Problematic Tendencies Research Articles

Strong and Weak Theories of Capacity: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Disability, and Contemporary Capacity Theorizing

Abstract This article puts forward two ways of understanding capacity: strong and weak theories. The strong theory of capacity self-evidently connects capacity with ideal humanity or pedestalizes it as an analytic concept, while the weak theory of capacity allows space for interpretations about life unfolding without murmurings about capacity. By considering capacity in a way that distinguishes these two theories, the article contributes to contemporary thinking in which capacity has emerged as a key concept. My perspective draws on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s ideas about strong and weak theories and is further influenced by methodological issues raised by disability studies scholars. I first recall Sedgwick’s ideas about strong theories, after which I focus on how capacity assumptions operate in Silvan Tomkins’ work, which has had an important impact on Sedgwick. I then identify two recent contributions in disability studies in the area of capacity-themed theorizing. I interrogate the ways in which these contributions share the habits of the strong theory and how they escape its problematic tendencies. Toward the end of the article, I outline how the weak theory of capacity could contribute new perspectives to the contemporary discussion.

Bias Cuts and Data Dumps

Bias Cuts and Data Dumps

Smartphone and social network addiction in early adolescents: The role of self-regulatory self-efficacy in a pilot school-based intervention.

Youths' online problematic behaviors, such as smartphone or social network sites (SNS) addiction, gained increasing attention nowadays, due to their impact on concurrent and later adjustment, such as emotional and/or behavioral problems, academic impairments, or relational issues. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of a pilot school-based intervention to contrast online addictive behaviors while fostering adolescents' self-regulative abilities. The intervention started in January 2022 in an Italian junior high school located in Rome, and consisted of four meetings with students. A total sample of 462 15-year-old adolescents (Mage = 15.2; SD = 0.50; 41% females; Ncontrol = 214; Nintervention = 248) was considered. Within the latent difference score framework, we examined short-term changes from the pre-to-the-postintervention levels of SNS and smartphone addiction, and self-regulatory self-efficacy (SRSE) beliefs as a possible booster of the intervention's effectiveness. Results showed a significant decrease in both online addictions (SNS and smartphone addiction), controlling for age, gender, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status, because of the short-term efficacy of the project. The buffering effect of SRSE beliefs was further supported. These findings emphasized the usefulness of promoting youths' self-regulative beliefs to contrast problematic tendencies, according to a Positive Youth Development perspective which focused on resources rather than only on the prevention of negative outcomes for youths' adjustment.

Student Perceptions of Online-Based Chemistry Learning Implementation during the Covid-19 Pandemic

This study explains chemistry students' perceptions of online-based chemistry learning during the Covid-19 pandemic. The descriptive quantitative survey method was used for the research. The research was carried out at 16 universities in Indonesia in the Chemistry Education Study Program involving 311 students. A survey technique with a Likert scale was used to collect data. The survey form was created using a Google Forms questionnaire, making it easier for students to access. The data analysis technique utilized in this study was to determine the percentage of data from each questionnaire indication from the disseminated Google form, then interpret it into a data presentation score and analyze each indicator in depth. The results showed that students' perceptions of online-based chemistry learning in chemistry education study programs at 16 universities in Indonesia were in poor criteria, this was obtained from the percentage score on the online enjoy learning indicator by 50%, the content presentation strategy indicator 40%, online media indicators used are 65%, indicators are constrained when online learning is 20%, student readiness indicators are 21% and online learning evaluation indicators are 60%. This research is expected to be a reference for evaluating various parties in online-based chemistry learning, especially regarding students' perceptions of fun learning activities. This study also discusses the problematic tendencies of online-based chemistry learning, namely (1) students' motivation decreases due to boring learning, (2) students' understanding of concepts is reduced because the presentation of learning content is less than optimal, (3) students' readiness to participate in online learning is very lacking because have no previous online learning experience. As a result, the findings of this study can be used as evaluation material in analyzing and developing online learning models during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Research on Patriotic Education Based on a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind

In the context of economic globalization, nations all over the world are looking forward to activate participation in economic activities while maintaining clear national boundaries under the economic and ideological centrifugal force. The chairman of the People's Republic of China put forward the value concept of building a community with a shared future for mankind, and promoted people to work together. We discussed the function of patriotic education in materializing this concept via comparative analysis of related ideological phenomena in various temporal and geographic scope. Then we make a meta-analysis of the related research, identify some problematic tendencies in the current patriotic education, and propose suggestions for from three aspects including cognition, affection and pedagogical methods. This study enriches the understanding of the rational patriotic education, which is the foundation of the community with a shared future for mankind, where countries can develop together while upholding respective political and cultural characteristics.

Finding the “sweet spot” of smartphone use: Reduction or abstinence to increase well-being and healthy lifestyle?! An experimental intervention study.

The present experimental study compared the impact of a total abstinence from smartphone use and of a reduction of daily smartphone use by 1 hr on well-being and healthy lifestyle. Participants (Ntotal = 619) were smartphone users in Germany. The first experimental group (N = 200) waived smartphone use for 7 days, the second experimental group (N = 226) reduced its daily use by 1 hr, and the control group (N = 193) used smartphone as usual. Variables of smartphone use (time, intensity, problematic tendencies), life satisfaction, depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, physical activity, and smoking behavior were assessed via online surveys at four measurement time points (baseline; postintervention; 1 and 4 months after postintervention). Both interventions reduced smartphone use intensity, problematic use tendencies, depressive, and anxiety symptoms. In both groups, life satisfaction and physical activity increased. Most effects were stronger and remained more stable over 4 months in the reduction group than in the abstinence group. Moreover, in the reduction group only, the number of daily smoked cigarettes decreased. Thus, less time spent on the smartphone leads to more well-being and a healthier lifestyle; a complete smartphone abstinence is not necessary. Programs that focus on the increase of well-being and a healthier lifestyle could benefit from the integration of controlled reduction of smartphone use. A potential "sweet spot" of smartphone use is discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Ecosocialism for Realists: Transitions, Trade-Offs, and Authoritarian Dangers

ABSTRACT Ecological Marxists have succeeded in developing compelling ecological critiques of capitalism and principles for alternative ecosocialist political-economies. However, they have devoted relatively little attention to strategic questions, such as: How might ecosocialist transitions take place? What are the challenges, trade-offs, and risks they would likely confront? And how may ecosocialists and allied movements best strategize to navigate them? In particular, these approaches are limited by two problematic tendencies, which I focus on in this essay: 1) an “abstract utopian” tendency that describes idealized ecosocialist futures without deeply considering how they might emerge; and 2) a tendency to ignore or downplay possible trade-offs, dilemmas, and dangers that ecosocialisms-in-transition would likely confront. In contrast, I propose what I call a “realist utopian” approach to ecosocialism, which will more deeply investigate the possible dynamics of ecosocialist transitions; the possible trade-offs, dilemmas, and dangers they would likely face; and how ecosocialists may best strategize to confront them.

Active, Adventurous and Heroic: Visual Constructions of Masculinity in the Afrikaans Church

In this article, I consider material collected from three Afrikaans churches in the Pretoria-Centurion area that visually relate masculinity to aspects such as physical activity, adventurism and heroism. I develop a background from the literature to male physical ontology, Muscular Christianity, the Promise Keepers, Afrikaner Christianity, Afrikaner nationalism and the interconnections between them. I also highlight the problematic tendencies involved in physicality as male ontology in terms of inherent misogyny, patriarchy, domination and, at worst, violence. I analyse the visual culture of the Dutch Reformed congregations of Moreletapark and kerksondermure (Church Without Walls), as well as that of the Apostolic Faith Mission Church, Doxa Deo, via a Barthesian (1972) visual semiotic approach. In my analysis, I found an emphasis in the representation of masculine physical activity on camping, sporting activities, adventurism, outdoorism, male bonding activities and the domination of nature. Finally, I contrast and problematise the prevalence of these representations to those of women, which are mainly decorative and subordinate to their male counterparts.

