Given the negative costs of exclusion and the relevance of belongingness for humans, the experience of exclusion influences social affiliation motivation, which in turn is a relevant predictor of prosocial behavior. Skin conductance is a typical measure of the arousal elicited by emotions. Hence, we argued that both inclusion and exclusion will increase skin conductance level due to the increase of either positive affect or anger affects, respectively. Moreover, we argued that emotional arousal is also related to social affiliation motivation (...) and prosocial behavior. A total of 48 students were randomly allocated to either an inclusionary or exclusionary condition and their skin conductance levels were recorded during an experiment in which they completed an online questionnaire and played the game “Cyberball.” Results indicated that (a) individuals who perceived high exclusion felt angrier than individuals perceiving high inclusion, who feel positive affect; (b) no differences were evidenced in terms of skin conductance between exclusion and inclusion situations; (c) over-aroused individuals were less motivated to affiliate; and (d) individuals with lower affiliation motivation behaved in a less prosocial way. The results were congruent to the argument that behaving prosocially may be a way to gain the desired affiliation. (shrink)

The book delves into mathematical mindsets, a current approach to understanding mathematical identities, as well as success and failure in mathematics.

Empathy is an integral aspect of human existence. Without at least a basic ability to access others’ affective life, social interactions would be well-nigh impossible. Yet, recent studies seem to show that the means we have acquired to access others’ emotional life no longer function well in what has become our everyday business – technologically mediated interactions in digital spaces. If this is correct, there are two important questions: (1) What makes empathy for frequent internet users so difficult? and (2) (...) What can we do to alleviate the negative consequences? Correspondingly, the aim of this paper is twofold. First, we identify structural differences between offline and technologically mediated interactions that can explain why digital empathy is harder to achieve. Second, drawing on the literature on ‘situated affectivity,’ we consider the idea of modifying digital spaces in ways specifically designed to ‘scaffold’ empathy where our evolved mechanisms fail. Section 2 argues that empathy is requires interpreting the behavior of embodied subjects. Section 3 identifies three factors that are crucial for this interpretative endeavor: the empathizer’s affective repertoire, their perceptual input, and their background knowledge. Section 4 argues that technologically mediated interactions differ from face-to-face interactions with regard to these factors in ways which render our evolved empathy mechanisms less effective in the digital world. Section 5 introduces the idea that situational factors can serve as ‘empathic scaffolds,’ i.e., as ‘tools’ that can ‘shape’ people’s empathic reactions. Section 6 wraps up the main line of reasoning, responds to objections and invites further scholarship. (shrink)

La ingente obra mediática de Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente en relación con las ciencias naturales nos permite explorar detenidamente los procesos de generación, circulación y gestión de conocimiento científico-tecnológico en un contexto particularmente convulso de la historia reciente de España, el final de la dictadura de Franco. Con un enfoque centrado en las relaciones entre los seres humanos y su entorno, el trabajo multidimensional de Rodríguez de la Fuente, como cetrero, naturalista, activista y comunicador, aportó un excepcional componente científico-técnico (...) a los procesos de transformación social, política y cultural de España en esos años. El objetivo de este trabajo es mostrar cómo este componente científico-técnico estaba frecuentemente ligado, y entre otros aspectos, a la definición y contextualización de España y su patrimonio natural tanto dentro de sus fronteras como en el escenario internacional. (shrink)

The use of private security companies by national governments is met with widespread skepticism. Less understood is the role these companies can play in international humanitarian interventions in the service of international organizations. I argue here that despite valid concerns about the use of such private entities, we should nonetheless see them as legitimate participants in efforts to secure human rights protection around the globe. In order to assess their legitimacy, we need to ensure, among other things, that they can (...) adhere to ethical standards when serving in humanitarian missions, that they can be held accountable when they fail to uphold the standard of justice enshrined in international law, and that their for-profit status does not have implications detrimental to humanitarian concerns. (shrink)

Data are lacking with regard to participants' perspectives on return of genetic research results to relatives, including after the participant's death. This paper reports descriptive results from 3,630 survey respondents: 464 participants in a pancreatic cancer biobank, 1,439 family registry participants, and 1,727 healthy individuals. Our findings indicate that most participants would feel obligated to share their results with blood relatives while alive and would want results to be shared with relatives after their death.

