Is strong reciprocity really strong in the lab, let alone in the real world?

We argue that standard experiments supporting the existence of "strong reciprocity" do not represent many cooperative situations outside the laboratory. More representative experiments that incorporate "earned" rather than "windfall" wealth also do not provide evidence for the impact of strong reciprocity on cooperation in contemporary real-life situations or in evolutionary history, supporting the main conclusions of the target article.     

Are the Russians as Unhappy as they say they are?

Since the 1980s, several polls in Russia have included questions about happiness. The responses to these questions were quite similar. Average happiness was low in comparison to other nations and declined over time. Ten years after the fall of communism Russians are less happy than during the communist period.There are doubts about the validity of these self-reports. One source of doubt is that these data may not reflect Russians' self-appraisals adequately, due to distortions in translation and a differential response bias. A second misgiving is that true discontent could be rather superficial, and be largely due to unfavorable comparison with the West and folklore of negativism.These qualms are checked in this article. It appears that the Russians are as unhappy as they say they are, and that they have good reasons to be so. The current unhappiness is not due to the Russian national character, but has more to do with the troublesome transitions taking place in Russian society.     

From Woman as Hasid to Woman as “Tsadik” in the Teachings of the Last Two Lubavitcher Rebbes

The paper deals with some of the ways in which the last Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menahem Mendel Schneerson, radicalized the legacy of his predecessor, Yosef Yitshak Schneersohn, who was the first hasidic leader to mobilize women as active members of the Habad constituency. In the teachings of Menahem Mendel Schneerson, women were invested for the first time with the sense of being full-fledged female hasidim in their own right. Moreover, unlike his predecessor, whose mobilization of women never became an integral element of his apocalyptic messianism, Menahem Mendel Schneerson consistently framed the empowerment of women in terms of kabbalistic eschatology, anticipating in the present the inverted gender hierarchy of the messianic future, which was, as he declared, just about to unfold. In this context, he applied to women some of the classical hasidic formulations of the doctrine of the tsadik, depicting them as a channel that mediates between Heaven and earth, and as the trigger that releases from Heaven the flow of material prosperity expressed in terms of the traditional tsadik’s blessing for sons (offspring), life (health), and food (secure livelihood).     

Is Loneliness the Same as Being Alone?

The cognitive discrepancy model predicts that loneliness occurs when individuals perceive a difference between their desired and actual levels of social involvement. Using data from a sample of high school sophomore students, the present investigation was designed to go beyond previous research that has tested this model by examining the predicted nonlinear relationships between desired and actual social contact and feelings of loneliness. Analyses indicated that support for the cognitive discrepancy model of loneliness was found only for measures of close friendships. Specifically, the discrepancy between the students' ideal number and actual number of close friends was found to be related in a nonlinear fashion to feelings of satisfaction with close friendships and loneliness after control for the number of close friends. Implications of these findings for theoretical models of loneliness are discussed.     

Kierkegaard and Psychology as the Science of the “Multifarious Life”

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the actuality of some considerations around psychology made by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855). According to him psychology is about the “multifarious” life, which is a term that pinpoints the challenges psychology still have when it comes to including changes and genetic perspectives on its understanding of actual living. Yet Kierkegaard discusses psychology in relationship to metaphysics, which is an almost forgotten perspective. His understanding opens up for narrowing the definition of psychology down to the science of subjectivity, which at the same time elevates psychology to being the only science that focuses on the actual human life. Yet Kierkegaard’s most important contribution to psychology is to maintain a radical distinction between subjectivity and objectivity, and in this respect the psychology of today is challenged.     

Agent causation as the solution to all the compatibilist’s problems

In a recent paper I argued that agent causation theorists should be compatibilists. In this paper, I argue that compatibilists should be agent causation theorists. I consider six of the main problems facing compatibilism: (i) the powerful intuition that one can’t be responsible for actions that were somehow determined before one was born; (ii) Peter van Inwagen’s modal argument, involving the inference rule (β); (iii) the objection to compatibilism that is based on claiming that the ability to do otherwise is a necessary condition for freedom; (iv) “manipulation arguments,” involving cases in which an agent is manipulated by some powerful being into doing something that he or she would not normally do, but in such a way that the compatibilist’s favorite conditions for a free action are satisfied; (v) the problem of constitutive luck; and (vi) the claim that it is not fair to blame someone for an action if that person was determined by forces outside of his or her control to perform that action. And in the case of each of these problems, I argue that the compatibilist has a much more plausible response to that problem if she endorses the theory of agent causation than she does otherwise.     

