Is Anti-Semitism Currently Part of an Authoritarian Attitude Syndrome?

This study used data from the 1990 General Social Survey to investigate the extent to which anti-Semitism had syndromic relationships with other authoritarianism-related attitudes among American white non-Jews. The correlational and factor analytic connections between four measures of anti-Semitism and the other attitudes were generally weak. There were no clear-cut differences between respondents high and low in education in the strength of these connections. Moreover, when the scores of respondents favorable and unfavorable to Jews were compared on a number of authoritarianism-related scales, the differences were usually small. The results suggest a diminished role for anti-Semitism in authoritarian attitude syndromes.     

The Unreal Child1

Unrepresented mental states lead to an impaired ability to feel emotions and trust in oneself, one’s history and in the world. The article explores the question of how representations of oneself and the relevant other, the mother, become possible in the course of therapy when dissociative processes previously made this impossible, and what role unconscious communication plays in the analytic realm. This question will be explored by examining the theories of André Green, Philip Bromberg, and Howard Levine.     

The Transformation of Chinese Cultural Images of the Plague through Chinese Characters,Legends and Folkways1

The human experience of survival from a plague is about distinguishing the sick from the healthy as quickly as possible, establishing a barrier to stop the infection, and protecting healthy people. Nevertheless, the various quarantine rules and the acceptance and compliance of the population are a kind of battle between policy implementers and the public. This paper tries to understand how Chinese cultural attitudes (Henderson, 1984) unconsciously influence the Chinese people to be most cooperative with the strict containment and quarantine measures to confront the COVID-19 pandemic. This article begins with the Chinese characters, exemplified by the four characters of disease and plague, to discuss how the pictograph nature and spatial structural way profoundly shaped the cultural mind. Then, through plague-related Chinese legends, stories and folklore, the paper sets out the Chinese cultural attitudes which are also manifested in the analogical associations between disease, plague and seasons, the balance of the five elements of the universe and ghosts, gods and the government bureaucrats in the Kingdom of the Heaven. All of these approaches are well in line with Jung’s method of associative amplification as a way to locate the archetypal wisdom that assures survival.     

Cross-national comparison of children's attitudes towards bully/victim problems in school

Using large-scale survey data from Italy, and England, findings are reported for attitudes to school bullying; specifically the extent to which children expect their teachers, or other children, to intervene in bullying; and the extent to which children either empathise with victims of bullying, or state that they themselves would do something about it. Findings were broadly similar in most respects, in the two countries. Teachers were thought to intervene fairly often, other children more rarely. Most children had sympathetic attitudes and behaviour toward victims of bullying, but a significant minority, including many self-reported bullies, did not. Girls were more empathic to victims than boys, but were not more likely to intervene. The main cultural difference was that older Italian children were more empathic than younger children, with the reverse difference in England. However in both countries, the likelihood of reported intervention was less with older children. The results are discussed in relation to theoretical viewpoints, and practical implications for schools. Aggr. Behav. 23:245–257, 1997. © 1997 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Measuring Associative Strength: Category-Item Associations and Their Activation from Memory

Three measures of the strength of association between a category and members of the category were investigated: (a) a naming measure, in which the participants (93 undergraduates) were asked to list the members of a category and the listing order was assumed to reflect associative strength; (b) a latency measure, which assessed the latency to correctly identify specific items as members or nonmembers of a given category; and (c) a facilitation measure, in which the spontaneous activation of an item upon presentation of a category label as a prime was assessed by considering the extent to which the prime facilitated recognition of an initially degraded (visually obscured) item. The three measures correlated substantially, thus validating the naming and latency measures as reasonable approximations of the likelihood that a given item will receive activation in memory when the category is presented. Many of the constructs of interest to survey researchers can be viewed similarly as associations in memory, and the naming and latency measures can be fruitfully used in surveys; research attesting to the utility of namingand latency data is reviewed.     

高师学生教学态度研究

对503名高师学生的教学态度进行问卷施测,结果显示:当前高师学生的教学态度是较积极、进步的,倾向人文取向的;性别、学科以及中学教学经验对高师学生教学态度有显著的影响,但当前的高师教育并未能有效促进学生养成积极的教学态度.     

Motivation and appraisal in perception of poorly specified speech

Normal-hearing students (n = 72) performed sentence, consonant, and word identification in either A (auditory), V (visual), or AV (audiovisual) modality. The auditory signal had difficult speech-to-noise relations. Talker (human vs. synthetic), topic (no cue vs. cue-words), and emotion (no cue vs. facially displayed vs. cue-words) were varied within groups. After the first block, effects of modality, face, topic, and emotion on initial appraisal and motivation were assessed. After the entire session, effects of modality on longer-term appraisal and motivation were assessed. The results from both assessments showed that V identification was more positively appraised than A identification. Correlations were tentatively interpreted such that evaluation of self-rated performance possibly depends on subjective standard and is reflected on motivation (if below subjective standard, AV group), or on appraisal (if above subjective standard, A group). Suggestions for further research are presented.     

Cognitive Dissonance and Post-Decision Attitude Change in Six Presidential Elections

Data from the National Election Studies were examined in an effort to isolate cognitive dissonance of two kinds: dissonance arising from a behavioral commitment in the form of voting, and dissonance arising from inconsistencies associated with having supported the losing candidate. Feeling thermometer ratings of the two principal presidential candidates obtained before and immediately after six elections (1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, and 1996) were analyzed. Regression estimates supported a dissonance reduction explanation of observed attitude changes. Voters, as compared to nonvoters, tended to increase the evaluative distance between candidates after an election, whereas supporters of the losing candidate were more likely than supporters of the winning candidate to decrease such evaluative distances. An additional examination of voters yielded results consistent with dissonance theory: After the election, respondents reporting favorable evaluations of both candidates (a difficult choice) tended to spread comparative candidate evaluations compared to respondents who were favorable toward only one candidate (an easy choice). The results both support and cast doubt on prior studies.     

Evaluating the Meta-Slope: Is there a Slippery Slope Argument against Slippery Slope Arguments?

Slippery slope arguments (SSAs) have often been viewed as inherently weak arguments, to be classified together with traditional fallacies of reasoning and argumentation such as circular arguments and arguments from ignorance. Over the last two decades several philosophers have taken a kinder view, often providing historical examples of the kind of gradual change on which slippery slope arguments rely. Against this background, Enoch (2001, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 21(4), 629–647) presented a novel argument against SSA use that itself invokes a slippery slope. Specifically, he argued that the very reasons that can make SSAs strong arguments mean that we should be poor at abiding by the distinction between good and bad SSAs, making SSAs inherently undesirable. We argue that Enoch’s meta-level SSA fails on both conceptual and empirical grounds.     

The Strength Model of Self-Control

ABSTRACT— Self-control is a central function of the self and an important key to success in life. The exertion of self-control appears to depend on a limited resource. Just as a muscle gets tired from exertion, acts of self-control cause short-term impairments (ego depletion) in subsequent self-control, even on unrelated tasks. Research has supported the strength model in the domains of eating, drinking, spending, sexuality, intelligent thought, making choices, and interpersonal behavior. Motivational or framing factors can temporarily block the deleterious effects of being in a state of ego depletion. Blood glucose is an important component of the energy.