It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.– Leonardo da VinciPhysicians often believe that a conscious commitment to ethical behavior and professionalism will protect them from industry influence. Despite increasing concern over the extent of physician-industry relationships, physicians usually fail to recognize the nature and impact of subconscious and unintentional biases on therapeutic decision-making. Pharmaceutical and medical device companies, however, routinely demonstrate their knowledge of social psychology processes on behavior and apply these principles to their marketing. (...) To illustrate how pharmaceutical marketing strategies use psychological techniques to promote targeted therapies, we draw on the relevant social psychology literature on conflicts of interest and on the six principles of influence articulated by the eminent social psychologist Robert Cialdini. Hospitals, professional organizations, medical educators, and other stakeholders must also draw on social psychology to respond effectively to commercial activities that compromise good medical practice. (shrink)

Pharmaceutical and medical device companies apply social psychology to influence physicians' prescribing behavior and decision making. Physicians fail to recognize their vulnerability to commercial influences due to self-serving bias, rationalization, and cognitive dissonance. Professionalism offers little protection; even the most conscious and genuine commitment to ethical behavior cannot eliminate unintentional, subconscious bias. Six principles of influence — reciprocation, commitment, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity — are key to the industry's routine marketing strategies, which rely on the illusion that the (...) industry is a generous avuncular partner to physicians. In order to resist industry influence, physicians must accept that they are vulnerable to subconscious bias and have both the motivation and means to resist industry influence. A culture in which accepting industry gifts engenders shame rather than gratitude will reduce conflicts of interest. If greater academic prestige accrues to distant rather than close relationships with industry, then a new social norm may emerge that promotes patient care and scientific integrity. In addition to educating faculty and students about the social psychology underlying sophisticated but potentially manipulative marketing and about how to resist it, academic medical institutions should develop strong organizational policies to counteract the medical profession's improper dependence on industry. (shrink)

Immigrant nurses make up a large percentage of the Australian nursing workforce. Since the support in the workplace is expected to be inclusive for all nurses, the aim of this article is to explore how support and opportunities for professional growth, learning and development are distributed across different categories of nurses working in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). An ethnographic approach has opened an examination of the everyday workplace practices in the NICU to gain insight into how nurses made (...) sense of the social and power relations occurring between themselves and their senior colleagues and how they experienced the support and opportunities they received in their workplace. As today's workplaces such as the NICU are diverse in races, culture and experiences, the concepts of intersectionality and cultural safety assisted in identifying inequality and injustice related to such diversity. The results showed how patronage relations rendered nurses with immigrant status with major disadvantage and left them clinically and culturally vulnerable. Such inequity defeats the reasons for encouraging skilled migration of nurses and poses questions on the cultural competency of recruiting organisations. Considering how cultural safety might guide staff development offers opportunities for authentic support to culturally diverse nurses. (shrink)

This article examines the development of events after the World War II and how these events influenced the decolonisation process of British Southeast Asia. Britain returned to claim its colonial possessions in Southeast Asia after the defeat of Japan and proposed the Malayan Union plan to further consolidate its power in Malaya. However, Britain’s plan was met with furious opposition from the Malays who demanded a better deal to protect their interest as natives of Malaya. This article also focuses on (...) how the United States reacted towards the British policy in Southeast Asia. International events such as the Cold War, the fall of China to the Communists and the Korean War have deep impact on the policies of both Britain and the United States in Southeast Asia. The United States supported Britain to retain Malaya as one of its colonies and helped Britain in dealing with the Communists. The American and British policies of returning to their former colonies before World War II were also contrary to the Atlantic Charter formed by the allies during World War II. This article showed that the Western powers had no intention to immediately renounce colonialism at the end of World War II. (shrink)

