The Choice Architect’s Trilemma

Critics have long dismissed paternalistic choice architecture as conceptually muddled at best and oxymoronic at worst. In this article, I argue that this criticism remains true despite recent replies to the contrary. Further, I suggest that a similar conceptual criticism also applies to non-paternalistic choice architecture. This is due to a three-way tension between the effectiveness, avoidability, and distinctiveness of each nudge. To illustrate this tension, I provide a novel explanation of the mechanics of nudging and a taxonomy of these interventions. I then argue that choice architects who defend the distinctiveness of nudging according to how it guides our behaviour via our unreflective intuitive reasoning encounter a trilemma because the distinctiveness of nudging hinges on interventions being both avoidable and effective. Choice architects cannot achieve this aim without harnessing both our automatic and reflective systems of thought in tandem. However, this diminishes the distinctive character of nudging by bringing it closer to other traditional policy interventions. This establishes the choice architect’s trilemma: a nudge is likely to be either ineffective, effective via some morally unacceptable means, or effective in a manner that is conceptually indistinct from other evidence-based policy interventions.     

Fathers’ Paternity Leave-Taking and Children’s Perceptions of Father-Child Relationships in the United States

Paternity leave-taking is believed to benefit children by encouraging father-child bonding after a birth and enabling commitments to fathers’ engagement. Yet, no known U.S. studies have directly focused on the associations between paternity leave-taking and children’s reports of father-child relationships. Understanding the potential consequences of paternity leave-taking in the United States is particularly important given the lack of a national paid parental leave policy. The present study uses five waves of data on 1319 families, largely socioeconomically disadvantaged, from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to analyze the associations between paternity leave-taking and 9-year-old children’s reports of their father-child relationships. We also assess the extent to which these associations are mediated by fathers’ engagement, co-parenting quality, parental relationship satisfaction, and fathers’ identities. Results indicate that leave-taking, and particularly 2 weeks or more of leave, is positively associated with children’s perceptions of fathers’ involvement, father-child closeness, and father-child communication. The associations are explained, at least in part, by fathers’ engagement, parental relationship satisfaction, and father identities. Overall, results highlight the linked lives of fathers and their children, and they suggest that increased attention on improving opportunities for parental leave in the United States may help to strengthen families by nurturing higher quality father-child relationships.

     

Acquired distinctiveness and equivalence in human discrimination learning: Evidence for an attentional process

In a first stage of training, participants learned to associate four visual cues (two different colors and two different shapes) with verbal labels. For Group S, one label was applied to both colors and another to both shapes; for Group D, one label was applied to one color and one shape, and the other label to the other cues. When subsequently required to learn a task in which a given motor response was required to one of the colors and one of the shapes, and a different response to the other color and the other shape, Group D learned more readily than Group S. The task was designed so that the associations formed during the first stage of training could not generate differential transfer to the second stage. The results are consistent, however, with the proposal that training in which similar cues are followed by different outcomes will engage a learning process that boosts the attention paid to features that distinguish these cues.     

Appearance‐Related Communication Mediates the Link Between Self‐Objectification and Health and Well‐Being Outcomes

Grounded in objectification theory, the 2 studies presented here predicted that self‐objectification is positively related to appearance‐related communication (i.e., fat talk and old talk), and, in turn, appearance‐related communication is associated with health and well‐being outcomes. Results from Study 1, which investigated only fat talk, revealed that fat talk significantly mediated the relationship between self‐objectification and body dissatisfaction, drive for thinness, bulimia, and self‐esteem. Study 2 sought to replicate the findings from Study 1, as well as extend appearance‐related communication to old talk. Fat talk was found to mediate the relationships between self‐objectification and body dissatisfaction, drive for thinness, bulimia, depression, and diet. Old talk significantly mediated the relationships between body dissatisfaction, drive for thinness, and bulimia.     

Epistemological Disjunctivism and Introspective Indiscriminability

Philosophia - According to Duncan Pritchard’s Philosophical Issues, 21(1), 434–455, (2011, 2012, 2015)version of epistemological disjunctivism, in paradigm cases of perceptual...     

Market Testing and Market Policing: Illuminating the Fluid micro-Sociology of the Illegal Drug Supply Enterprise in Liquid Modernity

Understanding Scotland’s illegal drug market continues to challenge social scientists. Most evidently neglected are processes related to social supply, from supplier perspectives. When analyzing illegal drug markets, demand-based approaches, customarily sourcing drug users, grossly overlook supplier perspectives. Thus, a qualitative research inquiry interviewing former drug dealers facilitated exploration of a supply-based approach that detailed processes of supply in relation to market level. Situating the findings within the disruptive lens of Chatwin and Potters’ (2014) concept of extending drug use normalization to embrace a dimension of market fluidity to drug supply dealing in Scotland, the researchers interviewed 35 former drug suppliers, learning about drug distribution behavioral patterns. Retail-level dealerships and higher market echelons exemplified an embodiment of the complexity of this social world. Any model aimed at characterizing Scotland’s illegal drugs market must acknowledge and incorporate aspects of social supply (e.g., recreational drugs) and recognize the fluid nature of “normalization,” taking account into its tacit embeddedness in a “local economy” with its own history and distinctive cultural geography. Unless the nuances of these various social formations are acknowledged, the potential of national policing strategies to address the crimes connected with drugs will go unrealized due to their conceptual and pragmatic inadequacies. It is ironic that a commitment to a generalized drug market conception of official enforcement is likely to sow the seeds for an unnecessary criminalization of minor serendipitous offenders and encourage reoffending patterns.     

On Staying in Character: Virtue and the Possibility of Deep Disagreement

The concept of deep disagreement is useful for highlighting skills and resources required for reasons-giving to be effective in restoring cooperative or joint action. It marks a limit. When it is instead understood as a challenge to be overcome by using reasons, it leads to significant practical, theoretical, and moral distortions.

     

On the Psychological Function of Nationalistic “Whitelash”

A noticeable feature of the political discourse accompanying the rise of nationalism in white‐majority countries is that white people fare worse than other ethnic groups in their societies. However, it is unclear based on the extant literature why group‐based relative deprivation (GRD) would correlate with majority‐group nationalism. Here, we propose that the psychological function of nationalism for majority‐group members lies in its ability to assuage the negative feelings arising from GRD. Accordingly, in a New Zealand national probability sample (N = 15,607), we found that GRD among whites was negatively associated with well‐being. However, we also found an opposing indirect association mediated by nationalism. GRD was associated with higher nationalism, which was in turn associated with higher well‐being. These findings suggest that endorsing beliefs about national superiority is one way a nation’s dominant ethnic group can cope with the negative psychological consequences of perceiving that their group is deprived.