Praise is a common feature of interpersonal interaction. It is used to encourage, socialize, ingratiate, seduce, reward, and influence other people. These assorted usages reflect a widespread belief in the efficacy of praise for altering the behaviour and affective state of the recipient. Despite this assumed power of praise, and despite its salience and frequency in human social interaction, research interest in praise has been sporadic and intermittent, and not united within an all-embracing theoretical model.In this article we will present (...) an analysis of the effects of praise. We will begin by considering how to define praise. Next, we will examine the view of praise as social reinforcement, a conception which roots praise firmly within an empiricist framework; this appears to have been the predominant theoretical view guiding previous research on praise. We will conclude, however, that this view is conceptually inadequate to account for the empirical evidence. Because of that conclusion, our next step will be to provide a novel examination of the likely processes and consequences involved in praise. The remainder of the article will then be devoted to examining, where it is available, empirical evidence relevant to our analysis. (shrink)

Severe staffing shortages have emerged as a prominent threat to maintaining usual standards of care during the COVID-2019 pandemic. In dire settings of crisis capacity, healthcare systems assume the ethical duty to maximise aggregate population-level benefit of existing resources. To this end, existing plans for rationing mechanical ventilators and intensive care unit beds in crisis capacity focus on selecting individual patients who are most likely to survive and prioritising these patients to receive scarce resources. However, staffing capacity is conceptually different (...) from availability of these types of discrete resources, and the existing strategy of identifying and prioritising patients with the best prognosis cannot be readily adapted to fit this real-world scenario. We propose that two alternative approaches to staffing resource allocation offer a better conceptual fit: prioritise the worst off: restrict access to acute care services and hospital admission for patients at relatively low clinical risk and prioritise staff interventions with high near-term value: universally restrict selected interventions and treatments that require substantial staff time and/or energy but offer minimal near-term patient benefit. These strategies—while potentially resulting in care that deviates from usual standards–support the goal of maximising the aggregate benefit of scarce resources in crisis capacity settings triggered by staffing shortages. This ethical framework offers a foundation to support institutional leaders in developing operationalisable crisis capacity policies that promote fairness and support healthcare workers. (shrink)

In the mid-twentieth century American architectural journals, including Architectural Forum, Architectural Record, and Progressive Architecture, routinely ran features on the state of contemporary church architecture in the United States. Rapid suburban expansion and the revival of religious life in the post-Depression, postwar era generated tremendous amounts of construction, with a great deal of work available for architects. This article examines the concerns and hopes of modernist editors in the 1940s–1960s, as they sought to stabilize a “direction” for church architecture. Specifically, (...) it examines the role of the architectural press as the self-established gatekeepers for acceptable church design, and their relationship with theologians, liturgists, and building commissions within the Catholic Church. Questions of authority and expertise lay behind the stark assertions commonplace in these discussions. Editors, generally not themselves Catholic, used their professional positions to weigh in on hot debates within the Catholic Church over the purpose of a church building, the relationship of the Church to modernity, and the appropriateness of new materials and engineering techniques. (shrink)

This essay argues that Catholic (magisterial) social teaching's division of ethics into public and private creates a structural lacuna which makes it almost impossible to envision a truly just situation for migrant domestic careworkers (MDCs) within the current horizon of Catholic social thought. Drawing on a variety of sociological studies, I conclude that it is easy for MDCs to “disappear” between two countries, two families, and, finally, two sets of ethical norms. If the magisterium genuinely wishes Catholic ethicists to address (...) the plight of these migrant women, normative Catholic social teaching must pay more attention to household sociological realities and more fully absorb the feminist critique of the sharp line between the public and the private, between care and paid work. (shrink)

