The Cold War and U.S. Diplomacy Essay Example for Free

The Cold War and U.S. Diplomacy Essay The Cold War was the dominant conflict of the Twentieth Century. More than any other event, it defined the roles that virtually all nations played for almost 50 years. It was a truly World- Wide War, a content between two rival superpowers between the U.S. and the Soviet Union which for many years held the entire planet hostage to the threat of nuclear annihilation. By the time it was over, its players had spent the staggering sum of $15 Trillion (Windle, 2011). Regan Doctrine was not a label coined by President Reagan or his administration. It was a term used later by his critics to define his foreign policy strategy for countries around the world. The Reagan Doctrine was a strategy to aid anti-communist, or more specifically, anti-Soviet insurgencies in the Third World during Reagan’s two terms as president form 1981-1989. The primary goal was to overthrow Maxist regimes and prevent Marxist regimes from becoming established. Handelman referred Maixism as â€Å"Another of communism’s appeals was its centralized, state control of the economy. A command economy, first established in the Soviet Union, has two central features. First, the state largely owns and manages the means of production. That includes factories, banks, major trade and commercial institutions, retail establishments, and, frequently, farms. While all communist nations have allowed some private economic activity, the private sector has been quite limited, aside from nations such as China and Vietnam, which largely abandoned Marxist economics in recent years.   Second, in a command economy, state planners, rather than market forces, shape basic decisions governing production (including the quantity and price of goods produced) (Handelman, 2011, p.278). Under the Reagan Doctrine, the U.S. provided overt and covert aid to anti-communist guerrillas and resistance movements in an effort to â€Å"roll back† Soviet backed communist government in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The doctrine was designed to diminish Soviet influence in these regions as part of the administration’s overall Cold War strategy. Reagan wasted no time getting started in the implementation of his foreign policy. The Administration’s first comprehensive â€Å"U.S. National Security Strategy.† Which was a document approved by the President in May of 1982, stated the objective to â€Å"contain and reverse the expansion of Soviet control and military presence throughout the world, and to increase the costs of Soviet support and use of proxy,  terrorist and subversive forces.† (Presidential Studies, 2006) Reagan made staunch calls for public support in his efforts. In the State of the Union Address in 1985, for example, he stated that the U.S. must â€Å"not break faith with those who are risking their lives—on every continent, from Afghanistan to Nicaragua—to defy Soviet-supported aggression.† One year later he boldly remarked that â€Å"America will support with moral and material assistance your right not just to fight and die for freedom, but to fight and win freedom†¦in Afghanistan, in Angola, in Cambodia, and in Nicaragua.† (Political Science Quarterly, 2007) In most of these nations, the aggressive policies and actions of Reagan caused severe damage. In Nicaragua for example, the economy was decimated by U.S. sanctions and manipulation of its banking institutions. The Administration, supported by Congress, funded a war against the Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberacià ³nNacional, or FSLN). It was a war fought by various Nicaraguan rebel groups, labeled the Contras, which sought to overthrow the Sandinistas, who came to power after the revolution in 1979. â€Å"The development of Contra forces began in 1981 when Reagan authorized $19.5 million in funding for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to construct a paramilitary force of 500 Nicaraguan exiles from deposed President Anastasio Somoza’s National Guard.† (International Security, 1990) Along with congressionally funded aid, members of the Reagan Administration attained additional funds through the illicit sales of arms to Iran. Funds from these sales were funneled to the Contras. When this illegal activity was revealed in the â€Å"Iran-Contra Affair† in November of 1986, it led to the indictment and conviction of many of Reagan’s staff. Reagan policy in Nicaragua was failure in many respects. The Contra war was ill-conceived and did not enjoy support of the people of Nicaragua. The rebel forces never legitimately threatened the Sandinista government and military. The U.S. failed to gain international support for the war or its political and economic actions. In fact, Reagan was largely condemned by the international community. Domestic support and popular opinion was low as well. Reagan’s policies pushed communist nations into aiding Nicaragua. The FSLN enjoyed majority support of the people, and were not looking for a change until the end of the decade when they could no longer survive with the Sandinistas under U.S. pressure. Did Reagan really need to be concerned with Nicaragua? Probably not. In  damaging Nicaragua’s economy, Reagan Doctrine policy caused ripple effects on the USSR and Cuba who were aiding Nicaragua during this time. When the Administration began to halt trade and relations with Nicaragua, the USSR and Cuba began their efforts to provide the country increased economic aid, military aid, and trade revenue. By the time Reag an left office, economic aid from the USSR never came close to covering Nicaragua’s losses from U.S. sanctions on the economy. Reagan’s behavior toward Nicaragua, particularly in the glaring disregard for international law and world opinion, threatened to backfire and endanger broader U.S. interests, especially with foreign allies On the other hand, Reagan was widely eulogized for having won the cold war. Reagan helped end the Cold War by exercising prudent diplomacy and skillful statesmanship rather than by crusading against communism and exploiting Soviet vulnerabilities. The signing of the I.N.F. (Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces) treaty in 1987 marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War. I.N.F. was the first treaty to eliminate a complete class of weapons. It was also the first treaty to include an in-depth verification program. The INF treaty was the first to actually reduce the level of nuclear arsenals, or collections of weapons, rather than simply freeze them at certain levels. Reagans willingness to negotiate arms control agreements and support Gorbachevs reform efforts within the Soviet Union was key to the eventual fall of communist governments, first across Eastern Europe in 1989, and soon after in the Soviet Union in 1991. The foundation for ending the Cold War had been laid (Historycentral.com, ). Nicaragua was one piece to Reagan’s global foreign policy strategy. Nicaragua was not the only victim to Reagan’s aggressive policies. Countries such as Afghanistan, Cambodia, and Angola were infiltrated by U.S.