This study aims to reveal patterns of e-petition co-signing behavior that are indicative of the political mobilization of online “communities”. We discuss the case of We the People, a US national experiment in the use of social media technology to enable users to propose and solicit support for policy suggestions to the White House. We apply Baumgartner and Jones's work on agenda setting and punctuated equilibrium, which suggests that policy issues may lie dormant for periods of time until some (...) event triggers attention from the media, interest groups, and elected representatives. In the case study presented, we focus on 21 petitions initiated during the week after the Sandy Hook shooting in opposition to gun control or in support of policy proposals that are alternatives to gun control, which we view as mobilized efforts to maintain stability and equilibrium in a policy system threatening to change. Using market basket analysis and social network analysis we found a core group of petitions in the “support law-abiding gun owners” theme that were highly connected and four “communities” of e-petitioners mobilizing in opposition to change in gun control policies and in favor of alternative proposals. (shrink)

During public health crises including the COVID-19 pandemic, resource scarcity and contagion risks may require health systems to shift—to some degree—from a usual clinical ethic, focused on the well-being of individual patients, to a public health ethic, focused on population health. Many triage policies exist that fall under the legal protections afforded by “crisis standards of care,” but they have key differences. We critically appraise one of the most fundamental differences among policies, namely the use of criteria to categorically exclude (...) certain patients from eligibility for otherwise standard medical services. We examine these categorical exclusion criteria from ethical, legal, disability, and implementation perspectives. Focusing our analysis on the most common type of exclusion criteria, which are disease-specific, we conclude that optimal policies for critical care resource allocation and the use of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) should not use categorical exclusions. We argue that the avoidance of categorical exclusions is often practically feasible, consistent with public health norms, and mitigates discrimination against persons with disabilities. (shrink)

Can you draw a clear line through American history from the Puritans to the "Nones" of today? On the surface, there is not much connective tissue between the former, who often serve as shorthand for a persistent religious fanaticism in the United States, and the almost one quarter of the population who now regularly check the "None" or "None of the above" box when responding to surveys of religious preference. But instead of seeing a disconnect between these two groups separated (...) by time, historian Catherine Albanese insists there is a deep connection that spans the centuries. With a targeted romp through American history from the seventeenth century to the present, Albanese ties together these seemingly disparate groups through a shared and distinctively American preoccupation with delight and desire. Albanese begins our journey with the role of delight and desire in the brand of Calvinism championed by renowned Puritan minister Cotton Mather and later Jonathan Edwards. She then traces the development of these themes up through the present, treating the reader to revelatory readings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Bushnell, Andrew Jackson Davis, William James, Emma Curtis Hopkins, Elizabeth Towne, and others, revealing the contours of an evolving theology of desire. The result is an original and entertaining take on an underexamined through line in American history. (shrink)

This study began with some questions about the saying and doings of a group of Transcendentalists in nineteenth-century New England. Renowned for their role in the creation of a distinctively philosophical thought, the Transcendentalists have long been regarded in twentieth-century scholarship as a major movement in American culture... Recently, they have become heroes for a generation concerned with ecological problems and seeking new models for respect toward the land and the environment.

Menu labelling is a public health policy intervention that applies principles of nutrition labelling to the eating out environment. While menu labelling has received a good deal of attention with regard to its effectiveness in shaping food choices for obesity prevention, its premises have not yet been fully explored in terms of its broader applications to social equity and population health. In the following case, we focus on the example of menu labelling within the context of food policy at the (...) local level, a fruitful substantive area of consideration for public health ethics. (shrink)

Despite the burgeoning literature on professionalism in other health professions, psychology lags behind in the level of attention given to this core competency. In this article, we review definitions from other health professions and how they address professionalism. Next, we review how this competency evolved within health service psychology (HSP), and we propose a definition. We offer an approach for assessing professionalism within HSP. Consideration is given to strategies and methods for providing effective education and training in this multifaceted competency. (...) Finally, recommendations are made for creating a culture of professionalism within HSP and honoring psychology’s social contract with multiple publics. (shrink)

