On the Importance of Well-being

Many among philosophers and non-philosophers would claim that well-being is important in moral theory because it is important to the individual whose well-being it is. The exact meaning of this claim, however, is in need of clarification. Having provided that, I will present a charge against it. This charge can be found in the recent work of both Joseph Raz and Thomas Scanlon. According to the latter the concept of well-being plays an unimportant role in an agent’s deliberation. As I will show, to claim this much is to undermine our initial claim; and to do that is to undermine some of the most central theories in normative ethics. I will focus on Scanlon’s discussion in particular because it affords us with two criteria for the assessment of the importance for a person of a value-concept such as well-being. I will claim that much of Scanlon’s case rests on the idea that well-being is an inclusive good, a good constituted by other things that are good in and for themselves. Then, I will put forward a case against Scanlon’s challenge by (1) showing that inclusiveness, when properly understood, does not lead to the conclusion Scanlon is led to and (2) showing that on at least the reading Scanlon prefers, his criteria are inappropriate.

‘Automatic’ evaluation? Strategic effects on affective priming

Two studies examined strategic effects on affective priming. Extending prior research by Klauer and Teige-Mocigemba [Klauer, K. C., & Teige-Mocigemba, S. (2007). Controllability and resource dependence in automatic evaluations. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43, 648-655], the influence of different control strategies on a priming measure of prejudice was assessed. In both studies, a short stimulus onset asynchrony between prime and target (275 ms) was implemented along with considerable time pressure. In Study 1, participants could strategically eliminate priming effects with attitudinal prime categories (Arabs and liked celebrities) represented by several exemplars per category while priming effects for control categories remained intact. In Study 2, two strategies (payoff and faking) were induced to motivate participants to respond particularly fast and accurately to incongruent targets. Both strategies were successful in counteracting the usual priming effects, while leaving priming effects for non-targeted primes intact. We consider the role of so-called implementation intentions in accounting for the present findings.     

Not too little, but not too much: The perceived desirability of responses to personality items

Paradigms typically employed to investigate socially desirable responding in personality assessment implicitly assume linear relationships exist between trait level and desirability but recent research has called this assumption into question. In this study, participants rated the desirability of a hypothetical applicant to one of four jobs on the basis of which five-point Likert-type scale option he/she selected when responding to personality items. Results generally indicated that the most extreme option, on the desirable side of the response scale, was rated as most desirable, but perceived desirability asymptotes with the penultimate option. The middle (neutral) option, however, was consistently regarded as being much less desirable. The occupational context also significantly moderated the patterns of desirability ratings for many items.