The social function of the feeling and expression of guilt

Humans are uniquely cooperative and form crucial short-and long-term social bonds between individuals that ultimately shape human societies. The need for such intense cooperation may have provided a particularly powerful selection pressure on the emotional and communicative behaviours regulating cooperative processes, such as guilt. Guilt is a social, other-oriented moral emotion that promotes relationship repair and pro-sociality. For example, people can be more lenient towards wrongdoers who display guilt than towards those who do not. Here we examined the social consequences of guilt in a novel experimental setting with pairs of friends differing in relationship quality. Pairs of participants took part in a cooperative game with a mutual goal. We then induced guilt in one of the participants and informed the other participant of their partner’s wrongdoing. We examined the outcome using a dictator game to see how they split a joint reward. We found that guilty people were motivated to repair wrongdoing regardless of friendship. Observing guilt in others led to a punishment effect and a victim of wrongdoing punished close friends who appeared guilty more so than acquaintances. We suggest, therefore, that guilt has a stronger function between close friends as the costs of relationship breakdown are greater. Relationship context, therefore, is crucial to the functional relevance of moral emotions

Transportation planning and implementation in cities of the Third World: the case of Bangkok

The Bangkok Metropolitan Region is synonymous with unprecedented growth as well as with traffic conditions which rival the worst in the world. The current transportation situation has evolved quiddy, yet planners, international donors, and many government leaders were not unaware of the magnitude of the evolving problem. The federal and municipal governments have at their disposal a number of state-of-the-art transportation plans but seem unable to implement the most important of the recommendations. In this paper Bangkok's transportation woes are described in terms of the obstacles that face the agencies charged with implementing improvements. The discussion is focused on institutional issues as well as the political structure responsible for much of the current crisis.

Community Service-Learning in Graduate Planning Education

Community service-learning (CSL) has gained popularity over the past decades in universities across North America. Although planning programs tend to involve more graduate-level community-engaged learning than other professional disciplines, learning outcomes have not been sufficiently examined. Based on a review of existing literature and analysis from four years of a CSL course at the University of Toronto’s Department of Geography and Planning, this article describes the implications of CSL for graduate planning education. We argue that CSL in graduate planning programs has a series of unique characteristics and thus requires distinctive pedagogical approaches

Environmental policy in Thailand: values, attitudes, and behavior among the slum dwellers of Bangkok

Contemporary governments have an important role in promoting economic development and at the same time improving the quality of life experienced by its people, but in many nations of the Pacific Rim governments can be hampered by the pace of the rapid urbanization, as well as poor understanding of the connection between values, attitudes, and behavior regarding public policy initiatives. In this paper the authors, through an analysis of the relationship between traditional Thai cultural values, attitudes, and behavior regarding environmental issues, health and environmental practices, and policy, explore whether environmental policies in Thailand effectively reflect the needs of low-income urban communities. A survey of 515 slum dwellers in Bangkok reveals that behavior which improves the quality of life is related to a number of important attitudes as well as cultural values. Cultural values based on the Thai notion of individualism, for example, are an obstacle to community-based environmental behavior. An understanding of cultural values and their linkages to attitudes and behavior is thus critical to the design of more effective policies.

Desert ants (Melophorus bagoti) navigating with robustness to distortions of the natural panorama

Many insects are known to use the terrestrial visual panorama for navigation. Research suggests that large-scale panoramic properties are often used for orientation rather than individual objects, usually called landmarks. We degraded the natural panorama encountered by Australian red honey ants, Melophorus bagoti, to test how robust their orientation based on the terrestrial panorama is. Foraging ants were lured to a feeder at a constant location. Trained ants were allowed to run home individually with food, but were captured just before they entered their nest. The tested ant was brought back to the location of the feeder, now covered, and allowed to run home again under different distortions of the natural panorama. In one experiment, a large tract of the view on one side of the feeder was obstructed by a tall plastic sheet. In a second experiment, the visual heights of terrestrial objects were altered by raising or lowering the ant by 80 cm. Under both kinds of distortions, the ants continued to be well oriented in the homeward direction. Navigation based on the natural terrestrial panorama proved robust to large distortions.13 page(s

Bruit des circuits de transport de gaz dans l'industrie siderurgique Inventaire des sources sonores potentielles

Available at INIST (FR), Document Supply Service, under shelf-number : 18477, issue : a.1991 n.82 / INIST-CNRS - Institut de l'Information Scientifique et TechniqueSIGLEFRFranc