The parietal cortex is divided into two major functional regions: the anterior parietal cortex that includes primary somatosensory cortex, and the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) that includes the rest of the parietal lobe. The PPC contains multiple representations of space. In Dijkerman & de Haan's (D&dH's) model, higher spatial representations are separate from PPC functions. This model should be developed further so that the functions of the somatosensory system are integrated with specific functions within the PPC and higher spatial representations. (...) Through this further specification of the model, one can make better predictions regarding functional interactions between somatosensory and visual systems. (shrink)

Much can be gained by specifying the operation of the emulation process. A brief review of studies from diverse domains, including complex motor-skill representation, emotion perception, and face memory, highlights that emulation theory offers precise explanations of results and novel predictions. However, the neural instantiation of the emulation process requires development to move the theory from armchair to laboratory.

Worker organizing outside the traditional union framework in the United States has lately focused on worker centers, which provide the benefits of collective action and participatory workplace democracy without the legal obstacles faced by unions. This Article offers thoughts on legal regulation of worker organizations’ internal governance to facilitate collective power with appropriate protection for the rights of individuals within the collective. Federal law extensively regulates the internal governance of unions so as to protect minorities in an organization that is (...) an exclusive representative. It does not apply to worker centers, which disclaim the desire to represent workers for bargaining. Worker centers are regulated only lightly, under state law of nonprofit organizations. But if they become powerful, they will be large and will need to be managed by a leadership that may or may not remain accountable to the membership and respectful of minority rights. This Article offers a reading of the literature on union democracy from the 1950s as notes toward thinking about governance of worker organizations that are not labor unions. Democracy was the political moment when the demos recognized that the power of the polis was their power, not an illegal seizure of something that belonged to the rich or well born. Sheldon Wolin, “Democracy: Electoral and Athenian”. (shrink)

This article draws on the results of a qualitative, exploratory study of 20 Australian women business owners to demonstrate how using a ‹gender as social identity’ lens provides new insights into the influence of gender on exporting and entrepreneurial behaviour. Interview data reveal perceptions of gender identity and gender relations varied and influenced the interpretations which women business owners placed on their exporting activities. Women in the study used different terms to describe exporter and entrepreneurial characteristics to those found in (...) extant literature. A strong theme was exporting as a life-changing experience that allowed the women to grow personally as well as grow the business and succeed as exporters. (shrink)

The need for psychological services to limited English proficient clients is increasing. Psychologists who provide clinical services to limited English proficient clients are frequently required to use the services of spoken language interpreters. Research has shown that the quality and consistency of interpretation services are often in question. Interpreters are generally not required to hold any certifications or to meet training requirements prior to providing interpretation services. This lack of oversight leaves the psychologist responsible for the quality of the interpretation (...) when adhering to the American Psychological Association’s 2010 Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct. This article includes a discussion of the ethical and clinical issues inherent in providing psychological services through an interpreter, how those issues affect a psychologist’s adherence to the APA Ethics Code, and recommendations for meeting the ethical standards while providing sound clinical services through the use of spoken language interpreters. (shrink)

The words in children's language learning environments are strongly predictive of cognitive development and school achievement. But how do we measure language environments and do so at the scale of the many words that children hear day in, day out? The quantity and quality of words in a child's input are typically measured in terms of total amount of talk and the lexical diversity in that talk. There are disagreements in the literature whether amount or diversity is the more critical (...) measure of the input. Here we analyze the properties of a large corpus of speech to children and simulate learning environments that differ in amount of talk per unit time, lexical diversity, and the contexts of talk. The central conclusion is that what researchers need to theoretically understand, measure, and change is not the total amount of words, or the diversity of words, but the function that relates total words to the diversity of words, and how that function changes across different contexts of talk. (shrink)

Recent studies claim that having an analytical cognitive style is correlated with reduced religiosity in western populations. However, in cultural contexts where social norms constrain behavior, such cognitive characteristics may have reduced influence on behaviors and beliefs. We labeled this the ‘constraining environments hypothesis.’ In a sample of 246 Muslims in Turkey, the hypothesis was supported for gender. Females face social pressure to be religious. Unlike their male counterparts, they were more religious, less analytical, and their analytical scores were uncorrelated (...) with religiosity. We had predicted an analogous effect for the comparison between monolingual and bilingual students, since English-proficient students are exposed to a wider social environment. The bilingual students were less religious than the monolingual students, yet they were also less analytical. Thus, being analytical was not the path to lower religiosity for the bilingual students. Cognitive styles need to be studied along with social norms in a variety of cultures, to understand religion-cognition relationships. (shrink)

