Can Perceptions of Supervisor-Related Ethical Climate Influence How High-Impression Managers Admit Past Unethical Behavior?

In this study, we investigated how the perceptions of ethical climate as it relates to supervisor behavior and impression management are related to admission of past unethical behavior in a sample of Canadian Army personnel. We expected that among respondents who perceive less ethical supervisor-related climate, the relationship between Impression Management (IM) and the admission of past unethical behavior should be significant and positive. In contrast, among respondents who perceive a more ethical supervisor-related climate, the relationship between IM and self-report past unethical behavior should be weak or nonsignificant, and the frequency of admission of past unethical behavior should be low. Although moderation occurred, it was not as hypothesized. IM predicted admission of having obeyed, or witnessed others obey an unlawful command when perceptions of supervisor-related ethical climate were low, and not when perceptions of supervisor-related ethical climate were high. However, higher (vs. lower) impression managers admitted less past unethical behavior, regardless of their perceptions of supervisor-related ethical climate. These results suggest that high impression managers do not admit to having obeyed or witnessed others obey an unlawful command in the past, regardless of their perceptions of the ethical climate as it relates to supervisor behavior.     

Speaking two languages at once: Unconscious native word form access in second language production

Bilingualism research has established language non-selective lexical access in comprehension. However, the evidence for such an effect in production remains sparse and its neural time-course has not yet been investigated. We demonstrate that German-English bilinguals performing a simple picture-naming task exclusively in English spontaneously access the phonological form of –unproduced– German words. Participants were asked to produce English adjective-noun sequences describing the colour and identity of familiar objects presented as line drawings. We associated adjective and picture names such that their onsets phonologically overlapped in English (e.g., green goat), in German through translation (e.g., blue flower – ‘blaue Blume’), or in neither language. As expected, phonological priming in English modulated event-related brain potentials over the frontocentral scalp region from around 440 ms after picture onset. Phonological priming in German was detectable even earlier, from 300 ms, even though German was never produced and in the absence of an interaction between language and phonological repetition priming at any point in time. Overall, these results establish the existence of non-selective access to phonological representations of the two languages in the domain of speech production.     

On the origins of cultural differences in conformity: four tests of the pathogen prevalence hypothesis

What are the origins of cultural differences in conformity? The authors deduce the hypothesis that these cultural differences may reflect historical variability in the prevalence of disease-causing pathogens: Where pathogens were more prevalent, there were likely to emerge cultural norms promoting greater conformity. The authors conducted four tests of this hypothesis, using countries as units of analysis. Results support the pathogen prevalence hypothesis. Pathogen prevalence positively predicts cultural differences in effect sizes that emerge from behavioral conformity experiments (r=.49, n=17) and in the percentage of the population who prioritize obedience (r=.48, n=83). Pathogen prevalence also negatively predicted two indicators of tolerance for nonconformity: within-country dispositional variability (r=-.48, n=33) and the percentage of the population who are left-handed (r=-.73, n=20). Additional analyses address plausible alternative causal explanations. Discussion focuses on plausible underlying mechanisms (e.g., genetic, developmental, cognitive).     

The Trouble with Truth-Makers

This paper argues that theories of truth which seek to specify the ontological ground of true statements by appealing to an ontology of truth-makers face a severe and possibly insurmountable obstacle in the form of logically complex statements. I argue that there is no apparent way to develop an account of logically complex truth within the confines of a modest and plausible ontology of truth-makers and to this end criticize independent attempts by Armstrong and Pendlebury to develop such an account.