The paper deals with the mutual interest of both economic and social theory in exploring a broader concept of the rational and in finding validity claims for rational discourse. Efficiency and effectiveness are discussed as possible validity criteria in evaluating norms in practical discussion. In addition to the problem of defining validity criteria for argumentation on norms and social choices, a major difficulty arises from the lack of a legitimate reflective centre in society which could integrate behaviour with norms and (...) metapreferences. As ways of motivating cooperative, collective action, both norm commitment and self‐interest should be appealed to. (shrink)

This article explores the concept of cultural competence and its relevance as an organizational resource in ethical disputes. Empirically, we aim to reveal the cultural competences that a global forest industry company, StoraEnso, and a global environmental nongovernmental organization (NGO), Greenpeace, utilized in forestry conflicts during 1985–2001. Our study is based on data which were collected from corporate and NGO communication outlets and which have gone through a detailed discourse-semiotic analysis. Our reinterpretation of the discourses identified three cultural competences: (1) (...) the ability to understand changing consumer preferences and values, (2) the ability to utilize culturally determined positions of expertise, and (3) the ability to maintain trust and credibility in the community through open communicative practices. We argue that these competences are relevant in industry–NGO disputes for both parties. However, maintaining them all simultaneously is a difficult task, since various discourses which aim at upholding them can sometimes have contradictory effects. (shrink)

Can heroin addicts give consent to research on trials in which heroin is prescribed to them? Analyses of addicts and informed consent have been objects of debate in several articles. Informed consent requires the agent not only to be competent but also to give consent voluntarily. This has been questioned because of alleged features of heroin addiction. Until recently the discussion has focused on heroin addicts' desires for heroin, whether these are irresistible and thus pose a problem for giving consent. (...) Still, in light of empirical evidence, there seems to be a consensus more or less that the problem is not whether the addicts can resist their desire for heroin. A recent article concentrates specifically on heroin addicts' false assumptions of options and voluntariness. We argue that the prevailing framing of the options in this discussion in terms of heroin and access to it is problematic. The way in which the options are typically laid out suggests an assumption that participation in the research is allegedly based on the addicts' views on using the drug. We argue that this way of presenting the options is, first, a mismatch to the studies carried out and, second, symptomatic of potential misconceptions about heroin addiction and addicts. Furthermore, we also suggest that the account of voluntariness needs to be realistic in order for subjects to be able to give consent voluntarily in actual situations, and for medical research to carry out studies on improving outcomes in addiction treatment in an ethical way. (shrink)

This edited collection is the first volume solely dedicated to research on Johann Gottfried Herder's understanding of history, time, and temporalities. Forms of Temporality and Historical Time in the Work of Johann Gottfried Herder is ideal for scholars, graduates, and postgraduates interested in Herder's metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of history, as well as any scholar concerned with 18th-century concepts of time and the emergence of the modern world at the beginning of the 19th century.

University students from Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, and Portugal were given a list of morally relevant behaviors, the Schwartz Value Survey and Tangney’s TOSCA, measuring empathic guilt, guilt over norm-breaking, and shame. A factor analysis of MRB yielded 4 dimensions: prosocial behaviors, interpersonal transgressions, antisocial behaviors and secret transgressions. Prosocial behaviors were predicted by self-transcendence–self-enhancement value contrast only while the three transgression categories were associated with both SET and openness to change–conservation contrast. Norm-breaking guilt was more strongly associated with behaviors than (...) were empathic guilt and shame. However, shame was associated with secret transgressions in three countries, after controlling for values. The associations were strongest in Bulgaria and Estonia while fewer associations were found in Finland and Portugal. The implications of the findings for the cross-cultural psychology of morality are discussed. (shrink)