Most writing on informed consent in Africa highlights different cultural and social attributes that influence informed consent practices, especially in research settings. This review presents a composite picture of informed consent in Nigeria using empirical studies and legal and regulatory prescriptions, as well as clinical experience. It shows that Nigeria, like most other nations in Africa, is a mixture of sociocultural entities, and, notwithstanding the multitude of factors affecting it, informed consent is evolving along a purely Western model. Empirical studies (...) show that 70–95% of Nigerian patients report giving consent for their surgical treatments. Regulatory prescriptions and adjudicated cases in Nigeria follow the Western model of informed consent. However, adversarial legal proceedings, for a multiplicity of reasons, do not play significant roles in enforcing good medical practice in Nigeria. Gender prejudices are evident, but not a norm. Individual autonomy is recognized even when decisions are made within the family. Consent practices are influenced by the level of education, extended family system, urbanization, religious practices, and health care financing options available. All limitations notwithstanding, consent discussions improved with increasing level of education of the patients, suggesting that improved physician's knowledge and increasing awareness and education of patients can override other influences. Nigerian medical schools should restructure their teaching of medical ethics to improve the knowledge and practices of physicians. More research is needed on the preferences of the Nigerian people regarding informed consent so as to adequately train physicians and positively influence physicians' behaviors. (shrink)

The reality of resource limitation during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 pandemic has deeply challenged established approaches to healthcare system emergency response. Early preparation du...

Online participation in research is used increasingly to recruit geographically dispersed populations. Obtaining online consent is convenient, yet we know little about the acceptability of this practice. We carried out a serostudy among personnel returning to the UK/Ireland following deployment to West Africa during the 2014–2016 Ebola epidemic. We used an online procedure for consenting returnees and designed a small descriptive study to understand: how much of the consent material they read, how informed they felt and if they preferred online (...) to traditional face-to-face consent. Of 261 returnees, 111 completed the consent survey. Participants indicated a high level of engagement with the consent materials, with 67 per cent reporting having read all and 20 per cent having read ‘most’ of the materials. All participants indicated feeling completely or mostly informed about the purpose, methods and intended uses of the research, as well as what participation was required and what risks were involved. Only three participants indicated a preference for face-to-face consent. Free-text comments suggested that online consent may be an acceptable modality for uncomplicated and low-risk studies. The study sample was largely composed of health professionals, suggesting acceptability of online consent within this population. (shrink)

This is a study involving three HIV clinics in the Canadian provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador, and Manitoba. We sought to identify ethical issues involving health care providers and clinic clients in these settings, and to gain an understanding of how different ethical issues are managed by these groups. We used an institutional ethnographic method to investigate ethical issues in HIV clinics. Our researcher conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews, compiled participant observation notes, and studied health records in order to document ethical (...) issues in the clinics, and to understand how health care providers and clinic clients manage and resolve these issues. We found that health care providers and clinic clients have developed work processes for managing ethical issues of various types: conflicts between client-autonomy and public health priorities, difficulties associated with the criminalization of nondisclosure of HIV positive status, challenges with non-adherence to HIV treatment, the protection of confidentiality, barriers to treatment access, and negative social determinants of health and well-being. Some ethical issues resulted from structural disadvantages experienced by clinic clients. The most striking findings in our study were the negative social determinants of health and well-being experienced by some clinic clients – such as experiences of violence and trauma, poverty, racism, colonization, homelessness, and other factors affecting well-being such as problematic substance use. These negative determinants were at the root of other ethical issues, and are themselves of ethical concern. (shrink)

Physicians generally recommend that patients resuscitated with naloxone after opioid overdose stay in the emergency department for a period of observation in order to prevent harm from delayed sequelae of opioid toxicity. Patients frequently refuse this period of observation despiteenefit to risk. Healthcare providers are thus confronted with the challenge of how best to protect the patient’s interests while also respecting autonomy, including assessing whether the patient is making an autonomous choice to refuse care. Previous studies have shown that physicians (...) have widely divergent approaches to navigating these conflicts. This paper reviews what is known about the effects of opioid use disorder on decision-making, and argues that some subset of these refusals are non-autonomous choices, even when patients appear to have decision making capacity. This conclusion has several implications for how physicians assess and respond to patients refusing medical recommendations after naloxone resuscitation. (shrink)

Wynn's claims are, in principle, entirely reasonable; although, as always, the devil is in the details. With respect to Wynn's discussion of the cultural evolution of artifactual symmetry, we provide a few more arguments for the utility of mirror symmetry and extend the enquiry into the tacit and explicit processing of natural and artifactual symmetry.

