Trait tendencies to forgive,punish, and exonerate oneself: A multi-study investigation

In two studies (N’s = 515 and 359), we examine the utility of the Dual-Process Model of Self-Forgiveness for conceptualizing and measuring trait self-forgiveness with South African and American adults. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of the trait-adapted Dual-Process Self-Forgiveness Scale supported an eight-item, two-factor structure of self-forgivingness consistent with prior theorizing and empirical evidence. The trait-adapted measure predicted incrementally more variance in outcomes beyond an existing measure of trait self-forgiveness. Latent subgroups characterized by tendencies to forgive, punish, and exonerate oneself in response to wrongdoing or failure were identified. Comparisons of mean differences provided preliminary evidence supporting the validity of the subgroups. Implications of the findings for conceptualizing and measuring self-forgiveness are discussed.     

Loving and angry? Happy and sad? Understanding and reporting of mixed emotions in mother–child relationships by 6‐ to 12‐year‐olds

The Evaluative Space Model of emotions allows for the coactivation of positive‐appetitive and negative‐avoidant systems, but few studies have examined mixed emotions in child development. Existing research suggests children's understanding of opposite valence emotion combinations emerges by approximately 11 years of age. However, it is not yet clear whether various opposite valence combinations are understood at different ages, nor whether children can understand them in others before they have experienced such mixed emotions themselves. Semi‐structured interviews with 97 children investigated whether they regarded six combinations of opposite valence mixed emotions as possible, could provide reasons for them, and report their own experience of each in the context of mother–child relationships. Both understanding that such combinations are possible and ability to provide reasons for them increased after age 6 and up to age 11, but were still incomplete in 12‐year‐olds. Understanding of different opposite valence combinations developed at different rates. At each age, fewer children who showed understanding of these combinations in others reported having had a similar experience themselves. The findings suggest a need to systematically examine a range of mixed emotions in order to develop a comprehensive theory of the development of mixed emotion understanding. They also suggest extending research into adolescence.     

The effects of self‐explaining when learning with text or diagrams

Self‐explaining is an effective metacognitive strategy that can help learners develop deeper understanding of the material they study. This experiment explored if the format of material (i.e., text or diagrams) influences the self‐explanation effect. Twenty subjects were presented with information about the human circulatory system and prompted to self‐explain; 10 received this information in text and 10 in diagrams. Results showed that students given diagrams performed significantly better on post‐tests than students given text. Diagrams students also generated significantly more self‐explanations that text students. Furthermore, the benefits of self‐explaining were much greater in the diagrams condition. To discover why diagrams can promote the self‐explanation effect, results are interpreted with reference to the multiple differences in the semantic, cognitive and affective properties of the texts and diagrams studied.     

The heterogeneity of attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms and conduct problems: Cognitive inhibition,emotion regulation,emotionality, and disorganized attachment

This study examined the contributions of several important domains of functioning to attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms and conduct problems. Specifically, we investigated whether cognitive inhibition, emotion regulation, emotionality, and disorganized attachment made independent and specific contributions to these externalizing behaviour problems from a multiple pathways perspective. The study included laboratory measures of cognitive inhibition and disorganized attachment in 184 typically developing children (M age = 6 years, 10 months, SD = 1.7). Parental ratings provided measures of emotion regulation, emotionality, and externalizing behaviour problems. Results revealed that cognitive inhibition, regulation of positive emotion, and positive emotionality were independently and specifically related to ADHD symptoms. Disorganized attachment and negative emotionality formed independent and specific relations to conduct problems. Our findings support the multiple pathways perspective on ADHD, with poor regulation of positive emotion and high positive emotionality making distinct contributions to ADHD symptoms. More specifically, our results support the proposal of a temperamentally based pathway to ADHD symptoms. The findings also indicate that disorganized attachment and negative emotionality constitute pathways specific to conduct problems rather than to ADHD symptoms.     

THE GOLEM LEGEND AND THE ENIGMA OF FACEBOOK

We are easily misguided as to the true nature of Facebook, and tend to treat it simply as a powerful technological instrument in the service of human intentions. We can, however, gain a better picture of it through recourse to the Jewish tradition of the golem, an image of human beings, created by them in a re-enactment of their own creation by God. It turns into a magic servant in modernity with an inherent dynamic running between its human and its subhuman characteristics. This dynamic is the main cause behind its becoming uncontrollable. In like manner, what is subhuman in Facebook serves its masters and functions under their total control, but also empowers Facebook's increasingly human operation, an algorithm-based capability which raises growing doubts about what counts as human. Facebook implies the crisis of humanity which coincides with the “death of God,” that is, the obsolescence of the idea of a divine creator.     

PARADIGMS OF BELIEF, THEORY AND METATHEORY

Abstract. My account of the recent turnabout in the treatment of mental states in science and its basis in a modified concept of causal determinism and my claim that this opens the way for beliefs and values consistent with science are here reaffirmed in response to perceived weaknesses and "inherent incompleteness." Contested issues are reviewed to better clarify the main thesis. An inherent weakness in respect to deep spiritual needs is recognized and tentative remedial measures explored.     

Aristotle and the tradition of rhetorical argumentation

The first part of this paper contends that argumentation is central and essential to Aristotle's Rhetoric, and recounts a number of arguments in support of that view, particularly the recognition that deliberative rhetoric or the rhetoric of counsel is the primary concern of Aristotle's work. The second part of the paper reviews the work that follows in this present volume to show that the other writers' views fit in perfectly with this thesis.     

Making peace in gestational conflicts

Mary Anne Warren's claim that there is room for only one person with full and equal rights inside a single human skin ([1], p. 63) calls attention to the vast range of moral conflict engendered by assigning full basic moral rights to fetuses. Thereby, it serves as a goad to thinking about conflicts between pregnant women and their fetuses in a way that emphasizes relationships rather than rights. I sketch out what a care orientation might suggest about resolving gestational conflicts. I also argue that the care orientation, with its commitment to the significance of the partial and the particular, cannot be absorbed within standard, impartialist moral theory.     

Devouring and Asphyxia: Paradigm Crisis,the Depletion of the Hero and Complex Thought1

This article deals with the profound paradigm crisis that affects modernity and threatens the destiny of humanity. This crisis results from the lack of perspective offered by the paradigm of modernity with its emphasis on unilateral rationality, scientific objectivity, and exploitation of natural resources by a hyper development of an inflated Hero archetype. The emergence of a new paradigm of complexity, C. G. Jung’s complex psychology, and Ameridian perspectivism, may offer new paths to approach these serious problems lived by modern man. A clinical vignette illustrates how complex psychology may also help with individual patients suffering from psychosomatic complaints.