Coordinating perspectives: De se and taste attitudes in communication

The received picture of linguistic communication understands communication as the transmission of information from speaker's head to hearer's head. This picture is in conflict with the attractive Lewisian view of belief as self-location, which is motivated by de se attitudes – first-personal attitudes about oneself – as well as attitudes about subjective matters such as personal taste. In this paper, I provide a solution to the conflict that reconciles these views. I argue for an account of mental attitudes and communication on which mental content and speech act content is understood as sets of multicentered worlds – roughly, possible worlds ‘centered’ on a sequence of individuals at a time. I develop a Stalnakerian model of communication based on multicentered worlds content, and I provide a suitable semantics for personal pronouns and predicates of personal taste. The resulting picture is one on which the point of conversation is the coordination of individual perspectives.     

The face‐mind link: Why we see minds behind faces,and how others' minds change how we see their face

Understanding others' minds has puzzled philosophers for centuries. Psychologists, too, have recently begun asking questions about what causes us to see another person as having complex or simple mental faculties. Here, we review recent evidence linking how we perceive others' faces with how we perceive others' minds—the face‐mind link. We first discuss research demonstrating a face‐to‐mind effect, showing that both certain facial features (e.g., eyes) and face perception processes (e.g., configural processing) can trigger the perception that a face has a mind. We then discuss recent evidence demonstrating a mind‐to‐face effect, showing that believing a person is inhumane (i.e., their mind) leads their face to be processed less like a face and more like an object. Finally, we consider both the consequences of this bidirectional face‐mind link, and what the next steps may be in understanding how and why we infer minds from faces, and how and why beliefs about others' minds affects how we see their face.     

Evaluations Versus Expectations: Children's Divergent Beliefs About Resource Distribution

Past research reveals a tension between children's preferences for egalitarianism and ingroup favoritism when distributing resources to others. Here we investigate how children's evaluations and expectations of others' behaviors compare. Four‐ to 10‐year‐old children viewed events where individuals from two different groups distributed resources to their own group, to the other group, or equally across groups. Groups were described within a context of intergroup competition over scarce resources. In the Evaluation condition, children were asked to evaluate which resource distribution actions were nicer. In the Expectation condition, children were asked to predict which events were more likely to occur. With age, children's evaluations and expectations of others' actions diverged: Children evaluated egalitarian actions as nicer yet expected others to behave in ways that benefit their own group. Thus, children's evaluations about the way human social actors should behave do not mirror their expectations concerning those individuals' actions.     

Conflict and metacognitive control: the mismatch-monitoring hypothesis of how others' knowledge states affect recall

Information about others' success in remembering is frequently available. For example, students taking an exam may assess its difficulty by monitoring when others turn in their exams. In two experiments, we investigated how rememberers use this information to guide recall. Participants studied paired associates, some semantically related (and thus easier to retrieve) and some unrelated (and thus harder). During a subsequent cued recall test, participants viewed fictive information about an opponent's accuracy on each item. In Experiment 1, participants responded to each cue once before seeing the opponent's performance and once afterwards. Participants reconsidered their responses least often when the opponent's accuracy matched the item difficulty (easy items the opponent recalled, hard items the opponent forgot) and most often when the opponent's accuracy and the item difficulty mismatched. When participants responded only after seeing the opponent's performance (Experiment 2), the same mismatch conditions that led to reconsideration even produced superior recall. These results suggest that rememberers monitor whether others' knowledge states accord or conflict with their own experience, and that this information shifts how they interrogate their memory and what they recall.     