Anorexia nervosa and obsessive–compulsive disorder are commonly reported to co-occur and present with overlapping symptomatology. Executive functioning difficulties have been implicated in both mental health conditions. However, studies directly comparing these functions in AN and OCD are extremely limited. This review provides a synthesis of behavioral and neuroimaging research examining executive functioning in AN and OCD to bridge this gap in knowledge. We outline the similarities and differences in behavioral and neuroimaging findings between AN and OCD, focusing on set shifting, (...) working memory, response inhibition, and response monitoring. This review aims to facilitate understanding of transdiagnostic correlates of executive functioning and highlights important considerations for future research. We also discuss the importance of examining both behavioral and neural markers when studying transdiagnostic correlates of executive functions. (shrink)

Book Review. . ???aop.label???. doi: 10.1080/00048402.2014.929720.

The Metaphysical Society was founded in 1869 at the instigation of James Knowles (editor of the Contemporary Review and then of the Nineteenth Century) with a view to "collect, arrange, and diffuse Knowledge (whether objective or subjective) of mental and moral phenomena" (first resolution of the Society in April 1869). The Society was a private club which gathered together a latter-day clerisy. Building on the tradition of the Cambridge Apostles, they elected talented members from across the Victorian intellectual spectrum: Bishops, (...) one Cardinal, philosophers, men of science, literary figures, and politicians. The Society included in its 62 members prominent figures such as T. H. Huxley, William Gladstone, Walter Bagehot, Henry Edward Manning, John Ruskin and Alfred Lord Tennyson. The papers they produced are key primary sources which shed new light on the ideas of their authors on the burning subjects of the day, ranging from the existence and personality of God to the nature of conscience or the existence of the soul. They are a legacy of a period when intellectuals were wondering how, and what, to believe in a time of social change, spiritual crisis, and scientific progress. The dissolution of the Society in 1880 did not diminish the value of the papers: they illustrate a tradition of private, open discussion among famous men of the most widely varying views; they offer detailed insight into the evolution of the relationships between different schools of Victorian scientific and religious thought; and they bring to light heretofore under-represented points of conflict and harmony. All 95 papers are included, accompanied by introductions and scholarly notes that set each paper into their proper context. (shrink)

Taking as its starting point Miri Gur-Arye’s critical discussion of a legal duty to report crime, this paper sketches an idealising conception of a democratic republic whose citizens could be expected to recognise a civic responsibility to report crime, in order to assist the enterprise of a criminal law that is their common law. After explaining why they should recognise such a responsibility, what its scope should be, and how it should be exercised, and noting that that civic responsibility must (...) include a responsibility to report one’s own crimes; it discusses whether that civic responsibility could ground at least a limited legal duty to report certain types of crime. It then turns to the question of whether a civic responsibility to assist the criminal law’s enterprise of bringing wrongdoers to account could include a responsibility to arrest suspected or known offenders if the police cannot or will not do so—a responsibility to make a citizen’s arrest, and the legal power to discharge that responsibility: how far should citizens feel entitled, or duty-bound, thus to ‘take the law into their own hands’? (shrink)

Angels are the ultimate stranger. They come from another world and have a special place in the art of the Russian Jewish painter Marc Chagall (1887-1985). In My Life (1923) the young Chagall recalls one memorable night in Saint-Petersburg. Drifting into sleep in the corner of a room (all he could afford) he suddenly saw the ceiling open and a winged being, surrounded by light and blue air, hovered above him before disappearing through the ceiling again.

