Showing papers on "Dilemma published in 1976"

Increasing compliance by legitimizing paltry contributions: When even a penny helps.

Abstract: Two experiments were conducted in a door-to-door charity drive context to examine the effectiveness of a technique for solving the dilemma of small requests. The dilemma of small requests is that while they serve to make a target person's compliance highly likely, they also tend to produce low-level payoffs for the requester. A procedure was developed to avoid the dilemma by legitimizing rather than requesting the delivery of a minimal favor. Thus, it was predicted that a solicitor who implied that a very small favor was acceptable but not necessarily desirable would make it difficult for a target to decline to help and, at the same time, make it unlikely that the target would actually offer a low grade of assistance. In confirmation of this prediction, a door-todoor solicitor for charity was able to increase significantly the frequency of donations while leaving unaffected the size of the donations by adding the sentence, "Even a penny will help," to a standard request for funds. Experiment 2 replicated this result and provided evidence for the legitimization-ofsmall-favors explanation of the effect. A growing number of studies have focused on the question of which factors affect a person's willingness to comply with a request. Researchers have investigated the influence of such variables as mood states, both positive (e.g., Isen & Levin, 1972) and negative

The Genesis Strategy: Climate and Global Survival

Abstract: The focus is on issues related to the world predicament. In 9 chapters attention is devoted to the weather the ongoing debate over the world predicament climate history the North American grain drain a review of the theory of climate weather and climate modification the politics of climate the politics of food and the genesis strategy - suggestions for a way out of the world predicament. The chief concern expressed for the future is political rather than scientific. Societies do face real dangers in the future and need to clarify the importance of the scientific component of these dangers. Politics and science are mixed in this book. Much of the current dilemma can be traced to the rationalizations by individuals that they are not technically qualified or significant enough to have any impact on solutions to the worlds growing problems. Personal involvement and influence is consequently abdicated to leaders and specialists. But the individual contribution is valuable to the ethical and political value judgments that will need to be made in the next few decades.

Big-Time Careers for the Little Woman: A Dual-Role Dilemma

Abstract: An explanation is presented for differential career achievement in women and men. The analysis proposed is based on social psychological theories, such as role theory and social comparison and attribution theory, rather than on the genetic or personality theories which have been advanced in the past. The paper focuses on the situational factors which operate on women to shape their domestic and professional choices and behavior. These factors are analyzed from the perspectives of traditional housewives and mothers; career women; and women who attempt to combine the responsibilities of housewife, mother, and professional.

Public Administration and American History: A Century of Professionalism

Abstract: assurances that there really is something to celebrate. At the bare minimum, of course, there is always survival; but it isn't easy to make much of a party out of that. For over a decade now historians have been picking at the American past in search of evidences of sin-omission, commission, it makes little difference as long as it is sin. Since we are dealing with human history, it's of course not hard to find. Still, people in search of its past can afford moments of generosity now and again. Public administration, along with many of the social sciences, has recently taken a renewed interest in its own history, not simply in the history of administration, but in the history of the development of the discipline itself. The distinction between the history of practices long associated with the process of government and the history of the modern professionalization of those practices is a difficult and complex one, but an important, perhaps even essential distinction to make. Human beings were governed by one another long before government became a field to be studied. The emergence of schools to train governors is part of that process by which all professions open access to the disciplines upon which they rest by making the knowledge and skill available outside a strictly limited group. While the process is slow and need not be called democratic, its openness depends ultimately on the fact that it is the knowledge which defines the identity of the group, not heredity or membership in a class however much those factors may influence selection. This is only to say that while professionalism is not a democratic process-indeed the hierarchies of knowledge and judgment it is intended to reflect are the essence of elitism-the development of modern democracy would be impossible without professionalism. From the perspective of American history, the professionalization of public administration was a key step in the acknowledgment of the dilemma industrial modernization posed for Americans committed to precepts of their revolution, their formative constitutional years, and, ultimately, the nationalism they saw confirmed in their Civil War. Administration became the way of coping with political problems without actually solving them, a process its defenders labeled pragmatic, or pluralist, but which its critics saw as muddling-and worse. The definition of the field, however, depended upon mediating the relation between an administrative elitism devoted to protecting a science of government and a faith in popular democracy which protected an extraordinary range of political practices. That the social sciences were always in the process of striving to be more scientific and the politics always under pressure to be more democratic often exacerbated differences and threats. The social science disci-

Weeping in the Playtime of Others: America's Incarcerated Children

Abstract: The microcosm and the national dilemma pathways to oblivion conditions in youth jails a national profile the politics of corruption alternatives and a new Bill of Rights for children.

City councillors and the dilemma of representation: the case of Isfahan

Abstract: (1976). City councillors and the dilemma of representation: the case of Isfahan. Iranian Studies: Vol. 9, No. 2-3, pp. 142-162.

Health Care: The Growing Dilemma.