Parent Distraction with Technology and Child Social Competence during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Role of Parental Emotional Stability

ABSTRACT This study aimed to test the possible moderating role of parents’ emotional stability on the relationship between parent distraction with technology and child social competence during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data used in the study were collected in May 2020 when extensive restrictive measures, labeled as lockdown, were present in Croatia. Data on technoference in parenting, parents’ problematic phone tendencies, and child social competence were collected using an online questionnaire from parents (n = 281) of children aged 3 to 14 years. The results show a significant negative effect of overall technoference in parenting on child social competence. This negative effect was significantly moderated by parents’ emotional stability, as expected. Medium and high levels of parents’ emotional stability buffer the negative effect of low technoference in parenting on child social competence. Results imply technoference in parenting negatively affects child development, but the emotional stability of parents can be a protective factor.

The DISRUPT : A measure of parent distraction with phones and mobile devices and associations with depression, stress, and parenting quality

The landscape of modern parenting has shifted as an increasing number of parents have and utilize smartphones and other mobile devices throughout the day. A validated measure of parent distraction with these devices is needed in the field. It is important to have a validated measure of parent distraction with mobile devices (e.g., phubbing, technoference), as this distraction can be common at times and could negatively impact the quality of parenting that children receive. In the current study, I developed a brief, parent-reported survey measure of parent distraction (DISRUPT), examined its reliability and validity (convergent, divergent) in two survey studies (Study 1, n = 473 parents; Study 2, n = 294 parents), and examined its usefulness in predicting parenting quality (predictive validity). Overall, the results provide initial support for the DISRUPT as a valid and reliable measure of parent problematic tendencies with their phone or mobile devices during time they spend with their children. The DISRUPT's items loaded together well and were internally consistent, and scores were associated with technology use (e.g., problematic phone use) and well-being variables (e.g., depression, stress) in the expected directions. Results also revealed the measure to be useful, as scores predicted parenting-related variables over and above other technology use variables. The DISRUPT also functioned as a mediator in a conceptual model of depression and parenting stress predicting parent distraction (DISRUPT) which then predicted parenting quality.

Beyond “Transborder”: Tawada Yōko’s Vision of Another World Literature

This article presents a critical examination of “transborder” literary approaches that seek to renegotiate the position of Japanese fiction within the world. The concept of transborder fiction has emerged in recent decades as a means of breaking down the boundaries of Japanese literature that assume agreement between the nationality of a writer and the language of her text. However, as it takes its cues from David Damrosch’s influential study of 2003, What is World Literature?, which suggests that literature gains in value in translation, transborder literature betrays its desires to promote Japan’s national literature in a globalising literary context. This more critical view reveals that despite their calls for greater literary diversity, transborder approaches exhibit problematic tendencies that threaten to erase the multiple flows of language and intertextuality already extant within modern Japanese fiction and turn its eye away from history. This critique is focalised through the writing of Tawada Yōko, whose prolific output of literary works and essays in Japanese and German appear to epitomise the image of transborder writing, and yet which frequently challenge these assumptions. Both the book-length essay Exophony (2003) and the Japanese novel Tabi o suru hadaka no me (2004) offer prescient critiques rooted in history that expose moments of rupture, asymmetry and untranslatability, which an emphasis on border crossings threatens to overlook. However, by choosing to peer through those gaps, guided by the latter’s Vietnamese narrator, these texts also incite hitherto unseen connections between Tawada’s Japanese fiction and the world.