Scholars have not reached an agreement on a theoretical foundation that underlies the psychological effects of avatar use on users. One group of scholars focuses on the perceptual nature of avatar use, proposing that perceiving the self-being represented by a virtual representation leads to the effects. Another group suggests that social traits in avatars prime users causing them to behave in accordance with the social traits. We combine these two theoretical explanations and present an alternative approach, hinging on a concept (...) of meta-cognitive experience. The psychological mechanism of the avatar-user bond is explicated in terms of cognitive fluency, a type of meta-cognitive experience reflecting an awareness of how readily or easily information is processed. Under this explication, two concepts related to avatar-user bond, identification and embodiment, are understood as the meta-cognitive experience of cognitive fluency at the level of one’s identity and physical body, respectively. Existing empirical evidence on avatar effects is revisited to explore how this new theoretical framework can be applied. (shrink)

The medical profession is under a state of increasing scrutiny. Recent high profile scandals regarding substantial industry payments to physicians, surgeons, and medical researchers have raised serious concerns over conflicts of interest. Amidst this background, the public, physicians, and policymakers alike appear to make the same assumption regarding conflicts of interest; that doctors who succumb to influences from industry are making a deliberate choice of self-interest over professionalism and that these doctors are corrupt. In reality, a myriad of evidence from (...) social science indicates that influence from conflicts of interest often occurs on a subconscious and unintentional level. This poses an important issue, since such conflicts can steer wellintentioned physicians away from their primary professional goal to provide the best medical advice and treatment possible. (shrink)

O modelo de convivência: contrato social e Estado na política de Pufendorf.

The general and sports psychology research is limited regarding the difference between the effects of verbal encouragement or compliment methods during high-intensity functional exercise testing. The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of VE and compliments on the performance of the repeated change-of-direction sprint test. A total of 36 male students in secondary school participated voluntarily in the study. They were divided equally into three homogeneous groups [VE group, compliment group, and control group) and performed a standardized (...) one repetition RCOD. The RCOD test consisted of a 100°change in the direction at every 4 m. Outcomes included performance indices, rating of perceived exertion, and feeling scale scores. VE and the compliment increased the performance indices and RPE compared with the control group. In conclusion, VE during the exercise testing would be more beneficial for optimal performance and RPE compared with the compliment and control groups. However, the moods, during RCOD, reproduce more positively during compliment conditions than the VE and control groups. (shrink)

Ethics; philosophy; linguistic analysis; western thought.

The subject of this research is the new age beliefs, which can be considered as individual religiosity. The aim of the research is to measure the relationship between new age beliefs and the level of religious knowledge and religiosity of individuals. As it is known, classical secularization theorists predicted that religious, mythological and similar supernaturalist structures will gradually lose their importance with the modernization process. Accordingly, religion will not only lose its decisive influence on social institutions, but will also withdraw (...) from the life of the individual to a significant extent. However, it can be said that although established religion relatively has lost its decisive role in directing life in (post)modern societies in comparison to the past, it still continues to exist in different forms as an important social institution. In other words, it can be stated that religiosity takes on different forms in societies where institutional religion has weakened. In this context, it is seen that new forms of religiosity emerged in Western societies after 1960. Concepts such as new religions, new religious movements, new age movement or new age spirituality have been put forward to describe these forms of religiosity in the tradition of sociological research. It has been determined that similar religious structures have begun to gain visibility in our modernizing country. The subject is investigated from different angles in many sub-disciplines of social science. In this context, the current research, which was designed in a quantitative design, was conducted with 382 university students studying in Bursa. In the study, a negative correlation was found between giving subjective importance to religion and new age beliefs. (shrink)

Arab countries; intellectual life; congresses.

COVID-19 has uncovered the vulnerabilities, inequalities and fragility present within our social community which has exposed and exacerbated the pre-existing racial and socioeconomic inequalities that disproportionately affect health outcomes for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people. Such disparities are fuelled by complex socioeconomic health determinants and longstanding structural inequalities. This paper aims to explore the inequalities and vulnerabilities of BAME communities laid bare by the Public Health England (PHE) reports published in June 2020, concluding with suggested strategies to address (...) inequalities in a post COVID-19 recovery. (shrink)

