Setting the sales budget: An exploratory study

This article explores how the sales budget is set in a business organization. Findings from a longitudinal participant observation study revealed that the sales budget is considered of great importance to the organization as sales estimates serve as premises for planning of production and supply and new product developments. It was observed that the sales budget was based on a narrow, inner-directed perspective, almost looking away from important environmental driving forces such as competitors and customers. The findings also showed that individuals involved in the sales budgeting process behaved opportunistically, influencing the budgetary process and outcomes. Theoretical and normative implications are highlighted.     

Stylistic appearances and linguistic diversity

Philosophy is beginning to pay problems of linguistic justice the attention they deserve in today's heavily interconnected and migrant world. Contemporary philosophy itself, however, has a particular problem of linguistic justice that deserves metaphilosophical attention. At least in the philosophical tradition that is mainstream in much of the world today, viz., analytic philosophy, methodological and sociological mechanisms make it the case that the voices of non-(native) Anglophone philosophers are substantially less heard. Among the mechanisms responsible for this situation, argues this paper, is the emphasis given by influential philosophical institutions to linguistic style and appearances as signs of clarity, precision, and rigour in the treatment of philosophical problems. Such an emphasis is not justifiable, in part because it deprives philosophy of a wider variety of perspectives. The paper concludes by presenting and motivating a recent initiative that aims to foster greater linguistic and cultural diversity within the profession.     

Detection of words versus good old counting: A note on Mizrahi and Dickinson, “The analytic-continental divide in philosophical practice”

In a recent Metaphilosophy article, Moti Mizrahi and Michael Dickinson argue against characterizing the divide between analytical and continental philosophy as a divide in the use of arguments. This hypothesis is rejected on the basis of a text-mining approach. The present paper argues that the results they extracted do not answer the questions they set out to answer as well as would have been possible. This is due to Mizrahi and Dickinson's choice to disregard duplicate occurrences of argument word pairs, their main indicator for the occurrence of arguments in articles. This paper reconstructs their method by now also counting duplicates. A small corpus (n = 436) of recent (2015–2021) analytical and continental articles is used to rerun the experiment; the results oppose Mizrahi and Dickinson's and suggest that arguments (as operationalized by Mizrahi and Dickinson) occur more in analytical articles. The paper argues that part of the discrepancy derives from the specific methodological choices they made.     

What analytic metaphysics can do for scientific metaphysics

The apparent chasm between two camps in metaphysics, analytic metaphysics and scientific metaphysics, is well recognized. I argue that the relationship between them is not necessarily a rivalry; a division of labour that resembles the relationship between pure mathematics and science is possible. As a case study, I look into the metaphysical underdetermination argument for ontic structural realism, a well-known position in scientific metaphysics, together with an argument for the position in analytic metaphysics known as ontological nihilism. I argue that we can ascribe the same schema to both arguments, which indicates that analytic metaphysics can offer an abstract model that scientific metaphysics may find useful.     

Does Analytic Thinking Insulate Against Pro-Kremlin Disinformation? Evidence From Ukraine

Pro-Kremlin disinformation campaigns have long targeted Ukraine. We investigate susceptibility to this pro-Kremlin disinformation from a cognitive-science perspective. Is greater analytic thinking associated with less belief in disinformation, as per classical theories of reasoning? Or does analytic thinking amplify motivated system 2 reasoning (or “cultural cognition”), such that analytic thinking is associated with more polarized beliefs (and thus more belief in pro-Kremlin disinformation among pro-Russia Ukrainians)? In online (N = 1,974) and face-to-face representative (N = 9,474) samples of Ukrainians, we find support for the classical reasoning account. Analytic thinking, as measured using the Cognitive Reflection Test, was associated with greater ability to discern truth from disinformation—even for Ukrainians who are strongly oriented towards Russia. We find similar, albeit weaker, results when operationalizing analytic thinking using the self-report Actively Open-Minded Thinking scale. These results demonstrate a similar pattern to prior work using American participants. Thus, the positive association between analytic thinking and the ability to discern truth versus falsehood generalizes to the qualitatively different information environment of postcommunist Ukraine. Despite low trust in government and media, weak journalistic standards, and years of exposure to Russian disinformation, Ukrainians who engage in more analytic thinking are better able to tell truth from falsehood.     

