Language‐Games and Relativism: On Cora Diamond's Reading of Peter Winch

We will look critically at three essays by Cora Diamond concerning Peter Winch's views on the possibility of communication and criticism between language‐games. We briefly present our understanding of Winch's approach to philosophy. Then, we argue that Diamond misidentifies Winch's views, taking them to imply language‐game relativism or linguistic idealism. When she does raise valid criticisms against language‐game relativism, her critical points mainly coincide with things that Winch has already stressed in his own work. That leaves us with the question what their real disagreement amounts to. Finally, we suggest that at the bottom of Diamond's objections lies her failure to appreciate Winch's insights about the place of logic in human intercourse.     

Person-supervisor fit,needs-supplies fit,and team fit as mediators of the relationship between dual-focused transformational leadership and well-being in scientific teams

Team-based work structures have become prevalent in science. Scientific teams, however, are characterized by competing individual-level and team-level needs (i.e., by mixed-motive situations). This makes leading scientific teams particularly challenging: Balancing competing individual-level goals and common team-level goals requires a specific type of leadership that simultaneously considers both satisfying individual-level needs as well as team-level needs. The current study addresses this issue by combining the dual-focused model of transformational leadership with person-environment fit theory. Specifically, we investigated needs-supplies fit, person-supervisor fit, and team fit as mediators of the relationship between transformational leadership and scientific team members’ job satisfaction and work-related strain. In doing so, we provide a new perspective on leadership in scientific teams by explicitly differentiating individual-level and team-level effects of transformational leadership. We tested our hypotheses using a three-wave design with a sample of 134 members of 42 scientific teams. The relationships between individual-focused transformational leadership, job satisfaction, and work-related strain were mediated by needs-supplies fit and person-supervisor fit. Team-focused transformational leadership was positively related to job satisfaction and negatively related to work-related strain. Our findings contribute to further clarifying the mechanisms underlying the relationship between transformational leadership and members’ well-being in scientific teams.     

Range Shrinkage of Cognitive Ability Test Scores in Applicant Pools for German Governmental Jobs: Implications for range restriction corrections

Range restriction corrections require the predictor standard deviation in the applicant pool of interest. Unfortunately, this information is frequently not available in applied contexts. The common strategy in this type of situations is to use national‐norm standard deviation estimates. This study used data from 8,276 applicants applying to nine jobs in German governmental organizations to compare applicant pool standard deviations for two cognitive ability tests with national‐norm standard deviation estimates, and standard deviations for the total group of governmental applicants. Results revealed that job‐ and organizational context‐specific applicant pool standard deviations were on average about 10–12% smaller than estimates from national norms, and about 4–6% smaller than standard deviations for the total group of governmental applicants.     

Communication and indexical reference

In the debate over what determines the reference of an indexical expression on a given occasion of use, we can distinguish between two generic positions. According to the first, the reference is determined by internal factors, such as the speaker’s intentions. According to the second, the reference is determined by external factors, like conventions or what a competent and attentive audience would take the reference to be. It has recently been argued that the first position is untenable, since there are cases of mismatch where the intuitively correct reference differs from the one that would be determined by the relevant internal factors. The aim of this paper is to show that, contrary to this line of argument, it is the proponent of the second position that should be worried, since this position yields counterintuitive consequences regarding communicative success in cases of mismatch.     

Terror management and political attitudes: the influence of mortality salience on Germans' defence of the German reunification

From the perspective of terror management theory, reminders of mortality should intensify the desire to maintain faith in one's own cultural worldview. We investigated this notion with regard to attitudes of Germans toward an important political event, the fall of the Berlin wall and German reunification. We found that when reminded of their own death, people with a supportive attitude toward the German reunification showed a more favourable evaluation of a positive essay about the fall of the Berlin wall and a more negative reaction to a critical essay than participants in the control condition. People with a more neutral attitude toward the reunification on the other hand did not show this effect. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Information search and presentation in advisor–client interactions

When making a decision, people often search for more information supporting than conflicting with their preferred alternative. This can be counterproductive because potential risks and liabilities of the intended decision may be overlooked. However, when confronted with a decision problem, people often turn to advisors for help. We examined what kind of information advisors search for when confronted with a client’s decision problem and what information they present to their clients. Experiment 1 suggested that advisors (participants in the role of travel agents or friends) conducted a more balanced information search than personal decision-makers. However, when presenting information to their client, mock travel agents passed on more information supporting their recommendation than conflicting with it, whereas friends presented information in a balanced way. Experiment 2 replicated the balanced information search of advisors and suggested that this effect was partly mediated by the advisors’ increased accuracy motivation. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.     

Psychological effects of the Euro—experimental research on the perception of salaries and price estimations

In five studies we show that the introduction of the Euro influences price estimations and the perception of salaries among people in Germany. People confronted with wages given in Euros compared to the German Mark (DM) showed a reduced willingness to face long distances to get to work when accepting a job offer. When asked to price various consumer goods appropriately, they estimated higher prices if they used the ‘Euro’ currency compared to price estimations made in DM. This phenomenon only occurred with regard to the Euro, but not in comparison with other currencies (cf. the British Pound and Austrian Schilling). The differing price estimations between the Euro and the German Mark were not influenced by participants' attitude towards the Euro. Moreover, it turned out that they depended on how the judgement context was framed. Only if participants expected to make price estimations for shops in their home country, Germany, did the familiar nominal DM figures serve as an anchor heightening the estimated prices in Euro. The same effect disappeared if participants were instructed to make their price estimations for shops in a foreign country (Ireland). Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Investigating stereotype structure with empirical network models

In this work we present empirical network models as a new approach in the investigation of stereotype structure. We will argue that empirical network models can provide more insight into stereotype structure because they do not suffer from the inherent constraints of factor analysis and multidimensional scaling (e.g., group features interpreted homogeneously only on the basis of their shared variance, impossibility to adequately represent cognitive schemas, difficulties to make inferences on the basis of dimensions potentially overlapping). In the present research we show how empirical network models can represent stereotypes as dynamic cognitive structures clustered in different substructures. These structures will be based on both the stereotype content and the co-occurrence of features in each group target. Additionally, this research shows how using empirical networks can contribute to broadening the interpretation of stereotypes representing them in the framework of prejudice or intergroup attitudes.     

Computing Qur’ans: A Suggestion for a Digital Humanities Approach to the Question of Interrelations between English Qur’an Translations

The present article is primarily intended as a methodological contribution to Islamic Studies providing an example of how the power of computer-aided text analysis can benefit the field. The data consists of a set of 51 lexicons created out of translations of the Qur’an into English. The analysis applies simple programming to calculate the lexical overlap between translations and uses the results in a preliminary discussion of possible influence of earlier on later translations. The results are compared with conclusions arrived at in previous research on the interrelationship between translations and are also used to identify and suggest new areas for in-depth studies.     

Cutaneous saltation within and across arms: A new measure of the saltation illusion in somatosensation

A new objective procedure was used to measure the strength of cutaneous saltation, in order to clarify current debates about the nature of this illusion. Three taps were presented successively to three possible forearm locations. Participants attended to the middle location and reported whether a tap was perceived there. When all stimuli were delivered to the same arm and intertap intervals were short, participants were unable to distinguish real and illusory stimuli at the middle location. When both arms were stimulated, location judgments on one arm were shifted toward a tap subsequently delivered to the other arm. These results challenge the view that saltation is a purely attentional phenomenon, but they are inconsistent with the idea that this illusion is produced in the primary somatosensory cortex.