Early emotional development in infants and toddlers: Perspectives of Early Head Start staff and parents

As part of a curriculum‐development project, focus groups were implemented with Early Head Start staff and with parents of infants and toddlers enrolled in Early Head Start. Focus groups were designed to identify staff and parent beliefs about early emotional development. Three major themes were identified that crossed the staff and parent focus groups: (a) Infants' and toddlers' abilities to have emotions and to be aware of others' emotions; (b) roles of parents as advocates, teachers, and disciplinarians; and (c) parental reflectivity about their own experiences as influences on their parenting. The findings suggest that parents participating in Early Head Start have some knowledge about basic emotions and the developmental nature of emotions, but may easily misinterpret emotional displays only as attempts at manipulation rather than as valid expressions of feelings; expectations for gender‐appropriate emotional expressiveness begin early; more empowered parents may view themselves as role models and teachers for their children; and more reflective parents are better prepared to engage in the sensitive interactions needed to guide young children's growing awareness of their own and others' emotions. Implications for parenting education and program planning utilizing an infant mental health perspective are discussed.     

From understanding others' needs to prosocial action: Motor and social abilities promote infants' helping

In the present study, we test the main hypothesis that infants' understanding of others' needs translates into helping behavior, when critical motor and social competencies have emerged, early in the second year. We assessed the understanding of others' needs in an eye‐tracking paradigm and the helping behavior of 10‐ (n = 41) and 16‐month‐olds (n = 37). Furthermore, we assessed the motor and social abilities of 16‐month‐olds. Critically, while infants understood others' needs already at 10 months, fine motor and social interaction skills moderated the link between infants' prosocial understanding and helping behavior at 16 months. This provides first evidence that infants' helping behavior relates to their understanding of others' needs. Furthermore, we found that fine motor, gross motor, and social interaction skills predicted early helping behavior by themselves. These findings highlight that the emergence of infants' helping behavior is the result of a developmental system that includes infants' understanding of others' needs and also their motor and social competencies. The link between infants' understanding of others' needs and their early helpful actions provide further support for the prosocial nature of early helping behavior.     

The Concerned Mental Health Practitioner

Summary

A discussion is provided regarding a fundamental principle of psychology, a concern for other's welfare, as set out in the American Psychological Association's (2002) Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct. Although the principle concern for others' welfare is essentially aspirational in nature, this is an ethical principle that is at the core of the mental health professions' stated values, and that must be positively put into operation in a variety of professional contexts. Unlike so much else in professional ethics codes that involves injunctions of what not to do, or which attempts to limit the self-serving tendencies of professionals, this general principle is essentially positive, pointing to the need to approach others and to consider their welfare first.     

The desirability of beliefs: preschoolers' appreciation of fact beliefs and subsequent emotions

In this study, we investigated the extent to which preschool children's own knowledge about reality biases their understanding that others' beliefs about reality govern others' emotions and not reality itself. Therefore, an increasing tension was created between the beliefs of the protagonist and the participant, by providing varying degrees of evidence about the validity of the protagonist's belief. Children of between 4 and 5 years of age were asked to predict the protagonist's emotion, given the protagonist's desire and the protagonist's belief. The results show that, to a certain extent, preschool children take others' beliefs into account when predicting others' emotions. When the outcome is clear, children probably feel tied to reality, and in the case of false beliefs, their knowledge about reality biases their emotion predictions, as was also evident in ‘false belief’ research (Wimmer H, Perner I. 1983. Beliefs about beliefs: representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children's understanding of deception. Cognition 13: 103–128). However, when it is uncertain what the actual outcome will be, then it is not the likelihood of others' beliefs but the desirability of the outcome that biases children's predictions of others' emotions. In other words, when the actual outcome is yet unclear, 4‐ and 5‐year‐olds show a tendency for wishful thinking in their predictions of others' emotions. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effect of Personal Injustice on Attributions for the Success of Others

The current research tested competing predictions on whether the experience of personal injustice would increase or decrease internal attributions of others' success. Compared with the control condition, Study 1 found that individuals gave less credit to another person for his promotion after they recalled their own unfair experience. Study 2 revealed that personal injustice led weak just-world believers, but not strong just-world believers, to perceive a lottery winner to be less deserving. Study 3 showed that these effects were mediated by resentment. The findings demonstrate that thinking about one's own injustice can lead to a more cynical outlook on others' positive outcomes.     

