In clinical research scientific, legal as well as ethical aspects are important. It is well known that clinical investigators at university hospitals have to undertake their PhD-studies alongside their daily work and reconciling work and study can be challenging. The aim of this project was to create a web based course in clinical research bioethics (5 credits) and to examine whether the method is suitable for teaching bioethics. The course comprised of six modules: an initial examination (to assess knowledge in (...) bioethics), information on research legislation, obtaining permissions from authorities, writing an essay on research ethics, preparing one’s own study protocol, and a final exam. All assignments were designed with an idea of supporting students to reflect on their learning with their own research. (shrink)

Teachers' Professional Ethics: Theoretical Frameworks and Empirical Research from Finland is intended for international readers in education who want to learn the theoretical frameworks that guide teachers' ethics and that help them address concrete challenges in their everyday work. Scholars and teachers from different countries can use this book to widen their understanding of the Finnish educational system and teacher ethics. The authors provide examples of concrete moral dilemmas in teaching that can be more effectively navigated with the rational principles (...) and guidelines that philosophies of different ethical frameworks can provide. They argue that teachers require ethical skills, especially ethical sensitivity, in order to select the most beneficial course of action concerning diverse students in inclusive education. They should be purposeful in their profession to develop the motivation and resilience to continue their demanding but fulfilling work with long-term goals. Moreover, they should acknowledge their implicit beliefs and possible stereotypes to be able to provide equal learning opportunities to their students and to build democratic moral communities in their schools. In this book, ethical sensitivity, purposeful teaching, and incremental beliefs concerning learning are seen as important prerequisites for teachers' professional ethics. We discuss these aspects with examples from our empirical studies in Finnish schools. (shrink)

ABSTRACT According to Kohlberg, a moral teacher is an independent moral agent capable of addressing moral dilemmas based on general principles of justice. In addition to moral reasoning, teachers require competencies in moral sensitivity, moral motivation, and the implementation of morality. In the current period of global transition, moral sensitivity in teaching is particularly emphasized along with the skills to identify culture-invariant and culture-dependent moral factors. In this lecture, the role of the moral teacher is explored in the context of (...) current global crises and everyday moral dilemmas in teaching. Purposefulness and professional ethics are identified as important assets for a moral teacher during the current global transition. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a global societal, economic, and social upheaval unseen in living memory. There have been substantial cross-national differences in the kinds of policies implemented by political decision-makers to prevent the spread of the virus, to test the population, and to manage infected patients. Among other factors, these policies vary with politicians’ sex: early findings indicate that, on average, female leaders seem more focused on minimizing direct human suffering caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, while male leaders implement (...) riskier short-term decisions, possibly aiming to minimize economic disruptions. These sex differences are consistent with broader findings in psychology, reflecting women’s stronger empathy, higher pathogen disgust, health concern, care-taking orientation, and dislike for the suffering of other people—as well as men’s higher risk-taking, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, narcissism, and focus on financial indicators of success and status. This review article contextualizes sex differences in pandemic leadership in an evolutionary framework. Evolution by natural selection is the only known process in nature that organizes organisms into higher degrees of functional order, or counteracts the unavoidable disorder that would otherwise ensue, and is therefore essential for explaining the origins of human sex differences. Differential sexual selection and parental investment between males and females, together with the sexual differentiation of the mammalian brain, drive sex differences in cognition and behavioral dispositions, underlying men’s and women’s leadership styles and decision-making during a global pandemic. According to thesexually dimorphic leadership specialization hypothesis, general psychobehavioral sex differences have been exapted during human evolution to create sexually dimorphic leadership styles. They may be facultatively co-opted by societies and/or followers when facing different kinds of ecological and/or sociopolitical threats, such as disease outbreaks or intergroup aggression. Early evidence indicates that against the invisible viral foe that can bring nations to their knees, the strategic circumspection of empathic feminine health “worriers” may bring more effective and humanitarian outcomes than the devil-may-care incaution of masculine risk-taking “warriors”. (shrink)

This article examines the use of the kus ‘where’-interrogative clause in the second position of a question–answer adjacency pair in Estonian informal interaction. Applying an interactional linguistic approach, I will demonstrate how speakers use the kus-interrogative to point out the inappositeness of their interlocutor’s question. The use of the kus-interrogative in the second position implies that the questioner should already know the answer before asking. Essentially, the kus-interrogative is a response that negates the presumption posed by the polar question. Nonetheless, (...) the negation is not sufficient to close this question–answer sequence. Instead, the interlocutors treat the kus-interrogative response as a challenge by subsequently justifying their question. (shrink)