The effect of COVID-19 on home advantage in high- and low-stake situations: Evidence from the European national football competitions

The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly altered the way sporting events are observed. With the absence or limited presence of spectators in stadiums, the traditional advantage enjoyed by home teams has diminished considerably. This underscores the notion that the support of home fans can often be considered a key factor of the home advantage (HA) phenomenon, wherein teams perform better in front of their own supporters. However, the impact of reduced attendance on games with higher stakes, as opposed to low-stakes friendly matches, remains uncertain. In this study, we investigate the recently concluded European football championship (EURO 20), wherein several teams had the advantage of playing at home in high-stakes games with only one-third of the stadium capacity filled. Firstly, we demonstrate that the Covid-19 restrictions, leading to reduced fan attendance, resulted in a nearly 50% decrease in HA compared to the HA exhibited by the same teams during the qualification stage preceding EURO 20, even after accounting for team strength. Secondly, we show that while low-stakes friendly matches generally exhibit a smaller overall HA compared to high-stakes games, the absence of fans led to a similar reduction in HA during the low-stakes matches. Utilizing the recently developed Home Advantage Mediated (HAM) model (Bilalić, Gula, & Vaci, 2021, Scientific Reports, 21558), we were able to attribute the reduction in both high- and low-stakes games to poorer team performance, with no significant contribution from referee bias.     

The significance of unusual acts in sexual homicide

In addition to being an unusual form of crime, sexual homicide (SH) sometimes includes unusual crime scene behaviours, such as carving on the victim, evisceration (i.e., removal of internal organs), skinning the victim, cannibalism and vampirism. The current study investigates these unusual crime scene behaviours to better understand their meaning as well as to explore whether such behaviours are associated with a specific crime-commission process. Using a sample of 762 SH cases, the study uses a combination of chi-square and stepwise forward logistic regression analyses to identify the differences between cases with and without unusual acts. Findings reveal that SH cases with unusual acts present a specific crime-commission process. This crime-commission process is characterised by a greater level of sadism—as demonstrated by the presence of mutilation and foreign object insertion—as well as a greater level of organisation from the selection of a contact location where the risk of being seen or heard was low. These findings provide a better understanding of these behaviours and could help investigators facing such cases.     

Thinking disposition,thinking style,and susceptibility to causal illusion predict fake news discriminability

Acceptance of fake news is probably modulated by an intricate interplay of social, cultural, and political factors. In this study, we investigated whether individual-level cognitive factors related to thinking and decision making could influence the tendency to accept fake news. A group of volunteers responded to a COVID19-related fake news discrimination scale as well as to questionnaires assessing their thinking style (reflective vs. intuitive) and thinking disposition (actively open-mindedness). Furthermore, they completed a computerized contingency learning task aimed at measuring their tendency to develop a causal illusion, a cognitive bias leading to perceive causal connections between non-contingent events. More actively open-minded and more reflective individuals presented higher fake news discrimination scores. In addition, those who developed weaker causal illusions in the contingency learning task were also more accurate at differentiating between fake and legitimate news. Actively open-minded thinking was the main contributor in a regression model predicting fake news discrimination.     

The associations of cultural worldviews,political orientation,and trust with COVID-19 risk beliefs in the U.S.

Given that risk beliefs predict engagement in behaviors to prevent disease, it is important to understand the factors associated with risk beliefs. In the present paper, we conducted path analyses to investigate the associations of belief systems (political orientation and cultural worldviews of individualism and hierarchy) with COVID-19 risk beliefs (i.e., perceived likelihood, perceived severity, and worry about disease; Studies 1 and 2), and the indirect effect through trust in information sources in these relationships (Study 1). Two online panels of U.S. adults were surveyed at three timepoints during the COVID-19 pandemic (Study 1: baseline n = 1,667, 1-year follow-up n = 551; Study 2: n = 404). Results of path analyses indicated that, across studies and timepoints, when controlling for political orientation, trust, and demographic factors, greater individualism had consistent significant direct effects on lower perceived severity and worry about COVID-19, whereas greater hierarchy had consistent significant direct effects on lower perceived severity. However, after accounting for cultural worldviews of individualism and hierarchy (and trust and demographic factors), none of the associations among political orientation and any of the three COVID-19 risk beliefs were significant. The test of indirect effects indicated that individualism and hierarchy were indirectly associated with lower perceived severity of and worry about COVID-19 through less trust. The findings suggest that cultural worldviews of individualism and hierarchy play a role in shaping people's risk beliefs.