Meaning Naturalism, Meaning Irrealism, and the Work of Language

I defend the hypothesis that organisms that produce and recognize meaningful utterances tend to use simpler procedures, and should use the simplest procedures, to produce and recognize those utterances. This should be a basic principle of any naturalist theory of meaning, which must begin with the recognition that the production and understanding of meanings is work. One measure of such work is the minimal amount of space resources that must go into storing a procedure to produce or recognize a meaningful utterance. This cost has an objective measure, called Kolmogorov Complexity. I illustrate the use of this measure for a naturalist theory of meaning by showing how it offers a straight solution to one of the most influential arguments for meaning irrealism: the skeptical challenge posed by Kripke’s Wittgenstein.     

Work Stress,Chinese Work Values,and Work Well-Being in the Greater China

ABSTRACT

Work values influence our attitudes and behavior at work, but they have rarely been explored in the context of work stress. The aim of this research was thus to test direct and moderating effects of Chinese work values (CWV) on relationships between work stressors and work well-being among employees in the Greater China region. A self- administered survey was conducted to collect data from three major cities in the region, namely Beijing, Hong Kong, and Taipei (N = 380). Work stressors were negatively related to work well-being, whereas CWV were positively related to work well-being. In addition, CWV also demonstrated moderating effects in some of the stressor–job satisfaction relationships.     

Basic Personal Values and the Meaning of Left‐Right Political Orientations in 20 Countries

This study used basic personal values to elucidate the motivational meanings of “left” and “right” political orientations in 20 representative national samples from the European Social Survey (2002–2003). It also compared the importance of personal values and sociodemographic variables as determinants of political orientation. Hypotheses drew on the different histories, prevailing culture, and socioeconomic level of three sets of countries—liberal, traditional, and postcommunist. As hypothesized, universalism and benevolence values explained a left orientation in both liberal and traditional countries and conformity and tradition values explained a right orientation; values had little explanatory power in postcommunist countries. Values predicted political orientation more strongly than sociodemographic variables in liberal countries, more weakly in postcommunist countries, and about equally in traditional countries.     

Organizational and Individual Values: Their Main and Combined Effects on Work Attitudes and Perceptions

A survey was conducted using a convenient sample of employees (N = 999) from various industries to examine the main and combined effects of organizational and individual values on organizational commitment, perceived organizational support, and procedural justice. Moderated multiple regression analyses showed that employees' reactions were mainly explained by perceived organizational values and value preferences. In contrast, person-organization value fit and interaction effects were marginal. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Basic Personal Values,Core Political Values,and Voting: A Longitudinal Analysis

We theorize that political values express basic personal values in the domain of politics. We test a set of hypotheses that specify how the motivational structure of basic values constrains and gives coherence to core political values. We also test the hypothesis that core political values mediate relations of basic personal values to voting demonstrated in previous research. We measured the basic personal values, core political values, and vote of Italian adults both before (n = 1699) and after (n = 1030) the 2006 national election. Basic values explained substantial variance in each of eight political values (22% to 53%) and predicted voting significantly. Correlations and an MDS projection of relations among basic values and political values supported the hypothesized coherent structuring of core political values by basic values. Core political values fully mediated relations of basic values to voting, supporting a basic values—political values—voting causal hierarchy.     

Mystery,Values, and Meaning: Religious Options that Respect Science

Abstract

Human nature is a contested concept and notions of it vary across disciplines. Despite this diversity, three basic notions of human nature emerge. One identifies human nature with properties that are innate, hardwired or products of some kind of necessary essence. Another understands it as consisting of properties that make human unique or distinct from non-human animals. Finally, some seek human nature by attempting to identify universal or near-universal properties of humans. While the sciences might not give us a robust form of innate or hardwired human nature, “human nature” as a concept might still serve other, non-scientific, goals.     

