Psychological Arguments Research Articles

A comparative evaluation of dissimilarity-based and model-based clustering in science education research: the case of children's mental models of the Earth

In the present work, two different classification methods, a dissimilarity-based clustering approach (DBC) and the model-based latent class analysis (LCA), were used to analyse responses to a questionnaire designed to measure children's mental representation of the Earth. It contributes to an ongoing debate in cognitive psychology and science education research between two antagonistic theories on the nature of children's knowledge, that is, the coherent versus fragmented knowledge hypothesis. Methodology-wise the problem concerns the classification of response patterns into distinct clusters, which correspond to specific hypothesised mental models. DBC employs the partitioning around medoids (PAM) approach and selects the final cluster solution based on average silhouette width, cluster stability and interpretability. LCA, a model-based clustering method achieves a taxonomy by employing the conditional probabilities of responses. Initially, a brief presentation and comparison of the two methods is provided, while issues on clustering philosophies are discussed. Both PAM and LCA attained to detect merely the cluster which corresponds to the coherent scientific model and an artificial segment added on purpose in the empirical data. The two methods, despite the obvious deviations in cluster-membership assignment, finally provide sound findings as far as hypotheses tested, by converging to identical conclusions.

Biology and panpsychism: German evolutionists and a philosopher Theodor Ziehen (1862–1950)

Theodor Ziehen was a prominent German psychiatrist and psychologist and a marginal philosopher of the first half of the 20th century who developed an exotic subjective-idealistic theory based on quasi-empirical psychological arguments. Although Ziehen was seen by contemporaries (most prominently by Vladimir Lenin) as a representative of the same philosophical current (empirio-criticism) as Mach and Avenarius, he never achieved their prominence in the history of philosophy. At the same time, Ziehen’s philosophy became influential in German biology, first of all, due to his direct and very strong impact on Bernhard Rensch. Rensch, in his turn, was the most significant figure on the international scene of what is known as the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis in biology. Rensch was not the only biologist influenced by Ziehen’s ideas. Ziehen had some communication with the “German Darwin” Ernst Haeckel and played a prominent role in the concept of the founder of biological systematics Willi Hennig. How to explain Ziehen’s prominent place in the history of evolutionary biology, despite his obscurity in the history of philosophy? Our hypothesis is that Ziehen became a visible figure in evolutionary theory because of the monistic bias in German biology. Ziehen’s epistemology appeared to be compatible with evolutionary monism and was developed by a practicing psychiatrist therefore obtaining a character of a quasi-experimental doctrine.

Autonomy of independent professionals: A political process perspective

This article looks into the issue of autonomy, often portrayed as a key feature of modern work arrangements, in particular of Independent professionals (IPros). Given the absence of conclusive evidence in the current debate opposing structural and agency views on autonomy at work, we study how Ipros perform their job referring to three main analytical dimensions: formalization, verticality and openness. Our empirical material is composed of critical incidents reported by 37 executive coaches working in France. We show that IPros’ autonomy unfolds over a 3-phase process combining the three aforementioned dimensions of autonomy that we associate with power strategies. This combination therefore reflects a complex interaction between structural and agentic factors, paving the way for a political process perspective on autonomy. Therefore, our paper advocates combining rather than opposing structural and agentic views on autonomy, and also expands the traditional agentic view of IPros’ autonomy beyond the dominant psychological argument.

No Replication, No Trust? How Low Replicability Influences Trust in Psychology

In the current psychological debate, low replicability of psychological findings is a central topic. While the discussion about the replication crisis has a huge impact on psychological research, we know less about how it impacts public trust in psychology. In this article, we examine whether low replicability damages public trust and how this damage can be repaired. Studies 1–3 provide correlational and experimental evidence that low replicability reduces public trust in psychology. Additionally, Studies 3–5 evaluate the effectiveness of commonly used trust-repair strategies such as information about increased transparency (Study 3), explanations for low replicability (Study 4), or recovered replicability (Study 5). We found no evidence that these strategies significantly repair trust. However, it remains possible that they have small but potentially meaningful effects, which could be detected with larger samples. Overall, our studies highlight the importance of replicability for public trust in psychology.

