Moral distress has been identified as an occupational hazard for clinicians caring for vulnerable populations. The aim of this systematic review was (i) to summarize the literature reporting on prevalence of, and factors related to, moral distress among nurses within acute mental health settings, and (ii) to examine the efficacy of interventions designed to address moral distress among nurses within this clinical setting. A comprehensive literature search was conducted in October 2022 utilizing Nursing & Allied Health, Embase, CINAHL, PsychInfo, and (...) PubMed databases to identify eligible studies published in English from January 2000 to October 2022. Ten studies met inclusion criteria. Four quantitative studies assessed moral distress among nurses in acute mental health settings and examined relationships between moral distress and other psychological and work-related variables. Six qualitative studies explored the phenomenon of moral distress as experienced by nurses working in acute mental health settings. The quantitative studies assessed moral distress using the Moral Distress Scale for Psychiatric Nurses (MDS-P) or the Work-Related Moral Stress Questionnaire. These studies identified relationships between moral distress and emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, cynicism, poorer job satisfaction, less sense of coherence, poorer moral climate, and less experience of moral support. Qualitative studies revealed factors associated with moral distress, including lack of action, poor conduct by colleagues, time pressures, professional, policy and legal implications, aggression, and patient safety. No interventions targeting moral distress among nurses in acute mental health settings were identified. Overall, this review identified that moral distress is prevalent among nurses working in acute mental health settings and is associated with poorer outcomes for nurses, patients, and organizations. Research is urgently needed to develop and test evidence-based interventions to address moral distress among mental health nurses and to evaluate individual and system-level intervention effects on nurses, clinical care, and patient outcomes. (shrink)

This study investigates professional tax practitioners' ethical judgments and behavioral intentions in cases involving client pressure to adopt aggressive reporting positions, an issue that has been identified as the most difficult ethical/moral problem facing public accounting practitioners. The multidimensional ethics scale (MES) was used to measure the extent to which a hypothetical behavior was consistent with five ethical philosophies (moral equity, contractualism, utilitarianism, relativism, and egoism). Responses from a sample of 67 tax professionals supported the existence of all dimensions of (...) the MES other than egoism. Regressions of ethical judgments and behavioral intentions on the MES dimensions indicate that ethical decision making is most heavily influenced by the moral equity dimension, followed by the contractualism dimension. In contrast, the utilitarianism and relativism dimensions were only related to ethical judgments and behavioral intentions in isolated instances. (shrink)

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This study of the history and contents of a hitherto unedited work on geometry by Vincenzo Viviani seeks to present a picture of the scientific environment in Italy in the second half of the 17th century, with particular emphasis on Tuscany and the impact the condemnation of Galileo had on ongoing scholarship. Information derived from unedited or less well-known material serves to illuminate a range of prominent and marginal figures who adopted different strategies for the dissemination of Galileo’s thought and (...) the application of its principles. A selection of texts, edited here for the first time, is presented in two appendices, while in a third decidedly unusual methods are used to elucidate the mathematical aspects. (shrink)

The creative process has the potential to increase wellbeing and foster human flourishing (Dolan and Metcalfe, 2012 ; Forgeard and Eichner, 2014 ; O’Brien and Murray, 2015 ; Conner et al., 2018 ; Kaufman, 2018 ), yet has received little attention in the humanistic management literature. In this paper, we present three experiments showing that idea originators experience greater relationship conflict with counterparts who have committed perceived “idea theft”, i.e., proposed identical or related ideas. We test a model that identifies (...) a mechanism—self-threat—that mediates the relationship between idea theft and relationship conflict and identifies an intervention to ameliorate that self-threat via self-affirmation. Study 1 demonstrates the idea originator’s attribution of malign attributions to, and negative moral emotions toward, the counterpart. Study 2 demonstrates that idea originators ostracize both those who propose identical ideas and those who propose merely related ideas. In Study 3, evidence for self-threat as the mechanism underlying the negative relational consequences is provided via both a direct test of mediation as well as via moderation by self-affirmation. Our research contributes to the nascent idea theft literature and suggests a way to reduce its negative consequences. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a critique of the strong adaptationist view inherent in the work of Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, as presentedat the Ruffin Lectures series in 2002. My critique proceeds in two stages. In the first stage, I advance arguments as to why I find the particular adaptation story that the authors advance for their experimental results unpersuasive even when I fully accept the value of their experimental results. In the second stage, I grant them their adaptation (...) story and critique the implications of such stories forbusiness ethics and for future research. In sum, I argue against recasting key problems in the social sciences to fit the use of toolsdeveloped in the so-called “hard” sciences. Instead, I urge that we deal with these problems on their own terms, i.e. through their basisin and dependence on deliberate social action. (shrink)

