The myth of regaining control: Ostracism increases superstitious tendencies

Whether and how interpersonal experiences predispose people to show superstitious tendencies have been largely unexamined by past studies. By adopting a multimethod approach, three studies tested (a) whether ostracism increases superstitious tendencies through thwarted perceived control, (b) whether the dispositional need for closure moderates the effect of ostracism on superstitious tendencies and (c) whether restoring ostracized people's thwarted control weakens their superstitious tendencies. The results revealed that ostracized participants had higher superstitious tendencies than nonostracized participants did (Studies 1–3). Moreover, thwarted control mediated the effect of ostracism on superstitious tendencies (Study 2). In addition, the dispositional need for closure moderated the effect of ostracism on superstitious tendencies, such that the effect was stronger among participants with a high need for closure (Studies 1–2). Finally, restoring ostracized participants' perceived control weakened the effect of ostracism on superstitious tendencies (Study 3). Altogether, these findings feature the essential role of thwarted perceived control in understanding the link between ostracism and superstitious tendencies and the implication of control restoration in weakening the link. They also highlight the importance of dispositional characteristics in moderating people's responses to superstitions following ostracism and related forms of interpersonal maltreatment.     

THEOLOGY AS THE QUEEN (BEE) OF THE DISCIPLINES?

Abstract. Once Queen of the Medieval court of sciences, dethroned theology may be able in our time to play a strategic servant role in rightly humiliating, elevating, and ordering the disciplines, in gadflying like a mutant honeybee, generating surprise and serendipity through the intermediacy of social science, and in offering ethical homing direction to the disciplines in their applied endeavors.     

Structuring argumentation in a social constructivist framework: A pedagogy with computer support

What we usually think of as higher order skills in argumentation can be profitably viewed as systematic structures for organizing and representing information. Standard terms like line of argument, synthesis, analysis and draft can be viewed as ways of constructing, storing, and accessing data in a social context — data structures for social communication. What makes argument difficult are the multiple structures that arguers have to construct and negotiate when reading and composing. In this paper, we describe the WARRANT project, a project designed to identify data structures of written argument and to design and implement computer tools to aid in the reading and design of argument.     

Ethics,AIDS, and community responsibility

In the discussion of the responsibilities of society to the HIV infected and uninfected, a serious question seems to have been left out of the picture: To what extent are people who are not infected, have no special relationship to the infected and have no professional responsibilities for the care of AIDS patients under an obligation to come to the aid of people with the HIV? In this paper, I shall examine our responsibilities, as members of society, for the welfare of others to whom we may or may not have a special relationship. I shall argue that those responsibilities flow from the conditions that structure our transactions with others; conditions that make such transactions possible.     

Neuropsychological identification of motor problems: Can we learn something from the feet and legs that hands and arms will not tell us?

The degree of structural and functional specialization that differentiates between upper and lower limb use in humans is quite unparalleled among primates. It is argued that less neural resources are devoted to leg and foot control than to arm and hand control, and that this aspect of lower limb innervation, together with the uniquely restricted use of the lower limb, renders lower limb function more sensitive to general neural insult. In addition, the status of leg and foot control differs from that of arm and hand control both early in life and during the later years of decline.     

Physicians,entrepreneurism and the problem of conflict of interest

This paper examines the ethical issues of conflict of interest raised by the burgeoning development of physician involvement in for-profit entrepreneurial activities outside their practice. After documenting the nature and extent of these activities, and their potential for conflicts of interest, the paper assesses the major arguments for and against physicians' referral of patients to facilities they own or in which they invest. The paper concludes that an outright ban on such activity seems ethically warranted.     

孟子的心理学思想研究

该文较系统地论述了孟子的普通心理思想。主要问题是:心理学思想的基本观点,知虑心理思想,情欲心理思想,志意心理思想,智能心理思想,性习心理思想。     

BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON FALL AND ORIGINAL SIN

Abstract. The paper consists of an argument that goes as follows. Symbols and their elaboration into myths constitute Homo sapiens 's most primitive reading of the world and the relation of humans to that world. They are, in other words, primordial units of cultural information, emerging very early in human history, representing a significant achievement in the evolution of human self-consciousness and reflection. The classic myths of Fall and Original Sin, as well as the doctrines to which they gave rise, are further interpretations of this primordial information. The doctrinal traditions of the first four centuries of Christianity are surveyed. Three sets of data as interpreted by the biological sciences are offered as resources for understanding the biogenetic grounds of the experience that the symbols, myths, and doctrines of Fall and Original Sin seek to interpret. The conclusions to be drawn are that (1) the symbolic material is indeed commensurate with the scientific understandings, and (2) the scientific interpretations deepen our understanding of the symbols, while (3) the conversation between the symbols and the science once again raises certain perennial questions about human existence.