This study examined Flow with Nature treatment, which is an integrative intervention based on eco and environmental psychology, psychotherapeutic theories and professional psychological practice. FWN is intended for depression rehabilitation with the help of social support, nature environments and FWN exercises. Exercises encourage sensing the environment, mindful awareness, psychological processing and focusing on the future. The FWN treatment proceeds in separate stages, which emphasise nature, group and FWN exercises differently. This study focused on the experiences of the participants in the (...) FWN treatment. Finnish adults who had been diagnosed with clinical depression took part in the FWN treatment and answered feedback questions. Answers were analysed using theory-based content analysis. Data were collected between spring 2019 and spring 2020. The majority of the participants were women and on average 44 years old. Content analysis revealed that the participant feedback answers were in agreement with the central theoretical themes of FWN. The participants emphasised the significance of nature, social support and exercises differently. Moreover, the significance of these ingredients differed according to the stages of treatment: in the horizon stage restorative and comprehensive nature experiences, in the growth stage social support and in the path stage environmental self-regulation were emphasised. These results are in accordance with the objectives of the stages and seem to support the phase-based rationale. The participants’ experiences of the key elements of the intervention, social support and nature environment were experienced mainly positively, which supports their inclusion in future intervention versions. In the future, FWN exercises should be developed to better enable participants’ possibilities for concentration and being present in the moment. Exercises should also be simplified to match the target group’s cognitive abilities. (shrink)

Humans have been using fire for hundreds of millennia, creating an ancestral expansion toward the nocturnal niche. The new adaptive challenges faced at night were recurrent enough to amplify existing psychological variation in our species. Night-time is dangerous and mysterious, so it selects for individuals with higher tendencies for paranoia, risk-taking, and sociability. During night-time, individuals are generally tired and show decreased self-control and increased impulsive behaviors. The lower visibility during night-time favors the partial concealment of identity and opens more (...) opportunities for disinhibition of self-interested behaviors. Indeed, individuals with an evening-oriented chronotype are more paranoid, risk-taking, extraverted, impulsive, promiscuous, and have higher antisocial personality traits. However, under some circumstances, such as respiratory pandemics, the psychobehavioral traits favored by the nocturnal niche might be counter-productive, increasing contagion rates of a disease that can evade the behavioral immune system because its disease cues are often nonexistent or mild. The eveningness epidemiological liability hypothesis presented here suggests that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the evening-oriented psychobehavioral profile can have collectively harmful consequences: there is a clash of core tendencies between the nocturnal chronotype and the recent viral transmission-mitigating safety guidelines and rules. The pandemic safety protocols disrupt much normal social activity, particularly at night when making new social contacts is desired. The SARS-CoV-2 virus is contagious even in presymptomatic and asymptomatic individuals, which enables it to mostly evade our evolved contagious disease avoidance mechanisms. A growing body of research has indirectly shown that individual traits interfering with social distancing and anti-contagion measures are related to those of the nocturnal chronotype. Indeed, some of the social contexts that have been identified as superspreading events occur at night, such as in restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. Furthermore, nocturnal environmental conditions favor the survival of the SARS-CoV-2 virus much longer than daytime conditions. We compare the eveningness epidemiological liability hypothesis with other factors related to non-compliance with pandemic safety protocols, namely sex, age, and life history. Although there is not yet a direct link between the nocturnal chronotype and non-compliance with pandemic safety protocols, security measures and future empirical research should take this crucial evolutionary mismatch and adaptive metaproblem into account, and focus on how to avoid nocturnal individuals becoming superspreaders, offering secure alternatives for nocturnal social activities. (shrink)

