Effects of status and outcome on attributions and just-world beliefs: How the social distribution of success and failure may be rationalized

The distribution of success and failure to social groups is supported by lay theories about the characteristics of social groups and the causes of their outcomes, as well as by beliefs about entitlement of groups to succeed or fail. This paper presents a study where a target individual’s socio-economic status (high vs. low) and outcome in a major academic achievement task (success vs. failure) were manipulated in a 2 × 2 experimental design. It was found that high-status success and low-status failure, i.e. the system-consistent outcomes, were attributed relatively more to stable internal causes (ability), whereas high-status failure and low-status success, i.e. the system-inconsistent outcomes, were attributed relatively more to unstable causes (effort). Second, participants’ belief in a just world was higher in high-status success and low-status failure than in high-status failure and low-status success.     

Cognitive Frames in Psychology: Demarcations and Ruptures

As there seems to be a recurrent feeling of crisis in psychology, its present state is analyzed in this article. The author believes that in addition to the traditional manifestations that have dogged psychology since it emerged as an independent science some new features of the crisis have emerged. Three fundamental “ruptures” are identified: the “horizontal” rupture between various schools and trends, the “vertical” rupture between natural science and humanitarian psychology, and the “diagonal” rupture between academic research and applied practice of psychology. These manifestations of the crisis of psychology have recently been compounded by the crisis of its rationalistic foundations. This situation is described in terms of the cognitive systems in psychology which include meta-theories, paradigms, sociodigms and metadigms.

Sexually dimorphic effect of an acute smoking manipulation on skin resistance but not on heart-rate during a cognitive verbal task

In a two-day, two-session experiment where smokers male and female college-student subjects worked on a cognitive verbal task during either the first or second day, and on a cognitive spatial task on the second or first day, smoking was manipulated as an acute independent variable by requiring 10+ hours of pre-experimental abstention, and providing a cigarette during the 15-minute rest period between the two sessions. Non-smoker female and male subjects underwent the same experiment, and hence served as controls for the effects of this acute-smoking manipulation. Overall adaptation (decreased arousal) to the experiment was manifested in a significant increase in skin resistance level (SRL) in all subjects, but when this adaptation effect was statistically controlled, there was a significant smokers by sex interaction during the verbal task only, such that SRL was increased by the cigarette in males, but decreased in females. In contrast, the same analysis indicated only a marked increase in heart-rate (HR) due to smoking, which was unaffected either by sex or by whether the task was the verbal or the (easier) spatial one. We interpret the SRL results as reflecting a sex difference in the direction of transient psychological arousal, and discuss it in relation to evidence in the literature based on self reports, and to evidence (based on HR in this study and on blood pressure in other studies) on physiological (cardiovascular) arousal.     

Protection of animal research subjects

The use of experimental animals, mostly rodents, in biomedical research and especially in oncology and immunology should be acknowledged with respect, recognizing the contribution of animal experimentation in the fascinating scientific progress in these disciplines of research. It is an obligation of the investigator to justify the scientific and ethical aspects of each study requiring the use of animals. The international guiding principles for using animals in biomedical research are well defined and have been distributed worldwide by the International Council for Laboratory Animal Science (ICLAS) since 1956, when this Organization was founded. In Poland the ICLAS philosophy and principles are highly respected and were implemented firstly by the members of the Commission on Biology of Experimental Animals appointed in 1962 by the Department of Medical Science of the Polish Academy of Science in Warsaw. Animal Protection Acts, first proclaimed in 1928 were gradually modified and improved. Actual legislation (enacted in 1997, 2003 and 2005) is consistent with EU Directives (86/609/EEC) and follows the internationally recommended principles that include ICLAS guidelines concerning animal welfare and care condition in biomedical research. The problem of “alternative methods” is briefly discussed. Dr. Donald Boisvert, CCAC — Canadian Council on Animal Care A lecture on the subject of this paper was presented at the 6th International Bioethics Conference entitled ‘The Responsible Conduct of Basic and Clinical Research’, held in Warsaw, Poland, 3–4 June 2005. The author is the National Representative of Polish Academy of Science to the International Council for Laboratory Animal Science (ICLAS) and a Member of the ICLAS Governing Board.     

Between morality and repentance: recapturing "sin" for bioethics.