Gordon's emphasizes that the process of prosecution is crucial to the idea of crime. One who commits a public wrong is properly called to public account for it, and the criminal trial constitutes such a public calling to account. The state is the proper prosecutor of crimes: since a crime is ‘our’ wrong, rather than only the victim's wrong, it is appropriate that we should prosecute it, collectively. The case is not simply V the victim, or P the plaintiff, against (...) D the defendant. It is brought, as the Americans properly have it, by ‘the People’, or by ‘the Commonwealth’, against the defendant. This is a useful way in which to think about crimes and criminalisation. This chapter tries to develop this conception of public wrongs a little further, which also involves complicating it more than a little. It works from a version of liberal communitarianism that rejects the metaphysical version of the individualist's ‘unencumbered self’; but the account sketched here should be compatible with all but the most radically individualist kinds of liberal theory. (shrink)

Evidence from numerous studies using the visual world paradigm has revealed both that spoken language can rapidly guide attention in a related visual scene and that scene information can immediately influence comprehension processes. These findings motivated the coordinated interplay account (Knoeferle & Crocker, 2006) of situated comprehension, which claims that utterance‐mediated attention crucially underlies this closely coordinated interaction of language and scene processing. We present a recurrent sigma‐pi neural network that models the rapid use of scene information, exploiting an utterance‐mediated (...) attentional mechanism that directly instantiates the CIA. The model is shown to achieve high levels of performance (both with and without scene contexts), while also exhibiting hallmark behaviors of situated comprehension, such as incremental processing, anticipation of appropriate role fillers, as well as the immediate use, and priority, of depicted event information through the coordinated use of utterance‐mediated attention to the scene. (shrink)

The fourth volume in the Criminalization series, this volume explores some of the most general principles and theories of criminalization. It includes not only philosophical work, but also historical, legal, and sociological investigations into criminalization, clarifying the state of the discipline today.

Most writing on informed consent in Africa highlights different cultural and social attributes that influence informed consent practices, especially in research settings. This review presents a composite picture of informed consent in Nigeria using empirical studies and legal and regulatory prescriptions, as well as clinical experience. It shows that Nigeria, like most other nations in Africa, is a mixture of sociocultural entities, and, notwithstanding the multitude of factors affecting it, informed consent is evolving along a purely Western model.Empirical studies show (...) that 70–95% of Nigerian patients report giving consent for their surgical treatments. Regulatory prescriptions and adjudicated cases in Nigeria follow the Western model of informed consent. However, adversarial legal proceedings, for a multiplicity of reasons, do not play significant roles in enforcing good medical practice in Nigeria. Gender prejudices are evident, but not a norm. Individual autonomy is recognized even when decisions are made within the family. Consent practices are influenced by the level of education, extended family system, urbanization, religious practices, and health care financing options available. All limitations notwithstanding, consent discussions improved with increasing level of education of the patients, suggesting that improved physician's knowledge and increasing awareness and education of patients can override other influences.Nigerian medical schools should restructure their teaching of medical ethics to improve the knowledge and practices of physicians. More research is needed on the preferences of the Nigerian people regarding informed consent so as to adequately train physicians and positively influence physicians’ behaviors. (shrink)

ABSTRACTFacial stimuli are widely used in behavioural and brain science research to investigate emotional facial processing. However, some studies have demonstrated that dynamic expressions elicit stronger emotional responses compared to static images. To address the need for more ecologically valid and powerful facial emotional stimuli, we created Dynamic FACES, a database of morphed videos from younger, middle-aged, and older adults displaying naturalistic emotional facial expressions. To assess adult age differences in emotion identification of dynamic stimuli and to provide normative ratings (...) for this modified set of stimuli, healthy adults categorised for each video the emotional expression displayed, rated the expression distinctiveness, estimated the age of the face model, and rated the naturalness of the expression. We found few age differences in emotion identification when using dynamic stimuli. On... (shrink)

