Recent experimental research has revealed forms of human behavior involving interaction among unrelated individuals that have proven difficult to explain in terms of kin or reciprocal altruism. One such trait, strong reciprocity is a predisposition to cooperate with others and to punish those who violate the norms of cooperation, at personal cost, even when it is implausible to expect that these costs will be repaid. We present evidence supporting strong reciprocity as a schema for predicting and understanding altruism in humans. We show that under conditions plausibly characteristic of the early stages of human evolution, a small number of strong reciprocators could invade a population of self-regarding types, and strong reciprocity is an evolutionary stable strategy. Although most of the evidence we report is based on behavioral experiments, the same behaviors are regularly described in everyday life, for example, in wage setting by firms, tax compliance, and cooperation in the protection of local environmental public goods.
BackgroundWe examined the experiences of incarcerated adolescent males (N = 29) who participated in a one‐day meditation retreat and 10‐week meditation programme.
Method
Self‐report surveys assessing mindfulness, self‐regulation, impulsivity and stress; behavioural assessments; and focus group data were examined.
Results
We observed significantly higher scores in self‐regulation (p = .012) and psychometric markers demonstrated psychological enhancement. No behavioural change was observed. Six themes emerged: enhanced well‐being, increased self‐discipline, increased social cohesiveness, expanded self‐awareness, resistance to meditation and future meditation practice.
Conclusions
Early evidence suggests that meditation training for incarcerated youth is a feasible and promising intervention.
Zotero Collections:
Humans behave altruistically in natural settings and experiments. A possible explanation—that groups with more altruists survive when groups compete—has long been judged untenable on empirical grounds for most species. But there have been no empirical tests of this explanation for humans. My empirical estimates show that genetic differences between early human groups are likely to have been great enough so that lethal intergroup competition could account for the evolution of altruism. Crucial to this process were distinctive human practices such as sharing food beyond the immediate family, monogamy, and other forms of reproductive leveling. These culturally transmitted practices presuppose advanced cognitive and linguistic capacities, possibly accounting for the distinctive forms of altruism found in our species.Early human practices requiring language and sophisticated cognition enhanced the contribution of altruism to group survival, perhaps selecting for altruistic traits.
Early human practices requiring language and sophisticated cognition enhanced the contribution of altruism to group survival, perhaps selecting for altruistic traits.
What is the current state of traditional healing practices in contemporary Asian societies? How are their practitioners faring in the encounter with Western science and its biomedical approach? How are traditional healing practices being transformed by the politics of health within the modern nation-state and by the processes of commodification typical of modern economies? How do patients in Asian societies see the various healing options now open to them?The authors, all of whom are anthropologists, observe the clashes and complementarities between traditional therapies and biomedicine, which, in its many manifestations, is the dominant form of medicine supported by national governments, and is emblematic of the modernity to which they aspire. Some of the medical traditions, such as the sophisticated herbal-humoral systems of Tibetan medicine and Indian Ayurveda, are becoming well known in the West, both through scholarly study and through their increasing popularity with Western patients interested in their healing potential. This book adds a new dimension to their study, being focused unlike most previous writing on practice rather than textual tradition.
The Wiley Blackwell Companion to East and Inner Asian Buddhism combines outstanding contributions covering Buddhism as it developed and is practiced in this region. These newly-commissioned essays provide fresh scholarly perspectives on a wide range of concepts, texts, and practices. Offers a comprehensive and balanced survey of Buddhism within East and Central Asia, from the time of the Buddha through to the present day Provides fresh perspectives on a wide range of concepts, texts, traditions, doctrines, practices, and institutions – on topics spanning gender roles, tantric rituals, and the spread of Zen into Europe Brings together cutting-edge research by an interdisciplinary and international contributor team, including historians, literature scholars, and historians, as well as those from religious studies Presents a panoramic view of the extraordinary richness and variety of local Buddhist expressions and practices within Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Tibetan, cultures
Background: School safety and quality affect student learning and success. This study examined the effects of a comprehensive elementary school-wide social-emotional and character education program, Positive Action, on teacher, parent, and student perceptions of school safety and quality utilizing a matched-pair, cluster-randomized, controlled design. The Positive Action Hawai'i trial included 20 racially/ethnically diverse schools and was conducted from 2002-2003 through 2005-2006. Methods: School-level archival data, collected by the Hawai'i Department of Education, were used to examine program effects at 1-year post-trial. Teacher, parent, and student data were analyzed to examine indicators of school quality such as student safety and well-being, involvement, and satisfaction, as well as overall school quality. Matched-paired "t"-tests were used for the primary analysis, and sensitivity analyses included permutation tests and random-intercept growth curve models. Results: Analyses comparing change from baseline to 1-year post-trial revealed that intervention schools demonstrated significantly improved school quality compared to control schools, with 21%, 13%, and 16% better overall school quality scores as reported by teachers, parents, and students, respectively. Teacher, parent, and student reports on individual school-quality indicators showed improvement in student safety and well-being, involvement, satisfaction, quality student support, focused and sustained action, standards-based learning, professionalism and system capacity, and coordinated team work. Teacher reports also showed an improvement in the responsiveness of the system. Conclusions: School quality was substantially improved, providing evidence that a school-wide social-emotional and character education program can enhance school quality and facilitate whole-school change. (Contains 4 tables and 1 figure.)
