Reading the Public: Political Action and Its Relationship to Constructions of Political Disagreement and Opinion Climate in the Context of Brexit

This study applied a social representations approach to investigate the ways in which constructions of perceived political disagreement and the prevailing opinion climate were implicated in people's construals of political participation in the context of the United Kingdom European Union referendum of 2016. Interviews were conducted with 19 residents of the United Kingdom who voted to remain in the referendum, located in constituencies which represented diverse opinion climates in relation to the referendum. Thematic analysis of the data revealed that public opinion was a dilemmatic social representation; it was inscrutable and often ill-informed but also volatile and disruptive, which left open the possibility of it moving towards a more pro-EU position. Importantly, constructions of a polarized and dysfunctional political system worked to sustain a mode of political engagement which prioritized and positioned as efficacious individual rather than collective anti-Brexit political behavior. This implies that people may prefer different types of political participation depending on the opinion climate which they occupy and the way in which they construe it. Findings are discussed in relation to previous work linking meta-representations to political behavior and expression, and the implications of the findings for emergent forms such as Brexit are elaborated.     

群组成员行动目标的一致性对群体实体性的影响:动作形式一致性的调节作用

群体被视为一个有机整体的特性被称为群体实体性。研究从行为的行动目标和动作形式两个特征维度出发,探讨了行动目标一致性和动作形式一致性如何共同作用于群体实体性。结果发现,在不同群体规模下,群体成员具有一致目标的群体实体性均高于不一致条件,但只有当行为发生在群体情景且符合合理性原则时,动作形式一致性对该影响关系才起到调节作用。该结果表明,只有当行为发生在群体情景且符合合理性原则时,行动目标和动作形式才联合作用于群体实体性。     

Academic activism and its impact on individual‐level mobilization,sources of learning,and the future of academia in Turkey

In January 2016, academics in Turkey distributed a peace petition calling for an end to hostilities and to restart negotiations with the Kurdish movement. The Turkish government responded by opening legal cases, jailing academics, and dismissing them from universities. In the state of emergency following the July 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, the government's extended powers allowed them to fire thousands of civil servants from every branch of government, including thousands of academics. This increased the number of academics who organized to form and teach in academic collectives. The current study evaluates how politicization occurs in scholars removed from the university environment. Traditional approaches to collective action and politicization suggest that empowerment is an important catalyst in politicization and continuation of collective political engagement. With the social and political restrictions that decree law dismissals place on scholars, what is it that motivates them to politicize? The current study was conducted through semistructured interviews with nine academics who work in these collectives. Participants described their politicization in terms of previous practice, reaction to injustice, and ideals of academia and academic freedom. They further evaluated current and prospective functions and possible barriers to academic collectives. Finally, although somewhat ambivalent, participants discussed feelings of efficacy, psychosocial support, and senses of solidarity and liberation in terms of being empowered. Their perspectives provide an opportunity to understand how and where academics engage in scholar activism for an independent and free academia in the context of consolidated political oppression.     

Intentionality and temporal binding: Do causality beliefs increase the perceived temporal attraction between events?

Intentional motor actions and their effects are bound together in temporal perception, resulting in the so-called intentional binding effect. In the current study, we address an alternative explanatory mechanism for the emergence of temporal binding by excluding the role of motor action. Employing a sensory-based Libet clock paradigm, we examined temporal perception of two different auditory stimuli, and tested the influence of beliefs about the causal relationship between the two auditory stimuli, thus simulating a crucial feature of intentional action. In two experiments, we found a robust temporal repulsion effect, indicating that instead of being attracted to each other, the auditory stimuli were shifted away from each other in temporal perception. Interestingly, repulsion was attenuated by causal beliefs, but this effect was fragile. Furthermore, temporal repulsion was unaffected by the intensity of prior learning. Findings are discussed in the context of intentional action awareness research and multisensory integration.     

A two-fold transformation model for human action recognition using decisive pose

Human action recognition in videos is a tough task due to the complex background, geometrical transformation and an enormous volume of data. Hence, to address these issues, an effective algorithm is developed, which can identify human action in videos using a single decisive pose. To achieve the task, a decisive pose is extracted using optical flow, and further, feature extraction is done via a two-fold transformation of wavelet. The two-fold transformation is done via Gabor Wavelet Transform (GWT) and Ridgelet Transform (RT). The GWT produces a feature vector by calculating first-order statistics values of different scale and orientations of an input pose, which have robustness against translation, scaling and rotation. The orientation-dependent shape characteristics of human action are computed using RT. The fusion of these features gives a robust unified algorithm. The effectiveness of the algorithm is measured on four publicly datasets i.e. KTH, Weizmann, Ballet Movement, and UT Interaction and accuracy reported on these datasets are 96.66%, 96%, 92.75% and 100%, respectively. The comparison of accuracies with similar state-of-the-arts shows superior performance.     

"It's led me astray": How Cognitive Behavioural Therapists experience personal therapy in clinical practice

Personal therapy is considered to be an essential component of most psychotherapeutic training programmes. However, it remains peripheral to cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) training courses. We present a subsection of results from a qualitative study that examines how CBT therapists use personal therapy in their clinical practice. Seven CBT therapists who have undergone personal therapy were interviewed. Participants were asked about how they used personal therapy in their clinical practice and their accounts were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to identify common themes. This article presents the results of the first master theme, “Personal therapy creates conflict”, which explores a paradox that arises between personal therapy and CBT clinical practice; participants suggest that personal therapy equips them with therapeutic tools that paradoxically hinder their capacity to practice a standardised protocol‐led CBT. Results show that participants found personal therapy created considerable internal conflict, where their use of technical evidence‐based treatment protocols as practitioners was experienced in tension with the relationally oriented therapy they had received as clients. We discuss results in the context of Gabriel Marcel's philosophical insights on the dehumanising effects of technology on human relationships. We conclude with a brief consideration of the current political climate that increasingly privileges short‐term technical solutions to psychological distress.     

OUTSTANDING ISSUES WITH ROBERT RUSSELL'S NIODA CONCERNING QUANTUM BIOLOGY AND THEISTIC EVOLUTION

Non‐Interventionist Objective Divine Action (NIODA), introduced by Robert John Russell, is a model of divine action drawing upon insights from quantum mechanics. It presents an intriguing and significant challenge to classical conceptions of divine action with far‐reaching consequences. When applying NIODA to theistic evolution, however, significant questions emerge that require attention. We identify and assess two sets of concerns. The first relates to quantum physics, particularly whether and how quantum occurrences influence mutations and evolution. We argue that the current empirical evidence is ambiguous in its support of the kinds of quantum action that Russell proposes, though emerging data from quantum biology look promising. The second set of concerns is metaphysical, especially concerning the problem of evil. NIODA gives Godextensive agency over evolution and genetics, which has adverse consequences for theodicy. We propose potential solutions to the problems highlighted in our article, both metaphysical and physical, to improve the viability of NIODA's application to theistic evolution.     

社会互动加工的认知特性及脑机制——第三人称的视角

在日常生活中, 从“第三人称”的视角识别并理解他人的社会互动至关重要。这种社会互动加工具有两种认知特性：构形整体性和动作关联性; 体现为一个由众多脑区共同参与的层级加工过程, 主要包括个体知觉网络、动作观察网络和心智化网络。其中, 后颞上沟等脑区在表征社会互动关系中起着关键作用。未来的研究需要结合多种技术手段进一步揭示社会互动加工的遗传特性和神经机制, 并关注它在实际生活中的应用。