Managing the aftermath: Scapegoating as crisis communication strategy

Should firms struggling with a brand crisis use scapegoating, the assignment of blame to another entity? Across three studies, we offer evidence of the value of scapegoating. We show that when firms use scapegoating, they reduce consumers' attributions of a firm's crisis responsibility, controllability, and stability. Compared to other strategies, including no response, denial, apology, and justification, scapegoating is most effective at reducing these attributions. However, attributions of crisis controllability seem more influential in reducing a firm's crisis responsibility. Scapegoating also increases consumers' word‐of‐mouth (WOM) intentions more than the no response strategy, but not more than denial, apology, and justification. The effect of scapegoating, however, depends on the scapegoat type. Whereas using an underdog scapegoat such as a regular company employee or a small partner firm can backfire and result in negative WOM intentions, the use of topdog scapegoats seems to have more positive effects. When firms use topdog scapegoats, such as the top management of a large firm, negative WOM intentions likely decrease. This type of effect seems to occur due to a reduction in the firm's crisis responsibility that scapegoating engenders.     

Mehr als Intersubjektivit?t

Erich Fromm (1900?C1980) was one of the forerunners of the intersubjective tradition in psychoanalysis. Trained at the Berlin Institute and emigrated to the US he started in the 1930s to reformulate psychoanalytic theory by focusing on man??s need to be related on reality, on others and on himself and herself. Similar to Sullivan, Fromm looked at man primarily as a social being but in contrast to Sullivan, Fromm much more stressed man??s being molded by societal requirements and by an intersubjectivity that is determined by strivings originating in his social character structure. The impact the respective social character orientation has on the patient??s being related to others and to himself and herself is to be recognized in the analysis of the therapeutic processes between analyst and analysand. In principle sociality plays a much bigger role for changing intrapsychic processes. Because of Fromm??s ??societal?? orientation his approach to psychoanalysis is still of relevance to understand how the intersubjective and intrapsychic is interwoven in each individual. Beyond that his approach enables insights into what is going on psychically in society and how these changes are influential to the individual??s welfare or suffering.     

The functions of moral philosophy

The conception of man as an economic animal is implied by the view that economic production is the determining “factor” or “sphere” of man or society. Against this conception can be put another, that of man as praxis. This takes account of man as a creative being, capable of realizing his freedom through his own activity. In this article the theory of the determining role of the “economic factor”, and the theory of factors in general have been examined. The economic interpretation of history, a variant of the theory of factors, has been acknowledged as partly true for the self‐alienated man and society, but the theory of factors in any variant has been found inadequate as a general theory of man, or society. The possibility of freedom cannot be reduced to the fact that the determining roles played by “factors”, vary, or to the hope that the economic “factor” can be subordinated to a “better” one. Man's freedom consists in his resolving the conflict of “factors”, and in realizing himself as an integral creative being, no longer split into independent and mutually opposed spheres.     

Traps for Sacrifice: Bateson's Schizophrenic and Girard's Scapegoat

John Perceval (1803–1876), who suffered from schizophrenia, published two books on his experience, in 1836 and 1840. More than a century later, the anthropologist Gregory Bateson discovered in Perceval's memoirs a lucid anticipation of his own theories on schizophrenia. To Bateson, Perceval describes the interactive patterns between himself, his family, and the hospital psychiatrists, as examples of “double bind” interactions, in which he played the role of a “sacrificial victim.” The article underlines the strong convergence between Bateson's theory of schizophrenia and René Girard's theory of the scapegoat. In the anthropological theory of Girard, the sacrificial ceremonies are the main way of constructing social order. In that perspective, the schizophenic can be considered as a particular example of a scapegoat, that is, as an important figure in social life, and not as a mere phenomenon of psychopathology. This theoretical convergence is remarkable, in particular, because both anthropologists explain the sacrificial processes through a theory of social life based on the idea that the main unit of analysis is not the individual, but the interactive dynamic as a whole: patterns of relationships, to Bateson; reciprocal imitation (mymesis), to Girard.     

