The novel coronavirus disease has become a global pandemic, causing substantial anxiety. One potential factor in the spread of anxiety in response to a pandemic threat is emotion contagion, the finding that emotional experiences can be socially spread through conscious and unconscious pathways. Some individuals are more susceptible to social contagion effects and may be more likely to experience anxiety and other mental health symptoms in response to a pandemic threat. Therefore, we studied the relationship between emotion contagion and mental (...) health symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic. We administered the Emotion Contagion Scale along with a measure of anxiety in response to COVID-19 and secondary outcome measures of depression, anxiety, stress, and obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms. These measures were completed by a large student sample in the United States. Data were collected in the months of April and May of 2020 when the fear of COVID-19 was widespread. Results revealed that greater susceptibility to emotion contagion was associated with greater concern about the spread of COVID-19, more depression, anxiety, stress, and OCD symptoms. Consumption of media about COVID-19 also predicted anxiety about COVID-19, though results were not moderated by emotion contagion. However, emotion contagion did moderate the relationship between COVID-19-related media consumption and elevated OCD symptoms. Although limited by a cross-sectional design that precludes causal inferences, the present results highlight the need for study of how illness fears may be transmitted socially during a pandemic. (shrink)

Based on a multiyear study, this article analyzes the reproduction of adult gender segregation in two youth-sports organizations in which most men volunteers become coaches and most women volunteers become “team moms.” We use interviews and participant observation to explore how these gender divisions are created. While most participants say the divisions result from individual choices, our interviews show how gendered language, essentialist beliefs, and analogies with gendered divisions of labor in families and work-places naturalize this division of labor. Observation (...) reveals how patterned, informal interactions reproduce it as well. We show how nonreflexive informal interactions at the nexus of three gender regimes—youth sports, families, and workplaces—produce a gender formation with two interrelated characteristics: an ascendant professional class gender ideology that we call “soft essentialism” and a “gender category sorting system” that channels most men into coaching and most women into being “team moms.”. (shrink)

Recent research on children's worlds has revealed how gender varies in salience across social contexts. Building on this observation, the author examines a highly salient gendered moment of group life among four- and five-year-old children at a youth soccer opening ceremony, where gender boundaries were activated and enforced in ways that constructed an apparently “natural” categorical difference between the girls and the boys. The author employs a multilevel analytical framework to explore how children “do gender” at the level of interaction (...) or performance, how the structured gender regime constrains and enables the actions of children and parents, and how children's gendered immersion in popular culture provides symbolic resources with which children and parents actively create categorical differences. The article ends with a discussion of how gendered interactions, structure, and cultural meanings are intertwined, in both mutually reinforcing and contradictory ways. (shrink)

Arnold Schwarzenegger's celebrity status allowed him to project a symbolic masculine persona that was effective in gaining political power as California governor. The well-known violent tough-guy persona that Schwarzenegger developed in the mid-1980s contributed to a post—Vietnam era cultural remasculinization of the American man. But this narrow hyper-masculinity was often caricatured in popular culture and delegitimized. In the 1990s and 2000s, Schwarzenegger forged a credible masculine imagery by introducing characters who were humorously self-mocking and focused on care and protection of (...) children. Schwarzenegger's resultant hybrid masculinity, the “Kindergarten Commando,” represents an ascendant hegemonic masculinity always foregrounding muscle, toughness, and the threat of violence and following with situationally appropriate symbolic displays of compassion. The equation of toughness plus compassion composing the Kindergarten Commando is asymmetrical, with toughness eclipsing compassion; this has implications for the kinds of policies that U.S. elected leaders advocate. Republicans utilize this masculine imagery in national politics to gain voters' trust in times of fear and insecurity and continue to employ a strategy that projects a devalued feminized stigma onto more liberal candidates. (shrink)

What does it mean for men to join with women in preventing sexual assault and domestic violence? This book, based on life history interviews with men and women anti-violence activists, illuminates both the promise of men's violence prevention work, as well as the strains and tensions that inhere, both for men as feminist allies, and for the women they work with.