-sponsored military insurgencies and suffered from U.S. economic policies. Though it can be argued that Reagan’s intervention in the Third World was essential in bringing down the USSR two years later, many people suffered the consequences of Reagan Doctrine. Nicaragua is an important case study of how effective and ineffective Reagan’s policies were in the Third World. Reagan Doctrine was a policy that gave military and material aid to countries that showed resistance against the USSR and the tyrannies they sponsored. Countries like Afghanistan, Cambodia, Angola, and Nicaragua were helped b  the United States; the Vatican and AFL-CIO’s international wing were also enlisted in the Doctrine to keep the Polish trade union intact. In his 1985 State of the Union Address, Reagan said, â€Å"We must stand by all our democratic allies. And we must not break faith with those who are risking their lives†¦ to defy Soviet-supported aggression and secure rights which have been ours from birth.† Then, in 1983, Reagan led troops into Grenada and overthrew the Marxist government and held free elections. : In regards to communism, the Reagan Doctrine’s â€Å"rollback mentality† broke the rule of containment set up by the Truman Doctrine, and this dissent played a huge hand in bringing down the Soviet Union and ending the Cold War. Reagan knew that the Russian economy would eventually fracture if there was an ongoing â€Å"arms race† between the Soviets and the United States; this is why Reagan began to build up the American military. Reagan threatened the Soviet Union by saying â€Å"We won’t stand by and let you maintain weapon superiority over us. We can agree to reduce arms, or we can continue the arms race, which I think you know you can’t win. One of Reagan’s first enhancements was the implementation of the Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI. The SDI was a new program that would research and eventually develop a missile defense system that offered the promise of, in President Reagan’s words, â€Å"making nuclear weapons obsolete† The Soviets were afraid of such technology because it would render their weapons useless and leave them vulnerable. In October of 1986, in response to the SDI program, Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to a mutual disarmament of weapons in Euro pe but only if the United States agreed not to deploy the missile defense system. Reagan literally stuck to his guns and refused to tell the American people that their government â€Å"would not protect them against nuclear destruction.† The Soviets were beginning to realize that they didn’t stand a chance in an arms race with America, so in December of 1987, Gorbachev came to Washington, D.C., to sign the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which would eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons. If Reagan had not continued the arms race, the Soviet Union may still be around today. Gorbachev’s trip to Washington was the first sign of Soviet surrender, and without Reagan’s military build-up, it would have never been possible. Ronald Reagan helped end the Cold War, such as the Reagan Doctrine, American military build-up, and his use of humor to shed a negative light on communism. The Reagan Doctrine was a strategy orchestrated and implemented by the United States to oppose the global influence of the Soviet Union during the final years of the Cold War. While the doctrine lasted less than a decade, it was a centerpiece of American foreign policy from the mid-1980s until the end of the Cold War in 1991. Under the Reagan Doctrine, the U.S. provided overt and covert aid to anti-communist resistance movements in an effort to roll back Soviet-backed communist governments in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The doctrine was designed to serve the dual purposes of diminishing Soviet influence in these regions of the world, while also potentially opening the door for democracy in nations that were largely being governed by Soviet-supported dictators. The most conspicuous examples of the new activism came in Latin America. In October 1962, the administration sent American soldiers and marines into the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada to oust an anti-American Marxist regime that showed signs of forging a relationship with Moscow. In El Salvador, whose government was fighting left-wing revolutionaries, the administration provided increased military and economic assistance. In neighboring Nicaragua, a pro-American dictatorship had fallen to the revolutionary â€Å"Sandinistas† in 1979; the new government had grown increasingly anti-American (and increasingly Marxist) throughout the early 1980s. the Reagan administration supported the so-called contras, an antigovernment guerilla movement fighting (without great success) to topple the Sandinista regime. References Chester Pach, â€Å"The Reagan Doctrine: Principle, Pragmatism, and Policy,† Presidential Studies Quarterly 36.1 (2006): 80. Handelman, H. (2011). the challenge of third world development. upper saddle rive nj: prentice hall. Historycentral.com. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.historycentral.com/Europe/ReaganandGorbMeet.html James M. Scott, â€Å"Interbranch Rivalry and the Reagan Doctrine in Nicaragua,† Political Science Quarterly 112, no. 2 (Summer 1997): 237. Kenneth Roberts, â€Å"Bullying and Bargaining: The United States, Nicaragua, and Conflict Resolution in Central America,† International Security 15, no. 2 (Autumn 1990): 78. Windle, J. (2011, December 20). Aol government. Retrieved from http://gov.aol.com/defense-spending-wizardry/

The Arab Conquest of the Central Asia Essay -- History, Muslim Populat

The Arab Conquest of the Central Asia was a significant event which impacted on the whole region at the beginning of the eighth century. Abu Ja’far Muhammad al-Tabari was one of the historians who described this conquest for the Muslim population later in ninth century by using different accounts (p. 16). His text is useful for the evaluation of Qutayba’s conquests of Central Asia and can be compared with the same century’s Persian historian al-Baladhuri (p. 11) and his description of the Arab Conquest. This excerpt can be regarded as relevant to the Silk Roads Survey due to the fact that it reflects in detail all aspects of past events, and emphasizes their historical importance. Firstly, the author refers to accounts from various sources (p.16) and describes in detail what happened during the seizure of Sogda. Secondly, when al-Tabari narrates about the events occurred in this region he uses direct quotations of the Arab conquerors and Sogdian defenders. For instance, when Sogdians asked Fergana kings for the support (p.17) al-Tabari demonstrates the full reflection of things happ...