Understanding Assimilation-contrast Effects in Online Rating Systems

“Unbiasedness,” which is an important property to ensure that users’ ratings indeed reflect their true evaluations of products, is vital both in shaping consumer purchase decisions and providing reliable recommendations in online rating systems. Recent experimental studies showed that distortions from historical ratings would ruin the unbiasedness of subsequent ratings. How to “discover” historical distortions in each single rating (or at the micro-level), and perform the “debiasing operations” are our main objective. Using 42M real customer ratings, we first show that users either “assimilate” or “contrast” to historical ratings under different scenarios, which can be further explained by a well-known psychological argument: the “Assimilate-Contrast” theory. This motivates us to propose the Historical Influence Aware Latent Factor Model (HIALF), the “first” model for real rating systems to capture and mitigate historical distortions in each single rating. HIALF allows us to study the influence patterns of historical ratings from a modelling perspective, which perfectly matches the assimilation and contrast effects observed in experiments. Moreover, HIALF achieves significant improvements in predicting subsequent ratings and characterizing relationships in ratings. It also contributes to better recommendations, wiser consumer purchase decisions, and deeper understanding of historical distortions in both honest rating and misbehaving rating settings.

The Return of the Repressed: The Persistent and Problematic Claims of Long-Forgotten Trauma

Can purely psychological trauma lead to a complete blockage of autobiographical memories? This long-standing question about the existence of repressed memories has been at the heart of one of the most heated debates in modern psychology. These so-called memory wars originated in the 1990s, and many scholars have assumed that they are over. We demonstrate that this assumption is incorrect and that the controversial issue of repressed memories is alive and well and may even be on the rise. We review converging research and data from legal cases indicating that the topic of repressed memories remains active in clinical, legal, and academic settings. We show that the belief in repressed memories occurs on a nontrivial scale (58%) and appears to have increased among clinical psychologists since the 1990s. We also demonstrate that the scientifically controversial concept of dissociative amnesia, which we argue is a substitute term for memory repression, has gained in popularity. Finally, we review work on the adverse side effects of certain psychotherapeutic techniques, some of which may be linked to the recovery of repressed memories. The memory wars have not vanished. They have continued to endure and contribute to potentially damaging consequences in clinical, legal, and academic contexts.

You should go for diversity, but I'd rather stay with similar others: Social distance modulates the preference for diversity

Organizations often state that they value diversity. The workforce, however, is often quite homogeneous, reflecting a striking mismatch between aspirations and reality. Based on the distinction between desirability and feasibility concerns, we provide a psychological argument for this mismatch. We hypothesize that social distance influences individuals' choices regarding diversity. When being socially more distant, individuals prefer to assemble a diverse team, due to a stronger impact of pro-diversity desirability concerns. In contrast, when being socially close, individuals prefer similar team members, due to a stronger weighing of anti-diversity feasibility concerns. Four studies investigate the different decision outcomes when being socially distant compared to close. Study 1 shows that working in a diverse group is perceived as desirable, but less feasible. Study 2 investigates the impact of psychological distance on individuals' choices of working with a more different (when being socially distant) or similar partner (when being socially close). Study 3 shows that participants created a more diverse team for another person (distance condition) than for themselves (proximity condition). In Study 4, participants did not create a more diverse group for a stranger (distance condition) than for a friend (adjusted proximity condition), however, participants weighted feasibility concerns less strongly for strangers than for friends. Implications for diversity research and practice are discussed.

