Recent revisions in child support and paternity establishment legislation enacted under the 1996 welfare reform act, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, significantly alter the American welfare state's relationship to men's fathering. Through a critical review of prior research and social service literature, the authors argue that PRWORA actively constructs fatherhood not only through state policies that maintain males as “breadwinners” but also through state-sponsored social service programs that seek to influence men's identities as fathers. PRWORA's policies and (...) their accompanying discourses simultaneously reproduce and undermine gender hierarchy yet tacitly maintain structural race and class inequalities. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The 2004 Meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian StudiesFrances S. AdeneyThe 2004 meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies was held in San Antonio, Texas, 19–20 November 2004. This year's theme was "Dealing with Illness and Promoting Healing: Buddhist and Christian Resources." During the first session panelists Laura Habgood Arsta, Jay McDaniel, and Beth Blizman presented Christian views on dealing with illness, and Rita Gross responded from a (...) Buddhist perspective. The second session focused Buddhist resources for promoting healing by panelists Francis Tsio and Grace Buford, with Laurel Curran presenting a Christian response.Laura Habgood Arsta presented research done by undergraduate students in border communities between the United States and Mexico. The topic was the connection between the Pentecostal movement and environmental health. Pentecostal Christianity (250–400 million members worldwide) emphasizes the signs that accompany the presence of Christ, evidenced by experiences of spirit baptism and faith healing.Their sample indicated that poor and minority people don't identify with the environmental movement until personal health problems emerge. One possible reason for Pentecostal religion thriving, according to this research, might be that exposure to toxins and poverty draws people to healing, a theological pillar of Pentecostalism. Religious services provide an emotional outlet and inspire self-confidence, which can become a mental health component of a healing solution. Women are free to share and lead services, finding leadership opportunities and a social group in churches. As an inexpensive alternative to medical care, healing in the Pentecostal church provides a sense of physical healing as well as help in overcoming addictions.Beth Blizman informed the group of the toxicity of the Lake Erie area of northern Ohio. Cancer is becoming normalized in this region, which has the highest level of multiple cancers in the United States. Beth feels called to heal her own body and become part of the healing process of that region. She argued that an attitude that disrespects the earth leads to disrespect of one another. "How can healing be found?" she asked. She discussed many resources from ancient monastics to modern women religious, from process and feminist thought to new cosmologies. Finally she connected [End Page 149] Audre Lourde's work on the rejection of difference to the bioregional studies that she has been doing on toxicity and illness.Jay McDaniels followed by giving a Christian perspective on Alzheimer's disease as an ecumenical Christian influenced by Buddhism. He addressed three questions that Christians ask in this situation. The first question is "Where is God now? Is God inside my loved one? How?" In response to this question, Jay outlined an evangelical view of God that understands God as a transcendent being, "way up there, watching from a distance." He contrasted this view with a process view of God as an "umbrella of compassion that envelops the world without smothering it." In this view, God is the great companion, sharing the confusion and anxiety of the ill person.So where is the person as they experience personality changes caused by the disease? Jay addressed this second question through process theology, stating that in process theology the person is defined in Buddhist terms, inheriting from the past and contributing to the future. A person is constantly in flux or transformation, so the person with illness may be a different person than they once were but can be embraced as the person that they are now. The multidimensional universe of process theology allows for a person to live "with one foot on earth and one foot in heaven."Help for dealing with Alzheimer's disease, Jay's third question, can be found in the Benedictine vow of obedience, stability, and ongoing conversion. The deepest need for those with Alzheimer's is to be with them, being available to others to listen. Stability is the vow to stay with the relationship through these changes. Ongoing conversion can come through Alzheimer's as those with this disease invite us into a space of creative imagination and a new kind of respect.Rita Gross responded to the three presentations by arguing that how one perceives a situation changes it tremendously. Two Buddhist principles that apply here are... (shrink)

In Constructing the World, Chalmers seeks to articulate and defend an important epistemic accessibility thesis, the Scrutability of Truth, which is crucial to Chalmers’ rationalist approach to meaning and modality. Chapters 3 and 4 of the book are devoted to persuading us that the move from weaker to stronger forms of Scrutability is intuitively plausible. In these comments, I want to question this move. The plausibility of strong forms of Scrutability hinges on controversial views about epistemic norms for answering ‘what (...) is x?’ questions that semantic externalists have good reason to reject. (shrink)