Free Will in Scientific Psychology Essay

Actions are freer than others, and the difference is palpably important in terms of inner process, subjective perception, and social consequences. Psychology can study the difference between freer and less free actions without making dubious metaphysical commitments. Human evolution seems to have created a relatively new, more complex form of action control that corresponds to popular notions of free will. It is marked by self-control and rational choice, both of which are highly adaptive, especially for functioning within culture. The processes that create these forms of free will may be biologically costly and therefore are only used occasionally, so that people are likely to remain only incompletely self-disciplined, virtuous, and rational. BACKGROUND What shall I do? Why did you do that? Are people captains of their fate, or are they mere products of their times and victims of circumstances? Should they be held responsible for their actions? These and similar questions pertain to the psychological problem of free will, also known as freedom of action. At the core of the question of free will is a debate about the psychological causes of action. That is, is the person an autonomous entity who genuinely chooses how to act from among multiple possible options? Or is the person essentially just one link in a causal chain, so that the person’s actions are merely the inevitable product of lawful causes stemming from prior events, and no one ever could have acted differently than how he or she actually did? My thesis is that free will can be understood in terms of the different processes that control human action and that, indeed, these differences correspond to what laypersons generally mean when they distinguish free from unfree action. To discuss free will in the terms of scienti? c psychology is therefore to invoke notions of self-regulation, controlled processes, behavioral plasticity, and conscious decisionmaking. Address correspondence to Roy F. Baumeister, Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306; e-mail: baumeister@psy. fsu. edu. The extreme positions on free will have been staked out through centuries of philosophical debate. On the negative side, the deterministic position can be traced from Democritus through Spinoza, Comte, and Freud. It leaves no room for free human choice. Everything that happens is the unavoidable product of prior causes. The universe resembles a giant machine, grinding along exactly as it must. There is no difference between the categories of possible and actual in this view: Everything that happened was inevitable, and nothing else was ever possible. The subjective impression that when you make a choice you really can choose any of several options is an illusion, because forces outside your consciousness are in motion to determine what you will choose, even if you do not know until the last minute what that choice will be. On the other side, Jean-Paul Sartre (1943/1974) argued passionately in favor of human freedom. He contended that people are always, inevitably free—‘‘condemned to freedom,’’ in his famous phrase. Life is a series of choice points, and at each choice point, you could have chosen differently than you did. (Thus, the category of the possible is far, far more vast than the category of the actual, in this view. ) When people say they could not help acting as they did, they are engaging in self-deception (bad faith, in Sartre’s term), because they could actually have acted otherwise—could have held their tongue, walked another step, resisted the temptation, and so forth. Other outcomes really were possible. In between those extremes, many thinkers have proposed limited or partial freedom. Kant (1797/1967) proposed that people have a capacity for free action but only use it sometimes. For him, freedom meant acting in a morally virtuous manner based on enlightened reasoning. His argument thus aptly sets up the emphasis on self-control and rational choice as two widely adaptive forms of free will. If free will is only occasional, whereas behavior is constantly occurring, then it is necessary to posit two systems for guiding behavior: a default one that mostly runs the show and an occasional one that sometimes intervenes to make changes. Free will should be understood not as the starter or motor of action but rather as a passenger who occasionally grabs the steering wheel or even as just a navigator who says to turn left up ahead. 14 Copyright r 2008 Association for Psychological Science Volume 3—Number 1 Roy F. Baumeister OBJECTIONS TO THE VERY IDEA Many psychologists disdain the idea of free will, for several reasons. First, some think that in order to be a scientist it is necessary to believe in determinism, because a scientist studies causality and cannot tolerate or accept exceptions. Second, and related to the ? rst, free choice (especially the full, extreme case of total freedom) cannot seem to be explained in scienti? c terms. Causality is how the human mind generally (and the scienti? c mind particularly) understands events, and there is no way to explain a free action causally. In other words, even if free will exists, there is no use in scientists talking about it, because there would be no replicable patterns of behavior. (On this I disagree most emphatically—see below. Third, and perhaps more formidably, plenty of research has by now shown that people are sometimes mistaken when they believe their actions to be free, insofar as factors outside their awareness do exert a causal in? uence on them (e. g. , Bargh, 1994; Wegner, 2002; Wilson, 2002). The fact that automatic, nonconscious processes are the direct causes of action (e. g. , Libet, 1985, 1999) seems now well established and has dealt a severe blow to some theories of conscious free will. But new theories of action have separated the deciding from the initiating (Gollwitzer, 1999), and free conscious choosing may have its main role in the deciding (deliberative) stage. To illustrate, free will would have more to do with deciding (now) to walk to the store when the rain stops (later) than with directing each footstep during the actual trip. Modern research methods and technology have emphasized slicing behavior into milliseconds, but these advances may paradoxically conceal the important role of conscious choice, which is mainly seen at the macro level (Donald, 2002). Meanwhile, there are several objections to the determinists too. To require scientists to believe in determinism seems unwarranted. After