When and how communicated guilt affects contributions in public good dilemmas

Two laboratory studies investigated how groups may deal with the strong emotions that social dilemmas often elicit. A first study showed that a new group member evaluated guilt communicated by a fellow group member as more instrumental than neutral emotion feedback when the amount of required resources to obtain the public good (i.e., provision point) was perceived as difficult to obtain. A second study revealed that participants use communicated guilt to draw inferences about both past and future contributions from all fellow group members. Participants also contributed more themselves and adhered to equality more often when guilt versus no emotion was communicated, but only when the provision point was high. Expected contributions from fellow group members mediated this effect.     

Holism,Communication, and the Emergence of Public Meaning: Lessons from an Economic Analogy

Holistic accounts of meaning normally incorporate a subjective dimension that invites the criticism that they make communication impossible, for speakers are bound to differ in ways the accounts take to be relevant to meaning, and holism generalises any difference over some words to a difference about all, and this seems incompatible with the idea that successful communication requires mutual understanding. I defend holism about meaning from this criticism. I argue that the same combination of properties (subjective origins of value, holism among values, and ultimate publicity of value) is exhibited by monetary value and take the emergence of equilibrium prices as a model for the emergence of public meanings.

Dual effects of implicit bystanders: Inhibiting vs. facilitating helping behavior

Encouraging consumers to engage in helpful behavior is a perennial task of marketers in non-profit and for-profit organizations. Recent research suggests that merely imagining the presence of others can lead to less helping behavior on a subsequent unrelated task (Garcia, S.M., Weaver, K.D., Moskowitz, G.B., and Darley, J.M. (2002). Crowded minds: The implicit bystander effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 843–853.). The present analysis uncovers the boundary conditions of this effect. Across four studies, we establish that the degree to which a group situation fosters public scrutiny is an important moderator. When group primes are paired with public scrutiny, their inhibitive effect on helping behavior diminishes, and helping behavior on a subsequent task tends to increase. The present research thus adds complexity to previous findings by suggesting that implicit bystanders can both decrease and increase helping behavior.     

Overblocking autonomy: the case of mandatory library filtering software

In U.S. v. American Library Association (2003), the Supreme Court upheld the Child Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which mandated that libraries receiving federal funding for public Internet access install content-filtering programs on computers which provide that access. These programs analyze incoming content, and block the receipt of objectionable material, in particular pornography. Thus, patrons at public libraries are protected from unintentionally (or intentionally) accessing objectionable material, and, in the case of minors, from accessing potentially damaging material. At least, that is the official story. In this paper, I develop three points. (1) I argue that CIPA and ALA are better read as examples of the enforcement of a regime of normative sexuality. The question of minors accessing pornography is only relevant to the official story insofar as it provides a rhetorically persuasive example of deviance from that normative regime. CIPAs full target includes information about topics such as homosexuality and contraception. (2) Rather than (or in addition to) punishing deviances directly, CIPA attempts to constitute a “public” in which such deviancy can never occur in the first place. Hence, the designation of a “public” space serves to domesticate alternative sexualities and to sanitize that space of sexual difference. (3) This interaction at the border of the public and private spheres offers an opportunity to reflect on and underscore the ways that subject formation and subjectivity are mediated through technological artifacts like the Internet.

Human embryonic stem cell research and the discarded embryo argument

Many who believe that human embryos have moral status are convinced that their use in human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research can be morally justified as long as they are discarded embryos left over from fertility treatments. This is one reason why this view about discarded embryos has played such a prominent role in the debate over publicly funding hESC research in the United States and other countries. Many believe that this view offers the best chance of a compromise between the different sides in this debate. This paper focuses on what seems to be the most plausible argument for this view about discarded embryos. It shows that this argument is unsound regardless of how one understands the claim that embryos have moral status. It also discusses the implications of this conclusion for attempts to use this argument as a basis for public policy.

