Long-standing Beliefs Research Articles

'The Trustworthy Agency of the Eyes': Reading Images of Music and Madness in Historical Context

peutic remedy within psychiatric institutions appear in the popular British and American press and also in Australia and New Zealand from the 1850s until the 1940s, and what they actually represent regarding cultural beliefs concerning madness and music as medicine over time. I look at how the press understood and represented music as therapeutic to the community, and examine how historians of psychiatry have read these images in recent historiography. I also consider why there has been a resurgence of the use of these images most recently by professional groups in commissioned commemorative histories about the asylum. These Australian and New Zealand images need to be understood within their Western context, and I investigate how these images reflect medical, musical, moral, and cultural understandings of music as medicine. Nothing has been written on how long-standing cultural beliefs about music as medicinal underpin the representations of the asylum ball in the press. Images of music-making and madness reinforce popular community beliefs that music has the power not only to 'soothe the savage breast' but also to trigger aggression and violence. This belief, which appears in nineteenthand twentieth-century medical tracts about the ideal treatment and care of the mentally ill within institutions, has not been explored in Western historiographical debates. Furthermore, the recognition, development, and professionalisation of, what were initially combined but later separate, therapeutic treatments including occupational, art and music therapies during the twentieth century point to a real belief in the potential therapeutic benefit of music within

Validating Key Results Linkages in the Baldrige Performance Excellence Model

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Criteria for Performance Excellence represent a framework for high-performance management systems. Although the criteria have evolved based on the collective wisdom of quality experts and management practitioners throughout the United States, little empirical research has been performed to validate the criteria and its core concepts and values. One of the key linkages in the criteria is the relationship between external results and internal performance metrics, which reflect the processes and management systems that drive results in an organization. The authors use a large empirical data set to explore these linkages, and apply canonical correlation to uncover significant relationships between variables, such as between employee satisfaction and process performance, and between work system improvement and productivity. These results: 1) validate some of the key linkages; 2) support long-standing beliefs and anecdotal evidence by practitioners of the relationships among endogenous and exogenous results for business performance; and 3) lend credibility to causal hypotheses that improving internal management practices leads to improvements in external results. As such, they provide new evidence of the validity of the Baldrige model and its examination/self-assessment process that seeks to validate strong business results as an outcome of high-performance management practices.

The Virgin Mary against the Jews: Anti-Jewish Polemic in the Pilgrimage to the Schöne Maria of Regensburg, 1519-25

This paper examines the propaganda and polemic surrounding the pilgrimage to the Schone Maria of Regensburg, exploring the connections between the anti-Jewish violence that precipitated the pilgrimage and the intense devotionalism to the Virgin Mary that characterized it. Founded on the ruins of the city's Jewish synagogue in 1519, the pilgrimage to Schone Maria stands in a long line of Marian pilgrimage sites associated with anti-Jewish violence. Contemporary writings both celebrating and condemning the pilgrimage drew heavily on long-standing beliefs that demonized the Jews, suggesting a link in the popular imagination between anti-Jewish violence and Marian devotionalism. The association of the diabolic influence of the Jews over the site and the purifying revelation of the Virgin Mary's power there sheds light on popular Christian understandings of the role of the Virgin Mary in human salvation and the interaction of the divine and the profane in the creation of sacred space.

From the Feds: Research, programs, and products

From the Feds: Research, programs, and products

A State of Minds: Toward a Human Capital Future for Canadians

From the Publisher: What happens when the world changes in ways that make Canada's physical capital, natural resources and geography - once the ultimate competitive advantages - less important than knowledge, information, technological know-how and human capital? What happens to Canadians? In A State of Minds, Tom Courchene examines the political structures that link local, provincial and federal governments and challenges many longstanding beliefs about how society should be organized and financed. While focusing on Canadian competitiveness in a global economy, Courchene shows us how an open federal state like Canada can achieve both economic prosperity and social justice.