Ethical reasoning and decision-making may be thought of as 9professional skills9, and in this sense are as relevant to efficient clinical practice as the biomedical and clinical sciences are to the diagnosis of a patient9s problem. Despite this, however, undergraduate medical programmes in ethics tend to focus on the teaching of bioethical theories, concepts and/or prominent ethical issues such as IVF and euthanasia, rather than the use of such ethics knowledge (theories, principles, concepts, rules) to clinical practice. Not surprisingly, many (...) students and clinicians experience considerable difficulty in using what they know about ethics to help them make competent ethical decisions in their day-to-day clinical practice. This paper describes the development of a seminar programme for teaching senior medical students a more systematic approach to ethical reasoning and analysis and clinical decision-making. (shrink)

The third book in the Criminalization series examines the constitutionalization of criminal law. It considers how the criminal law is constituted through the political processes of the state; how the agents of the criminal law can be answerable to it themselves; and finally how the criminal law can be constituted as part of the international order.

The idea that crimes can usefully be understood as ‘public wrongs’, and that this can generate a plausible principle of criminalisation, has found some support in recent years; it has also been subjected to some sharp criticism. This paper aims to sketch the most plausible version of that idea, and to show how, once properly explained, it is not vulnerable to those criticisms. After a brief defence of the negative principle, that we may not criminalise conduct that does not constitute (...) a public wrong, it explains the positive principle, that we have reason to criminalise conduct if it constitutes a public wrong, by drawing an analogy between criminal law and codes of professional ethics, and by appealing to the idea of civil order, as the normative structure of a polity—a structure that criminal law helps both to constitute and to sustain. Four objections are then met: that this account implies an unacceptable relativism; that it distorts the reasons that bear on criminalisation; that it cannot make room for those who do not identify themselves with the polity in which they live; and that it implies an unrealistically demanding conception of what is required for a polity to exist. (shrink)

In a world surrounded by smart objects from sensors to automated medical devices, the ubiquity of ‘smart’ seems matched only by its lack of clarity. In this article, we use our discussions with expert stakeholders working in areas of implantable medical devices such as cochlear implants, implantable cardiac defibrillators, deep brain stimulators and in vivo biosensors to interrogate the difference facets of smart in ‘implantable smart technologies’, considering also whether regulation needs to respond to the autonomy that such artefacts carry (...) within them. We discover that when smart technology is deconstructed it is a slippery and multi-layered concept. A device’s ability to sense and transmit data and automate medicine can be associated with the ‘sting’ of autonomy being disassociated from human control as well as affecting individual, group, and social environments. (shrink)

BackgroundDrug user networks and community-based organizations advocate for greater, meaningful involvement of people with lived experience of drug use in research, programs and services, and policy initiatives. Community-based approaches to research provide an opportunity to engage people who use drugs in all stages of the research process. Conducting community-based participatory research with people who use drugs has its own ethical challenges that are not necessarily acknowledged or supported by institutional ethics review boards. We conducted a scoping review to identify ethical (...) issues in CBPR with people who use drugs that were documented in peer-reviewed and grey literature.MethodsThe search strategy focused on three areas; community-based research, ethical issues, and drug use. Searches of five academic databases were conducted in addition to a grey literature search, hand-searching, and consultation with organizational partners and key stakeholders. Peer reviewed literature and community reports published in English between 1985 and 2013 were included, with initial screening conducted by two reviewers.ResultsThe search strategy produced a total of 874 references. Twenty-five references met the inclusion criteria and were included in our thematic analysis. Five areas were identified as important to the ethics of CBPR with people who use drugs: 1) participant compensation, 2) drug user perspectives on CBPR, 3) peer recruitment and representation in CBPR, 4) capacity building, and 5) participation and inclusion in CBPR.ConclusionsWe critically discuss implications of the emerging research in this field and provide suggestions for future research and practice. (shrink)

