When do circumstances excuse? Moral prejudices and beliefs about the true self drive preferences for agency-minimizing explanations

When explaining human actions, people usually focus on a small subset of potential causes. What leads us to prefer certain explanations for valenced actions over others? The present studies indicate that our moral attitudes often predict our explanatory preferences far better than our beliefs about how causally sensitive actions are to features of the actor's environment. Study 1 found that high-prejudice participants were much more likely to endorse non-agential explanations of an erotic same-sex encounter, such as that one of the men endured a stressful event earlier that day. Study 2 manipulated participants' beliefs about how the agent's behavior depended on features of his environment, finding that such beliefs played no clear role in modeling participants' explanatory preferences. This result emerged both with low- and high-prejudice, US and Indian participants, suggesting that these findings probably reflect a species-typical feature of human psychology. Study 3 found that moral attitudes also predicted explanations for a woman's decision to abort her pregnancy (3a) and a person's decision to convert to Islam (3b). Study 4 found that luck in an action's etiology tends to undermine perceptions of blame more readily than perceptions of praise. Finally, Study 5 found that when explaining support for a rival ideology, both Liberals and Conservatives downplay agential causes while emphasizing environmental ones. Taken together, these studies indicate that our explanatory preferences often reflect a powerful tendency to represent agents as possessing virtuous true selves. Consequently, situation-focused explanations often appear salient because people resist attributing negatively valenced actions to the true self. There is a person/situation distinction, but it is normative

Strange journey : the life of Dorothy Eckersley

Three days before the outbreak of the Second World War, William Joyce, the leader of the British Nazi group, the National Socialist League, was in Berlin. He and his wife, Margaret, had fled there fearing internment by the British government if war broke out. Yet as war drew nearer, Joyce was unsure whether to return to Britain or not. But a meeting that day sealed his fate, leading to years of broadcasting for German radio, notoriety as ‘Lord Haw Haw', and his execution for treason in January 1946. The meeting was accidental, with the Joyces bumping into one of his English supporters - Mrs Frances ‘Dorothy' Eckersley - in a Berlin restaurant. Dorothy Eckersley was surprised to see Joyce, to whom she had recently sent £50 to help the NSL find a new headquarters in London. Now, having a far better network of friends and acquaintances in Berlin than the almost friendless Joyces, she was able to put him in touch with officials who recruited Joyce to the radio propaganda microphone. And by the end of 1939, Dorothy, and her son, James, would join the English language team broadcasting German propaganda to the UK. At 46, Dorothy had already led an extraordinary life that had taken her from the stage in America to the microphone in Berlin, marriage with one of the most gifted radio engineers of the time, and years of political activism with the radical socialist Independent Labour Party. Yet now she was a committed follower of Hitler and a national socialist..

The Fasces and the Saltire: the failure of the British Union of Fascists in Scotland, 1932-1940

The history of Britain's main manifestation of inter-war fascism, Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists [BUF], continues to be a hotly contested field of study. A new biography of Mosley, work on gender and the BUF, and the incorporation of new models of generic fascism have made important contributions to the historiography of the BUF. However, until recently, almost no historical consideration of the BUF's career in Scotland had been attempted. But work by Tony Milligan and Henry Maitles has opened up the topic of fascism in Scotland between the wars. This article seeks to build on these contributions, and examines two groups of factors that led to the failure of fascism in Scotland. The inability of the BUF to find political space in Scotland, allied to internal organisational weaknesses, compounded by the indifference of the English fascist movement to the BUF in Scotland created flaws that characterised the Scottish BUF from the outset. These weaknesses were exacerbated by the failure of the BUF to understand the Scottish dimensions of politics, such as the cross-cutting appeal of Scottish nationalism, and religious tensions. Finally, anti-fascist opposition proved to be especially problematic for the Scottish BUF

Breakfast intake, habits and body composition in New Zealand European women : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Nutrition and Dietetics, Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

