The Epistemology of the Question of Authenticity,in Place of Strategic Essentialism

The question of authenticity centers in the lives of women of color to invite and restrict their representative roles. For this reason, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Uma Narayan advocate responding with strategic essentialism. This paper argues against such a strategy and proposes an epistemic understanding of the question of authenticity. The question stems from a kernel of truth—the connection between experience and knowledge. But a coherence theory of knowledge better captures the sociality and the holism of experience and knowledge.     

Affective Synchrony in Dual‐ and Single‐Smoker Couples: Further Evidence of “Symptom‐System Fit”?

Couples in which one or both partners smoked despite one of them having a heart or lung problem discussed a health-related disagreement before and during a period of laboratory smoking. Immediately afterwards, the partners in these 25 couples used independent joysticks to recall their continuous emotional experience during the interaction while watching themselves on video. A couple-level index of affective synchrony, reflecting correlated moment-to-moment change in the two partners' joystick ratings, tended to increase from baseline to smoking for 9 dual-smoker couples but decrease for 16 single-smoker couples. Results suggest that coregulation of shared emotional experience could be a factor in smoking persistence, particularly when both partners in a couple smoke. Relationship-focused interventions addressing this fit between symptom and system may help smokers achieve stable cessation.     

Counseling Patients with Senile Dementia of the Alzheimer Type and Their Families

Within the field of gerontology, senile dementia of the Alzheimer type has been noted as an area in which the family does not receive much support, although the emotional burdens are tremendous. This article offers client-centered counseling techniques for the Alzheimer Disease patient and examines the benefits of group or individual counseling for the family.     

Use of a Job Club to Increase Self-Efficacy: A Case Study of Return to Work

The purpose of this research was to link self-efficacy theory (Bandura, 1977, 1982) with job club methodology (Azrin, Flores, & Kaplan, 1975) by presenting a case study that measured changes in self-efficacy as a result of welfare recipients' participation in a job club. The job club enhanced each of the 4 sources of job search self-efficacy expectations postulated by Bandura and resulted in return to work for all participants. Implications for counselors are suggested between the results shown and the current efforts to reduce welfare dependency.     

The Ford Foundation and the Rise of Behavioralism in Political Science

How did behavioralism, one of the most influential approaches to the academic study of politics in the twentieth century, become so prominent so quickly? I argue that many political scientists have either understated or ignored how the Ford Foundation's Behavioral Sciences Program gave form to behavioralism, accelerated its rise, and helped root it in political science. I then draw on archived documents from Ford as well as one of its major grantees, U. C. Berkeley, to present several examples of how Ford used its funds to encourage the behavioral approach at a time when it had few adherents among political scientists.     

Players,Characters, and the Gamer's Dilemma

Is there any difference between playing video games in which the player's character commits murder and video games in which the player's character commits pedophilic acts? Morgan Luck's “Gamer's Dilemma” has established this question as a puzzle concerning notions of permissibility and harm. We propose that a fruitful alternative way to approach the question is through an account of aesthetic engagement. We develop an alternative to the dominant account of the relationship between players and the actions of their characters, and argue that the ethical difference between so‐called “virtual murder” and “virtual pedophilia” is to be understood in terms of the fiction‐making resources available to players. We propose that the relevant considerations for potential players to navigate concern (1) attempting to make certain characters intelligible, and (2) using aspects of oneself as resources for homomorphic representation.     

The Effects of Research Design on the Study of Sex Differences in Moral Development

This report suggests that the controversy surrounding the issue of sex differences in moral development is due, in part, to the project designs that are used. The author demonstrates the need for multiple research modes for the study of this issue.