An active role for conscious processes in the production of behaviour is proposed, involving top level controls in a hierarchy of behavioural control. It is suggested that by inhibiting or sensitizing lower levels in the hierarchy conscious processes can play a role in the organization of ongoing behaviour. Conscious control can be more or less evident, according to prevailing circumstances.

There may be evolutionary as well as economic reasons why organisms generally act impulsively. I discuss this possibility and suggest some follow-up experiments that may clarify the exciting empirical and theoretical contributions made by the experiments discussed in the target article.

The willingness to trade off large but ill-defined future consequences for immediate work characterizes social problems such as environmental sustainability. This commentary argues that important applications of behavioral models of self-control are being overlooked in the experimental literature. Tying the experimental literature to longterm health, environmental, and other risks makes the experimental work more germane, and raises new research questions for experimental modeling.

This experimental study evaluated the influence of stated organizational concern for ethical conduct upon managerial behavior. Using an in-basket to house the manipulation, a sample of 113 MBA students with some managerial experience reacted to scenarios suggesting illegal conduct and others suggesting only unethical behavior. Stated organizational concern for ethical conduct was varied from none (control group) to several other situations which included a high treatment consisting of a Code of Ethics, an endorsement letter by the CEO and specific sanctions (...) for managerial misconduct. Only in the case of suggested illegal behavior tempered by high organizational concern were managers influenced by organizational policy to modify the morality of their actions. However, the responses to the illegal scenarios were significantly more ethical than the reactions given to the unethical (but not illegal) situations. The implications of these findings are then discussed. (shrink)

1. Introduction. One major concern in cognitive psychology is explaining cognitively motivated behavior. However, attempts to specify the nature of the behavior that psychology is to explain have proved to be somewhat controversial. The aim of this paper is to conduct a preliminary investigation into the kinds of behavior psychology is concerned with.

Increasing the tax compliance of self-employed business owners—particularly of trade-specific service providers such as those involved in construction and repair work—remains an ongoing challenge for tax authorities. From a compliance point of view, cash transactions are particularly problematic when services are paid for on the spot, as these exchanges are difficult to audit. We present experimental evidence testing ten different policy strategies rooted in the enforcement, service, and trust/social paradigms, in a setting that allows payment either via a transaction that (...) directly reports income for tax collection purposes or in cash, where taxes are only collected on reported income. Our sample includes both a typical subject pool of students, as used in most previous studies, and non-students who are active within service industries characterised by the opportunity to engage in cash transactions. While our comparative results show that, for both student and non-student participants, interventions that rely on greater enforcement by the tax authority have the greatest effect on compliance in our cash economy setting, treatments involving cooperative elements may be similarly effective in enhancing tax compliance. Given their effectiveness, cooperative approaches should therefore be considered for addition to the policy mix if implemented at relatively low costs, making both carrot and stick approaches promising to increase compliance in an environment where cash-for-service payments offer a common benefit for small businesses and their customers from implicit collusion that enables tax evasion. (shrink)

This article draws on Ellul’s analysis of propaganda in understanding propaganda in the helping professions. Key in such an analysis is the interweaving of the psychological and sociological. Contrary to the discourse in mission statements of professional organizations and their codes of ethics calling for informed consent, competence of professionals and taking advantage of research findings, in everyday practice we find a variety of avoidable lapses, including decontextualized problem framing, bogus claims concerning risks, accuracy of assessment measures, and effectiveness of (...) interventions. Perhaps most troubling is obscuring the causes of human problems, for example, framing problems-in-living such as anxiety, alienation, and loneliness that result from living in a technological society as brain disorders, so mystifying the causes of distress. (shrink)