SUSANNE UUSITALO,ANNA AXELIN | : Infants born to opioid-dependent women are typically admitted to neonatal intensive-care units for management of neonatal abstinence syndrome, and their treatment requires medical decision making. It is not only the infants’ vulnerability, in terms of their incompetence and medical condition, that is present in those circumstances, but also the mothers’ situational vulnerability, which arises with the possibility of their engagement in medical decision making regarding their infants. Vulnerability is a concept that has often, if (...) not always, been traced back to individuals. In this paper, we suggest that in some cases evaluations and attributions of vulnerability to either individuals or populations fall short of capturing all aspects of vulnerability. We ask whether this individual-based evaluation is sufficient for identifying all the vulnerabilities arising in the situation. Moreover, we suggest that the “unit” of vulnerability attribution, typically a person who is a likely target of harm and/or moral violations, should not simply be reduced to the individual. Rather, the unit should in some cases be seen as constituted by an entity that is interpersonal in nature. The kind of real vulnerability that we identify in this paper is inherently embedded in a dyadic relationship, and notions of vulnerability that decompose social relations into individuals run the risk of missing the vulnerability in question. We elaborate this kind vulnerability by discussing of role of opioid-dependent mothers in decision making about their infants’ treatment. | : Les nourrissons nés de femmes dépendantes aux opioïdes sont généralement admis dans des unités de soins intensifs néonatals pour la prise en charge du syndrome d’abstinence néonatale, et leur traitement nécessite une prise de décision médicale. Ce n’est pas seulement la vulnérabilité des nourrissons, en termes d’incompétence et de dépendance médicale, qui est présente dans ces circonstances, mais aussi la vulnérabilité situationnelle des mères, qui découle de la possibilité de leur participation à la prise de décision médicale concernant leurs enfants. La vulnérabilité est un concept qui a souvent, sinon toujours été relié à des individus. Dans cet article, nous suggérons que, dans certains cas, les évaluations et les attributions de vulnérabilité aux individus ou aux populations ne permettent pas de saisir tous les aspects de la vulnérabilité. Nous demandons si cette évaluation individuelle est suffisante pour identifier toutes les vulnérabilités qui apparaissent dans la situation. De plus, nous suggérons que l’« unité » d’attribution de la vulnérabilité, généralement une personne qui est une cible probable de dommages ou de violations morales, ne devrait pas simplement être réduite à l’individu. Au contraire, l’unité devrait dans certains cas être considérée comme une entité de nature interpersonnelle. Le type de vulnérabilité réelle que nous identifions dans cet article est intrinsèquement intégré dans une relation dyadique, et les notions de vulnérabilité qui décomposent les relations sociales en individus risquent de manquer la vulnérabilité en question. Nous développons ce type de vulnérabilité en discutant du rôle des mères dépendantes aux opioïdes dans la prise de décision concernant le traitement de leurs enfants. (shrink)

Shpet’s interpretation of Husserl’s phenomenology has caused puzzlement because of the lack of clarity with which he treats the transcendental turn in Appearance and Sense. I suggest that we find a more comprehensive discussion on the topic in Shpet’s 1917 article, “Wisdom or Reason?” There, Shpet reacts to Husserl’s treatment of a cluster of problems related to the latter’s transition to transcendental idealism. I read “Wisdom or Reason?” not only in relation to Husserl’s Logos article of 1911, but also to (...) his 1907 lecture series “The Idea of Phenomenology.” My analysis of Shpet’s phenomenology reveals that he followed through with the transcendental turn, although his philosophy developed in a direction different from Husserl’s transcendental idealism. Shpet postulates a collective consciousness, in which meaning-constitution takes place, and discovers the “word” as the foundation for any cognition. Shpet’s phenomenology remains ontological, as he considers language or culture as the “form of being” in which human beings live. In “Wisdom or Reason?,” Shpet argues that we can have direct knowledge of this meaningful reality: being is not “represented” but “presented” in a word. A certain compatibility thus exists between Shpet’s phenomenology of cultural reality and Husserl’s search for the absolute validity of knowledge. (shrink)

The current paper plunges into the reality of a European Research and Innovation project on forced migration, with the aim of explaining the challenge of embedding gender equity approach into the entire process. The level of gender sensitivity of the initiative is analysed, as well as the difficulties and benefits in the implementation of gender equity in a culturally diverse and complex research surrounding of a three year H2020 initiative focused on finding tailored attention and inclusion strategies for forced migrants. (...) Findings show the need for additional training at international level, and the quest for genuinely transformative gender equity strategies. (shrink)