The real history of the covey of attention-artists who call themselves "The Birds." A great deal of uncertainty--and even some genuine confusion--surrounds the origin, evolution, and activities of the so-called Avis Tertia or "Order of the Third Bird." Sensational accounts of this "attentional cult" emphasize histrionic rituals, tragic trance-addictions, and the covert dissemination of obscurantist ontologies of the art object. Hieratic, ecstatic, and endlessly evasive, the Order attracts sensual misfits and cabalistic aesthetes--both to its ranks, and to its scholarship. In (...) recent years, however, the revisionist work of the research collective ESTAR(SER) has done much to clear the air, bringing archival precision to the history of this covey of attention-artists who call themselves "The Birds." Gathering the best articles of the last twenty years of The Proceedings of ESTAR(SER), this volume represents a landmark in the history of aesthetic practices, and will be a point of departure for future work wading the muddy marshes at the limits of historicism."--Publisher description. (shrink)

The concept of Health in All Policies aims to improve the health outcomes associated with policies in an attempt to mitigate health disparities and provide optimal environments for healthier living. This multidisciplinary framework seeks to improve health through effective assessment and reformation of policy for organizations of any level and stature. The importance of integrating health in policy assessment and decision making is a key concept in the growing field of Health Impact Assessment.The World Health Organization defines Health Impact Assessment (...) as “a combination of procedures, methods, and tools by which a policy, program, or project may be judged as to its potential effects on the health of a population, and the distribution of those effects within the population.” HIA provides a mechanism for collaboration between various sectors and disciplines bridging the gap between research, policymaking, and implementation of policies, programs, and projects affecting health outcomes. In the United States, while some HIA efforts have focused on proposed public policies, HIA has been used primarily to analyze the health effects of proposed development projects and plans related to community design and transportation. (shrink)

The concept of Health in All Policies aims to improve the health outcomes associated with policies in an attempt to mitigate health disparities and provide optimal environments for healthier living. This multidisciplinary framework seeks to improve health through effective assessment and reformation of policy for organizations of any level and stature. The importance of integrating health in policy assessment and decision making is a key concept in the growing field of Health Impact Assessment.The World Health Organization defines Health Impact Assessment (...) as “a combination of procedures, methods, and tools by which a policy, program, or project may be judged as to its potential effects on the health of a population, and the distribution of those effects within the population.” HIA provides a mechanism for collaboration between various sectors and disciplines bridging the gap between research, policymaking, and implementation of policies, programs, and projects affecting health outcomes. In the United States, while some HIA efforts have focused on proposed public policies, HIA has been used primarily to analyze the health effects of proposed development projects and plans related to community design and transportation. (shrink)

Our hospital’s policy and procedures for “Patients Without Surrogates” provides for gradated safeguards for managing patients’ treatment and care when they lack decision–making capacity, have no advance directives, and no surrogate decision makers are available. The safeguards increase as clinical decisions become more significant and have greater consequences for the patient. The policy also directs social workers to engage in “rigorous efforts” to search for surrogates who can potentially provide substituted judgments for such patients. We describe and illustrate the policy, (...) procedures, and kinds of expected rigorous efforts through our narration of an actual but disguised case for which we provided clinical ethics guidance and social work expertise. Our experience with and reflection on this case resulted in four recommendations we make for health care facilities and organizations that aim to provide quality care for their own patients without surrogates. (shrink)

When word pairs having a familiar order are sequentially flashed on a computer in their non-familiar order, , observers have a strong phenomenology of seeing them in familiar order . Reversal errors remained frequent even when participants obtained perceptual experience of reverse-display items by beginning with a block of longer-duration trials. A forced-choice order-detection procedure reduced but did not eliminate reversal errors, showing that “fast pairs” is a robust perceptual illusion. Even adjective + noun pairs showed reversal errors, and reversal (...) errors increased with the log frequency of the word pair, consistent with a strong role for statistical processing at the level of multi-word units. (shrink)

