Empathy and Other-Directed Intentionality

The article explores and compares the accounts of empathy found in Lipps, Scheler, Stein and Husserl and argues that the three latter phenomenological thinkers offer a model of empathy, which is not only distinctly different from Lipps’, but which also diverge from the currently dominant models.     

Generating Race,Gender, and Other Subgroup Data in Personnel Selection Simulations: A pervasive issue with a simple solution

In the past 25 years, organizational researchers and practitioners have relied heavily on computer simulation research to understand how group mean differences and correlations affect overall validity and adverse impact in protected groups (e.g., racial/ethnic groups and gender) as they relate to personnel selection practices. We point out a multilevel issue affecting nearly all past simulations: The total correlations that these simulations intended to specify are somewhat distorted after group mean differences were introduced into the data. Although this distorting effect is minimal in most cases, it matters in some cases, and after all, the main virtue of statistical simulations is precision, both in the population parameters and sample data and statistics those parameters are supposed to generate. We demonstrate this distorting effect through one specific example, based on multiple predictors and meta‐analytic data, followed by a broader simulation for single predictors across a wide variety of selection conditions. Rather than merely point out this problem, we also provide a straightforward solution: multilevel formulas that incorporate both between‐ and within‐group correlations that always correct for this biasing problem, yielding more accurate simulation results. We conclude by discussing applications and promising extensions of this work.     

What Should Realists Say About Honor Cultures?

Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen’s (1996) influential account of “cultures of honor” speculates that honor norms are a socially-adaptive deterrence strategy. This theory has been appealed to by multiple empirically-minded philosophers, and plays an important role in John Doris and Alexandra Plakias’ (2008) antirealist argument from disagreement. In this essay, I raise four objections to the Nisbett-Cohen deterrence thesis, and offer another theory of honor in its place that sees honor as an agonistic normative system regulating prestige competitions. Since my account portrays honor norms as radically different from liberal ones, it actually strengthens Doris and Plakias’ case in some respects: cultures of honor are not merely superficially different from Western liberal ones. Nonetheless, the persistent appeal of honor’s principles, and their moral plausibility in certain contexts, suggests not antirealism, but pluralism—a reply on behalf of realism that itself has considerable empirical support.     

Fragility of Happiness Beliefs Across 15 National Groups

The belief that happiness is fragile—that it is fleeting and may easily turn into less favourable states—is common across individuals and cultures. However, not much is known about this belief domain and its structure and correlates. In the present study, we use multigroup confirmatory factor analysis and multilevel modelling to investigate the measurement invariance, cross-level isomorphism, predictive validity, and nomological network of the fragility of happiness scale across 15 nations. The results show that this scale has good statistical properties at both individual and cultural levels, and is associated with relevant psycho-social concepts in expected directions. The importance of the results, limitations, and potential directions for future research are discussed.     

自我超越价值观对持久幸福感的作用及机制

追求幸福是人类社会永恒的主题。价值观对个体的发展起引导作用,与幸福感密切相关。认同自我增强价值观,即关注个人利益,可以让人体验到波动的幸福感,表现为短暂快乐和消极情绪的交替循环;认同自我超越价值观,即切实关心他人利益和福祉,则可以让人拥有持久的幸福感,表现为一种持续的充实、和谐、宁静的状态。就作用机制而言,认同自我超越价值观的个体可能对自我威胁信息有较少的防御性反应,体验到更多的社会关系导向的情绪,激发更多的亲社会行为,从而获得持久的幸福体验。未来的研究可采用多种方法和手段考察自我超越价值观对持久幸福感的作用,系统探讨二者之间的其他潜在机制,并通过开展自我超越价值观教育形成良好的社会心态。     

医患合谋诱导医疗保险消费的道德风险及其规避

通过对医患合谋诱导医疗消费的道德风险产生的原因进行系统分析,找到规避这种风险的可行办法。医疗保险领域广泛地存在着道德风险,其中以供方诱导需求下的医患合谋表现最为突出,它的存在与目前医疗保险的付费方式、制度本身的漏洞、利益的驱使、医生的自我保护等多方面因素有关,其后果是增加了医疗保险的负担,导致了保险基金的浪费。规避供方诱导需求下的医患合谋需从政策、医方、患方三方入手,并辅以一定的配套措施,才能从源头上杜绝这种道德风险。     

An Analysis of Intrinsicality

The leading account of intrinsicality over the last thirty years has arguably been David Lewis's account in terms of perfect naturalness. Lewis's account, however, has three serious problems: i) it cannot allow necessarily coextensive properties to differ in whether they are intrinsic; ii) it falsely classifies non‐qualitative properties like being Obama as non‐intrinsic; and iii) it is incompatible with a number of metaphysical theories that posit irreducibly non‐categorical properties. I argue that, as a result of these problems, Lewis's account should be rejected and replaced with an alternative account, which also analyses intrinsicality in terms of perfect naturalness, but which avoids these problems.     

Public and Private Values

In this paper, we experimentally examine whether looking at other people's pricing decisions is a type of a decision rule that people over‐apply even when it is not applicable, as in the case of private‐value goods. In Study 1, we find evidence that this is indeed the case—individual valuation of a subjective experience under full information, elicited using incentive compatible mechanism, is highly influenced by values of others. In Study 2, we find that people expect to use this rule to some degree with respect to actual consumption of goods, especially goods with some public value (music), and less so for private‐value goods (noise). However, people expect to use the rule to a very large extent when they are required to express their valuation of a good using a dollar figure (Study 3). These results can shed light on price behavior as rigidities and rents. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.