Individual and Group Meaning: Exploring the Reciprocal Relation

Abstract

Group construct systems were defined through application of a group construct grid that elicited types of groups in which an individual had participated or closely observed. The Group Grid was administered at the beginning and the end of a 4-month graduate class. The meanings of groups to participants were interpreted by examining changes in Group Grids over time and in relation to high and low levels of group performance. The meaning of individuals to the group was assessed by peer evaluations given at the end of the project. High and low levels of peer evaluation were then predicted by an individual's Group Grid measures. The most consistent findings were that greater variation in application regarding types of groups and characteristics about groups showed strong associations with both high levels of group performance and high levels of peer evaluation. Suggestions are given for future research     

Work Values and Organizational Citizenship Behaviors: Values That Work for Employees and Organizations

This study examines the question: Why would an employee engage in work that enhances organizational performance but is not necessarily recognized or rewarded by his or her employer? This study suggests that this question can be answered in part by the degree to which an employee endorses the Protestant work ethic (PWE). The relationship between the PWE and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) is analyzed using two separate survey data samples. Findings support a positive and significant relationship between OCB and two dimensions of the PWE, hard work and independence.     

Actions,Feelings, and Values: Foundations of Meaning and Personhood in Dementia

SUMMARY

Viktor Frankl's writings on the sources of meaning in human life are compared to emergent views on personhood in older individuals with dementing illnesses. An ethnomethodological study of a CBRF (community based residential facility) with two sections, each housing about 10 persons, revealed meaning in residents' actions, feelings, and expressions of values. These individuals showed it is possible to retain what Frankl called “tragic optimism” despite cognitive deterioration. Through active engagement with their environments and with one another, a wide range of expressed emotions including happiness and humor, and caring sensitivity toward others, these elders showed that given a supportive environment, dementia does not destroy meaning. These observations form the basis of suggestions for pastoral care and ministry with people with dementia.     

Centrality and Individual Differences In the Meaning of Dally Hassles

In this study we introduce the concept of centrality in an attempt to assess individual differences in the meaning underlying daily hassles. Central hassles are defined as those which reflect important ongoing themes or problems in the person's life. The characteristics of central hassles, and their role in psychological and somatic health, were assessed in a sample of 150 community-residing men and women. The results indicate that central hassles vary in content from person to person and touch more on problems with personal needs and deficits in coping skills compared to noncentral hassles. The dimension of centrality was found to play a significant role in the prediction of psychological symptoms. Although the empirical case for the importance of centrality in the stress-illness relationship is inconclusive due to problems of confounding and a cross-sectional rather than longitudinal design, the ideas presented appear promising and provide a basis for further research on psychological vulnerability to stress.     

Work,Domination, and the False Hope of Universal Basic Income

Res Publica - Universal basic income (UBI) is increasingly proposed as a simple answer to the problem of domination at work—one policy whose knock-on effects will transform the balance of...     

Careerist,Wage-Earner,or Entrepreneur: Work Values and Counseling

Work values play a major role in career decisions, but how often are these values consciously addressed in counseling? Studies based on ethnology offer new insight into the importance of work values. This article points to some implications for counseling.     

Moral Values Reveal the Causality Implicit in Verb Meaning

Prior work has found that moral values that build and bind groups—that is, the binding values of ingroup loyalty, respect for authority, and preservation of purity—are linked to blaming people who have been harmed. The present research investigated whether people's endorsement of binding values predicts their assignment of the causal locus of harmful events to the victims of the events. We used an implicit causality task from psycholinguistics in which participants read a sentence in the form “SUBJECT verbed OBJECT because…” where male and female proper names occupy the SUBJECT and OBJECT position. The participants were asked to predict the pronoun that follows “because”—the referent to the subject or object—which indicates their intuition about the likely cause of the event. We also collected explicit judgments of causal contributions and measured participants' moral values to investigate the relationship between moral values and the causal interpretation of events. Using two verb sets and two independent replications (N = 459, 249, 788), we found that greater endorsement of binding values was associated with a higher likelihood of selecting the object as the cause for harmful events in the implicit causality task, a result consistent with, and supportive of, previous moral psychological work on victim blaming. Endorsement of binding values also predicted explicit causal attributions to victims. Overall, these findings indicate that moral values that support the group rather than the individual reliably predict that people shift the causal locus of harmful events to those affected by the harms.     