Background: The rise of obesity and related poor health outcomes is rampant in New Zealand. Dietary factors are key in the aetiology of obesity. One dietary factor with wide reaching implications on health and weight maintenance is breakfast consumption. Breakfast consumption has declined in New Zealand in recent years, and adverse health outcomes have risen concurrently. Breakfast consumption has been associated with lower BMI, improved appetite control, better diet quality, and more stable glycaemia. Objective: The aim of this study was to describe and compare reported and observed breakfast consumption between obese and normal weight New Zealand European women aged 18-45 years, living in Auckland, New Zealand. Methods: In a cross-sectional study, healthy women (n=75 normal BMI, n=82 obese BMI) completed a 5-day food record, an observed ad libitum buffet breakfast assessment and body composition measurements. Nutrient intake, food choices and behavioural aspects, including pace of eating and meal skipping data were obtained and analysed. Results: More normal BMI women (n=69; 84.1%) than obese BMI women (n=56; 74.6%) consumed breakfast daily. Obese BMI women consumed significantly more energy at the observed breakfast (1915 ± 868 kJ) than at the recorded breakfast (1431 ± 690kJ, p<0.001); however neither BMI group met one third of estimated energy requirements at either breakfast occasion. Carbohydrate consumption was lower than recommended (AMDR: 45-65%) in both groups in the recorded breakfast (40.7% and 42.6%; normal BMI and obese BMI respectively), whereas total fat consumption was higher than recommended (AMDR: 20-35%) (36.5% and 35.9% respectively). Protein consumption was within AMDR recommendations (15-25%) for both groups in the recorded breakfast (16.3% and 17.5%) but not in the observed breakfast, (13.0% and 14.0%), obese BMI and normal BMI respectively. Foods with the greatest contribution to energy at the observed breakfast for obese BMI women were discretionary items (fats, cake and biscuits), compared with sweetened cereals, nuts and seeds for normal BMI women. Having a faster pace of eating and consuming foods with a higher energy density significantly increased the likelihood of falling into the obese BMI category (b=3.11, p=0.016; b=1.35, p=0.042 respectively). Conclusions: Consuming a breakfast, particularly one that contains whole grains, fruits and low-fat dairy products, and minimising discretionary items could enable women to more closely meet dietary recommendations, and as a result, improve health outcomes. Key words: breakfast, obesity, energy intake, appetite, pace of eatin

Air permeability of balsa core, and its influence on defect formation in resin infused sandwich laminates

Many large composite structures are manufactured using sandwich laminates to achieve high specific bending strength and stiffness. Examples include wind turbine blades, where self-weight becomes increasingly important as blade size increases. Resin infusion of three-dimensional sandwich laminates can result in complex resin flow paths, and subsequent defect formation, which are difficult to predict. The core material used for sandwich construction and its interaction with liquid resins may also influence the formation of defects, and in the case of balsa this effect can be used to reduce defect severity. In order to evaluate the effect of cored sandwich laminate construction on the formation of defects, this thesis concentrates on the characterisation of commonly used core materials and their interaction with liquid resin under high vacuum conditions. It also considers two numerical flow-modelling packages which are shown to be effective at the prediction of flow front convergence for monolithic laminate, but over-estimate defect severity when modelling air- permeable cored laminates. For balsa core, experiments indicate that the available pore space can act as sink for trapped air, which can aid the reduction of defects where multiple flow fronts converge due to the complexity of flow in sandwich laminates. Empirical data for air absorption and desorption rates in balsa core were obtained using a custom-designed experiment. Using these data a theoretical model was developed that can indicate available pore space, which can inform optimum processing conditions, such as time under vacuum. The diffusion coefficients obtained for air absorption and desorption in balsa are very similar, and lie in the middle of published ranges for hard woods at around 2 x 10 -7 m2/s. The methodology developed for this research project represents actual behaviour of air absorption/desorption during resin infusion, whilst other techniques do not, merely measuring diffusion of air through a sample not allowing for finite pore space. In consequence, infusion strategies can be planned more precisely because core/resin interaction is better understood. Knit line defect formation could be predicted with greater accuracy with suitably modified flow-modelling programs.Vestas Technologies, EPSR