Intergroup reconciliation: Instrumental and socio-emotional processes and the needs-based model

We discuss the complexity of the concept of intergroup reconciliation, offer our definition of it, and identify instrumental and socio-emotional processes as distinct processes that facilitate reconciliation. We then present the needs-based model, according to which conflicts threaten victims’ sense of agency and perpetrators’ moral image, and social exchange interactions that restore victims’ and perpetrators’ impaired identities promote reconciliation. We review empirical evidence supporting the model and present extensions of it to (a) contexts of structural inequality, (b) “dual” conflicts, in which both parties transgress against each other, and (c) contexts in which the restoration of positive identities is external to the victim–perpetrator dyad (e.g., third-parties’ interventions). Theoretical and practical implications, limitations, and future research directions are discussed.     

“You Should Know Better”: Expressions of Empathy and Disregard Among Victims of Massive Social Trauma

There is a belief that victims of extreme violence should be sensitive to the suffering of others although most of the psychosocial literature points to the opposite. We examine this belief by looking at work that we have carried out on the psychosocial effects of the Holocaust and on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. We assert that being a victim of collective violence often inhibits empathy toward others and creates continued animosity. We focus on intergenerational aspects connected to victimization and their negative impact on the expression of empathy among descendants of victims in order to explain why the sense of victimhood and justification of repeated violence is often expressed by individuals born years after the original violence took place.     

Selective humanitarian intervention: moral reason and collective agents

This paper examines four interpretations of the observation that humanitarian intervention might be used ‘selectively’ or ‘inconsistently’ in order to elucidate the normative commitments of the deliberative process in international relations. The paper argues that there are several types of concerns that are implicit in the accusation of inconsistency, and only some of them amount to objections to humanitarian intervention as a whole. The paradox of humanitarian intervention is that intervention is prohibited except where the intervention is humanitarian, yet humanitarian reasons never exist in isolation, and it is nearly impossible to determine the real reason for intervention (or any other collective action) in the international arena. The problems revealed by an examination of inconsistency in the example of humanitarian intervention turn out to be general problems with applying the norms of practical reasoning to moral questions dealing with collective agents.     

Economic Adversity and Depressive Symptoms in Mothers: Do Marital Status and Perceived Social Support Matter?

Over the past decade there has been increasing interest in the idea that marriage and perhaps other forms of interpersonal support can buffer the negative effects of poverty. The current study tests the hypothesis that marital status, perceived social support and neighborhood collective efficacy can moderate the effects of economic adversity on depressive symptoms among parents. Hierarchical Linear Modeling was used to analyze data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. Participants were 1,957 mothers of minor children. Analysis of main effects revealed associations between neighborhood SES (β = ?0.69, SE (0.15), p < .001), family income (β = ?0.11, SE (0.05), p = .02) financial strain (β = 0.51, SE (0.18), p = .004), being single (β = 0.63, SE (0.24), p = .009) and perceived social support (β = ?0.22, SE (0.03), p < .001) on depressive symptoms. The hypothesis that interpersonal resources can buffer the effects of economic adversity was not supported. There were no significant interactions between marital status and economic adversity. There was a significant interaction between perceived social support and neighborhood level socioeconomic status (β = ?0.07, SE (0.03), p = .04) but the effects of social support were weakest in neighborhoods characterized by low socioeconomic status.     

Durkheim,Sellars, and the Origins of Collective Intentionality

Wilfrid Sellars read and annotated Celestine Bouglé’s Evolution of Values, translated by his mother with an introduction by his father (1926). The book expounded Émile Durkheim's account of morality and elaborated his account of origins of value in collective social life. Sellars replaced elements of this account in constructing his own conception of the relationship between the normative and community, but preserved a central one: the idea that conflicting collective and individual intentions could be found in the same person. These notoriously opaque arguments, which seek to save an element of rationalism from social explanation while granting the claims of behavioural science, are illuminated by comparing them to their original Durkheimian form.     