Work Attitudes and Values of College Women

Despite woman's fast emergence into the working world, few studies have focused on individual changing attitudes and values that become initially responsible for setting future employment trends in our society. Following a historical perspective, a survey is presented that samples the inner feelings of young college women and their personal stand on the world of work. The results indicate a general rejection of much of the traditional work ethic. Although the attitudes expressed in this survey are simply contemporary, their hidden strength hints to the shape of a future American society that will potentially change the life-style of every individual.     

Introduction: The Meaning of Work

Abstract

The theme of this special issue is how cultural, societal, group, and individual factors shape what working has meant, means, and is going to mean in future societies. Concepts and empirical data from the Meaning of Working study (MOW, 1987), an eight-country comparison of work-related attitudes and values, and from complementary follow-up studies, serve as the “red thread” or empirical basis throughout the issue. The original MOW (1987) study and some of the follow-up studies reported in this issue are based on a heuristic model for the subjective meaning of work, which is briefly discussed in the first paper by Ruiz Quintanilla and Wilpert. However, as nearly all of the discussants point out, and Heller's paper tries to discuss specifically, there is still a lot of theoretical work to do. The studies reported in this issue provide some empirical data bases and point towards new and crucial questions that are raised by the results. On the other hand, this issue also wants to contribute to a focused discussion about alternative conceptions of the meaning of work and its central role in understanding the concept of work. Since the way we conceptualize a particular problem issue crucially determines the kind of answers and explanations we derive, as Brief points out in his discussant paper, a thorough and lively discussion about how we are to understand work (and “non-work”), what meaning it has in a person's life, what significance the meaning attributed to work has, and by what processes work attains its meaning for society in general, becomes of utmost importance. Moreover, in the light of European integration across cultures and the global internationalization of organizations, differences in cultural contexts for the meaning of work take on a particularly urgent problem for better understanding. Finally, Fineman in his discussant paper raises the crucial point, that the basic epistemological assumptions that guided both the basic conceptual framework and the methodology used in the MOW (1987) and the follow-up studies reported in this issue can be questioned. He argues that these assumptions allow only a rather restricted view of the meaning of work and forego many options in addressing more holistic perspectives of work and its meaning generating processes. Given the fact that meaning is in principle a product of subjective interpretation processes, the question about what social processes form the basis for the meaning of work and its consequences, as well as what epistemological assumptions make sense in trying to understand better the holistic nature of work and its meaning, must be finally addressed.

In this sense this issue attempts: (1) to contribute to the ongoing debate on the concept of meaning of work; as well as (2) to invite interested researchers and practitioners in W & 0 psychology to join in this debate. This journal strongly encourages such a debate and will publish quality rejoinders, commentaries, and critical alternatives to the problems raised in this special issue.     

Work Values Among Lebanese Workers

Abstract

On the basis of a review of the existing literature, the authors tested 4 hypotheses to determine the applicability of work values in Arab societies to employees in Lebanese organizations. Only 1 hypothesis was supported: Organizational policies that ran counter to the worker's religious values had an adverse effect on job satisfaction. There was no support for the hypotheses (a) that workers' religiosity is inversely related to positive attitudes toward women's involvement at work, (b) that employee satisfaction is related to a mechanistic organizational design, or (c) that workers with an internal locus of control experience higher job satisfaction. The Lebanese workers, thus, did not appear to share some of the attributes claimed to exist in Arab societies.     

Work and Individual Determinants of Intrinsic Work Motivation, Emotional Exhaustion, and Turnover Intention: A Multi-Sample Analysis

This study tested the influence of personal characteristics on a pattern of specific relationships between work characteristics and psychological outcomes. The study hypotheses were: (1) Growth Need Strength has a direct effect on intrinsic work motivation and moderates the relationship between task characteristics and intrinsic work motivation; (2) Negative Affectivity has a direct effect on emotional exhaustion and moderates the relationships between workload and social support on the one hand and emotional exhaustion on the other; and (3) Upward Striving has a direct effect on turnover intention and moderates the relationship between unmet career expectations and turnover intention. These hypotheses were tested in two samples (bank employees and teachers) using Multi-Sample Analysis. The results showed that, generally, personal characteristics had a direct effect on the outcomes as hypothesized. We only found one moderating effect: Upward Striving moderated the relationship between unmet career expectations and turnover intention.