<p><strong>Creator's Description:</strong> This is designed as an undergraduate textbook on Tibetan Buddhism. The general perspective is similar to that of <em>Civilized Shamans</em>, but the scale and detail are more appropriate for undergraduate usage, and the book includes supplementary material that will I hope be useful in that context. I have also taken the opportunity to cover a number of areas not dealt with in detail in the earlier book (e.g. gender, national identity, Tibetan Buddhism in the world today).A companion website will be available shortly with further material, including links to videos and a set of powerpoints which includes full colour versions of the illustrations in the book. An e-book version is also forthcoming with Journal of Buddhist Ethics Online Books. This lively introduction is the ideal starting point for students wishing to undertake a comprehensive study of Tibetan religion. It covers the development and influence of Tibetan Buddhism and the key schools and traditions, including Bon. Geoffrey Samuel helps students get to grips with a complex set of beliefs and practices and provides a clear sense of the historical, cultural and textual background. Important contemporary issues such as gender, national identity and Tibetan Buddhism in the world today are also addressed. Illustrated throughout, the book includes a chronology, glossary, pronunciation guide, summaries, discussion questions and suggestions for further reading that will aid understanding and revision. (2012-04-13)</p>
Abstract An important part of our Theory of Mind?the ability to reason about other people's unobservable mental states?is the ability to attribute false beliefs to others. We investigated whether processing these false beliefs, as well as similar but nonmental representations, is reliant on language. Participants watched videos in which a protagonist hides a gift and either takes a photo of it or writes a text about its location before a second person inadvertently moves the present to a different location, thereby rendering the belief and either the photo or text false. At the same time, participants performed either a concurrent verbal interference task (rehearsing strings of digits) or a visual interference task (remembering a visual pattern). Results showed that performance on false belief trials did not decline under verbal interference relative to visual interference. We interpret these findings as further support for the view that language does not form an essential part of the process of reasoning online (?in the moment?) about false beliefs.
<p>In this article Grupper argues that the monarchs of the nascent Manchu Ch'ing dynasty, particularly Nurhaci and Abahai, involved themselves with Tibetan Buddhist lamas not only as a means for winning favor of local rulers in Manchu efforts to consolidate authority in Mongol areas, but also as a deliberate act of political development which sought to utilize the Mongol-Sakyapa (sa skya pa) model of patron-lama government established by the Yüan dynasty. Moreover, it represented a sincere acceptance of Tibetan Buddhist ideals at the highest levels of the Manchu court. Grupper ties his argument in with a review of Hans-Rainer Kämpfe's study of a biography of Rölpé dorjé (rol pa'i rdo rje), the second Changkya (lcang skya) Qutuġtu at the Ch'ing court. In the life of Rölpé dorjé, Grupper notes, we see how the early predilection of Manchu rulers toward Tibetan Buddhism was continued and even developed in the middle Ch'ing dynasty period of the Ch'ien-lung Emperor. (Ben Deitle 2006-01-27)</p>
The body scan is a somatically oriented, attention-focusing practice first introduced into clinical practice as part of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program. Developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn, the MBSR program brings together a range of techniques and practices unified by a common theme — that of cultivating mindfulness. Mindfulness is defined predominantly as moment-by-moment attention focused in the present, in a nonjudgmental manner (Kabat-Zinn 1990). Described as a “clinic, in the form of an 8-week course” (Kabat-Zinn 2003, p. 149), MBSR has been adapted for various clinical populations, including individuals with eating disorders (Kristeller and Hallett 1999) anxiety (Kabat-Zinn et al. 1992), cancer (Speca, Carlson, Goodey & Angen, 2000; Lengacher et al. 2009), chronic pain (Kabat-Zinn, Lipworth, & Burney, 1985) and fibromyalgia (Sephton et al. 2007). MBSR was also the inspiration for a well-validated clinical intervention for depression: Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), developed by Segal, Williams, and Teasdale (2013).The MBSR program typically consists of an introductory informational meeting followed by eight, 2½-h group meetings with an all-day retreat on the weekend of the sixth week (Kabat-Zinn 1990). Participants are expected to commit to 45 min of home practice, 6 days of the week for the entire 8-week program. As the first formal home practice, the body scan is frequently participants’ initial encounter with mindfulness. Though the body scan serves as a foundation for all subsequent practices in the MBSR program, it has received remarkably little individualized attention. This relative lack of theoretical exploration may be an artifact of what McCown, Reibel and Micozzi (2010) note as a tendency of MBSR scholars to favor sitting meditation over other forms of practice. Whatever the reason, little has been written on the body scan in terms of its background, unique clinical contributions, and prospects for expanded clinical use. In this article we consider each of these facets in turn, with the intention of locating the body scan in the broader spectrum of clinical psychology practice.
Metacognitive Therapy (MCT) for depression is a formulation-driven treatment grounded in the Wells and Matthews (Attention and emotion: A clinical perspective, 1994) self-regulatory model. Unlike traditional CBT it does not focus on challenging the content of depressive thoughts or on increasing mastery and pleasure. Instead it focuses on reducing unhelpful cognitive processes and facilitates metacognitive modes of processing. MCT enables patients to interrupt rumination, reduce unhelpful self-monitoring tendencies, and establish more adaptive styles of responding to thoughts and feelings. An important component of treatment is modification of positive and negative metacognitive beliefs about rumination. MCT was evaluated in 6–8 sessions of up to 1 h each across 4 patients with recurrent and/or chronic major depressive disorder. A non-concurrent multiple-baseline with follow-up at 3 and 6 months was used. Patients were randomly allocated to different length baselines and outcomes were assessed via self-report and assessor ratings. Treatment was associated with large and clinically significant improvements in depressive symptoms, rumination and metacognitive beliefs and gains were maintained over follow-up. The small number of cases limits generalisability but continued evaluation of this new brief treatment is clearly indicated.
Pages |