A Comparative Analysis of Sport and Business Organizations: Factors Perceived Critical for Organizational Success

The purpose of the present investigation was to compare and contrast sport and business leaders' perceptions regarding what makes for a successful organization. Twenty sport ( N = 10) and business ( N = 10) leaders were interviewed and asked about their perceptions of organizational effectiveness in the area of group dynamics including (a) leadership, (b) group cohesion, and (c) communication. Using qualitative methods, results revealed more similarities than differences, with most sport and business leaders in agreement on the factors relating to organizational success. Specifically, all higher- and lower-order themes were identified by leaders in both areas, the emphasis simply being a matter of degree. Some of the more notable differences included business leaders putting more emphasis on being honest and being a reflective listener, whereas sport leaders emphasize interactions with others and having positive reinforcement in their communications. These similarities and differences are discussed in terms of the extant literature, and future directions for research are offered, such as investigating how to specifically enhance the transfer of skills and principles between sport and business settings.     

Effects of Augmenting Response Options on MMPI–2 RC Scale Psychometrics

A number of empirical investigations indicate that tests with a greater number of response options tend to yield better psychometric performance. We hypothesized that a version of the MMPI–2 with a polytomous response format would outperform the standard dichotomous format in terms of observed score reliability and validity. Two versions of the MMPI–2 RC scales were administered consecutively in counterbalanced order to 199 undergraduate students attending a large Midwestern university: the standard true–false version, and an experimental version containing 4 response options (very true, mainly true, slightly true, and false, not at all true). After participants completed both versions, 2 scales from the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ) were administered to assess differences in convergent validity. Results showed enhancements in reliability for all RC scale scores and increases in the convergent validity of scores. Directions for further investigation and potential implications for future test development are discussed.     

The Longitudinal Psychometric Properties of the EAS Temperament Survey in Adolescence

Studies on the psychometric properties of the EAS Temperament Survey (EAS) have produced equivocal results. In particular the psychometrics of the EAS are largely unknown in adolescence. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to explore the EAS structure in adolescents. Structural equation modeling was also used to assess measurement invariance and factor stability. A modified 4-factor model provided the best fit to the data and demonstrated reasonable longitudinal invariance and stability. Furthermore, the standardized factor scores correlated at near unity with the sum of observed scores, suggesting factor interpretations remained unchanged. However, the modifications suggest that further work is necessary.     

‘Ought’ and Control

Ethical theorists often assume that the verb ‘ought’ means roughly ‘has an obligation’; however, this assumption is belied by the diversity of ‘flavours’ of ought-sentences in English. A natural response is that ‘ought’ is ambiguous. However, this response is incompatible with the standard treatment of ‘ought’ by theoretical semanticists, who classify ‘ought’ as a member of the family of modal verbs, which are treated uniformly as operators. To many ethical theorists, however, this popular treatment in linguistics seems to elide an important distinction between agential and non-agential ought-statements. The thought is that ‘ought’ must have at least two senses, one implicating agency and connected to obligations, and another covering other uses. In this paper, I pursue some resolution of this tension between semantic theory and ethical theory with respect to the meaning of ‘ought’. To this end, I consider what I believe to be the most linguistically sophisticated argument for the view that the word ‘ought’ is ambiguous between agential and non-agential senses. This argument, due to Mark Schroeder, is instructive but based on a false claim about the syntax of agential ought-sentences—or so I attempt to show by first situating Schroeder's argument in its proper linguistic background and then discussing some syntactic evidence that he fails to appreciate. Then, I use the failure of this argument to motivate some more general reflections on how the standard treatment of ‘ought’ by theoretical semanticists might be refined in the light of the distinction important to ethical theory between agential and non-agential ought-statements, but also on how ethical theory might benefit from more careful study of the dominant treatment of modals as operators in theoretical semantics.     

What's Formal about Formal Indication? Heidegger's Method in Sein und Zeit 1

Against the background of a recent exchange between Cristina Lafont and Hubert Dreyfus, I argue that Heidegger's method of “formal indication” is at the heart of his attempt in Sein und Zeit to answer “the ontological question of the being of the ‘sum’” (SZ, p. 46). This method works reflexively, by picking out certain essential features of one's first-person singular being at the outset of its investigation that are implicit in the question “what is it to be the entity I am?” On the basis of these features, various further a priori, ontological structures (care and temporality) that constitute one as a first-person singular entity then become accessible. Formal indication is thus formal in two senses: it officially designates or signals certain first-person singular phenomena as the topic of investigation, and it picks out features which define the ontological form of the entity in question. It is thereby the method by which a legitimately transcendental account of our being may be begun to be generated by each of us from out of our factical, immanent existence.     

Linking cognitive and reaching trajectories via intermittent movement control

Theories of decision-making have traditionally been constrained by reaction time data. A limitation of reaction time data, particularly for studying the temporal dynamics of cognitive processing, is that they index only the endpoint of the decision making process. Recently, physical reaching trajectories have been used as proxies for underlying mental trajectories through decision space. We suggest that this approach has been oversimplified: while it is possible for the motor control system to access the current state of the evidence accumulation process, this access is intermittent. Instead, we demonstrate how a model of arm movements that assumes intermittent, not continuous, access to the decision process is sufficient to describe the effects of stimulus quality and viewing time in curved reaching movements.     

Body Image Preference in the United States and Rural Thailand: An Exploratory Study

The authors conducted a field study to examine the female body image preferences of young women and young men in a rural northern province of Thailand and in central California. The Thai participants did not have stronger body image preferences than did the U.S. participants overall. However, the young women preferred a significantly more slender body image than did the young men, F(1, 80) = 14.98, p < .001, and the Respondent Gender x Nationality interaction was also significant, F(1, 80) = 4.42, p = .039. Thai men, as expected, exhibited preferences for figures that were heavier than those preferred by their U.S. counterparts. Thai women, in contrast, exhibited preferences for figures that were thinner than those preferred by their U.S. counterparts or their male countrymen. These results are explained in terms of traditional Thai and U.S. values and in terms of Western cultural influences in modern Thailand.     

“Mindless” Decision Making as a Failure of Contextual Reasoning

People often make decisions without reference to vital information, even when such information is readily available. In the present research, the authors addressed the possibility that this tendency may derive from failure to have pertinent information immediately available in the decision context. Participants rated the utility of decisions in either the presence or absence of simple pertinent information. The information provided required no training and was relatively obvious (e.g., if money is spent on a given item, that money will not be available for other expenditures). Presentation of such information in the immediate context of decisions significantly improved participants' abilities to understand their negative consequences. These results indicate that the presentation of pertinent information in immediate decision contexts, even information that is already available through participants' long-term memory, can improve the understanding of decision situations and reduce “mindlessness” in decision processes.