A Closer Look at Manifest Consequence

Fine (2007) argues that Frege’s puzzle and its relatives demonstrate a need for a basic reorientation of the field of semantics. According to this reorientation, the domain of semantic facts would be closed not under the classical consequence relation but only under a stronger relation Fine calls “manifest consequence.” I examine Fine’s informally sketched analyses of manifest consequence, showing that each can be amended to determine a class of strong consequence relations. A best candidate relation emerges from each of the two classes, and I prove that the two candidates extensionally coincide. The resulting consequence relation is of independent interest, for it might be held to constitute a cogent standard of reasoning that proceeds under a deficient grasp on the identity of objects.     

A Closer Look at the Personality Characteristics of Outplaced Executives

The present study examines more closely the findings and recommendations presented recently by Austin and Murray (1993) regarding the personality characteristics of outplaced executives. The analysis of a much larger national sample that does not exclude females shows that the previously reported findings may not be representative of the population of outplaced executives and that important gender differences also are present. Finally, the suggestion that counselors should help individuals change their negative predispositions is questioned. It is recommended here that personality differences between employed and outplaced executives may have more important implications for organizational practices and counseling pertaining to person-job fit     

A Closer Look at Religiosity Among Family Caregivers

This article addresses the relationships between the dimensions of religiosity and positive appraisal of caregiving among African American, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic Caucasian family caregivers for older adults. Data analysis of 69 subjects revealed a negative correlation between non-organizational religiosity and positive appraisal of care among African American caregivers and a positive correlation between organizational religiosity and positive appraisal of care among Hispanic caregivers. Findings from this analysis challenges the overall assumption that religiosity increases positive appraisal of caregiving. Rather, the nature and outcomes of family caregiving are different for various ethnic groups.     

Distant Things: A Closer Look

In a discussion of the constitutive role of colour in our visual perceptual experiences, Wilhelm Schapp centrally argues that we cannot visually perceive certain distant things, like a house seen far down in the valley. My main contention is that, in cases relevantly similar to Schapp’s, we do perceptually experience distant things, viz., as drastically “decayed” things, which are part of distant scenes. In doing so, we adopt towards them a kind of conservative “attitude.” The ideas of decay and scenicness will be unpacked in terms of the Husserlian ideas of fulfilment, and fulfilment conditions, capturing the idea that we perceptually experience objects in terms of anticipated possibilities for further experiences of these objects. These ideas will also be considered in relation to Herbert Leyendecker’s notion of an attitude, e.g. of observing, searching for, or working with objects.     

A Closer Look at Couple Collusion: Protecting the Self and Preserving the System

Couple collusion is the term used to describe a group of defenses that some spouses use to protect their respective selves and to preserve dyadic equilibrium. Collusive defenses can take a variety of forms, such as conscious agreements, non-verbalized pacts, and unconscious contracts. In this article, the author describes two unconscious collusive defenses: (a) acting out and (b) monitoring and restraining. He offers some suggestions for dealing with these defensive systems in two case studies.     

A Closer Look at Reactions to Realistic Recruitment Messages

Recently there has been a great deal of interest among consumer and behavioral judgment researchers on how immediate affective reactions influence overall evaluations. The current study seeks to determine whether immediate affective reactions to organizational attributes warrant the attention of recruitment researchers as well. Using a customized web‐based computer program that elicits immediate affective reactions to organizational previews, the study finds that overall evaluations of the organization are influenced more by the average intensity of immediate affective reactions experienced during the message than by the relative balance of positive and negative information contained in the message. Results suggest that practitioners using realistic information need to be more concerned about the average intensity of recipients' reactions than about the relative balance of positive or negative information.     

A Closer Look at the Relationship between Life Satisfaction and Job Performance

Applied Research in Quality of Life - The central aim of this research was to examine the mediating role of bonding social capital and affective commitment in the life satisfaction – job...     

A Process Model of Goal Orientation and Feedback Seeking

This study investigated antecedents of seeking different types of feedback. Individual differences in goal orientation and cost and value perceptions were proposed as antecedents of seeking different types of feedback. We hypothesized that 4 dimensions of cost and value perceptions of feedback seeking (expectancy value, appraisal value, ego cost, and self-presentation cost) are related to an individual's goal orientation. Furthermore, moving beyond a focus on the frequency of feedback seeking, we proposed that the perceptions of costs and values of feedback seeking influence the preference for and choice among 4 distinct feedback types (diagnostic, normative, assurance, and no feedback). A total of 240 students participated in a computer-simulated work setting. Results were largely consistent with the hypotheses; each goal orientation had a unique pattern of relations with the perceptions of costs and values. Cost and value perceptions, in turn, influenced preference and choice for feedback type. The theoretical implications of the research are discussed.     

