Finding the Lost Sheep: A Panel Study of Business Students' Intrinsic Religiosity,Machiavellianism, and Unethical Behavior Intentions

This research investigates 266 business students' panel data across 4 time periods and tests a theoretical model involving intrinsic religiosity, the love of money (Time 1), Machiavellianism (Time 2), and propensity to engage in unethical behaviors (PUB; Times 3 and 4). There was a short ethics intervention between Times 3 and 4. We identified good apples and bad apples using the PUB measure collected at Time 4. From Time 3 to Time 4, good apples became more ethical, whereas bad apples became less ethical after the ethics intervention. Moreover, for the whole sample, intrinsic religiosity deterred unethical intentions not only directly but also indirectly through the absence of Machiavellianism. Before the ethics intervention, intrinsic religiosity curbed unethical intention directly for good apples but indirectly for bad apples. After the intervention, only the indirect effect was significant for bad apples. Intrinsic religiosity offers us hope to open the hearts of the lost sheep and bring them home. Research results were discussed in light of this study's theoretical, empirical, and practical contributions; Judeo-Christian ethics and values; challenging roles of educators and executives in educating Gen-Yers; creating a sea change of the ethical social norm in schools, organizations, and society, or ethical community building, and promoting ethical behavior; and future directions for research.     

The compression block technique

Remembering the distance or end-location of an interpolated movement interfered equally with the retention of criterion movement end-location. Interpolated distances were recalled less well than interpolated locations. These results were interpreted as evidence of capacity interference rather than structural interference with a visual/kinesthetic integrated store.     

Experimental test of a planning intervention for forming a ‘higher order’ health-habit

Abstract

Objective: Habit-formation interventions may help individuals initiate and maintain behaviour change. This paper proposes and empirically tests the idea that it is possible for individuals to form ‘higher-order habits’, or behaviours that can be executed in more than one way, and still be habitual.

Design: Participants (N?=?82) were healthy adults randomly assigned to an action-and-coping-planning intervention for forming a ‘higher-order habit’ of filling half of their dinner plates with fruits and vegetables or a control condition. Key measures were collected at baseline and 1, 2 and 3 weeks post-baseline. Participants submitted 3 pictures per week of their dinner plates via snapchat/email.

Main Outcome Measures: Intrinsic motivation, habit strength and behavioural frequency for filling half their dinner plates with fruits and vegetables.

Results: Intervention participants reported significantly greater habit strength at each follow-up time point. Controls did show some degree of habit formation, despite not fully forming a habit. Behavioural automaticity increased despite consuming a variety of fruits/vegetables; results did not depend on participants’ intrinsic motivation to consume fruits/vegetables.

Conclusion: It may be possible for individuals to form ‘higher-order’ habits, which may be particularly important in health contexts, in which many target behaviours are complex and can be seen as higher-order.     

Intrinsic Explanation and Field’s Dispensabilist Strategy

Abstract

Hartry Field defended the importance of his nominalist reformulation of Newtonian Gravitational Theory, as a response to the indispensability argument, on the basis of a general principle of intrinsic explanation. In this paper, I argue that this principle is not sufficiently defensible, and can not do the work for which Field uses it. I argue first that the model for Field’s reformulation, Hilbert’s axiomatization of Euclidean geometry, can be understood without appealing to the principle. Second, I argue that our desires to unify our theories and explanations undermines Field’s principle. Third, the claim that extrinsic theories seem like magic is, in this case, really just a demand for an account of the applications of mathematics in science. Finally, even if we were to accept the principle, it would not favor the fictionalism that motivates Field’s argument, since the indispensabilist’s mathematical objects are actually intrinsic to scientific theory.     

