Understanding beliefs, preferences and actions amongst potential body donors.

Body donation is a prosocial act providing a unique learning experience to students, ultimately impacting on patient care and science. With an increasing number of training professionals, there is an increasing need for body donors, yet little is understood about donors' beliefs and preferences. A four-center study aimed to understand donors' perceptions, 843 responses highlighted a significant relationship between completing a body donor consent form and being both an organ donor and having ever donated blood (p < 0.01). In exploring donor intentions, 69% had been considering donation for fewer than five years, 40% knew another body donor, and 27% had a family member or friend currently registered. Of those who had requested donor information packs, 97% had completed body donation consent forms. Of these, 92% had not selected any time restriction for their donation and 96% had consented to images being taken. Almost all (98%) were aware that their donation might not be accepted. Donors' motives highlighted a wish to: improve education, improve health care, advance science, and contribute to the greater good. A bimodal response was observed with body donation being used to save relatives money and inconvenience. Donors felt comfortable with their bodies being used by medical, dental, and allied health professionals; however, donors were less comfortable with their bodies being used by other groups. Only 57% were comfortable with artists, beauticians and yoga teachers using their remains. Understanding donors' motivations and decision-making process is vital to ensure resources for future and to meet any changing requirements of both donors and those studying them.

Beyond "altruism motivates body donation".

Altruism is consistently identified as the dominant motive for body donation. Over 12 months, 843 people who requested body donation information packs also completed research questionnaires that included open-ended questions about their motives. Abductive analysis suggested two distinct sets of altruistic motives: those seeking benefits for medical professionals and patient groups ("medical altruism") and those seeking benefits for friends and family ("intimate altruism"). Either could facilitate or impede body donation. Altruism may not be best understood as a unitary motive invariably promoting body donation. Rather, it is a characteristic of various motives, each of which seek benefits for specific beneficiaries.

Consent in Body Donation

This article explores potential threats to the validity of consent in body donation and potential responses to such threats. To minimize abstract generalizations, the article draws particularly on United Kingdom regulations but each of the issues it explores is applicable in many countries. Methods used were searches of relevant (e. g. , medical ethical) literatures using pertinent search terms (e. g. , consent) and discussions with multiple stake-holders (e. g. , family members of body donors). The main threats identified were: (1) failing to ade-quately acknowledge relatives' roles in donation, particularly as donation often cannot be completed without relatives' active participation; (2) failing to ensure that donors are informed enough to be able to give valid consent, especially given 'specification' and 'temporality' problems inherent in establishing consent for body donation; and (3) failing to genuinely prioritize donors' motives and concerns during and after obtaining their consent. Possible ways of countering these threats include layering information given and made available to potential donors and having donors consent not to 'donation and anything that might follow', but instead to 'relative-acknowledged donation, selective explicit consent, and delegated decision-making'. The latter involves donors specifying and relatives acknowledging donors' key preferences and prohi-bitions, among which is nomination or acceptance of specified proxies who may make decisions on donors' behalf after their death. By making such changes, the validity of consent for body donation could be substantially improved in ways that also increase respect for both donors and their autonomy. These changes may also increase the number of completed donations

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Social dimensions of judgments of integrity in public figures.

The notion of 'integrity' remains relatively unexplored in the social psychological literature, despite it being central to some important theoretical perspectives (notably, self-affirmation theory). It is an eminently positive - and well-used - epithet in descriptions of public figures. The two studies reported here addressed laypeople's conceptions of integrity. The findings indicate that in relation to eight public figures, the best general predictor of judgments of integrity was perceptions of 'sincerity' (characterized by attributes such as genuine and honest). For three of the public figures strongly linked to civil rights issues, judgments of integrity were also predicted by perceptions of 'standing for something'. The findings suggest that the social character of integrity merits further psychological research attention.

Perceived responsibility to act: an investigation with respect to registering willingness to become a posthumous organ donor.

Two questionnaire studies (Ns=238 and 497) were guided by the original theoretical specification of the triangle model of responsibility. These investigated the relationship between perceived responsibility to register willingness to posthumously donate one's organs and people's self-reported actual and intended registration behaviour. Exploratory factor analyses suggested that various responsibility-related constructs could be differentiated, several of which explained unique variance in participants' registration status. Although predominantly derived from it, these constructs provided little support for the specific manner in which the triangle model has previously been conceptualized and operationalized. Implications for theoretical development, future empirical research, and organ procurement are discussed.

Individual and gender differences in 'good' and 'first-class' undergraduate degree performance.

Corroborating recent findings elsewhere, women within a large undergraduate sample at the University of Sussex achieved a greater proportion of 'good' (first- or upper-second-class) degrees than did their male counterparts. This female advantage disappeared when statistically controlling for the trait openness to experience and for study-related behaviour whilst at university (i.e. attending seminars and completing 'non-contributory' assignments). Contrary to robust findings previously obtained elsewhere, only slight and unreliable evidence was found that men at Sussex obtained a greater proportion of first-class degrees than did women. Moreover, differences favouring either gender were unreliable across the subjects of study. Indeed, 'subject gaps' often appeared more pronounced than 'gender gaps', where present. We conclude that emphasis should be shifted away from research on gender differences per se in favour of recent approaches that more directly explore reasons for successful undergraduate performance. However, to the extent that subject choice is an important determinant of degree performance, gender differences in subject choice will continue to be an important area of research.