How objectively measured Twitter and Instagram use relate to self‐reported personality and tendencies toward Internet/Smartphone Use Disorder

Mounting evidence suggests meaningful relationships between personality and tendencies toward Internet Use Disorder (IUD), Smartphone Use Disorder (SmUD) and Social Networks Use Disorder (SNUD). Results of past research vary not only depending on methods applied, but also with respect to data and platforms investigated. With the present work, we aimed to examine links between objectively measured use of Twitter/Instagram and personality in a sample of N = 331 participants. We further investigated the relationship between actual social media usage and self-reported tendencies toward IUD/SmUD. We observed that active social media usage (number of posts) was negatively correlated with IUD/SmUD levels. Other users' reactions to one's posts (Likes and comments) on the other hand were positively associated with SmUD severity. Thus, our work contradicts the sometimes prevailing view that greater activity on social media in general predicts greater SmUD. Finally, we replicated most prior findings by showing that greater Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness were associated with more activity on social media (e.g. more posts on Twitter). Based on our results, some types of social media use seem to be beneficial to the individual and thus do not contribute to the development or maintenance of problematic tendencies in the context of social media applications.

Spiritual Ecology: On the Way to Ecological Existentialism

Spiritual ecology is closely related to inquiries into religion and ecology, religion and nature, and religious environmentalism. This article presents considerations of the unique possibilities afforded by the idea of spiritual ecology. On one hand, these possibilities include problematic tendencies in some strands of contemporary spirituality, including anti-intellectualism, a lack of sociopolitical engagement, and complicity in a sense of happiness that is captured by capitalist enclosures and consumerist desires. On the other hand, spiritual ecology promises to involve an existential commitment to solidarity with nonhumans, and it gestures toward ways of knowing and interacting that are more inclusive than what is typically conveyed by the term “religion.” Much work on spiritual ecology is broadly pluralistic, leaving open the question of how to discern the difference between better and worse forms of spiritual ecology. This article affirms that pluralism while also distinguishing between the anti-intellectual, individualistic, and capitalistic possibilities of spiritual ecology from varieties of spiritual ecology that are on the way to what can be described as ecological existentialism or coexistentialism.

Just What Is Ontological Political Theory Meant to do? The Method and Practice of William E. Connolly

This article provides a critical appraisal of the ontological method of political theorizing through an examination of the methodological development of the work of William E. Connolly. Connolly has often been taken as a paradigmatic figure of the ‘ontological turn’. This is not only because of the significance of his work in the field but because he is one of its major methodological articulators. However, there has been no systematic evaluation of that method and its development. This paper rectifies that lacuna by critically illustrating Connolly’s turn from a post-positivistic interpretivism to his much noted ‘onto-political method’. It argues that the latter, while usually thought to be modelled on the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault, is structured by Heidegger’s understanding of ontological difference. The paper then argues that this leads to several problematic tendencies within Connolly’s model that undermine the critical-explanatory and normative power of his methodology by compromising the critical reflexivity ontology is meant to provide. All of this raises some concerns and criticisms of the use of ontological method of political theorizing, which has escaped sustained methodological analysis and scrutiny.

Neuroaesthetics: Maladies and Remedies

Some neuroaestheticians have adopted a strongly reductionistic view of the arts and sought to supplant scholarship about the arts with an understanding of their evolutionary and neuropsychological underpinnings. I use the work of several neuroaestheticians to provide examples of four problematic tendencies that beset this approach: (1) assume that a domain-general system encodes the affective value of works of art; (2) oversimplify or disregard art history and scholarship about the arts; (3) apply laboratory findings to explain unique works of art, and (4) use widespread preferences to account for works of art. I then diagnose the ailment underlying these tendencies: the denial of autonomous standing to the production and interpretation of the arts, and suggest remedies. I end with an example of research that shows how neuroscientific research can successfully addresses an important and long-standing aesthetic question.

Supplemental Material for Validating Circumplex Scales of Perceived Impairments and Benefits From Prototypically Problematic Interpersonal Tendencies

Supplemental Material for Validating Circumplex Scales of Perceived Impairments and Benefits From Prototypically Problematic Interpersonal Tendencies

Attentional bias in Internet users with problematic use of social networking sites.