Eating disorders are evolutionarily novel conditions that lead to some of the highest mortality rates of all psychiatric disorders. Several evolutionary hypotheses have been proposed for eating disorders, but only the intrasexual competition hypothesis is extensively supported by evidence. We present the mismatch hypothesis as a necessary extension to the current theoretical framework of eating disorders. This hypothesis explains the evolutionarily novel adaptive metaproblem that has arisen when mating motives and readily available food rewards conflict with one another. This situation (...) is exacerbated in contemporary environments characterized by sedentary lifestyles, caloric surplus and the ubiquity of social comparisons that take place via social media. Our psychoneuroimmunological model connects ultimate-level causation with proximate mechanisms by showing how the adaptive metaproblem between mating motives and food rewards leads to chronic stress and, further, to disordered eating. Chronic stress causes neuroinflammation, which increases susceptibility to OCD-like behaviors that typically co-occur with eating disorders. Chronic stress upregulates the serotonergic system and causes dysphoric mood in patients with restricting-type anorexia nervosa. Dieting, however, reduces serotonin levels and dysphoric mood, leading to a vicious serotonergic-homeostatic stress/starvation cycle whereby cortisol and neuroinflammation increase through stringent dieting. Between-individual and within-individual variation in eating disorders partially arises from (co)variation in gut microbiota and stress responsivity, which influence neuroinflammation and the serotonergic system. In binge-related eating disorders, even a short period of fasting drops serotonin levels, a state alleviated by binge eating. Eating disorder treatments should aim to reduce the chronic stress, neuroinflammation, stress responsivity and gut dysbiosis that fuel the disorders. We review the advances that have been made in recent years in understanding how to best treat eating disorders, outlining directions for future clinical research. Connecting ultimate causes with proximate mechanisms and treating biopsychosocial causes rather than manifest symptoms will enable more effective and sophisticated long-term interventions for the millions of people who suffer from eating disorders. (shrink)

This paper studies the construction of ethics in interactions between professionals in meetings, in relation to the rationing of resources. The research context is a supported housing unit targeted at clients with mental health and substance abuse problems. The service is provided for a municipality, which expects good progress of the clients. The research question is: how do the professionals produce implicit ethical justifications for setting limits to helping, even though the need for professional help is not called into question? (...) Five types of justification appear in the data covering 28 meetings. However, these types of justification do not solve the central ethical difficulty arising in the conversations. Limiting help would easily push people out of reach of all help. Thus, in spite of the talk about ethical justification, workers do not ultimately resort to limiting help in situations with no real alternatives for getting help. The ethical principle of following non-exclusionary practices is highly prioritized. (shrink)

This article examines care plan meetings between professionals and clients held in a mental health supported housing unit. The article asks what is discussed about the recording of the plan and how it is discussed in the meetings. The study focuses on intertextual institutional interaction. The methodical tools used are genre and the genre chain. As a result of the analysis, we gain information on how the plan form, as a product of joint discussion through the meeting interaction, becomes the (...) basis of the care plan. In addition, the article highlights at which stages and for what purposes the care plan is discussed, and how earlier texts and discussions about the client’s situation serve as resources for making the plan. Plan forms have a significant role in directing the meeting conversation, the transferring of the information and producing and maintaining the care plan discourse. (shrink)

Background: There is evidence that household point-of-use water treatment products can reduce the enormous burden of water-borne illness. Nevertheless, adoption among the global poor is very low, and little evidence exists on why. Methods: We gave 600 households in poor communities in Dhaka, Bangladesh randomly-ordered two-month free trials of four water treatment products: dilute liquid chlorine, sodium dichloroisocyanurate tablets, a combined flocculant-disinfectant powdered mixture, and a silver-coated ceramic siphon filter. Consumers also received education on the dangers of untreated drinking water. (...) We measured which products consumers used with self-reports, observation, and chlorine tests. We also measured drinking water's contamination with E. coli. Findings: Households reported highest usage of the filter, although no product had even 30% usage. E. coli concentrations in stored drinking water were generally lowest when households had Water Guard. Households that self-reported product usage had large reductions in E. coli concentrations with any product as compared to controls. Conclusion: Traditional arguments for the low adoption of POU products focus on affordability, consumers' lack of information about germs and the dangers of unsafe water, and specific products not meshing with a household's preferences. In this study we provided free trials, repeated informational messages explaining the dangers of untreated water, and a variety of product designs. The low usage of all products despite such efforts makes clear that important barriers exist beyond cost, information, and variation among these four product designs. Without a better understanding of the choices and aspirations of the target end-users, household-based water treatment is unlikely to reduce morbidity and mortality substantially in urban Bangladesh and similar populations. © 2011 Luoto et al. (shrink)

We present data from 122 nations showing that Baumard's argument on the ecological predictors of life history strategies and innovation is incomplete. Our analyses indicate that wealth, parasite stress, and cold climate impose orthogonal effects on life histories, innovation, and industrialization. Baumard also overlooks the historical exploitation of other nations which significantly enlarged the “pooled energy budget” available to England.

