“I Am Moral,But You Are Deterred”: Differential Attributions About Why People Obey the Law1

This research examined the different attributions that individuals make for law‐abiding behavior by different people. Experiment 1 reveals that individuals believe that they and other highly moral people are motivated to obey laws because of internal reasons (e.g., laws reflect valued rules and moral behavior), whereas they believe that criminals are motivated by external reasons (e.g., fear of punishment). However, Experiment 2 shows that even some criminals are seen as motivated to obey laws regarding particular types of crimes because of internal factors. Experiment 3 replicates these general findings using a between‐subjects design. Finally, Experiment 4 shows that individuals believe that they are motivated to obey laws regarding minor transgressions (e.g., speed limits) for both internal and external reasons. Discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for both psychological theory and social policy.     

Emerging views of the role of theory

Offers a few broadly evaluative observations about what we have learned from the articles and commentaries contained in this special section. We discuss how--although the contributions contained in this special section might be viewed on one level as suggesting a lack of consensus concerning the role of theory--on a metalevel the contributions are suggestive of movement toward consensus. The emerging consensus seems to be that not only is theory alive and well but it is unlikely that we will ever be able to do without theory. However, our ways of thinking and talking about theory appear to be undergoing change; that is, the trend is in the emergence of theory as a guide for action or action-based epistemology. We conclude with ideas about future directions, including the call for methodological pluralism, theoretical pluralism, and metatheoretical development.     

SUPERIORS' ARGUMENTATIVENESS AND VERBAL AGGRESSIVENESS AS PREDICTORS OF SUBORDINATES' SATISFACTION

Corporatist theory of job productivity is reviewed and ideas about organizational communication are explored from the perspective of recent conceptions of argumentativeness and verbal aggressiveness. A hypothesis is derived that the more subordinates perceive their superiors are high in argumentativeness and low in verbal aggressiveness, the more the subordinates also wilt be argumentative and have job satisfaction. A study is reported that surveyed 216 subordinates in a variety of organizations in a major metropolitan and industrial section of the midwest. Canonical correlation analysis revealed three significant roots that suggested considerable support for the research hypothesis. Implications of the results are discussed, particularly in terms of corporatist theory.     

Social-Psychological Interventions for Intergroup Reconciliation: An Emotion Regulation Perspective

Intergroup reconciliation is a requirement for lasting peace in the context of intergroup conflicts. In this article, we offer an emotion regulation perspective on social-psychological interventions aimed at facilitating intergroup reconciliation. In the first section of the article, we conceptualize intergroup reconciliation as an emotion-regulation process involving positive affective change and offer a framework that integrates the emotion regulation and intergroup reconciliation literatures. In the sections that follow, we review social-psychological interventions that involve changes in beliefs and identity and assess their effects on specific intergroup emotions pertinent for intergroup reconciliation. More specifically, we focus our discussion on specific reconciliation-oriented intervention strategies and their relation to emotions pertinent for facilitating reconciliation, including intergroup hatred, anger, guilt, hope, and empathy. In the final section, we consider key implications and growth points for the field of intergroup reconciliation.     

SELF OR NO-SELF? CONVERGING PERSPECTIVES FROM NEUROPSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM

Abstract. The nature of self is examined in relation to psychological observations which reveal some form of dissociation of knowledge from consciousness. Such dissociations are apparent in cases of blindsight, and amnesic patients displaying implicit memory effects, among others. While amnesic patients, for example, are unable consciously to recall material previously presented, such material does influence subsequent physiological and psychological processes. Thus, it is not the memories themselves that have been lost, but the ability to make conscious connection to them. In attempting to account for such observations, theoreticians generally have posited some kind of "consciousness system" that may become dissociated from brain modules dealing with specific processing.
It is argued here that a view of self along the lines of the Buddhist concepts of no-self and the conditioned nature of "I" introduces a more parsimonious perspective on the neuropsychological data. A theory of the nature of self is presented that constitutes a synthesis between key ideas drawn from Buddhist and other mainly mystical traditions and the scientific observations in psychology. Central to this theory is the role that the left hemisphere's interpreter (Gazzaniga 1985; 1988a; 1988b) plays in constructing a unified "I." This "I" is, in effect, a hypothesis that the mind generates to introduce some coherence into otherwise fragmentary mental elements. Although it appears to be the causal focus of the individual's behavior and experience, it is in fact a retrospective construction and not a true causal structure of the mind. This theoretical view is discussed in relation to various meanings of the term consciousness and also in relation to the relevant neuropsychological cases.     