Thomas Kuhn on the existence of the world

This article argues that Thomas Kuhn's views on the existence of the world have undergone significant change in the course of his philosophical career. In Structure, Kuhn appears to be committed to the existence of the ordinary empirical world as well as the existence of an independent metaphysical world, but realism about the empirical world is abandoned in his later writings. Whereas in Structure the only relative worlds are the scientific worlds inhabited by the practitioners of various paradigms, the later Kuhn puts the non-scientific worlds of particular groups or cultures on the same footing as the paradigm-related scientific worlds. The article shows that, on what Ian Hacking called the “new-world problem”, the later Kuhn has moved to a more radical antirealist position. It is also argued that the earlier and later solutions to the “new-world problem” face insuperable difficulties, which render Kuhn's account of scientific change implausible.     

What are impossible worlds?

In this paper, I argue for a particular conception of impossible worlds. Possible worlds, as traditionally understood, can be used in the analysis of propositions, the content of belief, the truth of counterfactuals, and so on. Yet possible worlds are not capable of differentiating propositions that are necessarily equivalent, making sense of the beliefs of agents who are not ideally rational, or giving truth values to counterfactuals with necessarily false antecedents. The addition of impossible worlds addresses these issues. The kinds of impossible worlds capable of performing this task are not mysterious sui generis entities, but sets of structured propositions that are themselves constructed out of possible worlds and relations. I also respond to a worry that these impossible worlds are unable to represent claims about the shape of modal space itself.     

Workers' self‐objectification and tendencies to conform to others

Recent research showed that workers' self‐objectification—their self‐perception as objects rather than human beings—leads to detrimental intrapersonal consequences. In the present research, we explored whether this phenomenon may also affect interpersonal relations, by increasing workers' tendencies to conform. In a correlational study, Italian workers who perceived their work as more objectifying self‐objectified more—self‐attributed less human mental states and self‐perceive as more instrument‐like than human‐like—and, in turn, were more inclined to conform with others. The second study experimentally confirmed this pattern, showing that British workers who recalled an objectifying (vs. a non‐objectifying) work experience self‐objectified more. Self‐perception as instrument‐like was associated, in turn, with an increased tendency to adapt to others' opinions. The implications for organizational and social psychology are discussed.     

On Whether we Can See Intentions

Direct Perception is the view that we can see others' mental states, i.e. that we perceive others' mental states with the same immediacy and directness that we perceive ordinary objects in the world. I evaluate Direct Perception by considering whether we can see intentions, a particularly promising candidate for Direct Perception. I argue that the view equivocates on the notion of intention. Disambiguating the Direct Perception claim reveals a troubling dilemma for the view: either it is banal or highly implausible.     

The action model of relationship security: How one's own behavior shapes confidence in partners' care,regard, and commitment

The authors present and test the action model of relationship security, which predicts that people's behavior toward a relationship partner shapes their security regarding that partner's care, regard, and commitment. Specifically, actors who enact prosocial or antisocial behavior develop corresponding prosocial or antisocial metaperceptions (i.e., they believe they are viewed as prosocial or antisocial by their partner). In turn, these metaperceptions have a strong influence on actors' security in their partner's care, regard, and commitment due to lay theories positing that prosocial and antisocial behavior impacts others' sentiments. Four studies supported this model. Moreover, findings suggest that prosocial metaperceptions buffer the harmful effects of attachment anxiety on relationship security. This research suggests the relevance of own behavior for relationship security.     

