Metaphysical analyticity and the epistemology of logic

Recent work on analyticity distinguishes two kinds, metaphysical and epistemic. This paper argues that the distinction allows for a new view in the philosophy of logic according to which the claims of logic are metaphysically analytic and have distinctive modal profiles, even though their epistemology is holist and in many ways rather Quinean. It is argued that such a view combines some of the more attractive aspects of the Carnapian and Quinean approaches to logic, whilst avoiding some famous problems.     

Growing Up in Conflict: The Personal and the Political

This article is an autobiographical account of conflicts, both personal and political, that I experienced growing up in South Africa in a context of racism and civil conflict. It speaks to how these conflicts shaped my work as an analyst and as a person. In regard to specific issues that were fore-fronted, these included an interest in the ugly emotions, trauma and dissociation in both victims and perpetrators, the application of psychoanalysis in war zones, the issue of voice, the effects of emigration and the diaspora, the centrality of context, and the dynamics of racism.     

Alienation and Therapy in Existentialism: A Dual Model of Recognition

Many philosopers and social theorists pursue the notion that recognition is a fruitful framework for engaging with a social analysis of moral and political life, and – more critically – that the failure of recognition is a feature of alienation. This article argues that the thrust of these arguments can be properly attuned by deploying a dual model of recognition that draws especially on Sartre’s work. Where there is struggle for recognition between subjects, the object of struggle is not the recognition of identity, or even of difference, but the recognition of non-identity. The claim will be that this practical attitude of recognition designates inter-subjective attitudes that can institute normative practices whereby agents’ claims are motivated by the epistemic virtue of non-identity.     

Everyday rhetoric: Argument and persuasion in everyday life

While the study of rhetoric in the humanities has an impressive pedigree, rhetorical analysis in organization studies is rather less developed. In this article, I want to provide an introduction to rhetorical analysis, drawing particularly on the work of Billig (1996) and Potter (1996), and illustrate its application to organizational issues through a case example concerning technological change in a public sector organization. In doing this, I demonstrate how alternative approaches to traditional positivism may augment the explanatory power of research in work and organizational psychology. In particular, I want to argue that an awareness of the everyday rhetoric of organizational talk can be illuminating in explaining how the work of an organization is accomplished.     

BIS Sensitivity,Negative Affect and Performance: Dynamic and Multilevel Relationships

This study examined the dynamic and multi-level relationships among the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS), negative affect and performance. Participants performed multiple trials of a simulated air traffic control task. A single measure of BIS was taken before practice, whereas negative affect and performance were measured at repeated intervals. As expected, there was a negative relationship between negative affect and performance at both an inter- and intraindividual level of analysis. The key findings from this research relate to dynamic effects. The detrimental effect of negative affect on task performance strengthened across practice, at both levels of analysis. The negative relationship between BIS and performance was also found to change over time. These findings are discussed by drawing on resource allocation theory and reinforcement sensitivity theory. This study emphasizes the importance of examining dynamic and multilevel relationships to understand how BIS and negative affect relate to task performance.     

Hybrid Identifications,Mixed Feelings: Reply to Commentaries

In responding to the insightful papers of Suchet and White I explore further my own hybrid identifications in regard to the socially constructed category of race. The paper explores the dangers of both idealization and denigration of otherness. It shows how a traumatic confrontation with otherness may destabilize later identifications in favor of earlier more archaic ones. Melanie Suchet, in her very gracious response to my paper, comments that I refuse to “reside in the comfortable.” However, any wish I may have had to reside in the comfortable was derailed by the thought-provoking comments of both Melanie Suchet and Cleonie White. Both authors prompted me to confront myself and to examine a number of painful issues. These included not only a resistance to owning my own vicarious traumatization but the fact that I was subject to the return of the repressed as the personal meanings of the signifier black shifted and changed in the course of my paper. But most significantly, both authors confronted me with the challenge of Otherness.     

Change detection in the flicker paradigm: Do faces have an advantage?

Changes to a scene that occur during an eye movement, image flicker, or movie cut are difficult to detect. One way to measure change detection performance is with the flicker paradigm, where changes between two images are introduced during a brief blank screen, which causes the images to “flicker”. Ro, Russell, and Lavie (2001) presented flickering displays consisting of one face and five different common objects. They found that changes to faces were detected both more rapidly and more accurately than changes to objects and suggested that faces capture attention due to their biological significance. In the present studies, we found that changes to objects were more readily detected than changes to faces when displays consisted of an object among a number of faces. That is, a change detection advantage was observed for the “odd-one-out” in the array, regardless of its significance. Therefore, faces may not have a special status for change detection.     

Have you got the look? Gaze direction affects judgements of facial attractiveness

Much is known about the attractiveness of physical attributes, such as symmetry and averageness. Here we examine the effect of a social cue, eye-gaze direction, on facial attractiveness. Given that direct gaze signals social engagement, we predicted that faces showing direct gaze would be preferred to faces showing averted gaze. Thirty-two males completed two tasks designed to assess preferences for female faces displaying a neutral expression. Participants were more likely to select the face with direct gaze, when choosing the more attractive face from direct- and averted-gaze versions of the same face. This direct-gaze preference was stronger for high-attractive than low-attractive face sets, but was present for both. Attractiveness ratings were also higher for faces with direct than averted gaze. Interestingly, stimulus inversion weakened the preference for inverted faces, which suggests the preference does not simply reflect a bilateral symmetry bias.     

A Meta‐Analytic Investigation of the Within‐Person Self‐Efficacy Domain: Is Self‐Efficacy a Product of Past Performance or a Driver of Future Performance?

We conducted a meta‐analysis to determine whether the within‐person self‐efficacy/performance relationship is positive, negative, or null and to compare the strength of the self‐efficacy/performance and past performance/self‐efficacy within‐person relationships. The self‐efficacy/performance within‐person corrected correlation was .23 but was weak and nonsignificant (ρ = .06) when controlling for the linear trajectory, revealing that the main effect was spurious. The past performance/self‐efficacy within‐person corrected correlation was .40 and remained positive and significant (ρ = .30) when controlling for the linear trajectory. The moderator results revealed that at the within‐person level of analysis: (a) self‐efficacy had at best a moderate, positive effect on performance and a null effect under other moderating conditions (ρ ranged from –.02 to .33); (b) the main effect of past performance on self‐efficacy was stronger than the effect of self‐efficacy on performance, even in the moderating conditions that produced the strongest self‐efficacy/performance relationship; (c) the effect of past performance on self‐efficacy ranged from moderate to strong across moderating conditions and was statistically significant across performance tasks, contextual factors, and methodological moderators (ρ ranged from .18 to .52). Overall, this suggests that self‐efficacy is primarily a product of past performance rather than the driving force affecting future performance.     

Cognitive and Affective Regulation: Scale Validation and Nomological Network Analysis

This research examined the nomological network of cognitive and affective regulation with two scales developed to operationalise these constructs within complex performance domains. Data demonstrated that cognitive and affective regulation were differentially related to self‐regulatory, affective, and achievement variables at the inter‐ and intra‐individual levels. Psychometric properties of each scale were supported via confirmatory factor analyses and multilevel modeling. Study 1 established support for internal consistency, unidimensionality, and construct validity; Study 2 cross‐validated the scales in a different performance context; and Study 3 demonstrated utility for capturing intra‐individual changes in self‐regulation and predicting performance. This research highlights the importance of examining cognitive and affective regulation at the intra‐individual level of analysis; and the new measures provide a valid tool for advancing progress in this area.