Promoting Honesty: The Influence of Stories on Children's Lie‐Telling Behaviours and Moral Understanding

Moral stories are a means of communicating the consequences of our actions and emphasizing virtuous behaviour, such as honesty. However, the effect of these stories on children's lie‐telling has yet to be thoroughly explored. The current study investigated the influence of moral stories on children's willingness to lie for another individual. Children were read one of three stories prior to being questioned about an accidental wrongdoing: (1) a positive story, which emphasized the benefits of being honest; (2) a negative story, which outlined the potential costs of lying; and (3) a neutral story, which was unrelated to truth‐telling or lie‐telling. Initially, most children withheld information about the event. Older children were better able to maintain their lies throughout the interview. However, when asked direct questions, children in the positive story condition were more likely to tell the truth than those in the negative and neutral conditions. No significant differences were found between the negative and neutral story conditions. The present study also investigated the relationship between children's conceptual understanding and behaviour. The findings revealed that children's knowledge of truths and lies increased with age. Children who lied had significantly higher conceptual scores than those who did not lie. Furthermore, the type of story children were read had a significant impact on their evaluations of true and false statements. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The attraction of evil and the destruction of meaning

Does the concept of evil deserve special formulation in the realm of psychoanalytic thought? In agreement with authors such as Meltzer (1992) and De Masi (2003) and through selected moments from a boy's long analysis, I will propose a definition of evil as a state of mind, characterized by disregard for the human quality of the object and the destruction of meaning and meaningfulness of life in and for others. Evil drains, perverts and strips symbols of intentions and goals, leaving them empty of emotional significance. In my patient, the state of mind that he called evil exerted a seductive appeal and was accompanied by a sadistic excitement that he elevated into a state of sexualized well‐being, which progressively perverted and destroyed emotional meaning, contributing to his confusion and desperation. Confronting this pathological configuration and describing the situation that I felt existed within his mind and between us, and rearticulating emotional meaning where it had been perverted, cannibalized or left empty, was the principal – and at times only – clinical instrument available to lead him out of his descent into nothingness.     

Between conflict and reconciliation: the hard truth

In the context of the fairly recent Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRC), I examine phenomenologically the nature of truth as the essential condition for overcoming social and political conflicts, and as an instrument for enforcing so-called “transitional justice” periods and promoting reconciliation. I also briefly approach the limits of this truth’s possibility of being recognized, if its evaluative and practical dimensions and its appeal to an “intelligence of emotions” do not prevail over its merely theoretical claims. Though not expounding Schutz’s and Husserl’s contributions, and meditating on phenomena they did not deal with, I carry out this reflection inspired by their work and methodological approach. The case study used as an intuitive illustration is the recent Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Truth and Assertability

Deflationists say that the equivalence between ‘p is true’ and p is all there is to the meaning of ‘true’. “Use” theories generally construe meaning as acceptance conditions. I argue: (i) there are certain obvious objections to a deflationary theory of truth so formulated; but (ii) they can be overcome if we employ a graded notion of use, i.e. a notion of assertability; but (iii) there appear to be certain further difficulties which cannot be overcome in this way.     

The Chrysippus intuition and contextual theories of truth

Contextual theories of truth are motivated primarily by the resolution they provide to paradoxical reasoning about truth. The principal argument for contextual theories of truth relies on a key intuition about the truth value of the proposition expressed by a particular utterance made during paradoxical reasoning, which Anil Gupta calls “the Chrysippus intuition.” In this paper, I argue that the principal argument for contextual theories of truth is circular, and that the Chrysippus intuition is false. I conclude that the philosophical motivation for contextual theories of truth fails.

Mix me a list: Context moderates the truth effect and the mere-exposure effect

When participants are repeatedly presented with an unfamiliar stimulus, this stimulus is rated as more likable (mere-exposure effect) or more valid (truth effect) as compared with a similar non-repeated stimulus. Both effects have been discussed as effects of fluency. Typical research designs on these effects involve a test phase in which ratings of both repeated and non-repeated stimuli are required. Based on research on moderators of fluency effects, we propose that the procedure of assessing the effects with mixed lists of repeated and non-repeated stimuli contributes strongly to the emergence of both effects. Two experiments found that the truth effect and the mere-exposure effect were strongly moderated by whether mixed lists or only repeated items were used at the test phase: whereas strong effects occurred in a context of repeated and non-repeated stimuli, the effects vanished with only repeated stimuli. Methodological and theoretical implications are discussed.     

Berkeley’s Contingent Necessities

The paper provides an account of necessary truths in Berkeley based upon his divine language model. If the thesis of the paper is correct, not all Berkeleian necessary truths can be known a priori.

Faint-hearted Anti-realism and Knowability

It is often claimed that anti-realists are compelled to reject the inference of the knowability paradox, that there are no unknown truths. I call those anti-realists who feel so compelled ‘faint-hearted’, and argue in turn that anti-realists should affirm this inference, if it is to be consistent. A major part of my strategy in defending anti-realism is to formulate an anti-realist definition of truth according to which a statement is true only if it is verified by someone, at some time. I also liberalize what is meant by a verification to allow for indirect forms of verification. From this vantage point, I examine a key objection to anti-realism, that it is committed to the necessary existence of minds, and reject a response to this problem set forth by Michael Hand. In turn I provide a more successful anti-realist response to the necessary minds problem that incorporates what I call an ‘agential’ view of verification. I conclude by considering what intellectual cost there is to being an anti-realist in the sense I am advocating.     

Relationship quality and accuracy of detecting a romantic partner's fear of being single

How attuned are romantic partners to each other’s fear of being single, and is accuracy associated with relationship quality? In this study, 104 couples reported their fear of being single, perceptions of their partner’s fear of being single, and relationship quality. Partners had significant accuracy when judging fear of being single, but a tendency toward overestimation. Partners also were not systematically similar and did not project their own fears onto partners. Tracking accuracy was positively associated with some aspects of the perceiver’s relationship quality, but not with the target’s relationship quality. Mean-level bias was largely unassociated with relationship quality for the perceiver or target, except for lower investment from the target when the perceiver over-estimated their fear of being single.