This article draws upon data collected as part of a 25-year longitudinal analysis of televised coverage of women’s sports to provide a window into how sexism operates during a postfeminist sociohistorical moment. As the gender order has shifted to incorporate girls’ and women’s movement into the masculine realm of sports, coverage of women’s sports has shifted away from overtly denigrating coverage in 1989 to ostensibly respectful but lackluster coverage in 2014. To theorize this shift, we introduce the concept of “gender-bland (...) sexism,” a contemporary gender framework that superficially extends the principles of merit to women in sports. Televised news and highlight shows frame women in uninspired ways, making women’s athletic accomplishments appear lackluster compared to those of men’s. Because this “bland” language normalizes a hierarchy between men’s and women’s sports while simultaneously avoiding charges of overt sexism, this article contributes to gender theory by illuminating how women can be marginalized in male-dominated, male-controlled settings via individualized merit-based assessments of talent. (shrink)

Some feminists have seen sex role theory as limited, even dangerous; others see it as useful mid-range theory. This article sheds light on this debate through an examination of the discourse of the men's liberation movement of the 1970s. Men's liberation leaders grappled with the paradox of simultaneously acknowledging men's institutional privileges and the costs of masculinity to men. The language of sex roles was the currency through which they negotiated this paradox. By the late 1970s, men's liberation had disappeared. (...) The conservative and moderate wings of men's liberation became an anti-feminist men's rights movement, facilitated by the language of sex roles. The progressive wing of men's liberation abandoned sex role language and formed a profeminist movement premised on a language of gender relations and power. The article ends with a discussion of the implications of this case for debates about sex role theory, and urges the study of contemporary organizations whose discourse is based on the language of sex roles. (shrink)

This research compares and analyzes the verbal commentary of televised coverage of two women's and men's athletic events: the “final four” of the women's and men's 1989 National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball tournaments and the women's and men's singles, women's and men's doubles, and the mixed-doubles matches of the 1989 U.S. Open tennis tournament. Although we found less overtly sexist commentary than has been observed in past research, we did find two categories of difference: gender marking and a “hierarchy of (...) naming” by gender and, to a certain extent, by race. These differences are described and analyzed in light of feminist analyses of gendered language. It is concluded that televised sports commentary contributes to the construction of gender and racial hierarchies by marking women's sports and women athletes as “other,” by infantilizing women athletes, and by framing the accomplishments of women athletes ambivalently. (shrink)

Mindfulness meditation describes a set of different mental techniques to train attention and awareness. Trait mindfulness and extended mindfulness interventions can benefit self-control. The present study investigated the short-term consequences of mindfulness meditation under conditions of limited self-control resources. Specifically, we hypothesized that a brief period of mindfulness meditation would counteract the deleterious effect that the exertion of self-control has on subsequent self-control performance. Participants who had been depleted of self-control resources by an emotion suppression task showed decrements in self-control (...) performance as compared to participants who had not suppressed emotions. However, participants who had meditated after emotion suppression performed equally well on the subsequent self-control task as participants who had not exerted self-control previously. This finding suggests that a brief period of mindfulness meditation may serve as a quick and efficient strategy to foster self-control under conditions of low resources. (shrink)

The first part of this paper argues that if Craver’s ([2007a], [2007b]) popular mutual manipulability account (MM) of mechanistic constitution is embedded within Woodward’s ([2003]) interventionist theory of causation--for which it is explicitly designed--it either undermines the mechanistic research paradigm by entailing that there do not exist relationships of constitutive relevance or it gives rise to the unwanted consequence that constitution is a form of causation. The second part shows how Woodward’s theory can be adapted in such a way that (...) (MM) neither undermines the mechanistic paradigm nor reduces constitution to causation. However, it turns out that this modified theoretical embedding of (MM) makes it impossible to produce empirical evidence for constitutive relations. The paper ends by suggesting an additional criterion, the fat-handedness criterion, which, when combined with (MM), generates indirect empirical evidence for constitutive relevance. (shrink)

Inspired by the work of Wilfrid Sellars, Michael Williams launches an all-out attack on what he calls "phenomenalism," the idea that our knowledge of the world rests on a perceptual or experiential foundation.