This paper presents an implementation of two radically different control schemes for a state-coupled two-tank liquid-level system. This is due to the purpose of transferring theoretical studies to industrial systems. The proposed schemes to be introduced and compared are the nonsingular terminal sliding mode control and the backstepping control. The performances of the developed methods are experimentally tested on a particular class of second-order nonlinear systems. The main purpose of the considered control schemes is to achieve a tracking trajectory for (...) a coupled-tank system. It is proved that the designed robust controllers guarantee the stability of the corresponding closed loop systems. The obtained results are verified with the same setup test to ensure a suitable basis for their comparison. During the experiments, we resorted to adding an integrator to the backstepping control so that we improve the results, leading to the appearance of the integrator backstepping control. To focus on the adequacy and applicability of the suggested control layout, theoretical comparisons as well as experimental results are afforded and debated. (shrink)

BackgroundAlthough gait patterns disturbances are known to be related to cognitive decline, there is no consensus on the possibility of predicting one from the other. It is necessary to find the optimal gait features, experimental protocols, and computational algorithms to achieve this purpose.PurposesTo assess the efficacy of the Stable Sparse Classifiers procedure for discriminating young and healthy older adults, as well as healthy and cognitively impaired elderly groups from their gait patterns. To identify the walking tasks or combinations of tasks (...) and specific spatio-temporal gait features that allow the best prediction with SSC.MethodsA sample of 125 participants was studied. They underwent assessment with five neuropsychological tests that explore different cognitive domains. A summarized cognitive index, based on the Mahalanobis distance from normative data, was calculated. The sample was divided into three groups using k-means clustering of MDCog in addition to Age. The participants executed four walking tasks and their gait patterns, measured with a body-fixed Inertial Measurement Unit, were used to calculate 16 STGF and dual-task costs. SSC was then employed to predict which group the participants belonged to. The classification's performance was assessed using the area under the receiver operating curves and the stable biomarkers were identified.ResultsThe discrimination HE vs. MCI-E revealed that the combination of the easy dual-task and the fast walking task had the best prediction performance. The features related to gait variability and to the amplitude of vertical acceleration had the largest predictive power. SSC prediction accuracy was better than the accuracies obtained with linear discriminant analysis and support vector machine classifiers.ConclusionsThe study corroborated that the changes in gait patterns can be used to discriminate between young and healthy older adults and more importantly between healthy and cognitively impaired adults. A subset of gait tasks and STGF optimal for achieving this goal with SSC were identified, with the latter method superior to other classification techniques. (shrink)

Despite their potential for facilitating interaction between a user and computer, an embodied agent and voice command have not been examined enough for their matching effects. The current study proposes that an embodied agent and voice command generate positive evaluative outcomes, particularly when they are accompanied by each other. To test this prediction, we conducted a 2 (visual output: embodied agent vs. geometric figure) × 2 (input modality: voice command vs. remote controller) between-subjects experiment (N = 52), and examined whether (...) visual output and input modality jointly influence participants’ social attribution (i.e., anthropomorphism, animacy, likability, and perceived intelligence), social presence, and satisfaction. Results show that voice command does facilitate users’ social attribution and social presence, but only when an embodied agent was presented. Also, the effects of voice command on social presence and satisfaction were mediated by anthropomorphism and perceived intelligence respectively, but only when the interface displayed an embodied agent. The present study evidences the holistic nature of human-computer interaction, revealing the importance of matches in the input and output interface. (shrink)

Despite their potential for facilitating interaction between a user and computer, an embodied agent and voice command have not been examined enough for their matching effects. The current study proposes that an embodied agent and voice command generate positive evaluative outcomes, particularly when they are accompanied by each other. To test this prediction, we conducted a 2 (visual output: embodied agent vs. geometric figure) × 2 (input modality: voice command vs. remote controller) between-subjects experiment (N = 52), and examined whether (...) visual output and input modality jointly influence participants’ social attribution (i.e., anthropomorphism, animacy, likability, and perceived intelligence), social presence, and satisfaction. Results show that voice command does facilitate users’ social attribution and social presence, but only when an embodied agent was presented. Also, the effects of voice command on social presence and satisfaction were mediated by anthropomorphism and perceived intelligence respectively, but only when the interface displayed an embodied agent. The present study evidences the holistic nature of human-computer interaction, revealing the importance of matches in the input and output interface. (shrink)

