A Conceptual Structure of Justice - Providing a Tool to Analyse Conceptions of Justice

Justice is a contested concept. There are many different and competing conceptions, i.e. interpretations of the concept. Different domains of justice deal with different fields of application of justice claims, such as structural justice, distributive justice, participatory justice or recognition. We present a formal conceptual structure of justice applicable to all these domains. We show that conceptions of justice can be described by specifying the following conceptual elements: the judicandum (that which is to be judged as just or unjust), the community of justice including claim holders and claim addressees, their claims (and obligations), the informational base for the assessment, the principles of justice, and on a more practical level, the instruments of justice. By specifying these conceptual elements of justice, it is possible to analyse and compare different conceptions of justice, to assess their internal consistency, to explore new definitions of justice in an analytical way, and to explicate an idea of justice in a manner that provides concrete links to the relevant context.     

Temporal processing characteristics of the Ponzo illusion

Many visual illusions result from assumptions of our visual system that are based on its long-term adaptation to our visual environment. Thus, visual illusions provide the opportunity to identify and learn about these fundamental assumptions. In this paper, we investigate the Ponzo illusion. Although many previous studies researched visual processing of the Ponzo illusion, only very few considered temporal processing aspects. However, it is well known that our visual percept is modulated by temporal factors. First, we used the Ponzo illusion as prime in a response priming task to test whether it modulates subsequent responses to the longer (or shorter) of two target bars. Second, we used the same stimuli in a perceptual task to test whether the Ponzo illusion is effective for very short presentation times (12 ms). We observed considerable priming effects that were of similar magnitude as those of a control condition. Moreover, the variations in the priming effects as a function of prime-target stimulus-onset asynchrony were very similar to that of the control condition. However, when analyzing priming effects as a function of participants’ response speed, effects for the Ponzo illusion increased in slower responses. We conclude that although the illusion is established rapidly within the visual system, the full integration of context information is based on more time-consuming and later visual processing.     

The Impact of Absolute Importance and Processing Overlaps on Prospective Memory Performance

Prospective memory is the ability to remember an intention at an appropriate moment in the future. Prospective memory tasks can be more or less important. Previously, importance was manipulated by emphasizing the importance of the prospective memory task relative to the ongoing task it was embedded in. This resulted in better prospective memory performance but also ongoing task costs. In the present study, we simply instructed one group of participants that the prospective memory task was important (i.e., absolute importance instruction) and compared them with a group with relative importance instructions and a control group. The results showed that absolute importance leads to an increase in prospective memory performance without enhancing ongoing task costs, whereas relative importance resulted in both increased prospective memory performance and ongoing task costs. Thus, prospective memory can be enhanced without ongoing task costs, which is particularly crucial for safety‐work contexts. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What does it take to be a virtual team player? The knowledge,skills, abilities,and other characteristics required in virtual teams

Competency models are available for many aspects of work that cut across various occupations (such as leadership, teamwork, etc.). Although virtual teamwork has developed to a highly prevalent aspect of work, very little is known about the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) required. In the current study, KSAO requirements of virtual and traditional business teams (n = 175 and 205, respectively) were compared and aligned to the Great Eight competency model. Results showed that KSAOs pertaining to Leading and Deciding and to Analyzing and Interpreting were more important in virtual teams. Conversely, virtual and traditional teams did not differ in terms of broad personality (Big Five) requirements. Together, these findings contribute to deeper knowledge on selection and training in virtual teams.     

Withdrawing Versus Withholding Freedoms: Nudging and the Case of Tobacco Control

Is it a stronger interference with people's freedom to withdraw options they currently have than to withhold similar options they do not have? Drawing on recent theorizing about sociopolitical freedom, this article identifies considerations that often make this the case for public policy. However, when applied to tobacco control, these considerations are shown to give us at best only very weak freedom-based reason to prioritize the status quo. This supports a popular argument for so-called “endgame” tobacco control measures: If we believe that cigarettes would and should be withheld from entering markets in hypothetical scenarios in which they do not yet exist, then we also have reason to seek their abolition in situations, such as ours, in which cigarettes do exist—if necessary by banning their sale. The same considerations are then used to disarm objections that have recently been raised to using nudges in public policy.     

Route learning in Korsakoff's syndrome: Residual acquisition of spatial memory despite profound amnesia

Korsakoff's syndrome (KS) is characterized by explicit amnesia, but relatively spared implicit memory. The aim of this study was to assess to what extent KS patients can acquire spatial information while performing a spatial navigation task. Furthermore, we examined whether residual spatial acquisition in KS was based on automatic or effortful coding processes. Therefore, 20 KS patients and 20 matched healthy controls performed six tasks on spatial navigation after they navigated through a residential area. Ten participants per group were instructed to pay close attention (intentional condition), while 10 received mock instructions (incidental condition). KS patients showed hampered performance on a majority of tasks, yet their performance was superior to chance level on a route time and distance estimation tasks, a map drawing task and a route walking task. Performance was relatively spared on the route distance estimation task, but there were large variations between participants. Acquisition in KS was automatic rather than effortful, since no significant differences were obtained between the intentional and incidental condition on any task, whereas for the healthy controls, the intention to learn was beneficial for the map drawing task and the route walking task. The results of this study suggest that KS patients are still able to acquire spatial information during navigation on multiple domains despite the presence of the explicit amnesia. Residual acquisition is most likely based on automatic coding processes.     

The study of emotional processes in communication: I. Measuring emotionalization in everyday face-to-face communicative interaction

The drawbacks of traditional research into emotional processes have led us to develop a set of methodologies for investigating them in everyday face-to-face communication. The conceptual basis of these procedures is a model of the eliciting conditions of emotional processes as well as a conceptualization of the emotional processes themselves. On the basis of the assumption of conversation as a rule-governed process, one can describe its default temporal, formal, and functional features, for which we use the MAS EDIT and SEQ programs, and the minimal model of communicative exchange, respectively. Violations of these default rules can be identified as unexpected/temporally unpredictable events eliciting emotionalization. The nature of emotionalization is determined by the psychological principle of “standard and deviation.” Its investigation under natural conditions requires the following: A noninvasive method of data acquisition (including procedures for rejecting faulty or missing values), measurement (high-resolution recording of physiological, psychomotor, and vocal variables), and the (nonstatistical) construction of an inventory or “relevant effects” (contrastive and template analysis). Finally, we depict three routes of investigating time courses of activation changes as dependent and independent variables and as a target of modification and reflection.     

The study of emotional processes in communication: II. Peripheral blood flow as an indicator of emotionalization

Traditional methods of analyzing human peripheral blood flow (PBF) do not account for its continuous nature or small-scale variation. Sequel transformation is presented as a new methodology for measuring these variations. This analysis generates a richer record of aspects of activation of the autonomous nervous system than traditional interbeat-interval (IBI) measurement. Presumably, in addition to heartbeat (i.e., IBI), other information can be extracted that is consistent with the influence of several physiological and psychological factors. This kind of variation is reflected in the PBF signal. After determining and extracting relevant events from vascular volume data generated by sequel transformation, we demonstrate the use of template analysis to analyze patterns of events as time courses of activation. All procedures are included in the computer program VASC Analyzer.