Ontology, Understanding, and the A Priori

How might one explain the reliability of one's a priori beliefs? What if anything is implied about the ontology of a certain realm of knowledge by the possibility of explaining one's reliability about that realm? Very little, or so it is argued here.     

Decision-making quality of younger and older adults in familiar and unfamiliar domains

Age-related differences in purchasing decisions were examined as a function of age and familiarity. On each trial, participants received purchasing options which varied in quality but ultimately cost the same amount of money. On half the trials, participants made decisions about items familiar to younger adults and on the other half of the trials, participants made decisions about products familiar to older adults. The participants’ task was to choose the option that provided the best value for the money. We were particularly interested in participants’ performance when inferencing was required to select the optimal option from the two choices. Younger adults outperformed older adults in unfamiliar but not familiar domains. It appeared that both younger and older adults used inferencing and elaborative processing to make the best decision in familiar domains but that only younger adults used inferencing and elaborative processing in unfamiliar domains.     

On A Proportionality Analysis of Syllogistic Private Reasoning

Syllogisms like Barbara, “If all S is M and all M is P, then all S is P”, are here analyzed not in terms of the truth of their categorical constituents, “all S is M”, etc., but rather in terms of the corresponding proportions, e.g., of Ss that are Ms. This allows us to consider the inferences’ approximate validity, and whether the fact that most Ss are Ms and most Ms are Ps guarantees that most Ss are Ps. It turns out that no standard syllogism is universally valid in this sense, but special ‘default rules’ govern approximate reasoning of this kind. Special attention is paid to inferences involving existential propositions of the “Some S is M” form, where it is does not make sense to say “Almost some S is M”, but where it is important that in everyday speech, “Some” does not mean “At least one”, but rather “A not insignificant number”.     

Relationship specificity of aggressogenic thought-behavior processes

The purpose of this longitudinal study was to examine the relationship specificity of aggressogenic thought-behavior processes and to investigate the role of self-esteem in translating or inhibiting aggressogenic thought into aggression toward personally liked and disliked targets. Participants (186 Finnish boys and girls; 11-12 years old at Time 1) completed measures twice over a 1-year interval. We assessed children's attributions of hostility, relational goals, expectations of anger, and self-efficacy at Time 1 as well as aggression, at both time points, toward their previously identified liked and disliked peers. Our results mostly supported our hypothesis that cognitions guide behavior mainly within the relationship context. Moreover, high self-esteem potentiated cognition-behavior links toward children's own liked peer but inhibited the actualization of aggressogenic thought toward children's disliked peer. These findings highlight the importance of taking a Person × Situation approach when studying cognition-behavior processes.     

Moving from Rural to Urban China: How Urbanization Affects Women’s Housework

Sex Roles - The present study explores within-gender differences in domestic labor by studying housework variations across five different groups of women in contemporary China. We defined five...