Demographic differences among consumer groups have become increasingly important to the development of marketing strategies. Marketers depend heavily on the sales force to implement strategies at the consumer level and, not surprisingly, different groups may view the salesperson’s role differently. Unfortunately, unethical sales practices targeted at various consumer groups, and especially at seniors, have been utilized as well. The purpose of this study is to provide initial empirical evidence of the ethical ideological make-up of four age segments outlined by Strauss (...) and Howe (1991, Generations: The History of America’s Future 1584–2069, Morrow, New York) and to examine the propensity for these groups (seniors, in particular) to respond differentially to potentially unethical sales tactics. Data were collected from 179 respondents representing the four generational age groups. MANOVA revealed that the seniors in this study were distinct with respect to ethical ideology and less accepting of unethical sales tactics. Managerial implications are discussed for sales organizations to maximize their effectiveness across consumer groups. (shrink)

We use Homer and Sun Tzu as a background to better understand and reformulate confrontation, anger and violence in medicine, contrasting an unproductive ‘love of war’ with a productive ‘art of war’ or ‘art of strategy’. At first glance, it is a paradox that the healing art is not pacific, but riddled with militaristic language and practices. On closer inspection, we find good reasons for this cultural paradox yet regret its presence. Drawing on insights from Homer's The Iliad and The (...) Odyssey, we argue for better understanding of confrontation, anger, bullying, intimidation and violence in medicine in order to change the culture. For example, equating medicine with war is not a given condition of medicine but a convenient metaphor with historical origins and a historical trajectory. Other, non-martial metaphors, such as medicine as collaboration, may be more appropriate in an age of team-based care. Taking lessons from Homer, we suggest three key ways in which cold-hearted confrontation and anger in medicine can be transformed into productive, warm-hearted engagement: the transformation of angry impulse into reflection, moral courage and empathy. Thinking with Homer can offer an aesthetically and morally charged alternative to the current body of literature on topics, such as anger in doctors, and how this may be ‘managed’, without recourse to an instrumental economy where emotions are viewed as commodities, and emotional responses can be ‘trained’ through communication skills courses. (shrink)

David Wootton’s latest book is an attempt to show how “Power, Pleasure and Profit” – each related in turn to Machiavelli, Hobbes and Smith’s works – have shaped our modern world because they are “three goods which can be pursued without limits”. Based on a series of six Carlyle Lectures entitled “Power and Pleasure, 1513-1776”, given at the University of Oxford in 2014, the book attempts a major reinterpretation of the ideas of the thinkers of the period from 1500 to (...) 1800. David Woot... (shrink)

L’ouvrage célèbre de Henry Sidwick, The Methods of Ethics, avait pour objet de trouver un fondement intuitionniste à l’utilitarisme. Les six conférences qu’il donna à la Société Métaphysique sur pratiquement le même sujet permettent de mieux comprendre le cheminement des idées de Sidgwick sur ce point à l’aune des changements religieux, scientifiques et politiques de la période. Sa critique de ce qui allait devenir l’Idéalisme britannique et les critiques dont il fut l’objet par un idéaliste tel que Bradley eurent des (...) incidences sur les révisions successives de cet ouvrage. En essayant de concilier utilitarisme et intuitionnisme – deux méthodes éthiques opposées – il tentait de défendre une forme d’utilitarisme nouveau, à savoir un utilitarisme dans lequel serait incorporé une forme de moralité discrète. Le fait qu’il échoua n’est pas important en soi car il tenta de trouver des solutions à ce qui lui paraissait être irréconciliable dans l’utilitarisme et les six conférences qu’il donna à la Société Métaphysique permettent d’en saisir toute la portée et de comprendre sa définition de l’utilitarisme. (shrink)

The Metaphysical Society was founded in 1869 at the instigation of James Knowles (editor of the Contemporary Review and then of the Nineteenth Century) with a view to 'collect, arrange, and diffuse Knowledge (whether objective or subjective) of mental and moral phenomena' (first resolution of the society in April 1869). The Society was a private dining and debate club that gathered together a latter-day clerisy. Building on the tradition of the Cambridge Apostles, they elected talented members from across the Victorian (...) intellectual spectrum: Bishops, one Cardinal, philosophers, men of science, literary figures, and politicians. The Society included in its 62 members prominent figures such as T. H. Huxley, William Gladstone, Walter Bagehot, Henry Edward Manning, John Ruskin, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. (shrink)