The aim of this paper is to describe and analyse the presence of Pascal’s thought in the work of the Spanish writer José Jiménez Lozano (1930-2020). In fact, it could be considered that this writer is almost a kind of Pascal come alive, especially in terms of understanding and experiencing Christianity, since, for both Pascal and Jiménez Lozano, the orientation of the human soul towards God is not only a part of the essence of man but also is his most (...) definitory anthropological constituent. (shrink)

En este artículo se analiza la ironía en el Viaje del Parnaso desde la perspectiva pragmalingüística. Tras una exposición resumida de los problemas literarios que ha generado la obra en cuestión, incluida casi unánimemente entre la poesía burlesca, se aplica la concepción lingüística a la estrategia empleada por Cervantes, haciendo hincapié en la ironía como elemento de la parodia y de la sátira y como procedimiento ecoico o polifónico. Se concluye la caracterización de la obra como ironía continuada inestable o (...) heurística, en la que se aprecian ciertos indicadores o marcas que permiten una adecuada interpretación de los tercetos cervantinos. Destacan entre estos indicadores o marcas las palabras de alerta, el eufemismo, los juegos de palabras y la modalización epistémica. This article analyzes the irony present in Viaje del Parnaso from a pragmalinguistic perspective. After a summarized explanation of the literary problems that the piece of work under consideration -which has almost unanimously been classified as burlesque poetry- has caused, linguistic conception has been applied to the strategy used by Cervantes, emphasizing the irony as an element of parody and satire as well as a polyphonic or echoic technique. Thus, this piece of work is classified as a continuous unstable or heuristic irony, in which some indicators or marks that enable an accurate interpretation of the Cervantine tercets are visible. Among these indicators or marks, alarm words, euphemisms, word plays and epistemic modalization stand out. (shrink)

ArgumentFranco's fascist regime in Spain offers the possibility of exploring the complex relationship between media communication practices and the processes of production, circulation, and management of knowledge. The regime persistently used film, and later on television, as indoctrination and disciplining devices. These media thus served to shape the regime's representation, which largely relied on the generation of positive attitudes of adherence to the rulers through people's submission and obedience to experts. This article examines the changing nature of modernization discourses and (...) practices, as a fundamental element of the regime's propaganda strategies, and as portrayed in documentaries produced under its rule. The rhetoric of modernization involved an explicit deficit model of knowledge management, which aimed at legitimating the regime's deeds and policies in its first decades, as we shall see regarding colonial-medical documentaries produced for the official newsreel in the 1940s. However, the focus of such rhetoric, despite its enduring political aims, had to somehow open up as the relationship between experts and non-experts changed, both in epistemological and practical terms, such as in wildlife documentary films produced for television in the 1970s, the regime's last decade. (shrink)

The perception of sensory effects generated by one’s own actions is typically attenuated compared to the same effects generated externally. However, it is unclear whether this specifically relates to self-generation. Recent studies showed that sensory attenuation mainly relies on action preparation, not actual action execution. Hence, an attenuation of sensory effects generated by another person might occur if these actions can be anticipated and thus be prepared for.Here, we compared the perceived loudness of sounds generated by one’s own actions and (...) actions of another person that either could or could not be anticipated. We found an attenuation of the perceived loudness for self- as compared to other-generated sounds. This difference was independent of whether the sound-eliciting actions of the other person could be anticipated or not. Thus, sensory attenuation seems to be specifically tied to self-generation instead of being a secondary effect of agent-independent preparation for an upcoming action. (shrink)