Psychological sex differences have been studied scientifically for more than a century, yet linguists still debate about the existence, magnitude, and causes of such differences in language use. Advances in psychology and cognitive neuroscience have shown the importance of sex and sexual orientation for various psychobehavioural traits, but the extent to which such differences manifest in language use is largely unexplored. Using computerised text analysis, this study found substantial psycholinguistic sexual dimorphism in a large corpus of English-language novels by heterosexual (...) authors. The psycholinguistic sex differences largely aligned with known psychological sex differences, such as empathising–systemising, people–things orientation, and men’s more pronounced spatial cognitive styles and abilities. Furthermore, consistent with predictions from cognitive neuroscience, novels by lesbian authors showed minor signs of psycholinguistic masculinisation, while novels by homosexual men had a female-typical psycholinguistic pattern, supporting the gender shift hypothesis of homosexuality. The findings on this large corpus of 66.9 million words indicate how psychological group differences based on sex and sexual orientation manifest in language use in two centuries of literary art. (shrink)

Our aim was to identify the ethical issues faced by students in the behavioral and natural sciences during their doctoral programmes. The participants were 28 PhD students who were interviewed about their doctoral study and supervision experiences. We identified a total of 102 ethical issues compromising the principles of nonmaleficence, beneficence, autonomy, justice, or fidelity. There were some differences in emphases, with the students in the behavioral sciences displaying a broader range of ethical compromises than the students in the natural (...) sciences. Ethical problems emerged in the individual supervisor–student relationships, but often problems involving the scholarly community appeared in the background. (shrink)

While the ethic of care has generally been regarded as an appropriate attitude for nurses, it has not received equal attention as a mode of ethical problem solving. The primary nursing model is exp...

"Outoa tässä olemisen ajattelussa on sen yksinkertaisuus". Näin totesi Martin Heidegger omasta työstään. Heidegger – Ajattelun aiheita kokoaa suomalaisten tutkijoiden kirjoituksia Heideggerin avaamilla poluilla. Kokoelma piirtää Heideggerin haastavasta ja syvällisestä ajattelusta rikkaan ja moni-ilmeisen kuvan, joka soveltuu niin tutkijoiden kuin filosofian harrastajienkin käyttöön. Teos on ensimmäinen kattava kokoelma suomalaista Heidegger-tutkimusta. Kirja sisältää myös toimittajien johdatuksen Heideggeriin ja katsauksen aiheen historiaan Suomessa.

Nurses’ duties and patients’ rights have been important foci in nursing. Nurses’ rights legitimate the power and responsibility of the profession. There are few published articles on this subject in the nursing science literature. This article is a theoretical examination of nurses’ rights that aims to structure (i.e. show the internal logic of) those that have been little studied. It is based on the philosophical literature and published research. Nurses’ rights can be divided into: human and civil rights, rights based (...) on health care legislation, professional rights, and earned rights. In this context, professional rights relate to nursing and also to tasks shared with other health care professions. Analyzing nurses’ rights will help to promote these rights, improve nurses’ position both nationally and internationally, and provide possibilities for enhancing patient care. (shrink)

The on-going space settlement debate has raised questions whether it is possible to settle other planets, and if it was, is it something humans should do. The problem with this space ethical discussion is that it can easily become too vague. To avoid this problem, we suggest a framework for identifying relevant variables that affect the feasibility constraints and desirability factors of establishing space settlements. The variables we focus on include the settlement stage, scale and time frame. Based on the (...) relevant literature, we take mission cost, survival, habitation, water, in situ resources for food, oxygen and fuel energy and dependence on Earth as feasibility constraints that are relevant for the framework. None of them are hard constraints, but rather soft feasibility constraints that make it difficult to establish a permanent human settlement on Mars in the near- to medium-term future. However, in the past, humanity has achieved goals that first seemed infeasible. To justify the costs and effort, the goal must be highly morally desirable. We discuss five different desirability factors that could help justify the effort but as each framework has unique feasibility constraints, not all of these factors are sufficient or necessary to justify this effort. We argue that some of the desirability factors prominent in space ethical literature are not sufficient or necessary in our framework, and thus, we conclude that the normative grounds for establishing a permanent Mars settlement in the foreseeable future are weak. (shrink)