In our previous article on the question whether heroin addicts are able to give informed consent voluntarily to research on heroin-assisted treatment, we criticized the ongoing bioethical discussion of a flawed conceptualization of heroin addicts' options. As a participant in this discussion, Edmund Henden defends the conceptualization as sufficient for determining whether heroin addicts are able to give informed consent to the research on heroin-assisted treatment voluntarily. This discussion on research on heroin-assisted treatment seems to go astray in several respects. (...) In his reply to our article Henden maintains some of the biases, such as the necessity of abstinence in recovery, that seem to prevail in addiction research on a more general level as well. These biases run the danger of having implausible ethical implications on stakeholders in addiction research and treatment. In our reply to him, we will further clarify and discuss the importance of describing the relevant issues in plausible terms that do justice to the realities of the cases of informed consent in research on heroin-assisted treatment and also raise a wider issue of the ethics of wording as well as of the narrow scope, or ‘tunnel vision’, in addiction research as currently conducted. (shrink)

In this article, Bakhtin’s early aesthetics is reread in the context of Hermann Cohen’s system of philosophy, especially his aesthetics. Bakhtin’s thinking from the early ethical writing Toward a Philosophy of Act to Author and Hero in Artistic Activity and Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics is followed. In Author and Hero , an individual is in his life conceived as involved in cognitive and ethical action but as remaining without a consummative form; the form, or the ‘soul’, is bestowed upon a (...) person by the creative activity of the artist alone. In his understanding of artistic creativity and the relationship between the ‘hero’ and the author, Bakhtin closely follows Cohen, with the exception that for Cohen the object of artistic form-giving is the universal, idealized man, whereas for Bakhtin it is an individual. In the concept of a ‘polyphonic novel’ as developed in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics , Bakhtin, however, considers this view of the activity of the artist (or the novelist) to apply to the “traditional” novel only, while in a Dostoevskyean novel the characters are not subordinated to any defining power of the author. Bakhtin’s theory of the Dostoevskyean novel is thus a return to the emphasis of the cognitive and ethical autonomy of the individual. His understanding of the encounter between persons as a ‘subject’—‘subject’ or an ‘I’—‘thou’ relation has a predecessor, among others, in Cohen. (shrink)

Addiction is a phenomenon that usually offers challenges to theories of action. If we consider the standard causal theory of addiction, explaining addicts’ action in terms of their addictive desires leaves them without agency. If the compulsive desires bring about the action, despite the addicts’ views and attitudes toward their addiction, the desire just seems to force the addict to act accordingly. In light of philosophical studies, this is not a plausible way of understanding addicts’ action, as they are agents (...) in the sense that they are basically able to control their action and refrain from acting according to their addiction. Still it seems more difficult for addicts to act against the addictive desire. There has been empirical research that heroin addicts, for instance, have strong attentional bias to heroin-related cues and this feeds the strong desire they have for heroin. In the presentation, I will consider two ways in which the addictive desire may be understood as a source of difficulty that the agent may experience in their action. (shrink)

Background Professional care workers face ethical issues in long-term care settings (LTCS) for older adults. They need to be independent and responsible, despite limited resources, a shortage of skilled professionals, global and societal changes, and the negative reputation of LTCS work. Research aim Our aim was to describe the care workers’ lived experiences of ethical issues. The findings can be used to gain new perspectives and to guide decision-making to improve the quality of care, occupational well-being and nursing education. Research (...) design Focus group interviews were analyzed using a hermeneutic-phenomenological method. The analysis comprised three steps: naïve reading, structural analysis, and comprehensive understanding. Participants and research context We randomly sampled LTCS service providers in Finland and 53 care workers with different educational backgrounds from seven organizations participated in focus group interviews in 2021. Ethical considerations This was a sensitive study, which was connected to the participants’ individual views of the world, professional ethics and social and health care legislation. The participants' provided informed consent and their anonymity was guaranteed. Findings Care workers spoke about their lived experiences of ethical issues in an emotional way, using practical examples. They talked about how they were experts at caring and advocating for residents, balanced the responsibilities of their different roles, and defended their work to the wider society. The care workers said that ethical aspects of their work were too difficult to solve on their own. There were elements of their working environment and practices that caused unnecessary strain and they needed the commitment of managers, organizations, and society to solve ethical issues in LTCS. Conclusions Ethical issues were related to the well-being of both residents and care workers and reflected both internal and external pressures. Some issues could not be resolved by individuals and needed input from managers, organizations, and society. (shrink)