良知与和谐社会建设

“致良知”是阳明学说的核心。“致良知”是他的宇宙论、道德论,也是其修养论。“致良知”对构建和谐社会有重要意义。如今中国社会出现了许多不和谐,人与人、人与社会、人与自然冲突、矛盾、对立,比比皆是。但归根到底是人自己与自己不和谐,即身心不和谐。为此,需要从阳明学中,吸取一些智慧“省察克治”,限制乃至祛除无限膨胀的私欲,抛弃消费主义,过勤俭生活。     

The value of a liberal education: An essay on the power of knowing

Conclusion It is not easy to summarize what has been suggested in this essay. But in greatly simplified terms, something like this may serve.The understanding which comes through education increases the power of man over himself and his world; it increases his awareness, his capacity to influence, to accept and to enjoy. Everybody knows these things, but an explanation of how this power arises has been attempted. To do this, understanding, was said to be a process, a dynamic act, and four perspectives on this act, each showing one of the ways in which power is created have been presented.First, it was suggested that thought is the process of discriminating the field of feeling. This implies a much closer connection between thought and feeling than is ordinarily held. The particular power here is expressed in terms of the idea that the form of thought both expresses and limits at the same time. Due to this you get clear elements not only expressed in their own right, but deriving part of their clarity and individuality because of their explicit exclusion from other elements of the same field. Second, the power of knowing was explained as due to the tension between levels of significance It was suggested that concepts are fields of meaning composed of mutually constituting levels or particularity and generality.Third, it was suggested that the power of knowing comes through the extension of the range of significant feeling through the use of imagination.Finally, the double aspect of consciousness, which allows man both to do something consciously and to guide such doing self-consciously, was indicated as of major importance to the power and practice of a liberal education because it constitutes the power which frees man from himself.No one can liberate another person by organizing his experience for him. That he must do for himself; it is his life. But educators are in the business of disciplining the student in the truly human fashion which includes the organization of our experience in terms of dynamically interacting levels of generality and significance, the objectifying and clarifying of the field of feeling through thought, the broadening and deepening of that range of feeling through the imaginative projection of possibilities for feeling, as well as the steady consciousness of self that frees man from himself.These four aspects constitute the power which man's nature gives to him alone. It is because of this power that man has been called a rational animal. And along side of this power any others which he may be said to possess are as nothing. Indeed, it is open to question whether there are any other separate powers. Someone may want to mention the power of human love, but a moment of reflection should show that all we consider of most value in human love is an expression of the powers of which we have spoken. A liberal education is of value precisely because it is aimed at the development of those qualities of truly human activity which characterize man at his best. We may have to accept something less than this due to human frailty, but we need not be content to aim at anything less.     

Dirty Hands,the Scapegoat,and the Collective Responsibility of Religious Communities

The article connects the debates surrounding the problem of dirty hands with those regarding collective responsibility, mainly via René Girard’s scapegoat mechanism and his view on mimetic violence. By virtue of the distinction between group intentions and individual pre‐reflective intentions, the article will explore the notion that groups are morally responsible for acts accomplished with dirty hands, and whether individual participants in group actions are also responsible. Moreover, the article introduces a reflection on the collective shame of a larger community for what only a small group has done in its name. In a religious framework of thought, both the idea of a limited individual responsibility and that of collective guilt are valuable for furthering the dialogue on religious reconciliation.     

The Role of Evil in Kant's Liberalism

Carl Schmitt distinguishes between political theories in terms of whether they rest on the anthropological assumption that man is evil by nature or on the anthropological assumption that man is good by nature, and he claims that liberal political theory is based on the latter assumption. Contrary to this claim, I show how Kant's liberalism is shaped by his theory of the radical evil in human nature, and that his liberalism corresponds to the characterization of liberalism that Schmitt himself offers. My discussion of this issue will be shown to have certain implications with respect to the view that for Kant evil is the product of society. I show that this view is mistaken insofar as it fails to recognize that Kant's political philosophy implies that human beings require the type of society that best suits their radically evil natures, namely, a commercial one in which the “vices of culture” largely have free play, while the state's role is limited to that of preventing the antagonisms found in society leading to the mutual destruction of its members.     

睽而知其类,异而知其通——《周易》睽卦卦爻辞新释

睽卦卦义为睽而通,其卦辞与各爻爻辞亦皆围绕此义而展开。睽是睽乖之义,睽乖之所以能通,是因为本卦还有逊退之象义。卦辞之所以仅"小事吉",是因为逊退只能用于非原则性冲突,或者仅作为一种策略运用。初九爻:"丧马"是睽,"勿逐自复"是通;"见恶人"是睽,"无咎"是通。九二爻:臣仆遇主人,本应退避,但"遇主于巷",避无所避,是睽;因属情势所逼,自身无过,故"无咎",是通。六三爻:受刑者艰难赶车,是睽;因赶车很卖力,喻能洗心革面,终能获吉,是通。九四爻:睽孤无助,是睽;遇元夫得助,是通。六五爻:同宗之间有乖违之事,是悔,是睽;乖违之事消解,故同宗之人一起登上宗祠吃肉庆祝,是通。上九爻:求婚或娶亲队伍似寇盗,是睽;"往遇雨则吉",是通。     

