Exploitative,irresistible, and coercive offers: why research participants should be paid well or not at all

This paper begins with the assumption that it is morally problematic when people in need are offered money in exchange for research participation if the amount offered is unfair. Such offers are called ‘coercive’, and the degree of coerciveness is determined by the offer's potential to cause exploitation and its irresistibility. Depending on what view we take on the possibility to compensate for the sacrifices made by research participants, a wish to avoid ‘coercive offers’ leads to policy recommendations concerning payment for participation. For sacrifices considered compensable, we ought to offer either no payment or payment at a level deemed fair, while for sacrifices deemed incompensable, we always ought to offer no payment because as compensation appears and increases, so too does coercion. This article provides a model for thinking of the way in which degrees of exploitativeness, irresistibility, and coerciveness interact with the size of the reward for compensable and incompensable cases. The conclusions are of particular relevance in contexts where potential research participants are poor or in other ways lack reasonably good options, as is often the case when international pharmaceutical companies or researchers based in the Global North place clinical trials in the Global South.     

Informed Consent

Summary

This article focuses on informed consent and the components to be reviewed with clients in the first session or as early as possible thereafter. Recent changes that give patients greater autonomy in the treatment process are also presented. The process of obtaining informed consent or informed refusal places a new responsibility on the practitioner. Informed consent as it pertains to clinical practice, supervision and training, and psychological research is also discussed.     

Pilgrimage expansion through tourism in contemporary India: the development and promotion of a Hindu pilgrimage circuit

This article investigates the development and promotion of the Char Dham Yatra (or Char Dham), a Hindu pilgrimage route in the Himalayas, to challenge some prevalent assumptions and models in current scholarship concerning pilgrimage and tourism. I argue that the current prominence of the Char Dham is closely tied to the efforts of public tourism agencies and the coming together of a popular religious concept (Char Dham) with a unit of tourism development (circuit). Turning to promotional literature, I find that, while the Char Dham is increasingly framed to incorporate tourist interests, it continues to retain a religious profile. Contemporary Char Dham guidebooks combine and sometimes merge tourist and religious selling points. The Char Dham is promoted as a picturesque pilgrimage that allows for both homage and holiday. Contrary to popular opinion, the findings of my research suggest that the interplay between pilgrimage and tourism produces changes in, rather than the removal of, pilgrimage religiosity and associated religious communication.     

名人旅游开发中的文化迷失——以先秦诸子旅游开发为例

名人旅游是以追寻名人踪迹或感受名人文化为目的旅游活动。名人旅游基于"见贤思齐"的大众心理,旅游者通过各种品赏和休闲娱乐方式,深刻体会名人的思想精髓,从而获得启示和教育。但在当今的市场经济大潮下,名人旅游渐渐迷失了方向,偏离了名人旅游的理想宗旨。文章以春秋战国诸子的旅游开发为例,列举了其中的文化迷失现象,提出了对诸子旅游理性开发的意见。     

Exploitation via labour power in Marx

Marx's account of capitalist exploitation is undermined by inter-related confusions surrounding the notion of labour power. These confusions relate to [i] what labour power is, [ii] what happens to labour power in the labour market, and [iii] what the epistemic status of labour power is (the issue of appearance and reality). The central theses of the paper are [a] that property ownership is the wrong model for understanding the exploitation of labour, and [b] that the concept of exploitation is linked more fruitfully to a conception of distributive injustice than to Marx's theory of surplus value.     

Anthropocene in Context: A Response to Rasmussen

In response to Larry Rasmussen's article about religious ethics in the Anthropocene, I offer an analysis that both contextualizes and elaborates upon his ideas. I introduce other humanities disciplines that have already wrestled with this question, and scholars of color whose voices offer needed correctives to the colonial heritage of most academic disciplines. I explore topics including human agency, non-human agency, exploitation, and refuge. I encourage scholars in our field to move beyond questions of responsibility and lamentations of moral incompetence and into concepts of right relationality and analysis of grassroots climate action already taking place in religious, ethical contexts.     

Poverty tourism and the problem of consent

Is it morally permissible for financially privileged tourists to visit places for the purpose of experiencing where poor people live, work, and play? Tourism associated with this question is commonly referred to as ‘poverty tourism’. While some poverty tourism is plausibly ethical, other practices will be more controversial. The purpose of this essay is to address mutually beneficial cases of poverty tourism and advance the following positions. First, even mutually beneficial transactions between tourists and residents in poverty tourism always run a risk of being exploitative. Second, there is little opportunity to determine whether a given tour is exploitative since tourists lack good access to the residents' perspectives. Third, if a case of poverty tourism is exploitative, it is so in an indulgent way; tourists are not compelled to exploit the residents. In light of these considerations, we conclude that would-be tourists should participate in poverty tours only if there is a well-established collaborative and consensual process in place, akin to a ‘fair trade’ process.     

The influence of depression symptoms on exploratory decision-making

People with symptoms of depression show impairments in decision-making. One explanation is that they have difficulty maintaining rich representations of the task environment. We test this hypothesis in the context of exploratory choice. We analyze depressive and non-depressive participants’ exploration strategies by comparing their choices to two computational models: (1) an “Ideal Actor” model that reflectively updates beliefs and plans ahead, employing a rich representation of the environment and (2) a “Naïve Reinforcement Learning” (RL) model that updates beliefs reflexively utilizing a minimal task representation. Relative to non-depressive participants, we find that depressive participants’ choices are better described by the simple RL model. Further, depressive participants were more exploratory than non-depressives in their decision-making. Depressive symptoms appear to influence basic mechanisms supporting choice behavior by reducing use of rich task representations and hindering performance during exploratory decision-making.     

Bartering

Summary

This article examines issues related to bartering arrangements in the context of providing professional mental health services. The risks associated with significant conflict of interest in the professional-client relationship and the potential for exploitation of the client are analyzed by examining the interplay of personal, business, and clinical interests in bartering relationships. Professional practice guidelines are suggested.     

认知方式与消极情绪对旅游决策影响的实验研究

本研究在以往研究基础上,通过实验室实验,探索了个人的认知方式和消极情绪对旅游决策的影响。结果发现,认知方式的主效应不显著;消极情绪的主效应非常显著,有消极情绪唤醒的被试与没有消极情绪唤醒的被试．最终的决策结果,存在非常显著的差异。