Background: Research ethics training courses are gaining hold in the academia. Learning is affected by learner’s conception of the topic. Thus, knowledge regarding research ethics understandings of the participants of the training courses is needed. Methods: A data driven qualitative content analysis was utilized in a survey after a compulsory research ethics course for doctoral researchers in Finland. In an anonymous online survey, 17 respondents answered open questions concerning research ethics and its relevance. Results: Doctoral researcher’s views can be understood (...) with four core categories: (1) the relevance of research ethics; (2) motivation for learning and following research ethics, (3) the nature of research ethics; and (4) changes due to taking a research ethics course. All categories have subcategories. Conclusions: The views of the doctoral researchers greatly vary along the continuums formed by the core categories and subcategories. Understanding their views is important for the development of the training courses and teaching. (shrink)

Individuals’ food choices are intimately connected to their self-images and world views. Some dietary choices adopted by consumers pose restrictions on their use of genetically modified food (GMF). It is quite generally agreed that some kind of labeling is necessary for respecting consumers’ autonomy of choice regarding GMF. In this paper, we ask whether the current practice of mandatory labeling of GMF products in the European Union is a sufficient administrative procedure for respecting consumers’ autonomy. Three issues concerning this question (...) are discussed. First, we argue that labeling needs to be accompanied by relevant and understandable information on genetic modification, genetically modified food, and the European practice of GMF labeling. Second, we claim that this type of informing makes it less likely that consumers start to avoid GMF products just because labels make them suspicious of the products. It is further noted that even though some consumers may react to labels this way, labels do not restrict their autonomy of choice. Third, a need for more precise labels indicating the source of the transferred gene is considered. It is found out that such labels are not morally necessary when also non-GMF products are available and no relevant differences (such as differences in price and healthiness) exist between them and GMF products. However, in some other cases more precise labels may be needed for respecting consumers’ autonomy of choice. (shrink)

The European Union’s policies regarding genetically modified food are based on the precautionary principle and the requirement of respecting consumers’ autonomy. We ask whether the requirement of respecting consumers’ autonomy regarding GMF implies that both GMF and non-GMF products should be available in the market. According to one line of thought, consumers’ choices may be autonomous even when the both types of products are not available. A food market with only GMF or only non-GMF products does not strictly speaking compel (...) people to buy the type of products available, and a possibility to refuse to buy is enough for consumers’ choice to be autonomous. According to another line of thought, the unavailability of GMF or non-GMF products restricts the autonomy of those consumers who are unwilling to use the only type of products available in the market. From the point of view of autonomy, a food market with only GMF or only non-GMF products does not offer enough alternatives for consumers. Moreover, the whole point of the European Union’s requirement of respecting consumers’ autonomy is to enable an autonomous choice between GMF and non-GMF—not just to give a possibility to refrain from buying. However, this does not imply that producers, processors, wholesalers, retailers, or public authorities have a moral duty to see that there are both GMF and non-GMF products available in the market. The requirement to respect autonomy is prima facie in nature, and in the context of GMF, other prima facie requirements are often stronger and override it. Not only the consumers’ autonomy of choice but also environmental values, other people’s well-being, and the autonomous choice of farmers, retailers, and other relevant parties should be respected. Thus, according to the both lines of thought, the requirement to respect consumers’ autonomy of choice does not imply that there should be both GMF and non-GMF products available in the market. (shrink)