In this article, we aim to map out the complexities which characterise debates about the ethics of vaccine distribution, particularly those surrounding the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine. In doing so, we distinguish three general principles which might be used to distribute goods and two ambiguities in how one might wish to spell them out. We then argue that we can understand actual debates around the COVID-19 vaccine – including those over prioritising vaccinating the most vulnerable – as reflecting disagreements (...) over these principles. Finally, we shift our attention away from traditional discussions of distributive justice, highlighting the importance of concerns about risk imposition, special duties, and social roles in explaining debates over the COVID-19 vaccine. We conclude that the normative complexity this article highlights deepens the need for decision-making bodies to be sensitive to public input. (shrink)

Through a discussion of the socially extended mind, this paper advances the “not possible without principle” as an alternative to the social parity principle. By charging the social parity principle with reductionism about the social dimension of socially extended processes, the paper offers a new argumentative strategy for the socially extended mind that stresses its existential significance. The “not possible without principle” shows that not only is something _more_ achieved through socially located processes of knowledge building, but also that, and (...) more importantly, what is achieved is something that _would not have been possible without_ social interaction_._ The social parity principle states that the result of an activity achieved via social interaction should be assumed functionally equivalent to a solitary investigation and is characterized by multiple realisability. Contrary to the social parity principle, the “not possible without principle” holds that the result would not have been achieved without the social interaction between (at least) two agents with specific existential needs. The socially extended mind never happens in a void. This means that the "not possible without" principle should be located in real-life, affectively charged, embodied experiences of skilful interactions between agents. This fundamental conceptual change via reference to the “existential necessity” that regulates socially extended processes is necessary in order to effectively lead the socially extended mind to a truly embedded and embodied account. (shrink)

This article argues that every performance of habit‐driven action requires attention. I begin by revisiting the conception of habit‐driven actions as reducible to automatically performed responses to stimuli. On this conception, habitual actions are a counterexample to Wayne Wu's action‐centered theory of attention. Using the biased competition model of attention, and building on findings from affective cognitive neuroscience, I challenge this position. I claim that the performance of a habitual action requires experiential history to be exerting an influence that is (...) best understood as implicit selection‐biasing. It follows from this that habit‐driven action is compatible with Wu's theory. (shrink)

This innovative new volume analyses the role of emotions in knowledge acquisition. It focuses on the field of philosophy of emotions at the exciting intersection between epistemology and philosophy of mind and cognitive science to bring us an in-depth analysis of the epistemological value of emotions in reasoning. With twelve chapters by leading and up-and-coming academics, this edited collection shows that emotions do count for our epistemic enterprise. Against scepticism about the possible positive role emotions play in knowledge, the authors (...) highlight the how and the why of this potential, lucidly exploring the key aspects of the functionality of emotions. This is explored in relation to: specific kinds of knowledge such as self-understanding, group-knowledge and wisdom; specific functions played by certain emotions in these cases, such as disorientation in enquiry and contempt in practical reason; the affective experience of the epistemic subjects and communities. (shrink)

The aim of the chapter is to discuss and evaluate the epistemic role of emotions in participatory sense-making, assuming 4Ecognition as background. I first ask why could emotions be beneficial for the collective processes of knowledge, especially discussing Battaly and arguing for a conceptualisation of emotions as socially extended motivations in virtue epistemology; then, I discuss participatory sense-making, both conceptually and phenomenologically, arguing for a fundamental role played by emotions in boosting epistemic cooperation and determining the quality of social bonds. (...) I advocate their specific function in epistemic cooperation. Epistemic cooperation is what brings about the generation of a shared meaning in participatory sense-making and thus, since emotions function as socially extended motivations, they boost the relationships among the agents, bonding them to the aims of their epistemic community. (shrink)

Moral disengagement is the process by which individuals mitigate the consequences of their own violations of moral standards. Although MD is understood to be co-determined by culture norms, no study has yet explored the extent to which MD applied to safety at work fosters safety violations, nor the role of organizational culture as a predictor of JS-MD. The current study seeks to address this gap in the literature by examining individual- and organizational-level factors that explain why employees fail to report (...) workplace accidents. We tested a latent variable structural model positing organizational culture typologies as predictors of JS-MD, which in turn is expected to mediate the relationship with accident underreporting. Using data from 1033 employees in 28 Italian organizations, findings suggest that bureaucratic safety culture was related to lower levels of JS-MD, whereas technocratic safety culture was related to greater JS-MD. In turn, JS-MD positively predicted employee accident underreporting and fully mediated the relationship between culture and underreporting. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in light of the increasing focus on underreporting as well as the adverse individual and organizational consequences of failing to report workplace accidents. (shrink)

Starting from the standard quantum formalism for a single spin 1/2 system (e.g., an electron), this essay develops a model rich enough not only to afford an explication of symmetry breaking but also to frame questions about how to circumscribe physical possibility on behalf of theories that countenance symmetry breaking.

