Between Indifference and the Regimes of Truth. An Essay on Fundamentalism,Tolerance and Hypocrisy

Philosophia - There are two basic positions where tolerance as political strategy and moral viewpoint is rejected or made redundant. We are hostile to tolerance when we hold that we are defending...     

The importance of status congruency in interaction processes

The literature on status congruency is summarized in two statements: 1) Individuals strive after status congruency, and 2) status congruency involves favorable state for individuals, groups and the society. The two reported experiments throw serious doubts on the generality of these statements. Experiment I is a variation of Burnstein and Zajonc's (1965) experiment. It is hypothesized and shown that the striving after congruency is weakened under condition of a competitive reward structure, the Ss giving incongruent self-rankings. Moreover it is found that nominations for a different task are not congruent at all. Experiment II was designed to replicate and extend Exline and Ziller's (1959) experiment, in which it was shown that status congruency in small groups causes interpersonal conflict. On none of the several measures was clear support obtained. In the discussion it is argued that there is hardly any experimental evidence for the two statements formulated above. It is pointed out that the correlational relationships between status congruency and other variables may be attributed to some internal cognitive link in the person, serving as an intermediate variable, the forces of it perhaps being self-interest (as supported by Experiment I), a need for clarity and a need for justice.     

Design research programs and the logic of their development

Design research programs attempt to bring together the properties of available materials and the demands derived from intended applications. The logic of problem states and state transitions in such programs, including assessment criteria and heuristic principles, is described in settheoretic terms, starting with a naive model comprising an intended profile and the operational profile of a prototype. In a first concretization the useful distinction between structural and functional properties is built into the model. In two further concretizations the inclusion of potential applications is motivated and described for the case of drug research as well as the inclusion of potential realizations for the case of complex products. Next, another line of concretization of the naive model, the incorporation of potentially relevant properties, is sketched. Then the partial analogy between product- and truth-approximation is indicated. We conclude with some remarks about the usefulness of our models for products reaching the market in comparison to the the so-called social construction of technology approach.     

Lösungsstrategien beim Attneaveschen Rateversuch

Zusammenfassung Der Rateversuch von Attneave wurde durch Zulassung freier Ratestrategien modifiziert und der Lösungsvorgang der Rateaufgabe zum Thema einer Untersuchung gemacht. Es zeigte sich, daß die Rateleistung (Position des letzten Fehlers) mit zwei provisorisch gebildeten Strategiemerkmalen kovariiert: der Systematik der Abfolge und dem Verhalten nach einem Fehler. Je weniger systematisch die Reihenfolge überprüfter Flächenelemente ist oder/und je konsequenter die positive Strategie der Suche nach dem Figurverlauf auch nach der Widerlegung von Teilhypothesen beibehalten wird, um so besser ist die Rateleistung. Die Befunde werden kurz diskutiert.     

Rehearsal strategies during motor-sequence learning in old age: execution vs motor imagery

Motor imagery and action-based rehearsal were compared during motor sequence-learning by young adults (M = 25 yr., SD = 3) and aged adults (M = 63 yr., SD = 7). General accuracy of aged adults was lower than that of young adults (F(1,28) = 7.37, p =.01) even though working-memory capacity was equivalent in the two groups. Motor imagery and rehearsal by action increased accuracy in both age groups, compared with minimization of opportunity for rehearsal (F(1,28) = 30.95, p < .001), but no interaction was found with age group, which suggests that young and aged adults were equally capable of motor imagery and action-based rehearsal. It was assumed that differences in performance between young and aged participants related to the formation of mental representations of sequences and integration of new elements into these representations rather than the capacity for motor imagery or rehearsal by action per se. The current study was exploratory and involved a relatively small sample of 15 participants per age group. Caution must be taken when considering the results.     

Moral Compromises, Moral Integrity and the Indeterminacy of Value Rankings

Though the art of compromise, i.e. of settling differences by mutual concessions, is part of communal living on any level, we often think that there is something wrong in compromise, especially in cases where moral convictions are involved. A first reason for distrusting compromises on moral matters refers to the idea of integrity, understood in the basic sense of 'standing for something', especially standing for the values and causes that to some extent confer identity. The second reason points out the objective nature of moral values, which seems to make them immune from negotiation and barter. If one sincerely holds some moral conviction to be true, than compromising on that belief must be a sign of serious confusion.In order to reach a better understanding of these two reasons, I analyse what is involved in personal integrity and how this relates to moral integrity. I argue that the search for moral integrity naturally brings us to the question of how one could accept moral compromises and still uphold the idea that moral values and principles have an objective authority over us. To address this question I will present a version of moral pluralism which tries to capture the enormous complexity of what should matter to us as moral persons, and which explains why value-rankings are often deeply indeterminate. The general position I defend in this paper is that compromises involving moral values and norms may be morally required and, therefore, be laudable. To sustain this position I will arrive at a view of ethical objectivity that allows the possibility to negotiate about the truth of moral beliefs.     

The Work–Home Interface: Linking Work‐Related Wellbeing and Volunteer Work

An abundance of research shows the benefits of participation in volunteer work for individuals, employers and the society as a whole. However, relatively little is known about the precursors of volunteer work. In this study, we aim to fill this gap by investigating to what extent work‐related well‐being can function as a driver of volunteer work. Moreover, building on the Conservations of Resources Theory (Hobfoll, 1989 , 2011 ), we propose that the relationship between work‐related well‐being (burnout and engagement) and volunteer work is mediated by the work–home interface (work–home enrichment and work–home conflict). This hypothesis was tested in a large Swiss sample (N = 1947). Consistent with our expectations, structural equation analyses revealed an indirect relationship between (i) work engagement and volunteer work via work–home enrichment and (ii) between burnout and volunteer work via work–home conflict. In conclusion, it seems that well‐being at work indeed functions as a precursor for volunteer work because of the consequences it has for the work–family interface. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Predictive validity of the Dutch PCL:YV for institutional disruptive behavior: findings from two samples of male adolescents in a juvenile justice treatment institution

The present prospective study examined the predictive validity of the Dutch version of the Psychopathy Check List: Youth Version for disruptive behavior in male adolescents during treatment. The study comprised two samples admitted to different secure treatment institutions in The Netherlands, Jongerenhuis Harreveld (n = 81) and Rentray (n = 66). Overall, the results demonstrate that psychopathy is a significant predictor of institutional disruptive behavior, and physical violence in particular. Furthermore, Hare's traditional Factor 2 was more strongly related to disruptive incidents than Factor 1. By using the recently proposed three- and four-factor models of psychopathy, insight into the pattern of associations between psychopathy dimensions and different types of disruptive behavior was obtained. The antisocial dimension of psychopathy appeared to be more strongly related to severe incidents than the lifestyle dimension. Regression analyses identified significant contributions of the antisocial and lifestyle dimensions to the prediction of incidents. The relatively small degree of variance explained underlines the importance of other risk factors to identify adolescents at risk of disruptive behavior during institutional treatment.