Ethics Vs IT Ethics: a Comparative Study between the USA and the Middle East

This paper aims at investigating the perceived difference between ethics and IT ethics in college students. The study mainly investigates whether university students in the Middle East and their counterpart in the USA hold the same ethical values both in a traditional context and in an IT context. The study also investigates possible differences in students’ ethics considering their level of study and whether they have prior business ethics knowledge or not. Furthermore, the study controls for possible self-others bias in students’ responses to ethical issues by addressing some ethical issues where the respondent is the subject of the issue and other ethical issues where someone other than the respondent is the subject of the issue. Questionnaires were administered to university students in the USA and in several Middle East countries. A total of 401 usable questionnaires were returned. The study found that both the USA and the Middle East students have statistically significant lower ethical intention scores when addressing ethical issues in an IT context compared to traditional non-IT context. This pattern was consistent regardless of the students’ level of study and their prior knowledge of business ethics, and taking into consideration self-others bias. Additionally, it was found that graduate students have higher IT as well as non-IT ethical intentions compared to undergraduate students, however, it was found that the students’ prior business ethics knowledge did not affect the students’ ethical intention scores. Self-other bias was found to act in opposite directions for ethical issues in an IT context compared to ethical issues in a traditional context. For ethical issues within IT-context, students were less strict with themselves while they were stricter with others. For ethical issues within traditional non-IT context, students were stricter with themselves, while they were less strict with others. Finally, the study found that while students both in the USA and in the Middle East disagree with unethical IT as well as non-IT conducts, the degree to which they disagree with the unethical behavior significantly differ, where USA students were found to be significantly stricter with their disagreement.     

Neurophysical substrates of arousal and attention

The study of arousal and attention could be of prominent importance for elucidating both fundamental and practical aspects of the mind–brain puzzle. Defined as “general activation of mind” (Kahnemann in Attention and effort. Prentice-Hall, New Jersey, 1973), or “general operation of consciousness” (Thacher and John in Functional neuroscience: foundations of cognitive processing. Erlbaum, Hillsdale, 1977), arousal can be considered as a starting point of fundamental research on consciousness. Similar role could be assigned to attention, which can be defined by substituting the attributes “general” with “focused”. Concerning the practical applications, the empirically established correlation between neuronal oscillations and arousal/attention levels is widely used in research and clinics, including neurofeedback, brain–computer communication, etc. However, the neurophysical mechanism underlying this correlation is still not clear enough. In this paper, after reviewing some present classical and quantum approaches, a transition probability concept of arousal based on field–dipole quantum interactions and information entropy is elaborated. The obtained analytical expressions and numerical values correspond to classical empirical results for arousal and attention, including the characteristic frequency dependence and intervals. Simultaneously, the fundamental (substrate) role of EEG spectrum has been enlightened, whereby the attention appears to be a bridge between arousal and the content of consciousness. Finally, some clinical implications, including the brain-rate parameter as an indicator of arousal and attention levels, are provided.     

Outraged Consumers: Getting Even at the Expense of Getting a Good Deal

This article introduces the concept of desire for consumer vengeance. Desire for consumer vengeance (DCV) is conceptualized as the desire of a decision maker to “get even” with an entity, such as a firm, in response to a perceived wrongdoing. Drawing on research in psychology and organization behavior, a theoretical framework is proposed for understanding variables that influence the extent to which the DCV is felt and the conditions under which one acts on such feelings. The results of 2 experiments show that, given sufficient desire for vengeance, some consumers will choose a suboptimal decision outcome to get even with a firm. We also find that it is the interpersonal factors of the redress experience, rather than its tangible outcomes, that drive consumers to exact revenge on firms after a dissatisfying experience.     

Interpretation of pronouns in VP-ellipsis constructions in Dutch Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia

In this paper, we investigate the ability of Dutch agrammatic Broca's and Wernicke's aphasics to assign reference to possessive pronouns in elided VP constructions. The assumption is that the comprehension problems in these two populations have different sources that are revealed in distinct patterns of responses. The focus is primarily on the performance of the agrammatic group whose errors in comprehension are not viewed as a consequence of a breakdown of grammatical knowledge but as a result of limited processing resources (for an overview see Grodzinsky, 2000). The results of the present study provide evidence for the psycholinguistic reality of the economy hierarchy as proposed in the Primitives of Binding (Reuland, 2001). According to the economy hierarchy proposed for the non-brain-damaged, the more economical semantic dependencies are preferred over the costlier discourse dependencies. This hierarchy is reflected in agrammatic aphasia where the semantic dependencies are available on time and preferred over the discourse dependences that are not available on time as a result of the lack of processing resources with consequences for comprehension.     