Preliminaries to a psychology of inference

This paper presents a general pretheoretical framework for the study of inference. The framework is that of Social Judgment Theory which has been developed from Brunswik's probabilistic functionalism. The first section discusses the fundamental theoretical ideas and methodological principles. Important among these is the stress on the need to study the relation between the cognitive system and the inference task using parallel concepts for describing the cognitive system and the task, the theory of cognitive tasks, and the methodology of formal representative sampling. The second section describes a series of experimental paradigms developed from the basic ideas discussed in the first section. The third, and final section gives some examples of actual empirical research, mainly research concerned with the hypothesis testing process by means of which subjects learn inference tasks, studies on cognitive skills in using various rules for making inferences, new conceptions of feedback, research on the effects of feedforward, and interpersonal learning.     

Bergson’s panpsychism

Physical processes manifest an objective order that science manages to discover. Commonly, it is considered that these processes obey the “laws of nature.” Bergson disputes this idea which ultimately constitutes a kind of Platonism. In contrast, he develops the idea that physical processes are a particular case of automatic behaviors. In this sense, they imply a motor memory immanent to matter, whose actions are triggered by some perceptions. This approach is obviously panpsychist. It gives matter a certain consciousness, even if the latter is different in nature from our consciousness. In some respects, this approach is similar to contemporary panpsychism because it claims that the psychic is a fundamental characteristic of nature, causally active. But it is also original because it does not constitute a theory of the origin of mind in nature.     

Ambiguity aversion: the explanatory power of indeterminate probabilities

Daniel Ellsberg presented in Ellsberg (The Quarterly Journal of Economics 75:643–669, 1961) various examples questioning the thesis that decision making under uncertainty can be reduced to decision making under risk. These examples constitute one of the main challenges to the received view on the foundations of decision theory offered by Leonard Savage in Savage (1972). Craig Fox and Amos Tversky have, nevertheless, offered an indirect defense of Savage. They provided in Fox and Tversky (1995) an explanation of Ellsberg’s two-color problem in terms of a psychological effect: ambiguity aversion. The ‘comparative ignorance’ hypothesis articulates how this effect works and explains why it is important to an understanding of the typical pattern of responses associated with Ellsberg’s two-color problem. In the first part of this article we challenge Fox and Tversky’s explanation. We present first an experiment that extends Ellsberg’s two-color problem where certain predictions of the comparative ignorance hypothesis are not confirmed. In addition the hypothesis seems unable to explain how the subjects resolve trade-offs between security and expected pay-off when vagueness is present. Ellsberg offered an explanation of the typical behavior elicited by his examples in terms of these trade-offs and in section three we offer a model of Ellsberg’s trade-offs. The model takes seriously the role of imprecise probabilities in explaining Ellsberg’s phenomenon. The so-called three-color problem was also considered in Fox and Tversky (1995). We argue that Fox and Tversky’s analysis of this case breaks a symmetry with their analysis of the two-color problem. We propose a unified treatment of both problems and we present a experiment that confirms our hypothesis.     

Representing approximate ordering and equivalence relations

The central question considered is: given appropriate precisations of the ideas of an empirical system's approximately satisfying laws of measurement with error at most ? (for some ? ≥ 0), and of a real-valued function over its domain providing an approximate representation of its basic operations and relations with error at most δ, can it be shown that satisfaction of the laws with ‘sufficiently small’ error insures numerical representability with arbitrarily small error? Positive answers are given in the cases of ordinal and nominal measurement, together with some indications of the sizes of the errors involved. Problems of extending the theory to more complex types of measurement are discussed, some open problems and conjectures are formulated, and a relation between the ‘approximate representation’ and ‘stochastic choice model’ approaches to measurement with fallible data is established.     

Signal recognition and the probability-matching decision rule

In a visual binary recognition task in which three levels of signal strength were presented at each of three levels of signal probability, subjects’ behavior was consistent with the signal detection theory notion that the sensory and the decision processes are independent, but did not support the contention that the decision processes obey a likelihood ratio rule. Instead, the evidence suggests that subjects were attempting to probability-match, adjusting the relative frequencies of their responses to correspond with those of the stimuli. The results are discussed in relation to previous findings, against the background of signal detection theory.     

The Dretske–Tooley–Armstrong theory of natural laws and the inference problem

In this article I intend to show that the inference problem, one of the main objections raised against the anti-Humean theory of natural laws defended by Dretske, Tooley and Armstrong (“DTA theory” for short), can be successfully answered. First, I argue that a proper solution should meet two essential requirements that the proposals made by the DTA theorists do not satisfy. Then I state a solution to the inference problem that assumes a local immanentistic view of universals, a partial definition of the nomic necessitation relation as a relation of existential dependence, and a principle constraining multiple occupancy. I also argue that my solution meets the two requirements. Finally, I deal with non-standard laws such as exclusion laws, causal laws and laws involving spatiotemporal parameters.     

