That “Ought” Does Not Imply “Right”: Why It Matters for Virtue Ethics

Virtue ethicists sometimes say that a right action is what a virtuous person would do, characteristically, in the circumstances. But some have objected recently that right action cannot be defined as what a virtuous person would do in the circumstances because there are circumstances in which a right action is possible but in which no virtuous person would be found. This objection moves from the premise that a given person ought to do an action that no virtuous person would do, to the conclusion that the action is a right action. I demon‐strate that virtue ethicists distinguish “ought” from “right” and reject the assumption that “ought” implies “right.” I then show how their rejection of that assumption blocks this “right but not virtuous” objection. I conclude by showing how the thesis that “ought” does not imply “right” can clarify a further dispute in virtue ethics regarding whether “ought” implies “can.”     

The effect of arm crossing on persistence and performance

Two experiments investigated the hypothesis that arm crossing serves as a proprioceptive cue for perseverance within achievement settings. Experiment 1 found that inducing participants to cross their arms led to greater persistence on an unsolvable anagram. Experiment 2 revealed that arm crossing led to better performance on solvable anagrams, and that this effect was mediated by greater persistence. No differences in comfort, instruction adherence, or mood were observed between the arms crossed and control conditions, and participants appeared to be unaware of the effect of arm crossing on their behavior. Implications of the findings are discussed in terms of the interplay between proprioceptive cues and contextual meaning. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Psychological group memberships as outcomes of resource distributions

We propose that people can and will infer group memberships from resource distributions, and that these distributions have implications for people's understandings of the groups themselves and their own associations with these groups. We derive hypotheses from social identity and self‐categorization theories, and test them in three experiments. In Experiment 1, participants systematically rated specific patterns of group memberships as more likely than others in light of specific resource distributions in a manner consistent with our predictions. In Experiment 2, intragroup distributive fairness led to greater perceived self‐in‐group similarity than intra‐group distributive unfairness, while distributively unfair, in‐group favouritism led to greater perceived self‐in‐group similarity than intergroup fairness. In Experiment 3, social identification dropped following unfair, out‐group favouritism and intragroup unfairness, but not unfair, in‐group favouritism, or intragroup and intergroup fairness. The current data provide support for our hypotheses and clear evidence that resource distributions can be providers of group membership information. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Motivation and engagement in diverse performance settings: Testing their generality across school,university/college,work, sport,music, and daily life

In the light of recent calls for more integrative approaches to theorizing and measurement in motivation and engagement research, the present study assesses the generality of key motivation and engagement constructs across seven performance domains: elementary school (N = 624), high school (N = 21,579), university/college (N = 420), work (N = 637), music (N = 224), sport (N = 204), and daily life (N = 249). Based on domain specific adaptations of the Motivation and Engagement Scale, multi-group confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) tested invariance across the seven domains. First and higher order multi-group CFAs demonstrated broad invariance in factor loadings (in particular), factor correlations/variances, and uniquenesses across performance domains. Taken together, the present data support the hypothesized generality of key motivation and engagement constructs. Findings hold implications for pragmatic, statistical, substantive, and intervention considerations in motivation and engagement research and also for research into cognate constructs in personality psychology more generally.     

Market entry decisions: effects of absolute and relative confidence

In a market entry game, the number of entrants usually approaches game-theoretic equilibrium quickly, but in real-world markets business start-ups typically exceed market capacity, resulting in chronically high failure rates and suboptimal industry profits. Excessive entry has been attributed to overconfidence arising when expected payoffs depend partly on skill. In an experimental test of this hypothesis, 96 participants played 24 rounds of a market entry game, with expected payoffs dependent partly on skill on half the rounds, after their confidence was manipulated and measured. The results provide direct support for the hypothesis that high levels of confidence are largely responsible for excessive entry, and they suggest that absolute confidence, independent of interpersonal comparison, rather than confidence about one's abilities relative to others, drives excessive entry decisions when skill is involved.     