After the emergence of a popular resistance movement to direct rule by an absolutist monarchy, and several years of civil war, King Gyanendra of Nepal yielded power to an elected Congress in 2006. Within one year, Nepali citizens saw the signing of a Comprehensive Peace Accord, the establishment of a Constituent Assembly, the declaration of the Nepali state, and the declaration of the Nepali Republic a year after that. An Interim Constitution was adopted by 2007, which endowed (...) the Constituent Assembly with the authority to draft Nepal’s permanent Constitution, and established the limitations under which the Assembly must operate — all apparently legitimate steps in establishing a Constitutional order. What initially appeared to adhere to an established model of post-sovereign constitution-making failed in its first attempt. Indeed, the drafting and ratification of a permanent constitution is no easy task. Why did the first Constituent Assembly fail? Where did the constitution-making process divert from the post-sovereign model, and what caused it? I examine the process from the establishment of Nepal’s first Constituent Assembly to the short-lived deliberations of the Assembly, followed by the dissolution of the Assembly for failing to achieve its mandate. I also trace Nepal’s constitution-making process along the post-sovereign model, and assess whether they adhered to or diverted from the model. It is understood that no political models are fixed in the sense that adherence or divergence is necessarily incompatible with success or failure. However, I use Andrew Arato’s post-sovereign model as a guide for identifying the stages in the constitution-making process, and for a background to the discussion on where the first Assembly failed. (shrink)

In this article, I examine violence as constitutive of mobility for the feminine diasporic subject through an examination of women migrant workers from Nepal. I frame this project with two distinct theoretical approaches to understanding violence. First, I draw upon Catharine MacKinnon's provocative question ‘Are women human?’ to elucidate points of disjuncture between individual women migrants and state policy that dehumanises them. Second, I address some of the gaps in MacKinnon's work by turning to Judith Butler's theory of violence as (...) primarily embodied in the corporeal subject. Drawing on 30 in-depth interviews with returned women migrant workers, I examine three moments in the migration process that demonstrate how violence operates ubiquitously in and through circuits of mobility. I conclude that by putting Butler's and Mackinnon's approaches to violence in dialogue and examining the Nepali case through a dialectic framework, intriguing possibilities for approaching migration and its problematics are revealed. (shrink)

This article focuses on a particular episode in Sammy Gronemann’s life that occurred in 1902 and is briefly described in his memoires, Erinnerungen. Gronemann was asked to travel to Mainz for a propaganda lecture on behalf of the Zionist Movement in which he caused an uproar. Earlier in the year, the Jewish-orthodox newspaper Der Israelit of Mainz had published a slanderous article on the Zionist bank, the Jewish Colonial Trust, for which it was sued by the Zionist leadership. In the (...) midst of the trial against the paper and its editor-in-chief, Oskar Lehmann, efforts were made to bring the trial to a quick end by means of a settlement. During Gronemann’s talk in Mainz, he spotted Lehmann in the audience and entered into a tirade. He publicly insulted Lehmann, who angrily left the venue. This caused an uproar and jeopardized the leverage of the Zionists in the settlement negotiations and the trial’s speedy conclusion. This paper provides the background to the events, discusses its outcome, and puts the episode in its historical context. (shrink)

