Attitudes,Tracing, and Control

There is an apparent tension in our everyday moral responsibility practices. On the one hand, it is commonly assumed that moral responsibility requires voluntary control: an agent can be morally responsible only for those things that fall within the scope of her voluntary control. On the other hand, we regularly praise and blame individuals for mental states and conditions that appear to fall outside the scope of their voluntary control, such as desires, emotions, beliefs, and other attitudes. In order to resolve this apparent tension, many philosophers appeal to a tracing principle to argue that agents are morally responsible (only) for those attitudes whose existence can be traced back, causally, to a voluntary action or omission in the past. My aim in this article is to critically evaluate this tracing strategy and to argue that it gives us a misguided picture of when and why we are morally responsible for our attitudes. I argue that we should accept a ‘judgment sensitivity’ condition of moral responsibility rather than a ‘voluntary control’ condition, and defend this account against various objections.     

Science and politics: Dangerous liaisons

In contrast to the opinion of numerous authors (e.g. R. Rudner, P. Kitcher, L. R. Graham, M. Dummett, N. Chomsky, R. Lewontin, etc.) it is argued here that the formation of opinion in science should be greatly insulated from political considerations. Special attention is devoted to the view that methodological standards for evaluation of scientific theories ought to vary according to the envisaged political uses of these theories.I wish to thank the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for having supported the work on this paper.     

Counting On Blood Donors: Increasing the Impact of Reminder Calls

Two experiments were conducted to see if blood drive attendance could be increased by altering the content of reminder calls. In Experiment 1 college students received either a standard reminder (the place, time, and necessity of eating beforehand) or a commitment-enhancing reminder in which they agreed to be "counted on". Those in the latter condition were significantly more likely (p <.007) to attend a blood drive. Experiment 2 demonstrated that an alternate wording for the commitment-enhancing message was possible; that a verbal response was necessary to ensure the commitment; and that a message enhancing altruism was not as effective. The studies suggest that asking for an additional commitment during a reminder call can appreciably increase blood drive participation rates.     

Choosing situations for a purpose

Within the literature, in theoretical discussions individuals are conceptualized as agents, capable of choosing and planning their actions. Situations are open to definition and may be construed differently by different individuals. On the other hand, the majority of studies of situations treat them as concrete givens with specific properties merely waiting to be discovered. The present paper attempts to explore the possibility of empirically treating individuals as agents, capable of choosing and planning their actions and of treating situations as being open to definition. It focuses on the choice of settings to fulfil different goals and on aspects of the setting considered salient once the goal is specified. The two studies described in this paper have illustrated that there is some consensus in the way people choose settings for different goals and that different uses of the setting lead to different aspects of the setting being considered salient. The high consensus with which two different groups of subjects, performing slightly different tasks, associated goals and settings suggests that there is some shared, at least subcultural, knowledge concerning the appropriate places in which to achieve specific goals. Individuals enter settings for specific purposes. Individuals entering a particular setting for different purposes tend to report using the setting in different ways. Both the goal and the particular setting affect the aspects of the setting considered relevant to the goal; neither the goal nor the setting alone is sufficient.     

The Craik-O’Brien-Cornsweet effect: New varieties and their theoretical implications

New visual displays related to the Craik-O’Brien-Cornsweet effect are presented and their relevance for theories of the effect is assessed. The displays include a luminance cusp that does not induce the standard effect, an illusory chessboard, a brightness variant of the impossible staircase, and a display in which brightness varies with stimulus motion. Theories of the effect are grouped within the nonisomorphistic, the cognitive, and the mechanistic approaches. The nonisomorphistic approach is criticized as being seriously incomplete. Existing cognitively oriented proposals are criticized as inadequate. Mechanistic theories are divided into integration theories, which model the visual processing stages with standard mathematical operations such as differentiation and integration, and filling-in theories, which stress the processing dynamics of interconnected neural networks. The reported variations of the Craik-O’Brien-Cornsweet effect support the latter class of theories.     

Differences that suggest female investment in,and male distance from,children

A factorial between subjects experiment was conducted with sex of respondent, level of success, sex of stimulus parent, and sex of stimulus child as the independent variables. Two hundred seventy-two undergraduates without parenting experience constituted the sample. The attributions made to explain parenting success/failure and the ratings made both of the child and the parent on the same 60 personality item were the dependent variables. Female respondents were not only especially success-oriented, but evidenced a view of parenting emphasizing deliberation and skill, whereas their male counterparts were comparatively more inclined to explain failure in terms of it being the child's fault and to overstate a child's meanness.This investigation was completed on the first author's NIMH traineeship (5 T01 MH-14473) for doctoral study. The authors are appreciative of the contributions of Professors Donn Byrne, Kay Deaux, and William Martin to the development of this study.     

