Publication Type: Poster
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: We tested several predictions from Unconscious Thought Theory (UTT) in the context of juror decision making. Participants read a summary of evidence presented in the penalty phase of a capital murder case. We manipulated evidence (equal number of aggravating and mitigating evidence, more aggravating evidence, or more mitigating evidence) and mode of thought (unconscious thought, conscious thought, or immediate decision). According to UTT, participants in the unconscious thought condition will form more global decisions, as well as decisions influenced by the direction of evidence (e.g., more life sentences for cases with more mitigating evidence under unconscious compared to conscious thought).

Publication Type: Symposium Paper
Abstract: This paper focuses on the challenges and ethical dilemmas associated with the development of a systematic approach to assessing dispositions in teacher candidates. The development of the dispositions themselves was the result of unit level discussion and consensus building across eighteen programs residing in six departments and three colleges. Education Department faculty then worked with K-12 practitioners to operationalize the dispositions into observable teacher behaviors and to develop both a rubric and a systematic process by which the dispositions could be assessed. This paper includes preliminary results from the first year of implementation.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Scholarship on the American founding remains divided as to the nature of Anti-Federalist political philosophy. One school of thought contends that the Anti-Federalists were the heirs of the republican tradition, while the other maintains that the Ant

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper presents a view of deliberation that we believe is worth theoretical discussion outside the Interactivity Foundation because it offers a way out of a serious challenge to deliberative democrats: how to simultaneously promote both consensual action and thoughtfulness.
There is no single case for deliberative democracy. But the central commitments of its champions are few. Indeed, they are but two.
Deliberative democrats are the sort of democrats they are because they typically value either consensus or thoughtfulness. Not consensus and thoughtfulness; consensus or thoughtfulness. One group values deliberation because it encourages us to act in a more united fashion, the other because it encourages us to view things in a more reasonable fashion (an effect which may or may not unite us).
However, a problem begins to emerge when we see that these basic values may well be irreconcilable. (“Consensus leads to group think, not thoughtfulness; thoughtfulness leads to individual perspectives, not united action.”) Now, we could simple choose between them. But there are some pretty straightforward reasons to think that neither value is much good without the other. (“Divorced from action, thoughtfulness isn’t very useful; united action should be well thought out.”) If so—if deliberation cannot provide both the unity and thoughtfulness that public policy—the best we can say for deliberation is that it needs a set of sturdy non-deliberative institutional complements.
The Foundation’s deliberative approach may offer a way out of this impasse.
For the Foundation, deliberation begins with participants carefully selected for their ability to contribute cooperatively to a creative, non-competitive, and wide-ranging exploration of an area of concern. Parallel panels of professional experts and interested laypersons integrate differing intellectual strengths. Anonymity encourages a free and open exchange of ideas.
The process focuses on broad normative and conceptual questions and emphasizes interactivity and exploration rather than declarations and position-taking. At the end of the process, the consensus that emerges is not on a single policy, but on a set of policy possibilities or directions, to which any individual panelist may add.
The resulting “staff work” product is especially suitable for generating both thoughtful public consideration and collective action in the form of actual public policy. The intense nature of the collective inquiry used to produce the staff work (50+ hours) can be expected to contribute a measure of thoughtfulness to public discussion, all the more so since it is adaptable to a wide variety of public forums. Meanwhile, in reporting reasonable alternatives rather than a “right” answer, the staff work product opens up new possibilities around which a public consensus might coalesce.
For the staff work to encourage public deliberation—and action—it must be publicized, in the widest sense of the term. Hence the final step in the Foundation’s approach is to (thoughtfully) place our deliberative products with those who have an interest in thinking and acting on them.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Education for a cosmopolitan outlook is highly regarded in many circles. In practice, it is usually interpreted to mean cultivation of tolerance, self-distancing from any particular set of ethical or civic commitments, and the like. In both temper and social base, this kind of cosmopolitan educational agenda very much aligns with the prevailing tendencies of liberal globalisation. At the same time, many high-culture critics of liberal modernity are reacting against this loose cosmopolitanism, charging it with relativism and even nihilism. In contrast, they often reaffirm a particular tradition of classical and humanistic learning, such as the "great books" curricula that gained favour among many conservatives a decade ago. In this paper, I suggest space for an alternative approach to cosmopolitan self-cultivation. It would be unlike both the loose liberal cosmopolitanism that brackets or thins out ethical content, and the "great books" traditionalism that focuses on just one civilisation and neglects or disdains others. In short, it would resurrect the ethical truths that modernity has assaulted, and it would do so while bridging traditions. By exploring the universal temper that lay latent within all the major premodern civilisations, I suggest room for a vision of elite education that involves an integrated familiarity with the high-culture classics of the European, Islamic, Indian, Chinese, and other traditions. This approach urges a cosmopolitanism that takes seriously the ethical parallels across civilisations. Its practitioners would be impelled to view themselves as the successors of older elite culture-bearing strata: the mandarins, clerics, and literati. It also means embedding cosmopolitanism in a demanding pattern of self-cultivation on which the various strands of classical social thought can shed light. I close by suggesting that this kind of intellectual exploration and praxis is indispensable, if we are to forge a rich global political culture and a greater ethical sensitivity among the world's governing strata.