COVID-19 vaccine sceptics are persuaded by pro-vaccine expert consensus messaging

To further understand how to combat COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy, we examined the effects of pro-vaccine expert consensus messaging on lay attitudes of vaccine safety and intention to vaccinate. We surveyed N = 729 individuals from four countries. Regardless of its content, consensus messaging had an overall small positive effect. Most critically, the direction of the effect varied depending on the baseline attitudes of participants: consensus information improved the attitude of vaccine sceptics and uncertain individuals, while having no effect on vaccine supporters. We also analysed whether the persuasiveness of expert consensus would increase after puncturing an illusion of explanatory depth in individuals. This further manipulation had no direct effect, nor interacted with the type of expert consensus. We conclude that highlighting expert consensus may be a way to increase support toward COVID-19 vaccination in those already hesitant or sceptical with little risk of side-effects.

The TAMED Game, Bystanders and Professional Associations

The author introduces a psychological game named TAMED – the TA Myth of Explanatory Depth, which she suggests provides an explanation of unhealthy dynamics occurring within transactional analysis membership and professional associations. She illustrates this with four case examples based on personal experiences. She also provides an overview of TA theory about psychological games, the bystander role, the various roles within the drama triangle and extensions of it, and the potency pyramid. She provides a selection of materials by TA and non-TA authors to support the premise that such games are more to do with organisational and group processes than the script of the individual who is seen as the cause of the conflict. The article concludes with some initial thoughts about how TA organisational diagrams need amending to reflect the structure and dynamics of professional associations.

Panama in a Pandemic: The Digital Divide Became News

This documentary research explores, describes, and analyzes the media coverage of the digital divide in Panama during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on van Dijk’s theoretical postulates, I frame the digital access gap in the context of an unequal society. The review reveals that serious asymmetries, defined by socioeconomic status and territorial division, prevail in Panama. The discontent generated by difficulties in accessing online education triggered wide coverage by the media. In most cases, however, media outlets treated this phenomenon with little explanatory depth. Given the centrality that this problem has acquired and its future implications, the paper provides recommendations in the fields of journalism, research, education, and public policy, which aim to contribute to the understanding of the digital divide and how it could be corrected.

Linguistics Then and Now: Some Personal Reflections

By mid-twentieth century, a working consensus had been reached in the linguistics community, based on the great achievements of preceding years. Synchronic linguistics had been established as a science, a “taxonomic” science, with sophisticated procedures of analysis of data. Taxonomic science has limits. It does not ask “why?” The time was ripe to seek explanatory theories, using insights provided by the theory of computation and studies of explanatory depth. That effort became the generative enterprise within the biolinguistics framework. Tensions quickly arose: The elements of explanatory theories (generative grammars) were far beyond the reach of taxonomic procedures. The structuralist principle that language is a matter of training and habit, extended by analogy, was unsustainable. More generally, the mood of “virtually everything is known” became “almost nothing is understood,” a familiar phenomenon in the history of science, opening a new and exciting era for a flourishing discipline. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Linguistics, Volume 7 is January 14, 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

What Should We Require from an Account of Explanation in Historiography?

In this paper, I explicate desiderata for accounts of explanation in historiography. I argue that a fully developed account of explanation in historiography must explicate many explanation-related notions in order to be satisfactory. In particular, it is not enough that an account defines the basic structure of explanation. In addition, the account of explanation must be able to explicate notions such as minimal explanation, complete explanation, historiographical explanation, explanatory depth, explanatory competition, and explanatory goal. Moreover, the account should also tell how explananda can be chosen in a motivated way. Furthermore, the account should be able to clarify notions that are closely connected with explanation such as historical contingency. Finally, it is important that the account is able to recognize when explanation-related notions and issues are so closely intertwined that we are in danger of not seeing the differences between them. In other words, I argue that a satisfactory account of explanation in historiography must have the power to explicate central explanation-related notions and to clarify discussions where the differences between the notions are obscure. In order to explicate these desiderata, I formulate a (version of the) counterfactual account of explanation and show how that account is able to explicate explanation-related notions and clarify issues that are connected with historiographical explanations. The success of the counterfactual account suggests that historiographical explanations do not differ fundamentally from explanations in many other fields.