Adolescents’ Identity Formation: Linking the Narrative and the Dual-Cycle Approach

The narrative and dual-cycle approach conceptualize and operationalize adolescents’ identity formation in different ways. While the narrative approach focuses on the construction of an autobiographical life story, the dual-cycle approach focuses on the formation of identity commitments. Although these approaches have different emphases, they are conceptually complementary. Yet, their empirical links and distinctions have only scarcely been investigated. Empirical knowledge on these links in adolescence and across time has been especially lacking. In the present research, it was therefore examined whether key characteristics of adolescents’ narration (autobiographical reasoning and agency) were concurrently and prospectively related to engagement in the dual-cycle processes of commitment making, identification with commitment, exploration in breadth, exploration in depth, and ruminative exploration. The findings from a cross-sectional sample of 1,580 Dutch adolescents (M_age?=?14.7 years, 56% female) demonstrated that autobiographical reasoning was significantly positively associated with the commitment and more adaptive exploration processes (i.e., in breadth and in depth). In addition, agency was significantly positively associated with the commitment processes and exploration in depth. Yet, these associations between the narrative characteristics and dual-cycle processes were only weak. Subsequently, the findings from a two-year longitudinal subsample (n?=?242, M_age?=?14.7 years, 62% female) indicated that on average commitment strength remained stable but exploration increased across middle adolescence. A stronger increase in identification with commitment and adaptive exploration (i.e., in breadth and in depth) was predicted by a higher degree of agency in adolescents’ narratives. Overall, these findings indicate that both approaches to identity formation are associated, but the small size of these associations suggests that they predominantly capture unique aspects of identity formation. Both approaches could thus complement and inform each other.

     

基于纤维二次转移确定纤维屑作为示踪物质的探讨

目的 考察纤维屑在涉及二次转移案件中作为示踪物质的适用性.方法 根据一个实际案例展开,在该案中,犯罪嫌疑人涉嫌多起入室盗窃案.纤维开始分散于嫌疑人所用车辆,后被嫌疑人“携带”并分散到犯罪现场,最终这些纤维在勘查过程中被收集.设计完善了一个可用于散布纤维的便携式装置,并完成了一系列二次转移的相关实验.结果 设计的装置可在短时间均相的散布纤维,单次接触不能全部转移第一表面的纤维碎屑.只有1-15％的纤维会转移到代表犯罪现场的第三表面.实际转移的纤维数与包括比如表面的材质在内的各种因素都有关系.结论 在所选参数范围内,相对大量的纤维有可能转移到犯罪现场并在现场勘查过程中被提取.     

Legal Knowledge-based Systems: The Blind Leading the Sheep?

This paper gives an overview of a study into the persuasiveness of legal knowledge-based systems. The outcomes of this study show that lawyers tend to uncritically adopt the advice of legal knowledge-based systems and seem to underestimate the limitations of these systems. In this paper I want to concentrate on the implications of this research for the use of knowledge-based systems in legal practice. The results stress the importance of studying the behaviour of users of legal knowledge-based system.     

Law and Coherence

Abstract. This paper deals with the questions of whether the law should be coherent and what this coherence would amount to. In this connection so‐called “integrated coherentism” is introduced. According to integrated coherentism, an acceptance set is coherent if and only if it contains everything that should rationally be accepted according to what else one accepts and does not contain anything that should rationally be rejected according to what else one accepts. Such an acceptance set is ideally a theory of everything, including amongst others standards for rational aceptance. On the assumption that the law, as a social phenomenon, is what the best theory about the law says it is, the law must be coherent, because the best theory of the law is part of an integratedly coherent theory of everything. This view is compatible with Raz's view that the law stems from different sources that need not be coherent in the sense that they consistently elaborate the same underlying principles or policies. Raz's view is not a consequence of integrated coherentism, however.     

Post-war fascism in the Netherlands

In practically all the countries of western Europe attempts were made, shortly after the ending of the Second World War, to inject new life into national socialism and fascism. This also happened in the Netherlands. Such efforts were being made in the face of severe restrictions since, after 1945, fascist and racist activists could expect to encounter considerably more resistance than they had done before 1940. Nevertheless, fascist and racist organizations have continued to crop up throughout the entire post-war period. The pursuit of fascist continuity in a post-war, anti-fascist climate evoked fierce opposition and sharp conflicts. These conflicts constituted a threat to extreme-right activists, for if such activists could be identified with fascism, they would be discredited and viewed as criminals. They were obliged to adapt to the new situation, but adaptive strategies carried a risk: disavowal of ideological principles. This dilemma has two boundaries: on the one hand the open conflict with the judiciary and, on the other, a vague and nebulous political profile. Both limitations could spell the end of the organization. This article has been concerned with the struggle between fascist and racist organizations and the outside world in the post-war decades. The course of the struggle has had a great deal of influence on the rise and fall of organizations and on the varied forms they have taken. Fascist organizations have to withstand the pressure from without in one way or another, but how? This is the big question which has formed a divisive element for decades now.     

On Justice Knowledge Activation: Evidence for Spontaneous Activation of Social Justice Inferences

This article focuses on how people infer the justness of events they encounter. Earlier justice research typically asked participants explicitly for their justice judgments. More recent research provided evidence for the possibility of spontaneous judgment inferences. The present research extends this study in three important ways: it provides strong evidence that (1) spontaneous social justice inferences can occur in multiple research paradigms, (2) these inferences constitute a process separate from spontaneous general evaluation of valence, and (3) spontaneous justice inferences covary with individual differences in sensitivity to justice. We provide evidence for these three conclusions by means of important implicit measurement research paradigms that we specifically tailored to study justice inferences: the probe recognition paradigm and the grid-relearning paradigm. We discuss the implications of our findings for both the literatures on justice and spontaneous inferences.