Distinguishing within "sin" the dimensions of anomia, hamartia, and asthenia makes it possible to analyze in greater detail the contrary manners in which traditional and post-traditional Christianities in this issue of Christian Bioethics endeavor to recapture what was lost when secular bioethics reconstructed the specifically spiritual-context-oriented normative commitments of Christianity in one-dimensionally moral terms. Various post-traditional attempts at securing moral orientation and resources for forgiveness, both of which secular bioethics finds increasingly difficult to provide, are critically reviewed. Their engagement of secular moral concepts and concerns, and even their adoption of an academically philosophical posture and language, is presented as responsible for their failure to adequately preserve what in traditional Christianity would count as prohibited vs. permitted, and advisable vs. non-advisable, or what would allow to resolve "tragic conflicts." The deeper reason for this failure lies in post-traditional Christianity's restricting the Christian life (with its central tension between love and the law) to what can be captured by cognitive categories. As the survey of several traditionally Christian accounts of sin in bioethics makes clear, both moral orientation (along with the resolution of "tragic" conflicts) and the sources of forgiveness are available, once that Christian life is framed in terms of persons' spirit-supported practical involvement in ascesis and liturgy, and once bioethical reflections are situated in the experiential context of such involvement.     

The mind reduced to molecules?

According to Bickle, certain empirical results demonstrate that the bottom-up reduction of phychological concepts to the concepts of neuroscience has already been accomplished. I argue that this conclusion is hasty. Bickle claims that all high-level investigations depend on a mistake. I argue that this overstates the explanatory character of neuroscientific findings. Bickle's assessment is highly optimistic, but he is far from making a decisive argument. Those who wait for a full-blown reductionism will have to wait a little longer.     

ORMA: A strategy to reduce Psychology's replication problems

Because of their historical reliance upon null hypothesis statistical tests (NHST), the human sciences have developed a number of potentially problematic research literatures. While aware of the file drawer effect since the 1970s, scientists have been largely unsuccessful at addressing its pernicious effects. Because significant results have a greater likelihood of being published than do nonsignificant effects, many of our research literatures might currently be constructed upon a series of Type I errors and inflated effect sizes. A method (called Original Replication of Meta-Analyses or ORMA) has recently been developed for identifying problematic research literatures and offering a method to address the problems due to publication bias. Philosophers of science have long argued that a chief reason for science's preeminence as a source of knowledge rests in its ability to self-correct. Researchers in the human sciences are now able to empirically test their research literatures to ascertain which are in need of repair. The use of ORMA serves to lessen the problems that led to the recent calls for bans on significant/nonsignificant statistics in human science research. ORMA will also improve psychology's ability to successfully replicate its research findings.     

Linked arguments and the validity requirement

In this paper I demonstrate that most textbook accounts of the linked/convergent distinction fail to conform to the widespread intuition that all valid arguments ought to be classified as linked arguments. I also show that standard textbook accounts of linkage and convergence cannot provide a satisfactory treatment of fallacies of irrelevance and, due to their general insensitivity to the epistemic context in which arguments are offered, must be supplemented by subjective accounts of linkage and convergence which appeal exclusively to authorial beliefs and intentions.Drafts of this paper were read at the Ontario Philosophical Society meeting held at Trent University in October 1990 and the Central Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association held in Chicago in April 1991. I thank Trudy Govier, Hans Hansen and an anonymous referee for helpful and encouraging comments on various drafts.     

Hegel and Sellars on the Unity of Things

ABSTRACT

I have claimed previously that Hegel and Sellars are both, in the end, monistic visionaries, though with radically different visions of the grand unity of things. In this paper I explain and defend that claim. Section one differentiates several kinds of monism; section two discusses Hegel’s vision of the underlying unity of thing, while section three does the same for Sellars. The compare-and-contrast assignment is brought to completion in section four.     

Laudato Si’: Care for Creation at the Center of a New Social Issue

This essay reviews the documents of the pontifical magisterium of the Church from the encyclical Mater et magistra ( 1961 ) to the exhortation Evangelii gaudium (2013), in order to show the Church’s historical commitment to the defense of the environment. It then argues that Laudato si’ elevates the theological status of the environmental crisis to that of a new social issue, much as Leo XIII did for the industrial crisis with his encyclical letter Rerum novarum ( 1891 ).