Gender Differences in Attributions and Emotions in Helping Contexts

Gender differences in the provision and receipt of emotional support may result from differences in the formation of responsibility and effort attributions in support-seeking interactions. Participants (N = 1,211, primarily middle-class, European American college students) read support-seeking scenarios that varied in support-seeker gender, responsibility for the problem, and effort to resolve the problem, as well as the problem itself, and completed measures of responsibility, effort attributions, and emotions (anger, sympathy). Results indicated qualified and subtle gender differences in attributions, emotions, and attribution--emotion associations, which are broadly consistent with the application of gendered moral orientations and instrumentality norms. These findings are discussed with respect to theorizing about gender differences in attribution processes and emotional support behavior.     

Why Naturalism?

My goal in this paper is to explain what ethical naturalism is, to locate the pivotal issue between naturalists and non-naturalists, and to motivate taking naturalism seriously. I do not aim to establish the truth of naturalism nor to answer the various familiar objections to it. But I do aim to motivate naturalism sufficiently that the attempt to deal with the objections will seem worthwhile. I propose that naturalism is best understood as the view that the moral properties are natural in the sense that they are empirical. I pursue certain issues in the understanding of the empirical. The crux of the matter is whether any synthetic proposition about the instantiation of a moral property is strongly a priori in that it does not admit of empirical evidence against it. I propose an argument from epistemic defeaters that, I believe, undermines the plausibility of a priorism in ethics and supports the plausibility of naturalism.     

A path-analytic strategy to analyze psychoanalytic treatment effects

This paper introduces a path-analytic strategy to analyze psychoanalytic treatment effects. A simple causal model is used to analyze a well-known case study by Charles Brenner. Application of even this simple model to the case study sharpens causal inferences that may be validly made, highlights important aspects of the psychoanalytic process and builds a foundation for further model development.     

“Why me?” – women’s use of spiritual causal attributions in making sense of breast cancer

Objective: This study addressed the role of positive (event is due to God’s Love or to God’s Will) and negative (event is due to God’s Anger) spiritual causal attributions in women’s adjustment to breast cancer.

Design: Ninety-three women diagnosed with breast cancer were assessed at six times from pre-diagnosis through two years post-surgery.

Main outcome measures: Women completed positive and negative measures of spiritual causal attributions (e.g. God’s Love), cognitive appraisals (e.g. threat), coping behaviour (e.g. avoidance) and well-being (e.g. distress).

Results: Positive spiritual attributions were consistently related to positive aspects of adjustment (e.g. positive appraisal, acceptance coping, and/or emotional well-being) while negative spiritual attribution was related to negative factors (e.g. appraisals of loss and uncontrollability, avoidance coping, and/or emotional distress). Path analyses revealed that the effects of positive and negative spiritual attributions on well-being were mediated by general cognitive appraisal and coping behaviour. Cross-lagged correlational analysis revealed a ‘downward spiral’ effect wherein the negative attribution of God’s Anger at pre-diagnosis predicted greater distress at 1 week pre-surgery which in turn predicted an increase in the negative attribution and so on across time.

Conclusion: Although positive spiritual attributions may help women maintain an attitude of hope and acceptance in the face of cancer, results indicate that the effects of negative spiritual attribution can play a significant role in undermining their well-being.     

共变信息的程度差异对归因的影响

本研究通过两个实验探讨了1种自我关联的共变信息的程度差异对归因的影响。实验1中38名被试阅读一些情境,情境中包含被试好/不好的结果、及相关的一致性信息,并操作一致性的程度,然后在原因的4个维度进行归因。结果表明一致性高/低分别被归于人的外/内因,而一致性信息无或不明确时的归因则在内外归因之间。同时在4个原因维度均表现出利己归因偏好,一致性信息的程度差异对利己归因偏好没有显著干扰作用。实验2采用实验1的方法但给予了区别性信息,实验2基本复制了实验1的结果。另外本研究发现一致性或区别性高时在可控制性维度利己归因偏好消失。最后探讨了共变信息对归因及利己归因偏好的影响。     

Causal and moral responsibility: Antecedents and consequences of group‐based guilt

