How to be a structuralist all the way down

This paper considers the nature and role of axioms from the point of view of the current debates about the status of category theory and, in particular, in relation to the “algebraic” approach to mathematical structuralism. My aim is to show that category theory has as much to say about an algebraic consideration of meta-mathematical analyses of logical structure as it does about mathematical analyses of mathematical structure, without either requiring an assertory mathematical or meta-mathematical background theory as a “foundation”, or turning meta-mathematical analyses of logical concepts into “philosophical” ones. Thus, we can use category theory to frame an interpretation of mathematics according to which we can be structuralists all the way down.     

Normativity all the way down: from normative realism to pannormism

In this paper, I will give an argument for what I call pannormism, the view according to which if x instantiates a metaphysically basic normative property F, then whatever grounds the being of x also instantiates F. In slogan form: if there is normativity, there is normativity all the way down. Such pannormism is in many ways analogous to panpsychism, and my discussion also contains an important lesson for panpsychism, a way to avoid its so-called combination problem. In Sect. 1, I present the argument; in Sect. 2, I discuss its conclusion.     

It's all done with mirrors: proof of non-existence

Mirrors can show us to be absent (with minimal cognitive damage) and also can show imaginary lines to be unreal (again with little or no effect on the adjoining percept). The processes that create the subjective lines are immune to the optic information that the lines do not exist.     

It's a just world no matter which way you look at it

According to the confluence theory (D. Trafimow, 2009), there is a general tendency of associated mental elements to become compatible with each other. It is possible to derive a reversibility principle from this theory; effects that have been shown to go in 1 direction also can be shown to go in the other direction. Two experiments applied these ideas to just-world phenomena. In Experiment 1, the authors replicated traditional just-world effects but also demonstrated that they occur in the reverse direction. In Experiment 2, the authors extend the notion of compatibility by showing that the value participants assigned to luck is influenced by the assumed goodness or badness of the person involved. The authors also obtained a "contagion" effect whereby a person associated with the target person was tainted by the target person's goodness or badness.     

It's not all in the face: reduced face visibility does not modulate social segmentation

Humans rely on social information to parse environmental content into social and nonsocial events. Here, we assessed if information conveyed by faces was necessary for this process. We asked participants to view a video clip depicting a social interaction and mark social and nonsocial events while actors’ faces were either visible or blurred. Keypress and eye-movement data were collected. Participants consistently identified social and nonsocial event boundaries independently of face availability, with greater agreement and less variability in keypresses for social relative to nonsocial events. Eye-tracking revealed that participants attended more to actors’ faces when they were visible and more to bodies when faces were blurred. Thus, face information is not necessary for social segmentation, which appears to be a flexible process that depends on a range of information conveyed by both faces and bodies.     

Doing it all Bass-Ackwards: The development of hierarchical factor structures from the top down

A simple method is presented for examining the hierarchical structure of a set of variables, based on factor scores from rotated solutions involving one to many factors. The correlations among orthogonal factor scores from adjoining levels can be viewed as path coefficients in a hierarchical structure. The method is easily implemented using any of a wide variety of standard computer programs, and it has proved to be extremely useful in a number of diverse applications, some of which are here described.     

It's not what you say but the way you say it: matching faces and voices

Recent studies have shown that the face and voice of an unfamiliar person can be matched for identity. Here the authors compare the relative effects of changing sentence content (what is said) and sentence manner (how it is said) on matching identity between faces and voices. A change between speaking a sentence as a statement and as a question disrupted matching performance, whereas changing the sentence itself did not. This was the case when the faces and voices were from the same race as participants and speaking a familiar language (English; Experiment 1) or from another race and speaking an unfamiliar language (Japanese; Experiment 2). Altering manner between conversational and clear speech (Experiment 3) or between conversational and casual speech (Experiment 4) was also disruptive. However, artificially slowing (Experiment 5) or speeding (Experiment 6) speech did not affect cross-modal matching performance. The results show that bimodal cues to identity are closely linked to manner but that content (what is said) and absolute tempo are not critical. Instead, prosodic variations in rhythmic structure and/or expressiveness may provide a bimodal, dynamic identity signature.     