Can smartphones be used to bring computer-based tasks from the lab to the field? A mobile experience-sampling method study about the pace of life

Researchers are increasingly using smartphones to collect scientific data. To date, most smartphone studies have collected questionnaire data or data from the built-in sensors. So far, few studies have analyzed whether smartphones can also be used to conduct computer-based tasks (CBTs). Using a mobile experience-sampling method study and a computer-based tapping task as examples (N = 246; twice a day for three weeks, 6,000+ measurements), we analyzed how well smartphones can be used to conduct a CBT. We assessed methodological aspects such as potential technologically induced problems, dropout, task noncompliance, and the accuracy of millisecond measurements. Overall, we found few problems: Dropout rate was low, and the time measurements were very accurate. Nevertheless, particularly at the beginning of the study, some participants did not comply with the task instructions, probably because they did not read the instructions before beginning the task. To summarize, the results suggest that smartphones can be used to transfer CBTs from the lab to the field, and that real-world variations across device manufacturers, OS types, and CPU load conditions did not substantially distort the results.     

Reading paradigms: From lab to cyberspace?

Computer-controlled display procedures useful for doing reading research are discussed. The procedures used in the present research vary the text unit size (from single words to half-sentences), the amount of context available (no context and varying amounts of prior text), text movement (centered words or successive left-to-right placement), and use of text highlighting (present, absent). The data suggest links between the display attributes and the subjects’ coding strategies during reading of mathematical word problems. Display attributes can influence the time course of processing, the subjectively coded unit size, and the nature of linguistic processing. The data also have implications for display attributes that may make reading in cyberspace more user friendly for both novice and expert readers.     

Exploring the Promise of Eudaimonic Well-Being Within the Practice of Health Promotion: The “How” is as Important as the “What”

A brief historical and philosophical analysis suggests that the biomedical model and prevention have been the pillars of health promotion practices with the underlying assumption that these concepts provide answers to people’s health woes. Another observation resulting from this analysis is that biomedical, prevention, and more recently, wellness, do not differ much from each other paradigmatically (e.g., instrumental rationality) and, hence, are severely restricted in their short- and long-term effectiveness for helping people with healthy living and quality of life. It is proposed that eudaimonic well-being—if explored, understood, and implemented in a manner that holds true to the purity of the concept—offers significant promise for shifts in health promotion practices that may lead to transformative health experiences and enhanced quality of life.     

Metaphysics as modeling: the handmaiden’s tale

Critics of contemporary metaphysics argue that it attempts to do the hard work of science from the ease of the armchair. Physics, not metaphysics, tells us about the fundamental facts of the world, and empirical psychology is best placed to reveal the content of our concepts about the world. Exploring and understanding the world through metaphysical reflection is obsolete. In this paper, I will show why this critique of metaphysics fails, arguing that metaphysical methods used to make claims about the world are similar to scientific methods used to make claims about the world, but that the subjects of metaphysics are not the subjects of science. Those who argue that metaphysics uses a problematic methodology to make claims about subjects better covered by natural science get the situation exactly the wrong way around: metaphysics has a distinctive subject matter, not a distinctive methodology. The questions metaphysicians address are different from those of scientists, but the methods employed to develop and select theories are similar. In the first section of the paper, I will describe the sort of subject matter that metaphysics tends to engage with. In the second section of the paper, I will show how metaphysical theories are classes of models and discuss the roles of experience, common sense and thought experiments in the construction and evaluation of such models. Finally, in the last section I will discuss the way these methodological points help us to understand the metaphysical project. Getting the right account of the metaphysical method allows us to better understand the relationship between science and metaphysics, to explain why doing metaphysics successfully involves having a range of different theories (instead of consensus on a single theory), to understand the role of thought experiments involving fictional worlds, and to situate metaphysical realism in a scientifically realist context.     

