Normativity in Comparative Religious Ethics

This essay seeks to clarify the meaning and nature of normativity in metaethics and offers reasons why comparative religious ethics (CRE) must properly address questions about normativity. Though many comparative religious ethicists take CRE to be a normative discipline, what they say about normativity is often unclear and confusing. I argue that the third‐wave scholars face serious questions with respect to not only the justification of moral belief but also the rationality of moral belief and action. These scholars tend to view the justification of moral belief to be a matter of process (that is, discursive social practice) rather than evidence‐possession, thus overlooking crucial differences between the two. They also run the risk of confusing motivating and explanatory reasons with normative reasons for moral belief and action. Consequently, their account of normativity would be insufficient for determining the rationality of moral beliefs and actions as well as for justifying moral beliefs.     

Social Value Orientation Moderates the Effects of Intuition versus Reflection on Responses to Unfair Ultimatum Offers

We investigated whether social value orientation (SVO) moderates the effects of intuitive versus reflective information processing on responses to unfair offers. We measured SVO one week prior to an ultimatum game experiment in which participants had to accept or reject a series of 10 ultimatum offers including very low (unfair) ones. Before making these decisions, participants mentally contrasted their individual goals with the obstacle of pondering at length or acting in a hasty way; then they made the plan to adopt an intuitive or a reflective mode of processing (intuitive and reflective condition, respectively), or made no such plans (control condition). Participants with rather high (prosocial) SVO scores were more likely to accept unfair offers in the reflective than the intuitive condition. This effect also evinced for a subset of selfish individuals; however, the majority with rather low (selfish) scores made similar decisions in both conditions. This pattern of results suggests that SVO moderates the effects of intuitive versus reflective modes of processing on responses to low ultimatum offers. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Inducing Thought Processes: Bringing Process Measures and Cognitive Processes Closer Together

The challenge in inferring cognitive processes from observational data is to correctly align overt behavior with its covert cognitive process. To improve our understanding of this overt–covert mapping in the domain of decision making, we collected eye‐movement data during decisions between gamble‐problems. Participants were either free to choose or instructed to use a specific choice strategy (maximizing expected value or a choice heuristic). We found large differences in looking patterns between free and instructed choices. Looking patterns provided no support for the common assumption that attention is equally distributed between outcomes and probabilities, even when participants were instructed to maximize expected value. Eye‐movement data are to some extent ambiguous with respect to underlying cognitive processes. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Experiential tourist shopping value: Adding causality to value dimensions and testing their subjectivity

Previous literature on consumer behavior has tackled the experiential approach in retailing services in depth; however, most of the previous studies have concentrated on the simultaneous but not concatenated effects of value dimensions on satisfaction and/or loyalty. Furthermore, tourists' shopping behavior remains an underdeveloped area of study from the experiential perspective. This work explores experiential tourist shopping value, aiming to (a) explain tourists' loyalty to retailers by adding causality to experiential dimensions and (b) prove the subjectivity of these values. After a diachronic and synchronic review of the literature on experiential shopping value, a structural model with a chain of effects consisting of product quality, service quality, self‐esteem and shopping enjoyment on loyalty, and a multidimensional index as a second‐order model were built with partial least squares and tested on a purposive sample of 374 tourists in Valencia (Spain). Our findings revealed a sequential approach to tourists' shopping experiences where utilitarian values led to social and hedonic ones, all of which were antecedents of loyalty to retailers. Furthermore, the index showed differences by gender and nationality. Although our results are context specific, they add to the value creation process as they show a sequence of effects, and a fully subjective value provision, which changes according to demographics. The originality of this work is that it contributes to the suitability of the experiential paradigm in explaining tourists' shopping behavior by promoting interest in this specific, underdeveloped target area, and also by adding causality and proving the subjectivity of experiential value dimensions.     

Fitting Attitudes, Welfare, and Time

Chris Heathwood has recently put forward a novel and ingenious argument against the view that intrinsic value is analyzable in terms of fitting attitudes. According to Heathwood, this view holds water only if the related but distinct concept of welfare—intrinsic value for a person—can be analyzed in terms of fitting attitudes too. Moreover, he argues against such an analysis of welfare by appealing to the rationality of our bias towards the future. In this paper, I argue that so long as we keep the tenses and the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction right, the fitting-attitudes analysis of welfare can be shown to survive Heathwood’s criticism.

行为经济学中的损失规避

损失规避是指,人们总是强烈倾向于规避损失：一定数额的损失所引起的心理感受,其强烈程度约相当于两倍数额的获益感受。这种强烈的心理与行为倾向广泛存在于风险与非风险领域,在该两个领域中损失规避的研究范式也不同。损失规避常见于经济和消费等领域,可用于解释行为决策中有悖于规范化理论的诸多现象,如禀赋效应、现状偏差、股权溢价之迷和赢者的诅咒等。然而,损失规避的机制研究还存在许多尚未解决的问题,如损失规避的本质以及适用条件。今后的研究不仅要注重认知角度和情感依恋,还要结合认知过程来研究损失规避的性质和内在机制,以期帮助人们认识、预测及干预由损失规避造成的经济损失和非理性决策。     

社会价值取向与反馈对动态社会两难决策的影响：以水资源两难决策为例

以水资源两难情景为实验任务,探讨了社会价值取向与反馈在社会两难决策中的作用.结果表明: (1)社会价值取向在决策者的两难决策行为中起着非常重要的作用.合作型个体比非合作型个体显著地表现出更多的合作行为.个体的社会价值取向可以作为预测两难决策行为的一个重要因素: (2)不同的反馈类型对具有不同社会价值取向的决策者的决策行为影响不同.非合作型个体受反馈信息影响比较明显,而合作型个体则不易受他人的决策信息影响.     

论进化心理学的“心理机制”

“心理机制”是进化心理学的核心概念。对这一概念的理解直接影响着对整个进化心理学理论的理解。该文尝试从心理学其它相关学科的角度,对这一概念的性质进行充分的解读与分析,同时也指出进化心理学“心理机制”理论之明显误区,并在此基础上对进化心理学价值之所在给予充分的彰显。     

时间自我透视与价值偏好

该研究对大学生时间自我透视与价值偏好之间的关系进行了探讨。结果发现,当从远期的时间距离来透视自我（可能自我知觉）时,个体更加偏好理想主义价值;当个体从近期的时间距离来透视自我（当前自我知觉）时,个体更加偏好实用主义价值。但是,时间自我透视与价值偏好之间并非遵循严格的线性关系。此外,研究还发现,上述规律只出现于个体对自我的知觉中,个体对他人的时间透视并未表现出类似的规律。     

Sex–related self–concepts, cognitive styles and cultural values of traditionality–modernity as predictors of general and domain–specific sexism

Previous studies have determined that masculinity, femininity, need for closure and authoritarianism are significant predictors of sexism. The present study attempted to integrate these variables in order to better understand the nature of general ambivalent sexism and workplace–specific sexism in Singapore. Chinese traditionality and Chinese modernity were specifically examined as potential predictors of sexism. Robust results from hierarchical regressions indicated that these indigenous cultural variables were highly important in predicting general and workplace–specific sexism. Although masculinity and need for closure were unrelated to sexism, participant sex, femininity and authoritarianism significantly predicted sexist attitudes towards women. Most important, Chinese values were found to add significant incremental validity in predicting sexist attitudes beyond what was accounted by the aforementioned predictors. Chinese traditionality significantly predicted sexist attitudes towards women, but Chinese modernity was unrelated to sexism. Implications of these findings were discussed.