阅读障碍的巨细胞系统缺陷理论之争

近几年诸多研究者认为阅读障碍是由于视觉系统巨细胞功能缺陷引起的。他们从对比度敏感性研究、巨细胞抑制功能研究与视觉运动知觉功能的研究结果中得到了支持证据。就这个问题的研究进行综述,表明不论是巨细胞功能缺陷理论的支持者还是反对者,都从巨细胞的对比度敏感性、视觉运动知觉与巨细胞抑制功能上得到了一些研究结果的支持。巨细胞功能缺陷理论的支持者还从阅读障碍的神经生理学研究和阅读的脑功能研究中得到了一些支持性的证据。新的研究结果揭示了巨细胞系统缺陷理论与阅读之间的关系以及巨细胞系统缺陷理论的应用价值。在巨细胞系统缺陷理论的进一步研究中,还需要统一实验方法与实验标准以获得更多的证据,同时需要有新的方法来有效区分小细胞系统与巨细胞系统     

Differential time-dependent effects of emotion on recollective experience and memory for contextual information

Emotion has been suggested to slow forgetting via a mechanism that enhances memory consolidation. Here, we investigate whether this time dependent process influences the subjective experience of recollection as well as the ability to retrieve specific contextual details of the study event. To do so we examined recognition for emotional and neutral pictures at two retention intervals and collected remember/know reports and reports about the task that had been performed with the item during encoding. Recollective experience was enhanced for emotional compared to neutral photos after a 24-h delay, but not immediately after encoding. In contrast, memory for the task performed during encoding did not differ between emotional and neutral photos at either time point. The findings indicate that emotion slows the effects of forgetting on the recollective experience associated with studied events, without necessarily slowing the forgetting of specific contextual details of those events.     

Ethnic socialization and the academic adjustment of adolescents from Mexican, Chinese, and European backgrounds

Ethnic and generation differences in the frequency and types of ethnic socialization messages that 524 eleventh-grade adolescents from Mexican, Chinese, and European backgrounds received from their parents were examined. Results indicated that adolescents from both Mexican and Chinese backgrounds reported more cultural socialization and preparation for bias messages than their peers from European backgrounds. Chinese adolescents reported more promotion of mistrust messages than their peers with European backgrounds. Moreover, promotion of mistrust messages negatively predicted academic achievement, whereas positive cultural socialization messages accounted for the higher levels of motivation among adolescents from Chinese and Mexican backgrounds as compared with their equally achieving peers from European backgrounds.     

Restriction of working memory capacity during worry

The authors report the first direct assessment of working memory capacity when people engage in worry. High and low worriers performed a random key-press task while thinking about a current worry or a positive personally relevant topic. High (but not low) worriers showed more evidence of restricted capacity during worry than when thinking about a positive topic. These findings suggest that high worriers have less residual working memory capacity when worrying than when thinking about other topics and, thus, have fewer attentional resources available to redirect their thoughts away from worry.     

Visual event-related potentials in schizotypal personality disorder and schizophrenia

Schizophrenia (SZ) occurs among a spectrum of disorders with similar characteristics, including schizotypal personality disorder (SPD). Visual processing disturbances have been reported in both disorders, but it is not yet clear which processes are disturbed in both SZ and SPD, suggestive of a common endophenotype, and which appear only in SZ. In order to address this question, the authors evaluated visual event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited during a line-orientation discrimination task in control, SPD, and SZ participants. Visual ERPs allow specification of both the time course and physiological correlates of visual perception and cognition. SZ patients had smaller P100 and P300a amplitudes and prolonged P300b latency compared to the control group. SZ patients also had smaller N160, N200, P300a, and P300b amplitudes compared to the SPD group. SPD participants did not differ from control participants on any ERP measure. These data documented pervasive abnormalities in visual perception and attention in SZ but not in SPD, suggesting that these visual ERP disturbances may not represent a common endophenotype.