Go local or go global: how local brands promote buying impulsivity

PurposeUsing food brands as a case in point, the purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between a local vs global brand positioning strategy and buying impulsivity, as well as the mediating role of construal level. The findings add a psychological argument to the array of reasons for firms to opt for a local instead of a global brand positioning strategy: local food brands promote higher levels of buying impulsivity than global brands by lowering consumers’ level of construal.Design/methodology/approachFive experiments use student and nonstudent samples, different construal level indices and generic and brand-specific buying impulsivity measures to test the hypotheses.FindingsLocal food brands promote higher levels of buying impulsivity than global brands by lowering consumers’ level of construal. Because local brands are proximal to consumers’ lifestyles, values, preferences and behaviors, they decrease the psychological distance between the brand and the consumer, compared with global brands. The smaller psychological distance lowers consumers’ construal level and renders the immediate, concrete, appetitive attributes of the product more salient, thus making consumers more prone to impulsively buy a local brand than a global one.Practical implicationsFor the choice between a global or local brand positioning strategy, this paper argues in favor of the latter. Local (food) branding is a concrete brand positioning mechanism that can influence and benefit from consumers’ buying impulsivity.Originality/valueThe research reveals heretofore unknown but important implications of local vs global brand positioning strategies for consumers’ construal level and buying impulsivity.

The dual nature of partisan prejudice: Morality and identity in a multiparty system.

Rising hostility between members of opposing political factions has gained considerable attention in both academic and popular press. The adverse effects of this phenomenon are widely recognized, but its psychological antecedents remain the focus of ongoing debate in political psychology. Past research has honed in on two conflicting explanations: one highlights the extent to which people self-define as supporters of particular parties or candidates (the identity view), and another points toward the intensity with which they disagree on substantive matters of policy (the issues view). A nationally representative survey of 1051 eligible Spanish voters yielded support for both explanations. The perceived magnitude and nature of disagreement were associated with increased partisan prejudice, while controlling for partisan identification. Path analyses revealed that issue-based prejudice was more pronounced among ideologically extreme agents (β = 0.237, 95% CI [0.174, 0.300]) than toward extreme targets (β = 0.140, 95% CI [0.078, 0.201]), and replicated recent findings that identity-based prejudice is motivated primarily by non-instrumental factors (β = 0.286, 95% CI [0.230, 0.337]). Together, these results indicate that discrimination across party lines responds to two fundamentally distinct, though at times co-occurring, imperatives: to coalesce in ideologically homogeneous communities, and to protect one’s sense of partisan identity.

Youth Participation in Psychological Literature: A Semantic Analysis of Scholarly Publications in the PsycInfo Database.

The topic of youth participation in the public sphere has received increasing attention within recent psychological research. The literature remains somewhat fragmented between different conceptualizations varying in their specificity or broadness. The present study aims to map the current state of debate in psychology regarding youth civic and political participation and to identify the prevalent themes that characterize the research in the discipline from 1990 to 2016. A semantic content analysis with the software T-Lab was performed on a corpus of 1,777 publications retrieved from the PsycInfo database. The results highlight the increasing number of academic contributions on the topic, confirming the growing importance of the issue within psychology. The study sheds light on the spheres of participation, in which the discipline has attempted to make a contribution, namely: traditional and online political context, institutional civic education, adolescent development, and rights-based activism. Moreover, the findings reveal the existing opposing priorities of research that focus either on the explanation of specific forms of involvement or on the formation of future citizens. Within the thematic attention to young people’s civic and political development, there seem to be two general approaches that see youth in divergent ways: as citizens whose civic capacities are to be fostered or as targets for top-down training interventions. This systematic thematic review calls attention to the disparate ways in which youth participation is being addressed in psychology and highlights the need for greater theoretical integration in the field of study.