all, the deterministic hypothesis—that every event is fully and inevitably caused by prior events and nothing else than what happened was ever possible—is itself unproven and even unprovable, so it requires a big leap of faith. Determinism is also contrary to everyday experience (in which people do make choices, and they believe subjectively that more than one outcome is possible). Moreover, to say that scienti?c data and especially psychological data point to determinism is itself severely overstated. Most psychological experiments demonstrate probabilistic rather than deterministic causation: A given cause changes the odds of a particular response but almost never operates with the complete inevitability that deterministic causality would entail. These objections do not disprove determinism, but they certainly raise questions. It seems unreasonable to require that every scientist must believe something that is unproven, unproveable, contrary to daily experience, and incongruent with our data. A further objection to determinism is the observation that freedom and choice are woven deeply into the fabric of human relations and activities. If freedom and choice are completely illusions—if the outcome of every choice was inevitable all along—why must people agonize so over decisions? Why do they argue and strive so much for the right to decide (that is, for power and liberty)? Why has so much political, economic, and social struggle been aimed at increasing freedom if freedom is just an illusion? The presence versus absence of choice, control, autonomy, and freedom has been shown to be a signi?cant causal factor in many aspects of human life, including dissonance and consistency (Linder, Cooper, & Jones, 1967), reactance (Brehm, 1966), stress and coping (Glass, Singer, & Friedman, 1969), and motivated performance (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Moreover, with few circumscribed exceptions, people almost always prefer freedom and are better off with it—and seemingly not just because the lack of freedom prevents them from securing tangible rewards. It is not as if people would be ? ne with slavery or prison if only the food were better. Countless people have risked and sacri?ced their lives in ? ghting to achieve and defend freedom, and it is very dif? cult to ? nd historical instances of uprisings or wars based on a demand for less freedom. Laypersons may not understand the concept of free will in the same way as philosophers and scientists, but they use ‘‘freedom’’ to denote some psychological phenomena that are powerful and important. PSYCHOLOGY’S TASK In my opinion, it would be a mistake for psychologists to argue about whether free will exists and to debate the conceptual details. Philosophers and others have already spent centuries re? ning the concepts through such argument, and repeating their work would not be a good use of time and effort. In comparison with philosophers, psychologists are amateurs at conceptual re? nement and debate but are specialists at conducting experimental tests of causal hypotheses. Our expertise is thus not well suited for ascertaining the existence or nonexistence of free will, which is probably impossible to prove. Researchers such as Wegner (2002) and Bargh and Morsella (2008, this issue) may show that people are sometimes unaware of the causes of particular behaviors, but such ?ndings are incapable of establishing that all behaviors are the result of ? rm causal processes of which people are unaware. Conversely, it seems equally impossible to prove that a given person could have acted differently than he or she did under exactly the same circumstances. Psychology’s contribution lies elsewhere. Psychologists should focus on what we do best: collecting evidence about measurable variance in behaviors and inner processes and identifying consistent patterns in them. With free will, it seems most productive for psychologists to start with the well-documented observation that some acts are freer than others. As already noted, dissonance, reactance, coping with stress, and other behaviors have been shown in the laboratory to depend on variations in freedom and choice. Hence, it is only necessary to assume that there are genuine phenomena behind those subjective and objective Volume 3—Number 1 15 Free Will in Scienti? c Psychology differences in freedom. In a nutshell, we should explain what happens differently between free and unfree actions. Thus, the optimal agenda for psychology would be to ? nd out what people mean when they use concepts of freedom, choice, and responsibility in their daily lives and then to illuminate the inner processes that produce those phenomena. WHAT MAKES ACTION FREE? A starting point for psychology is to identify what aspects of an action make people regard it as free versus unfree. To be sure, some factors can contribute to a mistaken sense of freedom in one’s own action. Wegner (2002) showed that when the thought of an event immediately precedes its actual occurrence, people believe they have caused it, even if in reality they have not. For example, when participants who were moving a cursor around a computer screen along with someone else (akin to having four hands on the pointer on a Ouija board) heard the name of some image mentioned and then the cursor stopped there 2 s later, they believed that they had intentionally caused the cursor to stop, even though the stopping was actually programmed by the apparatus (Wegner & Wheatley, 1999). There are several ways to interpret these ? ndings. One is to suggest that all conscious will and volition are illusions: From the observation that people are sometimes mistaken about conscious will, one could extrapolate that they are always mistaken. Another is to suggest that people do not have a direct, introspective way of knowing when they initiate action, and so they rely on salient cues to give them the feel and subjective impression of having acted or chosen, and this system of cues can be fooled. Shifts in the social distribution of causality and agency are important to people, and these correspond to social phenomena that people have encountered for millennia. Power, for example, confers on one person the right to make decisions that may affect others (e. g. , Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003), and the long history of power struggles can be viewed as being about who gets to choose. Studies by Brehm (1966) and his colleagues have also shown that people are very sensitive to having their freedom of choice