Did They Earn It? Observing Unearned Luxury Consumption Decreases Brand Attitude When Observers Value Fairness

People frequently observe others’ consumption, making inferences about both the consumer and the consumed brands. Although these observations are often beneficial for brands, this research demonstrates that observing luxury brand consumers whose consumption arose from unearned (vs. earned) financial resources reduces observers’ brand attitudes when observers place a high value on fairness. When fairness values are high, observers do not perceive luxury brand consumers who use unearned (vs. earned) consumption resources as prestigious, and in turn, lower prestige perceptions adversely affect observers’ brand evaluations for luxury brands. Consistent with our theorizing regarding the signaling of prestige, the joint effect of consumers’ consumption resources and observers’ fairness values on observers’ brand attitudes does not hold for nonluxury brands, which are not associated with prestige and thereby are not denigrated when the consumer is not perceived as prestigious. This research sheds light on the role of moral values in marketplace judgments of luxury consumption and brand attitude by considering the influence of consumption resources on observers’ judgments.     

Heuristics versus direct calculation,and age-related differences in multiplication: an evidence accumulation account of plausibility decisions in arithmetic

We offer a new theoretical angle for cognitive arithmetic, which is that evidence accumulation may play a role in problem plausibility decisions. We build upon previous studies that have considered such a hypothesis, and here formally evaluate the paradigm. We develop the finding that performance differences, due to variations in strategy use and aging effects, can indeed be reasonably explained through these accumulation-to-bound cognitive models. Results suggest that these models may be effectively used to learn more about the underlying cognitive processes. In this study, we modelled young (18–24) and older (68–82) adults’ solution times in performing arithmetic verification (e.g. whether 8?×?5?=?41 is true/false). The domain-relevant factors in strategy use (problem-verification heuristics) and aging differences (older/younger adult groups) were analyzed by a response process model of the latency data, that is fit by participant and item. Lower thresholds accounted for the faster response times (RTs) for problems solved with heuristics (arithmetic rule-violation checking strategies), as opposed to problems solved by calculation approaches. A more rapid accumulation accounted for faster RTs on problems in which two arithmetic rules were violated (strategy combination) rather than one. Third, higher thresholds (i.e. preferring to have greater certainty before responding) accounted for older adults’ slower speed. These findings are in support of accumulation models being relevant for more complex cognitive tasks, as well as to account for the age-related differences therein.     

How Cross‐Linguistic Differences in the Grammaticalization of Future Time Reference Influence Intertemporal Choices

According to Chen's (2013) Linguistic Savings Hypothesis (LSH), our native language affects our economic behavior. We present three studies investigating how cross‐linguistic differences in the grammaticalization of future‐time reference (FTR) affect intertemporal choices. In a series of decision scenarios about finance and health issues, we let speakers of altogether five languages that represent FTR with increasing strength, that is, Chinese, German, Danish, Spanish, and English, choose between hypothetical sooner‐smaller and later‐larger reward options. While the LSH predicts a present‐bias that increases with FTR‐strength, our decision makers preferred later‐larger options and this future‐bias increased with FTR‐strength. In multiple regressions, the FTR‐strength effect persisted when controlled for socioeconomic and cultural differences. We discuss why our findings deviate from the LSH and ask in how far the FTR‐strength effect represents a habitual constitution of linguistic relativity or an instance of online decision framing.     

Human rights without human supremacism*

Early defenders of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights invoked species hierarchy: human beings are owed rights because of our discontinuity with and superiority to animals. Subsequent defenders avoided species supremacism, appealing instead to conditions of embodied subjectivity and corporeal vulnerability we share with animals. In the past decade, however, supremacism has returned in work of the new ‘dignitarians’ who argue that human rights are grounded in dignity, and that human dignity requires according humans a higher status than animals. Against the dignitarians, I argue that defending human rights on the backs of animals is philosophically suspect and politically self-defeating.     

Victims' Stories: A Call to Care

In her book Victims' Stories and the Advancement of Human Rights, Diana Meyers offers a careful analysis of victims' stories as a narrative genre, and she argues that stories in this genre function as a call to care: they both depict a moral void and issue a moral demand, thereby fostering the development of a culture of human rights. This article, while finding Meyers's articulation of this idea compelling, questions Meyers's account of how victims' stories do their moral work. Whereas Meyers argues that victims' stories are complete narratives, characterized by a distinctive form of closure, it suggests that the moral power of victims' stories may lie in part in their open‐endedness or lack of closure. In telling their stories, victims engage their audiences in a new moral relationship and implicitly give them a role to play in bringing about the moral (and narrative) closure they seek.     

