A Bioethos for Bodies: Respecting a Priceless Resource

The value that willed body donors provide to medical education is priceless. Their precious gift helps to teach anatomy, spatial relationships between morphological structures, anatomical variation, and professionalism to medical students in a way that plastic models, podcasts, and lectures cannot. They are also an important resource for medical research and a wide variety of postgraduate training opportunities. While many body donation programs throughout the world are nonprofit organizations, there are body donation companies in the United States that sell donors for-profit. These “body brokers” have accumulated large profits from this business. It is incongruous that others would profit from such a priceless, freely donated gift. To prevent this incongruity, it is proposed that the international anatomical community develop a normative culture (a bioethos) for body donation programs. This would involve the conscious and systematic development of ethical principles for the day-to-day policies and practices of institutions that collect and use human bodies. With the development of this bioethos, a cultural shift in how donors are treated would occur and, over time, this would become the normal practice. These principles would become fundamental and foundational for the procurement and use of priceless human tissues.     

“Wealth Makes Many Friends”: Children Expect More Giving From Resource-Rich Than Resource-Poor Individuals

Young children show social preferences for resource-rich individuals, although few studies have explored the causes underlying such preferences. We evaluate the viability of one candidate cause: Children believe that resource wealth relates to behavior, such that they expect the resource rich to be more likely to materially benefit others (including themselves) than the resource poor. In Studies 1 and 2 (ages 4–10), American children from predominantly middle-income families (n = 94) and Indian children from lower income families (n = 30) predicted that the resource rich would be likelier to share with others than the resource poor. In Study 3, American children (n = 66) made similar predictions in an incentivized decision-making task. The possibility that children's expectations regarding giving contribute to prowealth preferences is discussed.     

Acculturation orientations of competing host communities toward valued and devalued immigrants

This study explored how members of competing host communities may endorse different acculturation orientations towards valued and devalued immigrants settled in the bilingual city of Montreal. Francophone (N=422) and Anglophone (N=401) host community students from low-, medium- and high-ethnic diversity colleges completed the host community acculturation scale (HCAS) along with a questionnaire monitoring a range of social psychological correlates of acculturation orientations. Results showed that Anglophones were more integrationist and individualist and less assimilationist than Francophones. Both Francophones and Anglophones were more integrationist and individualist and less assimilationist, segregationist and exclusionist toward valued than devalued immigrants. Attending a multiethnic college had no influence on respondents’ acculturation orientations. The more welcoming acculturation orientations of Anglophones compared to Francophones was corroborated by results obtained with immigrants attending the French and the English colleges. Social psychological profiles of the respective acculturation orientations were similar across both host communities thus supporting the construct validity of the HCAS. Attitude toward co-national outgroup was a significant determinant of each acculturation orientations, suggesting that intergroup relations between rival host communities has an impact on acculturation orientations toward immigrants.