BackgroundUsing an effective method for evaluating Institutional Review Board (IRB) performance is essential for ensuring an IRB’s effectiveness, efficiency, and compliance with applicable human research standards and organizational policies. Currently, no empirical research has yet been published in China evaluating IRB performance measures by the use of a standardized tool. This study was therefore conducted to develop a Chinese version of the IRB Researcher Assessment Tool (IRB-RAT), assess the psychometric properties of the Chinese version (IRB-RAT-CV), and validate the tool for (...) use in China.MethodsIn this cultural adaptation, cross-sectional validation study, the IRB-RAT-CV was developed through a back-translation process and then distributed to 587 IRB staff members and researchers in medical institutions and schools in Hunan Province that review biomedical and social-behavioral research. Data from the 470 valid questionnaires collected from participants was used to evaluate the reliability, content validity, and construct validity of the IRB-RAT-CV.ResultsParticipants’ ratings of their ideal and actual IRB as measured by the IRB-RAT-CV achieved Cronbach's alpha 0.989 and 0.992, Spearman-Brown coefficient 0.964 and 0.968, and item-total correlation values ranging from 0.631 to 0.886 and 0.743 to 0.910, respectively.ConclusionThe IRB-RAT-CV is a linguistically and culturally applicable tool for assessing the quality of IRBs in China. (shrink)

Understanding cognitive effort expended during assessments is essential to improving efficiency, accuracy, and accessibility within these assessments. Pupil dilation is commonly used as a psychophysiological measure of cognitive effort, yet research on its relationship with effort expended specifically during language processing is limited. The present study adds to and expands on this literature by investigating the relationships among pupil dilation, trial difficulty, and accuracy during a vocabulary test. Participants (n = 63, Mage = 19.25) completed a subset of trials from (...) the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test while seated at an eye‐tracker monitor. During each trial, four colored images were presented on the monitor while a word was presented via audio recording. Participants verbally indicated which image they thought represented the target word. Words were categorized into Easy, Medium, and Hard difficulty. Pupil dilation during the Medium and Hard trials was significantly greater than during the Easy trials, though the Medium and Hard trials did not significantly differ from each other. Pupil dilation in comparison to trial accuracy presented a more complex pattern, with comparisons between accurate and inaccurate trials differing depending on the timing of the stimulus presentation. These results present further evidence that pupil dilation increases with cognitive effort associated with vocabulary tests, providing insights that could help refine vocabulary assessments and other related tests of language processing. (shrink)

Engineering ethics education is a complex field characterized by dynamic topics and diverse students, which results in significant challenges for engineering ethics educators. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a systematic approach to determine what to teach and how to teach in an ethics curriculum. This is a topic that has not been adequately addressed in the engineering ethics literature. This systematic approach provides a method to: (1) develop a context-specific engineering ethics curriculum using the Delphi technique, a (...) process-driven research method; and (2) identify appropriate delivery strategies and instructional strategies using an instructional design model. This approach considers the context-specific needs of different engineering disciplines in ethics education and leverages the collaboration of engineering professors, practicing engineers, engineering graduate students, ethics scholars, and instructional design experts. The proposed approach is most suitable for a department, a discipline/field or a professional society. The approach helps to enhance learning outcomes and to facilitate ethics education curriculum development as part of the regular engineering curriculum. (shrink)

Emerging adult newlywed couples often experience many demands on their time, and three common problems may surface as couples try to balance these demands—problems related to finances, sleep, and sex. We used two waves of dyadic data from 1,001 emerging adult newlywed couples to identify four dyadic latent profiles from husbands’ and wives’ financial management behaviors, sexual satisfaction, and sleep quality: Flounderers, Financially Challenged Lovers, Drowsy Budgeters, and Flourishers. We then examined how husbands’ and wives’ marital satisfaction, in relation to (...) profile membership, varied at a later wave. We found that Financially Challenged Lovers and Flourishers had significantly higher marital satisfaction than Drowsy Budgeters and Flounderers. Whereas, Financially Challenged Lovers and Flourishers did not differ in terms of marital satisfaction, Drowsy Budgeters seemed to have slightly higher marital satisfaction than Flounderers for wives only. However, we did not find evidence that these connections meaningfully differed by sex. Implications for the efforts of clinicians and educators are discussed. (shrink)

