When consumers own their work: Psychological ownership and consumer citizenship on crowdsourcing platforms

The growth of crowdsourced platforms for consumer products has opened many interesting research questions on the impact of consumers participating in such crowdsourced work. In this paper, we focus on consumers' psychological ownership of the crowdsourced product and the role it plays in the relationship between consumer work and consumer citizenship. Further, drawing on social comparison theory, we show that consumers' perceived amount of work relative to others is a boundary condition for this explanation. Finally, we examine the theoretical contributions and managerial implications of our findings.     

Adult shyness: the interaction of temperamental sensitivity and an adverse childhood environment

This article examines the relation between adult shyness and sensory-processing sensitivity and posits a new model in which the interaction of sensitivity and adverse childhood environment leads to negative affectivity (with the highly sensitive being more impacted), which in turn leads to shyness. Consistent with this model, two questionnaire studies (Ns = 96 and 213) supported three hypotheses: (a) sensory-processing sensitivity interacts with recalled quality of childhood parental environment to predict shyness, (b) sensory-processing sensitivity interacts in the same way with childhood environment to predict negative affectivity, and (c) the interaction effect on negative affectivity mediates the effect on shyness. Hypothesis 2 was tested and supported in an additional questionnaire study (N = 393) and also in an experiment (N = 160) that manipulated negative contemporaneous experience as an analog for adverse childhood environment.     

Menstrual synchrony can be assessed,inherent cycle variability notwithstanding: commentary on Schank (2001)

J. C. Schank (2001) argued that biases in the calculation of synchrony (due to inherent variability in the menstrual cycle) and in respondents' recall of menstrual dates can produce spurious results. In this commentary, the major flaws in J. C. Schank's arguments regarding the calculation of synchrony are presented. Low standard deviations (< 2.0) of interwomen cycle lengths were found in a reanalysis of the Bedouin family data (A. Weller & L. Weller, 1997). This obviates J. C. Schank's major assumption that a high degree of cycle variability exists and his concern that high variability produces a spurious increase of onset differences over time. Furthermore, research that has used random control groups has found significantly greater levels of synchrony in their experimental groups, refuting J. C. Schank's arguments.     

“Was It Good for You?”: Reply to Commentaries

In many ways, psychoanalysis revolutionized attitudes about sexuality. Yet by undertheorizing female erotic passion and downplaying the role of the clitoris, psychoanalysis perpetuated a long historical tradition of denying essential aspects of women's sexual experience. Psychoanalysis has at times contributed to women perceiving their own bodily erotic excitement as frightening, dangerous, and out of control. In this reply to the commentaries, the authors continue to explore the ways in which women and women's experience, especially their embodied sexual experience, are so often rendered invisible.     

Do computer simulations support the Argument from Disagreement?

According to the Argument from Disagreement (AD) widespread and persistent disagreement on ethical issues indicates that our moral opinions are not influenced by moral facts, either because there are no such facts or because there are such facts but they fail to influence our moral opinions. In an innovative paper, Gustafsson and Peterson (Synthese, published online 16 October, 2010) study the argument by means of computer simulation of opinion dynamics, relying on the well-known model of Hegselmann and Krause (J Artif Soc Soc Simul 5(3):1–33, 2002; J Artif Soc Soc Simul 9(3):1–28, 2006). Their simulations indicate that if our moral opinions were influenced at least slightly by moral facts, we would quickly have reached consensus, even if our moral opinions were also affected by additional factors such as false authorities, external political shifts and random processes. Gustafsson and Peterson conclude that since no such consensus has been reached in real life, the simulation gives us increased reason to take seriously the AD. Our main claim in this paper is that these results are not as robust as Gustafsson and Peterson seem to think they are. If we run similar simulations in the alternative Laputa simulation environment developed by Angere and Olsson (Angere, Synthese, forthcoming and Olsson, Episteme 8(2):127–143, 2011) considerably less support for the AD is forthcoming.     

Personality predictors of creative achievement and lawbreaking behavior

Current Psychology - This article investigates how Big Five personality traits are related to creative achievements and lawbreaking behavior in a large sample (N = 1669) of Polish...