Increasingly, professionalism has been recognized as a core competency for health service professionals and is the domain in which vexing competence problems are observed in trainees. We begin by describing manifestations of problems of professionalism in accord with the values that fall within the rubric of this multifaceted construct. We provide an approach for evaluating problems of professionalism and discuss intervention for trainees with mild, moderate, or severe problems in this domain. We propose implications for training focused on enhancing the (...) culture of programs; bolstering the education, guidance, and mentoring provided related to professionalism; and encouraging best practices for addressing trainees with problems of professionalism. We conclude by sharing ideas about defining professionalism, identifying problems of professionalism, strengthening our approach to assessing professionalism and intervening when problems are evident, developing strategies for preventing professionalism problems, and ensuring that psychologists take seriously their responsibility to address professionalism concerns with colleagues. (shrink)

We consider the moral and social ingredients in physicians' relationships with patients of diminished capacity by considering certain claims made about friendship and the physician's role. To assess these claims we look at the life context of two patients as elaborated examples provided in two novels: Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) by Marge Piercy, a radical feminist; and It's Hard to Leave While the Music's Playing (1977) by I. S. Cooper, a prominent physician-researcher. At issue is how the (...) doctor-patient relationship should be structured. In question is whether the physician's friendship and professional expertise, together with the diminished capacity of the patient, authorize medical paternalism. From our examination, we find compelling insights against appealing to friendship both in good doctor-patient relationships and in more typical, not-so-good ones. (shrink)

RationaleSurrogates of critically ill patients often have inaccurate expectations about prognosis. Yet there is little research on how intensive care unit clinicians should discuss prognosis, and existing expert opinion-based recommendations give only general guidance that has not been validated with surrogate decision makers.ObjectiveTo determine the perspectives of key stakeholders regarding how prognostic information should be conveyed in critical illness.MethodsThis was a multicenter study at three academic medical centers in California, Pennsylvania, and Washington. One hundred eighteen key stakeholders completed in-depth semistructured (...) interviews. Participants included 47 surrogates of adult patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome; 45 clinicians working in study ICUs, including physicians, nurses, social workers, and spiritual care providers; and 26 experts in health communication, decision science, ethics, family-centered care, geriatrics, healthcare disparities, palliative care, psychology, psychiatry, and critical care.Measurements and main resultsThere was broad support among surrogates for existing expert recommendations, including truthful prognostic disclosure, emotional support, tailoring the disclosure strategy to each family's needs, and checking for understanding. In addition, stakeholders offered suggestions that add specificity to existing recommendations, including: In addition to conveying prognostic estimates, clinicians should help families "see the prognosis for themselves" by showing families radiographic images and explaining the clinical significance of physical manifestations of severe disease at the bedside. Many physicians did not support using numeric estimates to convey prognosis to families, whereas many surrogates, clinicians from other disciplines, and experts believed numbers could be helpful. Clinicians should conceptualize prognostic communication as an iterative process that begins with a preliminary mention of the possibility of death early in the ICU stay and becomes more detailed as the clinical situation develops. Although prognostic information should be initially disclosed by physicians, other members of the multidisciplinary team-nurses, social workers, and spiritual care providers-should be given explicit role responsibilities to reinforce physicians' prognostications and help families process a poor prognosis emotionally.ConclusionsFamily members, clinicians, and experts identified specific communication behaviors that clinicians should use to discuss prognosis in the critical care setting. These findings extend existing opinion-based recommendations and should guide interventions to improve communication about prognosis in ICUs. (shrink)