My chapter aims to advance the debate on a problem often raised by philosophers who are skeptical of implied narrators in movies. This is the concern that positing such elusive narrators gives rise to absurd imaginings (Gaut 2004: 242; Carroll 2006: 179-180). -/- Friends of the implied cinematic narrator reply that the questions critics raise about the workings of the implied cinematic narrator are "silly ones" to ask. -/- I examine how the "absurd imaginings" problem arises for all the central (...) arguments for the elusive cinematic narrator and discuss why the questions critics pose about this narrator are legitimate ones to ask. (shrink)

In qualitative interviews with a diverse group of experts, the vast majority believed unregulated researchers should seek out independent oversight. Reasons included the need for objectivity, protecting app users from research risks, and consistency in standards for the ethical conduct of research. Concerns included burdening minimal risk research and limitations in current systems of oversight. Literature and analysis supports the use of IRBs even when not required by regulations, and the need for evidence-based improvements in IRB processes.

We examined disgust and fear responses to spiders in spider-distressed and nondistressed individuals. Undergraduate participants (N = 134) completed questionnaires concerning responses to spiders and other potentially aversive stimuli, as well as measures of disgust sensitivity, anxious arousal, worry, and anhedonic depression. In addition, we obtained self-report and facial expressions of disgust and fear while participants were exposed to a live tarantula. Both spider distressed and nondistressed individuals reported disgust and exhibited disgust facial expressions in response to a tarantula. Disgust (...) in response to spiders was not found to be part of a general disgust response to all negative stimuli, nor was it due to a general negative emotional response to spiders. Emotional responses to spiders were differentially associated with scores on personality and psychological functioning measures. The results of this study provide evidence that spiders have a specific disgust-evoking status in both distressed and nondistressed populations. (shrink)

This essay proposes a simple way to incentivize states not to develop pathogens with enhanced pandemic potential (PEPPs) as bioweapons: to tip all state actors that all of them stand to lose from developing such highly lethal, highly transmissible bioweapons. Being highly transmissible, a PEPP used as a weapon could easily spread, infecting a state’s own citizens and leaders. Therefore, no state concerned for its own citizens or leaders can afford to use a PEPP weapon, even having developed or acquired (...) it. We then show that when this is commonly known between states, having PEPPs provides no useful deterrent to a state, and there is no point getting into an arms race. Developing and stockpiling PEPP weapons gives states no gain, only risk. We end by assessing three objections to our thesis. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThirty years ago, the subfields of emotion and cognition operated relatively independently and the associated science reflected the tacit view that they were distinct constructs. Today, questions about the integration of cognition and emotion are among the most interesting questions in the field. I offer a personal view of the key changes that fuelled this shift over time and describe research from my group that unfolded in parallel and led to the identification of the positivity effect.

The aim of this chapter is to discuss the relevance that emotions can play in our epistemic life considering the state of the art of the philosophical debate on emotions. The strategy is the one of focusing on the three main models on emotions as evaluative judgements, bodily feelings, and perceptions, following the fil rouge of emotion intentionality for rising questions about their epistemic functions. From this examination, a major challenge to mainstream epistemology arises, the one that asks to provide (...) prominence to the epistemic agent and to her affects. This chapter discusses these implications, also providing an overview of the many alternatives available nowadays in epistemology, arguing for an open, comprehensive, and interdisciplinary approach to emotions in knowledge. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the debate over two central claims regarding cinematic narration: the claim that there are implicit cinematic narrators and the thesis that when we watch movies, we imagine seeing the events and characters in the film fiction. I examine what a consideration of the indeterminate nature of fictional narration, that is, what is specified by the fiction about how we come to imagine the story events, can contribute to the debate on these issues. It is argued that (...) consideration of fictional indeterminacy can be used to show that positing an implicit cinematic narrator is not only unnecessary, but is also incompatible with appreciating the film fiction. While the opposite result is reached regarding the claim about imagined seeing: considerations of indeterminacy suggest that we can suppose, without absurdities, that audiences at the movies sometimes engage in imagined seeing. (shrink)

