Individual differences in gelotophobia predict responses to joy and contempt

In a paradigm facilitating smile misattribution, facial responses and ratings to contempt and joy were investigated in individuals with or without gelotophobia (fear of being laughed at). Participants from two independent samples (N1 = 83, N2 = 50) rated the intensity of eight emotions in 16 photos depicting joy, contempt, and different smiles. Facial responses were coded by the Facial Action Coding System in the second study. Compared with non-fearful individuals, gelotophobes rated joy smiles as less joyful and more contemptuous. Moreover, gelotophobes showed less facial joy and more contempt markers. The contempt ratings were comparable between the two groups. Looking at the photos of smiles lifted the positive mood of non-gelotophobes, whereas gelotophobes did not experience an increase. We hypothesize that the interpretation bias of “joyful faces hiding evil minds” (i.e., being also contemptuous) and exhibiting less joy facially may complicate social interactions for gelotophobes and serve as a maintaining factor of gelotophobia.The research leading to these results has received funding from a research grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF; 100014_126967-1

Delivery of Subterranean Arsenic Removal in West Bengal

Environment and Developmen

Stoics against stoics in Cudworth's "A Treatise of Freewill"

In his 'A Treatise of Freewill', Ralph Cudworth argues against Stoic determinism by drawing on what he takes to be other concepts found in Stoicism, notably the claim that some things are ‘up to us’ and that these things are the product of our choice. These concepts are central to the late Stoic Epictetus and it appears at first glance as if Cudworth is opposing late Stoic voluntarism against early Stoic determinism. This paper argues that in fact, despite his claim to be drawing on Stoic doctrine, Cudworth uses these terms with a meaning first articulated only later, by the Peripatetic commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias

The Chagos Islands cases: the empire strikes back

Good governance requires the accommodation of multiple interests in the cause of decision making. However, undue regard for particular sectional interests can take their toll upon public faith in government administration. Historically, broad conceptions of the good of the commonwealth were employed to outweigh the interests of groups that resisted colonisation. In the decision making of the British Empire, the standard approach for justifying the marginalisation of the interests of colonised groups was that they were uncivilised and that particular hardships were the price to be paid for bringing to them the imperial dividend of industrial society. It is widely assumed that with the dismantling of the British Empire, such impulses and their accompanying jurisprudence became a thing of the past. Even as decolonisation proceeded apace after the Second World War, however, the United Kingdom maintained control of strategically important islands with a view towards sustaining its global role. In an infamous example from this twilight period of empire, in the 1960s imperial interests were used to justify the expulsion of the Chagos islanders from the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). Into the twenty-first century, this forced elision of the UK’s interests with the imperial “common good” continues to take centre stage in courtroom battles over the islanders’ rights, being cited before domestic and international tribunals in order to maintain the Chagossians’ exclusion from their homeland. This article considers the new jurisprudence of imperialism which has emerged in a string of decisions which have continued to marginalise the Chagossians’ interests

Trafficking

In cities the world over we are able to determine stability in daily existence, to identify with our social spaces, because modes of transport have become essential components of subjective autonomy. But would it not be just as accurate to say that in transit modern life puts the self in abeyance? I argue that the ways we allow ourselves to be moved around in ‘traffic space’ creates a passivity that renders almost invisible the complex mechanics of movement, which we only become alert to at the moment of breakdown, precisely when they become a threat to autonomy. Our trafficking, I conclude, has an almost narcotic effect, rendering us immobile against the continual movements that constitute urban life, one that also magnifies out of all proportion the accidents or aberrations that sometimes disturb our traffic space, making it seem as if we may easily descend into an uncontrollable chaos

The poverty of contractarian moral education

In A Theory of Moral Education, Michael Hand claims that a directive moral education that seeks to persuade children that a particular conception of contractarian morality is justified can be undertaken without falling foul of the requirement not to indoctrinate. In this article, we set out a series of challenges to Hand’s argument. First, we argue that Hand’s focus on ‘reasonable disagreement’ regarding the status of a moral conception is a red-herring in this conception. Second, we argue that the endorsement of moral contractarianism and the prohibition on indoctrination pull in different directions: if contractarianism is sound, then teachers or governments should be less worried about indoctrination than Hand suggests. Third, we argue that moral contractarianism is mistaken; teachers should look elsewhere for guidance on the moral norms and principles towards which they should direct their pupils

The Non-linear Dynamics of Meaning-Processing in Social Systems

Social order cannot be considered as a stable phenomenon because it contains an order of reproduced expectations. When the expectations operate upon one another, they generate a non-linear dynamics that processes meaning. Specific meaning can be stabilized, for example, in social institutions, but all meaning arises from a horizon of possible meanings. Using Luhmann's (1984) social systems theory and Rosen's (1985) theory of anticipatory systems, I submit equations for modeling the processing of meaning in inter-human communication. First, a self-referential system can use a model of itself for the anticipation. Under the condition of functional differentiation, the social system can be expected to entertain a set of models; each model can also contain a model of the other models. Two anticipatory mechanisms are then possible: one transversal between the models, and a longitudinal one providing the modeled systems with meaning from the perspective of hindsight. A system containing two anticipatory mechanisms can become hyper-incursive. Without making decisions, however, a hyper-incursive system would be overloaded with uncertainty. Under this pressure, informed decisions tend to replace the "natural preferences" of agents and an order of cultural expectations can increasingly be shaped

The Emergence of Consensus: a primer

The origin of population-scale coordination has puzzled philosophers and scientists for centuries. Recently, game theory, evolutionary approaches and complex systems science have provided quantitative insights on the mechanisms of social consensus. This paper overviews the main dimensions over which the debate has unfolded and discusses some representative results, with a focus on those situations in which consensus emerges `spontaneously' in absence of centralised institutions. Covered topics include the macroscopic consequences of the different microscopic rules of behavioural contagion, the role of social networks, and the mechanisms that prevent the formation of a consensus or alter it after it has emerged. Special attention is devoted to the recent wave of experiments on the emergence of consensus in social systems