Rethinking the Relationships between Sport and Race in American Culture: Golden Ghettos and Contested Terrain

This article proposes a new way of thinking about the relationships between sport and race in the U.S. It is critical of sport’s racial form and function but does not overlook its unique and potentially progressive characteristics. This theoretical framework is generated through an extended review and critique of longstanding popular beliefs and post-1970s scholarly critiques thereof. It draws most heavily from the latter but also argues that academic critics have been too quick to dismiss the opportunities for racial resistance and change available through sport and, thus, failed to grasp the full extent to which sport is implicated in American racial formations. In contrast, sport is portrayed as a “contested racial terrain.” This formulation, in combination with the “golden ghetto” metaphor, not only conveys the complexity of racial dynamics in sport but also reveals the broad public significance of sport in a racialized culture.

The Myth of Old Money Liberalism: The Politics of the "Forbes" 400 Richest Americans

According to the conventional view, old money is more liberal than new money. Although widely shared, this thesis of old money liberalism has never been demonstrated empirically. In this paper, I discuss the origins and elaboration of this thesis within the social science literature. I then present evidence to refute the thesis from a study of the politics of the Forbes 400 richest Americans and several similar samples of wealthy persons drawn from earlier decades. The results of this study show that old money is, if anything, more uniformly conservative than new money. The paper also reviews the explanations commonly given for the reputed liberalism of old money and argues that the acceptance of the thesis is based less on the persuasiveness of these arguments than upon longstanding beliefs about old and new wealth that are invoked by the theory. In the conclusion, I sketch an alternative theory of the political differences between old and new money that is more consistent with the empirical evidence.

Timing of Convertible Debt Issues

The popularity of convertible debt as a financing vehicle waxes and wanes. In this article, we investigate whether the timing of convertible debt issues can be explained by three reported reasons for its use as a financing vehicle. Specifically, we reexamine the long-standing beliefs that convertibles are used as “debt sweeteners” and there are “hot issue” markets for these securities. In addition, we examine whether convertibles help diminish the agency conflict between bondholders and stockholders as suggested by Brennan and Schwartz (1988). Our empirical results suggest that: (1) corporate managers issue convertible debt as debt sweeteners and (2) more convertible debt is issued in hot markets.

Deep Structure in Community Cultures: The Revival of Religious Orders in Roman Catholicism

Recent research in organizational culture has emphasized in-depth analyses of the underlying processes of cultural sensemaking' and, especially, of the influence of an organization's larger sociocultural environment in these processes. The present study investigates the 'deep structure of the ideologies adopted by newly-fownded Roman Catholic religious communities - groups which have self-consciously attempted to revive the long-standing tradition of relgious virtuosity in that church. Despite their avowedly revivalistic goals, the groups' reconstructed cultures differ from that of their traditional models in subtle but important ways. In the past decade, a new school of organizational theory has been developed in sociology, one which focuses on organizational culture. Influenced by anthropologists such as Clifford Geertz (1973) and Anthony Wallace (1956), researchers in this tradition have moved from thin description of specific organizational practices to thick description of the meanings which underlie these practices (Geertz 1973: 7). An organization's culture serves as its root metaphor, the mutually-constructed cognitive patterns and taken-for-granted values which its members create to define and give meaning to their activities together (Weick 1995). Recently, critics have pointed out a key defect of the literature on organizational culture. Insufficient attention has been paid to the interaction between the organization's specific cultural elements and those of the larger environment in which it is embedded (Alvesson 1993: 78-79; Friedland and Alford 1991). Such an omission is especially deleterious when there are fundamental conflicts between the organization's professed norms or beliefs and those of the surrounding society (Martin 1992: 86). No organization can long ignore such discrepancies. It may react to them by constructing totally new cultural elements, but it may also subtly modify its longstanding and traditional beliefs or practices. Previous organizational literature, to the extent that it considered environmental influences at all, has primarily described the new elements within an organization's culture, rather than studying the more subtle changes in it changes of which the organization's members may not even be aware (Alvesson 1993: 79).

