Peak-End rule versus average utility: How utility aggregation affects evaluations of experiences

The “Peak-End rule” which averages only the most extreme (Peak) and the final (End) impressions, is often a better predictor of overall evaluations of experiences than average impressions. We investigate the similarity between the evaluations of experiences based on Peak-End and average impressions. We show that the use of the Peak-End rule in cross-experience comparisons can be compatible with preferences for experiences that are better on average. Two conditions are shown to make rankings of experiences similar regardless of the aggregation rule: (i) the individual heterogeneity in the perception of stimuli, and (ii) the persistence in impressions. We describe their effects theoretically, and obtain empirical estimates using data from previous research. Higher estimates are shown to increase correlational measures of association between the Peak-End and average impressions. The high association per se is shown to be not only a theoretical possibility, but an empirical fact.     

Sleeping beauty and the dynamics of de se beliefs

This paper examines three accounts of the sleeping beauty case: an account proposed by Adam Elga, an account proposed by David Lewis, and a third account defended in this paper. It provides two reasons for preferring the third account. First, this account does a good job of capturing the temporal continuity of our beliefs, while the accounts favored by Elga and Lewis do not. Second, Elga’s and Lewis’ treatments of the sleeping beauty case lead to highly counterintuitive consequences. The proposed account also leads to counterintuitive consequences, but they’re not as bad as those of Elga’s account, and no worse than those of Lewis’ account.

Diversity Challenges in Community Research and Action: The Story of a Special Issue of AJCP

This story explores an intervention conducted in a Catholic parish community in New York City. The intervention, conducted by the author and a Jesuit priest, focused on issues of unity and diversity among the various Chinese immigrant subgroups in the parish (primarily Cantonese‐ and Mandarin‐speakers). Issues of class, power, and a history of colonialism in the Catholic Church are explored as central to the relations among culturally diverse Chinese American community members and between the members and the practitioners and the church authority. The author especially focuses on how the dynamics that played out in the intervention reflected wider issues of economics, labor practices, and political elitism in the wider Chinatown community. A central part of the author's argument is about power relationships between this parish community and Chinatown and how these power relationships are embedded within broader racial and economic oppression within the United States.     

The Role of Strategy in Mixed-Gender Group Interactions: A Study of the Television Show “The Weakest Link”

This paper studies mixed-gender group interactions in a strategic game where group members are sequentially eliminated till a single winner takes all. Study 1 tests the hypothesis that female contestants are retained till final rounds where they are eliminated. Using observational data from the US television show The Weakest Link (20 shows), results show that females are finalists but not winners. In a laboratory study (Study 2, 67 Berkeley undergraduates), we show that this effect is attenuated when winnings are shared among finalists (versus one winner takes all) due to the reduction in competitive pressures in the context. This research was supported in part by the Junior Faculty Research Grant awarded by the University of California at Berkeley to the second author.     

Idealization and modeling

This paper examines the role of mathematical idealization in describing and explaining various features of the world. It examines two cases: first, briefly, the modeling of shock formation using the idealization of the continuum. Second, and in more detail, the breaking of droplets from the points of view of both analytic fluid mechanics and molecular dynamical simulations at the nano-level. It argues that the continuum idealizations are explanatorily ineliminable and that a full understanding of certain physical phenomena cannot be obtained through completely detailed, nonidealized representations.     

Computing the uncomputable; or,The discrete charm of second-order simulacra

We examine a case in which non-computable behavior in a model is revealed by computer simulation. This is possible due to differing notions of computability for sets in a continuous space. The argument originally given for the validity of the simulation involves a simpler simulation of the simulation, still further simulations thereof, and a universality conjecture. There are difficulties with that argument, but there are other, heuristic arguments supporting the qualitative results. It is urged, using this example, that absolute validation, while highly desirable, is overvalued. Simulations also provide valuable insights that we cannot yet (if ever) prove.     

Good vibrations: Analytic process as coupled oscillations

This paper develops a new model for the action of psychoanalysis based on concepts from non-linear dynamics (chaos theory and complexity theory). It shows that the analyst–analysand couple may be conceptualized as a new configuration with its own properties that promote complex development in both members of the couple. These developments are an emergent result of the formation of the analyst–analysand couple and are significantly independent of the particular content of the manifest interaction of the couple. The well-studied phenomena of coupled oscillators suggest the specific features of the analysand–analyst interaction that are likely to be most important in conceptualizing analytic change. The model has substantial clinical applications since efforts to arrange for a coupled oscillator system that is central to it are distinct from many of the traditional considerations associated with creating an analytic situation.     

Being seen or being watched? A psychoanalytic perspective on body dysmorphia

The focus of this paper is on individuals who present as excessively preoccupied with their body, perceiving some aspect(s) to be 'ugly' such that they feel compelled to alter and/or conceal this 'ugly' body part. These difficulties are understood as symptoms of an underlying narcissistic disturbance. The author suggests that the relative pervasiveness of an identification with a 'super'-ego accounts for the degree of severity of the disturbance (increasing the compulsion to alter and/or conceal the hated body part) and that it has implications for the patient's accessibility in analytic treatment. Understanding the vicissitudes of the development of the body–self in the context of the earliest relationship with the 'object of desire' is core to helping these patients because of the quality of the identifications that ensue and that are then enacted the transference.     

The role of beliefs in goal dynamics: prolegomena to a constructive theory of intentions

In this article we strive to provide a detailed and principled analysis of the role of beliefs in goal processing—that is, the cognitive transition that leads from a mere desire to a proper intention. The resulting model of belief-based goal processing has also relevant consequences for the analysis of intentions, and constitutes the necessary core of a constructive theory of intentions, i.e. a framework that not only analyzes what an intention is, but also explains how it becomes what it is. We discuss similarities and differences between our approach and other standard accounts of intention, in particular Bratman’s planning theory. The aim here is to question and refine the conceptual foundations of many theories of intentional action: as a consequence, although our analysis is not formal in itself, it is ultimately meant to have deep consequences for formal models of intentional agency.