Is life of infinite value?

It is possible and necessary to compare stretches of human life with other goods, such as the good of conserving resources for others. A minute of human life is not of infinite value; all else being equal, a minute of life is less valuable than 10 years of the same life. Nevertheless, this ability to evaluate human life does not necessarily lead to total commodification of human life.     

Does sport have intrinsic value?

This paper considers the suggestion, central to McFee's (2004 Mcfee, Graham. 2004. Sport, Rules and Values: Philosophical Investigations into the Nature of Sports, London: Routledge. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) moral laboratory argument, that sport is intrinsically valuable. McFee's position is outlined and critiqued and various interpretations of intrinsic value found in the philosophical literature are considered. In addition, Morgan's (2007 Morgan, William J. 2007. Caring, final ends and sports. Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 1(1): 7–21. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) claim that sport is an appropriate final end is considered and partially accepted. The paper draws a number of terminological distinctions and concludes that sport does not have intrinsic value as traditionally conceived, but that this is of little consequence with regard to the role of sport as a moral laboratory.     

Does the brain calculate value?

How do people choose between options? At one extreme, the 'value-first' view is that the brain computes the value of different options and simply favours options with higher values. An intermediate position, taken by many psychological models of judgment and decision making, is that values are computed but that the resulting choices depend heavily on the context of available options. At the other extreme, the 'comparison-only' view argues that choice depends directly on comparisons, with or even without any intermediate computation of value. In this paper, we place past and current psychological and neuroscientific theories on this spectrum, and review empirical data that have led to an increasing focus on comparison rather than value as the driver of choice.     

What do people value when they negotiate? Mapping the domain of subjective value in negotiation

Four studies support the development and validation of a framework for understanding the range of social psychological outcomes valued subjectively as consequences of negotiations. Study 1 inductively elicited and coded elements of subjective value among students, community members, and practitioners, revealing 20 categories that theorists in Study 2 sorted into 4 underlying subconstructs: Feelings About the Instrumental Outcome, Feelings About the Self, Feelings About the Negotiation Process, and Feelings About the Relationship. Study 3 proposed a new Subjective Value Inventory (SVI) and confirmed its 4-factor structure. Study 4 presents convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity data for the SVI. Indeed, subjective value was a better predictor than economic outcomes of future negotiation decisions. Results suggest the SVI is a promising tool to systematize and encourage research on subjective outcomes of negotiation.     

Do conscientious athletes value world peace? Personality traits and value preferences of young athletes and non-athletes

The preferred values and personality traits of young athletes allow to predict their decisions in the sports context. Of 120 primary and junior high school students that were surveyed, including 60 students following an extended sports curriculum and 60 students following a standard curriculum. The athletes practiced soccer, basketball and swimming. The Picture-Based Value Survey for Children based on Schwartz's theory of universal values and the Picture-Based Personality Survey for Children predicated on the Big Five model of personality were used in this study. Regression analysis with an interaction effect of type of school program on relationships between values and personality traits was carried out. Effects were observed between the type of program and preference for Universalism and Conscientiousness and preference for Hedonism and Agreeableness. In athletes, Conscientiousness correlated positively with preference for Universalism. In non-athletes, a positive correlation was found between Agreeableness and preference for Hedonism.     

Can performance epistemology explain higher epistemic value?

Synthese - Judgment and Agency contains Sosa’s latest effort to explain how higher epistemic value of the sort missing from an unwitting clairvoyant’s beliefs might be a special case of...     

Assessment by groups: Can value be added?

The scant research on the use of groups of assessors in selection processes indicates that group discussion in assessment centres and panel interviews results in little or no increase in predictive validity. Yet social psychological research suggests that there should be benefits from working in groups on such tasks.However, it also suggests reasons why such benefits might not be realized in practice, which derive from issues of conformity and identity. It is argued that these issues are often present in selection processes. Some hypotheses for research and some ways of redesigning processes to take account of them are presented. It is proposed that different ways of working in groups are appropriate for the different purposes that selection may be serving.     

Does theory have value in clinical child psychology?

