What do cross-national comparisons of personality traits tell us? The case of conscientiousness

Much research contrasts self-reported personality traits across cultures. We submit that this enterprise is weakened by significant methodological problems (in particular, the reference-group effect) that undermine the validity of national averages of personality scores. In this study, behavioral and demographic predictors of conscientiousness were correlated with different cross-national measures of conscientiousness based on self-reports, peer reports, and perceptions of national character. The predictors correlated strongly with perceptions of national character, but not with self-reports and peer reports. Country-level self- and peer-report measures of conscientiousness failed as markers of between-nation differences in personality.     

Which should you use,intuition or logic? Cultural differences in injunctive norms about reasoning

Past research has shown that tendencies to engage in holistic and analytical reasoning are differentially encouraged by East Asian and Western cultures. But little is known about cultural differences in the perceived value of analytic versus intuitive reasoning. In Study 1, Koreans and Americans ranked the importance of traits including ‘intuitive’ and ‘logical’ in work and family contexts. In Study 2, Euro‐Canadians and East‐Asian‐Canadians read scenarios of intuitive versus rule‐following business decisions. Relative to Western participants, East Asians rated intuitive reasoning as more important and reasonable than analytic reasoning. Implications for the epistemic status of reasoning modes, culture's effect on values about reasoning, and multiculturalism are discussed.     

Why does social dominance orientation decrease with university exposure to the social sciences? The impact of institutional socialization and the mediating role of “geneticism”

Why does university exposure to a hierarchy‐attenuating (HA) academic major (e.g., social science) lead to a decrease in anti‐egalitarianism and group domination (social dominance orientation, SDO)? The reason for this well‐documented phenomenon remains unclear. In the social sciences, the origins of differences in both behavior and personality are attributed more to social and environmental factors than to genetic ones. We hypothesized that the normative and informational influences of this academic major would lead to perceptions that genes have a less important role than nurture in the shaping of human behavior and personality. Our main hypothesis was confirmed. Decreased SDO among psychology students was mediated significantly by a decrease in belief in genetic determinism, the factor we called “geneticism.” Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Religion and Support for Suicide Attacks

ABSTRACT— In four studies carried out across different cultural, religious, and political contexts, we investigated the association between religion and popular support for suicide attacks. In two surveys of Palestinians and one cognitive priming experiment with Israeli settlers, prayer to God, an index of religious devotion, was unrelated to support for suicide attacks. Instead, attendance at religious services, thought to enhance coalitional commitment, positively predicted support for suicide attacks. In a survey of six religions in six nations, regular attendance at religious services positively predicted a combination of willing martyrdom and out-group hostility, but regular prayer did not. Implications for understanding the role of religion in suicide attacks are discussed.     

God is watching you: priming God concepts increases prosocial behavior in an anonymous economic game

We present two studies aimed at resolving experimentally whether religion increases prosocial behavior in the anonymous dictator game. Subjects allocated more money to anonymous strangers when God concepts were implicitly activated than when neutral or no concepts were activated. This effect was at least as large as that obtained when concepts associated with secular moral institutions were primed. A trait measure of self-reported religiosity did not seem to be associated with prosocial behavior. We discuss different possible mechanisms that may underlie this effect, focusing on the hypotheses that the religious prime had an ideomotor effect on generosity or that it activated a felt presence of supernatural watchers. We then discuss implications for theories positing religion as a facilitator of the emergence of early large-scale societies of cooperators.     

Marx and Paci on the Question of Appearances (Or,Reading <Emphasis Type="Italic">Capital</Emphasis> as a Phenomenology)

The following essay argues that Marx’s method of critique, conception of science, and mode of presentation in Capital are all phenomenological in the sense first articulated by Enzo Paci in The Function of the Sciences and the Meaning of Man. In Capital, Marx places the phenomenological problem of appearances at the centre of his criticism of political economy. His analysis begins with the way in which things typically present themselves in a capitalist society, but this is merely the starting point for a systematic critique which tries to reveal the innerconnections and exploitative social relations hidden beneath those estranged outward appearances. Marx presumed that this phenomenological approach was the most appropriate method for demystifying the ‘naturalized’ semblance of the capitalist economy. According to Paci’s reading of Capital, the task of Marxian critique is to show these superficial appearances for what they really are: i.e., reflections of the reified reality of modern life.     

Bouncing a ball: tuning into dynamic stability

Rhythmically bouncing a ball with a racket was investigated and modeled with a nonlinear map. Model analyses provided a variable defining a dynamically stable solution that obviates computationally expensive corrections. Three experiments evaluated whether dynamic stability is optimized and what perceptual support is necessary for stable behavior. Two hypotheses were tested: (a) Performance is stable if racket acceleration is negative at impact, and (b) variability is lowest at an impact acceleration between -4 and -1 m/s2. In Experiment 1 participants performed the task, eyes open or closed, bouncing a ball confined to a 1-dimensional trajectory. Experiment 2 eliminated constraints on racket and ball trajectory. Experiment 3 excluded visual or haptic information. Movements were performed with negative racket accelerations in the range of highest stability. Performance with eyes closed was more variable, leaving acceleration unaffected. With haptic information, performance was more stable than with visual information alone.     

Visual rapid naming and phonological abilities: different subtypes in dyslexic children

One implication of the double-deficit hypothesis for dyslexia is that there should be subtypes of dyslexic readers that exhibit rapid naming deficits with or without concomitant phonological processing problems. In the current study, we investigated the validity of this hypothesis for Portuguese orthography, which is more consistent than English orthography, by exploring different cognitive profiles in a sample of dyslexic children. In particular, we were interested in identifying readers characterized by a pure rapid automatized naming deficit. We also examined whether rapid naming and phonological awareness independently account for individual differences in reading performance. We characterized the performance of dyslexic readers and a control group of normal readers matched for age on reading, visual rapid naming and phonological processing tasks. Our results suggest that there is a subgroup of dyslexic readers with intact phonological processing capacity (in terms of both accuracy and speed measures) but poor rapid naming skills. We also provide evidence for an independent association between rapid naming and reading competence in the dyslexic sample, when the effect of phonological skills was controlled. Altogether, the results are more consistent with the view that rapid naming problems in dyslexia represent a second core deficit rather than an exclusive phonological explanation for the rapid naming deficits. Furthermore, additional non-phonological processes, which subserve rapid naming performance, contribute independently to reading development.     

Paraconsistent Logics and Translations

In 1999, da Silva, D'Ottaviano and Sette proposed a general definition for the term translation between logics and presented an initial segment of its theory. Logics are characterized, in the most general sense, as sets with consequence relations and translations between logics as consequence-relation preserving maps. In a previous paper the authors introduced the concept of conservative translation between logics and studied some general properties of the co-complete category constituted by logics and conservative translations between them. In this paper we present some conservative translations involving classical logic, Lukasiewicz three-valued system L ₃, the intuitionistic system I ¹ and several paraconsistent logics, as for instance Sette's system P ¹, the D'Ottaviano and da Costa system J ₃ and da Costa's systems C _n, 1≤ n≤ω.