This study examined links between antisocial behaviour, moral emotions (i.e., sympathy and guilt), and negative emotionality in an ethnically diverse sample of 4- and 8-year-old children (N = 79). Primary caregivers reported their children’s antisocial behaviour, sympathy, and negative emotionality through a questionnaire and across a 10-day span via daily diary entries (n = 474 records). In a semi-structured interview, children reported their sympathy levels and guilt feelings. Children with high guilt in harm contexts and low negative emotionality were rated as less antisocial in both questionnaire and diary reports. For children with low guilt in exclusion contexts, low sympathy ratings predicted higher questionnaire-reported antisocial behaviour. For children with high guilt in prosocial omission contexts, high sympathy ratings predicted lower diary-reported antisocial behaviour. Lastly, high sympathy ratings predicted lower questionnaire-reported antisocial behaviour for children with low negative emotionality.

A disproportionate amount of research into musical theatre focuses on the positive and accessible nature of the books and librettos. Very little, if any, research into musical theatre explores its darker side, specifically the considerable amount of villainy (i.e., traditionally immoral and/or criminal behavior) practiced by some of its protagonists. Moreover, it is important to note that several of the most popular musicals contain villainous characters, and that many of these characters are highly popular and even sympathetic (i.e., understandable, pitiable, and deserving of compassion) to audiences. Therefore, this thesis explores sympathetic villainous personalities in popular American musicals, focusing on the defining characteristics of the sympathetic villainy presented within specific musical works. Specifically, this thesis examines a variety of American musical theatre pieces, chronologically, from Show Boat (1927) to Wicked: The Untold Story of the Witches of Oz (2003) which have strong sympathetic villainous characters. This thesis primarily addresses musical theatre villainy primarily from a critical literary analysis standpoint.

This thesis argues that Kant has a viable, intellectualist account of moral character that is much richer and more interesting than has often been thought. This account is consistent with his broader practical philosophy, in particular, his account of moral worth. Chapter one establishes that Kant has a theory of education on which a child's inclinations are to be trained in preparation for her to grasp the moral law and acquire full moral agency. It argues that his account of habit is complex, recognizing a kind of moral value that is broader than his definition of moral worth. Chapter two argues that sympathy is, for Kant, a primarily cognitive disposition of special importance; this is because it provides knowledge of how the moral law applies in particular circumstances, therefore enabling an agent to fulfill her duties toward others. This chapter also resolves a puzzle concerning Kant's dual concept of character (as both intelligible and empirical) by drawing an analogy with one account of weakness of will. Chapter three develops an account of moral worth that incorporates these more palatable elements of Kant's account of moral character with the seemingly more austere elements familiar from the Groundwork. This theory allows for positive, participating inclinations alongside ascriptions of moral worth. Further, it introduces a distinction between full and mitigated moral worth, to account for agents who, for example, act rightly but for confused reasons as in the case of Twain's Huckleberry Finn. Chapter four responds to two objections to Kant on the basis of moral demandingness, one concerning psychological integration and personal relationships, the other concerning the value of non-moral goods more broadly. It then responds to some objections to his account of the highest good, or the idea of a world in which happiness is distributed in proportion to virtue.

abstract: The purpose of this study was to examine whether dispositional sadness predicted children's prosocial behavior, and whether empathy-related responding (i.e., sympathy, personal distress) mediated this relation. It was hypothesized that children who were dispositionally sad, but well-regulated (i.e., moderate to high in effortful control), would experience sympathy versus personal distress, and thus would engage in more prosocial behaviors than children who were not well-regulated. Constructs were measured across three time points, when children were 18-, 30-, and 42-months old. In addition, early effortful control (at 18 months) was investigated as a potential moderator of the relation between dispositional sadness and empathy-related responding. Separate path models were computed for sadness predicting prosocial behavior with (1) sympathy and (2) personal distress as the mediator. In path analysis, sadness was found to be a positive predictor of sympathy across time. There was not a significant mediated effect of sympathy on the relation between sadness and prosocial behavior (both reported and observed). In path models with personal distress, sadness was not a significant predictor of personal distress, and personal distress was not a significant predictor of prosocial behavior (therefore, mediation analyses were not pursued). The moderated effect of effortful control was significant for the relation between 18-month sadness and 30-month sympathy; contrary to expectation, sadness was a significant, positive predictor of sympathy only for children who had average and low levels of effortful control (children high in effortful control were high in sympathy regardless of level of sadness). There was no significant moderated effect of effortful control on the path from sadness to personal distress. Findings are discussed in terms of the role of sadness in empathy-related responding and prosocial behavior as well as the dual role of effortful control and sadness in predicting empathy-related responding. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Psychology 2012

