BackgroundImportant sex and gender differences have been found in research on diabetes complications and treatment. Reporting on whether and how sex and gender impact research findings is crucial for developing tailored diabetes care strategies. To analyze the extent to which this information is available in current diabetes research, we examined original investigations on diabetes for the integration of sex and gender in study reporting.MethodsWe examined original investigations on diabetes published between January 1 and December 31, 2015, in the top five (...) general medicine journals and top five diabetes-specific journals (by 2015 impact factor). Data were extracted on sex and gender integration across seven article sections: title, abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, and limitations.ResultsWe identified 155 original investigations on diabetes, including 115 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and 40 observational studies. Sex and gender were rarely incorporated in article titles, abstracts and introductions. Most methods sections did not describe plans for sex/gender analyses; 47 (30.3%) articles described plans to control for sex/gender in the analysis and 12 (7.7%) described plans to stratify results by sex/gender. While most articles (151, 97.4%) reported the sex/gender of study participants, only 10 (6.5%) of all articles reported all study outcomes separately by sex/gender. Discussion of sex-related issues was incorporated into 21 (13.5%) original investigations; however, just 1 (0.6%) discussed gender-related issues. Comparison by journal type (general medicine vs. diabetes specific) yielded only minor differences from the overall integration results. In contrast, RCTs performed more poorly on multiple sex/gender assessment metrics compared to observational studies.ConclusionsSex and gender are poorly integrated in current diabetes original investigations, suggesting that substantial improvements in sex and gender data reporting are needed to inform the evidence to support sex- and gender-specific diabetes care. (shrink)

Daydreaming appears to have a complex relationship with life satisfaction and happiness. Here we demonstrate that the facets of daydreaming that predict life satisfaction differ between men and women , that the content of daydreams tends to be social others , and that who we daydream about influences the relation between daydreaming and happiness variables like life satisfaction, loneliness, and perceived social support . Specifically, daydreaming about people not close to us predicts more loneliness and less perceived social support, whereas (...) daydreaming about close others predicts greater life satisfaction. Importantly, these patterns hold even when actual social network depth and breadth are statistically controlled, although these associations tend to be small in magnitude. Individual differences and the content of daydreams are thus important to consider when examining how happiness relates to spontaneous thoughts. (shrink)

Emotionality is a basic feature of behavior. The argument over whether the expression of emotions is based primarily on culture (constructivism, nurture) or biology (natural forms, nature) will never be resolved because both alternatives are untenable. The evidence is overwhelming that at all ages and all levels of organization, the development of emotionality is epigenetic: The organism is an active participant in its own development. To ascribe these effects to “experience” was the best that could be done for many years. (...) With the rapid acceleration of information on how changes in organization are actually brought about, it is a good time to review, update, and revitalize our views of experience in relation to the concept of basic emotion. (shrink)

Some individuals facing dementia contemplate hastening their own death: weighing the possibility of living longer with dementia against the alternative of dying sooner but avoiding the later stages of cognitive and functional impairment. This weighing resonates with an ethical and legal consensus in the United States that individuals can voluntarily choose to forgo life‐sustaining interventions and also that medical professionals can support these choices even when they will result in an earlier death. For these reasons, whether and how a terminally (...) ill individual can choose to control the timing of their death is a topic that cannot be avoided when considering the dementia trajectory. With a focus on the U.S. context, this landscape review considers the status of provisions that would legally permit people facing dementia to hasten death with appropriate support from medical professionals. This review can be used to plan and guide clinical and legal practitioner discussion and policy development concerning evolving questions not fully covered by existing medical decision‐making provisions. (shrink)

Biomedical innovation and translation are increasingly emphasizing research using “big data.” The hope is that big data methods will both speed up research and make its results more applicable to “real-world” patients and health services. While big data research has been embraced by scientists, politicians, industry, and the public, numerous ethical, organizational, and technical/methodological concerns have also been raised. With respect to technical and methodological concerns, there is a view that these will be resolved through sophisticated information technologies, predictive algorithms, (...) and data analysis techniques. While such advances will likely go some way towards resolving technical and methodological issues, we believe that the epistemological issues raised by big data research have important ethical implications and raise questions about the very possibility of big data research achieving its goals. (shrink)