Goal-setting theory states that challenging, specific, and concrete goals (i.e., subordinate goals) are powerful motivators and boost performance in goal pursuit more than vague or abstract goals (i.e., superordinate goals). Goal-setting theory predominantly focuses on single, short-term goals and less on broad, long-term challenges. This review article extends goal-setting theory and argues that superordinate goals also fulfill a crucial role in motivating behavior, particularly when addressing broad, long-term challenges. The purpose of this article is to show theoretically that people pursue (...) long-term goals more successfully when they focus on subordinate and superordinate goals simultaneously than when they focus on either subordinate or superordinate goals alone. (shrink)

"Cover " -- "Title Page " -- "Copyright " -- "Dedication" -- "Contents" -- "Introduction: Moral Globalization and Its Discontents" -- "1. Jackson Heights, New York: Diversity Plaza" -- "2. Los Angeles: The Moral Operating Systems of Global Cities" -- "3. Rio de Janeiro: Order, Corruption, and Public Trust" -- "4. Bosnia: War and Reconciliation" -- "5. Myanmar: The Politics of Moral Narrative" -- "6. Fukushima: Resilience and the Unimaginable" -- "7. South Africa: After the Rainbow" -- "Conclusion: Human Rights, (...) Global Ethics, and the Ordinary Virtues" -- "Notes" -- "Acknowledgments. (shrink)

Tye's book develops a persuasive and, in many respects, original argument for the view that the qualitative side of our mental life is representational in..

Even though the measurement of fear of crime in criminological research commenced a few decades ago, specific populations, such as social activists, remain undocumented. This article is an attempt to address this gap. A study was conducted among 153 social activists involved in exposing corruption and irregularities that take place in the government system in India. This article explores the gap between the fear of crime and actual victimization among the specific social activists in India. The results indicate activists expressed (...) moderate fear of any one form of victimization including verbal and emotional, physical, and sexual victimization. It was also found that one-third of them have reported facing some form of abuse. The research implications are discussed. (shrink)

This book fills a gap in studies of meaning by providing detailed case studies of attested corpus data on the meanings of words and phrases.

The method of reflective equilibrium (MRE) is a method of justification popularized by John Rawls and further developed by Norman Daniels, Michael DePaul, Folke Tersman, and Catherine Z. Elgin, among others. The basic idea is that epistemic agents have justified beliefs if they have succeeded in forming their beliefs into a harmonious system of beliefs which they reflectively judge to be the most plausible. Despite the common reference to MRE as a method, its mechanisms or rules are typically expressed (...) in a metaphorical or simplified manner and are therefore criticized as too vague. Recent efforts to counter this criticism have been directed towards the attempt to provide formal explications of MRE. This paper aims to supplement these efforts by providing an informal working definition of MRE. This approach challenges the view that MRE can adequately be characterized only in the negative as a set of anti-essentialisms. I argue that epistemic agents follow MRE iff they follow four interconnected rules, which are concerned with a minimalistic form of foundationalism, a minimalistic form of fallibilism, a moderate form of holism, and a minimalistic form of rationality. In the critical spirit of MRE, the corresponding working definition is, of course, provisional and revisable. In general, the aim is to contribute to a reflective equilibrium (RE) concerning MRE. If it is successful, this working definition provides a better grasp of the most basic elements of the method and thereby enhances our understanding of it. (shrink)

