Selective exposure to information: the impact of information limits

In research on selective exposure to information, people have been found to predominantly seek information supporting rather than conflicting with their opinion. In most of these studies, participants were allowed to search for as many pieces of information as they liked. However, in many situations, the amount of information that people can search for is restricted. We report four experiments addressing this issue. Experiment 1 suggests that objective limits regarding the maximum number of pieces of information the participants could search for increases the preference for selecting supporting over conflicting information. In Experiment 2, just giving participants a cue about information scarcity induces the same effect, even in the absence of any objective restrictions. Finally, Experiment 3 and 4 clarify the underlying psychological process by showing that information limits increase selective exposure to information because information search is guided by the expected information quality, which is basically biased towards supporting information, and information limits act to reinforce this tendency. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

哲学：世纪末的回顾与前瞻

H.约纳斯(Hans Jonas,1903-1993)是当代著名的生态哲学家和责任伦理学家.上世纪20年代,他曾是胡塞尔和海德格尔的学生,因此他的思想的现象学背景也较为明显.本文是他于1992年5月25日在德国慕尼黑摄政王剧院所做的一个报告,该报告属于"世纪之末"的报告系列.这篇报告充满了这位世纪哲学老人的经历与感想、明察与希望、警示与告诫,而且基本上是在与现象学家的对话中完成的.约纳斯于一年之后辞世.这个报告可能是他生前的最后一次讲演.     

Intrinsicalism and Conditionalism about Final Value

The paper distinguishes between two rival views about the nature of final value (i.e. the value something has for its own sake) — intrinsicalism and conditionalism. The former view (which is the one adopted by G.E. Moore and several later writers) holds that the final value of any F supervenes solely on features intrinsic to F, while the latter view allows that the final value of F may supervene on features non-intrinsic to F. Conditionalism thus allows the final value of F to vary according to the context in which F appears. Given the plausible assumption that there is an intimate tie between final values and appropriate attitudinal responses, it appears that conditionalism is the better approach for mainly the following three reasons: First, intrinsicalism is too indiscriminate, which makes it subject to what I call ‘location problems’ of final value. I illustrate this problem by discussing alleged examples of Moorean organic unities. Second, intrinsicalism evokes symptoms of ‘evaluative schizophrenia’. Third, considerations of theoretical economy tell in favour of conditionalism. Thereafter I respond to some recent challenges to conditionalism. An appendix surveys some meritorious implications that conditionalism offers for various substantial versions of such structurally different views about value as monism, pluralism, and particularism.     

Wahhabi ideology of social control versus a new publicness in Saudi Arabia

To understand Saudi Arabian Wahhabi theology, it needs to be contextualized. This article explores the discussion about music in Saudi Arabia in order to illuminate the political theory of the social of Wahhabi theology and the ongoing transformation of Saudi publicness. Since Wahhabism has singled out music as one of the abominations of society to be avoided by the believer, the changing soundscapes of the kingdom as music becomes a more common public presence has becomes a hot topic of discussion. By looking at the common Wahhabi stand on music and comparing it with both new practices and a new discourse represented by the scholar al-Kalbani, it becomes clear how a plurality of opinions challenge established Wahhabi agendas in a new publicness. This, in its turn, makes it relevant to investigate the logic of the political vision of the social that the official Wahhabi scholars have. I argue that this Wahhabi theology needs to be understood in the framework of its view on the human psyche and in relation to its concept of sin. I further argue that a renegotiation of positions is taking place, since negative judgments about music are not internalized in the population to the extent scholars might wish for or envisage.     