Since management is about influencing - influencing people who work in the organization, the structure and practices of the organization, as well as its environment - how ‘influencing’ is understood evidently makes a huge difference. The still popular empiricist concept of cause-effect relations as presupposing regularities is mistaken, since it forms no sufficient basis for action in new and unique situations. As alternative notions of causation, the paper discusses the Critical Realist conception of causal powers and the counterfactual conditional view, (...) arguing that the classical notion of power (dunamis in Greek; power, potentiality, possibility, ability, capacity, capability in English) offers the most fruitful analysis of causal relations for managerial purposes. The paper presents the four ontological features of power scrutinised already by Aristotle in his Metaphysics and Physics, and actively discussed in current philosophy of science. These are the potentiality-actuality distinction, full power as consisting of an active and a receptive component, the distinction of rational and non-rational powers, and the idea of hierarchy of powers. These ontological distinctions suit management contexts not only because they allow room for new unique decision-making situations, but primarily because they imply invaluable practical advice. The relevance of the power ontology for management is illustrated in the context of the Bohm and the new Timeout dialogue. The paper concludes with a summary of the practical implications of the classical power ontology to management and the adoption of dialogical practices to managerial expertise. (shrink)

We have national guidelines for the responsible conduct of research (RCR) and procedures for handling allegations of misconduct in Finland. The guidelines have been formulated and updated by the Finnish Advisory Board on Research Integrity (TENK). In this article, we introduce and evaluate the national RCR guidelines. We also present statistics of alleged and proven RCR violation cases and frequency of appeals to TENK on the decisions or procedures of the primary institutions. In addition, we analyze the available data on (...) seven investigated cases in more detail. Positive aspects in the Finnish system are a fairly good infrastructure to investigate suspected RCR violations and a wide concept of RCR violations, which consists of fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, misappropriation, and other misbehaviors. However, the guidelines contain poorly elaborated definitions, do not treat the complainant and the suspect in an equal way, and need to be revised. Confusion about the concepts and criteria of the RCR violations seems to be common in primary institutions and among the complainants. Even if research institutions and universities have officially adhered to the national RCR guidelines, slipping from the guidelines occurs quite commonly. All these factors lead to frequent dissatisfaction with the decisions or procedures applied, high rate of appeals to TENK, and far from optimal functionality of the system. (shrink)

Ethicists have for the past 20 years debated the possibility of using neurointerventions to improve intelligence and even moral capacities, and thereby create a safer society. Contributing to a recent debate concerning neurointerventions in criminal rehabilitation, Nicole Vincent and Elizabeth Shaw have separately discussed the possibility of responsibility enhancement. In their ethical analyses, enhancing a convict’s capacity responsibility may be permissible. Both Vincent and Shaw consider self-control to be one of the constituent mental capacities of capacity responsibility. In this paper, (...) we critically examine the promise of improving convicts’ capacity responsibility by neuroenhancements of self-control to see whether the special characteristics of the inmate population make a difference in the analyses. As improving self-control by means of neurointerventions seems plausible, we then ask whether it is or could be a justified measure in court rulings. We conclude that, even if there are cases in which neurointerventions were warranted in the context of the stated goals of the criminal court, i.e., decreasing recidivism and rehabilitating the offenders to the society, due to the range of individual variability in the constitution of self-control, the prescription of specific neurointerventions of self-control falls outside the scope of legitimate court rulings. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to explore how one person experienced the early years of dementia as she was living through the pre-clinical and earlyclinical stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Interviews were held onfour occasions over a period of three years. The data were analyzed usingthe descriptive phenomenological psychological method, in which theresearcher approached the data from a caring perspective. The livedexperience of early-stage Alzheimer’s disease showed to be acomplex transitional phenomenon that involves a dynamic process of personaladjustment. The process (...) is set in motion as the participant receives thediagnosis and will eventually lead her towards a state of increased opennessand receptiveness toward the disease. The results describe this process asit unfolds in the context of the overall experience, and the variousadjustments that the participant undertakes. Some reflections concerning theplausible needs of patients with early-stage Alzheimer’s diseaseare included in the discussion. (shrink)

Drawing on multimodal conversation analysis as a method, this article explores the role of embodiment and tactility in negotiating peer relations in classroom interaction. We aim at discussing how social relations between peers are locally constructed and negotiated through embodied, tactile-haptic, and spatial practices during classroom activities. The focus of the empirical analysis is on how students sequentially co-construct specific peer-to-peer touch type—sustained leaning touch—as well as how embodied two-student formations, synchronization of bodily movements and negotiation of personal space serves (...) as displaying social bonding and balancing between students’ dual role orientation. Our findings suggest that intercorporeal construction of we-ness—including exclusive and inclusive practices in relation to peer groups—is based on students’ embodied orientations during leaning touch as well as re-organized embodied choreographies, participation frameworks and spatial arrangements. Our empirical analysis on tactility, embodied consciousness and incorporeal compresence has its basis in a phenomenologically rooted understanding of intercorporeality, and therefore our article aims at building bridges between phenomenological understanding and conceptualization and detailed empirical analysis of clearly observable interactional phenomena. (shrink)