Hobbes, in his political writing, is generally understood to be arguing for absolutism. I argue that despite apparently supporting absolutism, Hobbes, in Leviathan, also undermines that absolutism in at least two and possibly three ways. First, he makes sovereignty conditional upon the sovereign’s ability to ensure the safety of the people. Second and crucially, he argues that subjects have inalienable rights, rights that are held even against the sovereign. When the subjects’ preservation is threatened they are no longer obliged to (...) obey the sovereign. Third, there is also a possible limitation on the absolute power of the sovereign in the form of restrictions Hobbes puts in place on what laws he may legitimately make. Finally, Hobbesian absolutism is compared to the absolutism of Carl Schmitt. This exercise demonstrates the limitations that Hobbes places on the power and authority of the sovereign. (shrink)

Although the expression 'intellectual property' is widely used, it could be argued that the very idea of intellectual property is incoherent. After all, ideas are not like land, houses or clothing; surely they are not the sorts of things that can be owned? I shall examine two arguments - one ontological, one jurisprudential - that put pressure on the coherence of the idea of intellectual property, both leading to the conclusion that intellectual property rights are not genuine property rights, but (...) rights to monopolies. In setting up and responding to the first argument, I discuss the applicability of the type/ token distinction to intellectual property law; a distinction I also appeal to as a way of clarifying my response to the second argument. (shrink)

Research ethics consultation is increasingly recognized as a potentially valuable mechanism for addressing the depth and breadth of ethical issues that arise in research related to human health and well-being. However, fundamental questions remain, including: What is “research ethics consultation”? And what is its justification beyond the purposes already served by existing entities? We examine how a research ethics consultation service may differ from or complement the role of an institutional review board by offering a definition of research ethics consultation (...) and by exploring the potential scope of a consultation service in terms of types of clients served, questions addressed, and advice provided at various stages of the research process. We then consider the relationship between research ethics consultation services and IRBs, as well as the issues that may arise between them, including possible conflicts of interest. (shrink)

Prior work has found that moral values that build and bind groups—that is, the binding values of ingroup loyalty, respect for authority, and preservation of purity—are linked to blaming people who have been harmed. The present research investigated whether people's endorsement of binding values predicts their assignment of the causal locus of harmful events to the victims of the events. We used an implicit causality task from psycholinguistics in which participants read a sentence in the form “SUBJECT verbed OBJECT because…” (...) where male and female proper names occupy the SUBJECT and OBJECT position. The participants were asked to predict the pronoun that follows “because”—the referent to the subject or object—which indicates their intuition about the likely cause of the event. We also collected explicit judgments of causal contributions and measured participants' moral values to investigate the relationship between moral values and the causal interpretation of events. Using two verb sets and two independent replications (N = 459, 249, 788), we found that greater endorsement of binding values was associated with a higher likelihood of selecting the object as the cause for harmful events in the implicit causality task, a result consistent with, and supportive of, previous moral psychological work on victim blaming. Endorsement of binding values also predicted explicit causal attributions to victims. Overall, these findings indicate that moral values that support the group rather than the individual reliably predict that people shift the causal locus of harmful events to those affected by the harms. (shrink)

In this article, I shall analyze Schopenhauer's conception of Buddhism in the context of the Western reception of Buddhism from the seventeenth century onwards. I will focus on Schopenhauer's notion of the Buddhist palingenesis and provide an overview of the Buddhist sources Schopenhauer read before the publication of the second edition of his main work The World as Will and Representation in 1844.

En sus lecciones de los años treinta, Heidegger se centra en el pensamiento de Nietzsche dado que considera que en él se ha consumado el nihilismo de la metafísica a través de la inversión de sus principios en su doble inicio platónico y cartesiano. Pero el “nihilismo impropio” de la metafísica entendido como el “olvido del ser”, es motivado a su vez por el “nihilismo propio” o “abandono del ser”. Consecuentemente Heidegger propone la “superación-sobretorsión” de la metafísica en el sentido (...) de una “torsión” del olvido del ser, camino que lo llevará a la búsqueda de un pensamiento no metafísico entendido como el “recuerdo interiorizante en la metafísica” primeramente, y seguidamente en el sentido de un pensamiento rememorante. Seguidamente la presente propuesta se detiene en la temática del “último Dios” en el horizonte de la temporalidad, donde Heidegger lo anuncia como “el último” pero en el sentido del más originario, pensado desde la dimensión del “tiempo auténtico” tetradimensional, donde lo advenidero no es lo meramente futuro, sino lo predeterminado por “lo sido”. Así se comprende la humanidad de los advenideros, un pueblo de creadores que son “los vigías del silencio del pasaje del último Dios”. (shrink)

