Redeeming Apartheid's Legacy: Collective Guilt, Political Ideology, and Compensation

This paper reports two studies among white South African students on feelings of collective guilt about apartheid and attitudes to affirmative action. Study 1 reports on 21 in-depth interviews, Study 2 on results from 180 survey questionnaires. Substantial proportions of the participants in both studies displayed feelings of collective guilt. Among participants in both studies who identified strongly with white South Africans, some displayed strong feelings of collective guilt while others displayed no such feelings. Our survey data suggest that political ideology functions as a moderator. Strong feelings of guilt were found among students who identified strongly with white South Africans and defined themselves as liberals. If they defined themselves as conservatives then no feelings of collective guilt were observed. Strong feelings of collective guilt were accompanied by positive attitudes toward affirmative action. The influence of political ideology on attitudes toward affirmative action was mediated by collective guilt.     

Forgive and Forget? Antecedents and Consequences of Intergroup Forgiveness in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The present study examines the effects of contact and common-ingroup identification on intergroup forgiveness and outgroup behavioral tendencies. A sample of Bosnian Muslims (N  =  180) were asked to report their readiness to forgive the misdeeds committed by Bosnian Serbs during the 1992–95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A path analysis of the presumed antecedents and consequences of forgiveness revealed that frequent and good quality contact with members from the perpetrator group predicted forgiveness (positively) and desire for social distance (negatively). Moreover, the positive relationship between contact and forgiveness was mediated by empathy and trust towards the outgroup and by perceived outgroup heterogeneity. Common-ingroup identification was also found to be positively associated with forgiveness and negatively with social distance towards the outgroup. Finally, intergroup forgiveness also predicted social distance from the outgroup. The theoretical and applied implications of these findings are discussed.     

Support and self-care: professional reflections of six New Zealand high school counsellors

In many Western societies there is increasing demand for counselling; in turn, heightened levels of support needs have been identified for counsellors themselves. Despite calls for practitioners to adopt a more proactive approach to self-care, research suggests many still pay insufficient attention to alleviating on-the-job stress or achieving ‘work–life balance’. These issues were examined within the context of inviting six high school counsellors in New Zealand to talk generally about their professional lives. The authors suggest findings support calls for counsellor education programmes to offer structured opportunities for trainees to reflect upon the task of discursively constructing professional roles.     

Room for a view: on the metaphysical subject of personal identity

Sydney Shoemaker leads today’s “neo-Lockean” liberation of persons from the conservative animalist charge of “neo-Aristotelians” such as Eric Olson, according to whom persons are biological entities and who challenge all neo-Lockean views on grounds that abstracting from strictly physical, or bodily, criteria plays fast and loose with our identities. There is a fundamental mistake on both sides: a false dichotomy between bodily continuity versus psychological continuity theories of personal identity. Neo-Lockeans, like everyone else today who relies on Locke’s analysis of personal identity, including Derek Parfit, have either completely distorted or not understood Locke’s actual view. Shoemaker’s defense, which uses a “package deal” definition that relies on internal relations of synchronic and diachronic unity and employs the Ramsey–Lewis account to define personal identity, leaves far less room for psychological continuity views than for my own view, which, independently of its radical implications, is that (a) consciousness makes personal identity, and (b) in consciousness alone personal identity consists—which happens to be also Locke’s actual view. Moreover, the ubiquitous Fregean conception of borders and the so-called “ambiguity of is” collapse in the light of what Hintikka has called the “Frege trichotomy.” The Ramsey–Lewis account, due to the problematic way Shoemaker tries to bind the variables, makes it impossible for the neo-Lockean ala Shoemaker to fulfill the uniqueness clause required by all such Lewis style definitions; such attempts avoid circularity only at the expense of mistaking isomorphism with identity. Contrary to what virtually all philosophers writing on the topic assume, fission does not destroy personal identity. A proper analysis of public versus perspectival identification, derived using actual case studies from neuropsychiatry, provides the scientific, mathematical and logical frameworks for a new theory of self-reference, wherein “consciousness,” “self-consciousness,” and the “I,” can be precisely defined in terms of the subject and the subject-in-itself.     