Background and aimsEvidence from the field of addictive disorders suggests that attentional bias for stimuli related to a substance or activity of abuse (e.g., gambling) exacerbates the addictive behavior. However, evidence regarding attentional bias in PIU is sparse. This study aims to investigate whether individuals who express problematic tendencies toward social networking sites (SNS), a subtype of PIU, show attentional bias for stimuli associated with social media.MethodsSixty-five participants performed Visual Dot-Probe and Pleasantness Rating Tasks containing SNS-related and matched control images during eye movements were recorded, providing a direct measure of attention. Participants were assessed on their levels of SNS Internet use (ranging from problematic to non-problematic) and their levels of urges to be online (high vs. low).ResultsProblematic SNS users and, in particular, a subgroup expressing higher levels of urges to be online showed an attentional bias for SNS-related images compared to control images.ConclusionThese results suggest that attentional bias is a common mechanism associated with problematic Internet use as well as other addictive disorders.

Assessment of the competitive environment of the health insurance market

The main purpose of this investigation is to distinguish the problematic tendencies of the health insurance market development in Ukraine and the competitive positions of the leading insurance companies on it. Accordingly, the issues of complex analysis of key indicators of the insurers’ competitiveness, and the issues of establishing the factors that determine the level of competition in the market become very urgent. The first 30 insurers out of 50 were taken for the study, and they received about 90% of insurance premiums for voluntary health insurance in Ukraine in 2017. The authors have made the assessment of the competitive environment of the health insurance market of Ukraine using the concentration index and the indicator of market competition, which resulted in defining the advantages and disadvantages of their application. Taking into account that the abovementioned indicators for assessing the competition in the insurance market can provide only approximate results, which indicates the inadequacy of the conclusions about the effectiveness of business processes management on it, the authors offered a scientific methodological approach to assessing the market environment with the use of an integrated indicator of the voluntary health insurance market competitiveness. Herewith, such an integrated indicator is calculated in terms of three segments of the market: sickness insurance; voluntary medical insurance (continuous health insurance); medical expenses insurance, simultaneously taking into account the behavior of two indicators – concentration and market competition. As a result of the research, it was found that the highest level of market concentration is typical for sickness insurance and it indicates a high monopoly in the market in terms of this segment. Thus, the integrated indicator allows to make a comprehensive investigation of market behavior of the market participants and to reveal the problematic tendencies of its competitive environment.

Chinese university students’ attitude towards self and others in reflective journals of intercultural encounter

Journal writing involving guided reflections on intercultural experiences has a potential in facilitating intercultural communicative competence (ICC). However, most of the research on reflective journal writing relied on content-based thematic analysis alone and neglected the use of language that reveals, complements or even distorts the true meaning of the content. Using linguistic tools provided by appraisal theory, the study investigated the attitudinal changes towards self and others in the reflective journals of intercultural encounter written by 41 undergraduates in an College English Intercultural Communication class in a Chinese university. Positive attitudinal changes were found, including the extension of reflection from people in the incidents to cultures they represented, more appreciation of the intercultural experience, more objectivity and empathy for others, and critical reflection on one's own behaviour in intercultural experience and one's initial ethnocentric interpretation of it. Problematic tendencies included outgroup-favouritism, non-judgement on the surface and overgeneralisation. Suggestions were provided for teachers who intend to use reflective journals in facilitating students' ICC growth.

Where fairness fails: data, algorithms, and the limits of antidiscrimination discourse

ABSTRACTProblems of bias and fairness are central to data justice, as they speak directly to the threat that ‘big data’ and algorithmic decision-making may worsen already existing injustices. In the United States, grappling with these problems has found clearest expression through liberal discourses of rights, due process, and antidiscrimination. Work in this area, however, has tended to overlook certain established limits of antidiscrimination discourses for bringing about the change demanded by social justice. In this paper, I engage three of these limits: 1) an overemphasis on discrete ‘bad actors’, 2) single-axis thinking that centers disadvantage, and 3) an inordinate focus on a limited set of goods. I show that, in mirroring some of antidiscrimination discourse’s most problematic tendencies, efforts to achieve fairness and combat algorithmic discrimination fail to address the very hierarchical logic that produces advantaged and disadvantaged subjects in the first place. Finally, I conclude by sketching three paths for future work to better account for the structural conditions against which we come to understand problems of data and unjust discrimination in the first place.