VIRTUE, EMOTION, AND ATTENTION

Abstract: The perceptual model of emotions maintains that emotions involve, or are at least analogous to, perceptions of value. On this account, emotions purport to tell us about the evaluative realm, in much the same way that sensory perceptions inform us about the sensible world. An important development of this position, prominent in recent work by Peter Goldie amongst others, concerns the essential role that virtuous habits of attention play in enabling us to gain perceptual and evaluative knowledge. I think that there are good reasons to be sceptical about this picture of virtue. In this essay I set out these reasons, and explain the consequences this scepticism has for our understanding of the relation between virtue, emotion, and attention. In particular, I argue that our primary capacity for recognizing value is in fact a non-emotional capacity.     

BBC NATURAL HISTORY VERSUS SCIENCE PARADIGMS

In 1979 the finale of David Attenborough’s Life on Earth featured Attenborough’s iconic forest floor romp with mountain gorillas. Two decades later and Sir David was still being asked to re-enact this memorable piece of television on the Parkinson chat show. Life on Earth had become the BBC’s first David Attenborough blockbuster to be followed by The Trials of Life, The Living Planet, The Life of Plants, up to the most recent, The Life of Mammals, in 2002. The outcome of this success has been to invest BBC natural history television with scientific authority. The BBC Natural History Unit and BBC Wildlife Magazine have become dominant conduits for popular natural science in the UK. Natural history television often relied implicitly upon science for advice and subject material. Recently the links have been made explicit with wildlife filmmakers and scientists’ research depicted working hand in hand, e.g. The Blue Planet and Walking with Dinosaurs. However the very success of the BBC’s wildlife output has produced a schism between the presentation of natural history and of the other sciences, e.g. cosmology, geology, non-wildlife biology. These sciences, explored in other generic programmes, e.g. Horizon or specific series e.g. Space, are promoted separately from natural history programmes. This schism extends to the BBC’s website, www.bbc.co.uk, which separates the genres between ‘/science’ and ‘/nature’, respectively. The science of natural history not only occupies its own broadcasting niche; it works to a different paradigm.     

The Effects of a Parent Guidance Intervention on Communication among Adolescents Who Have Experienced the Sudden Death of a Sibling

Existing and new validity data on 3,880 cases from the Bricklin Perceptual Scales and Perception-of-Relationships Test address the assertion that custody data cannot be generated scientifically. Reliability (93 percent stability over 8 months) and validity data (90 percent agreement with multiple independent criteria) are presented, but without a fully explicated chain linking evidence to conclusions, one ends up with unresolvable, typically all-or-none, disputations about the adequacy of one's evidence. This chain includes, among others, the (confusing) role of values in science and how system complexities affect the choice of measurement units as well as measurement relevance. We also consider the value of information to a specific decision-maker. Psychometric indices, the usual source of such arguments, cannot alone address any of these areas.     

Student Perceptions of Salient Indicators of Integration of Faith and Learning (IFL): The Christian Vocation Model

This article presents findings from a qualitative study of 120 undergraduate students from seven schools in the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. Using in-depth individual and focus group interviews, we explored participants' perceptions of salient indicators of integration of faith and learning (IFL) in the classroom. Findings highlight two main categories of indicators: 1) faculty relationships with God and with students, and 2) faculty competence, including specific IFL curriculum coverage and academically safe classroom settings. All indicators contributed to IFL experiences resonating with most students. We then set forth the Christian vocation model from our analysis to describe the interconnections between the two main categories. Implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Training,Transforming, and Transitioning: A Blueprint for the Christian University

With respect to students, Christian universities have at least three interrelated missions or aims: training, transformation, and transition. That is, their role is to educate or train students to be excellent in their field, to facilitate the transformation of students’ worldview and character, and to transition students into their vocational calling. This article briefly examines the dimensions of training and transitioning, and then looks more deeply at student transformation as it may be the principal distinctive of a Christian school. The article proposes six conditions necessary to enable the transformation process.     

The Good Life: A Defense of Attitudinal Hedonism

What makes a life go well for the one who lives it? Hedonists hold that pleasure enhances the value of a life; pain diminishes it. Hedonism has been subjected to a number of objections. Some are (a) based on the claim that hedonism is a form of “mental statism”. Others are (b) based on the claim that some pleasures are base or degrading. Yet others are (c) based on the claim that when a bad person enjoys a pleasure, his receipt of that pleasure seem not to make the world better. It is important to keep in mind that hedonism is a theory about the value of a person's life for the person who lives it, and not for the world or for others. It is also important to distinguish between sensory hedonism and attitudinal hedonism. “Desert Adjusted Intrinsic Attitudinal Hedonism” appears to be immune to objections (a) and (b). A variant appears to be immune to all of them. Perhaps it is the answer to the question about the value of a life.     

IS IT WORTH IT TO WIN THE TALENT WAR? EVALUATING THE UTILITY OF PERFORMANCE‐BASED PAY

Although the business press suggests that "winning the talent war," the attraction and retention of key talent, is increasingly pivotal to organization success, executives often report that their organizations do not fare well on this dimension. We demonstrate how, through integrating turnover and compensation research, the Boudreau and Berger (1985) staffing utility framework can be used by I-O psychologists and other HR professionals to address this issue. Employing a step-by-step process that combines organization-specific information about pay and performance with research on the pay-turnover linkage, we estimate the effects of incentive pay on employee separation patterns at various performance levels. We then use the utility framework to evaluate the financial consequences of incentive pay as an employee retention vehicle. The demonstration illustrates the limitations of standard accounting and behavioral cost-based approaches and the importance of considering both the costs and benefits associated with pay-for-performance plans. Our results suggest that traditional accounting or behavioral cost-based approaches, used alone, would have supported rejecting a potentially lucrative pay-for-performance investment. In addition, our approach should enable HR professionals to use research findings and their own data to estimate the retention patterns and subsequent financial consequences of their existing, and potential, company-specific performance-based pay policies.