We must reconceive the ethical relationship between mothers and their newborn babies. The intertwinement of mother and baby does not disappear with birth but rather persists in the form of postpartum maternal tethering. Drawing upon three years of ethnographic fieldwork and training in the United States and China, I argue that dependencies associated with postpartum maternal tethering make it extremely difficult for postpartum mothers to act autonomously, even in the relational sense. Breaching this tether opens up new possibilities for thinking (...) about the bioethics of vulnerability, dependency, and care by denaturalizing and desanctifying the mother-baby relationship and diversifying newborn care. (shrink)

A principal theme of our article is that emotions, including what are called basic emotions, cannot be exhaustively categorized as “innate” or “acquired.” Instead, we argue that basic emotions are more realistically viewed as emergent phenomena, the result of complex interrelations of environmental and organismic factors at all levels of organization. While the commentators apparently accepted the proposed developmental paradigm, they took exception to aspects of our treatment of basic emotions and made a number of helpful comments, to which we (...) respond below. (shrink)

Most scholars have thought that in the _Republic_ democracy is supposed to be worse than timarchy or oligarchy, but lately certain commentators have denied that it is. Is it, then? We argue that pursuing this question leads to a dead end: it simply is not clear how bad democracy is supposed to be in the _Republic_. To make our case, we first marshal the strongest available evidence that democracy is supposedly better than timarchy and oligarchy. Next we lay out the (...) strongest available evidence that democracy is supposedly worse. And then we explain why there is an impasse. (shrink)

Identity, difference, and the associated subject of cultural diversity pose challenges for nursing. As the demographics of the world change, demands are rising for nurses to provide sensitive, individualized care to people living in our ever‐changing global community. Issues concerning gender, sexuality, disability, age, language, economic and occupational status, multiculturalism, and ethnicity are made more complex because many of these topics strike a personal chord for individual nurses. In order for nursing to provide appropriate care to the world's people and (...) to meet future challenges, nursing must define itself in new ways. Kikuchi and Simmons have stated that the best way for nursing to approach this task is through the development of a ‘sound’ philosophy of nursing that will ‘accommodate diversity in nursing thought’. They contend that before we can establish a philosophy of nursing, nurses will have to agree upon the nature of reality, human beings, truth, and knowledge. This paper will suggest that neopragmatism, as described by Richard Rorty, is a way to assure diversity of thought in nursing. However, I will argue against the requirement for this philosophy to be ‘sound’ in the sense that Kikuchi and Simmons use this term. In place of their call for ‘truth and unity in nursing thought’. I will attempt to demonstrate how neopragmatic ideas relate to the construction of what Rorty called a unifying ‘plausible narrative of progress’. This change will allow nursing to abandon the dead end debate over epistemologies and instead focus on more important issues related to improving nursing practice. (shrink)

Coach observation studies conducted since the 1970s have sought to determine the quantity and quality of verbal feedback provided by coaches to their athletes. Relatively few studies, however, have sought to determine the knowledge and beliefs of coaches that underpin this provision of feedback. The purpose of the current study was to identify the beliefs and knowledge that elite team sport coaches hold about providing, receiving and evaluating feedback in their training and competition environments. Semi-structured interviews conducted with 8 coaches (...) were inductively analysed, revealing three broad themes: thinking and learning about feedback, providing feedback, and evaluating feedback. Findings revealed a detailed array of knowledge about feedback across a wide range of sub-topics. Coaches saw feedback as a tool to improve performance, build athlete confidence, help athletes to monitor progress, and as a tool to improve their own performance. Novel insights about evaluating an athlete’s reception of feedback, and tailoring feedback for individual athletes, were provided by coaches. The findings also highlight areas in which future coach education offerings can better support coaches to provide effective feedback. (shrink)

Despite contemporary moral philosophers' renewed attention to the moral significance of emotions, the attitudinal repertoire with which they equip the mature moral agent remains stunted. One attitude moral philosophers neglect (if not disown) is contempt. While acknowledging the nastiness of contempt, I here correct the neglect by providing an account of the moral psychology of contempt. In the process, I defend the moral propriety of certain tokens of properly person-focused contempt against some prominent objections -- among them, objections stemming from (...) Kantian worries that contempt is incompatible with the respect we owe to persons as such. (shrink)