restricted by others. When an option is taken away from them, they respond by desiring that option more, by trying actively to reassert that freedom and take that option, and even by aggressing against whomever restricted their freedom. Such patterns seem hard to reconcile with the view that all free will and choice (in every sense) are illusions: Why would people care so much about something that is entirely inconsequential? Another approach to understanding what people mean by free will is to have participants rate how free a stimulus person’s actions are. Stillman, Sparks, Baumeister, and Tice (2006) had participants rate scenarios that varied systematically along several dimensions. Participants rated people’s actions as freest when their choices were made after conscious deliberation, when their actions went against external pressure rather than going along with it, and when people acted against their shortterm self-interest. Thus conscious, rational choice and selfcontrol seem to be integral parts of what people perceive as free. When people wrote autobiographical accounts of their own acts that felt free or unfree, pursuing long-term personal goals was central to the feeling of freedom. The difference suggests that people see free will in others as useful for restraining their socially undesirable impulses, but in themselves they see free will in the sustained pursuit of (enlightened) self-interest. As Dennett (1984, 2003) has argued, free will is hardly worth having unless it helps you get something you want. THE EVOLUTION OF FREEDOM Several recent authors have argued that human freedom of action is a product of evolutionary processes (e. g. , Dennett, 2003). I proposed that the de? ning thrust of human psychological evolution was selection in favor of cultural capability (Baumeister, 2005). That process might well have included a new, different way of controlling behavior, whose purpose was enabling the beast to function in a complex, information-based society. The hallmarks of this new form of behavioral control include personal responsibility, conscious deliberation, invoking abstract rules and principles to guide actions, autonomous initiative, and a capacity to resist urges that have earlier evolutionary roots but that may be incompatible with civilized life (e. g. , eating any food you ? nd when hungry, including what is on the plates of other restaurant patrons). Whether this pattern will satisfy the various theological and philosophical de? nitions of free will is hard to say, but it could well correspond to what ordinary people mean when they speak of free action. The previous section noted that free will has to be useful for bene? ting the person. Evolution has favored animals with psychological processes insofar as those processes help them pursue their goals. A more intelligent animal, for example, may be better able to ? nd food and reproduce than a less intelligent one. In human cultural life, however, there is sometimes a tradeoff between short-term and long-term goals, and much of the success of the human species is based on our ability to sacri? ce short-term goals for the long-term ones, as in delay of grati? cation (Mischel & Ayduk, 2004). For example, taking someone else’s food may bring short-term bene? ts, but if it leads the other group members to imprison or expel the person, it could be self-defeating in the long run. Hence free will may be most useful in fostering the pursuit of enlightened self-interest. Were evolution working instead to enable the human animal to pursue what it wants right now to maximum effect, it might have promoted physical strength, speed, and ferocity rather than brainpower and social skills. But to succeed and live harmoniously in a cultural group, the animal is best served by being able to inhibit its impulses and desires. Perhaps ironically, free will is necessary to enable people to follow rules. 16 Volume 3—Number 1 Roy F. Baumeister Let me focus brie? y on two of the most important phenomena that are associated with the concept of free will: self-control and rational intelligent choice. The cultural-animal argument has the following assumptions. First, self-control and smart choice are much more highly developed in humans than in other animals and thus are among the most distinctively human traits. Second, these traits are highly conducive for living in a cultural society. Third, these traits are probably interrelated in the sense of sharing some inner processes and mechanisms, which suggests that one evolved ? rst and the other piggy-backed on the ? rst one’s system. My speculative evolutionary scenario is that self-control evolved ? rst, because it is useful already in merely social (as opposed to cultural) groups. For example, it would be natural for hungry animals to eat food that they see and want, but in many social groups the alpha male would beat up any other who tries to take his food or usurp his other prerogatives. Therefore, in order to live in social groups, animals must develop the capacity to restrain their impulses and bring their behavior into line with externally imposed constraints. Moving from social to cultural groups substantially increases the importance of following rules, including moral principles, laws, commands, religious prescriptions, norms, and customs. Rational intelligent choice, then, evolved later than selfcontrol and was even more distinctively associated with culture. Culture is based on information, and the large amount of information in a culture creates great opportunities for reasoning powers to sort through it and draw action-relevant conclusions. Human decision making is far more complex and varied than that in other species. As Searle (2001) pointed out, rationality is widely regarded as a central human trait, but not all have noticed that rationality entails at least some limited concept of free will—at least to the extent that one can alter one’s behavior on the basis of that reasoning. Put another way, self-control gives the capacity to alter your behavior to conform to the group’s rules, and rationality enables you to work out your own rules and then behave accordingly. This line of thought ? ts the view of free will as a sometime thing. People are incompletely rational and self-controlled. They have the capacity for acting for acting rationally and exerting self-control, but they only use it sometimes. This suggests the capacity is limited. WHY FREE WILL IS LIMITED Our research on ego depletion provides one way to understand why free will is at best an occasional phenomenon. In testing several competing theories about self-regulation, we consistently found that people performed relatively poorly at almost any self-control task if they had recently performed a different self-control task (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, 1998; Muraven & Baumeister, 2000). The implication is that some resource is used up by the ? rst act of self-control, leaving less available for the second. Choice may also deplete the same resource. Vohs et al.