Malcolm Schofield: Cicero: Political Philosophy

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice -     

Restaurant Tipping: Free‐Riding,Social Acceptance,and Gender Differences1

The practice of paying gratuities for services is a worldwide custom. Tipping is found only in some professions, which suggests that it serves to increase the efficiency of specific kinds of exchanges. The literature accepts the view that monitoring of employees by customers appears to be the logical rationale for the practice of tipping. This can be seen in that gratuities are paid at the discretion of consumers after they receive the services for which they are paying. However, it does not explain why, given the voluntary aspect of tipping, rational people would not free‐ride on the tipping of others. We found that both men and women free‐ride in their tipping behavior. Yet, we also found that men are more influenced by social acceptance or approval in their tipping behavior than are women.     

Contextualism and Unhappy-Face Solutions: Reply to Schiffer

Philosophical Studies -     

Differentiating Hostile and Benevolent Sexist Attitudes Toward Positive and Negative Sexual Female Subtypes

Expressions of hostile and benevolent sexism toward a female character whose behavior was consistent with either a positive (i.e., chaste) or negative (i.e., promiscuous) sexual female subtype were examined. Consistent with the theory that benevolent and hostile sexism form complementary ideologies that serve to maintain and legitimize gender-based social hierarchies, men expressed increased hostile, but decreased benevolent,sexism toward a female character who fit a negative subtype, whereas they expressed increased benevolent, but decreased hostile, sexism toward a female character who fit a positive subtype that was consistent with traditional gender roles. Furthermore, men’s sexual self-schema moderated expressions of hostile sexism across subtypes, whichsuggests that men who think of themselves in sexual terms (i.e., those who are sexuallyschematic) may be predisposed to (a) interpret information about women in sexual terms and categorize women into positive or negative sexual female subtypes on the basis of limited information, which leads to (b) increased hostile sexist attributions when womenare perceived as fitting a negative sexual subtype. These findings emphasize the role of both social dominance motives and the more subtle sociocognitive processes underlyinggender stereotyping in the expression of ambivalent sexism.     

Using eye movements during reading as an implicit measure of the acceptability of brand extensions

We apply eye movement monitoring techniques to examine how acceptable consumers find different brand extensions. Participants were presented with sentences (e.g. I wanted to record a song on Polaroid, but it cost too much.) which could only be fully understood if they made an inference that was based on extending the meaning associated with the brand name. By building on work on the processing of metonymic expressions (Frisson & Pickering, 1999) we predict that plausible brand extensions will cause little difficulty during initial reading, but that implausible extensions will cause immediate disruption. Analyses of the eye‐tracking data confirmed these predictions. Plausible extensions led to minor reading difficulty during late processing of the sentence, which we interpret in terms of the construction of a new interpretation associated with the brand. Implausible extensions, in contrast, caused immediate disruption, which we interpret in terms of the difficulty of providing a coherent interpretation for the term. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Still another confounded face in the crowd

Experiments using schematic faces developed by Öhman (Öhman, Lundqvist, &; Esteves, 2001) seem to document an anger-superiority effect, although we have come to question these experiments. Our work shows that the low-level features of these schematic faces interact with the face’s surround to produce effects that have been attributed to facial affect. Using relatively neutral faces that preserved the feature and surround spatial relationships of angry and happy schematic faces, we produced reaction times (RTs) that were indistinguishable from those found with angry and happy faces. We also found that the target face’s position within the crowd determined the magnitude of the advantage for angry faces as well as for relatively affect-neutral faces. Removing the facial surround reduces the advantage for angry faces, largely by improving performance on happy faces. There was an apparent small advantage for angry features without a surround. öhman faces avoid the problems associated with modified grayscale faces only to introduce an equally troubling confound.     

Explorations in the Meanings of Excellence and Its Importance for Counselors: The Culture of Excellence in the United States

Contemporary narratives of excellence embody the competitive striving and achievement themes underlying the idea of American exceptionalism. The author examines excellence through Aristotle's (trans. 2002) Nicomachean Ethics. An overemphasis on winning or excelling can undermine general human excellence and harm well‐being. Counselors are encouraged to embrace general human excellence and to challenge narratives of excellence.     

Choosing to Report: Characteristics of employees who report the counterproductive work behavior of others

Managers typically expect employees to report counterproductive work behavior (CWB) when they see or have knowledge of other employees engaging in such acts. However, the degree to which individuals actually report CWB to company officials has not been addressed in the literature. Previous research has also not explored the personality traits, attitudes, and workplace behaviors of those employees who report CWB on the part of others. Hence, we conducted 2 studies with 2 independent samples to provide information on both of these points in an effort to assist organizations in curbing negative workplace acts and in making more informed personnel selection decisions.