Examines the value and importance of theory in child psychology, particularly with respect to clinical practice. Although it is readily apparent that theory is not an essential element of treatment, the role of theory is to provide a coherent framework for clinical intervention. Theory provides a foundation for understanding the presenting pathology, the factors that affect it, the patient's and therapist's roles within the context of treatment, and the specific intervention strategies to be utilized. Therapeutic commonalities are considered as they may affect treatment outcome, but they are not viewed as the essential factors in efficacy. The value and meaning of eclecticism are also discussed.     

Agency and authenticity: Which value grounds patient choice?

In current American medical practice, autonomy is assumed to be more valuable than human life: if a patient autonomously refuses lifesaving treatment, the doctors are supposed to let him die. In this paper we discuss two values that might be at stake in such clinical contexts. Usually, we hear only of autonomy and best interests. However, here, autonomy is ambiguous between two concepts—concepts that are tied to different values and to different philosophical traditions. In some cases, the two values (that of agency and that of authenticity) entail different outcomes. We argue that the comparative value of these values needs to be assessed.     

The educative value of Dewey’s religious attitude for spirituality

John Dewey’s ‘religious attitude’ has great potential for the educative development of children’s spirituality. This is because it enables their spiritual understandings to become more intelligently composed – not just in a cognitive or hyper‐rational sense, but as a way of being. This paper provides an outline of Dewey’s approach, which is described as being democratic, inquiry based, and ‘scientific’. Such an approach therefore offers a contrast to other more epistemologically focused curricula which attempt to educate a person’s spirituality. In order to make the case for the potential educative value of such an attitude, a brief review of Dewey’s approach to education shall be offered, in which the notions of inquiry, democracy, and ‘science’ shall be highlighted to make the case that such attributes might be necessary for spiritual education if the United Nations Educational and Scientific Organization’s goal of attaining world peace is to ever become possible.     

“I” value competence but “we” value social competence: The moderating role of voters' individualistic and collectivistic orientation in political elections

This investigation distinguishes interpersonally oriented social competence from intrapersonally oriented competence. It examines the influence of voters' individualism and collectivism orientation in affecting the roles of these two dimensions in predicting electoral outcomes. Participants made judgments of personality traits based on inferences from faces of political candidates in the U.S. and Taiwan. Two social outcomes were examined: actual election results and voting support of the participants. With respect to actual electoral success, perceived competence is more important for the candidates in the U.S. than for those in Taiwan, whereas perceived social competence is more important for the candidates in Taiwan than for those in the U.S. With respect to subjective voting support, within cultural findings mirror those found cross-culturally. Competence is valued more among voters who are more individualistic, and social competence is valued more among voters who are more collectivistic. These results highlight important omissions in the social perception/judgment literature.     

Fooled by first impressions? Reexamining the diagnostic value of appearance-based inferences

We often form opinions about the characteristics of others from single, static samples of their appearance - the very first thing we see when, or even before, we meet them. These inferences occur spontaneously, rapidly, and can impact decisions in a variety of important domains. A crucial question, then, is whether appearance-based inferences are accurate. Using a naturalistic data set of more than 1 million appearance-based judgments obtained from a popular website (Study 1) and data from an online experiment involving over a thousand participants (Study 2), we evaluate the ability of human judges to infer the characteristics of others from their appearances. We find that judges are generally less accurate at predicting characteristics than they would be if they ignored appearance cues and instead only relied on their knowledge of characteristic base-rate frequencies. The findings suggest that appearances are overweighed in judgments and can have detrimental effects on accuracy. We conclude that future research should (i) identify the specific visual cues that people use when they draw inferences from appearances, (ii) determine which of these cues promote or hinder accurate social judgments, and (iii) examine how inference goals and contexts moderate the use and diagnostic validity of these cues.     