Arap dili gramerinde istişhâd ameliyesinde diğer naklî deliller kadar olmasa da hadise de yer verilmiştir. Nahivde hadisle istişhâd denilince kimi çevrelerce sadece Hz. Peygamber’in sözleri anlaşılır olmuştur. Oysaki hadis kavramı bundan daha geniş bir içeriğe sahip olup sahâbî ve tâbiî sözlerini de kapsamaktadır. Yine nahiv literatüründe istişhâda dair ortaya konmuş görüşler gözden geçirildiğinde sadece Hz. Peygamber’in sözleri değil az da olsa sahâbenin hatta tâbiînden bazılarının kavillerinin dahi referans alındığı görülmektedir. Bu olgudan hareketle sahâbe ve tâbiîn kavillerinin hadisler içindeki yeri, kavliyle (...) istişhâdda bulunulan sahâbe ve tâbiînin kimler olduğu ve istişhâda etkilerinin niceliksel ve niteliksel durumu gibi hipotezler gündeme gelmektedir. Diğer yandan bir kısmı hâlis Arap olan sahâbe ve tâbiînin sözlerinin “Arap kavli” içinde değerlendirilip değerlendirilmeyeceği konusu da akla gelen bir diğer güçlü soru işaretidir. İşte bu varsayımlardan hareketle şu amaçlar gözetilerek bu araştırmada bir neticeye varılabileceği kanaati hâsıl olmuştur: 1- Sahâbî ve tâbiîn sözlerinin Arap kavliyle ilişkisi 2- Hadisin kavramsal boyuttaki mahiyeti ve sınırlılıkları 3- Hadisle istişhâd çerçevesindeki teorik tartışmalar bir yana literatürde sahâbî ve tâbiî kavliyle istişhâd özelinde pratiğin tespit edilmesi. 4- Elde edilen verilere bağlı olarak literatürde teoriyle pratiğin bağdaşıklık durumunun saptanması. Buna göre araştırmada öncelikle hem erken dönemde hem geç dönemde istişhâd bağlamında eserlerinde sahâbî kavline ve varsa tâbiî kavline yer veren nahiv bilginleri tespit edilmiş, bunlardan öne çıkanlarının her biri için alt başlıklar açılmıştır. Bu başlıklar altında öncelikle ilgili bilginin hadisle istişhâd noktasındaki genel tutumuna kısaca değinilmiş, daha sonra hem sahâbî kavliyle istişhâdına dair dikkat çekici bir örneğe yer verilmeye çalışılmış hem de sahâbî kavliyle istişhâd tavırlarının niteliksel ve niceliksel yönlerine dikkat çekilmeye çalışılmıştır. Araştırmada ulaşılan sonuç erken dönemde Sîbeveyhi (öl. 180/796), Yahyâ b. Ziyâd el-Ferrâ (öl. 207/822), Ahfeş el-Evsat (öl. 215/830 [?]) ve Müberred (öl. 286/900) gibi nahiv âlimlerinin fesahatleriyle ün yapmış olan Hz. Ömer (öl. 23/644) ve Hz. Ali (öl. 40/661) gibi sahâbenin öncü isimlerinin kavillerini az da olsa hüccet edindiği, geç dönemde ise ilk kez Zemahşerî’nin (öl. 538/1144) bu iki sahâbînin dışında farklı kavillerle istişhâd etmesi sonrasında zamanla Abdurrahman b. Abdullah Süheylî (öl. 581/1185), İbn Mâlik et-Tâî (ö. 672/1274), Radî el-Esterâbâdî (öl. 688/1289’dan sonra), Ebû Hayyân el-Endelüsî (öl. 745/1344) ve İbn Hişâm en-Nahvî (öl. 761/1360) başta olmak üzere sonraki dönemin meşhur bilginleri sayesinde daha fazla sahâbî ve tâbiî kavlinin nahiv literatürüne girdiği şeklindedir. Son tahlilde pratikte hadisle istişhâd adı altında başta Hz. Peygamber’in (s.a.s.) bizzat kendi sözlerinin yanı sıra bir miktar sahâbe ve tâbiîn kavlinin de yer aldığı ve bu kavillerin Arap kavli içerisinde yeri olmakla birlikte hadis kategorisine daha yakın olduğu çıkarımına ulaşılmıştır. Yine geç dönemde Zemahşerî, İbn Hazm (öl. 456/1064), Süheylî ve İbn Harûf el-İşbîlî (öl. 609/1212) gibi bilginlerin başta Hz. Peygamber’in (s.a.s.) sözleriyle olmak üzere sahâbe ve tâbiînin kavilleriyle, bir diğer ifadeyle çok hadisle istişhâdın öncül karakterleri olduğu, dolayısıyla çok hadisle istişhâda sadece İbn Mâlik ekseninde bakılamayacağı, sosyolojik denklemler ekseninde dönemsel bir olgu olarak bakılması gereği gibi hususlar diğer çözüm önerileri olarak gündeme getirilmiştir. (shrink)

Commentary on Kusumāñjali of Udayanācārya, treatise on Nyaya philosophy.