Moral "foundations" as the product of motivated social cognition: Empathy and other psychological underpinnings of ideological divergence in "individualizing" and "binding" concerns.

According to moral foundations theory, there are five distinct sources of moral intuition on which political liberals and conservatives differ. The present research program seeks to contextualize this taxonomy within the broader research literature on political ideology as motivated social cognition, including the observation that conservative judgments often serve system-justifying functions. In two studies, a combination of regression and path modeling techniques were used to explore the motivational underpinnings of ideological differences in moral intuitions. Consistent with our integrative model, the "binding" foundations (in-group loyalty, respect for authority, and purity) were associated with epistemic and existential needs to reduce uncertainty and threat and system justification tendencies, whereas the so-called "individualizing" foundations (fairness and avoidance of harm) were generally unrelated to epistemic and existential motives and were instead linked to empathic motivation. Taken as a whole, these results are consistent with the position taken by Hatemi, Crabtree, and Smith that moral "foundations" are themselves the product of motivated social cognition.

Social comparison and prosocial behavior: an applied study of social identity theory in community food drives.

Social Identity Theory and the concept of social comparison have inspired research on individuals, addressing effects of personal and environmental factors in directing social attention. The theory's conceptual origins, however, suggest that social comparison may have behavioral implications as well. Such behaviors may include attempts by an individual to enhance the relative status of his ingroup on a salient dimension of comparison. Such behavior is referred to as "social competition." In two studies, the effects of social comparison and social competition were measured in the real-world environment of community food drives. Participants were aggregated by household; 600 households in upper middle-class neighborhoods in Eugene and Salem, Oregon, were contacted. In Study 1 of 300 households, it was hypothesized that inclusion of a social competition cue in requests for donation would significantly increase the likelihood of donation. This hypothesis was supported. Study 2 was done to clarify the possible role in a social comparison of perceived ingroup inferiority in the prior observed increase in donations. The inclusion of a social comparison cue in the donation request significantly increased donations in households of the second study. The findings suggest that researchers should expand study of the theory's behavioral implications, including the role of social comparison in prosocial behavior.

Subacute cutaneous lupus erythematosus presenting in a child.

A 5-year-old girl presented in summer with an erythematous, scaly annular eruption in a malar distribution. She had no symptoms or signs of systemic lupus erythematosus. A diagnosis of subacute cutaneous lupus erythematosus was made on the basis of the clinical and histological features, positive anti-Ro antibody and a mildly elevated erythrocyte sedimentation rate. All other investigations, including complement studies, were normal. She has responded well to treatment with 0.5% alclometasone ointment and photoprotection.