The definitive work on the philosophical nature and impact of the theories of Charles Darwin, written by a well-known authority on the history and philosophy of Darwinism. Broadly explores the theories of Charles Darwin and Darwin studies Incorporates much information about modern Biology Offers a comprehensive discussion of Darwinism and Christianity – including Creationism – by one of the leading authorities in the field Written in clear, concise, user-friendly language supplemented with quality illustrations Examines the status of evolutionary theory as (...) a genuine theory and its implications for philosophy, epistemology and ethics Provides a strong understanding of the philosophical nature and impact of Darwin's thought Holds wide appeal for general audiences outside the world of academic philosophy Strongly supports Darwinism and fully explores modern naturalistic explanations of religion. (shrink)

Michael Quante focuses on what Hegel has to say about such central concepts as action, person and will, and then brings these views to bear on contemporary debates in analytic philosophy. This book enables professional analytic philosophers and their students to understand the significance of Hegel's philosophy to contemporary theory of action. As such, it will contribute to the ever-increasing erosion of the barrier between the continental and analytic approaches to philosophy.

When contrasted with "Continental" philosophy, analytical philosophy is often called "Anglo-American." Dummett argues that "Anglo-Austrian" would be a more accurate label. By re-examining the similar origins of the two traditions, we can come to understand why they later diverged so widely, and thus take the first step toward reconciliation.

A collection of all but two of the author's philosophical essays and lectures originally published or presented before August 1976.

Morals from Motives develops a virtue ethics inspired more by Hume and Hutcheson's moral sentimentalism than by recently-influential Aristotelianism. It argues that a reconfigured and expanded "morality of caring" can offer a general account of right and wrong action as well as social justice. Expanding the frontiers of ethics, it goes on to show how a motive-based "pure" virtue theory can also help us to understand the nature of human well-being and practical reason.

From the concrete experience of war, Michael S. Yandell constructs a phenomenology of “negative revelation” in which false or distorted claims of goodness and justice disintegrate and become meaningless, adding depth to the term moral injury.

I explore an agent-based model of the development and dissemination of scientific theory that makes very little use of any pre-defined “social structure” (such as partnerships or collaborations). In these models, under a broad range of values of the parameters, widespread (but not universal) “agreement” about scientific theory emerges. Moreover, the residual disagreement turns out to be important to developing new theories in the face of new evidence.

Such a conception, says Dummett, will form "a base camp for an assault on the metaphysical peaks: I have no greater ambition in this book than to set up a base ...

According to a historically popular view, emotions are normative experiences that ground moral knowledge much as perceptual experiences ground empirical knowledge. Given the analogy it draws between emotion and perception, sentimental perceptualism constitutes a promising, naturalist-friendly alternative to classical rationalist accounts of moral knowledge. In this paper, we consider an important but underappreciated objection to the view, namely that in contrast with perception, emotions depend for their occurrence on prior representational states, with the result that emotions cannot give perceptual-like access (...) to normative properties. We argue that underlying this objection are several specific problems, rooted in the different types of mental states to which emotions may respond, that the sentimental perceptualist must tackle for her view to be successful. We argue, moreover, that the problems can be answered by filling out the theory with several independently motivated yet highly controversial commitments, which we carefully catalogue. The plausibility of sentimental perceptualism, as a result, hinges on further claims sentimental perceptualists should not ignore. (shrink)

Mankind's place in nature -- Evolution after Darwin -- The naturalization of value systems in the human sciences.

We investigate the family of concepts that an agent comes to know through a set of defining features, and examine the role played by these features in the process of categorization. In a qualitative framework, categorial membership is evaluated through an order relation among the objects at hand, which translates the fact that an object may fall more than another under a given concept. For concepts defined by their features, this global membership order depends on the degree with which each (...) feature applies to the objects of the universe. The passage from these individual membership degrees to a global membership order poses a problem analogous to vote aggregation in social choice theory. This similarity leads to an original solution that is particularly well-adapted to the framework of cognitive psychology. The resulting membership order extends to compound concepts, and provides a good description of the guppy paradox and the conjunction effect. (shrink)