Concurrent Relations Between Perspective-Taking Skills,Desire Understanding,and Internal-State Vocabulary

Recent studies suggest that there appears to be a similar developmental sequence in the understanding of mental states in both internal-state language and in standard theory-of-mind tasks. These findings suggest possible developmental relations between children's ability to talk and think about the mind. Two experiments investigated the concurrent relations between internal-state vocabulary and theory-of-mind abilities in 30-month-old toddlers. In Experiment 1, children's internal-state language vocabulary was significantly and specifically related to their concurrent understanding of others' visual and emotional perspectives and was less strongly related to desire understanding. Experiment 2 replicated and extended these findings by examining the link between internal-state vocabulary and visual perspective-taking and comprehension of own versus other's desire, controlling for general verbal skills. Children with a more developed internal-state vocabulary performed better on perspective-taking tasks. These findings suggest that labeling and reasoning about mental states are related abilities at the early stages of theory-of-mind development.     

A Longitudinal Application of the Theory of Reasoned Action to Women's Career Behavior1

Based on the theory of reasoned action (TRA; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975), we hypothesized that young women's career intentions would be predicted by their gender-role attitudes and perceptions of their boyfriends' and parents' career-related preferences for them. Career intention was expected to predict future career behavior. The model was tested using longitudinal data from 105 women studied in 1973 and followed up 14 years later in 1987. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results supported the TRA: women's gender-role attitudes and their perceptions of important others' preferences predicted their career intentions, which predicted career behavior 14 years later. Implications for the study of women's careers and the longitudinal application of the TRA are discussed.     

Person‐centred positive emotions,object‐centred negative emotions: 2‐year‐olds generalize negative but not positive emotions across individuals

Prior work suggests that young children do not generalize others' preferences to new individuals. We hypothesized (following Vaish et al., 2008, Psychol. Bull., 134, 383–403) that this may only hold for positive emotions, which inform the child about the person's attitude towards the object but not about the positivity of the object itself. It may not hold for negative emotions, which additionally inform the child about the negativity of the object itself. Two‐year‐old children saw one individual (the emoter) emoting positively or negatively towards one and neutrally towards a second novel object. When a second individual then requested an object, children generalized the emoter's negative but not her positive emotion to the second individual. Children thus draw different inferences from others' positive versus negative emotions: Whereas they view others' positive emotions as person centred, they may view others' negative emotions as object centred and thus generalizable across people. The results are discussed with relation to the functions and implications of the negativity bias.     

Client Conceptions of Change in Career Development and Career Counseling

This article illustrates the ways in which clients in career counseling think about the types of change in their career lives and about the determinants of change. It is based on an analysis of the interview data of a few adult clients. Two category systems are proposed as representative of the clients' thinking about change in these domains.     

Reasoning bias for the recall of one's own beliefs in a Smarties task for adults

While many studies in the theory of mind (ToM) literature have investigated how we understand others' mental states, few have explored the mechanism by which we reflect on our own mental states. This study examined how adults reflect on their own and others' mental states within the same ToM task. To do so, we modified the Smarties task, one of the traditional ToM tasks for children. The results showed that adult participants were biased by outcome knowledge when recalling their false belief and that the participants who overestimated their false belief also overestimated the mental states of a naive other. These results were analogous to young children's failure in the Smarties task. Considering the current findings, we discuss possible cognitive processes that are common across children and adults when reflecting on their own mental states and the mental states of others.     

Training and development for career management and talent development in wholesale and retail industry in South Africa

The study investigated ways to achieve sustainable career management as well as talent management for employees of a wholesale and retail industry operating in the city of Polokwane, South Africa. Employees (n = 85; females = 47%) completed a questionnaire on their perceptions and experiences of the use of training and development activities to support career management and talent development in their organisation. Data were analysed to predict the extent to which aspects of career management and talent development were explained by training and development within the work setting. Findings from the regression analysis indicate significant effects of the frequency of training needs assessment on career and talent management effectiveness. Significant effects of induction, career-focused job rotation practices, provision of mentors on career and talent development effectiveness are also shown. Career-focused training programmes and development variables appear to have a complementary effect on career management and talent management effectiveness.