The relationship between fear and courage has been discussed in terms of opposite though mutually involving notions. However, their link has not been inquired extensively. Recently, new light has been shed on the topic thanks to recent empirical evidence within emotion theories that stress the role played by perception and/or cognition in the experience of fear, as well as the role played by the “emotional virtue” of courage in fear regulation. Questions arise whether fear has a fundamentally perceptual structure or (...) is a biologically-grounded natural kind, and whether such an emotion-related virtue as courage is intrinsically or extrinsically related to fear. This paper considers the last problem first, then enlarges the picture to fear modeling, finally drives some conclusions which aim at deepening the relationship between fear and courage. As a result, it emerges that the emotion of fear has a conceptual, emotional, situational and subjective dimension. Assuming fear as a possible emotional center within the subject’s cognitive experience, the virtue of courage appears to balance the excess and lack of fear, and is consequently related to rational thoughts and consistent behavior, laying the foundations for a new Aristotelian-Thomistic account for it. (shrink)

Passive frame theory attempts to illuminate what consciousnessis, in mechanistic and functional terms; it does not address the “implementation” level of analysis (how neurons instantiate conscious states), an enigma for various disciplines. However, in response to the commentaries, we discuss how our framework provides clues regarding this enigma. In the framework, consciousness is passive albeit essential. Without consciousness, there would not be adaptive skeletomotor action.

A model of curriculum development that enables students of architecture in the developing nation of Taiwan to draw on their own life experiences in formulating their own architectural education is proposed. Such an ideology recognizes that while education certainly includes the acquisition of the technical skills needed to ply one’s trade, its more important aspect is the development of the ability to learn throughout life and to apply those skills creatively as social, economic, and cultural contexts change. An architecture curriculum (...) that accomplishes this end will draw on existing designs and encourage input from a wide variety of disciplines and cultures, especially including the humanities and social sciences. In particular, it will recognize the philosophical tradition of epistemology and the epistemological tradition of constructivism. Moreover, such an architectural curriculum will shift its focus of study from the modern tradition of aesthetics to the postmodern concern for environmental ethics. For both practical and cultural reasons, these changes will not be easy, but they are necessary. (shrink)

This thesis arises out of a critique of the way language is decontextualized and presented from a reductively linguistic viewpoint in foreign language instruction. In particular, it focuses on the weaknesses of the broad approach known as Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and highlights the disparity between its theoretical assumptions and practical applications. With this in mind, the thesis identifies and explores three foundational premises that should be considered as part of an attempt to design a theoretically coherent framework for foreign (...) language instruction. By applying three sets of principles based on these premises, the thesis goes on to outline such a framework. After providing a background to the study, the first consideration is the nature of cultural and communicative performance. The study turns to sociological concepts regarding cultural organization and production, in order to better conceptualize how 'culture' can be understood in the context of foreign language learning. The second part of this area focuses on meaning and communication in order to undermine current treatments of 'language' in foreign language pedagogy. The second area of interest is that of learning and thus considers a number of theories of how people learn. The focus here is on learning-in-general rather than learning languages specifically. What emerges from this are a number of principles that should be borne in mind when creating conditions favorable to language learning. Finally, one largely overlooked area in foreign language learning and applied linguistics more broadly, is how the field of foreign language pedagogy constructs and legitimizes its practices, as well as suppresses its foundational theoretical assumptions in its activities (including research, methodology and teaching). A chapter is therefore devoted to this issue, and a set of principles is formulated in order to ensure that the design of any instructional framework is honest and ethical. Thus furnished with the triangulation of principles, an attempt is made to outline how a learner-focused, ethical pedagogical framework that stresses culture might look. This thesis is theoretical in nature and relies on arguments and positions from diverse and less commonly considered academic fields in foreign language instruction. Its main theoretical inspiration comes from concepts and claims generally considered 'poststructural' or 'postmodern'. However, there is no exclusive devotion to any particular author or theory. It is hoped that this thesis can make a genuine, if not controversial, contribution to the field of foreign language teaching by initiating a dialogue concerning the (lack of) philosophical and epistemological reflexivity in the field. (shrink)