Prioritarianism, Levelling Down and Welfare Diffusion

I have earlier argued that, like egalitarianism, prioritarianism is exposed to the levelling down objection??which I do not find serious??but also that it faces related, more serious objections that egalitarianism avoids. In this paper I reply to Thomas Porter??s attempt to rebut this argument. I also trace the more serious objections to prioritarianism to the fact that it implies the desirability of welfare diffusion, i.e. that it is better all things considered if a quantity of welfare is distributed over as many recipients as possible, so that each recipient gets a minimal benefit, and that the outcome would still be in one respect better, even if the quantity of welfare was reduced. In contrast to egalitarianism, prioritarianism therefore implies that it is in one respect better if an equality, or a solitary individual, is located at lower rather than a higher level of welfare.     

Disentangling the relationship between hemispheric asymmetry and cognitive performance

It is widely believed that advantages of hemispheric asymmetries originated in better cognitive processing, hence it is often implied that the relationship between hemispheric asymmetry and cognitive performance is linearly positive: the higher the degree of lateralization in a specific cognitive domain, the better the performance in a corresponding task. Yet, the empirical evidence for this notion is mixed and the statistical methods to analyze this relationship have been criticized. The present study therefore investigated the relationship between hemispheric asymmetries and cognitive performance in two behavioral tasks (a left-lateralized word-matching task and a right-lateralized face-decision task) in 230 participants (140 women, 90 men) by using two different approaches. Both methods correspondingly revealed that a relationship between hemispheric asymmetries and cognitive performance does exist. Contrary to a positive (linear) relationship however, the data could be best described by an inverted U-shaped curve. Although the optimal degree of lateralization seemed to be task-specific, a slight or moderate degree of hemispheric asymmetry achieved best cognitive performance in all tasks. Moreover, performances deteriorated towards extreme ends of lateralization (i.e., participants with either extreme left or right hemispheric biases). Taken together, the present study provides evidence against the notion that higher lateralization is related to enhanced cognitive performance.     

Deliberate self-harm in 14-year-old adolescents: how frequent is it, and how is it associated with psychopathology, relationship variables, and styles of emotional regulation?

Deliberate self-harm was studied in 14-year-old adolescents from four schools in southern Sweden with a test-retest design, using a nine-item version of the Deliberate Self-Harm Inventory. At Time 1, 40.2% of the adolescents indicated deliberate self-harm on at least one occasion compared with 36.5% at Time 2. Test-retest data showed high stability over periods of up to 2 months in duration. Cross-validation of the results from Time 1 to Time 2 showed robust correlations between deliberate self-harm and general psychopathology, a relative absence of positive feelings toward parents, and a ruminative style of emotional regulation. Further, rumination/negative thinking and a relative absence of positive feelings toward parents were predictors of self-harm independently of general psychopathology. In addition, deliberate self-harm correlated with symptoms of eating disorder and negative body esteem in girls.     

The path or the goal? Decision vs. information focus in biased information seeking after preliminary decisions

Research on the phenomenon of selective exposure to information demonstrates that after preliminary or final decisions, people show a preference for supporting rather than conflicting information (confirmation bias). In this article, we examine conditions that increase or decrease distortions in the search for information. We report on four experiments indicating that the confirmation bias is influenced by whether people focus on their decision or on the presented pieces of information during the information search. Focusing on the decision, for example, because a reward for a correct decision is promised or simply because participants repeatedly think of it, increases the confirmation bias. On the other hand, if participants focus on the available pieces of information because they have to invest money in order to search for information or because they have to evaluate the individual pieces of information, the confirmation bias decreases. Implications for theoretical understanding and interventions for decision-making situations are discussed.     

Why Levelling Down could be Worse for Prioritarianism than for Egalitarianism

Derek Parfit has argued that, in contrast to prioritarianism, egalitarianism is exposed to the levelling down objection, i.e., the objection that it is absurd that a change which consists merely in the betteroff losing some of their well-being should be in one way for the better. In reply, this paper contends that (1) there is a plausible form of egalitarianism which is equivalent to another form of prioritarianism than the Parfitian one, a relational rather than an absolute form of prioritarianism, and that (2), although this relational or egalitarian form of prioritarianism is hit by the levelling down objection, the Parfitian form is also hit by it, or worse objections, if it is fully worked out.