To what extent do early intuitions about ownership depend on cultural and socio-economic circumstances? We investigated the question by testing reasoning about third party ownership conflicts in various groups of three- and five-year-old children (N = 176), growing up in seven highly contrasted social, economic, and cultural circumstances (urban rich, poor, very poor, rural poor, and traditional) spanning three continents. Each child was presented with a series of scripts involving two identical dolls fighting over an object of possession. The child (...) had to decide who of the two dolls should own the object. Each script enacted various potential reasons for attributing ownership: creation, familiarity, first contact, equity, plus a control/neutral condition with no suggested reasons. Results show that across cultures, children are significantly more consistent and decisive in attributing ownership when one of the protagonists created the object. Development between three and five years is more or less pronounced depending on culture. The propensity to split the object in equal halves whenever possible was generally higher at certain locations (i.e., China) and quasi-inexistent in others (i.e., Vanuatu and street children of Recife). Overall, creation reasons appear to be more primordial and stable across cultures than familiarity, relative wealth or first contact. This trend does not correlate with the passing of false belief theory of mind. (shrink)

Objective: The aim of the current study was to investigate the alterations in the neural networks of patients with temporal lobe epilepsy during working memory encoding.Methods: Patients with TLE and healthy volunteers completed a WM task, during which 34-channel electroencephalogram signals were recorded. The neural networks during WM encoding were calculated in TLE patients with and without WM deficits.Results: Functional connectivity strength decreased, and the theta network was altered in the TLE-WM group, although no significant differences in clinical features were (...) observed between the TLE-N and TLE-WM groups.Conclusions: Not all patients with TLE present with cognitive impairments and alterations in the theta network were identified in TLE patients with functional cognitive deficits.Significance: The theta network may represent a sensitive measure of cognitive impairment and could predict cognitive outcomes among patients with TLE. (shrink)

This research investigates 3- and 5-year-olds' relative fairness in distributing small collections of even or odd numbers of more or less desirable candies, either with an adult experimenter or between two dolls. The authors compare more than 200 children from around the world, growing up in seven highly contrasted cultural and economic contexts, from rich and poor urban areas, to small-scale traditional and rural communities. Across cultures, young children tend to optimize their own gain, not showing many signs of self-sacrifice (...) or generosity. Already by 3 years of age, self-optimizing in distributive justice is based on perspective taking and rudiments of mind reading. By 5 years, overall, children tend to show more fairness in sharing. What varies across cultures is the magnitude of young children's self-interest. More fairness (less self-interest) in distributive justice is evident by children growing up in small-scale urban and traditional societies thought to promote more collective values. (shrink)

From the viewpoint of information transaction models in linguistic pragmatics, expressions of linguistic politeness (LP) induce costs upon speakers. That speakers regularly “pay" such cost is what formal models of LP typically explain either by individual-level _strategic_ considerations (e.g., the speaker’s aim of avoiding a face-threat to the hearer) or community-level _conventional_ considerations (e.g., the use of LP as a relation-acknowledging device). Because these explanations are compatible, as each relates to the speaker and hearer’s social relation, we combine them into (...) a single game-theoretical model enriched by three types of social network structures (ring-shaped, star-shaped, and complete). Using simulation studies of (single and repeated) speech acts of requesting, we let the degree of LP be determined by (i) the degree of social imposition associated with a request, (ii) the number of interlocutors’ past interactions, and (iii) the relative importance of strategic and conventional considerations. The greatest average optimal degree of LP is obtained in the star-shaped network, which intuitively corresponds to a power-centered, hierarchical society. (shrink)

Qingping åŠ‰æ¸ å¹³ has published a series of articles criticizing Confucian ethics in its modern context (see various articles by Liu), which has drawn the attention of many scholars. My friends and I have debated with him and his allies on this issue (See Guo 2002, Yang Haiwen 2002, Yang Zebo 2003, 2004a, 2004b, Ding 2003, 2005a, 2005b, Gong 2004, Guo and Gong 2004, and Wen 2005). Most of the important articles in the debate are now collected in a volume (...) I edited, A Collection of Contentions about Confucian Ethics: Focusing on the Mutual Concealment among Family Members (Guo 2005 [ed.]). In the following, I attempt to respond to some of Liu’s criticisms of Confucian ethics. (shrink)

Dans les théories traditionnelles de la sociologie du développement, les recherches se concentrent sur deux axes. D’un côté, les théories de la modernisation, qui étudient l’évolution des pays développés, de l’autre, celles du développement, qui s’intéressent aux modèles latino-américains, africains et est-asiatiques. Ces deux axes traditionnels limitent fortement le champ de vision de la sociologie du développement. Nous montrerons que les processus de transition dans les pays socialistes tels que la Chine, l’ex-URSS ou l’Europe de l’Est soulèvent toute une série (...) de débats inédits. Comment analyser la voie de développement propre à des régions et des pays différents ? Comment examiner les relations entre l’État et la société au sein du processus de développement et de transition ? Comment aborder le problème des inégalités sociales au sein de ce processus ? Autant de nouvelles questions – et ce ne sont pas les seules – qui élargissent non seulement le champ de vision de la sociologie du développement, mais qui permettent aussi d’envisager une nouvelle théorie pour cette discipline. Il s’agit d’observer le processus pratique de transition sociale dans les pays de l’ancien bloc communiste. L’objectif ? Restructurer la sociologie du développement autour de trois piliers : les théories de la modernisation, du développement et de la transition.Among the traditional theories in the sociology of development, research generally focuses on two lines. On the one hand, the theories of modernization, which mainly study the evolution of developed countries, on the other hand, the theories of development, which are interested in the patterns spread out by Latin America, Africa and East Asia. Those two directions set serious restrictions on the sociology of development’s scope. We’ll show that the transition processes of socialist countries such as China, ex-USSR or Eastern Europe actually raise a whole series of new debates. How should we analyze the specific way of development of countries or areas that are different ? How examine the relations between State and society during the development and transition process ? How should we deal with the issue of social inequalities during this process ? These new interrogations – and many others – do broaden the sociology of development’s horizons, but also help us build up a new theory for the discipline. We must scrutinize the practical process of social transition in the countries which were part of the former communist bloc, and, in so doing, rebuild the sociology of development on three pillars : the theories of modernization, of development and of transition. (shrink)

