Can you forgive? It depends on how happy you are

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.This paper examined how individual group status and happiness influence forgiveness. In Study 1, happiness was treated as a trait difference: highly happy people, compared with very unhappy people, were found to be more willing to forgive murderers. More important, an interaction effect between happiness and group status on forgiveness was found, that is, highly happy people tended to be more forgiving when either ingroup or outgroup mem- bers were killed; unhappy people, however, tended to be less forgiving about murder when ingroup rather than outgroup members were killed. In Study 2, happiness was treated as an emotional state difference: happiness, rather than sadness, was found to bring greater forgiveness. Moreover, consistent with the interaction effect displayed in Study 1, happy participants tended to forgive more when ingroup or outgroup members were hurt; sad partici- pants tended to forgive less when ingroup members rather than outgroup members were hurt. Implications for connections between happiness, group membership, and forgiveness are discussed

The structure of verbal sequences analyzed with unsupervised learning techniques

Data mining allows the exploration of sequences of phenomena, whereas one usually tends to focus on isolated phenomena or on the relation between two phenomena. It offers invaluable tools for theoretical analyses and exploration of the structure of sentences, texts, dialogues, and speech. We report here the results of an attempt at using it for inspecting sequences of verbs from French accounts of road accidents. This analysis comes from an original approach of unsupervised training allowing the discovery of the structure of sequential data. The entries of the analyzer were only made of the verbs appearing in the sentences. It provided a classification of the links between two successive verbs into four distinct clusters, allowing thus text segmentation. We give here an interpretation of these clusters by applying a statistical analysis to independent semantic annotations

Path, theme and narrative in open plan exhibition settings

Three arguments are made based on the analysis of science exhibitions. First,sufficiently refined techniques of spatial analysis allow us to model the impact oflayout upon visitors' paths, even in moderately sized open plans which allow almostrandom patterns of movement and relatively unobstructed visibility. Second, newlydeveloped or adapted techniques of analysis allow us to make a transition frommodeling the mechanics of spatial movement (the way in which movement is affectedby the distribution of obstacles and boundaries), to modeling the manner in whichmovement might register additional aspects of visual information. Third, theadvantages of such purely spatial modes of analysis extend into providing us with asharper understanding of some of the pragmatic constrains within which exhibitioncontent is conceived and designed

Analyzing equivalalences in discourse: are discourse theory and membership categorization analysis comptatible

Facing a crucial leap from political philosophy to empirical analysis, the approach to discourse analysis that arose in the aftermath of Laclau and Mouffe (1985), and that is currently known as the Essex school of discourse theory (DT), has in recent years repeatedly been accused of suffering from a methodological deficit. This paper examines to what extent membership categorization analysis (MCA), a branch of ethnomethodology that investigates lay actors' situated descriptions-in-context as practical activity, can play a part in rendering poststructuralist DT notions such as articulation and equivalence analytically tangible in empirically observable discourse. Based on a review of Laclau and Mouffe's foundational text as well as on Glynos and Howarth's recent exposition of the framework (2007), it is argued that MCA empirically substantiates many poststructuralist claims about the indeterminacy of signification. However, MCA consistently falters - and willingly so - at the point where DT would articulate emerging equivalences between identity categories as part of a second-order explanatory concept, such as Glynos and Howarth’s notion of political logic. Nevertheless, MCA also contains the kernel of an "endogenous" notion of the political that comes fairly close to DT’s all-pervasive understanding of the concept. To support these arguments, a variety of empirical sources are mobilized, ranging from the transcript of a political talk show, a newspaper report regarding a discrimination case in a dance class, to data drawn from earlier research on the way that minority members are treated by the Belgian criminal justice system

The Debate Over the Efficacy of Federal Hate Crime Legislation: A Look at Arlen Specter’s Senatorial Efforts and its Legacy

Bias-motivated violence is considered especially heinous in the United States of America. This research examines the Federal legislation that cements that value into law. Hate crimes are criminal acts where the target was specifically chosen because of their race, sexual orientation, gender expression, ethnicity, or religion. These crimes, whether intentionally or not, have a ripple effect on societal values, and especially spread fear within oppressed minority groups. This research begins by examining the context that precipitated a need for hate crime laws to begin with and then looks at federal developments as a reaction to landmark hate crime cases. One of Senator Arlen Specter’s key areas of policy impact lies right here in hate crimes. Through means of the Arlen Specter Senatorial Papers his contributions in both Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania are explored. Finally, the debate over hate crime legislation as it exists today is had. This research is expected to analyze bias motivated crime through a contextualizing historical lens of Arlen Specter’s work and then use that analysis to work through the current debate over legislation