A recurrent theme that is addressed in psychotherapies is the client’s conflicting emotions. This article discusses discursive practices of working on conflicting emotions during psychodynamic psychotherapy. We focus on a phenomenon that we refer to as a ‘delayed response’ and analyze the client’s uses of interactional means, such as a display of negative experience, to invite affiliation or empathy from the therapist. The therapist, however, does not take a turn in the first possible place after the client’s turn. Recurrently, the (...) therapist’s silence is followed by the client’s new turn that backs down from the emotional experience under discussion. After these retractions, the therapists respond with a turn that is responsive both to the retraction and to the initial display of negative experience that occurred prior to it. We argue that the timing of the therapist’s response in these sequences is in the service of psychotherapeutic work on conflicting emotions. (shrink)

Dance events as a caregiver intervention for persons with dementiaThe aim of the study was to illuminate the phenomenon of dance events as a caregiver intervention for persons with dementia in one nursing home as described by the caregivers. Seven caregivers were interviewed. The interviews were unstructured and conducted while the caregivers were watching a video of dance events arranged in the nursing home. The analysis was carried out using the phenomenological method developed by Giorgi. The results are presented in (...) five consistent themes: (1) prerequisites for dance events; (2) creating and preparing different kinds of activities related to the dance events; (3) emotional arousal; (4) caregivers’ situational understanding; and (5) dance events and contextual consequences and synthesis into a general structure. The meaning of the dance events as a caregiver intervention was founded not only on the dancing itself but also encompassed the ontological state of ‘being together’. (shrink)

The primary means for psychotherapy interaction is language. Since talk-in-interaction is accomplished and rendered interpretable by the systematic use of linguistic resources, this study focuses on one of the central issues in psychotherapy, namely agency, and the ways in which linguistic resources, person references in particular, are used for constructing different types of agency in psychotherapy interaction. The study investigates therapists' responses to turns where the client complains about a third party. It focuses on the way therapists' responses distribute experience (...) and agency between the therapist and the client by comparing responses formulated with the zero-person to responses formulated with a second person singular pronoun that refers to the client. The study thus approaches agency as situated, dynamic and interactional: an agent is a social unit whose elements are distributed in the therapist-client interaction. The data consist of 70 audio-recorded sessions of cognitive psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, and the method of analysis is conversation analysis and interactional linguistics. The main findings are that therapists use the zero-person for two types of responses: affiliating and empathetic responses that distribute the emotional experience between the client and the therapist, and responses that invite clients to interpret their own experiences, thereby distributing control and responsibility to the clients. In contrast, the second person references are used for re-constructing the client's past history. The conclusion is that therapists use the zero-person for both immediate emotional work and interpretative co-work on the client's experiences. The study suggests that therapists' use of the zero-person does not necessarily attribute “weak agency” to the client but instead might strengthen the clients' agency in the sense of control and responsibility in the long term. (shrink)

In spite of numerous outstanding recent contributions on Aristotle’s dialectic, it seems that our picture of dialectic in the Topics is not yet clear enough to settle the questions concerning the purpose and utility of dialectic. Thegoalofthispaperisamore modest one, simply to clarify our notion of dialectic and the skills involved. Thisinvestigation will allow us to draw some conclusions concerning their relevance to Aristotle’s philosophical inquiry.The paper formulates and systematizes the rules for dialectica ldisputations in Topics Book I and III so (...) as to reveal their epistemic, logical, and psychological peculiarities. First, it is argued that so-called constitutive rules offer a framework for both good and bad, fair and unfair argumentative discourse in question-answer form. Second, strategic rules are demonstrated to yield logical and epistemic moves to enhance good argument and the search for justified truth claims through debate. (shrink)