Students’ knowledge about the value of discussions for teaching and learning

We are particularly interested in looking at teaching and learning from students perspectives. Focussed interviews and written responses from a number of linked investigations with middle-school and tertiary students highlighted that students perceive discussion to be a valuable teaching -- learning technique. This paper provides text extracts, organised into six key themes, to illustrate students understandings about how discussion helps them to learn. We conclude that, across the whole participant group, knowledge about the various potentials of discussion for learning is wide ranging. However, at the individual level, some students perspectives appear limited. We propose that specific attention to enhancing students pedagogical knowledge about techniques such as discussion should accompany subject matter instruction.     

Intrinsic work value–reward dissonance and work satisfaction during young adulthood

Previous research suggests that discrepancies between work values and rewards are indicators of dissonance that induce change in both to reduce such dissonance over time. The present study elaborates this model to suggest parallels with the first phase of the extension-and-strain curve. Small discrepancies or small increases in extension are presumed to be almost unnoticeable, while increasingly large discrepancies are thought to yield exponentially increasing strain. Work satisfaction is a principal outcome of dissonance; hence, work value-reward discrepancies are predicted to diminish work satisfaction in an exponential fashion. Findings from the work and family literature, however, lead to the prediction that this curvilinear association will be moderated by gender and family roles. Using longitudinal data spanning the third decade of life, the results suggest that intrinsic work value-reward discrepancies, as predicted, are increasingly associated, in a negative curvilinear fashion, with work satisfaction. This pattern, however, differs as a function of gender and family roles. Females who established family roles exhibited the expected pattern while other gender by family status groups did not. The results suggest that gender and family roles moderate the association between intrinsic work value-reward dissonance and satisfaction. In addition, women who remained unmarried and childless exhibited the strongest associations between occupational rewards and satisfaction.     

Understanding the Humanities crisis: an argument for Humanities’ national value

What justifies the negative perception of the Humanities? What justifies budget cuts and curricula changes in schools and universities that prejudice the Humanities? In this article I argue that what is meant to justify the crisis narrative as well as curricula and budget cuts is the following argument: education has national value if and only if it positively contributes to the economy. The Humanities do not and cannot positively contribute to the economy. Therefore, the Humanities fail to contribute anything of national value. Therefore, governments are justified in cutting the Humanities from curricula and reapportioning funding away from the Humanities. In addition to defending this argument as the argument against the Humanities, I argue that the first premise is false. I argue that there are non-profit-seeking national goods that the Humanities are ideally placed to meet and promote. Therefore, the argument against the Humanities fails.     

Conflicts between on-task and off-task behaviors in the classroom: the influences of parental monitoring, peer value orientations, students’ goals, and their value orientations

Students in class are sometimes torn between following the lesson and engaging in off-task behavior. In this paper, instead of classifying it as a form of deviant behavior, off-task behavior is reconstructed as a manifestation of students multiple motivations in the classroom. The study examines whether parental monitoring, peer value orientations, students’ personal goals, and their value orientations determine students’ motivational interference in these conflict situations. Participants were 348 students (mean age 15.24) from 16 classes of four high schools. A self-report questionnaire was used that combined a qualitative assessment of personal goals with a quantitative approach. Qualitative answers were coded and data was analyzed in a series of hierarchical linear models. As hypothesized, relationships between motivational interference and parental monitoring, peer achievement and well-being value orientations, students’ school- and leisure-related goals, as well as students’ achievement and well-being value orientations were demonstrated. Students’ own value orientations emerged to be the strongest predictor of motivational interference and mediated between parental monitoring and motivational interference. The results suggest that teachers should help students to reconcile their multiple values and goals in the classroom.     

On the meaningfulness of behavior: An expectancy x value approach

Our research examines people’s concept of ‘meaningful behavior’ from an expectancy x value perspective. Specifically, we argue that people consider two elements when inferring the meaningfulness of behavior: the value of the goals that the behavior relates to and the degree to which the behavior is useful for the achievement of these goals. A series of five studies demonstrates that behavior is considered to be ‘meaningful’ if it is highly instrumental for a highly valued goal. Our expectancy x value approach offers a straightforward yet crucial perspective of how people infer whether or not everyday life behaviors are meaningful to them. The implications of our findings for research on meaningfulness, meaning-regulation, and sense making are discussed.