道德运气

康德主义者认为,道德只跟动机相关,不受运气影响。威廉斯以未尽基于真实历史事实的高更和小说人物安娜为例展开讨论。高更这位画家为了自己的艺术追求,背逆、冲撞了社会的道德要求。如果他最后成功了,他将能为自己提供理性辩护,失败了则不能。而最初,没谁(包括他自己)知道他的追求是否结出正果——这有一部分依赖于运气。威廉斯对这一阐论中的几个关键概念做出辨析,运气(指的不是意外受伤之类,而是内在于其计划的运气),成功(不是功效主义意义上的,而是指他最终成为他曾希望会是的那个人),辩护(理性辩护可以回溯性的,且不一定能为所有人接受)。他尤其详细地阐发了行为者憾恨的概念。本文的结论是:道德并不免受运气影响。     

4 Being Suicidal and Elderly in Changing Times: A Case History

Mr. Andrew A, at age 67, is a physically well and mentally active man who is involved in business failures and marital conflicts, which brought him dangerously close to precipitating his own demise. He is different from my other elderly suicidal patients, most of whom were ill, disabled, and in decline. They were grieving for many reasons, such as the loss of a spouse or — frequently — themselves as they had been. Andrew's story has hopeful implications for the changing nature of aging and suicide that extend beyond himself as an individual or my interventions as a therapist.     

Favouritism as a function of assumed similarity and anticipated interaction

Discussions of intergroup behavior (e.g., Rabbie and Wilkens, 1971; Tajfel, Flament, Billig and Bundy, 1971) have drawn attention to the influence of both assumed similarity and anticipated future interaction between an individual and other members of his group on his tendency to assign more favourable outcomes to members of his own group than to members of another group. This note examines whether similar processes may also affect an individual's tendency to make intragroup discriminations between different members of a group to which he himself does not belong, in a situation where the variables of similarity and anticipated interaction may be treated as independent factors.     

Artificial Intelligence and the New Alienation of Human Beings

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a revolutionary and overwhelming technology that is yet to immature. While profoundly changing and shaping people and society, AI also splits into its own opposites and develops into a new external alien force. As the basic technical support of the entire society, intelligent technology entails the overt or covert domination of human beings, who are becoming the “vassals” and “slaves” of this high-speed intelligent social system. Various intelligent systems are constantly replacing human work, so that the “digital poor” gradually lose the opportunities and values offered by labor and hence are excluded by the global economic and social system, rendering their existence empty and absurd. The rapid development of intelligent robots has blurred the boundary between humans and machines and had a strong impact on the nature of man and his position as a conscious agent, making “What is man?” and the human-machine relationship prominent issues for our times, challenging the commonplaces of philosophy. We must face up to the existing or imminent risk of alienation, expand our theoretical horizons, innovate theories of alienation in the era of intelligence, take constructive action in terms of the construction of an ideal society and the evolution of man himself, build an ecological system for the joint evolution and growth of human beings and intelligent machines, and achieve liberty of man and the all-round and free development.     

LIFE ON THE ISLAND

Walker Percy was both a medical doctor and a serious Catholic—a scientist and a religious believer. He thought, however, that science had become hegemonic in the twentieth century and that it was incapable of answering the most fundamental needs of human beings. He thus leveled a critique of the scientific method and its shortcomings in failing to address the individual person over against the group. In response to these shortcomings Percy postulates a religious understanding of human life, one in which man's life is understood as a pilgrimage or a search. The person who searches may not find the “object” of his search during his earthly life, but it is likely that he will come to a better understanding of himself by means of it.     

Emotional crises of those facing the draft

Summary While emotional responses will vary among young men, for many of them the draft constitutes some kind of crisis. Although it may be very difficult, most young men will be able to cope with the complicating factors of the draft and will take it in stride along with other disturbing events in the normal course of life. A young man may be able to cope with his feelings resulting from the draft in ways akin to his coping with similar situations. However, if the threat is too intense, and if there is not sufficient time to mobilize his usual coping mechanisms, the young man will be thrown into a state of crisis. In view of the nature of the developmental process, a young man between the ages of 18 and 22 has rarely developed an adequate sense of identity. Hence, he may be especially vulnerable to the emotional threat of the draft because of the very nature of the process of personality development.In such a crisis he will need someone to help him cope with the new situation. There are some guidelines which should help the counselee to mobilize his own emotional resources to cope constructively with the crisis. A pastoral counselor may help such a person to honestly face his fears and conflicts, and to face them gradually. Increasing his knowledge about the available possibilities in a particular situation will help him to increase his power to cope with the crisis. Being enabled to face his negative feelings with a sense of responsibility, he will be enabled to accept himself in terms of the situation in which he finds himself. Discovering significant other persons as supportive may give him the necessary time and support to enable him to develop a means of coping with the situation which he faces.     

