Repair Avoidance: When Faithful Informational Exchanges Don't Matter That Much

Common-sense intuition suggests that, when people are engaged in informational exchanges, they communicate so as to be reasonably sure that they perform the exchanges faithfully. Over the years, we have found evidence suggesting that this intuition, which is woven into several influential theories of human communication, may be misleading. We first summarize this evidence and discuss its potential limitations. Then, we present a new study that addresses the potential limitations. A confederate instructed participants to “pick up the skask” from a tray containing six objects and move it to a specific location. Since skask is a non-word invented by us, participants had to ask for clarification to perform the instruction faithfully. In contradiction with the intuition that people pursue faithfulness when engaged in informational exchanges, 29 of the 48 participants we tested performed the instruction without asking for clarification. We identified a possible cause for this behavior, which occurred more frequently when avoiding the clarification was unlikely to result in an overt consequence (an error in the execution of the instruction that could be noticed by the confederate or the experimenter). Other factors such as individual differences and the specific interpersonal dynamics of the experimental settings, if they played a role at all, did it to an extent that is unlikely to be comparable to that of the role played by overt consequences. Considered together, our various assessments of the extent to which people engage in faithful informational exchanges converge on a simple conclusion: Communicating faithfully is a substantially demanding task, and people often fail at it. We discuss the implications of this conclusion and speculate on its relevance for understanding the evolutionary past of human communication.     

Beyond Truth and Falsehood: The Real Value of Knowing That p

Current epistemological dogma has it that the twin goalsof believing truths and avoiding errors exhaust our cognitive aspirations.On such a view, (call it the TG view) the only evaluationsthat count as genuinely epistemological are those that evaluatesomething (a belief, believer, set of beliefs, a cognitivetrait or process, etc.) in terms of its connection to thesetwo goods. In particular, this view implies that all theepistemic value of knowledge must be derived from thevalue of the two goals cited in TG. I argue thatthis implication is false, and thus that the TG view must be abandoned. I propose a candidate to replacethe TG view that makes better sense of the value ofknowledge.     

Playing By and With the Rules: Norms and Morality in Play Development

This article, Piaget’s theory of moral development in play behaviour is critically reviewed and framed within the philosophical debate on morality. On this basis, an alternative socio-cognitive model for describing normative evolution in play development is proposed. Special attention is paid to the transition from children’s play to adult games, for the purpose of demonstrating that some relevant features of morality stagnate, rather than progress, during such transition. Finally, some speculations are offered on the connection between moral involution in play and ethical behaviour in life, with reference to contemporary Western societies.     

John Exner and the Book That Started It All: A Review of The Rorschach Systems

This article is a review and a reassessment of Exner's (1969) The Rorschach Systems. The book reviews the history of the development of the Rorschach, primarily in the United States, including a detailed analysis of the progressive development of systems devised by Klopfer, Beck, Piotrowski, Hertz, Rapaport, and Schafer. The final versions of each system are compared with each other, and with Rorschach's own system. The development of the book is linked to Exner' s personal relationship with Klopfer, Beck, and Hertz. The book is described as the basic forerunner of Exner's Comprehensive System.