Attachment theory proposes that the activation of the attachment system enacts emotion regulation (ER) to maintain security or cope with insecurity. However, the effects of ER on attachment states and their bidirectional influences remain poorly understood. In this ecological momentary assessment study, we examined the dynamics between attachment and ER. We hypothesised that attachment states and ER influence each other through time. Specifically, we hypothesised bidirectional short-term cycles between state attachment security and reappraisal, state attachment anxiety and rumination, and state (...) attachment avoidance and suppression. We also tested how trait attachment is related to state attachment and ER. One hundred twenty-two participants (Mage = 26.4) completed the Experiences in Close Relationship–Revised and reported state attachment and ER seven times daily for seven days. The results were only partly consistent with our cycle hypotheses yet revealed a cycle between low state attachment security and rumination that was attenuated by reappraisal. Moreover, rumination and suppression predicted increased insecure states, and reappraisal predicted increased secure and insecure states. Finally, trait attachment showed associations with state attachment and ER. Our study suggests regulatory dynamics between attachment and ER and opens important questions about their functional relationship in maintaining attachment-related behavioural patterns and emotional well-being. (shrink)

BackgroundMany studies have been published about ethics committees and the clarifications requested about the submitted applications. In Finland, ethics committees require a separate statement on ethical aspects of the research in applications to the ethics committee. However, little is known about how researchers consider the ethical aspects of their own studies.MethodsThe data were collected from all the applications received by the official regional ethics committee in the Hospital District of Northern Savo during 2004–2009 (n = 688). These included a total (...) of 56 studies involving research on tissue other than blood. The statements by the researchers about the ethics about their own research in these applications were analyzed by thematic content analysis under the following themes: recruitment, informed consent, risks and benefits, confidentiality and societal meaning.ResultsThe researchers tended to describe recruitment and informed consent process very briefly. Usually these descriptions simply stated who the recruiter was and that written consent would be required. There was little information provided on the recruitment situation and on how the study recruiters would be informed. Although most of the studies were clinical, the possibility was hardly ever discussed that patients could fail to distinguish between care and research.ConclusionThe written guidelines, available on the webpages of the ethics committee, do not seem to be enough to help researchers achieve this goal. In addition to detailed guidelines for researchers, investigators need to be taught to appreciate the ethical aspects in their own studies. (shrink)

Research suggests that both childhood experiences with one’s parents and individual differences in effortful control contribute to adult emotion regulation (ER). However, it is unclear how they associate with specific ER processes. In this adult study, we examined the roles of recalled parenting experiences and effortful control in daily ER selection and implementation. Using ecological momentary assessment (EMA), we focused on ER strategies of reappraisal, suppression, and rumination. We hypothesized recalled parental warmth, rejection, and overcontrol to predict adult ER selection (...) and effectiveness of ER implementation and effortful control to mediate these effects. One hundred twenty-two adults answered self-reported questionnaires on their childhood experiences with their parents and effortful control. In EMA, they reported ER and emotions seven times daily for seven days. Recalled parental warmth predicted less suppression and rumination, whereas recalled overcontrol, especially in fathers, predicted greater suppression and reappraisal. However, recalled parenting experiences did not predict the effectiveness of ER implementation, and no support was found for the mediating role of effortful control between recalled parenting experiences and ER. Our findings suggest that recalled parenting experiences may guide adult ER selection rather than shape ER implementation, and these links may be largely independent of their effortful control. (shrink)

Having the ability to understand emotionally how other people feel and see things is an essential fabric for building and sustaining functional interpersonal relationships. Without such an ability, social interaction crumbles, engagement fails, and learning is eroded. Yet, empirical evidence on the relationship between study burnout and study engagement, and empathy between upper secondary school students is limited. We are tackling the challenge by exploring the association between empathy between peers and study engagement and study burnout among upper secondary school (...) students. Two hundred and eighty upper secondary education students took part in our cross-sectional study. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the association between empathy, and study burnout and study engagement. The results showed that cognitive empathy contributed to affective empathy, which was further related to increased levels of study engagement, and decreased levels of cynicism, and sense of inadequacy. The role of cognitive empathy seemed to be more complicated: while cognitive empathy contributed directly to increased levels of cynicism, and inadequacy and decrease in study engagement, the indirect effects of cognitive empathy on cynicism and inadequacy were negative, and positive on study engagement. Neither of the empathy dimensions explained students’ emotional exhaustion. The results indicate that merely teaching students to recognize and identify their peers’ emotions is not sufficient to enhance study wellbeing, but they need to learn to share emotions and to tune into each other’s emotions. (shrink)

Book review of Martin Heidegger, Perusteen periaate [Der Satz vom Grund], translated into Finnish by Miika Luoto (Helsinki: Teos, 2018).