Changing the subject: on the subject of subjectivity

In this paper I shall attempt to argue for the simple view of personal identity. I shall first argue that we often do have warrant for our beliefs that we exist as continuing subjects of experience, and that these beliefs are justified independently of any reductionist analysis of what it means to be a person. This has two important implications that are relevant to the ongoing debate concerning the number of persons that are in existence throughout any duration in time: (1) the lack of logically or metaphysically necessary and sufficient conditions for distinguishing one person from another should imply neither that there is only one person nor that personhood is not individuative; and (2) the lack of such universally applicable identity criteria should not imply that the term ‘person’ is a folk term with no real application. In other words, lack of reductionist analysis does not entail lack of existence.     

Diversity in unity: practical unity and personal boundaries

In the spirit of the discussion in Daniel Kolak’s I Am You: The Metaphysical Foundation for Global Ethics, I consider the way in which divisions that we usually think of as borders between distinct people occur within a single life. Starting with the dispute between constructionist and non-constructionist views of persons, I argue for a view that places the unity of persons in the dynamic generated by simultaneously taking a constructionist and non-constructionist view of oneself. In order to unify ourselves as agents we need to treat past and future selves as others, but to motivate this endeavor we need to think of ourselves as temporally extended agents, and so identify with past and future selves. Understanding this dynamic illuminates the structure of our agency and the unity of the self.     

Racial-ethnic self-schemas: Multidimensional identity-based motivation

Prior self-schema research focuses on benefits of being schematic vs. aschematic in stereotyped domains. The current studies build on this work, examining racial-ethnic self-schemas as multidimensional, containing multiple, conflicting, and non-integrated images. A multidimensional perspective captures complexity; examining net effects of dimensions predicts within-group differences in academic engagement and well-being. When racial-ethnicity self-schemas focus attention on membership in both in-group and broader society, engagement with school should increase since school is not seen as out-group defining. When racial-ethnicity self-schemas focus attention on inclusion (not obstacles to inclusion) in broader society, risk of depressive symptoms should decrease. Support for these hypotheses was found in two separate samples (8th graders, n = 213, 9th graders followed to 12th grade n = 141).     

医学职业显规则何以不再“败走麦城”

近些年来,医学职业显规则接连受挫,医学职业生态呈现非常态甚至反常态。其根本原因在于,医学职业显规则与潜规则二者并存且此消彼长。职业规则是职业精神的核心。若要真正颠覆医学职业潜规则,让医学职业显规则回归医学职业生活,从而恢复或重构医学职业精神,就必须克服现存的医学职业显规则的致命性缺欠,进行自身优化,即强化自己的权威性、情境性与实用性。     

流动儿童歧视知觉与社会文化适应：社会支持和社会认同的作用

采用整群取样方法对选自北京市的1164名流动儿童进行问卷调查, 考察社会支持、社会认同在歧视知觉与社会文化适应关系中的作用。结果表明, 流动儿童的歧视知觉整体上并不明显, 其社会文化适应状况整体良好; 歧视知觉对社会文化适应有显著负向预测性(β=-0.39, p<0.001); 在歧视知觉与社会文化适应的负向预测关系中, 社会支持起部分中介作用, 城市认同有增强作用, 老家认同有缓冲作用; 社会支持的中介作用受到城市认同、老家认同的调节。     

男性气质：理论基础、研究取向和相关研究领域

男性气质是和女性气质相对或平行的、具有一定可塑性的人格特质, 是个体内化了的、关于男性应展现出的、符合男性气质意识形态的构念, 维系着自我概念和行为的一致性。男性气质的形成依赖于性别自我认同、社会认同和文化认同。固执地遵从特定社会化的男性气质意识规范会影响男性的心理健康。对男性气质的理论基础、研究取向：意识形态取向、社会建构取向和认同取向, 以及相关研究领域进行了系统阐述。未来研究应改进测量工具, 更新研究设计, 细化研究领域, 发展男性气质多元化实践以及男性气质的跨文化研究。