Cultural norms and cultural agents in buyer–seller negotiation processes and outcomes

Although a good number of studies have significantly investigated the role of culture in buyer–seller negotiation processes and outcomes, fewer studies have investigated the role of individual negotiators and organizations in shaping the cultural norms that affect negotiation processes and outcomes. Through a multi-case study of buyer–seller negotiations in five organizations that are illustrative of the informal economy of Nigeria, the study unpacks the role of individuals and organizations in shaping the cultural norms that affect the scope and outcomes of negotiation in an emerging market economy. We find that buyers and sellers play the role of inhabiting cultural norms which in turn narrow the scope of the negotiation to price considerations. On the other hand, the templates used by organizations to execute selling activities either maintain or deter the cultural norms that influence negotiation outcomes. Insights from the study extend the literatures on institutional work, culture and negotiation, sales negotiation in emerging markets.     

Electron-phonon interactions in conducting polymers

The magnetic properties of conducting polymers are investigated within a one-dimensional periodic Anderson model in which effects stemming from electron–lattice intercations are explicitly included. The effective Hamiltonian derived via bosonization exhibits ferromagnetic ground state in the intermediate coupling regime. For these ferromagnetic polymers, the results show that phononic contributions have insignificant effect on ferromagnetism.     

Muslim–Paulician Encounters and Early Islamic Anti-Christian Polemical Writings

This article investigates the portrayals of the Paulicians in early Islamic sources and specifically analyses the role that Paulician religious views play in Islamic anti-Christian writings. The study also gives insights into the nature of materials that were available to Muslim scholars and the strategies they applied in constructing coherent arguments to refute certain Christian religious beliefs. In doing so, the study touches upon Muslims’ religious needs and scholarly curiosity, which sheds light on their intellectual interactions with non-Islamic religious beliefs and philosophical ideas. The article demonstrates that references to Paulician religious beliefs can be found primarily in early Christian–Islamic polemics. Muslim polemicists, most of whom were Mu?tazilites, attempted to demonstrate the soundness and the coherence of Islamic tenets vis-à-vis inadequacies and contradictions in Christian doctrines. The reliance of Muslim polemicists on heresiographical discourse therefore constituted an important strategy to substantiate their polemical arguments. Two major issues stand out in Islamic portrayals of Paulician doctrines: the centrality of Paul of Samosata in the history of the sect, and his association with the view that Jesus was a human being devoid of divinity.     

Impact of outpatient non-myeloablative haematopoietic stem cell transplantation in quality of life vs. conventional therapy

The role of outpatient hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) as a therapeutic tool has been strengthened significantly because of the increasing number of patients undergoing this treatment. Due the very nature of this procedure, one of the aspects that should not be overlooked is the quality of life (QOL) of patients undergoing HSCT. Thus, one must consider not only health status after treatment, but also, the psychosocial implications for the patient. This is an observational, longitudinal, and prospective study to assess QOL in patients undergoing outpatient HSCT vs. similar patients receiving medical treatment (MxTx). By applying the COOP/WONKA charts on five occasions (pre-HSCT/initial, post-HSCT/first month, and at 3, 6, and 9 months), thirty-eight patients were analysed, 19 with HSCT and 19 with MxTx with no differences in age, gender or diagnosis. The initial survey found significant differences only in pain perception, which was higher in the HSCT group (p = .08); at the first month, there was a greater tendency for feelings of depression or anxiety in the HSCT group (p = .016), with more limitations in social (p = .003) and daily (p = .044) activities. From 3 months post-HSCT, the results were very similar. The differences persisted only in the area of social activities. Four patients developed graft-versus-host disease with no significant difference in the scores obtained compared to other transplant patients at 3, 6, and 9 months (p = .26) of follow-up.     

Bridging the divide in work and organizational psychology: evidence from practice

This study explores the extent to which work and organizational (W&O) psychology practitioners use evidence, how they apply it to the everyday contexts in which they work, and the types of barriers they encounter in so doing. It adopts a mixed methods approach involving the administration of a survey to a UK sample (N = 163) of W&O psychologists and a series of semi-structured interviews (N = 25) exploring in greater depth how evidence is applied in practice. Findings reveal that practitioners consult a wide range of different types of evidence which they employ at various stages of engagement with client organizations and that this evidence is pressed into service in the pursuit of solutions which are both acceptable from the client perspective and consistent with the scientific standards underpinning professional knowledge and expertise in W&O psychology. Barriers to evidence-use were mainly practical in nature, concerning issues around managing the client–consultant relationship and the particularities of implementation context, both of which were shown to influence evidence utilization. The study contributes to current debate on the extent to which W&O psychologists adopt an evidence-based approach and provides a valuable and much called-for empirical insight into the enactment of the scientist–practitioner model in W&O psychology.     