This book takes on current perspectives on transnationalism and children's relationships to media, childhood, and markets in converging global worlds. It introduces the idea of multi-sited imaginaries to explain how children's media and literacy performances shape and are shaped by shared visions of communities that we collectively imagine, including play, media, gender, family, school, or cultural worlds. It draws upon elements of ethnographies of globalization to examine the convergences of such imaginaries across multiple sites: early childhood and elementary classrooms and (...) communities in Puerto Rico and the Midwest United States. The analysis situates children's literacy and play practices in the intersections of local/global, rural/urban, Spanish/English/multilingual, and Latino multinational media/US multinational media, revealing how children use drama and pretense to relocate, take up, contest, and consume global media and consumer identities. (shrink)

Natural selection is an important force that shapes the evolution of all living things by determining which individuals contribute the most descendents to future generations. The biological unit upon which selection acts has been the subject of serious debate, with reasonable arguments made on behalf of populations, individuals, individual phenotypic characters and, finally, individual genes themselves. In this essay, I argue that the usual unit of selection is the gene. There are powerful logical arguments in favor of this conclusion, as (...) well as many real-world examples. I also explore the possibility that epigenetic differences between individuals may be heritable between generations. Although few such examples exist, epigenetic differences provide an exciting source of potentially heritable variation that may allow rapid evolutionary change to occur, perhaps in response to environmental influences. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Natural Selection Operates within Genomes without Regard for Phenotypic Effect Selective Forces, Heritable Variation, and the Definition of Function Natural Selection Can, and Does, Act on the Products of Individual Genes Natural Selection Can Act Directly on Genes Themselves What Are the Limitations on the Unit of Selection Being “the Gene”? The “Complexity” Argument: Do Complex Phenotypes Require Complex Explanations? Do “Epigenes/Epialleles” Provide a “Non‐genetic” Source of Heritable Variation Upon Which Natural Selection May Act? (...) Summary Points: The Usual Unit of Selection Is the Gene Postscript: Counterpoint Note References. (shrink)

Hunting ducks with a firearm has become increasingly contested in industrialized and urbanized contemporary societies. In southern New Zealand, an area that maintains strong connections to rural life ways, duck shooting is still a very popular activity. However, even duck shooters living in this region are increasingly finding that they must justify an activity their grandparents practiced without compunction. This paper considers ethical discourses associated with the killing of ducks, particularly the ways in which people who shoot ducks construct the (...) act of killing as an activity that can be ethically justified. As this paper will show, duck hunters assert that they have a more realistic and appropriate view of nature and animal life cycles than the average antihunter who might criticize them. New Zealand duck hunters also embed their hunting activities within a discourse of wetland conservation, arguing that they do far more to preserve and develop wetlands than do non-hunters. This paper concludes that duck hunters' understandings of nature are intrinsic to the ethical discourses that underpin duck hunting activities in New Zealand. (shrink)

The demonstrations of monks in Tibet and Myanmar in recent times as well as the age-old conflict between a predominantly Buddhist population and a Hindu minority in Sri Lanka raise the question of how the issues of human rights and Buddhism are related. The question applies both to the violation of basic rights in Buddhist countries and to the defence of those rights which are well-grounded in Buddhist teachings. The volume provides academic essays that reflect this up to now rather (...) neglected issue from the point of view of the three main Buddhist traditions, Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana. It provides multi-faceted and surprising insights into a rather unlikely relationship. (shrink)

What paths are taken by post-posi tiv ist so - cial the ory?. Be yond the three ba sic types of contemporarty the o ries stud ied in this pa per, the pre sup po si tions of which com bine struc ture and agent, the study of so ci ety in which ac knowl - edge ment of the prop er ties of dis tinct..

Dienes & Perner argue that the explicit representation of an individual to which a property is attributed requires explicit representation of the attributed property. The reasons for this conclusion are similar to the reasons why another of their conclusions may be considered suspect: A property may be explicit without an explicit representation of an individual or the predication of the property to an individual. We question the latter conclusion and draw connections to neurophysiological and cognitive evidence.