In juxtaposition with the myth and tragedy of Ovid’s Medea, this paper investigates the possibility within the Kantian conception of agency of understanding moral evil as acting against one’s better judgment. It defends the thesis that in Kant self-deception, i. e. the intentional untruthfulness to oneself, provides the fundamental structure for choosing against the moral law. I argue that, as Kant’s thought progresses, self-deception slowly proceeds to become the paradigmatic case of moral evil. This is discussed with regard to two (...) important topics in his later moral philosophy: the doctrine of radical evil and the crucial role of the duty of truthfulness in ethics. The inquiry into Kant’s theory of conscience unfolds both against this theoretical background and in light of its historical roots in the polemic against casuistry and probabilism. This contribution closes with a brief look at the tools Kant implements to counter this tendency to self-deception in moral judgment and particularly at the role casuistry plays within his conception of moral education. (shrink)

Mediante un análisis histórico y documental, se indaga en las posibles percepciones e influencias que en la vida de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz pudo haber tenido su exposición a los incipientes movimientos sociales y culturales de la época del virreinato en la Nueva España. A lo largo de su obra, la poeta novohispana se refiere a España y a la Nueva España. De la primera, recoge la tradición literaria y la transforma, dedica poemas a los representantes de (...) la monarquía y reconoce su propia herencia española; de la segunda, recoge la lengua nahua, el español mexicano y el eco de otras lenguas. (shrink)

A derivação da religião como fruto da moralidade, a descrição de deveres como comandos divinos, o conceito de comunidade ética, podem, à primeira vista, credenciar a ideia de que o princípio kantiano de autonomia moral não seria tão forte quanto pretende, de que não incluiria, em particular, a noção de soberania individual na aplicação da lei moral. uma análise mais detida, entretanto, da concepção kantiana de religião e da concepção, simples e direta, da natureza do dever, indica a força da (...) autonomia como princípio, não apenas da razão prática como da razão em geral. (shrink)

Rationality and reason are often used as synonyms, although they are very different concepts. In this article we argue that rationality is the concept of reason that has been stripped of its human elements. Ancient and medieval philosophers such as Aristotle and Aquinas stressed that the concept of reason is composed of sensitive, discursive, and moral elements. Post-Enlightenment thinkers instead, building on the works of René Descartes and Isaac Newton, took these out and claimed that rationality must be based on (...) an external logic devoid of value-concepts such as perfection, harmony, meaning and aim (Koyré in From the closed world to the infinite universe, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1957). The purpose of this essay is to highlight this shift in Western thought and its consequences for management theories. While explaining the ancient concept of reason in contrast with modern rationalism (Klein in: Williamson RB, Zuckerman E (eds) Jacob Klein—lectures and essays, St. John’s College Press, Annapolis, 1985), we aim at raising awareness of the differences between building a research programme (especially in business sciences like economics and management) on rationality or on reason. (shrink)

Current facts about soil erosion, groundwater “mining,” and impact of toxic substances suggest a resource crisis in our farming system. Yet traditional checks on the exploitation of farmland, capsulized in the “stewardship ethic,” proceed from too limited a viewpoint to adequately address the root of the exploitation and proffer an alternative. After briefly examining the stewardship ethic, I consider the developmentof a “partnership ethic” to guide the use of land for farming which builds its essential elements out of the reflections (...) of feminist thinkers on the relationship between humankind and nature. Instead of using “rights” language to express the ethic, I develop a theory of appropriate use analogous to the appropriate use of another person’s capabilities-i.e., that such moral use should respect and not destroy the other and that it should return something of value to the other in exchange for the use. Finally, those principles are examined for their practical implications for farmland use and national farm policy. (shrink)