The COVID-19 outbreak has ravaged all societal domains, including education. Home confinement, school closures, and distance learning impacted students, teachers, and parents’ lives worldwide. In this study, we aimed to examine the impact of COVID-19-related restrictions on Italian and Portuguese students’ academic motivation as well as investigate the possible buffering role of extracurricular activities. Following a retrospective pretest–posttest design, 567 parents reported on their children’s academic motivation and participation in extracurricular activities. We used a multi-group latent change score model to (...) compare Italian and Portuguese students’: pre-COVID mean motivation scores; rate of change in motivation; individual variation in the rate of change in motivation; and dependence of the rate of change on initial motivation scores. Estimates of latent change score models showed a decrease in students’ motivation both in Italy and in Portugal, although more pronounced in Italian students. Results also indicated that the decrease in students’ participation in extracurricular activities was associated with changes in academic motivation. Furthermore, students’ age was significantly associated with changes in motivation. No significant associations were found for students’ gender nor for parents’ education. This study provides an important contribution to the study of students’ academic motivation during home confinement, school closures, and distance learning as restrictive measures adopted to contain a worldwide health emergency. We contend that teachers need to adopt motivation-enhancing practices as means to prevent the decline in academic motivation during exceptional situations. (shrink)

Brexit activists demonstrating outside the British Houses of Parliament were studied in situ to examine their potential for pro-group extreme behavior. This involved activists of two polarized, opposing views; those of Leave and Remain. The research engaged concepts linking the different theoretical perspectives of identity fusion and personal construct psychology. The study measured participants' degree of fusion to their group using a verbal measure. Willingness to undertake extreme acts was assessed in several ways: a measure of willingness to fight for (...) the group, adaptations of the trolley dilemma and questions regarding political violence. Individual construing was examined using repertory grid technique and a semi-structured interview. Results were similar for both Leave and Remain participants. The majority of activists identified as “fused” to their group and, if so, were more likely to undertake hypothetical extreme behavior compared to those who did not identify as “fused.” Repertory grid technique indicated that becoming an activist provided individuals with a clearer and more positive view of themselves. Opposition activists were construed more negatively and extremely than fellow activists, and this construal was associated with an increased willingness to undertake extreme pro-group behavior. This was consistent with the personal construct model of radicalization and was heightened in those who were “fused.” Interview data provided support for the constructivist model and revealed characteristics and concerns of the two groups. Overall, the findings indicate that campaigning organizations contain fused individuals, who are more likely to undertake hypothetical pro-group violence including self-sacrifice. This has broader implications which may be particularly pertinent, given the violent impact of extremist activists around the globe. (shrink)

The Subjective Well-Being Scale and its short version were developed and validated to measure life satisfaction and positive affect in a Spanish-speaking population. The aim of the present study was to obtain additional evidence of validity for the EBS-8. To this end, the scale was applied in three successive studies to a total of 2259 Mexicans aged 12 to 81 years. The results of the first study allowed us to confirm its unifactorial structure and its adequate reliability ; in the (...) second its measurement invariance by sex, social group and age was tested. From the psychometric indices obtained, it is concluded that the EBS-8 is an excellent brief instrument constructed in Spanish to assess subjective well-being in adolescents, young people, adults and older adults. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

What’s the difference between those psychological posits that are ‘me” and those that are not? Distinguishing between these psychological kinds is important in many domains, but an account of what the distinction consists in is challenging. I argue for Psychological Constructionism: those psychological posits that correspond to the kinds within folk psychology are personal, and those that don’t, aren’t. I suggest that only constructionism can answer a fundamental challenge in characterizing the personal level – the plurality problem. The things that (...) plausibly qualify as personal are motley. Other attempts at accounting for the personal level either cannot accommodate this plurality, or cannot explain what unifies the personal. Given arguments others have given for a pluralistic conception of folk psychology, constructionism explains and predicts this plurality in a systematic and unified way, thereby solving the plurality problem. (shrink)