Reference assignment: using language breakdown to choose between theoretical approaches

We report results of an experimental study with Dutch agrammatic aphasics that investigated their ability to interpret pronominal elements in transitive clauses and Exceptional Case Marking constructions (ECM). Using the obtained experimental results as a tool, we distinguish between three competing linguistic theories that aim at determining principles responsible for pronoun distribution: Government and Binding (Chomsky, 1981), Reflexivity (Reinhart & Reuland, 1993), and Primitives of Binding (Reuland, 2001). The obtained results are inconsistent with Government and Binding, but consistent with the latter two theories. We further show that the Primitives of Binding framework most naturally explains our results. Our proposal is based on the different performance demonstrated by patients in transitive clauses and ECM constructions, in combination with the often-made claim in the literature regarding the limitation of processing resources in this population (e.g., Haarmann and Kolk, 1991, Haarmann and Kolk, 1994 and Zurif et al., 1993, among others).     

Interaction of prime and target in the subliminal affective priming effect

It has been found that an emotional stimulus such as a facial expression presented subliminally can affect subsequent information processing and behavior, usually by shifting evaluation of a subsequent stimulus to a valence congruent with the previous stimulus. This phenomenon is called subliminal affective priming. The present study was conducted to replicate and expand previous findings by investigating interaction of primes and targets in the affective priming effect. Two conditions were used. Prime (subliminal presentation 35 msec.) of an angry face of a woman and a No Prime control condition. Just after presentation of the prime, an ambiguous angry face or an emotionally neutral face was presented above the threshold of awareness (500 msec.). 12 female undergraduate women judged categories of facial expressions (Anger, Neutral, or Happiness) for the target faces. Analysis indicated that the Anger primes significantly facilitated judgment of anger for the ambiguous angry faces; however, the priming effect of the Anger primes was not observed for neutral faces. Consequently, the present finding suggested that a subliminal affective priming effect should be more prominent when affective valence of primes and targets is congruent.     

Hemodynamic and electrophysiological relationship involved in human face processing: evidence from a combined fMRI-ERP study

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and event-related potential (ERP) experiments were conducted in the same group of subjects and with an identical task paradigm to investigate a possible relationship between hemodynamic and electrophysiological responses within the brain. The subjects were instructed to judge whether visually presented stimuli were faces or houses and then press the corresponding button. Functional MRI identified face- and house-related regions in the lateral and medial part of the fusiform gyrus, respectively, while ERP showed significantly greater N170 negativity for face than for house stimuli in the temporo-occipital electrodes. Correlation analysis between the BOLD signal in the fusiform gyrus and ERP parameters demonstrated a close relationship between the signal and both latency and amplitude of N170 across the subjects. These correlations may indicate that the variation in cognitive demand and hemodynamic responses during the face/house discrimination task is coupled with the variation of N170 peak latency/amplitude across the subjects. Thus, integrative analysis of spatial and temporal information obtained from the two experimental modalities may help in studying neural correlates involved in a particular cognitive task.     

DNA-sequence patenting: National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC) position paper

In November 2000, the Genetic Services Committee of the National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC) convened a working group to draft a position paper on patenting of DNA-sequences. The mandate of the group was to produce general position statements that support the perspective and needs of consumers of DNA-based genetic tests and therapies (our patients and their families) and participants in DNA-based genetic research. After review and discussion of the literature on DNA-sequence patenting issues, the working group drafted position statement points that support current United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) guidelines; broad licensing of DNA-sequence patents; nonenforcement of DNA-sequence patents in noncommercial research; reasonable royalty rates; an informed consent process for research participants that discloses whether they can share in any financial rewards relating to the project; the development of guidelines for licensing of DNA-sequence patents; and the establishment of oversight organizations to monitor licensing of DNA-sequence patents. These position statements were approved by the NSGC Board of Directors in the fall of 2001.