Submitted by Maike Costa (maiksebas@gmail.com) on 2017-09-20T13:20:50Z No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 1104345 bytes, checksum: 3fee21bdbacbf668eaccd75ad8d20f94 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-09-20T13:20:50Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 1104345 bytes, checksum: 3fee21bdbacbf668eaccd75ad8d20f94 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-03-29 / This dissertation has the objective to investigate the moral’s theory of the scottish philosopher David Hume, concerning with the concept of sympathy and what is its function in the humean moral’s philosophy. It analyzes as well the concept of utilitarianism that according to Hume it must be understood like a general criterion of morality, therefore, all human being has a strong link with society and perceives it like a well-being state of humanity. To fulfil the proposed objective, this research was divided into three chapters. In the first one, I present the general aspects of Hume’s philosophy like empiricism, impressions and ideas, causality, freedom and necessity. In the second chapter, I treat the moral and its distintions, if it has its foundation in the reason or in the sensibility, justice like artificial virtue and the passions. Finally, in the third and last chapter, I treat the sympathy and the utilitarianism, and what its relation with the humean moral. / Esta dissertação tem o objetivo de investigar a teoria moral do filósofo escocês David Hume, no que se refere ao conceito de simpatia, e qual seu papel na filosofia moral humeana. Analisa também o conceito de utilitarismo que de acordo com Hume deve ser concebido como um critério geral de moralidade, pois, todo ser humano tem uma forte ligação com a sociedade e a percebe como um bem-estar da humanidade. Para cumprir o objetivo proposto, esta pesquisa, foi dividida em três capítulos. No primeiro, apresento os aspectos gerais da filosofia de Hume como o empirismo, impressões e ideias, a causalidade, liberdade e necessidade. No segundo capítulo, trato da moral e suas distinções, se têm seu fundamento na razão ou na sensibilidade, a justiça como virtude artificial e as paixões. Finalmente, no terceiro e último capítulo trato a simpatia e o utilitarismo, e qual sua relação com a moral humeana.

Trata-se de explorar o tema da identidade pessoal no Tratado da natureza humana (1739-1740) de Hume, segundo três pontos de vista: a simpatia, a imaginação e as paixões. De início, mediante o estudo da relação entre as ideias de eu e de outro no princípio da simpatia, procuramos mostrar como esse princípio carrega em si um significado mais profundo do que a mera comunicação de paixões ou afetos usualmente privilegiada entre os intérpretes. Com efeito, se examinarmos a dependência entre o indivíduo e seu semelhante, encontramos no mecanismo simpático um conflito quanto à natureza da identidade pessoal: o eu é, ao mesmo tempo, a percepção mais forte que se pode ter no pensamento, e, sem a exterioridade, nas palavras de Hume, o eu é na realidade nada. A fim de esclarecer o conflito, propomos o seguinte: num primeiro momento, investiga-se a imaginação, em virtude da qual uma ficção do eu é engendrada no pensamento; num segundo, a sucessão de paixões, em que um eu de prazer e dor é produzido. Sem a intenção de privilegiar a imaginação ou as paixões como princípio de formação da identidade, ou mesmo de especular a respeito de uma articulação exaustiva entre elas, pretendemos apreender sob os três pontos de vista (incluindo a simpatia) o que haveria de essencial à identidade: uma ordem que se estabelece a partir da desordem, e que se encontra a todo momento por ela ameaçada. / This work explores the theme of personal identity in Humes Treatise of human nature (1739-1740), according to these three points of view: sympathy, imagination and passions. First of all, through the study of the relation between the self and the ideia of other in the principle of sympathy, we intend to show that this principle carries within itself a meaning more significant than a mere communication of passions or affects usually adopted by the commentators. In effect, if we examine the dependency between the individual and his similar, we find in the mechanism of sympathy a conflict regarding the nature of personal identity: the self is, at the same time, the liveliest perception we can have in the thought, and, without the exteriority, according to Humes words, the self is in reality nothing. In order to overcome the conflict, we propose: first, the investigation of the imagination, through which a fiction of the self is created in the thought; second, the succession of passions, where a self of pleasure and pain is produced. Without the intention of favouring the imagination or the passions as the principle of the formation of identity, neither with the intention of speculating about an exhaustive articulation between these two, we intend to consider by the three points of view (including that of sympathy) what would be the essential about personal identity: an order that is established by the disorder, and that is at all times threatened by that very disorder.