How we have fallen: implicit trajectories in collective temporal thought

ABSTRACT

Memory may play a critical role in the ability to imagine events in the future. While most work on this relation has concerned episodic memory and simulated episodic events in the future, the current study examines how collective memories relate to imagination for the collective future. Two thousand American participants provided events for (1) America’s origins, (2) normative events that all Americans should remember, and (3) events in America’s future. Each event was rated for emotional valence. Whereas collective memories – particularly origin events – showed pronounced positivity biases, there was a negativity bias in collective future thought, indicating an implicit trajectory of decline in Americans’ representations of their nation across time. Imagination for the social future may not be simulated based on the template of collective memories, but may rather relate to the past in a way that is mediated by cultural narrative schemata.     

Validation of a Community Collective Efficacy Scale in an African Context

The aim of this study was to validate a community collective efficacy scale in an African context. An abridged version of the Community Collective Efficacy Scale was validated in a cross-sectional survey design. Participants (N = 1050) from urban (n = 451) and rural (n = 599) areas completed the CCES and other measures of self-efficacy and psychological well-being. Results indicated a Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of 0.72 and satisfactory inter-item correlations ranging between 0.17 and 0.25. Significant correlations between the CCES and other measures of self-efficacy and psychological well-being indicated good criterion-related validity. Construct validity was supported by confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis. Exploratory factor analysis yielded one factor that relates to a sense of “we-ness”. The CCES thus has good reliability and validity in an African context.     

Structural and functional information—an evolutionary approach to pragmatic information

The paper starts with a critics of the potential information which is related to the statistical entropy. In order to include the syntactic and semantic aspects of information, we propose a distinction between structural and functional information, instead. Structural information represents the structural determination of a system state, it measures the content of information, as given by the material structure. Functional information, on the other hand, represents the operational closure of the system, it could be e.g. an algorithm which activates and interprets the existing structural information.

From an evolutionary point of view, pragmatic information is generated by an interplay of structural and functional information. This leads to a new insight into the concept of pragmatic information, which is not an invariant of evolution, but must be steadily re‐generated.

The active role of information in a self‐organization process is demonstrated in a model of artificial agents. It is shown by means of computer simulations that the feedback of already existing information on the generation of new information performs analogies to the creation of a collective memory.     

The developmental/emergent model of archetype, its implications and its application to shamanism

This paper addresses the ongoing debate in the JAP to do with archetype theory and supports an emergent/developmental model which sees archetypal imagery as an emergent phenomenon arising out of neural bio-structures laid down in early infant life as a result of developmental experience. This model is supported by the current findings of those developmental biologists who adhere to Developmental Systems Theory. The themes of Developmental Systems Theory are examined and corroborative parallels are drawn with the model. A number of implications follows: the model has substantial explanatory power and leads to a new perspective on innatism; it implies an archetype-environment nexus; it collapses the nature-nurture debate in relation to archetype theory; it collapses the 'sacred heritage' approach to archetypes and it removes the conceptual division between the collective and personal unconscious. This developmental/emergent perspective is then applied to the shaman archetype, using ethnographic records of the Sakha (Yakut) Siberian tribe. The material supports the hypothesis that the shamanic complex is laid down in early infancy by a combination of events which cause emotional ruptures in the mother-infant dyad. Siberian shamanism is then understood to arise out of developmental experience and not from the constellation of an autochthonous archetype.     

Exploring racism

Whilst the concept of 'race' has no basis in genetics or biology, the dynamics of racism pervade all aspects of modern life--including the consulting room. In this paper the relationship between a white therapist and a black patient is explored through an unbidden thought and a verbal slip that occurred in the course of the therapy. The amplification and examination of these unwanted 'slips' are used to shed light on the subtleties of the effects of difference in colour on the relationship. It is argued here that the interaction reflects and illuminates the asymmetrical relationship between 'black' and 'white' in modern-western society. This is then considered using the concepts of the cultural unconscious and social unconscious as ways of understanding the tenacity of racism in ourselves.