A comparative method of studying the biological bases of personality compares human trait dimensions with likely animal models in terms of genetic determination and common biological correlates. The approach is applied to the trait of sensation seeking, which is defined on the human level by a questionnaire, reports of experience, and observations of behavior, and on the animal level by general activity, behavior in novel situations, and certain types of naturalistic behavior in animal colonies. Moderately high genetic determination has been (...) found for human sensation seeking, and marked strain differences in rodents have been found in open-field behavior that may be related to basic differences in brain neurochemistry. Agonistic and sociable behaviors in both animals and humans and the trait measure of sensation seeking in humans have been related to certain common biological correlates such as gonadal hormones, monoamine oxidase (MAO), and augmenting of the cortical evoked potential.The monoamine systems in the rodent brain are involved in general activity, exploratory behavior, emotionality, socialization, dominance, sexual and consummately behaviors, and intracranial self-stimulation. Preliminary studies have related norepinephrine and enzymes involved in its production and degradation to human sensation seeking. A model is suggested that relates mood, behavioral activity, sociability, and clinical states to activity of the central catecholamine neurotransmitters and to neuroregulators and other transmitters that act in opposite ways on behavior or stabilize activity in the arousal systems. Stimulation and behavioral activity act on the catecholamine systems in a brain–behavior feedback loop. At optimal levels of catecholamine systems activity (CSA) mood is positive and activity and sociability are adaptive. At very low or very high levels of CSA mood is dysphoric, activity is restricted or stereotyped, and the organism is unsocial or aggressively antisocial. Novelty, in the absence of threat, may be rewarding through activation of noradrenergic neurons. (shrink)

In Gray's conjecture, mismatches in the subicular comparator and matches have equal prominence in consciousness. In rival cognitive views novelty and difficulty especially elicit more conscious modes of cognition and higher levels of self-regulation. The mismatch between Gray's conjecture and these views is discussed.

Gray's neuropsychological model of consciousness uses a hierarchical feedback loop framework that has been extensively discussed by many others in psychology. This commentary therefore urges Gray to integrate with, or at least acknowledge previous models. It also points out flaws in his feedback model and suggests directions for further theoretical work.

A growing, interdisciplinary field of cognitive linguistics has developed in recent decades, bringing together research from many fields to explore the ways that metaphors provide structure and semantic content to thought and language. In this article, the American public school disability emotional/behavioral disorder (E/BD) is examined in regard to the primary metaphors that frame the basic concepts of the disorder. The metaphors of 2 versions of E/BD, psychodynamic and behavioral, are investigated. A series of critical questions about the E/BD construct (...) are posed, and possibilities for new metaphors are proposed. (shrink)

Although culturally prominent modernist influences account for much of Skinner's early behaviorism, the subsequent changes in his views are appropriately considered as postmodern and are indebted to other sources. These changes are strikingly apparent in his 1945 publication. "The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms." In that publication. Skinner introduced a probabilistic three-term contingency for verbal behavior with an expanded contextualism and an increased emphasis on consequence with a clear alignment to pragmatism. Instead of reaffirming the mechanistic and necessitarian values of (...) modernism that he had previously embraced, Skinner was aligning himself with the postmodern values of pragmatism and selectionism. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 1, Page 43-54, January 2022. This article reviews literature in composition studies since affective science's emergence in the 1980s. It focuses on composition studies’ history of adopting findings and theories from affective science, and distinguishes trends in how the field applies those elements in theoretical versus pedagogical contexts. While composition studies’ adoption of affective science in its theorizing has helped the field progress toward a “complete psychology of writing,” affective science's influence on classroom practices has (...) not been so clear cut or direct. However, affective science is a fast-growing, liberal, and multidisciplinary field. As it progresses, composition studies continues to embrace its concepts and theories. This review notes the expectations and limitations developing through this dynamic interdisciplinary relationship. (shrink)

For an academic, there is no greater reward than having one's scholarship taken seriously. The five distinguished scholars who have contributed to this symposium on The Force of Law have done just that, with varying degrees of agreement and disagreement, praise and criticism. But even critical commentary, and perhaps especially critical commentary, is evidence of serious engagement. More importantly, the commentaries contained here have advanced our understanding of law in valuable ways. I respond to each in this reply, but with (...) full acknowledgment that my responses cannot do justice to the full breadth of their contributions and challenges. My hope is not that I will persuade readers that I am correct and my critics mistaken, but rather that the reader who absorbs both the challenges and my response will come away with a greater understanding of the issues that The Force of Law seeks to place on the agenda of contemporary jurisprudence. (shrink)