Development of sex biases in children: 40 years later

Children in grades 2–10 (200 of each sex) assigned desirable and undesirable traits to girls or boys. Half the subjects had an additional option of both sexes. Children in all grades assigned more desirable traits to their own sex and more undesirable traits to the opposite sex, in line with Smith (1939). Both sexes became less positive toward their own sex and more positive toward the opposite sex with increasing age. This pattern also had characterized girls in Smith's study, whereas, boys had shown the opposite pattern. Beginning in the sixth grade, girls were more apt than boys to assign desirable traits to their own sex. Availability of the “both sexes” option decreased stereotyping, especially in girls.     

Depressed mood and environmental mastery as potential pathways linking family relationship quality and disease self-management for African Americans with hypertension

African Americans are at significantly greater risk of hypertension and worse cardiovascular outcomes than other racialized groups, yet hypertension intervention effects remain limited. Thus, it is necessary to understand the potential mechanisms whereby interventions may be more effectively targeted to improve health. Supported by prior research evidence and guided by the Biobehavioral Family Model, this study examined associations between family relationship quality, psychological wellbeing, and self-management behaviors for African Americans with hypertension. Data were pooled from three Midlife Development in the U.S. projects, resulting in a sample of 317 African Americans (63.4% female, M_age = 53.32) with self-reported high blood pressure in the past 12 months. We tested four cross-sectional multiple mediator models, with depressed mood and environmental mastery mediating associations between family strain and exercise, smoking, problematic alcohol use, and stress-eating. Environmental mastery mediated the association between greater family strain and decreased odds of achieving recommended exercise levels; greater odds of reporting problematic alcohol use; and greater stress-eating. Though family strain was associated with depressed mood in each model, this variable did not serve as an indirect pathway to self-management behaviors. Family strain, and the potential pathway identified via environmental mastery, may be a meaningful predictor of disease self-management for African Americans with hypertension. Longitudinal studies are needed to examine directionality and to support intervention trials for improving self-management and hypertension outcomes.     

Personality and context-related factors of helping and helping-related affect during early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic

COVID-19 pandemic led to introduction of lockdown measures in many countries, while in Serbia the Government also introduced the curfew by which vulnerable groups of citizens were prohibited from leaving their homes at any time. In such a situation many citizens organized to voluntarily offer their help to those in isolation, which offered a unique opportunity to examine prosocial behavior in the natural setting of global crisis. This study examined the differences between non-helpers and helpers, as well as groups of helpers who provided their help to close or unknown others, in personality (prosocial tendencies, selfishness and communal narcissism) and context-related factors (situation specific empathy and fear) of prosocial behaviors. Additionally, the study also analyzed the helping-related affect among helpers, depending on the recipient of help and personality characteristics. Results revealed that groups of helpers with different recipients of help (close persons, unknown persons or both) were not different among each other, but they were different from non-helpers. Non-helpers were more selfish and had self-focused prosocial tendencies, and they showed less empathy towards people in isolation, compared to helper groups. However, the helping-related affect depended on the recipient of help and helper's personality traits. This study confirmed some previous findings and offered novel insights into factors related to helping in crises.     

Exploring the Context-Sensitivity of Collective Action Motivations and the Mobilizing Role of Social Media: A Comparative Interview Study With Activists in Germany and Turkey

Western scholarship has underlined the relevance of social identity, perceived efficacy, emotions, and cost–benefit assessments as central catalysts of collective action. Little has been done to understand the context-sensitivity of these catalysts by means of cross-culturally comparative designs. The current study explores their context-sensitivity. It aims to find out whether existing opportunity structures in a democratic, nonrepressive country like Germany produce catalysts of collective action different from those produced in an autocratic, repressive country like Turkey. It also aims to understand the role of social media in mobilizing people in these two contexts. Semistandardized interviews with activists were carried out in both countries (n = 18 in Germany and n = 15 in Turkey) and analyzed by means of a cross-culturally comparative inductive coding procedure including initial and focused coding. Results show that collective action is related to different configurations of collective-action catalysts in the two countries. Solidarity concerns at the face of existential risks are more pronounced in Turkey, whereas political-change concerns are more important in Germany. The role of social media accordingly differs, adhering to the different activist goals. Theoretical implications for the role of context in studying collective action are discussed.