A growing body of evidence from the sciences suggests that our moral beliefs have an evolutionary basis. To explain how human morality evolved, some philosophers have called for the study of morality to be naturalized, i.e., to explain it in terms of natural causes by looking at its historical and biological origins. The present literature has focused on the link between evolution and moral realism: if our moral beliefs enhance fitness, does this mean they track moral truths? In spite of (...) the growing empirical evidence, these discussions tend to remain high-level: the mere fact that morality has evolved is often deemed enough to decide questions in normative and meta-ethics. This volume starts from the assumption that the details about the evolution of morality do make a difference, and asks how. It presents original essays by authors from various disciplines, including philosophy, anthropology, developmental psychology, and primatology, who write in conversation with neuroscience, sociology, and cognitive psychology. (shrink)

Imaginative resistance refers to cases in which one’s otherwise flexible imaginative capacity is constrained by an unwillingness or inability to imaginatively engage with a given claim. In three studies, we explored which specific imaginative demands engender resistance when imagining morally deviant worlds and whether individual differences in emotion predict the degree of this resistance. In Study 1 (N = 176), participants resisted the notion that harmful actions could be morally acceptable in the world of a narrative regardless of the author’s (...) claims about these actions but did not resist imagining that a perpetrator of harm could believe their actions to be morally acceptable. In Study 2 (N = 167) we replicated the findings of Study 1 and showed that imaginative resistance is greatest among participants who experience more negative affect in response to imagining harm and are lower in either trait anxiety or trait psychopathy. In Study 3 (N = 210) we show that this is the case even when the harms assessed include both low-severity (i.e., emotional harm) and high-severity (i.e., killing) cases. Thus, people’s moral beliefs constrain their ability to imagine hypothetical moral alternatives, although this ability systematically varies on the basis of stable individual differences in emotion. (shrink)

This article delves into a potential mindset that may be responsible for the recent financial meltdown. Research relating to this mindset from different perspectives is reviewed. The findings from this literature review are used to create a conceptual framework for the empirical, ethical, and corporate social responsibility study of financial professionals. Data were collected from a survey of the professional membership of a large national association of financial professionals. This article reports the results of the analysis of data relative to (...) the relationships among the four constructs—financial professionals' perceived organizational value clusters, ethics, corporate social responsibility, and corporate performance. The findings indicate that organizational core values significantly affect corporate ethics, social responsibility, and financial performance. We propose that organizations in the financial industry can move toward being more ethical and socially responsible by adopting organic core values (e.g., democratic, open, trusting, enterprising, creative, stimulating) and moving away from mechanistic values (e.g., structured, regulated, procedural, authoritarian, closed, callous). We also found the adaptation of organic core values does not require the organization to suffer a loss in financial performance. (shrink)

"Here is a unique and penetrating postmodernist invitation to reread Pascal's Pensées. With a full control on two centuries of Pascalian hermeneutics, Sara Melzer leads her readers into a passionate quest far beyond the worn-out search for a paleontological reconstruction of the Pensées's hypothetical final form. She rightly and deeply understands Pascal's writing--écriture--as the complex story of the "Fall of Truth into language." Such a perspective gives to Pascal's fragments a rejuvenated life, a newness, a dramatic and powerful voice (...) for our own culture. In brief, a welcome breeze of fresh air in the Pascalian world!" --Edouard Morot-Sir, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill "By approaching Pascal's Pensées from the point of view of contemporary critical theory, Melzer sheds new light on this well-known work. Her argument is clear, lucid, and cogent. She has a firm grasp of the major issues at stake in debates among literary critics. I think this is an important work that will be of interest not only to Pascal specialists but also to people who work in the general area of literary theory.... One of the genuine strengths of the book is the author's ability to discern the theological implications of issues that preoccupy literary theorists. This is particularly important at a time when students of theology and religion are becoming more and more interested in literary theory. They will find this analysis of Pascal very suggestive." --Mark Taylor, Williams College. (shrink)