Responsibility and Justice: A View Across Cultures

A psychological theory needs both universal and specific components in order to describe and predict human behaviour across cultures. It is argued that the purpose of conducting cross-cultural studies is not merely to demonstrate cultural variations in human behaviour, but also to build better universal laws so that we can generalize from culture to culture. From this cross-cultural point of view, the six papers of this special issue are discussed. The distinction between individualism and collectivism, as an example, is evaluated in relation to a specific case—Japanese culture—and a few observations are made, including the suggestion that variances associated with within-culture sources are often larger than between-culture variances. Finally, the implications of cross-cultural studies in a rapidly changing world are discussed.     

Can mindfulness overcome the effects of workplace ostracism on job performance?

ABSTRACT

With a basis in the transactional theory of stress and coping, this study investigates the relationship between employees’ exposure to workplace ostracism and their job performance, while also considering the mediating role of acquiescence silence and the moderating role of mindfulness. Multisource, three-wave data from employees and their peers in Pakistani organizations reveal that ostracism in the workplace hinders job performance because employees passively withhold relevant ideas about their work due to feelings of acquiescence. The mediating role of acquiescence silence is mitigated if employees can draw from their mindfulness trait. This study accordingly identifies a key mechanism – the passive withholding of pertinent ideas, based on submission – by which workplace ostracism hampers job performance, and it reveals how this process might be contained by encouraging employees’ receptive attention and awareness focused on present experiences.     

从传统针灸学到现代针灸学——针灸现代化50年之回顾

现代针灸学的理论基础不同于传统针灸学,前者是以运用现代科学技术、方法对相关问题的研究所获取的现代科学意义上的规律作为指导理论,机理的阐明完全立足于现代科学意义的相关知识体系,并以神经一内分泌一免疫网络学说及针灸效应的四大规律为该体系的理论核心;而传统针灸学则是以阴阳五行学说、脏腑气血学说、经络学说等为基本理论;在临床上,现代针灸学充分利用现代诊疗技术和方法,以辨病为主导,针刺手法注重的是强弱刺激与针刺效应的关系;而传统针灸学则是借助四诊八纲以辨证为主导,针刺手法强调的是补泻。     

Fixed and optional stopping models for two-choice discrimination times

Several current models for choice- or discrimination-time experiments represent the stimulus as a sequence of independent and identically distributed observations. This paper develops and compares models based on two different stopping rules that a subject might use to terminate his sampling process and convert his perceptual evidence into an observable response. The fixed and optional stopping rules yield different predicted forms for the speed/accuracy tradeoff function and for the relation between mean and variance of response times. These predictions are developed in the general case and then specialized for certain conditions of symmetry, so that the expressions are easier to apply and to compare between models. A later section considers how changes in stopping criteria (either between or within experimental trials) affect predictions about mean response times for correct responses and errors, and then uses these ideas to relate the optional stopping rule for the Random Walk models to those of the Accumulator models. A final section considers specialized models for stimulus detection and intensity discrimination that assume Poisson-distributed sensory input, and relates these models to the present fixed stopping model.     

Individual differences in metacontrast: An impetus for clearly specified new research objectives in studying masking and perceptual awareness?

While the majority of perceptual phenomena based research on consciousness is implicitly nomothetic, some idiographic perspective can be sometimes highly valuable for it. It may turn out that after having had a closer look at individual differences in the expression of psychometric functions a need to revise some nomothetic laws considered as the general ones arises as well. A study of individual differences in metacontrast masking published in this issue superbly illustrates this. A myriad of urgent research objectives emerges out of this study, most of them important both for clearing up the still messy theoretical picture on visual masking and for the beginning of asking whether perceptual awareness mechanisms are so universal at all. In this commentary the problems pertinent to this issue are discussed.     

Vagueness and the Laws of Metaphysics

This is a paper about the nature of metaphysical laws and their relation to the phenomenon of vagueness. Metaphysical laws are introduced as analogous to natural laws, and metaphysical indeterminism is modeled on causal indeterminacy. This kind of indeterminacy is then put to work in developing a novel theory of vagueness and a solution to the sorites paradox.     

Laws of nature: Ante res or in rebus?

The dilemma which originated in Aristotle's antithesis to Plato and was transformed in the Middle Ages into a debate on universals, revives today in the discussion concerning the character of laws of nature: Do laws exist separately from individual objects (ante res) or should we rather say that they are in things (In rebus,)? My first aim is to show the weaknesses of the Platonist view. To this purpose James R. Brown's theory of laws of nature is discussed as an example of a fruitful revival of Platonism, defending the existence of uninstantiated laws and our capacity to grasp them directly. My claim is that although this theory successfully solves the epistemological problem, it nevertheless fails to meet the challenge of the traditional issue of the χωρισμò?, of the two worlds. This, I argue, can be resolved by an appeal to Aristotle. Thus, my subsequent goal is to advance an alternative solution, built on an analysis of some key concepts of Aristotelean‐Scholastic realism and C. S. Peirce's thought. Particular emphasis is put on the ideas of natures and potentiality, which leads me to the conclusion that laws must be instantiatable, i. e. potentially real as they point to their future instantiations.