We present a theoretical rationale and supporting studies revealing how unethical leader behavior fosters an unethical climate within workgroups that increases member turnover intentions and malfeasance. Drawing on the attraction–selection–attrition model of organizational behavior, we propose a selective attrition effect whereby unethical leader behavior results in the retention of group members who are more comfortable with dishonesty and, consequently, more likely to engage in unethical behavior toward their group. In two experiments, exposure to unethical leader behavior increased group members’ likelihood (...) of choosing to leave the group. Members who chose to remain in a group with an unethical leader were more likely than those who chose to leave to cheat their group in a subsequent task. A two time-period survey replicated these findings and identified psychological distress as the mechanism driving group members’ turnover intentions. This research extends our understanding of the complex relationships between unethical leadership and follower turnover intentions, psychological distress, and malfeasance. We contribute to the behavioral ethics literature by identifying a previously underappreciated form of selective attrition that produces internal costs to groups and organizations, independent of reputational consequences and whether the unethicality is publicized. (shrink)

BackgroundLittle previous research has been conducted outside of major cities in China to examine how physicians currently perceive palliative care, and to identify specific goals for training as palliative care access expands. This study explored physicians’ perceptions of palliative care integration for advanced cancer patients in Changsha, China.MethodsWe conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with physicians (n = 24) specializing in hematology or oncology at a tertiary hospital.ResultsMost physicians viewed palliative care as equivalent to end-of-life care, while a minority considered it possible (...) to integrate palliative care with active treatment. Almost all physicians maintained separate conversations about palliative care with family members and patients, communicating more directly with family members than with patients about prognosis and goals of care. Physicians described experiencing ethical tension between the desire of family members to protect the patient from knowing they have advanced cancer, and the patient’s “right to decide” about palliative treatment. Physicians varied overall regarding perceptions of the role they should have in discussions about goals of care.ConclusionsAs palliative care access expands in China, medical training should encourage earlier integration of palliative care for advanced cancer, address ethical issues faced by physicians communicating about palliative care, and establish guidance on the role of the physician in discussions about goals of care. (shrink)

An ongoing debate in the United States relating to COVID-19 features the purported tension between containing the coronavirus to save lives or opening the economy to sustain livelihoods, with ethical overtones on both sides. Proponents of opening the economy argue that sustaining livelihoods should be prioritized over virus containment, with ethicists asking, “What about the risk to human life?” Defendants of restricting the spread of the virus endorse saving lives through virus containment but contend with the ethical concern “What about (...) people’s livelihoods and individual freedoms?” A commonly held belief is that political ideology drives these differential preferences: liberals are more focused on saving lives, whereas conservatives favor sustaining livelihoods with no additional government intervention in the free-market economy. We examine these lay beliefs among US residents in four studies and find that economic system justification (ESJ), an ideology that defends the prevailing economic system when under threat, is a reliable psychological predictor beyond political ideology. Specifically, compared to those who scored low on ESJ, people who scored high on ESJ judged China as more justified in downplaying the spread of virus to protect its interest in the global free-market economy, supported in-person over online learning, viewed shelter in place as less desirable, and perceived the opening of the Texas economy as more legitimate. We also find that multiple psychological mechanisms might be at work—resistance to market interventions, perceived legitimacy of opening the economy, perceived seriousness of the health crisis, and violation of human rights. (shrink)

The groundbreaking, viewpoint theory of Merker et al. explains several properties of the conscious field, including why the observer cannot directly apprehend itself. We propose that viewpoint theory might also provide a progressive, constitutive marker of consciousness and shed light on why most of the contents of consciousness are encapsulated.

This study focuses on comparison of perceptions of ethical business cultures in large business organizations from four largest emerging economies, commonly referred to as the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), and from the US. The data were collected from more than 13,000 managers and employees of business organizations in five countries. The study found significant differences among BRIC countries, with respondents from India and Brazil providing more favorable assessments of ethical cultures of their organizations than respondents from China and (...) Russia. Overall, highest mean scores were provided by respondents from India, the US, and Brazil. There were significant similarities in ratings between the US and Brazil. (shrink)

Religious beliefs, including those about an afterlife and omniscient spiritual beings, vary across cultures. We theorize that such variations may be predictably linked to ecological variations, just as differences in mating strategies covary with resource distribution. Perhaps beliefs in a soul or afterlife are more common when resources are unpredictable, and life is brutal and short.

Niedenthal et al. recognize that cultural differences are important when interpreting facial expressions. Nonetheless, many of their core observations derive more from individualistic cultures than from collectivist cultures. We discuss two examples from the latter: (1) lower rates of mutual eye contact, and (2) the ubiquity of specific These examples suggest constraints on the assumptions and applicability of the SIMS model.