Do avian brood parasites eavesdrop on heterospecific sexual signals revealing host quality? A review of the evidence

Eavesdropping can be defined as the extraction of information from the interactions between other individuals. It provides a relatively cheap way of gathering relevant information for fitness enhancement. Here, we propose that obligate avian brood parasites, which always lay their eggs in foreign nests of individuals of other species, may eavesdrop on their host sexual signals to locate nests of high quality individuals in which to lay their parasitic eggs. Sexual signal variation can honestly signal parental quality. Thus, by eavesdropping on sexual signals, parasites may select high quality foster parents for their own offspring. Such a use of sexual signals within host populations by brood parasites differs from signal exploitation theory that proposes that parasite only use signals to locate potential host independently from signaller quality. Here, we review the avian literature concerning host choice within a host species by obligate avian brood parasites and find evidence for host selection within individuals of a host species on the basis of cues potentially functioning as sexually selected traits, or at least revealing parental abilities. We have also found support for the existence of benefits linked to host selection by avian brood parasites. Finally, one study reported on the attenuation of a sexual ornament in host populations under strong pressure by brood parasites. Most of these findings have been interpreted as evidence for host selection by avian brood parasites based on the conspicuousness of sexual signals. We suggest, however, that these findings may in fact reveal eavesdropping on host signalling performance by brood parasites which would use the information extracted to choose the better individuals among conspecifics of a given host. This provides a new perspective for the study of host selection in obligate brood parasites, and raises interesting questions for the study of animal cognition that would deserve experimental studies.     

Resistance to yielding and the expectation of cooperative future interaction in negotiation

The expectation of cooperative future interaction (ECFI) encouraged especially high joint benefit (the total of the two bargainers' individual outcomes) when resistance to yielding was high, but especially low joint benefit when resistance to yielding was low. Process data suggest that this finding can be explained as follows: When resistance to yielding is high, ECFI encourages problem solving and reduced contentious behavior; when resistance to yielding is low, ECFI encourages a collapse of aspirations. The results support Filley's (1975) dualconcern model and cast doubt on Deutsch's (1973) blanket assertion that a cooperative process leads to constructive conflict resolution.     

Transport risk evaluations associated with past exposure to adverse security events in public transport

The current study aims to examine differences in risk evaluations according to whether individuals have been exposed to adverse security events in transport during the last five years. In addition, a path model is tested where risk evaluations predict intentions to use public transport and use of such transport in these groups. The results are based on a survey conducted in a randomly obtained representative sample of the Norwegian urban public (n = 1043). The results showed that individuals who had been exposed to adverse security events in public transport reported substantially higher risk perception of experiencing security issues in such transport than those who were not exposed. Exposed individuals also reported higher probability judgements and more worry of experiencing injury in public transport. The path model showed that high probability judgements of experiencing injury in public transport were related to a lower intention of using such transport, whereas corresponding worry in the private motorized sector predicted a stronger intention to use public transport. Demand for risk mitigation in the public transport sector was found to be more relevant for intentions to use public transport than similar demands in the private motorized sector. The path model and coefficients were not found to differ significantly according to exposure to security events in public transport. The findings are discussed in relation to the role of negative risk experiences for risk evaluations in transport.     

Transport of tools to food sites in tufted capuchin monkeys (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Cebus apella</Emphasis>)

Tool use and transport represent cognitively important aspects of early hominid evolution, and nonhuman primates are often used as models to examine the cognitive, ecological, morphological and social correlates of these behaviors in order to gain insights into the behavior of our early human ancestors. In 2001, Jalles-Filho et al. found that free-ranging capuchin monkeys failed to transport tools (stones) to food sites (nuts), but transported the foods to the tool sites. This result cast doubt on the usefulness of Cebus to model early human tool-using behavior. In this study, we examined the performance of six captive tufted capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) in a tool transport task. Subjects were provided with the opportunity to transport two different tools to fixed food reward sites when the food reward was visible from the tool site and when the food reward was not visible from the tool site. We found that the subjects quickly and readily transported probing tools to an apparatus baited with syrup, but rarely transported stones to a nut-cracking apparatus. We suggest that the performance of the capuchins here reflects an efficient foraging strategy, in terms of energy return, among wild Cebus monkeys.