What do you do when faced with wrongdoing-do you blame or do you forgive? Especially when confronted with offences that lie on the more severe end of the spectrum and cause terrible psychological or physical trauma or death, nothing can feel more natural than blame. Indeed, in the UK and the USA, increasingly vehement and righteous public expressions of blame and calls for vengeance have become...

OBJECTIVE Although child maltreatment is associated with later non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), the mechanism through which it might lead to NSSI is not well understood. The current retrospective case-control study examined associations between child maltreatment and later NSSI, and investigated the mediating roles of dissociation, alexithymia, and self-blame. METHODS Participants were 11,423...

Science is indeed interminable. Criticizing old ideas, coming up with new ones in an iterative process of creative destruction and reinvention is the spice of life for research. But there is another seemingly interminable aspect of science, at least in the biomedical arena, related to journal publication. When I was a postdoctoral fellow with Julius “Julie” Axelrod at the National Institutes of...

Here is a firm but qualified assertion. Scientists are often too hasty to criticize the media for inaccuracy and sensationalism in handling scientific issues. The assertion is qualified because some articles and programmes deserve condemnation. But it is firmly made because angry reactions are often disproportionate to alleged offences by the media, and in many cases are entirely misplaced. Con...

A survey using a convenience sample examined the relationships among blame placed on Firestone, Ford and the drivers in accidents involving Firestone tires. The amount of blame placed on one entity was unrelated to perceptions of others’ blameworthiness. Blaming Ford for the accidents predicted consumers’ desire to fine Ford, but not for more industry regulation.

Contradictory findings have been found with regard to attributions of praise and blame. In some cases, research points to a negativity effect whereby attributions of blame are greater for immoral behaviors than attributions of praise for similar moral behaviors (Knobe, 2003;Malle, 2006). Other researchers have demonstrated the opposite effect (Pizzaro, Uhlmann, & Salovey, 2003). In the current ...

Ajarring surprise greets the reader of 20th century psychosomatic literature who comes to it after having been immersed in 17th and 18th century materials. The mind-body dualism credited to Descartes is referred to with uncommon frequency and is usually said to have exercised an overwhelmingly negative influence on modem medicine. Roy R. Grinker, for example, bitterly blames Cartesian dualism f...

Who blames corruption for the poor enforcement of environmental laws? The answer to this question is important since corruption is an important reason why environmental policies are not properly enforced, but previous studies of environmental public opinion do not address the issue. We analyze data from a survey fielded in Brazil in June 2012, immediately preceding the Rio+20 environmental summ...

As the contemporary heirs of popular music or cinema, computer games are gradually taking over the markets of entertainment. Much like cinema and music, computer games are taking the spotlight in another front – that which blames them for encouraging unethical behaviors. Apparently, computer games turn their users into blood thirsty zombies with a computer game learnt ability of aiming with dea...