Integrating Covariates into Social Relations Models: A Plausible Values Approach for Handling Measurement Error in Perceiver and Target Effects

The Social Relations Model (SRM) is a conceptual and analytical approach to examining dyadic behaviors and interpersonal perceptions within groups. In an SRM, the perceiver effect describes a person's tendency to perceive other group members in a certain way, whereas the target effect measures the tendency to be perceived by others in certain ways. In SRM research, it is often of interest to relate these individual SRM effects to covariates. However, the estimated individual SRM effects might not provide a very reliable measure of the true, unobserved SRM effects, resulting in distorted estimates of associations with other variables. This article introduces a plausible values approach that allows users to correct for measurement error when assessing the association of individual SRM effects with other individual difference variables. In the plausible values approach, the latent, true individual SRM effects are treated as missing values and are imputed from an imputation model by applying Bayesian estimation techniques. In a simulation study, the statistical properties of the plausible values approach are compared with two approaches that have been used in previous research. A data example from educational psychology is presented to illustrate how the plausible values approach can be implemented with the software WinBUGS.     

Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf? The interweaving of values and science

The role of values in the scientific process is widely debated. But evidence and values cannot be neatly separated. Instead, values infuse the entire scientific process, starting with the choice of research questions. Research avenues are selected based on prior beliefs about the workings of the world. In fact, informally assigned prior probabilities and normalizing constants play an essential role in distinguishing causes from correlations and ignoring irrelevant associations that would otherwise be suggested by raw data. But since these initial probabilities often have a heterogeneous pedigree – often not all that went into their formation is known or knowable – it becomes difficult to cleanly separate evidence from values. At the same time, this reality does not undermine science’s unique status in generating knowledge. This is because it is not the evidence per se generated by science, but rather the method by which science generates it, that justifies science’s privileged role.     

Evidence: wanted,alive or dead

This paper is meant to link the philosophical debate concerning the underdetermination of theories by evidence with a rather significant socio-political issue that has been taking place in Canada over the past few years: the so-called ‘death of evidence’ controversy. It places this debate within a broader philosophical framework by discussing the connection between evidence and theory; by bringing out the role of epistemic values in the so-called scientific method; and by examining the role of social values in science. While it should be admitted that social values play an important role in science, the key question for anyone who advocates this view is: what and whose values? The way it is answered makes an important epistemic difference to how the relation between evidence and theory is appraised. I first review various arguments for the claim that evidence underdetermines theory and shows their presuppositions and limitations, using conceptual analysis and historical examples. After broaching the relation between evidence and method in science by highlighting the need to incorporate epistemic values into the scientific method, my discussion focuses on recent arguments for the role of social values in science. Finally, I address the implications of the approach outlined for the current ‘death of evidence’ debate in Canada.     

Public concerns about violent video games are moral concerns—How moral threat can make pacifists susceptible to scientific and political claims against violent video games

Public discussions about the harmfulness of violent media are often held in the aftermath of violent felony. At the same time, we know little about whether and how experiencing real‐life violence impacts the way laypersons perceive and evaluate debates about virtual violence. In Study 1, we provided data indicating that both real‐life violence and violent video games are perceived as morally threatening by people who regard nonviolence to be an important moral value (i.e., pacifists). In Study 2, we hypothesized and found that when pacifists perceive threat from the presence of real‐life violence, they are especially susceptible to scientific and political claims indicating that violent video games are harmful. Our findings are in line with the value protection model and research on the psychological consequences of threat. Implications of the present findings are discussed with regard to a better understanding of the violent video games debate in the general public.     

Terrorist Suspect Religious Identity and Public Support for Harsh Interrogation and Detention Practices

Does the U.S. public's support for the use of harsh interrogation and detention practices against terrorism suspects depend upon the religious identity of the alleged perpetrators? Some scholarly research indicates greater public acceptance for abridging the rights of Muslims after 9/11. This is consistent with literature suggesting that heightened perception of threat decreases popular tolerance for racial, ethnic, and religious outgroups. This study executes a survey experiment and finds respondents to be more permissive of the use of extraordinary detention practices, such as indefinite detention and denying suspects access to legal counsel and civilian criminal courts, against terror suspects identified as Muslims. Furthermore, the study reveals that respondents are significantly less likely to treat domestic, right‐wing terrorist suspects with extraordinary detention, suggesting ingroup leniency.