When and why people <Emphasis Type="Italic">don</Emphasis>’<Emphasis Type="Italic">t</Emphasis> accept cheating: self-transcendence values,social responsibility,mastery goals and attitudes towards cheating

Although self-transcendence values have received top rankings as moral values, research has yet to show how they relate to cheating. In two studies, (N = 129) and (N = 122), we analyze the indirect motivational path between self-transcendence values and acceptance of cheating. Both studies were carried out with third-year students in an international management school: Study 1 included 58 male and 65 female students (six missing values), mean age: 22.38 (SD = 1.60). The study 2 sample comprised 46 male and 73 female students, (three missing values), mean age: 22.01 (SD = 1.74). We find that adherence to self-transcendence values positively predicts a social-responsibility driven motivation to study, namely wanting to study to help improve society. This, in turn, predicts the adoption of study-related mastery-approach achievement goals, characterized by a desire to understand course material. These learning-oriented goals negatively predict the acceptance of cheating. Study 2 also reveals that exposing individuals to representations of society characterized by opposing self-enhancement values of power and achievement is sufficient to render non-significant the negative relation between self-transcendence values and acceptance of cheating. The theoretical and practical significance of understanding motivational connections between higher-order life values and context-specific acceptance of dishonest behaviors is discussed.     

Interpretative Disputes,Explicatures, and Argumentative Reasoning

The problem of establishing the best interpretation of a speech act is of fundamental importance in argumentation and communication in general. A party in a dialogue can interpret another’s or his own speech acts in the most convenient ways to achieve his dialogical goals. In defamation law this phenomenon becomes particularly important, as the dialogical effects of a communicative move may result in legal consequences. The purpose of this paper is to combine the instruments provided by argumentation theory with the advances in pragmatics in order to propose an argumentative approach to meaning reconstruction. This theoretical proposal will be applied to and tested against defamation cases at common law. Interpretation is represented as based on a hierarchy of interpretative presumptions. On this view, the development of the logical form of an utterance is regarded as the result of an abductive pattern of reasoning in which various types of presumptions are confronted and the weakest ones are excluded. Conflicts of interpretations and equivocation become essentially interwoven with the dialectical problem of fulfilling the burden of defeating a presumption. The interpreter has a burden of explaining why a given presumption is subject to default, assuming that the speaker is reasonable and acting based on a set of shared expectations.     

Multisensory-mediated auditory localization

Multisensory integration is a powerful mechanism for maximizing sensitivity to sensory events. We examined its effects on auditory localization in healthy human subjects. The specific objective was to test whether the relative intensity and location of a seemingly irrelevant visual stimulus would influence auditory localization in accordance with the inverse effectiveness and spatial rules of multisensory integration that have been developed from neurophysiological studies with animals [Stein and Meredith, 1993 The Merging of the Senses (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press)]. Subjects were asked to localize a sound in one condition in which a neutral visual stimulus was either above threshold (supra-threshold) or at threshold. In both cases the spatial disparity of the visual and auditory stimuli was systematically varied. The results reveal that stimulus salience is a critical factor in determining the effect of a neutral visual cue on auditory localization. Visual bias and, hence, perceptual translocation of the auditory stimulus appeared when the visual stimulus was supra-threshold, regardless of its location. However, this was not the case when the visual stimulus was at threshold. In this case, the influence of the visual cue was apparent only when the two cues were spatially coincident and resulted in an enhancement of stimulus localization. These data suggest that the brain uses multiple strategies to integrate multisensory information.     

Investigating mental representation of order with a speeded probed recall task

We compare three models of representation of item order in a verbal STM task: item-item associations, item-position associations, and primacy gradient. A speeded probed recall task is used, in which a list of words is presented, immediately followed by a probe; participants must report as fast as possible the word that was in the probed position. In the number probe condition, a digit is presented and one must say the word in that position. In the word probe condition, the probe is an item of the list and participants must say the immediately following item. Response times (RTs) are analyzed according to probe type and position. The three models imply different predictions about RTs as a function of serial order in the two conditions. Our results suggest a serial, self-terminating search from the beginning of the list to the target position, except for the final position, which is directly accessible. The item-item and item-position association models are ruled out; the primacy gradient model accounts satisfactorily for our results, except for the finding of a larger recency effect with a number probe. Alternative interpretations are also discussed.     