The lateralized ERP N2pc component has been shown to be an effective marker of attentional object selection when elicited in a visual search task, specifically reflecting the selection of a target item among distractors. Moreover, when targets are known in advance, the visual search process is guided by representations of target features held in working memory at the time of search, thus guiding attention to objects with target-matching features. Previous studies have shown that manipulating working memory availability via concurrent tasks (...) or within task manipulations influences visual search performance and the N2pc. Other studies have indicated that visual vs. spatial working memory manipulations have differential contributions to visual search. To investigate this the current study assesses participants' visual and spatial working memory ability independent of the visual search task to determine whether such individual differences in working memory affect task performance and the N2pc. Participants completed a visual search task to elicit the N2pc and separate visual working memory and spatial working memory assessments. Greater SPWM, but not VWM, ability is correlated with and predicts higher visual search accuracy and greater N2pc amplitudes. Neither VWM nor SPWM was related to N2pc latency. These results provide additional support to prior behavioral and neural visual search findings that spatial WM availability, whether as an ability of the participant's processing system or based on task demands, plays an important role in efficient visual search. (shrink)

ABSTRACTTask-irrelevant emotional expressions are known to capture attention, with the extent of “emotional capture” varying with psychopathic traits in antisocial samples. We investigated whether this variation extends throughout the continuum of psychopathic traits in a community sample. Participants searched for a target face among facial distractors. As predicted, angry and fearful faces interfered with search, indicated by slower reaction times relative to neutral faces. When fear appeared as either target or distractor, diminished emotional capture was seen with increasing affective-interpersonal psychopathic (...) traits. However, moderation analyses revealed that this was only when lifestyle-antisocial psychopathic traits were low, consistent with evidence suggesting that these two facets of psychopathic traits display opposing relationships with emotional reactivity. Anxiety did not show the predicted relationships with emotional capture effects. Findings show... (shrink)

The persistence, and international expansion, of food banks as a non-governmental response to households experiencing food insecurity has been decried as an indicator of unacceptable levels of poverty in the countries in which they operate. In 1998, Poppendieck published a book, Sweet charity: emergency food and the end of entitlement, which has endured as an influential critique of food banks. Sweet charity‘s food bank critique is succinctly synthesized as encompassing seven deadly “ins” (1) inaccessibility, (2) inadequacy, (3) inappropriateness, (4) indignity, (...) (5) inefficiency, (6) insufficiency, and (7) instability. The purpose of this paper is to examine if and how the contemporary food bank critique differs from Sweet charity’s “ins” as a strategy for the formulation of synthesizing arguments for policy advocacy. We used critical interpretive synthesis methodology to identify relationships within and/or between existing critiques in the peer-reviewed literature as a means to create “‘synthetic constructs’ (new constructs generated through synthesis)” of circulating critiques. We analyzed 33 articles on food banks published since Sweet charity, with the “ins” as a starting point for coding. We found that the list of original “ins” related primarily to food bank operations has been consolidated over time. We found additional “ins” that extend the food bank critique beyond operations (ineffectiveness, inequality, institutionalization, invalidation of entitlements, invisibility). No synthetic construct emerged linking the critique of operational challenges facing food banks with one that suggests that food banks may be perpetuating inequity, posing a challenge for mutually supportive policy advocacy. (shrink)

Background: Discussions about medical errors facilitate professional learning for physicians and may provide emotional support after an error, but little is known about physicians’ attitudes and practices regarding error discussions with colleagues.Methods: Survey of faculty and resident physicians in generalist specialties in Midwest, Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions of the US to investigate attitudes and practices regarding error discussions, likelihood of discussing hypothetical errors, experience role-modelling error discussions and demographic variables.Results: Responses were received from 338 participants . In all, 73% of (...) respondents indicated they usually discuss their mistakes with colleagues, 70% believed discussing mistakes strengthens professional relationships and 89% knew at least one colleague who would be a supportive listener. Motivations for error discussions included wanting to learn whether a colleague would have made the same decision , wanting colleagues to learn from the mistake and wanting to receive support . Given hypothetical scenarios, most respondents indicated they would likely discuss an error resulting in no harm , minor harm or major harm . Fifty-seven percent of physicians had tried to serve as a role model by discussing an error and role-modelling was more likely among those who had previously observed an error discussion .Conclusions: Most generalist physicians in teaching hospitals report that they usually discuss their errors with colleagues, and more than half have tried to role-model discussions. However, a significant number of these physicians report that they do not usually discuss their errors and some do not know colleagues who would be supportive listeners. (shrink)