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Biomedical subjects

H Lesser

Publications and source records attributed to H Lesser.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

Obligation and consent.

It is often supposed, as in Professor Kluge's article (1), that one can only acquire an obligation by free consent. This paper argues that although this is true of some types of obligation, including the ones discussed by Professor Kluge, it is by no means true of all. In particular, it is argued, society may legitimately impose obligations on us without our consent, if the obligations are reciprocated, or if it is simply enforcing an already existing moral obligation.

Ethics

Problem-solving rigidity of children on perceptual tasks as a function of parental authoritarianism.

The effect of parental authoritarianism on the rigid problem-solving behavior of 25 10- to 12-year-old children was examined. Children were tested on three perceptually ambiguous tasks in an experimentally induced ego-involving situation. Authoritarianism in one parent was associated with authoritarianism in the other. Children's greater difficulty on all three tasks was associated with higher parental authoritarianism; opposite sex correlations betweens sons' and mothers' and between daughters' and fathers' scores are stronger than same sex correlations. Children were consistent across all three tasks on rigid problem-solving behavior. It is suggested that rigid problem-solving behavior may mediate the transmission of authoritarianism from parent to child.

Anxiety