Longing, Belonging and the Politics of Naming: The Case of the Khache

In Tibet, Muslim traders and subsequent settlers from Kashmir were called Khache. Over the years, this term has come to acquire multiple significations. By engaging with the complex history of the group and their eventual return to Kashmir, this paper tries to uncover these very significations and how the idea of Khache represents a coming together of the Himalayan region (Tibet, Nepal, Kashmir, Darjeeling, Kalimpong). In their multi-layered notion of belonging, there is a strong sense of attachment to the imagined Tibet, reflecting a harmoniously lived life, while further complexities emerge from their repatriation to the ancestral land of Kashmir. Referred to as Kashmiri Muslims (loosely, Khache) in Tibet, and now as Tibetan Muslims in Kashmir, the confusion in identity is as much linguistic as political. We should also note that regional prefixes such as ‘Tibetan’ or ‘Kashmiri’ don’t just fixate associations with regions, but also with regimes of power and powerful agents. As such, through this article, I am trying to argue for a geographically and politically neutral or at least less problematic term Khache. Finally, this paper is an ethnographic examination of how different representations and regional influences can be witnessed in everyday life performances for this group, and how these ultimately shape their sense of being. In the same vein, we will locate Islam emerging as a constant and source of justification to life\u27s trials and tribulations – as often portrayed by the analogy to hijrat – the journey to save one\u27s religion

The screening score of Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) is a useful routine screening tool for malnutrition risk in patients on maintenance dialysis

PURPOSE: Malnutrition is prevalent in patients on dialysis and is associated with morbidity and mortality. Nutritional status can be assessed by a variety of biochemical and physical parameters or nutritional assessment scores. Most of these methods are expensive or cumbersome to use and are not suitable for routine repetitive follow-up in dialysis patients. The Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) has a short form screening set (MNA-SF), which would be suitable as a screening tool, but has not been validated yet in dialysis patients. We aimed to assess whether the MNA is an appropriate tool for identifying nutritional problems in dialysis patients. METHOD: MNA, routine biochemistry, physical parameters, comorbidities were assessed in cross-sectional multicentric cohorts of hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis patients with a longitudinal follow up of 2 years for mortality. RESULTS: In this cohort of 216 patients, mortality was 27.3% at a follow up of 750±350 days. The mean MNA-SF score was 9.9±1.8, with 30.1%, 59.3% and 10.6% of patients categorized as having normal nutritional status, at risk for malnutrition and malnourished, respectively. The screening score was associated with mortality (HR 0.86, 95% CI 0.75-0.98 per point). With normal nutrition as reference, adjusted mortality was 2.50 (95% CI 1.16-5.37) and 3.89 (95% CI 1.48-10.13) for patients at risk for malnutrition and with malnutrition, respectively. After recalibrating the MNA full score for the specificity of some of its domains for dialysis patients, the MNA-SF had a good sensitivity and specificity for not being well nourished (0.95 and 0.63 respectively) in the full score, and a high negative predictive value (0.91). CONCLUSION: The MNA-SF is independently associated with 2 year mortality in dialysis patients. It has a high negative predictive value for excluding being at risk or having malnutrition in the full score. Therefore, it can be advocated as a screening tool for nutritional status in dialysis patients

Gangs, displaced, and group-based aggression

Many urban areas experienced an alarming growth of gang activity and violence during the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries. Gang members, motivated by various factors, commit a variety of different types of violent acts towards rivals and other targets. Our focus involves instances of displaced aggression, which generally refers to situations in which aggression is targeted towards individuals who have either not themselves committed an offense against the aggressor (s), or who provide an offense that is too mild to justify the aggression levels that are expressed towards them. We discuss how social–psychological mechanisms and models of two types of displaced aggression might help explain some aspects of the retaliatory behavior that is expressed by members of street gangs. We also propose general techniques that have the potential to reduce such aggressive behavior