In this article I discuss the problem of embodied subjectivity, viewed from the perspective of spatiality. The questions I address arise from my ethnographic study on chronic pain. My main argument is that, in contrast to philosophical understanding of space as an a priori, or as a container, space and spatiality are shaped and reshaped through the body in pain. What characterizes most patients' experiences of space is movement. This can be understood through Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological theory of the lived body (...) but needs in addition a cultural contextualization. Because of biomedical thinking, in Western settings chronic pain is liminal. It does not fit the biomedical categories of disease or space. This profoundly shapes patients' understanding of their subjectivity as homeless, and their experience of spatiality as estranged and exiled. (shrink)

The growing importance of researching online activities, such as cyber-deviance and cyber-crime, as well as the use of online tools (e.g. questionnaires, games, and other interactive tools) has created new ethical and legal challenges for researchers, which can be even more complicated when researching adolescents. In this article, we highlight the risks emerging from the current European legal and ethical landscape when researching potentially vulnerable groups, with a special focus on online research. It is not always clear how to differentiate (...) research ethics consent from consent for data processing activities: when can an adolescent independently consent to research, or when is parental consent needed? Additional problems emerge when parents do not consent to research activities, but their adolescent children do. A serious ethical challenge can arise when the parents do not communicate with researchers, but the adolescent wishes to participate, especially when weak parental oversight is coupled with research on sensitive topics. We offer some guidance on what to keep in mind when conducting online research with adolescents and highlight possible ways that these issues can be dealt with in pan-European projects. (shrink)

The right inferior frontal gyrus has most strongly, although not exclusively, been associated with response inhibition, not least based on covariations of behavioral performance measures and local gray matter characteristics. However, the white matter microstructure of the rIFG as well as its connectivity has been less in focus, especially when it comes to the consideration of potential subdivisions within this area. The present study reconstructed the structural connections of the three main subregions of the rIFG using diffusion tensor imaging, and (...) further assessed their associations with behavioral measures of inhibitory control. The results revealed a marked heterogeneity of the three subregions with respect to the pattern and extent of their connections, with the pars orbitalis showing the most widespread inter-regional connectivity, while the pars opercularis showed the lowest number of interconnected regions. When relating behavioral performance measures of a stop signal task to brain structure, the data indicated an association between the dorsal opercular connectivity and the go reaction time and the stopping accuracy. (shrink)

Increasing evidence indicates that the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic is associated with adverse psychological effects, including heightened levels of anxiety. This study examined whether COVID-19-related anxiety levels during the early stage of the pandemic predicted demanding working memory updating performance. Altogether, 201 healthy adults mostly from North America and the British Isles were recruited to this study via the crowdsourcing site www.prolific.co. The results showed that higher levels of COVID-19-related anxiety during the first weeks of the pandemic outbreak were associated (...) with poorer WM performance as measured by the n-back paradigm. Critically, the unique role of COVID-19-related anxiety on WM could not be explained by demographic factors, or other psychological factors such as state and trait anxiety or fluid intelligence. Moreover, across three assessment points spanning 5–6 weeks, COVID-19-related anxiety levels tended to decrease over time. This pattern of results may reflect an initial psychological “shock wave” of the pandemic, the cognitive effects of which may linger for some time, albeit the initial anxiety associated with the pandemic would change with habituation and increasing information. Our results contribute to the understanding of cognitive–affective reactions to a major disaster. (shrink)

Therapeutic alliance is a central concept in psychotherapeutic work. The relationship between the therapist and the patient plays an important role in the therapeutic process and outcome. In this article, we investigate how therapists work with disaffiliation resulting from enduring disagreement while maintaining an orientation to the psychotherapeutic project at hand. Data come from a total of 18 sessions of two dyads undergoing psychoanalytic psychotherapy and is analyzed with conversation analysis. We found that collaborative moves deployed amidst enduring disagreement can (...) assist the therapist in furthering the disagreement as part of the ongoing psychotherapeutic project. Relying on their collaborative format, therapists utilize collaborative moves to temporarily mend the disaffiliation without necessarily changing their position and re-affiliating with the patient. We show how the relation between the therapist and the patient gets transformed in the moment-by-moment work accomplished in the psychotherapeutic talk. (shrink)