Why do some parents refuse to vaccinate their children? Why do some people keep guns at home, despite scientific evidence of risk to their family members? And why do people use antibiotics for illnesses they cannot possibly alleviate? When it comes to health, many people insist that science is wrong, that the evidence is incomplete, and that unidentified hazards lurk everywhere. In Denying to the Grave, Gorman and Gorman, a father-daughter team, explore the psychology of health science denial. Using several (...) examples of such denial as test cases, they propose six key principles that may lead individuals to reject "accepted" health-related wisdom: the charismatic leader; fear of complexity; confirmation bias and the internet; fear of corporate and government conspiracies; causality and filling the ignorance gap; and the nature of risk prediction. The authors argue that the health sciences are especially vulnerable to our innate resistance to integrate new concepts with pre-existing beliefs. This psychological difficulty of incorporating new information is on the cutting edge of neuroscience research, as scientists continue to identify brain responses to new information that reveal deep-seated, innate discomfort with changing our minds. Denying to the Grave explores risk theory and how people make decisions about what is best for them and their loved ones, in an effort to better understand how people think when faced with significant health decisions. This book points the way to a new and important understanding of how science should be conveyed to the public in order to save lives with existing knowledge and technology. (shrink)

There is an increased controversy surrounding Westerners' use of ayahuasca. One issue of importance is psychological resiliency of users and lack of screening by ayahuasca tourism groups in the Amazon. Given the powerful effects of ayahuasca coupled with lack of cultural support, Western users are at increased risk for psychological distress. Many Westerners who experience psychological distress following ayahuasca ceremonies report concurrently profound spiritual experiences. Because of this, it may be helpful to consider these episodes "spiritual emergencies," or crises resulting (...) from intense and transformative spiritual experiences. Although the author warns readers to avoid romantic comparisons of Western ayahuasca users to shamans, ethnographic data on indigenous shamanic initiates along with theory on liminality may be of some use to understand difficult experiences that accompany ayahuasca use. Given that psychotherapy is culturally sanctioned, therapists trained in treating spiritual crises can help Western ayahuasca users make meaning of their distress. Three case studies are offered as examples of individuals working through various sorts of crises following ayahuasca ceremonies. (shrink)

We hypothesize that juvenile baboons are less efficient foragers than adult baboons owing to their small size, lower level of knowledge and skill, and/or lesser ability to maintain access to resources. We predict that as resources are more difficult to extract, juvenile baboons will demonstrate lower efficiency than adults will because of their lower levels of experience. In addition, we hypothesize that juvenile baboons will be more likely to allocate foraging time to easier-to-extract resources owing to their greater efficiency in (...) acquiring those resources.We use feeding efficiency and time allocation data collected on a wild, free-ranging, non-provisioned population of chacma baboons (Papio hamadryas ursinus) in the Moremi Wildlife Reserve, Okavango Delta, Botswana to test these hypotheses. The major findings of this study are:1. Juvenile baboons are significantly less efficient foragers than adult baboons primarily for difficult-to-extract resources.We propose that this age-dependent variation in efficiency is due to differences in memory and other cognitive functions related to locating food resources, as is indicated by the greater amount of time juvenile baboons spend searching for food. There is no evidence that smaller body size or competitive disruption influences the differences in return rates found between adult and juvenile baboons in this study.2. An individual baboon’s feeding efficiency for a given resource can be used to predict the duration of its foraging bouts for that resource.These results contribute both to our understanding of the ontogeny of behavioral development in nonhuman primates, especially regarding foraging ability, and to current debate within the field of human behavioral ecology regarding the evolution of the juvenile period in primates and humans. (shrink)

Categorical loudness scaling (CLS) measures provide useful information about an individual’s loudness perception across the dynamic range of hearing. A probability model of CLS categories has previously been described as a multi-category psychometric function (MCPF). In the study, a representative “catalog” of potential listener MCPFs was used in conjunction with maximum-likelihood estimation to derive CLS functions for participants with normal hearing and with hearing loss. The approach of estimating MCPFs for each listener has the potential to improve the accuracy of (...) the CLS measurements, particularly when a relatively low number of data points are available. The present study extends the MCPF approach by using Bayesian inference to select stimulus parameters that are predicted to yield maximum expected information (MEI) during data collection. The accuracy and reliability of the MCPF-MEI approach were compared to the standardized CLS measurement procedure (ISO16832:2006). A non-adaptive, fixed-level, paradigm served as a “gold-standard” for this comparison. The test time required to obtain measurements in the standard procedure is a major barrier to its clinical uptake. Test time was reduced from approximately 15 minutes to approximately 3 minutes with the MEI-adaptive procedure. Results indicated that the test-retest reliability and accuracy of the MCPF-MEI adaptive procedures were similar to the standardized CLS procedure. Computer simulations suggest that the reliability and accuracy of the MEI procedure were limited by intrinsic uncertainty of the listeners represented in the MCPF catalog. In other words, the MCPF provided insufficient predictive power to significantly improve adaptive-tracking efficiency under practical conditions. Concurrent optimization of both the MCPF catalog and the MEI-adaptive procedure have the potential to produce better results. Regardless of the adaptive-tracking method used in the CLS procedure, the MCPF catalog remains clinically useful for enabling maximum-likelihood determination of loudness categories. (shrink)

Researchers have argued that bilingual speakers experience less emotion in their second language. However, some studies have failed to find differences in emotionality between first and second lang...