Εὐφραινέσθωσαν οἱ οὐρανοί, ‘Let the heavens rejoice’: an Anglican reflection on the 2014 Agreed Statement on Christology between the Anglican Communion and the Oriental Orthodox Churches

After acknowledging the importance of the Anglican–Oriental Orthodox Agreed Statement on Christology (2014) and explaining the perspective of this article, the rationale of Christology as confession and interpretation is explained and explored: its development of the fundamental theme of Christ the eternal Son, by his double solidarity in incarnation with humanity and Godhead relating and re-bonding Godhead and humanity. This theme, inherent in Peter’s confession of Jesus as Messiah, is essentially repeated by Paul and continuously interpreted in the Church’s unfolding self-understanding. Criticism of this process is mentioned and briefly countered. The continuity of the theme in the debates of the fourth and fifth centuries, its basis in principles of human relevance and divine commitment and its adequate expression in the Statement are indicated and affirmed. The prudent silence of the Agreement on technical refinements and definitions of Councils is noted. Finally, brief suggestions are offered in explanation of the continuance of the issue in ancient times and reflections on its relevance to modern Christology.     

Biases and regularities of grapheme–colour associations in Japanese nonsynaesthetic population

Associations between graphemes and colours in a nonsynaesthetic Japanese population were investigated. Participants chose the most suitable colour from 11 basic colour terms for each of 40 graphemes from the four categories of graphemes used in the Japanese language (kana characters, English alphabet letters, and Arabic and kanji numerals). This test was repeated after a three-week interval. In their responses, which were not as temporally consistent as those of grapheme–colour synaesthetes, participants showed biases and regularities that were comparable to those of synaesthetes reported in past studies. Although it has been believed that only synaesthetes, and not nonsynaesthetes, tended to associate graphemes with colours based on grapheme frequency, Berlin and Kay's colour typology, and colour word frequency, participants in this study tended in part to associate graphemes with colours based on the above factors. Moreover, participants that were nonsynaesthetes tended to associate different graphemes that shared sounds and/or meanings (e.g., Arabic and kanji numerals representing the same number) with the same colours, which was analogous to the findings in Japanese synaesthetes. These results support the view that grapheme–colour synaesthesia might have its origins in cross-modal association processes that are shared with the general population.     

Subliminal repetition primes help detection of phonemes in a picture: Evidence for a phonological level of the priming effects

In this research, we combine a cross-form word–picture visual masked priming procedure with an internal phoneme monitoring task to examine repetition priming effects. In this paradigm, participants have to respond to pictures whose names begin with a prespecified target phoneme. This task unambiguously requires retrieving the word-form of the target picture's name and implicitly orients participants' attention towards a phonological level of representation. The experiments were conducted within Spanish, whose highly transparent orthography presumably promotes fast and automatic phonological recoding of subliminal, masked visual word primes. Experiments 1 and 2 show that repetition primes speed up internal phoneme monitoring in the target, compared to primes beginning with a different phoneme from the target, or sharing only their first phoneme with the target. This suggests that repetition primes preactivate the phonological code of the entire target picture's name, hereby speeding up internal monitoring, which is necessarily based on such a code. To further qualify the nature of the phonological code underlying internal phoneme monitoring, a concurrent articulation task was used in Experiment 3. This task did not affect the repetition priming effect. We propose that internal phoneme monitoring is based on an abstract phonological code, prior to its translation into articulation.     

The influence of high and low cue–action association on prospective memory performance

Recent discoveries in the field of prospective memory (PM) show higher accuracy for remembering intentions in which prospective cue and action are strongly associated. In two experiments presented in this paper, participants encoded both high and low association cue–action pairs and were later tested on both prospective and retrospective PM components. Results of both studies show higher PM accuracy for the low association pairs, compared to high association ones, but only for the prospective component (across both Experiments) and only when a high association cue was presented first (Experiment 2). This finding was accompanied by longer study times for the low association pairs and study times were functionally related to later performance (across both Experiments). In the retrospective component, higher accuracy was observed for pairs with high level of association (but only in the first Experiment). Data are discussed in the context of metacognitive processes possibly related to the encoding of an intention as well as cue monitoring in case of PM tasks with high memory load and varying task difficulty.     

The Beck Depression Inventory as a Measure of Subjective Well-Being: A Cross-National Study

The present study examined the question whether the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), which is one of the most widely used instruments to assess depression, can be used to measure differences in subjective well-being at national level. In order to establish the meaning of depression scores at country level, the functional equivalence (i.e., similarity of meaning) of depression scores at individual and country level was examined. Studies using the BDI in normal populations from 28 countries were collected. Depression showed the same correlates at individual and country level, which supports the functional equivalence of the BDI at the two levels. BDI scores and subjective well-being were then correlated with a number of country characteristics in order to test three theories of cross-national differences in subjective well-being. Livability theory stresses the importance of objective living conditions, comparison theory focuses on relative living conditions, and folklore theory states that cross-national differences can be explained by some national trait (e.g., beliefs and values concerning happiness). Cross-national differences in depression and subjective well-being could be explained by livability theory and folklore theory. BDI scores were negatively correlated with subjective well-being and other happiness-related variables. These findings suggest that depression had the same meaning at individual and country level and that depression is an adequate measure of (a lack of) subjective well-being at country level.