This study sheds light on a key concept of Yogācāra intersubjectivity that played a significant role in medieval Chinese Yogācāra. Specifically, it analyzes how Kuiji 窺基 (632–682) reinterprets adhipati (activating and amplifying influence; Ch: zengshang 增上 or zengshang li 增上力 or zengshang yuan 增上緣) to account for intersubjective karmic interactions across different lifeworlds in the events of teaching and killing.As this line of investigation shows, Kuiji’s theory of adhipati attempts to sidestep the entanglement of the problems of intersubjectivity and incommensurable (...) worlds in Yogācāra. Extant scholarship on intersubjectivity often presumes one spatio-temporal world populated by sentient beings and insentient objects, which is fundamentally at odds with the Yogācāra tenet that each mental stream generates its distinct lifeworld. To address the pragmatic question of how different mental continuums of consciousnesses can impinge into each other’s lifeworlds, Kuiji employed adhipati in a specific way to account for intersubjective interplay across different, potentially incommensurable worlds. In this framing of intersubjectivity, the problem of one world or many worlds is explained non-dualistically: these lifeworlds are neither the same nor different, neither one nor many, but karmically interconnected.Expanding on recent discussions of the puzzle of intersubjectivity in Yogācāra, this paper shows that Kuiji’s deployment of adhipati provides an account of genuine intersubjectivity in which different mental continuums are recognized as subjects and engage in causal interactions among different spatio-temporal worlds. In Kuiji’s framing, this genuine intersubjectivity gives rise to the sense of one shared world. (shrink)

Previous meta-analyses support a female advantage in decoding non-verbal emotion (Hall, 1978, 1984), yet the mechanisms underlying this advantage are not understood. The present study examined whether the female advantage is related to greater female attention to the eyes. Eye-tracking techniques were used to measure attention to the eyes in 19 males and 20 females during a facial expression recognition task. Women were faster and more accurate in their expression recognition compared with men, and women looked more at the eyes (...) than men. Positive relationships were observed between dwell time and number of fixations to the eyes and both accuracy of facial expression recognition and speed of facial expression recognition. These results support the hypothesis that the female advantage in facial expression recognition is related to greater female attention to the eyes. (shrink)

Contextualists such as Cohen and DeRose claim that the truth conditions of knowledge attributions vary contextually, in particular that the strength of epistemic position required for one to be truly ascribed knowledge depends on features of the attributor's context. Contextualists support their view by appeal to our intuitions about when it's correct (or incorrect) to ascribe knowledge. Someone might argue that some of these intuitions merely reflect when it is conversationally appropriate to ascribe knowledge, not when knowledge is truly ascribed, (...) and so try to accommodate these intuitions even on an invariantist view. DeRose (Blackwell Guide to Epistemology, 1998; Philosophical Review, 2002) argues that any such 'warranted assertibility manoeuvre', or 'WAM', against contextualism is unlikely to succeed. Here, I argue that his objections to a WAM against contextualism are not persuasive and offer a pragmatic account of the data about ascriptions of knowledge. (shrink)

There exists a countable structure of Scott rank where and where the -theory of is not ω-categorical. The Scott rank of a model is the least ordinal β where the model is prime in its -theory. Most well-known models with unbounded atoms below also realize a non-principal -type; such a model that preserves the Σ1-admissibility of will have Scott rank . Makkai [M. Makkai, An example concerning Scott heights, J. Symbolic Logic 46 301–318. [4]] produces a hyperarithmetical model of Scott (...) rank whose -theory is ω-categorical. A computable variant of Makkai’s example is produced in [W. Calvert, S.S. Goncharov, J.F. Knight, J. Millar, Categoricity of computable infinitary theories, Arch. Math. Logic . [1]; J. Knight, J. Millar, Computable structures of rank J. Math. Logic . [2]]. (shrink)

Two studies tested whether observers could differentiate between two facets of pride—authentic and hubristic—on the basis of a single prototypical pride nonverbal expression combined with relevant contextual information. In Study 1, participants viewed targets displaying posed pride expressions in response to success, while causal attributions for the success (target's effort vs. ability) and the source of this information (target vs. omniscient narrator conveying objective fact) were varied. Study 2 used a similar method, but attribution information came from both the target (...) and an omniscient narrator; the congruence of these attributions was varied. Across studies, participants tended to label expressions as authentic pride, but were relatively more likely to label them as hubristic pride when (a) contextual information indicated that targets were arrogant and (b) no mitigating information about the target's potential value as a hard-working group member (i.e., that success was actually due to effort) was presented. (shrink)

