What is the Accordion Effect?

In "Action and Responsibility,' Joel Feinberg pointed to an important idea to which he gave the label "the accordion effect.' Feinberg's discussion of this idea is of interest on its own, but it is also of interest because of its interaction with his critique, in his "Causing Voluntary Actions,' of a much discussed view of H. L. A. Hart and A. M. Honoré that Feinberg labels the "voluntary intervention principle.' In this essay I reflect on what the accordion effect is supposed by Feinberg to be, on differences between Feinberg's understanding of this idea and that of Donald Davidson, and on the interaction between Feinberg's discussion of the accordion effect and his critique of the voluntary intervention principle.     

Two Theories of Just War

As it is traditionally conceived, Just War Theory is not well suited for dealing with nation vs non-nation wars. It thus makes sense to create a second Just War Theory to deal with these wars. This article explores the differences and similarities between the two theories.

DELAYED REINFORCEMENT OF OPERANT BEHAVIOR

The experimental analysis of delay of reinforcement is considered from the perspective of three questions that seem basic not only to understanding delay of reinforcement, but, also, by implication, the contributions of temporal relations between events to operant behavior. The first question is whether effects of the temporal relation between responses and reinforcers can be isolated from other features of the environment that often accompany delays, such as stimuli or changes in the temporal distribution or rate of reinforcement. The second question is that of the effects of delays on operant behavior. Beyond the common denominator of a temporal separation between reinforcers and the responses that produce them, delay of reinforcement procedures differ from one another along several dimensions, making delay effects circumstance dependent. The final question is one of interpreting delay of reinforcement effects. It centers on the role of the response—reinforcer temporal relation in the context of other, concurrently operating behavioral processes.     

医学教育发展的困局与突破

受“大跃进”思维模式影响,我国高等教育由精英化快速过渡到大众化,医学教育呈现出急剧膨胀的发展态势,在教育理念、培养体系、办学模式、学制结构、专业设置、教育质量等方面出现了许多新情况、新问题,陷入了发展困局.面对困局必须更新教育观念,加强统筹协调,推动医学教育科学发展.     

项目反应理论原理与当前应用热点概览

本文首先分析了经典测验理论存在的局限,然后在潜在特质理论和项目特征曲线两大概念基础上阐述了项目反应理论及其基础模型的测量学原理,介绍了多个项目反应理论基础模型.最后简要介绍了七项当前应用项目反应理论指导大型题库建设和指导编制各种新型测验的热点内容.     

Two ways to overcome social uncertainty in social support networks: A test of the emancipation theory of trust by comparing kin/nonkin relationships

Many findings of previous research have supported the predictions of the emancipation theory of trust ( Yamagishi, 2011 ) in experimental settings. Although the key concept of the theory is social uncertainty, few studies of the concept have been conducted in natural settings. In the present study, we operationally defined social uncertainty by comparing kin and nonkin relationships. We analyzed survey data representative of the Japanese population and compared the exchange of social support between kin and nonkin. The prediction was that commitment helps respondents construct cooperative nonkin relationships more than it does kin relationships, and general trust helps only resource‐rich respondents to do so. The results supported the predictions. The study found significant interactions with relationship type × commitment and relationship type × household income × general trust. The patterns of mean score for social support exchanged were consistent with the predictions. High trusters with low household income exchanged more support independent of the relationship type.     

Anxiety sensitivity and intolerance of uncertainty: Evidence of incremental specificity in relation to health anxiety

Anxiety sensitivity (AS) reflects the fear of arousal-related sensations and intolerance of uncertainty (IU) represents the dispositional fear of the unknown. Within cognitive–behavioral models, AS and IU are individual difference variables considered central to the phenomenology of health anxiety. However, prior studies have cast doubt on whether both variables incrementally contribute to our understanding of health anxiety. Addressing limitations of these prior studies, the present study examined the incremental specificity of AS and IU as these two variables relate to health anxiety in a large medically healthy sample of community adults (N = 474). Both AS and IU incrementally contributed to the concurrent prediction of health anxiety beyond both negative affect and one another. However, within these analyses, the physical dimension of AS and the inhibitory dimension of IU were the only AS and IU dimensions to evidence incremental specificity in relation to health anxiety.     

Timescapes of Security: Clocks,Clouds, and the Complexity of Security Governance

This article pulls together the disjointed complexification of security studies. Such analytical overview suggests that the perspective of “timescapes” allows for exploring the complexity that shapes meanings and practices of security and its governance. In this respect, it is the imperative to change that suggests the significance of complexity thinking to security studies—that is, it is alone in taking the discontinuities of global life seriously. Security, in this regard, is not merely about the clockwork of survival, but is redefined through the cloudlike adaptive contingency of “security as resilience.” In this setting, the security governance of complexity is identified through its dancing to the timescaped rhythms of uncertainty, cognitive challenges, complex risks, and exaptation prompted by the heterogeneity of global life.     

Intolerance of Uncertainty Mediates the Relation Between Generalized Anxiety Disorder Symptoms and Anger

Previous research has shown that individuals with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) report elevated anger compared with nonanxious individuals; however, the pathways linking GAD and anger are currently unknown. We hypothesized that negative beliefs about uncertainty, negative beliefs about worry and perfectionism dimensions mediate the relationship between GAD symptoms and anger variables. We employed multiple mediation with bootstrapping on cross-sectional data from a student sample (N = 233) to test four models assessing potential mediators of the association of GAD symptoms to inward anger expression, outward anger expression, trait anger and hostility, respectively. The belief that uncertainty has negative personal and behavioural implications uniquely mediated the association of GAD symptoms to inward anger expression (confidence interval [CI] = .0034, .1845, P_M = .5444), and the belief that uncertainty is unfair and spoils everything uniquely mediated the association of GAD symptoms to outward anger expression (CI = .0052, .1936, P_M = .4861) and hostility (CI = .0269, .2427, P_M = .3487). Neither negative beliefs about worry nor perfectionism dimensions uniquely mediated the relation of GAD symptoms to anger constructs. We conclude that intolerance of uncertainty may help to explain the positive connection between GAD symptoms and anger, and these findings give impetus to future longitudinal investigations of the role of anger in GAD.     

Uncertainty avoidance moderates the link between faith and subjective well-being around the world

Theorists have suggested that faith in God can play an important role in the relief of anxiety associated with uncertainty. Yet little is known about the impact of national differences in uncertainty avoidance – the degree to which uncertainty is threatening to members of a culture – on the relationship between faith and subjective well-being. In the present study, we investigated faith’s relationships with psychological well-being in the World and European Values Surveys for nearly 240,000 people in 92 countries, and the role national uncertainty avoidance plays in modifying these relationships. We found that faith was positively related to subjective well-being around the world overall, but this relationship was moderated by uncertainty avoidance. In particular, the relationship between faith and well-being was strongest in nations characterized by the highest levels of uncertainty avoidance. Our results suggest that cultural norms of uncertainty avoidance play a role in determining faith’s role in psychological functioning.