Getting older and living up to implicit followership theories: Implications for employee psychological health and job attitudes

Age discrimination at work is a widespread destructive phenomenon that often takes subtle forms. Based on negative stereotypes about older employees, we argue that older employees often experience that they are perceived as less ideal followers than younger employees. We propose that older and younger employees do not differ in what they assume their supervisors expect of an ideal follower (implicit followership theories, IFTs). Thus, we hypothesize that older employees perceive that they compare less favorably to their supervisors' IFTs than younger employees (i.e., worse IFT-fit). This should entail lower quality of the relationship between leader and follower (leader-member-exchange, LMX), which, in turn, should have detrimental effects on employees' health (i.e., burnout) and job attitudes (i.e., job satisfaction, turnover intentions, and identification). We tested our model in a field study with 379 employees. Results differed for ideal and counter-ideal follower attributes. Concerning counter-ideal follower attributes (e.g., being incompetent), age had the proposed negative effect on psychological health and job attitudes that mediated through IFT-fit and LMX. Concerning ideal follower attributes (e.g., thinking ahead), older employees expected their supervisors not only to think less of them than of their younger colleagues, but also expected them to have less demanding IFTs—contrary to our expectations. Employee age was negatively related to psychological health and job attitudes, mediated through lower perceived IFTs, worse perceived appraisal of the actual employee and their joint effects on LMX.     

Structural problems for reductionism

Philosophical Studies - Universal reductionism—the sort of project pursued by Carnap in the Aufbau, Lewis in his campaign on behalf of Humean supervenience, Jackson in From Metaphysics to...     

Gibbons exploit information about what a competitor can see

Animal Cognition - How much nonhuman animals understand about seeing has been the focus of comparative cognition research for decades. Many social primates (and other species) are sensitive to cues...     

The Knowledge Argument and Objectivity

In this paper I argue that Frank Jackson’s Knowledge Argument is better considered not as an argument against physicalism, but as an argument that objective theories must be incomplete. I argue that despite the apparent diversity of responses to the knowledge argument, they all boil down to a response according to which genuine epistemic gains are made when an individual has an experience. I call this the acquaintance response. I then argue that this response violates an intuitive stricture on the objectivity of theories. Therefore, the knowledge argument does show that objective theories cannot provide a complete understanding of the world. The result, however, is that both objective dualism and objective physicalism are refuted by the argument. In the end it is suggested that the notion of “subjective physicalism” is one that should be pursued.     

How Wittgenstein Defeated Russell’s Multiple Relation Theory of Judgment

In 1913 Wittgenstein raised an objection to Russell’s multiple relation theory of judgment that eventually led Russell to abandon his theory. As he put it in the Tractatus, the objection was that “the correct explanation of the form of the proposition, ‘A makes the judgement p’, must show that it is impossible for a judgement to be a piece of nonsense. (Russell’s theory does not satisfy this requirement,” (5.5422). This objection has been widely interpreted to concern type restrictions on the constituents of judgment. I argue that this interpretation is mistaken and that Wittgenstein’s objection is in fact a form of the problem of the unity of the proposition.     

THE USE OF REBT PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES IN LEADERSHIP TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT

Training, coaching, and consulting with people in leadership roles can be a primary consulting function for clinicians. In this paper, the authors describe their model of leadership, and what they believe to be the central personality or character components of leadership necessary for producing extraordinary results. Throughout they will show where and how REBT skills can make a significant contribution.     

Explication Defended

How can formal methods be applied to philosophical problems that involve informal concepts of ordinary language? Carnap answered this question by describing a methodology that he called “explication." Strawson objected that explication changes the subject and does not address the original philosophical problem; this paper shows that Carnap’s response to that objection was inadequate and offers a better response. More recent criticisms of explication by Boniolo and Eagle are shown to rest on misunderstandings of the nature of explication. It is concluded that explication is an appropriate methodology for formal philosophy.