Fairness as “Appropriate Impartiality” and the Problem of the Self-Serving Bias

Garrett Cullity contends that fairness is appropriate impartiality (See Cullity (2004) Chapters 8 and 10 and Cullity (2008)). Cullity deploys his account of fairness as a means of limiting the extreme moral demand to make sacrifices in order to aid others that was posed by Peter Singer in his seminal article ‘Famine, Affluence and Morality’. My paper is founded upon the combination of (1) the observation that the idea that fairness consists in appropriate impartiality is very vague and (2) the fact that psychological studies show the self-serving bias is especially likely to infect one’s judgements when the ideas involved are vague. I argue that Cullity’s solution to extreme moral demandingness is threatened by these findings. I then comment on whether some other theories of fairness are vulnerable to the same objection.     

Explaining the justice-performance relationship: trust as exchange deepener or trust as uncertainty reducer?

Past research has revealed significant relationships between organizational justice dimensions and job performance, and trust is thought to be one mediator of those relationships. However, trust has been positioned in justice theorizing in 2 different ways, either as an indicator of the depth of an exchange relationship or as a variable that reflects levels of work-related uncertainty. Moreover, trust scholars distinguish between multiple forms of trust, including affect- and cognition-based trust, and it remains unclear which form is most relevant to justice effects. To explore these issues, we built and tested a more comprehensive model of trust mediation in which procedural, interpersonal, and distributive justice predicted affect- and cognition-based trust, with those trust forms predicting both exchange- and uncertainty-based mechanisms. The results of a field study in a hospital system revealed that the trust variables did indeed mediate the relationships between the organizational justice dimensions and job performance, with affect-based trust driving exchange-based mediation and cognition-based trust driving uncertainty-based mediation.     

‘Martyrs as really as St Stephen was a martyr’? Commemorating the British dead of the First World War

Taking its cue from a phrase in a wartime sermon by the Bishop of London, Arthur Winnington-Ingram, this article examines the tensions between Christian and more secular approaches to the commemoration of the military casualties of the First World War. An initial overview of perceptions of sacrifice, martyrdom and Christian militarism in the early twentieth century is followed by discussion, in turn, of local war memorials, of the early policies of the Imperial (now Commonwealth) War Graves Commission, and of the arrangements for the dedication of the Cenotaph and the interment of the ‘Unknown Warrior’ in Westminster Abbey on Armistice Day 1920. At the local and institutional level a wide spectrum of approaches between the overtly Christian and the robustly secular were adopted, but national memorialisation required compromise and consensus. Hence it was agreed that the war cemeteries should include both a Cross of Sacrifice and Stone of Remembrance, and that there should be uniform headstones engraved with a cross or other religious symbol. Similarly the primarily (but not exclusively) secular ceremonial at the Cenotaph was seamlessly linked to the Christian funeral service for the Unknown in the Abbey. At the same time non-Christian faiths were accorded significant recognition. While other belligerent powers faced similar issues, and in some respects adopted similar solutions, in Britain there was nevertheless a distinctive and particularly pronounced blending of the Christian and the national which has had an abiding legacy.     

Gateways—just as important as standards: How the internet won the “religious war” over standards in Scandinavia

This article concerns the Nordunet project and its “plug.” It is a history about how the Internet “won” the “religious war” about computer communication protocol standards in Scandinavia. It teaches us important lessons about how the Nordic countries (except Denmark) became the leading ones in the adoption and use of the Internet. On a more general level this story also teaches us an important lesson about the importance of gateways in the design and establishment of large scale computer networks and information infrastructures. It is a universal truth that the development of such technologies requires standards. And that gateways are equally important. The main conclusion drawn is that what matters in the development of such technologies is to combine and balance the use of gateways and standards in a proper way. Originally trained as a computer scientist his research focuses mainly on the interplay between social and technical issues in the development and use of large-scale information systems and infrastructures—including their standards. He has worked most of his professional career within applied research institutions and industry and before moving into academia in 1997.     

What's the subject? Brexit and politics as articulation

This paper focuses on the moment of Brexit and its political aftermath in order to challenge dominant academic and popular conceptions of the political subject as singular and coherent. Instead, we suggest that there is an urgent political and analytical need for a view of the subject as multiple, contradictory, and dialogic. As interdisciplinary scholars working on the borders of policy studies and cultural studies, we think this is a critical site for transdisciplinary conversations about such conceptions of the subject. In the political field, such subjects are selectively and unevenly addressed and mobilized by political projects—such as Vote Leave—that invite them to recognize themselves as part of an imagined collective identity. In the twin disturbances of the European Union referendum and the 2017 general election, we suggest that it is possible to see that other voicings, other identifications, and other projects remain possible. Specific political mobilizations are neither singular nor stable.