Morgan reads the treatment of gesture in Clarissa (Richardson, 1747 - 48), Amelia (Fielding,1 751), and Cecilia (Burney, 1782) to study the capacity the sentimental novel attributes to physical forms of eloquence to generate sociability and moderate selfishness in London. He argues that the eighteenth-century English novel of sentiment adopts a physiology derived from Descartes's theory of the body-machine to construct sentimental protagonists whose gestures bear witness against Bernard Mandeville's assertions that people are not naturally sociable, and that self-interest, rather than sympathy, determines absolutely every aspect of human behaviour. However, when studied in the context of sentimental fiction set in the cruel and unsociable metropolis of London, the action of this eloquent body proved relatively ineffectual in changing its spectators for the better. In the English novelistic tradition that stems from Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1747 - 48), selfishness lies at the roots of civilization, and inculcates modern urban people with instinctively theatrical mores: metropolitan theatricality, marked out in the gestures of the polite body, works to vitiate the sociability that might naturally animate everyday human intercourse. Clarissa responds to the dilemma of the intrinsic theatricality and self-interestedness of modern civil society with a heroine whose gestures (that is, whose physical states) demonstrate an eloquence that partially counteracts some of the effects self-love has upon the metropolis. But while sympathy and natural eloquence do little to diminish London's submission to selfishness, they remain, in Clarissa, unequivocally good. In contrast with Clarissa, Henry Fielding's Amelia (1751) and Frances Burney's Cecilia (1782) criticize both phenomena. In these novels, both by written by socially conservative authors, natural eloquence and sympathy do not generate sociability in London at all and do not even ensure personal virtue unless they are tempered by the discipline of some kind of theatricality. For Fielding and for Burney, unregulated sympathy becomes a problem to which the best remedy is a modicum of stage-craft. But, strangely enough, all three novels indirectly licence the principles of the self-interest they ostensibly attack. Ultimately, these novels of sentiment self-consciously position sympathy and natural eloquence as supplemental discourses that might protest against the dominant practices of Mandevillian self-interest that produce the social order of the metropolis. The net result is that the novel of sentiment implicitly tolerates the dominance of self-interest in the areas of public activity that lie mostly outside the subject-matter with which sentimental fiction principally concerns itself. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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Little is known about the complex processes leading to prosocial behavior. However, theories suggests that empathy, empathic responding, and emotion regulation abilities, may all contribute to the presence or absence of prosocial behavior. While theoretical papers demonstrate relationships between these constructs, researchers to date have only focused on small aspects of this complex relationship (e.g., the relationship between sympathy and emotion regulation, the relationship between empathy and prosocial behavior). This study proposed a complex model whereby empathy was both directly related to prosocial behavior and indirectly related to prosocial behavior via sympathy or personal distress. Furthermore, this study proposed an emotion regulation framework for understanding the relation between empathy and prosocial behavior, suggesting that one's emotion regulation abilities would cause a differential presentation of empathic responses, leading to a potential increase or decrease in prosocial behavior. An adult sample was recruited. Analyses were completed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Results indicate that hypothesized model adequately fit the data. All hypothesized associations between variables were significant. However, contrary to the hypothesis, emotion regulation ability did not alter the associations between study constructs. Strengths, limitations, and implications will be discussed. / Master of Science

Televised cruelty has become more severe in recent years likely in an attempt to pique the interest of viewers desensitized to its milder forms. Following the recent empirical interest in research dedicated to televised violence, which encompassed the typical, physical realm of cruelty, little research has focused on the psychological forms of cruelty demonstrated on television. Specifically, no research has examined the extent to which teasing, humiliation, gossip, ridicule, and verbal abuse, the five constituents of Caputo, Brodsky, and Kemp's (2006) definition of "ordinary cruelty," are perceived and enjoyed. A pilot study was conducted to narrow a pool of videos selected for their apparent content of ordinary cruelty. After the calculation of satisfactory estimates of reliability, summative scores were used to select the clips with the highest cruelty ratings: American Idol and Maury. Both videos were used in an experimental investigation of ordinary cruelty on television. Specifically, participants were divided into two groups: each group read a vignette, but the victim's deservingness was high in one group and low in another. Afterwards, all participants watched the same video clips and answered questions related to sympathy, empathy, parasocial identification, and other just world correlates. Belief in a Just World for Others (BJW-0) has been shown to be an index of harsh social attitudes. II was hypothesized that participants who have a high BJW-0 should enjoy the suffering of a deserving victim while not enjoying the suffering an undeserving victim, as the latter would present a threat to their beliefs. This hypothesis was marginally supported when measures were combined across both clips used within the study, but not for each individual clip separately. Sympathy is defined as expression compassion for another's suffering, while empathy is defined as experiencing one's emotions as though they were one's own. Both sympathy and empathy were hypothesized to be positively related to being victimized in the past, having no prior experience with the show, to perceiving oneself as similar to the victim, to not having committed victimization in the past, and to not perceiving oneself as similar to the perpetrator. The results partially supported these hypotheses, and the implications are discussed. Also hypothesized was that parasocial interaction, the feeling of closeness with the television character, with the victim would relate to less enjoyment, having a low BJW-O, and the victim's deservingness. However, none of these hypotheses were supported. Parasocial interaction with the host, however, significantly predicted enjoyment of the show. Results and limitations of the study overall are discussed as well as implications for Just World Theory.

