The Metaphors of Knowledge and Academic Impact

This essay discusses critically the ways in which different metaphors employed to illustrate the practices of knowledge production and knowledge acquisition as well as scientific and scholarly research shape our understanding of the academic form of life. The essay examines the metaphors of knowledge and their role in academia by means of philosophical analysis and a rhetorical analysis of language, thereby defending the core values of academic freedom. It focuses on two pairs of metaphors highly relevant to the tensions characteristic of contemporary academic work: verticality and horizontality, on the one hand, and change and stability, on the other. The entanglement of perspectives from philosophy and historical rhetoric serves a metaphilosophical goal here: to show that our philosophical understanding of the nature of inquiry will be considerably enhanced if we seriously, and with both historical and literary sensibilities, study the metaphors we use in characterizing our epistemic and cognitive projects.     

Marketing Research Ethics: Researcher’s Obligations toward Human Subjects

This paper addresses the growing concern over violation of research ethics in marketing, in particular rights of human subjects in fieldwork, notably the right to informed consent; right to privacy and confidentiality; and right not to be deceived or harmed as a result of participation in a research. The paper highlights the interaction of the three main parties involved in most marketing research: the sponsoring organization (client or user), researcher, and participant in the survey, focusing on researcher’s ethical responsibilities in interacting with human subjects in surveys. The paper stresses the importance of ethical integrity in marketing research and emphasizes the need to establish a universal model for regulatory requirements and well institutionalized practice of ethical research.     

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivational Orientations in the Competitive Context: An Examination of Person–Situation Interactions

ABSTRACT The current study examined Intrinsic Motivation Orientation and Extrinsic Motivation Orientation (Work Preference Inventory; Amabile, Hill, Hennessey, & Tighe, 1994 ) as potential trait-level moderators of the way Internet chess players responded to the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards of the chess games they played. On the basis of the defining characteristics of these 2 types of motivational orientations, we predicted that (a) Intrinsic Motivation Orientation would be associated with a stronger curvilinear relationship between challenge and enjoyment and (b) Extrinsic Motivation Orientation would be associated with a heightened affective responsivity to competitive outcome (i.e., winning vs. losing). Results supported the predictions. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Factors influencing maternal attack on conspecific intruders by lactating female “TO” strain mice

Factors regulating maternal attack in “TO” strain mice were investigated to determine 1) optimal conditions for inducing this behaviour and 2) the likely utility of this activity. Lactating females were more likely to attack male intruders than female intruders. The mate's presence reduced maternal attack in this strain, or (putting it conversely) aggression was generated in the male's absence. Removal of the mothers from their litters for four to five hours also suppressed maternal attack. Investigation of the bite targets in the maternal attack suggested that it is a defensive, rather than an offensive, response.     

What shall we do with emergence? A survey of a fundamental issue in the metaphysics and epistemology of science

A survey of some recent literature on the concept of emergence provides a case study of an important issue in the general metaphysics and epistemology of science. Emergentism has often been motivated by the desire to avoid excessive reductionism in the philosophy of mind and culture and in the respective fields of the philosophy of science—philosophy of psychology and of the human and social sciences. Philosophers employing the concept of emergence usually argue that there are several ‘levels’ of reality and that the entities and properties of the ‘higher’ levels (e.g., mentality) emerge from those of the ‘lower’ ones (e.g., the physical universe). The standard division between ontological and epistemological approaches to this concept is shown to be inadequate through a critical discussion of emergence from the perspective of a pragmatist philosophy of science. It is argued that emergence should be conceived of both ontologically and epistemologically, because there is no humanly possible point of view for ontologizing about the way the world is structured in itself, entirely independently of our epistemic standpoints. Emergence thus turns out to be an example of the way in which the ‘pre-critical’ dispute between dogmatic metaphysics and skeptical reactions to it (which Kant famously wanted to overcome) still dominates philosophy of science. Hence, the problems of emergence and realism are observed to be intimately connected.     

Socioemotional selectivity in older adults: Evidence from the subjective experience of angry memories

Few studies have compared the phenomenological properties of younger and older adults' memories for emotional events. Some studies suggest that younger adults remember negative information more vividly than positive information whereas other studies suggest that positive emotion yields phenomenologically richer memories than negative emotion for both younger and older adults. One problem with previous studies is a tendency to treat emotion as a dichotomous variable. In contrast, emotional richness demands inclusion of assessments beyond just a positive and negative dimension (e.g., assessing specific emotions like anger, fear and happiness). The present study investigated different properties of autobiographical remembering as a function of discrete emotions and age. Thirty-two younger and thirty-one older adults participated by recalling recent and remote memories associated with six emotional categories and completed the Memory Characteristics Questionnaire for each. Results demonstrated that older adults' angry memories received lower ratings on some phenomenological properties than other emotional memories whereas younger adults' angry memories did not show this same pattern. These results are discussed within the context of socioemotional selectivity theory.     

The role of peer groups in male and female adolescents' task values and physical activity

The purpose of this longitudinal study was to examine the role of peer groups and sex in adolescents' task values and physical activity. The participants were 330 Finnish Grade 6 students (173 girls, 157 boys), who responded to questionnaires that assessed physical education task values during the spring semester (Time 1). Students' physical activity was assessed one year later (Time 2). The results indicated that adolescent peer groups were moderately homogeneous in terms of task values toward physical education and physical activity. Girls' peer groups were more homogeneous than those of boys in regards to utility and attainment values. Furthermore, the results for both girls and boys showed that particularly intrinsic task value typical for the peer group predicted group members' physical activity. The findings highlight the important role of peer group membership as a determinant of future physical activity.     

The importance of challenge for the enjoyment of intrinsically motivated, goal-directed activities

Although early interview-based analyses of the enjoyment of intrinsically motivated, goal-directed activities (e.g., chess, rock climbing, art making) suggested the importance of relatively difficult, "optimal" challenges, subsequent findings derived from a wider range of activities have not provided consistent support for this proposition. Two studies were conducted to clarify the relation between challenge and enjoyment. Study 1 focused on a single activity-Internet chess. The importance of challenge was evident at the subjective level (perceived challenge strongly predicted enjoyment) as well as the objective level (games against superior opponents were more enjoyable than games against inferior opponents, and close games were more enjoyable than blowouts). In Study 2, the experience sampling method was used to examine the enjoyment of challenge across a wide range of everyday activities. Activity motivation (intrinsically motivated, non-intrinsically motivated) and activity type (goal directed, non-goal directed) moderated the relation. Implications for theories of intrinsic motivation are discussed.