In the Eye of the Beholder: Knowledge that a Man is Gay Promotes American College Students’ Attributions of Cross-Gender Characteristics

In this study, we examine whether an actual (rather than hypothetical) man being labeled “gay” either by himself or by another influences American (US) undergraduates’ attributions of the man’s masculinity, femininity, and likeability, replicating (with refinements) a similar study from the 1970s. One hundred ninety-two male and 591 female undergraduates, almost exclusively white, in Kentucky observed two gender-typical white men (one very masculine and the other of average masculinity, both low in femininity, both gay) play a word game on videotape; prior to playing, each man labeled either himself or the other man as either gay or adopted. Male participants rated the men as less masculine and more feminine than female participants, but the label used did not differentially influence male and female participants. Both male and female participants rated each man less masculine and more feminine when labeled gay than when the other man was labeled gay, and rated the more masculine man less masculine and more feminine when labeled gay than when labeled adopted. Whether either man was labeled by himself or by the other man, or whether either man was a labeler or in the presence of a self-labeler, had no effect on participants’ ratings of the men’s masculinity or femininity. Both men were rated as likeable across all conditions. While the stereotype of gay men as more feminine and less masculine than other men appears robust since the 1970 study, the dislike of gay men appears to have abated.     

Future determination of entities in Talmudic public announcement logic

Ordinary dynamic action logics deal with states and actions upon states. The actions can be deterministic or non-deterministic, but it is always assumed that the possible results of the actions are clear cut.Talmudic logic deals with actions (usually legally meaningful actions which can change the legal status of an entity) which depend on the future and therefore may be not clear cut at the present and need future clarifications.The clarification is modelled by public announcement which comes at a later time after the action has taken place.The model is further complicated by the need to know what is the status of formulas at a time before the results of the action is clarified, as we do not know at which state we are in. Talmudic logic treats such states much like the quantum superposition of states and when clarification is available we get a collapse onto a pure state.The Talmudic lack of clarity of actions arises from applying an action to entities defined using the future, like the statement of a dying man on his death bed:

Let the man who will win the jackpot in the lottery next week be the sole heir in my will now

We need to wait a week for the situation to clarify.There is also the problem of legal backwards causality, as this man, if indeed he exists, unaware of his possible good fortune, may have himself meanwhile donated all his property to a charity. Does his donation include this unknown inheritance?This paper will offer a model and a logic which can represent faithfully the Talmudic reasoning in these matters.We shall also see that we get new types of public announcement logics and (quantum-like) action logics. Ordinary public announcement logic deletes possible worlds after an announcements. Talmudic public announcement logic deletes accessibility links after an announcement. Technically these two approaches are similar but not equivalent.     

Reported use of a Japanese accent to promote fluency

This report describes a case study of a young adult man who reportedly adopted an imitation of a Japanese accent as a means of eliminating symptoms of stuttering. Prolonged unfilled pauses and altered stress patterns were key features of his deviant speech pattern. Following an extensive evaluation of his communication skills and case history, it was determined that his unusual speech pattern may have resulted from an identification with a small peer group of Japanese exchange students with whom he felt comfortable. This identity (including his accent) may have provided him with self-confidence he lacked as a teenager, thus enabling him to communicate with more assurance and confidence. It was conclude he was neither a stutterer nor a clutterer.     

The psychodynamics of anti-Judaism in the historical perspective]

In the author's view, anti-Jewishness is the expression of covert anti-Christianism, which in its turn conceals an unconscious revolt against Christ. Unconscious aggression is unleashed against the Jews, who thus become scapegoats against whom three constantly recurring accusations are levelled: the killing of Christ; the desecration of the Host; and the ritual murder of children. The author traces the history of these accusations from the Middle Ages to the present. The search for scapegoats is a universal phenomenon not limited to anti-Jeweshness but encountered more generally in situations of social and political uncertainty. To substantiate his claims, the author draws upon historical documents from the Second World War dealing with the threat to China from Japan's armed forces, and also makes reference to the race riots in Los Angeles early this year.     

Manipulated suicide

To accept a notion of rational suicide, as many contemporary bioethicists now urge, first makes possible certain kinds of manipulation into suicide which do not occur in suicide-impermissive societies. This paper describes the two principal mechanisms by which an individual can be manipulated into choosing to kill himself or herself, though that individual would not have done so otherwise, and identifies circumstantial and ideological changes in contemporary society which may be associated with such manipulation now and in the future. However, the author holds that this prospect is not grounds for rejecting the notion of rational suicide;it must be accepted on other moral grounds, but with a clear view of the risks it will bring.