Olfaction has recently been highlighted as a sense poorly connected with language. Odor is difficult to verbalize, and it has few qualities that afford mimicry by vision or sound. At the same time, emotion is thought to be the most salient dimension of an odor, and it could therefore be an olfactory dimension more easily communicated. We investigated whether sounds imitative of an innate disgust response can be associated with unpleasant odors. In two experiments, participants were asked to make a (...) forced choice between a pseudoword including a disgust sound and a neutral pseudoword, for pleasant and unpleasant odors. Overall, participants chose more disgust pseudowords than neutral pseudowords for unpleasant odors, but this was not the case for pleasant odors. This effect was not driven by a general association between unpleasant sounds and unpleasant odors, but specifically the sounds [x/χ] and [f], thought to reflect physical responses to disgusting odors, as seen in the Polish fu! or the English ugh!. In line with growing evidence that language can encode odor, we provide the first experimental evidence for an association between the sound of a word and odor valence. (shrink)

ABSTRACTRecent research suggests that impaired emotion regulation may play an important role in the development of youth psychopathology. However, little research has explored the effects of ER strategies on affect in early adolescents. In Study 1, we examined if early adolescents are able to use distraction and whether the effects of this strategy are similar to talking to one’s mother. In Study 2, we compared the effects of distraction, cognitive reappraisal, acceptance, and rumination. In both studies, participants received instructions on (...) how to regulate their emotions after a standardised negative mood induction. In general, the results indicated that distraction, but also cognitive reappraisal and acceptance, had promising short-term effects on positive and negative affect in early adolescents. These findings suggest that targeting adaptive ER skills, such as distraction, acceptance, and cognitive reappraisal, may be an important strategy to prevent or treat psychological pro... (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Lafayette's American Plants English Agrarian Influences Transforming La Grange Planting Politics at La Grange Notes.

Van Fraassen's 1991 modal interpretation of Quantum Mechanics offers accounts of measurement and state preparation. I argue that both accounts overlook a class of interactions I call General Unitary Measurements, or GUMs. Ironically, GUMs are significant for van Fraassen's account of measurement because they challenge it, and significant for his account of preparation because they simplify it. Van Fraassen's oversight prompts a question about modal interpretations: developed to account for ideal measurement outcomes, can they consistently account as well for the (...) whole horizon of laboratory practices by which we investigate QM? (shrink)

This systematic review identifies and critically evaluates instruments that have been developed to measure clinical trial informed consent comprehension in non-cognitively-impaired adults. Literature searches were carried out on Medline (Ovid), PsycInfo, CINHAL, ERIC, ScienceDirect, and Cochrane Library for English language articles published between January 1980 and September 2008. Instruments were excluded if they focused on consent onto paediatric trials, the construct under study was primarily capacity or competency, or the instrument was developed specifically for psychiatric or cognitively-impaired populations. Instruments selected (...) for review were evaluated against the following criteria: (1) method of item generation; (2) type and format of test items; (3) administration and interpretation of test results; and (4) psychometric properties. Three instruments met our defined inclusion criteria: the Deaconess Informed Consent Comprehension Test (DICCT), the Quality of Informed Consent (QuIC) questionnaire and the Brief Informed Consent Protocol (BICEP). Each instrument varied in terms of content measured. Significantly, these are the first standardized instruments developed to assess comprehension in non-cognitively-impaired adults. Yet, each instrument had its own set of limitations such as the lack of generalizability and the absence of details pertaining to how test results should be used to guide clinical decision-making. Standardized clinical trial informed consent comprehension assessments have been developed to identify gaps in research participants' understanding and ensure that respect for patient autonomy is satisfied. (shrink)