It's the way that you, er, say it: hesitations in speech affect language comprehension

Everyday speech is littered with disfluency, often correlated with the production of less predictable words (e.g., Beattie & Butterworth [Beattie, G., & Butterworth, B. (1979). Contextual probability and word frequency as determinants of pauses in spontaneous speech. Language and Speech, 22, 201-211.]). But what are the effects of disfluency on listeners? In an ERP experiment which compared fluent to disfluent utterances, we established an N400 effect for unpredictable compared to predictable words. This effect, reflecting the difference in ease of integrating words into their contexts, was reduced in cases where the target words were preceded by a hesitation marked by the word er. Moreover, a subsequent recognition memory test showed that words preceded by disfluency were more likely to be remembered. The study demonstrates that hesitation affects the way in which listeners process spoken language, and that these changes are associated with longer-term consequences for the representation of the message.     

It's all in your head: Feminist and medical models of menopause (strange bedfellows)

The purpose of this article is twofold. First, it addresses the substantive area of menopause. It argues that there has been and continues to be a paucity of literature on the topic, which may be due largely to the stigma associated with aging females in our society. Though some current women's studies literature has addressed itself to this area, menopause is still relatively ignored or poorly researched as compared to menstruation and other feminine physiological issues. Furthermore, the few studies which have emerged from the recent wave of feminist research have tended to perpetuate aspects of the medical model of menopause found in current gynecological textbooks and popular paperbacks, i.e., It's all in your head. This ironic compatibility between medical establishment and feminist models of menopause is the second focus of this article. How such a stance could be shared by two radically different ideological groups is a subject worthy of further analysis because it raises more general questions about the relationship of political ideology to research into human behavior, an issue which is crucial to contemporary studies on sex-role differences.This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the meetings of the American Anthropology Association in Washington, D.C., November 1976. Many thanks to my colleague and friend Judith Katz for her invaluable editorial assistance.     

It's not all about me: motivating hand hygiene among health care professionals by focusing on patients

Diseases often spread in hospitals because health care professionals fail to wash their hands. Research suggests that to increase health and safety behaviors, it is important to highlight the personal consequences for the actor. However, because people (and health care professionals in particular) tend to be overconfident about personal immunity, the most effective messages about hand hygiene may be those that highlight its consequences for other people. In two field experiments in a hospital, we compared the effectiveness of signs about hand hygiene that emphasized personal safety ("Hand hygiene prevents you from catching diseases") or patient safety ("Hand hygiene prevents patients from catching diseases"). We assessed hand hygiene by measuring the amount of soap and hand-sanitizing gel used from dispensers (Experiment 1) and conducting covert, independent observations of health care professionals' hand-hygiene behaviors (Experiment 2). Results showed that changing a single word in messages motivated meaningful changes in behavior: The hand hygiene of health care professionals increased significantly when they were reminded of the implications for patients but not when they were reminded of the implications for themselves.     

It's all good: Children's personality attributions after repeated success and failure in peer and computer interactions

The present study examined children's use of behavioural outcome information to make personality attributions in social and non‐social contexts. One hundred and twenty‐eight 3‐ to 6‐year‐olds were told about a story actor who engaged in primarily successful or primarily unsuccessful interactions with several different people (social context) or several different computers (non‐social context). Subsequently, children made behavioural predictions and trait attributions about the actor. Findings indicated that participants were more likely to use past information to make behavioural predictions and trait attributions when hearing about primarily successful than primarily unsuccessful interactions, although there were age‐related differences in trait attribution as a function of success and trait type. There was no support for differential use of information across contexts, as participants' predictions and attributions were similar regardless of hearing about interactions with computers or humans. Factors involved in the development of impression formation are discussed.     

Retracted:It's all in the timing: measuring emotional reactions to stereotype threat before and after taking a test

Stereotype threat is often described as resulting from increased anxiety over confirming a negative stereotype about one's group (Steele, 1997 ). However, variations in the type of emotional reactions targets experience as a function of stereotype threat has never been examined systematically before and after taking a test, thus it is unclear whether targets experience different emotions at different points in the testing session. The present study investigated this issue of emotional specificity. Results demonstrate that targets of a negative stereotype, but not non‐targets, experienced heightened anxiety prior to taking a test under stereotype threat conditions and heightened frustration once the test was concluded. No effects were found in the non‐stereotype threat conditions. These findings, therefore, highlight the specific affective states that targets and non‐targets experience in threat and non‐threat conditions, as well as how these affective states can be assessed using self‐report measures. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.