Seeking Perfection: A Kantian Look at Human Genetic Engineering

It is tempting to argue that Kantian moral philosophy justifies prohibiting both human germ-line genetic engineering and non-therapeutic genetic engineering because they fail to respect human dignity. There are, however, good reasons for resisting this temptation. In fact, Kant’s moral philosophy provides reasons that support genetic engineering—even germ-line and non-therapeutic. This is true of Kant’s imperfect duties to seek one’s own perfection and the happiness of others. It is also true of the categorical imperative. Kant’s moral philosophy does, however, provide limits to justifiable genetic engineering.     

A Closer Look at the Role of Applicant Age in Selection Decisions

Participants evaluated hypothetical applicants recruited from a younger (university students) or older (American Association of Retired Persons) population for 2 young-typed jobs, one more strongly young-typed than the other. Participants were given applicant information, including age and personal characteristics, that varied in the extent to which it was consistent with raters' job stereotypes. Results indicated that younger applicants were evaluated more favorably than older applicants. However, an Applicant Age × Job interaction effect indicated that the older applicant was evaluated less favorably for the more strongly compared with the less strongly young-typed job. In addition. applicants whose personal characteristics (other than age) were more consistent with raters' job stereotypes were evaluated more favorably than applicants whose characteristics were less consistent. Results also indicated that applicant age and personal characteristics interacted to influence applicant evaluations. The implications of these and other study results are discussed.     

A Closer Look at the Yardstick: A New Discount Rate Measure with Precision and Range

In intertemporal choice research, choice tasks (i.e., choosing between $80 today and $100 in a year) are often used to elicit a discount rate. The discount rate derived from a choice task, however, is largely restricted by the granularities and ranges of the questions asked. We examined this restriction in three popular discount rate measurements using simulations and experiments, and we propose an alternative procedure (Three‐option Adaptive Discount rate measure (ToAD)), which is capable of measuring a wide range of discount rates (from approximately .035% to 350 000% annual percentage rate) with high precision using 10 questions, in under a minute. ToAD can be easily implemented in online surveys (i.e., Qualtrics). Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Natural Selection and Multiple Realisation: A Closer Look

The target of this article is the claim that natural selection accounts for the multiple realisation of biological and psychological kinds. I argue that the explanation actually offered does not provide any insight about the phenomenon since it presupposes multiple realisation as an unexplained premise, and this is what does all the work. The purported explanation mistakenly invokes the ‘indifference’ of selection to structure as an additional explanatorily relevant factor. While such indifference can be explanatory in intentional contexts, it is not a causal factor at all in non-intentional nature. The upshot is that, once the necessary initial assumption about heterogeneity is accepted, there is no further explanation to do.     

Situational and Individual Determinants of Teachers' Reported Use of Behavior Alteration Techniques

Tying together principles applicable to compliance-gaining from both interpersonal and instructional communication theory and research, this investigation focused on situational and individual difference determinants of teachers’ strategy selection in the classroom. Specifically, this study required teachers to focus on student misbehavior scenarios that reflected the situational determinants of misbehavior type (active/passive) and intensity (moderate/severe). Results indicated that teachers’ compliance-gaining message selection was influenced substantially by misbehavior type, and to a lesser extent, misbehavior intensity. Assessments of teachers’ and students’ gender confirmed stereotypic differences for male and female teachers’ reported technique use, but no student gender effect was obtained. These findings are compared with those obtained with prospective teachers (Plax, Kearney, & Tucker, 1986). Results are discussed in terms of cognitive scheme development for classroom management.     

A Closer Look at Eyespot Effects on Voter Turnout: Reply to Matland and Murray

Implicit social pressure, applied via exposure to eyespots in nonpartisan, direct‐mail blandishments to vote, has been shown using randomized field experiments to raise turnout in elections. Similar eyespot effects have been observed across a wide range of prosocial behaviors. A series of recent replications conducted by Matland and Murray (2015) have failed to consistently produce statistically significant eyespot effects on voter turnout, however, leading the authors to conclude the effects observed in previous research were likely illusory. In this article, I rebut this claim, arguing that an alternative, more circumspect interpretation of the authors’ key results points to a different conclusion that supports the notion that eyespots likely stimulate voting, especially when taken together with previous findings.     

Empowerment and Powerlessness: A Closer Look at the Relationship Between Feminism, Body Image and Eating Disturbance

Objectification Theory (Frederickson & Roberts, 1997) states that women’s bodies are viewed as objects to be evaluated and this societal objectification may lead to self-objectification when women view their own bodies as objects. The current study theorized that empowerment is an important factor in reducing self-objectification. Although empowerment is a central tenet of feminist theory, this study is the first to examine the relationship between empowerment, feminism, and body image and eating disturbance. Participants were 276 women from the southeastern USA. Results demonstrated that empowerment was more predictive of body image and eating disturbance than was feminism. Development of a validated empowerment scale specific to body image and eating disturbance may be useful for future research, prevention, and treatment efforts.