In six studies (N = 1045) conducted in three European countries, we demonstrate distinctions between causal responsibility, group‐based guilt, and moral responsibility. We propose that causal responsibility is an antecedent of group‐based guilt linking the ingroup to previous transgressions against the victim group. In contrast, moral responsibility is a consequence of group‐based guilt and is conceptualized as a sociomoral norm to respond to the consequences of the ingroup's transgressions and the current needs of the victim group. As such, moral responsibility can be stimulated by group‐based guilt and directly predicts individual action intentions. Studies 1 and 2 focus on the conceptual distinctions among the three constructs. Study 3 tests the indirect effect of causal responsibility on moral responsibility via group‐based guilt. The remaining studies explore the mediating role of moral responsibility in associations between group‐based guilt and compensatory action tendencies, that is, financial compensation (study 4), approach and avoidance tendencies (study 5) and public apology (study 6). Together these studies show that causal and moral responsibility are psychologically distinct concepts from group‐based guilt and that moral responsibility plays an important role in shaping the effects of group‐based guilt on behavioral intentions. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Executive functioning by 18‐24‐month‐old children: effects of inhibition,working memory demands and narrative in a novel detour‐reaching task

Infants can inhibit a prepotent but wrong action towards a goal in order to perform a causal means‐action. It is not clear, however, whether infants can perform an arbitrary means‐action while inhibiting a prepotent response. In four experiments, we explore this executive functioning in 18–24‐month‐old children. The working memory and inhibition demands in a novel means‐end problem were systematically varied in terms of the type and combination of means‐action(s) (causal or arbitrary) contained within the task, the number of means‐actions (1 or 2), the goal visual availability and whether the task was accompanied by a narrative. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that children performed tasks that contained causal as opposed to arbitrary information more accurately; accuracy was also higher in tasks containing only one step. Experiment 2 also demonstrated that performance in the arbitrary task improved significantly when all sources of prepotency were removed. In Experiment 3, task performance improved when the two means‐actions were intelligibly linked to the task goal. Experiment 4 demonstrated that the use of a narrative that provided a meaningful (non‐causal) link between the two means‐actions also improved children's performance by assisting their working memory in the generation of a rationale. Findings provide an initial account of executive functioning in the months that bring the end of infancy. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

THE BLURRED LINE BETWEEN THEISTIC EVOLUTION AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN

It is often assumed that there is a hard line between theistic evolution (TE) and intelligent design (ID). Many theistic evolutionists subscribe to the idea that God only acts through natural processes, as opposed to the ID assertion that God, at certain points in natural history, has acted in a direct manner; directly causing particular features of the world. In this article, I argue that theistic evolutionists subscribe to what might be called Natural Divine Causation (NDC). NDC does not merely provide a nonsupernaturalist and noninterventionist model of divine action, it provides a line of demarcation between TE and ID. I make the critique that NDC is philosophically untenable and argue, consequently, that the line between TE and ID is blurred.     

Hume on the Problem of Other Minds

Hume is not often cited as a philosopher who posited a solution to the Problem of Other Minds. He instead seems to assume the belief in other minds in his moral philosophy without justification. However, Hume needs to explain how we experience and respond to others’ affections, and hence generate moral sentiments, given how central the latter are to his moral theory. Two recent interpretations of Hume’s solution to the Problem are the Wittgensteinian Interpretation, and the Simulation Theory Interpretation. Both focus on the concept of sympathy as a solution to the Problem, claiming that, for Hume, sympathy produces the belief in other minds. This paper critically examines these two interpretations and offers an alternative called ‘the Analogical Argument Interpretation’, which reconstructs Hume’s version of an analogical argument carried out not by our rational faculty of mind but by custom and imagination. On this interpretation, Hume does not think that sympathy generates the belief in other minds, but rather, sympathy presupposes that belief.     

Consciousness in a multilevel architecture: What causes the lateralization of effective connectivity under resting state?

Here we present our answers to a critical commentary by Elkhonon Goldberg on our recent publication (Velichkovsky et al., 2018). To avoid discussions about novelty effects in the human brain activity and memory processes, we narrowed down this response to a reanalysis of our data along the lines proposed in the commentary, namely to comparing the effective links between symmetrical brain structures during the first and the last parts of a prolonged resting-state fMRI experiment. We also tested for sex differences in our results and checked for a stability of top-down interactions during the course of experiment because learning is often expressed in the weakening of upper level control over low-level mechanisms. Our attempts to test the predictions based on the novelty hypothesis has led to mixed results suggesting that the discovered right-to-left dominance of causal connections at rest may have a deeper origin than supposed in the Goldberg’s commentary.