Abstract: The success of the film of One Flew over the Cudcoo's Nest seems to be an indicator of a growing public awareness of the ambiguity of the concept of mental illness and of the potentially exploitative uses of psychiatric treatment. But whatever doubts may be felt about uses of psychiatry in the USA and in other western countries, the picture of Soviet psychiatry painted in The Case ofLeonid Plyushch leaves one in no doubt about the extremes of such abuse ofmedicalauthority. Plyushch, a promising young mathematician with a particular interest in the history and psychology ofgames, was arrested in January I972 on charges of anti-Soviet activity. His main 'crime' appears to have been his membership of the Initiative Group for the Defence of Human Rights in the USSR, a group of Soviet citizens committed to publicizing abuses ofhuman rights in political trials and in correcting inaccurate accounts of these trials in the Soviet press. He was held in prison for a year before a trial was held. The court sat in camera and in the absence of the accused. Plyushch was found to be insane (although no expert witnesses of any kind were called) and was ordered to be 'sent for treatment in a special type of hospital'. The treatment consisted ofbeing locked up, in grossly overcrowded and degrading conditions, in a ward for severely psychotic patients. In addition high doses of haloperidol, insulin and other drugs were administered. In these conditions Plyushch's mental and physical health showed signs of steady deterioration. Eventually, as a result of the courageous persistence of his wife and friends, intemational protests were mobilized to such an extent that the Soviet authorities released him, allowing him to leave Russia with his family in I976. Such a bare catalogue of events, however, cannot convey the force of this book. The earliest parts of it contain a selection of letters which Plyushch wrote to his family and friends at a time when his lucidity was still unimpaired by drugs. They testify not only to his mental health, but to his lively intelligence, warmth and simple humanity. The reader has begun to feel that he knows the man a little, when the tone of the narrative changes and detailed accounts of his diagnosis and 'treatment' are given. Through the eyes of family and friends we see the changes in him, and we are left with a disturbing feeling of what the editor descibes as a threat to 'the precious inner life of man'. In a sense the book has a happy ending. On release, Plyushch is found to be physically exhausted but mentally well. His statement to a press conference is calm and committed. He remains a convinced Communist as well as an advocate for human rights. But in his closing words he reminds us characteristically -not of his own suffering but of the plight of the many others still sentenced to insanity for their political beliefs. This book would be tragic enough as an isolated case history. But it is much more than this. It is about the corruption of the moral foundation of medicine and the cynical definition of health in terms of social utility. No society can afford to ignore its lessons.

Toward a Cross-Cultural Definition of Sin:

Abstract: Every culture has some standard of right and wrong. This is not fully discovered in a people's behavior, our author reminds us, but in their ideals. These ideals may, in essence, closely parallel the Decalogue; but this essence may be applied with widely varying emphases in the real life situations of different cultures. If the missionary, jealous for the essence of God's righteous demands, relies too heavily on the applications and emphases of his own culture, he may experience little conviction of sin in his hearers — and confused standards in the emerging church. Fully recognizing the dilemma this imposes on the cross-cultural witness, linguist-translator Dye finds hope and help in an ethnotheological approach to the problem.

School Athletics and Fan Aggression

Abstract: Each American is generally expected to fully embrace with all his being the "all-American" sports, and the pitiful person who "does not follow" sports is often considered to have some kind of character defect The possibility that there might be some kinds of social problems associated with sports first occurred to the author when security police in charge of a sports arena requested lectures and presentations which might be useful in their attempts at crowd control The security police were faced with a dilemma They knew how, they said, to control youthful aggressors at games and other events, but the incidence of such behavior was dramatically increasing On the other hand, the police claimed that they were also confronted with a newer problem that caused some apprehension, and this was how they might handle the "little old ladies" and "grandmothers" who became embroiled in fisticuffs in the grandstands Youthful antagonists could be physically broken apart, perhaps handcuffed, maced, and arrested; but few of the young policemen felt that they would be comfortable trying to pin a 60-year-old, gray haired lady to the floor in front of a cheering audience of 6000 fans It was problems such as these, brought to the author by various law enforcement officials, that originally stimulated the analysis and exploratory inquiry reported in this paper Scott (1972) has described two opposing ethics in athletics The first, the Lombardian ethic, is based upon such proclamations by Vince Lombardi as "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing" The Lombardian ethic equates victory with the preservation of manhood, and, by promoting a "winning-is-theonly-thing" philosophy, attitudes and behavior are sometimes transformed into "the end justifies the means" Many critics feel that the Lombardian ethic appears to be the rule of the day from the professional ranks down to the colleges, high schools and junior high schools Under this philosophy, the opponent is the enemy an obstacle in the path of victory, causing some players to assert that "you almost have to despise your opponent or even hate him" Axthelm (1975) claims that Lombardi, Haldeman and other architects of victory have sold the public a new attitude "Winning is the only thing" became a catch phrase, causing the sports fans of the nation to smirk, "Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser" The antithesis of the Lombardian

The Insoluble Problem of the Social Contract

Abstract: The traditional problem of the social contract defies solution. Agents with the motivations traditionally assumed would not in the circumstances traditionally assumed voluntarily arrive at a contract or voluntarily keep it up, as we can now understand, more clearly than our illustrious predecessors, by treating the problem in terms not available to them: the terms of Prisoner's Dilemma and of the theory of public goods.

Economic Aspects of Land Reform in Kiangsu, 1949–52

Abstract: The first part of this article consisted of a documentary analysis of the implementation of land reform in North and South Kiangsu between 1949 and 1952. What emerged most strikingly were the contradictions inherent in the multiple objectives of the institutional changes taking place and the impossibility of disassociating their economic and non-economic consequences. Specifically, the requirements of restoring production in the industrial sector, where many enterprises were under the control of landlords, while simultaneously redistributing landlords' agricultural land and other resources, gave rise to a serious dilemma which was reflected in different policy emphases during the campaign. Even if this dilemma could have been resolved, there remained a further contradiction: between the social and political desirability of allocating the maximum amount of land to the poorest peasants and the economic benefits to be gained from allowing the middle peasants to share in the fruits of expropriation. The situation was also complicated by the need to protect the efficient rich peasant economy, even at the expense of encouraging “capitalist” development.

Prisoner's dilemma: the "solution" by general metagames

Abstract: A solution of the prisoner's dilemma using general metagames is described. The solution is descriptive, not normative. It consists of showing that cooperation is an equilibrium of the full full metagame. The metaequilibria derived from this metagame are characterized in general; they are shown to be the symmetric equilibria of the basic game.