Despite the enormous progress made in the advancement of health technologies over the last century, infectious diseases continue to cause significant morbidity and mortality in developing countries. Neglected diseases are a subset of infectious diseases that lack treatments that are effective, simple to use, or affordable. Neglected diseases primarily affect populations in poor countries that do not constitute a lucrative market sector, thus failing to provide incentives for the pharmaceutical industry to conduct R&D for these diseases. Of the treatments that (...) do exist for neglected diseases, most are completely out-dated, with poor side-effect profiles, cumbersome logistics of administration, and inadequate efficacy. Historically, the impetus for a majority of neglected disease research was driven by early 20th-century colonialism, and in the post-colonial era, these diseases have been virtually ignored. Of the 1556 New Chemical Entities brought to market during the 30-year period from 1975 to 2004, only 20 — less than 0.02% — were for neglected diseases. (shrink)

The COVID‐19 pandemic exposes underlying inequalities in our socio‐economic and health systems, such as gender‐based violence (GBV). In emergencies, particularly ones that involve quarantine, GBV often increases. Policymakers must utilize community expertise, technology and existing global guidelines to disrupt these trends in the early stages of the COVID‐19 epidemic. Gender norms and roles relegating women to the realm of care work puts them on the frontlines in an epidemic, while often excluding them from developing the response. It is critical to (...) value women’s roles in society and include their voices in the decision‐making process to avoid unintended consequences and ensure a comprehensive response that caters to the needs of the most vulnerable groups. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas argues that justice is meaningful only to the extent that other persons are encountered in their individuality, as my neighbors, and not merely abstract citizens of a political community. That is, the political demand for justice arises from my ethical relationship with the other whose face I cannot look past. But despite his revolutionary ideas about the origins of justice, Levinas ultimately appeals to a very traditional view of justice in which persons are considered equal and comparable. and (...) responsibilities and rights are distributed evenly among them. In response to Levinas, I argue that insofar as justice is constructed by and for the ethicalrelationship, it must also be deconstructed by that relationship. If one takes seriously Levinas’s claim that asymmetrical ethical responsibility is the origin of justice, then one must also reject Levinas’s suggestion that justice involves viewing persons and responsibilities as comparable and symmetrical. (shrink)

In the 1930s, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) graded the mortgage security of urban US neighborhoods. In doing so, the HOLC engaged in the practice, imbued with racism and xenophobia, of “redlining” neighborhoods deemed “hazardous” for lenders. Redlining has caused persistent social, political and economic problems for communities of color. Linkages between redlining and contemporary food access remain unexamined, even though food access is essential to well-being. To investigate this, we used a census tract-level measure of low-income and low (...) grocery store food access from the US Department of Agriculture Food Access Research Atlas, redlining data from Mapping Inequality Project, and demographic data from the American Community Survey. We employed generalized estimating equations with robust covariance estimates to analyze data pertaining to 10,459 census tracts in 202 US cities. Tracts that the HOLC graded as “C” (“decline in desirability”) and “D” (“hazardous”) had reduced contemporary food access compared to those graded “A” (“best”). Increases in contemporary census tract proportions of Black, Hispanic, or other racial/ethnic minority residents, as well as disabled residents, were associated with reduced food access. Increases in contemporary proportions of residents age 75 years and older or those without a car were associated with better food access. Tracts that underwent housing redevelopment since being graded had better food access, while those undergoing gentrification had reduced food access. Results suggest that issues of redlining, housing discrimination, racism, ableism, displacement, and food inaccessibility are deeply intertwined. (shrink)

