What is Said?

It is sometimes argued that certain sentences of natural language fail to express truth conditional contents. Standard examples include e.g. Tipper is ready and Steel is strong enough. In this paper, we provide a novel analysis of truth conditional meaning (what is said) using the notion of a question under discussion. This account (i) explains why these types of sentences are not, in fact, semantically underdetermined (yet seem truth conditionally incomplete), (ii) provides a principled analysis of the process by which natural language sentences (in general) can come to have enriched meanings in context, and (iii) shows why various alternative views, e.g. so‐called Radical Contextualism, Moderate Contextualism, and Semantic Minimalism, are partially right in their respective analyses of the problem, but also all ultimately wrong. Our analysis achieves this result using a standard truth conditional and compositional semantics and without making any assumptions about enriched logical forms, i.e. logical forms containing phonologically null expressions.     

Soziales Trauma

Social traumatization is targeted at entire victim groups and occurs in a societal context. The classification of posttraumatic stress disorders in DSM-5, which intentionally fails to differentiate between different types of traumatic events, ignores the social factors of traumatogenic pathologies. Whereas clinical practice unanimously embraces the thorough exploration of patients’ individual life experiences and history of suffering, taking the relevant social and environmental factors into account, in the classification systems (DSM-5 and ICD-10) it has been decided to address posttraumatic disorders as individual pathologies and not as social phenomena. Even equating social trauma with a disease may foster this partial exclusion, which in turn can contribute to perpetuation of the posttraumatic condition.     

A job demands-resources perspective on salespersons’ market intelligence activities in new product development

Research shows that R&D's use of sales’ market intelligence positively influences innovation performance. However, little is known about whether this effect hinges on salespersons’ engagement towards and perceptions of market intelligence activities (MIA). Moreover, research remains incomplete regarding the drivers of salespersons’ MIA engagement. Using dyadic data from 359 salespersons and 239 R&D managers in a multi-level model based on the job demands-resources theory, we demonstrate that the positive effect of R&D's use of sales’ market intelligence on innovation performance is especially pronounced when salespersons’ market intelligence generation is high and role ambiguity is low. We also show that although salespersons’ self-set MIA goals are a strong driver of their MIA engagement, not assigning salespersons MIA goals may be a double-edged sword: in the short run, salespersons might engage in MIA voluntarily. However, in the long run, they could incur psychological costs in terms of role ambiguity and conflict, preventing them from engaging in MIA.     

Information Centrism and the Nature of Contexts

Information Centrism is the view that contexts consist of information that can be characterized in terms of the propositional attitudes of the conversational participants. Furthermore, it claims that this notion of context is the only one needed for linguistic theorizing about context-sensitive languages. We argue that Information Centrism is false, since it cannot account correctly for facts about truth and reference in certain cases involving indexicals and demonstratives. Consequently, contexts cannot be construed simply as collections of shared information.     

‘Now My Life in Syria Is Finished’: Case Studies on Religious Identity and Sectarianism in Narratives of Syrian Christian Refugees in Austria

Using semi-structured life story interviews with Syrian Christian refugees in Austria, this article investigates the impact on identity of the conflict in Syria and the resulting act of seeking refuge outside Syria. It suggests that the sectarian dynamics of the war affect religious minorities in particular, and the method of using biographical case studies allows an analysis of how the sectarianization discourse is used by interviewees to construct their autobiographical narratives of life as refugees. The results, taken from four case studies, show that in each case, religion is a strong marker, providing a framework for self-interpretation in a period of change and/or disruption. In most cases, post-flight identity as a matter of ‘translocational’ positioning is constructed within the framework of sectarianism. The argument of the article is twofold: first, sectarianism provides a setting for Syrian Christians that is appropriated through diverse biographical patterns. Second, sectarianism as a narrative strategy is modelled by and responds to contexts in the host society. The results of this study aim to offer important suggestions for understanding the particular experience of Christian refugees settling in the European diaspora.     

Preventing prejudice and improving intergroup attitudes: A meta-analysis of child and adolescent training programs

This article reports the results of a meta-analysis of 81 research reports containing 122 intervention–control comparisons of structured programs to reduce prejudice or promote positive intergroup attitudes in children and adolescents. Overall, the analysis revealed a mean effect size of d = 0.30, indicating low to moderate intervention effects. From the great variety of different approaches, interventions based on direct contact experiences along with social-cognitive training programs designed to promote empathy and perspective taking showed the strongest effect sizes. In addition, effects varied according to the program participant's social status (higher effects for majority groups), the target out-group (lower effect sizes for ethnic vs. disabled and aged out-groups), and the type of outcome assessment (higher effects for cognitive vs. affective and behavioral measures of intergroup attitudes). The discussion considers several limitations including the lack of implementation and follow-up research as well as future direction of research on promoting intergroup relations.     

Leader Advancement Motive,Political Skill,Leader Behavior,and Effectiveness: A Moderated Mediation Extension of Socioanalytic Theory

We examine socioanalytic theory from a leadership perspective and extend this research to examine the mediating mechanisms through which leader getting ahead motive and social competence influence leader effectiveness outcomes. A first-stage moderated mediation model was tested and supported, positioning the Leader Motive to Get Ahead × Political Skill interaction as influencing perceived institutional effectiveness and follower satisfaction with one’s leader through leader initiating structure behavior. This research both supports the relevance of socioanalytic theory for predicting leadership outcomes and extends socioanalytic theory to examine a mediating mechanism through which the interaction of the leader getting ahead motive and social competencies affects relevant performance outcomes. Contributions, strengths and limitations, directions for future research, and practical implications are discussed.     

Leader Inquisitiveness,Political Skill,and Follower Attributions of Leader Charisma and Effectiveness: Test of a moderated mediation model

Given the variability in personality's relationship with leadership and the use of personality measures in leader selection and assessment, we examine the joint influence of leader trait inquisitiveness and leader political skill on subordinate perceptions of leader charisma and effectiveness. Findings indicate a positive main effect of political skill on charisma, the positive relationship between inquisitiveness and charisma is moderated by heightened political skill, and charisma mediates the relationship between the inquisitiveness by political skill interaction and perceived effectiveness. The moderated mediation results of our study suggest that organizations should not only select creative and imaginative leaders, but also select those who are politically skilled or provide political skill training.     

Single-process versus multiple-strategy models of decision making: Evidence from an information intrusion paradigm

When decision makers are confronted with different problems and situations, do they use a uniform mechanism as assumed by single-process models (SPMs) or do they choose adaptively from a set of available decision strategies as multiple-strategy models (MSMs) imply? Both frameworks of decision making have gathered a lot of support, but only rarely have they been contrasted with each other. Employing an information intrusion paradigm for multi-attribute decisions from givens, SPM and MSM predictions on information search, decision outcomes, attention, and confidence judgments were derived and tested against each other in two experiments. The results consistently support the SPM view: Participants seemingly using a “take-the-best” (TTB) strategy do not ignore TTB-irrelevant information as MSMs would predict, but adapt the amount of information searched, choose alternative choice options, and show varying confidence judgments contingent on the quality of the “irrelevant” information. The uniformity of these findings underlines the adequacy of the novel information intrusion paradigm and comprehensively promotes the notion of a uniform decision making mechanism as assumed by single-process models.