La apropiación de la educación virtual por parte de los colectivos sociales: las nuevas relaciones entre la tecnología, el conocimiento, y lo social

A apropriação da educação virtual por parte dos coletivos sociais: as novas relações entre a tecnologia, o conhecimento e o social
 RESUMO. As novas "crises educacionais" não têm apenas como ponto de partida os debates em filosofia e psicologia (conhecimento), política, poder e pedagogia (aprendizagem), ou dentro das ciências sociais e tecnológicas. (tecnologia e sociedade), mas surgem das profundas mudanças nas formas de interação entre os seres humanos em certos espaços sociais complexos e multifacetados. É cada vez mais evidente que os desafios educacionais do futuro não são ditados pelas instituições educacionais, mas por diversos grupos sociais e como eles se apropriam de seus próprios conceitos, formas e objetivos educacionais. O que aprender, como fazer e por que fazer são perguntas que surgem agora dos grupos sociais em transformação e não dos estados que as governam. Assim, a educação virtual é a modalidade educacional com maiores possibilidades de se tornar o modelo que melhor responde às necessidades desses grupos. Este artigo pretende sugerir quais são os pontos de encontro entre o modelo educacional virtual e a forma de interação utilizada pelos novos grupos que motivarão o panorama educacional do futuro.
 Palavras-chave: Congresso, Pedagogia, Coletivo Social, Educação Virtual.
 
 La apropiación de la educación virtual por parte de los colectivos sociales: las nuevas relaciones entre la tecnología, el conocimiento, y lo social
 RESUMEN. Las nuevas “crisis educativas” no solo tienen como punto de partida los debates a lo interno de la filosofía y la psicología (conocimiento), la política, el poder y la pedagogía (aprendizaje), o a lo interno de las ciencias sociales y la tecnología (tecnología y sociedad), sino que surgen de los profundos cambios en las formas de interacción entre los seres humanos en determinados espacios sociales multifacéticos y complejos. Es cada vez más evidente que los retos educativos del futuro no son dictados por las instituciones educativas, sino por los colectivos sociales diversos y cómo ellos se apropian de sus propios conceptos, formas y objetivos educativos. Qué aprender, cómo hacerlo y para qué hacerlo son preguntas que surgen ahora de los grupos sociales en transformación y no desde los estados que los gobiernan. Así las cosas, es la educación virtual la modalidad educativa con mayores posibilidades de llegar a ser el modelo que mejor responde a las necesidades de dichos colectivos. Este trabajo pretende sugerir cuáles son los puntos de encuentro entre el modelo educativo virtual y la forma de interacción utilizada por los nuevos colectivos que motivará el panorama educativo del futuro.
 Palabras clave: Congreso, Pedagogía, Colectivo Social, Educación Virtual.
 
 The appropriation of virtual education by social collectives: the new relations between technology, knowledge and social 
 ABSTRACT. The so-called “educational crises” do not only surge from the internal debates in philosophy and psychology (knowledge), politics, power and pedagogy (learning), or inside the social sciences and the advance of technology (technology and society), but also these crises originate from the deep changes in the ways in which human beings interact within determined complex and multifaceted social spaces. It has become evident that future educational challenges are not defined by educational institutions, but by diverse social groups, and by how they dictate their own concepts, forms and educational objectives. What to learn, how to do it and why do it are all questions that find their answers within the social groups that have themselves been adapting, and not from the governmental institutions. Therefore, virtual education has big possibilities of becoming the modality that could best fit the needs of these groups. This work points to the intersection between virtual education and the way in which social groups interact and that will modify the educational scenes of the future.
 Keywords: Conference, Pedagogy, Online Education, Social Collectives.

Moral motivation in early 18th century moral rationalism

AbstractIn the modern debate in metaethics and moral psychology, moral rationalism is often presented as a view that cannot account for the intimate relation between moral behaviour on one hand and feelings, emotions, or desires on the other. Although there is no lack of references to the classic rationalists of the 18th century in the relevant discussions, the works of these writers are rarely ever examined detail. Yet, as the debate in Kant scholarship between “intellectualists” and “affectivists” impressively shows, a more thorough analysis of what the classic rationalists actually have to say about moral motivation is suited to cast serious doubts on the idea that moral rationalism must crucially neglect the affective–conative side of human psychology. The aim of this paper is to analyse the conceptions of moral motivation that were embraced by Kant's rationalist predecessors—Clarke, Wolff, Burnet, Balguy, and Price—which have not attracted a similar amount of attention by specialists so far. The claim I will defend is that none of those early rationalists actually embraces the motivational thesis that is often taken to be characteristic of moral rationalism, a thesis I shall refer to as strong rationalism about (moral) motivation.

