Folk Concepts of Intentional Action in the Contexts of Amoral and Immoral Luck

This paper concerns a recently discovered, puzzling asymmetry in judgments of whether an action is intentional or not (Knobe 2003a, b). We report new data replicating the asymmetry in the context of scenarios wherein an agent achieves an amoral or immoral goal due to luck. Participants’ justifications of their judgments of the intentionality of the agent’s action indicate that two distinct folk concepts of intentional action played a role in their judgments. When viewed from this perspective, the puzzle disappears, although the asymmetry remains

Parenting Control in Contexts of Political Violence: Testing Bidirectional Relations Between Violence Exposure and Control in Post-Accord Belfast

Objective. The authors examined bidirectional relations between youth exposure to sectarian and nonsectarian antisocial behavior and mothers' efforts to control youths' exposure to community violence in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Design. Mother-child dyads (N = 773) were interviewed in their homes twice over 2 years regarding youths' exposure to sectarian and nonsectarian community antisocial behavior and mothers' use of control strategies, including behavioral and psychological control. Results. Youths' exposure to nonsectarian antisocial behavior was related to increases in mothers' use of behavioral and psychological control strategies over time, controlling for earlier levels of these constructs. Reflecting bidirectional relations, mothers' behavioral control strategies were associated with youths' reduced exposure to nonsectarian and sectarian antisocial behavior over time, whereas psychological control was not related to reduced exposure. Conclusion. Only nonsectarian community violence was associated longitudinally with mothers' increased use of control strategies, and only behavioral control strategies were effective in reducing youths' exposure to community antisocial behavior, including sectarian and nonsectarian antisocial behavior.

Strategies for critical reflection in international contexts for social work students

International contexts provide social work students with the opportunity to develop knowledge of international social work, global citizenship and cultural competency. While these contexts are powerful sites of learning, there is a need to ensure that this occurs within a critical framework. The paradigm of critical reflection is used to facilitate this and has been popular in international programs. In this article, we develop this further by describing critically-reflective techniques and providing examples used in a pilot exchange program between a social work school in the UK and in India. The potential implications of these strategies for social work education are discussed. © The Author(s) 2012

Socioeconomic position, co-occurrence of behavior-related risk factors, and coronary heart disease: the Finnish public sector study

Objectives. We examined the associations between socioeconomic position, co-occurrence of behavior-related risk factors, and the effect of these factors on the relative and absolute socioeconomic gradients in coronary heart disease.