‘Ought Implies Can’: Not So Pragmatic After All

Those who want to deny the ‘ought implies can’ principle often turn to weakened views to explain ‘ought implies can’ phenomena. The two most common versions of such views are (a) that ‘ought’ presupposes ‘can’, and (b) that ‘ought’ conversationally implicates ‘can’. This paper will reject both views, and in doing so, present a case against any pragmatic view of ‘ought implies can’. Unlike much of the literature, I won't rely on counterexamples, but instead will argue that each of these views fails on its own terms. ‘Ought’ and ‘can’ do not obey the negation test for presupposition, and they do not obey the calculability or the cancelability tests for conversational implicature. I diagnose these failures as partly a result of the importance of the contrapositive of ‘ought implies can’. I end with a final argument emphasizing the role the principle plays in moral thinking, and the fact that no pragmatic account can do it justice.     

Love Thy Self? How Belief in a Supportive God Shapes Self-Esteem

Previous research raises the question of self-esteem as a fundamental human need, but also indicates that self-esteem is an inherently social product. Is religious involvement influential—and does it depend on beliefs about God? In this research, we examine the associations between multiple dimensions of religious involvement and self-esteem, and specifically focus on the belief in a supportive higher power (“divine support”) as a central influence in this relationship. Analyses of a national probability sample of adults from the US (2004 General Social Survey) reveal two central findings: (1) divine support helps to explain a positive association between religious involvement and self-esteem; (2) divine support strengthens that association. These findings contribute to the growing discussion about beliefs about God—especially as an engaged, involved, and influential force in everyday life—and the association with different components of the self-concept. Our observations underscore the need for more research on the intersection of beliefs and practices in shaping various facets of personal functioning.     

Diversity and Community: The Role of Agent‐Based Modeling

Community psychology involves several dialectics between potentially opposing ideals, such as theory and practice, rights and needs, and respect for human diversity and sense of community. Some recent papers in the American Journal of Community Psychology have examined the diversity‐community dialectic, some with the aid of agent‐based modeling and concepts from network science. This paper further elucidates these concepts and suggests that research in community psychology can benefit from a useful dialectic between agent‐based modeling and the real‐world concerns of community psychology.     

No need for an intention to deceive? Challenging the traditional definition of lying

According to the traditional definition of lying, somebody lies if he or she makes a believed-false statement with the intention to deceive. The traditional definition has recently been challenged by non-deceptionists who use bald-faced lies to underpin their view that the intention to deceive is no necessary condition for lying. We conducted two experiments to test whether their assertions are true. First, we presented one of five scenarios that consisted of three different kinds of lies (consistent bald-faced lies, conflicting bald-faced lies, and indifferent lies). Then we asked participants to judge whether the scenario at hand was a lie, whether the speaker intended to deceive somebody, and how they would judge the behavior in terms of morality. As expected, our results indicate that the intention to deceive is not a necessary condition for lying. Participants rated indifferent lies to be lies and judged that no intention to deceive was involved in these cases. In addition, all bald-faced lies were evaluated as lies. However, participants widely ascribed an intention to deceive to bald-faced lies, which thus might not apply as counterexamples against the traditional definition of lying. Besides, lies are judged as morally wrong regardless of an intention to deceive.     

Grit Happens: Moderating Effects on Motivational Feedback and Sport Performance

Research on motivational climates within athletics has focused on mastery and ego achievement approaches, yielding different psychological consequences (Smith, Smoll, &; Cumming, 2007 Smith, R. E., Smoll, F. L., &; Cumming, S. P. (2007). Effects of a motivational climate intervention for coaches on young athletes' sport performance anxiety. Journal of Sport &; Exercise Psychology, 29, 39–59.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Further, the motivational climate may interact with athletes' trait characteristics, such as grit, resulting in different outcomes. Grit may alter athletes' experience of the motivational climate by helping them remain oriented to their long-term quest in sport (Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, &; Kelly, 2007 Duckworth, A. L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M. D., &; Kelly, D. R. (2007). Grit: Perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 1087–1101. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.92.6.1087[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). However, to date, the impact of these motivational climates and potential moderating factors on athlete performance remains in question, as the research utilizing objective measures of athletic performance is limited (Harwood, Keegan, Smith, &; Raine, 2015 Harwood, C. G., Keegan, R. J., Smith, J. M., &; Raine, A. S. (2015). A systematic review of the intrapersonal correlates of motivational climate perceptions in sport and physical activity. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 18, 9–25. doi:10.1016/j.psychsport.2014.11.005[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). We used a motivational research paradigm (e.g., Mueller &; Dweck, 1998 Mueller, C. M., &; Dweck, C. S. (1998). Praise for intelligence can undermine children's motivation and performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 33–52. doi:10.1037//0022-3514.75.1.33[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) to examine the effects of mastery- or ego-involving feedback on 71 high school adolescent soccer players' (M_age = 15.81) performance on a kicking task. Then we explored the potential moderating effects of grit on the relationship between motivational feedback and the athletes' performance, desire to persist, and choice of task difficulty on a soccer task. Athletes performed significantly better receiving mastery- as opposed to ego-involving feedback. Further, grit was a significant moderator of the feedback-shooting performance relationship, accounting for 3.9% of variance. Simple slopes analysis revealed a significant effect for low (B = 13.32, SE_b = 4.44, p =.004, t = 2.99), but not high (B = 2.11, SE_b = 4.31, p =.63, t = 0.49), grit on task performance. These results suggest that the feedback athletes receive matters, especially for those low in grit.     

‘No fair, copycat!’: what children’s response to plagiarism tells us about their understanding of ideas

Adults believe that plagiarizing ideas is wrong, which requires an understanding that others can have ideas and that it is wrong to copy them. In order to test when this understanding emerges, we investigated when children begin to think plagiarism is wrong. In Study 1, children aged 7, 9 and 11 years old, as well as adults, disliked someone who plagiarized compared to someone who drew an original drawing or someone who drew an identical picture by chance. Study 2 investigated the same question with younger children, focusing on children aged 3–6 years old. Children aged 5–6 years old evaluated plagiarizers negatively relative to unique drawers, but 3–4-year-olds did not. Study 3 replicated the findings from Study 2 and found that children justify their negative evaluations of plagiarizers by mentioning concerns over copying. These experiments provide evidence that, by age 5 years old, children understand that others have ideas and dislike the copying of these ideas.     

New Caledonian crows use tools for non-foraging activities

Tool use is of great interest for cognitive research, largely because it can be particularly revealing about the underlying information processing mechanisms. Tool use that is inflexible or requires extensive experience to change, and that is only addressed towards specific targets such as food, is not likely to reflect unusual or particularly complex cognition. On the contrary, if tools are employed flexibly and for a variety of innovative purposes, then conventional combinations of inherited predispositions and associative learning are challenged and interesting questions emerge. Since New Caledonian crows (Corvus moneduloides) are especially adept at using and making tools for food extraction, we decided to examine their ability to generalise this to other contexts. We recorded how five pairs of New Caledonian crows interacted with novel objects that were not associated with food. We observed eight occasions in which the first contact with the novel object was mediated by a tool, suggesting that the function of the tool was for exploration. This is the first report of non-foraging tool use in New Caledonian crows, and it implies that the cognitive operations controlling tool-oriented behaviour in this species are more general than previously thought.