Predicting criminality with social perspective taking, attachment relationship, anger, impulsivity and depression

Summary Criminality and what turns a person into a criminal has been a moral, legal and psychological debate. Existing literature has been faithful with exploring different sides to the nature of criminality, either by tracking criminals’ history of personal experiences or investigating their brain functions. In a different approach, this paper administers a behavioral perspective to studying the criminal tendency of human beings by processing scales that are strictly unidimensional in order to predict a criminal's number of crimes committed and severity of such crimes. The researchers argue that approaches to criminality through personal history is fundamentally flawed because an abstract variable such as a person's past is impossible to be randomized, quantified, and measured ethically. By creating and measuring six psychological and behavioral factors (social perspective-taking (intelligence stage), attachment relationship, anger, impulsivity , depression, and lying tendency) with unidimensional scales, the researchers were able to identify current factors and interactions between factors that are able to predict a criminal's counts and severity with a reliable strength ( r = 0.819 and r = 0.993).

Analyzing debunking arguments in moral psychology: Beyond the counterfactual analysis of influence by irrelevant factors.

May assumes that if moral beliefs are counterfactually dependent on irrelevant factors, then those moral beliefs are based on defective belief-forming processes. This assumption is false. Whether influence by irrelevant factors is debunking depends on the mechanisms through which this influence occurs. This raises the empirical bar for debunkers and helps May avoid an objection to his Debunker's Dilemma.

The Sexual Diversity Debate in Brazilian Psychology: Professional Regulation at Stake

Abstract So-called “sexual reorientation therapies” represent a challenge to the scientific and professional development of Psychology, and to the exercise and free expression of sexual orientation as a human right. Since 1999 the Brazilian Federal Council of Psychology (CFP) has implemented a ban against the pathologization of homosexuality. The validity of that normative instrument, known as Resolution 01/99, has been contested by moral entrepreneurs within the profession, self-identified as Evangelical Christians, who pose a broader challenge to Psychology, standing as a secular, science-based profession. The controversy created by the challenge to CFP’s positions on homosexuality and on religion extrapolates the domain of Psychology and its regulation as a science and profession, and becomes one more dispute related to sexual politics in Brazil. In this paper we explore the process by which sexual diversity has become a contentious issue for Brazilian Psychology, affecting the politics and regulation of the profession.

Arguments for European Disintegration: A Mobilization Analysis of Anti‐Immigration Speeches by U.K. Political Leaders

In this article, we develop a mobilization analysis of contemporary antagonism to immigrants. We argue that such antagonism does not arise spontaneously from the cognitions of ordinary people but is mobilized by political actors. This leads us to ask why politicians mobilize such antagonisms and how they do so. Our analysis, illustrated by set piece speeches on immigration by the four main U.K. party political leaders in the period prior to the 2015 elections, suggests (1) that while these speeches are ostensibly about an intergroup issue, they equally serve intragroup dynamics, notably demonstrating how the speaker serves national interests and hence qualifies to serve as a national representative; (2) the way that speakers mobilize antagonism to immigrants is through construing a variety of forms of threat: spatial threat, economic threat, security threat, and diversity threat. We focus particularly on the last of these because of the ways in which it invokes social psychological arguments and hence speaks in our name. We conclude by raising issues of accountability—both of politicians and social psychologists—regarding the way we talk about immigration.

What Can Philosophers Learn from Psychopathy?

