Establishing a Reputation

The positive effects of a favorable reputation on one's career are well known. What is less established is how reputations are developed and spread throughout an organization. When integrated, a variety of theories can provide a better understanding of personal reputation. Calling upon sense making, role theory, gossip, and a variety of other paradigms, the authors present a model of personal reputation in organizations.     

Young children use pedagogical cues to modulate the strength of normative inferences

Young children understand pedagogical demonstrations as conveying generic, kind‐relevant information. But, in some contexts, they also see almost any confident, intentional action on a novel artefact as normative and thus generic, regardless of whether this action was pedagogically demonstrated for them. Thus, although pedagogy may not be necessary for inferences to the generic, it may nevertheless be sufficient to produce inductive inferences on which the child relies more strongly. This study addresses this tension by bridging the literature on normative reasoning with that on social learning and inductive inference. Three‐year‐old children learned about a novel artefact from either a pedagogical or non‐pedagogical demonstration, and then, a series of new actors acted on that artefact in novel ways. Although children protested normatively in both conditions (e.g., ‘No, not like that’), they persisted longer in enforcing the learned norms in the face of repeated non‐conformity by the new actors. This finding suggests that not all generic, normative inferences are created equal, but rather they depend – at least for their strength – on the nature of the acquisition process.     

Merging Mass and Interpersonal Communication via Interactive Communication Technology: A Symposium

This introduction to the special issue describes the impetus for a review of the merger of mass and interpersonal communication processes in light of recent developments in communication technologies. It reviews historical arguments about the need for integration in theorizing about communication processes. Then, it discusses the potential for communication technologies to combine mass and interpersonal communication in ways that obviate the traditional distinction between both types, and how interactive communication technology offers unprecedented analytic approaches for research. Finally, it previews the 11 essays that follow by identifying 4 types of convergence of mass and interpersonal communication: concurrence, integration, transformation, and evolution.     

Children tell white lies to make others feel better

We investigated whether children tell white lies simply out of politeness or as a means to improve another person's mood. A first experimental phase probed children's individual insight to use white lies when prosocial behaviour was called for. We compared a situation in which a person had expressed sadness about her artwork and the goal was to make her feel better (Sad condition) with a situation in which a person was indifferent about her work (Neutral condition). Children at 7 years and older were more likely to tell a white lie than the blunt truth in the Sad over the Neutral condition. Five‐year‐olds showed only a trend. A second phase tested whether children selectively use white lie telling after it was modelled by an adult. Results showed that after modelling, children from all age groups were significantly more likely to use white lies in the Sad condition than in the Neutral condition. Taken together, these results show that children are attentive to another person's affective states when choosing whether to tell a white lie or tell the truth. We discuss the emergence of this behaviour in relation to children's developing social cognition and the increasing sophistication of children's prosocial behaviour.     

Whom to punish? How observers sanction norm-violating behavior in ostracism situations

When observing ostracism, individuals can either side with the target or the sources of ostracism. Here we demonstrate that side-taking depends on whether the target previously acted in adherence to or in violation of perceived social norms. In four studies, a target behaved either norm-consistently or violated a social norm, and was subsequently either excluded by the sources or was not. Next, participants could sanction the behavior of the observed persons by refraining to assign money (Studies 1 and 2), or by subtracting money from a bonus (Studies 3 and 4). Observers assigned less money to the sources when these excluded a norm-consistent target. However, when the target had violated a social norm before, participants assigned less money to the target instead. These results have far-reaching implications because the (in)actions of neutral individuals can legitimize the sources’ behavior, or help a target under attack.     

ON AGGRESSION TURNED AGAINST THE SELF

Deliberate self‐harm is a common presenting problem suffered by young people. Several patients referred to the NHS outpatient clinic where I work have been able to stop harming themselves during intensive psychoanalytic psychotherapy. In this paper, I shall discuss a variety of motives for persistent cutting by one adolescent girl. I am most interested to show how the healthier part of her personality overcame her motives for harming herself, and eventually allowed her to make use of my understanding of a sadomasochistic internal object that worked against us.     

Where Have All the Proportionalists Gone?

Interest in proportionalism as an important trend in Catholic moral theology seems to have faded in the recent decade. This has led some to view it as a movement that was somehow defeated. I suggest that proportionalism's influence can still be seen in contemporary Catholic ethics, most noticeably in the current interest in virtue ethics, casuistry, and feminist ethics. I argue that proportionalism encouraged a reappraisal of the methodology for evaluating moral action in a direction that was more hospitable to concerns about the particularity and context of the agent.