Recent research in ethics education shows a potentially problematic variation in content, curricular materials, and instruction. While ethics instruction is now widespread, studies have identified significant variation in both the goals and methods of ethics education, leaving researchers to conclude that many approaches may be inappropriately paired with goals that are unachievable. This paper speaks to these concerns by demonstrating the importance of aligning classroom-based assessments to clear ethical learning objectives in order to help students and instructors track their progress (...) toward meeting those objectives. Two studies at two different universities demonstrate the usefulness of classroom-based, formative assessments for improving the quality of students’ case responses in computational modeling and research ethics. (shrink)

Receiving a diagnosis of cancer can be devastating. Cancer continues to be one of the most feared diagnoses, and experiencing pain is a major fear for people diagnosed with cancer. Cancer pain is complex in aetiology and can be acute or chronic and can be caused by various compression, ischaemic, neuropathic or inflammatory processes. Many people with cancer will experience excruciating pain, which is often underreported and undertreated. The reasons for this are complex and include various factors including fears and (...) beliefs held by patients. Cognitive factors are important modulators of pain and the appraisals, meanings and beliefs that people have in relation to illness, cancer, and pain, have implications in regard to help-seeking behaviours and the coping strategies people adopt. Cancer pain can impact a range of psycho-social factors across its course. Cancer pain relates to higher rates of psychological distress, anxiety and low mood, and the perception of pain intensity is, in turn, influenced by psychological factors. Cancer pain can negatively affect psychological health, and psycho-social factors can affect the pain experience. It has been suggested that people with a life-limiting illness experience ‘total pain’, and this can encompass psychological, social, practical, spiritual domains. Research demonstrates that cancer is predominantly an illness affecting older people, yet there is a higher risk of under-treated pain in this age group and there is a paucity of research into the subjective experiences of older people managing their cancer pain. Many older people are required to self-manage cancer pain at home as outpatients, due to drivers to keep people out of inpatient care, such as the high healthcare costs of inpatient treatment, and patients wanting to manage their illness, and die, at home. Our own research into this area found that the self-management of cancer pain involves a sequential and temporal process, which centres on perceptions of control. We describe how the older people in our study experienced a perceived loss of control, followed by a sense of gaining control over pain through various experience of certain internal and external factors. The assessment and treatment of physical pain should be done in combination with assessment and treatment of psycho-social and spiritual pain, and interventions for cancer pain need to focus on increasing positive affect and reducing helplessness. No person should suffer with poorly controlled pain and we argue for the need for further research in this area to ensure adequate treatment for all.Clinical Implications: Assessment and treatment of physical pain in people with cancer needs to be conducted in combination with assessment and treatment of psycho-social issues and spiritual pain. Psychological and behavioural approaches have strong evidence supporting their efficacy for reducing cancer pain. Interventions should target helplessness and focus on increasing positive affect through positive psychological states including fighting spirit and resilience. Person-centred interventions that focus on helping people with the search for meaning may help those with cancer pain derive positive benefits. (shrink)

The effective provision of psychotherapy services to individuals with intellectual disability requires consideration of ethical issues related to clinical competence, access to services, obligations to multiple parties, guardianship, and appropriate assessment practices. This article provides an overview of major ethical considerations with guidance for clarifying and resolving common ethical concerns. Psychologists are encouraged to expand access to psychotherapy services for this population while maintaining awareness of potential modifications, training needs, and boundaries of professional competence. The authors provide recommendations and resources (...) for effective and ethical treatment of psychotherapy clients with intellectual disabilities. (shrink)

In this article we present a notion of “logical perfection”. We first describe through examples a notion oflogical perfectionextracted from the contemporary logical concept of categoricity. Categoricity (in power) has become in the past half century a main driver of ideas in model theory, both mathematically (stability theory may be regarded as a way of approximating categoricity) and philosophically. In the past two decades, categoricity notions have started to overlap with more classical notions of robustness and smoothness. These have been (...) crucial in various parts of mathematics since the nineteenth century. We postulate and present the category of logical perfection. We draw on various notions of perfection from mathematics of the 19th and 20th centuries and then trace the relation to the concept of categoricity in power as a logical notion of what a “mathematically perfect” structure is. (shrink)