Many spectacular claims about psychopaths are circulated. This contribution aims at providing the reader with the more complex reality of the phenomenon (or phenomena), and to point to issues of particular interest to philosophers working in moral psychology and moral theory. I first discuss the current evidence regarding psychopaths’ deficient empathy and decision-making skills. I then explore what difference it makes to our thinking whether we regard their deficit dimensionally (as involving abilities that are on or off) and whether we focus on primary or secondary psychopathy. My conclusion is that most grand claims about psychopathy settling long-standing debates in moral philosophy and psychology are overblown, but there is much to be learnt from this disorder when it comes to formulating modern theories of moral psychology.

Retrospective attribution of false beliefs in 3-year-old children

A current debate in psychology and cognitive science concerns the nature of young children's ability to attribute and track others' beliefs. Beliefs can be attributed in at least two different ways: prospectively, during the observation of belief-inducing situations, and in a retrospective manner, based on episodic retrieval of the details of the events that brought about the beliefs. We developed a task in which only retrospective attribution, but not prospective belief tracking, would allow children to correctly infer that someone had a false belief. Eighteen- and 36-month-old children observed a displacement event, which was witnessed by a person wearing sunglasses (Experiment 1). Having later discovered that the sunglasses were opaque, 36-month-olds correctly inferred that the person must have formed a false belief about the location of the objects and used this inference in resolving her referential expressions. They successfully performed retrospective revision in the opposite direction as well, correcting a mistakenly attributed false belief when this was necessary (Experiment 3). Thus, children can compute beliefs retrospectively, based on episodic memories, well before they pass explicit false-belief tasks. Eighteen-month-olds failed in such a task, suggesting that they cannot retrospectively attribute beliefs or revise their initial belief attributions. However, an additional experiment provided evidence for prospective tracking of false beliefs in 18-month-olds (Experiment 2). Beyond identifying two different modes for tracking and updating others' mental states early in development, these results also provide clear evidence of episodic memory retrieval in young children.

Psychological Determinants of Changing Industries after Entrepreneurial Failure

This paper advances a psychological argument that extends explanations of entrepreneurs¡¯ response to failure. We explored narcissistic personality as a mechanism to understand why some entrepreneurs change industries after failure even though the cost of doing so might be high. Using both quantitative and qualitative data on entrepreneurs who had experienced failure in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen in China, we found that narcissism had a positive relationship with industry change, consistent with the research finding that narcissists often do not learn from failure. We further observed that other-referent counterfactual thinking mediated the relationship between narcissism and industry change. We suggest that although narcissistic personality is not easy to change, entrepreneurs can change the way they think to control the negative impact of narcissism and to take advantage of their failure experience. Our results shed light on the studies of entrepreneurial failure.

PSYCHOLOGICAL SUPPORT TO STUDENTS IN COMPETITIVE ACADEMIC ENVIRONMENT (ADAPTATION PROBLEM)

The article analyzes theoretical bases of adaptation of students to study in higher education and the peculiarities of the process. Adaptation is understood as a process of adaptation to environmental changes and it is one of the most important issues of general and still is the traditional subject of debate in psychology. Adaptation is the change itself (attitudes, character traits, behavior, etc.) in accordance to activity, social conditions and new environment. It is entering a new social position and a new system of relationships. Psychological adjustment associated with the receiving of a new student social position and mastering new social role of «student». Psychological and pedagogical factors of this adaptation, attempts to develop specific recommendations on the provision of first — year students help in adapting to the new conditions of life, psychological support for students affected by negative competitive behavior among students are described. Attention is paid to the activities of the curator, because curator’s work is to create favorable conditions for the formation and training support, an atmosphere of trust and mutual aid. In the context of globalization is steadily growing rivalry between the people and the struggle to achieve the best results. Relevance is prevalent for the student environment. However, a number of circumstances it can take a destructive direction and negative affect on relations and training students. The negative characteristic of the rivalry is a testament of the relevance of problem which related to competitive behavior and requires activation of psychologists. So in modern society the problem of adaptation is extremely important for individual.