What Do You Care About: Inferring Values from Emotions

Observers can glean information from others' emotional expressions through the act of drawing inferences from another individual's emotional expressions. It is important for socially aware artificial systems to be capable of doing that as it can facilitate social interaction among agents, and is particularly important in human-robot interaction for supporting a more personalized treatment of users. In this short paper, we propose a methodology for developing a formal model that allows agents to infer another agent's values from her emotion expressions

Computational accountability in MAS organizations with ADOPT

This work studies how the notion of accountability can play a key role in the design and realization of distributed systems that are open and that involve autonomous agents that should harmonize their own goals with the organizational goals. The socio–technical systems that support the work inside human companies and organizations are examples of such systems. The approach that is proposed in order to pursue this purpose is set in the context of multiagent systems organizations, and relies on an explicit specification of relationships among the involved agents for capturing who is accountable to whom and for what. Such accountability relationships are created along with the agents’ operations and interactions in a shared environment. In order to guarantee accountability as a design property of the system, a specific interaction protocol is suggested. Properties of this protocol are verified, and a case study is provided consisting of an actual implementation. Finally, we discuss the impact on real-world application domains and trace possible evolutions of the proposal

Relating a Model of Resolution of Arrested Anger to Outcome in Emotion-Focused Therapy of Depression

The present study explored essential client performances believed to be involved in depression resolution with arrested anger at its core for 32 cases. The five predictors were: 1. marker of arrested anger, 2. the expression of assertive anger, 3. empathic and insightful understanding of the Other/Self-Critic, 4. expression of primary adaptive sadness, and 5. letting go/forgiving the Other/Self-Critic. Two independent, blind to outcome raters used The Marker of Arrested Anger Rating Scale (MAARS) and The Resolution of Depression Components Scale (RDCS), both 5-point scales developed during the study, to measure the predictors. The average of "peak" ratings was used. Final outcome was assessed using change scores on three self-report measures: Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II, depressive symptomatology), Global Severity Index (GSI, global symptomatology), and the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems (IIP, interpersonal difficulties). Pearson’s correlations indicated the marker of arrested anger is strongly related with pre-treatment BDI-II scores (r = .78, p<.001), but not GSI and IIP. Simultaneous regressions analyses showed that taken together, the components of resolution significantly predicted changes in BDI-II scores (64% of the overall variance explained), but not in GSI and IIP. Assertive anger expression is a unique independent predictor of BDI-II and GSI change scores (42% and 35% variance explained), but not of IIP change scores. Letting go/forgiving was another independent predictor of BDI-II change scores (23% variance explained). No other components of resolution independently predicted outcome. The results are discussed in light of existing research in depression and emotional processing in EFT

Buddhist Perspectives on Free Will: Agentless Agency?

A collection of essays, mostly original, on the actual and possible positions on free will available to Buddhist philosophers, by Christopher Gowans, Rick Repetti, Jay Garfield, Owen Flanagan, Charles Goodman, Galen Strawson, Susan Blackmore, Martin T. Adam, Christian Coseru, Marie Friquegnon, Mark Siderits, Ben Abelson, B. Alan Wallace, Peter Harvey, Emily McRae, and Karin Meyers, and a Foreword by Daniel Cozort

Development, Implementation, and Evaluation of a Seminar on Positive Resolution of Interpersonal and Substantive Conflict in the Hazelton, British Columbia, Seventh-day Adventist Church

Problem Some form of conflict is associated with virtually every human relationship, including relationships involving Christians. Negative conflict situations frequently injure Christians, and sometimes conflicts are severe enough to cripple churches. The purpose of this project was to study whether the teaching of concepts and skills that are, first, related to the management and resolution of interpersonal and substantive conflict, and second, congruent with biblical principles will have a positive impact upon how parishioners understand conflict and, as a result, upon how they behave in conflict situations so that the negative results of conflict are reduced and the positive results increased. Method A seminar designed to teach the concepts and skills that are, first, related to the management and resolution of interpersonal and substantive conflict, and second, congruent with biblical principles, was developed for the Hazelton Seventh-day Adventist Church. The seventeen participants in the project were volunteers from the congregation who met for ninety minutes on five consecutive Thursday nights beginning on February 24 and ending on March 24, 1994. The participants were tested before the seminar and again at its conclusion. The question addressed by the testing instrument was: Will a seminar on conflict change the participants\u27 attitude and feelings about conflict? For comparison purposes, the same testing instrument was administered to a control group just before and after the seminar was presented. Results A study of the treatment group test results compared with the control group test results indicated a significant modification in the attitude of the treatment group toward conflict. Based upon the test results, it seems clear that as a consequence of attending the seminar on how to deal with conflict, participants believed that they were better equipped to handle conflict situations and that they had a greater tolerance for conflict situations. Conclusions A training program utilizing a seminar designed to teach concepts and skills that are, first, related to the positive management and resolution of interpersonal and substantive conflict, and second, congruent with biblical principles, would likely be effectual in helping participating church members learn to relate during conflict situations with others in more caring, tolerant, and effective ways

A Sensible Faith: A Philosophical Reconstruction of the Theology of Charles Chauncy

The following dissertation intends the exposition, through the tools of analytic philosophy, of the theology of the New England Divine Charles Chauncy (1705-1787), minister for over sixty years of Boston´s prominent First Church. Particularly, our aim has been to explicate our subject´s theology on the doctrines of original sin, the atonement, and his thoughts concerning the afterlife. It has been also our attempt to lay out the manner in which these strands of his theological reflection can be made rigorous, and the contribution his ideas could make to contemporary philosophical theology. As the pages of this work will reveal, he had an original doctrinal proposal for the dogma of original sin, an exemplarist understanding of the doctrine of atonement, and a novel, and in various respects forward-looking proposal for the process by which indeterministically free and rational creatures attain salvation, and hence union with their maker. Our theologian was probably the most eminent representative of a religious movement that in a relatively short period of time would break away from traditional Puritan orthodoxy and would come to embrace more rational, and thus liberal, forms of religious expression. We believe that a closer look at his theology, something which has been rather neglected by academic research, could shed new light on a period of history that proved crucial in the evolution of American religion

Passively Ever After : Disney's Cinematic Abuse in Beauty and the Beast

This thesis examines the manner in which Disney's Beauty and the Beast cultivates stereotypes and gendered behaviors consistent with domestic violence and thereby encourages viewers to accept and tolerate abuse against women. Chapter 1 includes a literature review highlighting gender themes and the film's influence on children. I argue that due to the dangerous, constricting, and sexist gender roles encouraged by the Walt Disney Corporation, films like Beauty and the Beast prime young girls and boys to react to social situations and encounters in a way that mirror the characters' reactions. Because of the films' entertainment value, most of the characters' inappropriate, stereotypical, and often violent behaviors either go unnoticed or are passively accepted. The violence does not have to be blatant nor physical to have a detrimental effect. Passive and indirect acts of violence, such as bullying, ostracism, and criticism, pave the way for physical violence (Muscio, 2010). Therefore, a central argument of this thesis is that our culture desperately needs to broaden the way we conceptualize violence. The chapters that follow provide a unique feminist critical analysis that draws upon domestic violence literature to argue that Beauty and the Beast is an example of cinematic abuse. I propose that cinematic abuse occurs when viewers accept the dominant readings encouraged by films like Beauty and the Beast and are thereby coerced into entering into metaphoric domestic violence relationships with Disney. As I dissect the themes and scenes within the film, Walker's (1979) book, The Battered Woman, is used to support the argument that cinematic abuse victims (viewers) and abusers (the film) mirror the behaviors and reactions of actual domestic violence victims and abusers.  M.A