The "dramatic monologue" is curiously named, given that poems of this genre often feature characters not only listening to the speakers but responding to them. While "silent auditors," as such inscribed characters are imperfectly called, are not a universal feature of the genre, their appearance is crucial when it occurs, as it turns monologue into dialogue. The scholarly attention given to such figures has focused almost exclusively upon dramatic monologues by Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, and other male poets and has consequently never illustrated how gender influences the attitudes toward and outcomes of communication as they play out in dramatic monologues. My dissertation thus explores how Victorian and modernist female poets of the dramatic monologue like Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Augusta Webster, Amy Levy, and Charlotte Mew stage the relationships between the female speakers they animate and the silent auditors who listen to their desperate utterances. Given the historical tensions that surrounded any woman's speech, let alone marginalized women, the poets perform a remarkably empathetic act in embodying primarily female characters on the fringes of their social worlds--a runaway slave, a prostitute, and a modern-day Mary Magdalene, to name a few--but the dramatic monologues themselves end, overwhelmingly, in failures of communication that question the ability of dialogue to generate empathetic connections between individuals with radically different backgrounds. Silent auditors often bear the scholarly blame for such breakdowns, but I argue that the speakers reject their auditors at pivotal moments, ultimately participating in their own marginalization. The distrust these poems exhibit toward the efficacy of speaking to others, however, need not extend to the reader. Rather, the genre of the dramatic monologue offers the poets a way to sidestep dialogue altogether: by inducing the reader to inhabit the female speaker's first-person voice--the "mobile I," in Èmile Benveniste's terms--these dramatic monologues convey experience through role-play rather than speech, as speaker and reader momentarily collapse into one body and one voice. Such a move foregrounds sympathetic identification as a more powerful means of conveying experience than empathetic identification and the distance between bodies and voices it necessitates.

My dissertation seeks to restore the sentiment of pity to Rousseau’s moral and political system. Rousseau scholarship tends to offer a proto-Kantian interpretation of Rousseau’s concepts of moral liberty and the general will. I argue that these readings neglect Rousseau’s own definition of virtue as the product of an individual’s pity moderating rational self-interest (amour de soi). I offer an account of Rousseau’s moral liberty dependent on this concept of virtue that incorporates the sentiments. I then argue that pity must perform a similar role in the general will because it is through the general will that people express their moral agency. To do so, I explore how Rousseau’s account of pity as a social sentiment is more expansive and active than standard interpretations allow, and thus it is better described as expanded pity or sympathy. Understanding pity’s role in the general will also affects Rousseau’s accounts of equality and individuality. Because virtue demands that pity moderate impulses to excess, the general will that arises from a virtuous citizenry will tend toward distributive equality. A state then best achieves equality by cultivating virtue through private institutions like education and public institutions like civil religion. Finally, I argue that Rousseau’s account of pity alleviates the perceived conflict, first posed by Judith Shklar, between the individual life of man and the homogenized life of citizen. In its expanded form, pity motivates individuals to care about others’ pursuits of their own personal interests while also maintaining a separation between self and other. Exploration into Rousseau’s pity thus has important implications for the kind of political emotions we should look to revitalize in modern democratic society.

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