The increasing role that new technologies play in intimate relationships has led to the emergence of a new form of couple violence, cyber dating abuse, especially among adolescents and young adults. Although this phenomenon has received increased attention, no research has investigated predictors of cyber dating abuse taking into account the interdependence of the two partners. The study examines adverse childhood experiences and early maladaptive schemas as possible predictors of young adults’ perpetrated and suffered cyber dating abuse. Adopting a dyadic (...) approach, mediational models in which adverse childhood experiences were assumed to be related to individual and partner’s cyber dating abuse through individual early maladaptive schemas were tested. 134 couples completed online self-reports of the variables of interest, including a bidimensional measure of cyber dating abuse assessing pressure-aggression and control-monitoring. Actor-partner interdependence mediation model analyses were conducted. Results indicated that the emotional deprivation schema mediated the association between adverse childhood experiences and cyber dating abuse, whereas the abandonment schema did not. Specifically, more frequent experiences of emotional abuse and physical neglect during childhood were indirectly related to increased likelihood of perpetrating cyber dating pressure-aggression as well as of perpetrating and suffering cyber dating control-monitoring in both males and females. These associations were mediated by a stronger internalization of the emotional deprivation schema and were supported by both self-reported and partner-reported data. Also, a strong and direct association was found between childhood exposure to intimate partner violence by the opposite-sex parent and cyber dating pressure-aggression by females or control-monitoring by both males and females. These findings help to clarify the potential negative effects of specific adverse childhood experiences and early maladaptive schemas on the tendency to perpetrate and suffer cyber abuse in romantic relationships. The implications for prevention and treatment programs are noted and avenues for future research are described. (shrink)

Many families worldwide have at least one member with a behavioral or mental disorder, and yet the majority of the public fails to correctly recognize symptoms of mental illness. Previous research has found that Mental Health Literacy (MHL)—the knowledge and positive beliefs about mental disorders—tends to be higher in European and North American cultures, compared to Asian and African cultures. Nonetheless quantitative research examining the variables that explain this cultural difference remains limited. The purpose of our study was fourfold: (a) (...) to validate measures of MHL cross-culturally, (b) to examine the MHL model quantitatively, (c) to investigate cultural differences in the MHL model, and (d) to examine collectivism as a predictor of MHL. We validated measures of MHL in European American and Indian samples. The results lend strong quantitative support to the MHL model. Recognition of symptoms of mental illness was a central variable: greater recognition predicted greater endorsement of social causes of mental illness and endorsement of professional help-seeking as well as lesser endorsement of lay help-seeking. The MHL model also showed an overwhelming cultural difference; namely, lay help-seeking beliefs played a central role in the Indian sample, and a negligible role in the European American sample. Further, collectivism was positively associated with causal beliefs of mental illness in the European American sample, and with lay help-seeking beliefs in the Indian sample. These findings demonstrate the importance of understanding cultural differences in beliefs about mental illness, particularly in relation to help-seeking beliefs. (shrink)

This is the first of a two-part introduction to some interpretive questions that arise in connection with quantum field theories (QFTs). Some of these questions are continuous with those familiar from the discussion of ordinary non-relativistic quantum mechanics (QM). For example, questions about locality can be rigorously posed and fruitfully pursued within the framework of QFT. A stark disanalogy between QFTs and ordinary QM – the former, but not the latter, typically admit infinitely many putatively physically inequivalent realizations – prompts (...) relatively novel questions, questions about how to understand and adjudicate different strategies for equipping quantum theories with content. Part I sketches the fate of locality and related notions in QFT, then documents the non-uniqueness unprecedented in ordinary QM but rampant in QFT. Part II presents foundations issues raised by non-uniqueness. (shrink)

Psychiatric electroceutical interventions (PEIs) use electrical or magnetic stimulation to treat psychiatric conditions. For depression therapy, PEIs include both approved treatment modalities, such as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), and experimental neurotechnologies, such as deep brain stimulation (DBS) and adaptive brain implants (ABIs). We present results from a survey-based experiment in which members of four relevant stakeholder groups (psychiatrists, patients with depression, caregivers of adults with depression, and the general public) assessed whether treatment with one of (...) four PEIs (ECT, rTMS, DBS, or ABIs) was better or worse than living with treatment-resistant depression (TRD) and then provided a narrative explanation for their assessment. Overall, the prevalence of many narrative themes differed substantially by stakeholder group—with psychiatrists typically offering different reasons for their assessment than non-clinicians—but much less so by PEI modality. A large majority of all participants viewed their assigned PEI as better than living with TRD, with their reasons being a mix of positive views about the treatment and negative views about TRD. The minority of all participants who viewed their assigned PEI as worse than living with TRD tended to express negative affect toward it as well as emphasize its riskiness, negative side effects, and, to a lesser extent, its invasiveness. The richness of these narrative explanations enabled us to put in context and add depth to key patterns seen in recent survey-based research on PEIs. (shrink)