In this paper, I work within Ruth Marcus’s account of the source of moral dilemmas and articulate the implications of her theory for collective responsibility. As an extension to Marcus’s work, I explore what her account means for the moral emotions and responsibilities of those complicit in perpetuating unjust systems of a non-ideal world from which moral dilemmas arise. This move necessitates shifting away from the primacy of control. That one is born into unjust systems one had no hand in (...) establishing does not excuse one from responsibility to mend them. Similarly, even if one’s personal contribution in the perpetuation of unjust systems is negligible – the injustices would continue whether one participated or not, and one’s resistance would do little-to-nothing – one nevertheless retains responsibility. This expanded sense of responsibility necessitates a specialized sort of moral emotion – one that, like agent-regret or tragic-remorse, transcends the criterion of agentic control, but nevertheless can be classified neither as agent-regret nor tragic-remorse. (shrink)

Lachlan observed that any nonzero d.c.e. degree bounds a nonzero c.e. degree. In this paper, we study the c.e. predecessors of d.c.e. degrees, and prove that given a nonzero d.c.e. degree , there is a c.e. degree below and a high d.c.e. degree such that bounds all the c.e. degrees below . This result gives a unified approach to some seemingly unrelated results. In particular, it has the following two known theorems as corollaries: there is a low c.e. degree isolating (...) a high d.c.e. degree [S. Ishmukhametov, G. Wu, Isolation and the high/low hierarchy, Arch. Math. Logic 41 259–266]; there is a high d.c.e. degree bounding no minimal pairs [C.T. Chong, A. Li, Y. Yang, The existence of high nonbounding degrees in the difference hierarchy, Ann. Pure Appl. Logic 138 31–51]. (shrink)

Collection of articles on Mongolian Buddhist history, literature and philosophy.

ABSTRACT Defining a nonpaternalistic yet achievable form of trust in medicine in an era of simultaneous patient empowerment and institutional control has been and remains an important task of bioethics. The ‘crisis of trust’ in medicine has been viewed mainly as the problem of getting patients to trust their health care providers, especially physicians. However, since paradigmatic cases of trust are mutual, bioethicists must pay more attention to physician trust in patients. A physician’s view of the reasonableness of trust in (...) a particular patient is affected not just by his or her relationship with that patient, but also by what is going on institutionally, professionally, legally, and politically with regard to a given treatment or intervention. Since general moral principles are insufficient in determining the moral value and reasonableness of trust in particular instances, I discuss in detail the role of trust and distrust in the specific case of treating patients with medications implicated in drug abuse. I conclude that it is important to become aware, first, of the clinical significance of physician trust and distrust in patients, and second, of the many factors which inform both of these moral attitudes. These two claims together suggest that a central, but overlooked, virtue of medical practice is reflective, context‐responsive trust in patients. (shrink)

Humanistic and ethical thought existed in China already in the ancient culture period, and was strongly enhanced during the Spring and Autumn era. Based on this background and foundation, Confucius is ‘a creator of the paradigm’ of Chinese philosophy, and Lao-Tzu is ‘an original metaphysician,’ both establishing the basic tendencies of Chinese philosophy. After that, the philosophies of pre- and post-Qin eras, all continued to develop along their thought. Chinese philosophy has several characteristics, including the unity of nature and man, (...) truth and goodness, cognition and behavior, ontology and cosmology, humanity and natural law, the theory of human nature and values and many others. Its theoretic framework and basic structure aims to enlighten what humans ought to be - a question at the core of Chinese culture, reflecting the national spirit. The Chinese spirit is paradigmatically expressed in two sayings, “as Heaven’s movement is ever vigorous, so must a gentleman ceaselessly strive,” and “as Earth is broad and profound, so must a gentleman be greatly virtuous and lenient.”. (shrink)

In 1959, the Chinese government conducted a democratic reform in Tibet, and thoroughly abolished feudal serf system. Feudal serf system in Tibet before that time was dark and ferocious, vandalizing “human character, personality, human rights and humanity”, seriously obstructing overall progress of the Tibetan society, and isolating Tibet from the modern civilized world. The fact in Tibet that “millions of serfs acquired freedom and liberation, and thence became human in its actual meaning” was in line with the goal of human (...) rights campaign without doubt. Therefore, the Chinese government and people made another great contribution to the human rights campaign and human civilized progress. (shrink)