The Role of Customers in Interactive Co-Creation Practices: The Italian Scenario

Co-production, or co-creation, is becoming the cornerstone of marketing and design practices and a sort of managerial mantra that is rapidly gaining momentum both at professional and academic level. Despite a growing interest for this topic, there seems to be a lack of researches investigating the level of interest and participation of customers in co-creation activities and the drivers and motivations that might trigger co-production. This paper presents the results of a research run by Politcnico di Milano School of Management in collaboration with AC Nielsen, Nielsen Online and Connexia in 2007 among Italian consumers to determine the size and characteristics of the co-creation phenomena.

Practical Reasoning Arguments: A Modular Approach

This paper compares current ways of modeling the inferential structure of practical (goal-based) reasoning arguments, and proposes a new approach in which it is regarded in a modular way. Practical reasoning is not simply seen as reasoning from a goal and a means to an action using the basic argumentation scheme. Instead, it is conceived as a complex structure of classificatory, evaluative, and practical inferences, which is formalized as a cluster of three types of distinct and interlocked argumentation schemes. Using two real examples, we show how applying the three types of schemes to a cluster of practical argumentation allows an argument analyst to reconstruct the tacit premises presupposed and evaluate the argumentative reasoning steps involved. This approach will be shown to overcome the limitations of the existing models of practical reasoning arguments within the BDI and commitment theoretical frameworks, providing a useful tool for discourse analysis and other disciplines. In particular, applying this method brings to light the crucial role of classification in practical argumentation, showing how the ordering of values and preferences is only one of the possible areas of deep disagreement.     

Implicit evidence on the dissociation of identity and emotion recognition

Cognitive Processing - Recognition of identity and of emotional facial expressions of individuals are both based on processing of the human face. While most studies show these abilities to be...     

The Role of Occupational Self-Efficacy in Mediating the Effect of Job Insecurity on Work Engagement,Satisfaction and General Health

This study explores the associations among job insecurity, occupational self-efficacy, work engagement, job satisfaction and health and the mediation role of occupational self-efficacy. Two hundred and forty-one workers, were asked to fill in the Occupational Self-Efficacy Scale, the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale, the Satisfaction Scale of Occupational Stress Inventory and the General Health Questionnaire. Mediation analysis was performed using the boot-strapping method. Job insecurity was negatively related to work engagement, job satisfaction and general health. Occupational self-efficacy mediated the relationship between job insecurity, work engagement, job satisfaction and health on employees in the private and public sectors. The originality of this work is that it shows the effect of job insecurity on engagement, satisfaction and health, and the mediational role of occupational self-efficacy. In a time of economic crisis, when it is not possible to guarantee permanent contracts, Human Resource managers might consider occupational self-efficacy as a resource when planning interventions.     

Reconstructing Metaphorical Meaning

Metaphorical meaning can be analyzed as triggered by an apparent communicative breach, an incongruity that leads to a default of the presumptive interpretation of a vehicle. This breach can be solved through contextual renegotiations of meaning guided by the communicative intention, or rather the presumed purpose of the metaphorical utterance. This paper addresses the problem of analyzing the complex process of reasoning underlying the reconstruction of metaphorical meaning. This process will be described as a type of abductive argument, aimed at explaining how the vehicle can best contribute to the purpose of the utterance. This type of reasoning involves the analysis of the possible predicates that can be and usually are attributed to the vehicle, and the selection of the one (or ones) that can support the implicit conclusion constituting the communicative goal of the metaphorical utterance. Metaphorical meaning, in this perspective, becomes the outcome of a complex process of meaning reconstruction aimed at providing the best explanation of the function of the vehicle within a discourse move.