Intrinsic religiosity protects believers from the existential fear of a human Jesus

ABSTRACT

The present study examined the role of internalised religious beliefs in defending against existential concerns aroused from a creaturely Jesus. Prior work has found that biologically human traits (e.g., vomiting, sweating, etc.) can increase death concerns when applied to both humans and a god. Intrinsic beliefs, however, have been shown to reduce mortality awareness. In the current study, religious participants were primed with thoughts of either a human or neutral Jesus followed by a single item measure about fear of death. A moderated regression analysis found that whereas high intrinsic individuals were buffered from existential concerns, low intrinsic individuals experienced a greater fear of death when primed with a human Jesus. These results replicate prior work within terror management theory and the psychology of religion suggesting that internalised beliefs serve a protective function against existential anxieties.     

From ecology to ecosophy,from science to wisdom

Eco‐science (ecology) is not enough. Eco‐wisdom (ecosophy) is needed: How to live on Earth enjoying and respecting the full richness and diversity of life‐forms of the ecosphere.

The cold acknowledgement of dependency upon ecosystems is not enough to motivate responsible policies. To replenish the Earth, we need thejoy of interaction with life and within life. This implies deep reaction against the narrowly utilitarian outlook. We need integration of all levels: abstract and fundamental premises of a philosophy or religion, the derivation of general guideline of global action from these premises, and the conclusion of particular decisions in concrete situations in everyday life. In short: ecosophical total views are called for.     

A fallacy of aristotle''s about ends

A distinction between activities and processes plays an important role in Aristotle's argument to establish that the good life is a life of activities, among which metaphysical contemplation is foremost. But, as a result of having failed to distinguish internal from external ends of action, Aristotle makes fallacious inferences from every activity's having an internal end in itself to its possessing features which may be legitimately inferred only from external ends, and from every process's having an internal end that is its terminal point to its having the attainment of that terminal point as an external end. The resulting confusion explains a number of problematic elements in Aristotle's ethical theory.     

Deci and Ryan's cognitive evaluation theory of intrinsic motivation: A set of common sense theorems

Cognitive evaluation theory as put forward by Deci and Ryan (1985) is examined. The theory, which deals with intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, has inspired considerable amount of empirical research in the last two decades. However, contrary to the mainstream view and that of its authors, it is argued here that the theory consists of necessary truths of common sense (folk) psychology, rather than contingent and empirically testable hypotheses. As such the theory spells out what must necessarily be the case in human motivation and the empirical evidence amassed to test its validity is irrelevant. Such testing should be abandoned if its purpose is to appraise the truth value of the theory's propositions. To empirically test necessary true propositions is not only redundant in such cases, but also a waste of time and resources.     

Intrinsic Value as a Reason for the Preservation of Minority Cultures

In the Netherlands, the policy of supporting the efforts of ethnic-cultural minorities to express and preserve their cultural distinctiveness, is nowadays considered as problematic because it might interfere with their integration into the wider society. The primary aim is now to reduce these groups' unemployment rate and to stimulate their participation in the wider society. In this article I consider how the notion of the intrinsic value of cultures, if sensible, might affect the policy regarding ethnic-cultural minorities. I develop a theory of intrinsic value of culture, as an analogy of the theory of intrinsic value of non-human natural entities. My conclusion is that the dominant cultural group in the Netherlands should preserve clearly deviant minority cultures which have considerable intrinsic value.     

语音告警信号语速研究

用普通会话句表和飞机告警句表两种测试材料 ,以言语可懂度测试法和主观评价法研究言语告警信号的适宜语速。实验中的语速定为 0 .1 1、0 .1 5、0 .2 0、0 .2 5、0 .3 5和 0 .45秒 /字六级。实验模拟飞机座舱环境 ,采用计算机生成的数字化言语信号 ,在 90 d B(A)的飞机噪声环境下 ,通过耳机传递给被试。研究得到以下结论 :言语告警信号的适宜语速为 0 .2 5秒 /字 (或 4字 /秒 ) ,它的下限为 >0 .2 0秒 /字 (或 <5字 /秒 ) ,它的上限为 0 .3 0秒 /字 (或 3 .3 3字 /秒 )。