Images, Words, and Questions: Variables That Influence Beliefs about Vision in Children and Adults

In three studies we used animated computer graphics to examine beliefs among children and adults that vision involved input to the eyes (the intromission theory) or emissions from the eye (the extramission theory). Results supported previous findings which showed a decrease in extramission and an increase in intromission responses across age. The findings also indicated that there were more extramission interpretations when subjects were tested with graphic images, and more intromission interpretations when the questioning was purely verbal. However, the magnitude of the effect was highly dependent upon question format. The differences between graphic and verbal question presentations (A) are consistent with our theory on the origins of extramission beliefs, (B) suggest that beliefs can vary as a function of form of symbolization, and (C) are contrary to long-standing beliefs of educators and psychologists that emphasize the importance of concrete, pictorial representation.

Who Ever Said Studying Art Would Be Easy? The Growing Cognitive Demands of Understanding Works of Art in the Information Age

The impact of the information age on teaching and learning in the arts has been largely ignored by researchers in art education. As with other fields of study, arts disciplines are rapidly expanding-generating a vast body of new works for students to study and comprehend. The proliferation of new art knowledge (including works of art and art scholarship) along with existing art content, dramatically increases the heavy demands already placed on art teachers and students. The cognitive and curricular consequences of this change are questioned in this paper. Special attention is paid to discussing facets of art cognition and the contextual conditions that surround the study of artwork. Finally, recommendations are offered to guide the direction of future research on art learning and curriculum development. Understanding the arts-or anything for that matter-is more demanding today than ever before due to the staggering volume of new material to teach and learn about. Existing and emerging computer technologies offer exciting opportunities for reconceptualizing educational experiences in the arts and other disciplines. However, technological advances also can inhibit understanding by speeding the production and delivery of new information and knowledge at an incomprehensible rate. Few art educators are prepared to cope with the challenges brought on by the information age because we have not fully considered the cognitive consequences of our curricula and teaching practices. We have not adequately examined how current practices help or hinder our students' success in comprehending art content, let alone the growing magnitude of what will soon exist to be learned about the arts. My purpose in writing this paper is to focus on these issues by discussing research on learning and art cognition and by questioning long-standing beliefs about professional practice (curriculum decision-making most especially). Why question art learning in the information age? There are many reasons why it is interesting and important for art educators to take a hard look at the cognitive demands of learning today and to anticipate what the future may bring. We should be cognizant of the fact that as each day passes, there are more works of art-old and new-to teach and learn about.

Beyond the Promised Land: Jews and Arabs on a Hard Road to a New Israel

Details the last seven turbulent years of civil unrest, political unheaval and diplomatic crisis in Israel, in which many of the long-standing assumptions, beliefs and practices that lay at the heart of Israeli society, were challenged and ultimately swept aside or remade.

Can Meta-Analysis Make Feminist Transformations In Psychology?

Meta-analysis is a statistical method for literature reviewing. Metaanalyses of gender differences in verbal ability, spatial ability, mathematics performance, helping behavior, and sexuality illustrate the ways in which this technique can illuminate research on gender differences. Meta-analysis can make feminist transformations in psychology by: (a) challenging long-standing beliefs in gender differences, (b) demonstrating the extent to which gendered behavior is context-dependent and the product of gender roles, (c) examining the intersection between gender and race/ethnicity, and (d) providing powerful data to counter assertions of difference and female inferiority that proliferate in the popular media.

HOSPITAL PSYCHIATRIC UNITS: Nonsmoking Policies

Establishing nonsmoking policies in hospitals--even on acute psychiatric units--requires patience, planning, and a bit of nerve. The benefits of such a move, however, can be significant for patients and staff. When Vancouver General Hospital implemented a complete indoor nonsmoking policy on its psychiatric assessment and inpatient psychiatry units, workplace conditions noticeably improved, and some long-standing beliefs about psychiatric patients were disproved. Several conditions provided the impetus to change to a nonsmoking policy. With a few exceptions (palliative care, the burn unit) the indoor areas were nonsmoking; nevertheless, the hospital environmental committee considered a site-wide (indoor and outdoor) ban on smoking. One reason was that the community funding that had provided psychiatric patients with cigarettes would soon be cut off. Another reason was that all psychiatry units were anticipating moving into the new hospital tower--a facility slated to be smoke-free--on its completion.