(2006) found that making a series of choices led to poorer self-control on subsequent, unrelated tasks, as compared with just thinking about items or answering questions about them without making choices among them. The fact that effortful choice uses the same resource as self-control links the two main forms of free will and supports the idea that they share a common underlying mechanism. Thus, the traditional concept of ‘‘willpower’’ does appear to be a useful metaphor, insofar as both self-control and rational choice rely on some kind of power. To move beyond metaphor, Gailliot et al.(2007) began studying blood-glucose dynamics. Glucose is a chemical in the bloodstream that is the fuel for brain (and other) activities. Although all brain processes use glucose, some use much more than others, and self-control is a likely candidate to be one of these more expensive processes. Gailliot et al. (2007) found that acts of self-control caused reductions in the levels of glucose in the bloodstream, and that low levels of blood glucose after initial acts of self-control were strongly correlated with poor self-control on subsequent tasks. Moreover, experimental administrations of glucose counteracted some of the ego-depletion effects. That is, drinking a glass of lemonade with sugar enabled people to perform well at self-control even if they had recently gone through a depleting exercise of self-control. Lemonade made with a sugar substitute (thus not furnishing glucose) had no effect. These ? ndings suggest that human evolution developed a second, new, and expensive way of controlling action. It involved using relatively large quantities of the body’s caloric energy to fuel complex psychological processes. If the cultural-animal argument is correct, then these processes should have improved biological success by enabling people to behave in more advantageous ways. Ample evidence con? rms that this second executive mode of action control has adaptive bene? ts and that when its resources are depleted or inadequate, behavior is less successful. Nondepleted persons outperform ego-depleted ones at making effective and unbiased decisions (Amir, Dhar, Pocheptsaya, & Baumeister, 2007), at logical reasoning and intelligent thought (Schmeichel, Vohs, & Baumeister, 2003), and at active coping with unexpected setbacks (Vohs & Baumeister, 2006). Self-control has multiple bene? ts, and people who are high on the trait end up more successful in work and school, are more popular and better liked, have healthier and more stable relationships, commit fewer crimes, and have less psychopathology (Duckworth & Seligman, 2005; Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990; Mischel, Shoda, & Peake, 1988; Tangney, Baumeister, & Boone, 2004). And as for following rules generally, there is some cross-cultural evidence that countries with higher rule of law report signi? cantly higher subjective well-being (Veenhoven, 2004). Volume 3—Number 1 17 Free Will in Scienti? c Psychology BELIEVING IN FREEDOM This brief article has argued that psychology’s task is to ? nd out what people perceive as free will and what genuine psychological phenomena underlie those perceptions. Such investigations will not establish whether free will exists according to some philosophical or theological de? nitions, and it remains possible that many laypersons’ beliefs about free will are partly or wholly mistaken. If free will is entirely an illusion, however, then it becomes especially perplexing that people devote so much time and effort to sustaining those illusions. Belief in free will is highly relevant to many social, legal, and moral judgments. For example, if all actions are fully caused and therefore inevitable, why does the legal system spend so much time trying to establish whether a perpetrator was acting freely? ‘‘Heat of passion’’ crimes are just as fully caused as any other crimes, in that view, so it makes little sense for judges to award lighter sentences. Yet they do. One possible explanation for the widespread social belief in free will is that it helps produce socially desirable and harmonious actions. To return to the cultural-animal framework, I am assuming that people evolved so as to be able to live and work in culture (Baumeister, 2005). Anything that makes people better able to do that, including improvements in cooperation and prosocial actions or reductions in antisocial actions, would therefore be bene? cial. To speculate, cultures that believed in free will might have outreproduced and supplanted cultures that did not. Belief in free will does support socially desirable actions, according to Vohs and Schooler (2008). They found that participants who had been induced to disbelieve in free will were subsequently more likely than a control group to cheat on a test. Further studies by Baumeister, Masicampo, and DeWall (2006) using the Vohs–Schooler methods found that inducing participants to disbelieve in free will made them more aggressive and less helpful toward others. If we combine the cheating, aggression, and helping ? ndings, it seems reasonable to suggest that belief in free will is conducive to better, more harmonious social behavior. CONCLUSION A scienti?c approach to free will should perhaps start with the view that freedom of action evolved as a new, more sophisticated form of controlling behavior. Its two components, self-control and rational intelligent choice, conferred important advantages by enabling the human animal to function within a cultural society. Recent evidence about ego depletion and glucose dynamics suggests that this new, freer form of action control is biologically expensive, which may help explain why free will is only used occasionally. Nonetheless, even its occasional use may contribute greatly to increasing the ? Exibility and adaptive diversity of human behavior. Acknowledgments—Work on this article was facilitated by a grant from the Templeton Foundation, and it builds on research supported by Grant MH57039 from the National Institute of Mental Health. REFERENCES Amir, O. , Dhar, R. , Pocheptsaya, A. , & Baumeister, R. F. (2007). The fatigued decision maker: Ego depletion changes decision process and outcome. Manuscript submitted for publication. Bargh, J. A. (1994). The four horsemen of automaticity: Awareness, ef? ciency, intention, and control in social cognition. In R. S. Wyer Jr. , & T. K. Srull (Eds. ), Handbook of social cognition (2nd ed. , pp. 1–40). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Bargh, J. A. , & Morsella, E. (2008). The primacy of the unconscious. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3, 73–79. Baumeister, R. F. (2005). The cultural animal: Human nature, meaning, and social life. New York: Oxford University Press. Baumeister, R. F. , Bratslavsky, E. , Muraven, M. , & Tice, D. M. (1998). Ego depletion: Is the active self a limited resource? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1252–1265. Baumeister, R. F. , Masicampo, E. J. , & DeWall, C. N. (2006). Prosocial bene? ts of feeling free: Inducing disbelief in free will increases aggression and reduces helpfulness. Manuscript submitted for publication. Brehm, J. (1966). A theory of psychological reactance. New York: Academic Press. Dennett, D. C. (1984). Elbow room: The varieties of free will worth wanting. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Dennett, D. C. (2003). Freedom evolves. New York: Viking/Penguin. Donald, M. (2002). A mind so rare: The evolution of human consciousness. New York: Norton. Duckworth, A. L. , & Seligman, M. E. P. (2005). Self-discipline outdoes IQ in predicting academic performance of adolescents. Psychological Science, 16, 939–944. Gailliot, M. T. , Baumeister, R. F. , DeWall, C. N. , Maner, J. K. , Plant, E. A. , Tice, D. M. , et al. (2007). Self-control relies on glucose as a limited energy source: Willpower is more than a metaphor. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 325–336. Glass, D. C. , Singer, J. E. , & Friedman, L. N. (1969). Psychic cost of adaptation to an environmental stressor. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 12, 200–210. Gollwitzer, P. M. (1999). Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans. American Psychologist, 54, 493–503. Gottfredson, M. R., & Hirschi, T. (1990). A general theory of crime. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. The distinction between free choice and unfree action has enormous and widespread signi? cance individually, socially, historically, and politically. That distinction also seems so thoroughly woven into the fabric of human social life that it seems quixotic to try to imagine a society that had abandoned the concept so as to operate ‘‘beyond freedom and dignity,’’ in Skinner’s (1971) titular phrase. Psychology can explore and elucidate that difference between free and unfree action without having to resolve metaphysical questions. Conscious, controlled, and self-regulating processes seem likely to be important aspects of what people understand as free will. 18 Volume 3—Number 1 Roy F. Baumeister Kant, I. (1967). Kritik der praktischen Vernunft [Critique of practical reason]. Hamburg, Germany: Felix Meiner Verlag. (Original work published 1797) Keltner, D. , Gruenfeld, D. H. , & Anderson, C. (2003). Power, approach, and inhibition. Psychological Review, 110, 265–284. Libet, B. (1985). Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action. Behavior and Brain Sciences, 8, 529–566. Libet, B. (1999). Do we have free will? Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6, 47–57. Linder, D. E. , Cooper, J. , & Jones, E. E. (1967). Decision freedom as a determinant of the role of incentive magnitude in attitude change. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 6, 245–254. Mischel, W. , & Ayduk, O. (2004). Willpower in a cognitive-affective processing system: The dynamics of delay of grati? cation. In R. Baumeister & K. Vohs (Eds. ), Handbook of self-regulation: Research, theory, and applications (pp. 99–129). New York: Guilford. Mischel, W. , Shoda, Y. , & Peake, P. K. (1988). The nature of adolescent competencies predicted by preschool delay of grati? cation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 687–696. Muraven, M. R. , & Baumeister, R. F. (2000). Self-regulation and depletion of limited resources: Does self-control resemble a muscle? Psychological Bulletin, 126, 247–259. Ryan, R. M. , & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55, 68–78. Sartre, J. -P. (1974). Being and nothingness. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel. (Original work published 1943) Schmeichel, B. J. , Vohs, K. D. , & Baumeister, R. F. (2003). Intellectual performance and ego depletion: Role of the self in logical reasoning and other information processing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 33–46. Searle, J. R. (2001). Rationality in action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Skinner, B. F. (1971). Beyond freedom and dignity. New York: Knopf. Stillman, T. D. , Sparks, E. , Baumeister, R. F. , & Tice, D. M. (2006). What makes freedom? Situational factors that in? uence ratings of free will. Manuscript in preparation. Tangney, J. P. , Baumeister, R. F. , & Boone, A. L. (2004). High selfcontrol predicts good adjustment, less pathology, better grades, and interpersonal success. Journal of Personality, 72, 271–322. Veenhoven, R. (2004). World database of happiness: Continuous register of scienti? c research on subjective appreciation of life. Retrieved September 26, 2004, from http://www. eur. nl/fsw/research/happiness Vohs, K. D. , & Baumeister, R. F. (2006). Does depletion promote passivity? Self-regulatory resources and active coping. Manuscript in preparation. Vohs, K. D. , Baumeister, R. F. , Nelson, N. M. , Rawn, C. D. , Twenge, J. M. , Schmeichel, B. J. , & Tice, D. M. (2006). Making choices impairs subsequent self-control: A limited resource account of decision making, self-regulation, and active initiative. Manuscript submitted for publication. Vohs, K. D. , & Schooler, J. W. (2008). The value of believing in free will: Encouraging a belief in determinism increases cheating. Psychological Science, 19, 49–54. Wegner, D. M. (2002). The illusion of conscious will. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wegner, D. M. , & Wheatley, T. (1999). Apparent mental causation: Sources of the experience of will. American Psychologist, 54, 480–491. Wilson, T. D. (2002). Strangers to ourselves: Discovering the adaptive unconscious. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Volume 3—Number 1 19.

