When Is a Gerrymander Not a Gerrymander: Who Benefits and Who Loses from the Changed Rules for Defining Parliamentary Constituencies?

Members of the British Labour party have, not for the first time, criticised the Boundary Commissions’ proposals for new constituency boundaries as gerrymandering. This represents a misuse of the term: the Commissions have produced recommended constituencies in the context of new rules for such redistributions that give precedence to equality of electorates across all seats and the boundaries of those constituencies have been defined without any reference to the likely electoral consequences. The Conservatives, who were responsible for the change in the rules to emphasise electoral equality, wanted to remove a decades‐long Labour advantage in the translation of votes into seats because of variations in constituency size, and the Commissions’ implementation of those rules has achieved that. A Labour advantage has been removed but not replaced by a Conservative advantage: in terms of electoral equality between the two, the playing field has been levelled. Labour's claim to have been disadvantaged by decisions on the electoral register is also examined; the disadvantage is probably only small.     

Missing the overlap between theory and practice: Patten’s ‘equal recognition’ in the face of the Catalan case

Drawing on the particularities of Catalonia (and related cases), the general point of this contribution is to argue that Patten’s equal recognition theory is modeled upon a too-restricted set of empirical assumptions, a circumstance that might harm its value as a tool for the orientation, evaluation, and reform of public policy. What is absent in Patten’s account – or at least not properly inserted into it – are four built-in modules that we have named ‘history’, ‘democracy’, ‘international relations’, and ‘migration’. When it comes to recognition of minorities, the past matters more often than Patten is willing to accept; democracy can lead to permanent departures from equal recognition on the part of self-governing national minorities; in the recognition game, there are other relevant players than simply states and their minorities; and one of these players, namely immigrant groups, can (albeit involuntarily) distort equal recognition schemes.     

Empowering women through the positive birth movement

Childbirth has been positioned as a life changing event that has profound long-term psychological effects upon women. This paper adopts a community psychology approach to explore the role that the Positive Birth Movement (PBM) may have in tackling negative birth experiences by supporting women before and after birth. Six women who all regularly attend UK-based PBM meetings and had given birth to at least one child participated in one to one semi-structured interviews designed to explore the support they received before, during and after their birth, as well as their experiences with the PBM. A Foucauldian inspired discourse analysis explores themes relating to the lack of support and information provided by the NHS and the function of the PBM as a transformative community space which offers social support and information. Within these themes a focus on neoliberalism, choice and the woman’s position as an active consumer of health care is critically discussed. It is argued that the PBM has the potential to prepare women for positive birth experiences but more attention needs to be paid to the wider contexts that limit women’s ability to make ‘free’ choice.     

族群社会心理:民族心理学的研究对象

对民族心理学研究对象的模糊界定,难于给研究者提供科学的、明确的研究方向。文章分析了我国民族心理学研究者对民族心理学研究对象的各种观点,并引入人类学的“族群”概念,提出民族心理学的研究对象应该为族群社会心理,而不是一般的民族心理。民族心理学研究并非一般心理规律和意义的研究,而是具有特殊性和具体性的研究,是在社会实际场景中,在社会活动和人际交往中才能完成的研究。     

警察心理的国内研究现状

我国对警察心理的研究起步较晚,目前还处在发展阶段。就目前的研究现状来看,大致可以分为三个研究流派:经院派、公校派和实务派;主要研究内容包括五个方面:警察群体心理特征、警察心理健康问题、警察心理压力问题、警察职业耗竭问题、警察实战应用心理问题;研究阶段分为萌芽起步阶段和发展阶段,约15年左右的时间。     

"法德并举"与和谐社会

"法德并举"治国方略的提出,既解读继承历史,又立足创新现实.它与和谐社会存在着密切的关系,"法德并举"治国方略是和谐社会构建的前提、实现的途径和成果的保障;而和谐社会是"法德并举"治国方略的目的归宿和贯彻落实,法德并举方能社会和谐,长治久安.     

Assessing Cognitive Bias in Forensic Decisions: A Review and Outlook

In recent years, a number of studies have demonstrated that forensic examiners can be biased by task-irrelevant contextual information. However, concerns relating to methodological flaws and ecological validity attenuate how much the current body of knowledge can be applied to real-life operational settings. The current review takes a narrative approach to synthesizing the literature across forensic science. Further, the review considers three main issues: (i) primary research on contextual bias within forensic science; (ii) methodological criticisms of this research; (iii) an alternative perspective that task-irrelevant contextual information does not always lead to error. One suggestion for future research is outlined, which is that studies on contextual bias in forensic decisions should be conducted in collaboration between forensic scientists and cognitive psychologists. Only then can rigorous and ecological valid experiments be created that will be able to assess how task-irrelevant contextual information influences forensic analysis and judgments in operationally valid settings.     

Differences in Psychosexual Development Among Child,Peer, and Mixed Juvenile Sex Offenders

Researchers have examined a number of typologies of juvenile sex offenders, including victim age. Using data from psychological evaluations and the Multiphasic Sex Inventory-II (MSI-II; [Psychological assessment of sex offenders, 2010 ]), this study compared child offenders (i.e., victims were more than 4 years younger), peer offenders (i.e., victims were 4 years younger or less), and mixed offenders (i.e., both child and peer victims) on variables including victim, offender, and offense characteristics, and psychosexual development. Peer offenders had more severe sexual offenses, prior status/nonviolent charges, and issues with sexual functioning. Mixed offenders began offending at a younger age and were indiscriminate in gender and relationship of the victim. Mixed offenders were also more likely than child and peer offenders to have prior sex offender treatment, meaning they had previously failed treatment. As juvenile sex offenders are a heterogeneous group, these research findings suggest that child offenders, peer offenders, and mixed offenders’ treatment needs differ from each other.     

Are Science and Religion Complementary Perspectives?

Eugene Goodheart provides an eloquent defense of the non-literalist, religious imagination before the aggressive atheism of several of today’s leading neo-Darwinists. But the position that he takes—that science and religion represent “complementary perspectives” serving different, yet equally permanent needs—is undermined by two fundamental problems. First, the claim that science can only tell us how the natural world works, while religion offers meaning, value, and moral guidance, may hold true when science is understood on the model of mathematical physics, but not when evolutionary biology and its derivatives are considered. Even Stephen Jay Gould, whose famous defense of science and religion as “nonoverlappling magisteria” resembles Goodheart’s, acknowledges that the case of evolutionary biology is profoundly different. Here evolutionary fact and moral values bleed together obscuring the boundary between science and religion. Second, religion and legacy of the religious imagination embedded in our culture, lose their ability to provide meaning, morals, and consolation when core elements of religious teaching are no longer believed to be true.

论沈从文的苗族文化心理

湘西独特的人文环境,孕育了沈从文浓厚的苗族文化心理。这种文化心理,赋予了作家认识世界的独特目光和审美情趣,孕育了他的个性,影响了他一生的处事态度。这种心理主导下的创作思想,在一个以汉儒文化和西方文明为主流的都市文化背景下,不失为一种特立独行的创作个性。