Mutational analysis of protein stability: Current Opinion in Structural Biology 1991, 1:17–21

The ability to obtain mutant proteins almost at will, and to subject such variants to detailed structural, thermodynamic and theoretical analyses, is now making it possible to test, in a systematic way, the many longstanding beliefs and prejudices concerning the folding and stability of proteins.

Beliefs about aids, health, and illness among low‐income latina women

The purposes of this study were to describe (a) the health beliefs of Latina women about acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS); and (b) the relationship of these beliefs to the subjects' traditional beliefs about illness and its treatment. The sample consisted of 59 low-income Latina women attending nutrition programs in Los Angeles. A qualitative approach was used to gather the data in semi-structured focus group interviews. Content analysis was used to classify data according to causes of AIDS and prevention and treatment of AIDS. Causes of AIDS included all of the current biomedical and public health explanations of transmission, current popular beliefs and misconceptions about transmission, and long-standing traditional beliefs about the causes of illness. Prevention and treatment of AIDS reflected these same three perspectives. The women's beliefs consisted of accurate, inaccurate, and incomplete information about AIDS. Implications were drawn from the findings for AIDS education and prevention programs which are congruent with the participants' cultural beliefs, values, attitudes, and expectations.

Substance Abuse and Public Policy

This article assesses the American effort to control and eradicate substance abuse and drug trafficking. Five drug control strategies-foreign crop eradication, border interdiction, deterrence, treatment, and prevention-are evaluated. In each area, the basic programs and their effectiveness are described. The authors conclude that U.S. policy is misdirected, dominated by long-standing and insupportable beliefs about the effectiveness of supply-side interventions such as eradication and interdiction.

Effects of Age on Testicular Function

Although frequency of sexual activity declines dramatically with age, most investigators have been able to define rather small physiologic function (hormonal and spermatogenic) changes with advancing age. Despite the development of subtle intrinsic age-related defects at all levels of the hypothalamic-pituitary-testicular axis, reproductive capacity is maintained in healthy elderly men.

Demographic correlates of fatigue in a university family health centre.

To delineate the demographic correlates of the fatigued patient, 297 patients attending a family practice centre were investigated. Women were more frequently tired than were men; patients with less than a college education were over-represented, and employed persons were more robust than the unemployed. Fatigue was also associated with lack of exercise, nightly wakening and the presence of children less than six years old in the household. There were no significant relationships between fatigue and age, smoking or 'reducing' diets. The results of the study shed new light on the correlates of fatigue and confirmed some long-standing beliefs.

Sexuality During the Menopause

Although the evidence is not conclusive, overall many sexual changes seem to occur in the climacteric years. It would be easy to propagate and perpetuate longstanding beliefs and myths that would do a great disservice to all of the women to whom our care is dedicated. In the coming years it is hoped that we shall learn more about how to understand these changes. In recent years the International Menopause Society has actively encouraged work in this area. An entire issue of its journal Maturitas is devoted to a series of scientific papers on sexuality in the climacteric years. For those who desire further reading that issue is strongly recommended. All medical professionals who come into contact with women during the climacteric years should be prepared to ask about sexuality and to deal with any concerns that arise. Taking a good sexual history along with a good general medical history and full social background is the best starting point for coping with these concerns. How to take a comprehensive sexual history is well described by Munjack and Oziel. Of course, it is not usual to take this full history on every woman with menopause symptoms. A few key questions should identify the woman who has sexual problems and facilitate selection of appropriate questioning for each patient (Table 2). Often, taking such a history allows the physician to identify a problem area that may be helped by medication or, more often, by education and simple office counseling. When it is clear that these simple approaches will not be adequate, the physician should have good resources for referral to the appropriate specialist, whether it be gynecologist, menopause center, psychologist, family therapist, or sex therapist.