Strategic games require reasoning about other people’s and one’s own beliefs or intentions. Although they have clear commonalities with psychological tests of theory of mind, they are not clearly related to theory of mind tests for children between 9 and 10 years of age “Flobbe et al. J Logic Language Inform 17(4):417–442 (2008)”. We studied children’s (5–12 years of age) individual differences in how they played a strategic game by analyzing the strategies that they applied in a zero, first, and (...) second-order reasoning task. For the zero-order task, we found two subgroups with different accuracy levels. For the first-order task, subgroups of children applied different suboptimal strategies or an optimal strategy. For the second-order task only suboptimal strategies were present. Strategy use for all tasks was related to age. The 5- and 6-year old children were additionally tested on theory of mind understanding and executive functioning. Strategy-use in these children was related to working memory, but not to theory of mind after correction for age, verbal ability and general IQ. (shrink)

Our objective is to test an optimality model of human fertility that specifies the behavioral requirements for fitness maximization in order (a) to determine whether current behavior does maximize fitness and, if not, (b) to use the specific nature of the behavioral deviations from fitness maximization towards the development of models of evolved proximate mechanisms that may have maximized fitness in the past but lead to deviations under present conditions. To test the model we use data from a representative sample (...) of 7,107 men living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, between 1990 and 1993. The model we test proposes that low fertility in modern settings maximizes number of grandchildren as a result of a trade-off between parental fertility and next generation fertility. Results do not show the optimization, although the data do reveal a trade-off between parental fertility and offspring education and income.We propose that two characteristics of modern economies have led to a period of sustained fertility reduction and to a corresponding lack of association between income and fertility. The first is the direct link between costs of investment and wage rates due to the forces of supply and demand for labor in competitive economies. The second is the increasing emphasis on cumulative knowledge, skills, and technologies in the production of resources. Together they produce historically novel conditions. These two features of modern economies may interact with evolved psychological and physiological mechanisms governing fertility and parental investment to produce behavior that maximizes the economic productivity of lineages at the expense of fitness. If cognitive processes evolved to track diminishing returns to parental investment and if physiological processes evolved to regulate fertility in response to nutritional state and patterns of breast feeding, we might expect non-adaptive responses when returns from parental investment do not diminish until extremely high levels are reached. With high economic payoffs from parental investment, people have begun to exercise cognitive regulation of fertility through contraception and family planning practices. Those cognitive processes maynot have evolved to handle fitness trade-offs between fertility and parental investment. (shrink)

Strategic games require reasoning about other people’s and one’s own beliefs or intentions. Although they have clear commonalities with psychological tests of theory of mind, they are not clearly related to theory of mind tests for children between 9 and 10 years of age “Flobbe et al. J Logic Language Inform 17(4):417–442 (2008)”. We studied children’s (5–12 years of age) individual differences in how they played a strategic game by analyzing the strategies that they applied in a zero, first, and (...) second-order reasoning task. For the zero-order task, we found two subgroups with different accuracy levels. For the first-order task, subgroups of children applied different suboptimal strategies or an optimal strategy. For the second-order task only suboptimal strategies were present. Strategy use for all tasks was related to age. The 5- and 6-year old children were additionally tested on theory of mind understanding and executive functioning. Strategy-use in these children was related to working memory, but not to theory of mind after correction for age, verbal ability and general IQ. (shrink)

Experiential evidence shows that pain is associated with common meanings. These include a meaning of threat or danger, which is experienced as immediately distressing or unpleasant; cognitive meanings, which are focused on the long-term consequences of having chronic pain; and existential meanings such as hopelessness, which are more about the person with chronic pain than the pain itself. This interdisciplinary book - the second in the three-volume Meanings of Pain series edited by Dr Simon van Rysewyk - aims to better (...) understand pain by describing experiences of pain and the meanings these experiences hold for the people living through them. The lived experiences of pain described here involve various types of chronic pain, including spinal pain, labour pain, rheumatic pain, diabetic peripheral neuropathic pain, fibromyalgia, complex regional pain syndrome, endometriosis-associated pain, and cancer-related pain. Two chapters provide narrative descriptions of pain, recounted and interpreted by people with pain. Language is important to understanding the meaning of pain since it is the primary tool human beings use to manipulate meaning. As discussed in the book, linguistic meaning may hold clues to understanding some pain-related experiences, including the stigmatisation of people with pain, the dynamics of patient-clinician communication, and other issues, such as relationships between pain, public policy and the law, and attempts to develop a taxonomy of pain that is meaningful for patients. Clinical implications are described in each chapter. This book is intended for people with pain, their family members or caregivers, clinicians, researchers, advocates, and policy makers. (shrink)