A P by John Updike - Paper - 1236 Words

As people age, maturity and wisdom is gained through every experiences. From the time a child turns eighteen and becomes an adult, they are required to deal with the realities of the real world and learn how to handle its responsibilities. In John Updikes short story, Aamp;P, the narrator Sammy, a young boy of nineteen, makes a major change to his life fueled by nothing more than his immaturity and desire to do what he wants and because of that, he has do deal with the consequences. From the beginning of the story, it is clear that Sammy does not likes his job, nor is he fond of the customers and people he is surrounded by each day. To Sammy, they are nothing more than sheep going through the motions of life. I bet you could set†¦show more content†¦They stand out amongst the customers, walking against the usual traffic(Updike 616), and not blending in, and Sammy almost idolizes that; he sees the way their simplistic yet unique appearance and actions distinguish them and he seems to really appreciate it. About the Queenie he says, I mean, it was more than pretty(Updike 619). And in reference to the other customers reaction Sammy says, †¦ there was no doubt, this jiggled them. A few houseslaves in pin curlers even looked around after pushing their carts past to make sure what they had seen was correct (Updike 616). Although Sammy isnt really voicing a positive or negative stance on the issue here, he makes an effort to point out how unique and almost distracting they are to everyone in the store. It also becomes clear that Sammy wants to know more about them through his fixation with them, which may add to the reason he wanted to quit; he hoped to captivate their attention and gain their praise. When Sammy sees the store manager, Lengel, embarrass the girls, not only does Sammy see the ability to look heroic in front of his three mystery girls, like an unsuspected hero (Updike 618), he also sees the ability to get out of his boring nine to five job . Partially, because he is only nineteen and very immature in the way he views the world, he may have thought the girls would find him heroic. However, as soon as he quits his jobShow MoreRelatedA P By John Updike982 Words   |  4 PagesThe story that this research paper is being written over is â€Å"AP† by John Updike. This story is filled with good grammar and has a well written plot and good transition. A person reading the story â€Å"AP† could see it as an interesting story filled with good symbolism. The main character, Sammy, uses a great deal of symbolism when describing the three girls in bathing suits who walked into the store he works in. the three girls in bathing suits that walked into the store where the center of the wholeRead MoreThe Connections Between Updike And His Story, A P1027 Words   |  5 PagesJohn Updike was a very unique writer. This man mastered many things. He lived a very interesting life what I enjoyed learning about. Updikeâ€℠¢s life includes much success. He took learning to a new level, and he did what he loved and did a wonderful job, earning many awards. While researching, it also came clear to me some of the connections between Updike and his story, AP. His life from beginning to end is a very remarkable life. Updike was born in Reading, Pennsylvania in 1923. Since he was bornRead MoreSocial Conformity And Sexism : A Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman1586 Words   |  7 Pagesstories that explored these social issues were a Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and another story that explored these debated topics was AP written by John Updike. A Yellow Wall Paper was a story published on January of 1892 and this story gives us an insight of how gender roles operated during the early parts of the 20th century, and AP was published in 1961, this story gives an early insight of the new social upheavals that the rebellious youth will cause against the norms of societyRead More Love and Disillusionment in Araby and A and P Essay980 Words   |  4 PagesLove and Disillusionment in â€Å"Araby by James Joyce and â€Å"A and P by John Updike â€Å"Araby by James Joyce and â€Å"A and P by John Updike are both short stories in which the central characters are in love with women who don’t even know it. The Araby story started sad and ended sadder, however, the â€Å"A and P† story started happy and ended with a heroic act that went unnoticed. The main characters both experience new situations and truths of which they were not previously aware. Both stories willRead MoreA P By John Updike And The Things They Carried By Tim OBrien976 Words   |  4 PagesThe two short stories used in this comparison are â€Å" AP† by John Updike and â€Å"The things they carried† by Tim O’Brien. Both stories deal with the feel of impotence, loss, shock and both characters fantasizes with a girl during the time of the Vietnam War. I will show some similarities and contrasts in the settle and how it affects the plot But. Also, the characters of each story. Both are similar in the motivation of the character towards on girl and the differs in how the settle affects the plotRead MoreObedience or Rebellion? Essay925 Words   |  4 Pages American author, Shirley Jackson, is known for her fictional mystery and horror works. Her most famous piece is a short story, â€Å"The Lottery.† In this story a small village holds a lottery and one unfortunate individual ends up with a slip of paper with a black spot on it. This person is then stoned to death. In reality, the lottery is a horrible ritual believed to be necessary sacrifice for the village to have a bountiful crop that year. When a man mentions how some surrounding villages haveRead MoreA P By John Updike1532 Words   |  7 PagesPaper 1: AP by John Updike In this essay I will be reviewing the six elements of fiction: point of view, plot, setting, characterization, symbolism, and theme in the story, AP by John Updike, to see how it constitutes to the work as a whole. Sammy, a 19-year-old cashier at the AP, narrates AP. In this first-person narrative, the narrator tells us everything as he sees it, but since it is a limited point of view the narrator is unreliable. But this allows the reader to notice growth in the characterRead MoreThe Yellow Wallpaper, By Susan Glaspell, And A P Essay2143 Words   |  9 PagesWallpaper† by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, â€Å"Trifles† by Susan Glaspell, and â€Å"AP† by John Updike; they all illuminates on the submissiveness, the obedience of women to a man s authority that was considered unexceptional at the onset of the twentieth century because the themes of the inscrutability of women, domesticity, patriarchal dominance and female identity are present in all these works. Among the three works under scrutiny in the paper herein, â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† is arguably the one that best illustratesRead MoreCoffee Consumption By Jessica Mcclarney1189 Words   |  5 Pagesincurred in taking a product from the producer to final consumption. Apart from the cost of the product, there are other costs accompanied in taking the product for final consumption and this can be none other than the distribution expenses (Updike, 2011). This paper therefore tends to discuss this concept by describing the path a product takes to reach the final consumer in two different countries. The Product: Coffee Almost everyone drinks coffee. Most people view it as part of their basic needs. ItRead MoreAn Analysis of Dogs Death by John Updike and I Used to Live Here Once by Jean Rhys2768 Words   |  11 Pagessuperstitious behavior of humans extends to death as if it were an unnatural event instead of a completely natural milestone albeit, the final one in a life. Doubtless, there are times when people could be more sensitive to the harbingers of death, as John Updike intimates in his poem Dogs Death. Fiction, fantasy, and film are chock-a-block full of images representing death. Even the beloved The Christmas Carole tells the story of a present in which Marley is dead and spirits escort Scrooge to a season