Solidarity in a Technocratic Age

Do free markets teach us how to construct humane social relations or do they impede us from doing so? We discuss social scientific evidence on the nature of commercialization and its consequences for moral formation. From a virtue ethics perspective, people face a need to learn and practice the good. When interactions transition into the market sphere, we argue commercialization can fundamentally alter the nature of relationships, particularly for those relations formerly based on gift, sacrifice, and obligation. While modern social scientists accurately identify problems resulting from commercialization, we argue for the importance of theological social ethics, which can offer a penetrating analysis of the habits of gift and communal responsibility. Catholic social teaching in particular outlines the set of principles and institutions which foster sacrificial gift‐giving among individuals and organizations within society, providing a bulwark against the threat commercialization poses to many social relations.     

The role of goals and goal barriers in predicting the outcomes of intentional actions in the contexts of narrative text

ABSTRACT

Predictions about human behaviour can be influenced by the presence and status of goals. The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of an active goal and barriers to that goal on predictions about outcomes experienced by agents. Participants read stories describing characters with goals. The extent that there were barriers to those goals was varied. Participants predicted what happens next in the story, both prior to and after barrier removal. There was support for a goal barrier hypothesis, where the conditions for predicting goal completion involved removing conditions that prevent a goal being achieved (Experiments 1 and 2). At the same time, unachieved goals were more accessible to working memory than completed goals, regardless of a barrier (Experiment 3). These results suggest that participants deliberately decided when it was appropriate to use goal information to predict outcomes of intentional actions conducted by the agents in the stories.     

Do performance avoidance goals moderate the effect of different types of stereotype threat on women’s math performance?

Stereotype threat is considered to be a robust effect that explains persistent gender gaps in math performance and scientific career trajectories. Some evidence suggests stereotype threat effects are buffered by adoption of performance avoidance goals (Chalabaev, Major, Sarrazin, & Cury, 2012). With 590 American female participants, we closely replicated Chalabaev et al. (2012). Results showed no significant main or interaction effects for stereotype threat or performance avoidance goals, despite multiple controls. We conclude that effects of stereotype threat might be smaller than typically reported and find limited evidence for moderation by avoidance achievement goals. Accordingly, stereotype threat might not be a major part of the explanation for the gender gap in math performance, consistent with recent meta-analyses (Flore & Wicherts, 2015).