This report modifies and re-envisions Jakob von Uexküll’s Umwelt theory as the “sympathetic umwelt,” in which sympathy is both the external object of desire and the internal means by which individual, subjective worlds are created. Through the application of this new paradigm to George Eliot’s “The Lifted Veil” and Middlemarch, this paper suggests that intersubjective relationships in the fictions she conceives are ephemeral illusions. Her early cognitive experiments and intellectual grappling with the nature of emotional connections culminates in the ambiguously defined concept of sympathy. Eliot’s focus on sympathy is not meant to reveal a solution to failures in human compassion and understanding, but to present it as the central problem – both in her own literature and in reality. / text

Na Teoria dos Sentimentos Morais, Adam Smith estabelece um esquema pluralista para explicar a aprovação moral, com quatro tipos de juízos morais: 1) em relação ao motivo da ação, o juízo que determina a conveniência ou inconveniência (propriety ou impropriety); 2) em relação aos efeitos imediatos da ação, o juízo determina seu mérito ou demérito; 3) ao analisar o acordo entre o ato e determinada regra geral de conduta, o juízo determina se o indivíduo agiu de acordo com seu dever; e 4) em relação aos efeitos não imediatos do ato, isto é, à maneira como esse ato se insere no funcionamento global da sociedade (juízo que Smith analisa sob o nome de aparência de utilidade). Esses quatro tipos de juízos se fundam na imaginação e formam a totalidade do princípio de aprovação que estrutura a parte especulativa de sua teoria moral. / In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith establishes a pluralist scheme to explain moral approbation, with four kinds of moral judgments: 1) regarding the motives of the agent, the judgment determines its propriety or impropriety; 2) regarding the immediate effects of the action, the judgement determines its merit or demerit; 3) analyzing if this act is a particular case of a general rule, the judgement determines if the agent has acted according to his duty; and 4) regarding the remote effects of the action, that is, the way this action is a part of the global operations of society (a judgement that Smith calls the appearance of utility). These four kinds of moral judgments are grounded in imagination and form the totality of the principle of approbation that structure the speculative part of his moral philosophy.

Chan, On Yue Joyce. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 316-329). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.

In A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume argues that moral judgments are the product of sentiment. The mechanism of sympathy allows individuals to enter into a common point of view in order to produce judgments that are truly moral, and not merely self-interested. Hume argues that the common point of view is the standard that moral judgments are subjected to. I argue that the common point of view is an inadequate standard for distinguishing between proper and improper moral judgments. The common point of view is inadequate because it is subjective and unreflective. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith offers an account of moral judgment that has an adequate standard for distinguishing between proper and improper moral judgments. Smith avoids the problems with Hume’s account due to his distinction between partial and impartial spectators and the role that self-command plays in his theory of moral judgment.

In this thesis I argue literary readership allows us to gain imagined experiences necessary to sympathize with people whose experiences are different from our own. I begin with a discussion of Adam Smith’s conception of sympathy and moral education. Although sympathy is a process we take part in naturally as members of a society, we can only be skilled spectators if we practice taking the position of the impartial spectator and critically reflect on our judgments. As I will argue in this thesis, literature provides a way for us to practice spectatorship without the consequences that come along with making mistakes when judging real people. Literature also provides a way to build up a stock of experiences, which can be applied together with our personal life histories to create the most informed judgments possible.

The crucial purposes of this thesis have two folds. Firstly, I will reconstruct Adam Smith¡¦s (5 June 1723-17 July 1790) thought through re-conceptualising the doctrine of the human nature in his theory. In doing this, I will give you reasons that the so-called ¡¥Das Adam Smith Problem¡¦ is founding on the wrong problematic concern in interpreting Smith¡¦s doctrine. The bulk of ¡¥the problem¡¦, having raised from the incessant controversy about whether Smith¡¦s theory is a coherent system built upon either sympathetic-based or interested-based foundation, but, as my kernel problematic concern in this thesis, I will argue that, neither side alone captures comprehensively about Smith¡¦s own understanding of human nature. Through presenting Smith¡¦s conception of the development of our moral judgement and his construction of operational principal of our market bahaviour, his doctrine of man should be orientated towards our intellectual capacity, especially on how do human cultivate their own moral judgement and the proper way of mutual understanding in everyday life. To accentuate the development of our capacity of judgement or reflection is the way I argue to understand Smith¡¦s conception of man correctly. Secondly, another controversy about Smith¡¦s doctrine lies on the contradiction among the concepts of ¡¥propriety¡¦ and ¡¥virtue¡¦ in his moral philosophy, while the former is the general standard attainable by the majority, and the latter with the stricter normative standard only a few men can achieve. My argument is, if man¡¦s intellectual capacity, such as judgement and reflection, having been regarded as essential concepts that Smith used to supersede the deficiency of one-sided understanding of human, then, his conception of impartial spectator and spectatorship¡¦s approach also gives the priority to cultivate our moral judgement and our capacity of reflection. Smith¡¦s primary concern, if I conceive it rightly, is to inspire our moral potential through disclosing the general principle lies behind our moral learning which terminated in the judgement made by impartial spectator, further, the concept of impartial spectator is also a linkage of different normative standards prescribed by propriety or virtue. Finally, In the conclusion part, I will connect my argument about moral potential with Smith¡¦s conception of human nature which tries to prove that, as the practical moralist, who considered man as intellectual animals that who deserves this privileged claim when who urges himself in enlarging and improving his own mentality.