This article explores the putative addressee in the persuasion of diplomatic discourse by adopting White’s recent proposals as to putative reader/addressee positioning to specifically examine China’s communication efforts through South African English-language newspapers in the Xi Jinping era. Likemindedness is found to be predominantly construed, meticulously balanced with relative frequent construal of uncommittedness and very rare construal of un-likemindedness. And a set of 12 interrelated discourses are identified as fundamental ideological tenets in legitimating China’s African engagement and its vision of (...) world order. Findings show that the classical political discursive strategy of Us/them polarization is typically deployed. The analysis and discussion illustrates how White’s proposed framework can be systematically applied to offer new lines of analysis of persuasion and shed some light on understanding contemporary Chinese diplomatic discourse. (shrink)

An experiment explored the acquisition of conscious and unconscious knowledge of semantic prosody in a second language under incidental and intentional learning conditions. Semantic prosody is the conotational coloring of the semantics of a word, largely uncaptured by dictionary definitions. Contrary to some claims in the literature, we revealed that both conscious and unconscious knowledge were involved in the acquisition of semantic prosody. Intentional learning resulted in similar unconscious but more conscious knowledge than incidental learning. The results are discussed in (...) terms of second language learning and the nature of unconscious knowledge. (shrink)

The Confucian culture, rich in its contents and great in its significance, exerted on the thinking, culture and political life of ancient China immense influences, unparalleled by any other school of thought or culture. Confucian theories on morality and ethics, with 'goodness' as the core and 'rites' as the norm, served as the 'key notes' of the traditional medical ethics of China. The viewpoints of Confucianism on benevolence and material interests, on good and evil, on kindheartedness, and on character cultivation (...) were all inherited by the medical workers and thus became prominent in Chinese traditional medical ethics. Hence, it is clear that the medical profession and Confucianism have long shared common goals in terms of ethics. Influenced by the excellent Confucian thinking and culture, a rather highly-developed system of Chinese traditional medical ethics emerged with a well-defined basic content, and the system has been followed and amended by medical professionals of all generations throughout Chinese history. This system, just to mention briefly, contains concepts such as the need: to attach great importance to the value of life; to do one's best to rescue the dying and to heal the wounded; to show concern to those who suffer from diseases; to practise medicine with honesty; to study medical skills painstakingly; to oppose a careless style of work; to comfort oneself in a dignified manner; to respect local customs and to be polite; to treat patients, noble or humble, equally, and to respect the academic achievements of others, etc. Of course, at the same time, Confucian culture has its own historical and class limitations, which exerted negative influences on traditional medical ethics. Now, if we are to keep up with the development of modern medicine, a serious topic must be addressed. That is how to retain the essence of our traditional medical ethics so as to maintain historic continuity and yet, at the same time, add on the new contents of medical ethics so as to incorporate modern features into our system. Therefore, when trying to reform medical practice in China, we are faced with the urgent need to inherit and promulgate the essence of Confucian ethics--discarding its obsolete concepts--while at the same time building up the new medical ethics that can meet the requirements of the outside world and the future. (shrink)

Traditional explanations for the presence of ambiguous words in natural language have focused on the cost of added complexity that would accompany unambiguous languages. In these theories, ambiguity arises because it represents the optimal trade-off between the informational benefits from precision and the costs for rich languages. In this paper, we suggest that ambiguity remains an inevitable feature of learning languages even without complexity costs. We show that ambiguous words occur more frequently and will therefore be learned more readily, thus (...) triggering more semantic activations between senses of the ambiguous word. We illustrate this through a game-theoretical example. (shrink)

The functions of advertisement always give rise to the fact that trust and co-operation between the interlocutors are limited or lacking. Presupposition is frequently employed in order to enhance function of advertising language implicitly because of its own special properties and characteristics. This article refers to the historical and theoretical background of the study of presupposition and indicates pragmatic functions of presupposition in advertising English.

Intermediaries are social agents who can be found in all types of different environments, cultures, and organizations. More often than enough, intermediaries are middlepersons between two power centers, yet their agency is precarious due to their position as brokers who gain from bridging otherwise unconnected parties, or marginalized vulnerable individuals who suffer from the invasion of the neighboring power holders. How can these two different perspectives of the intermediaries be reconciled? Under what conditions do they shift from one type of (...) agency to another? Previous scholarship attributes the agency of intermediaries to static positionality. This paper treats the position of the intermediary as an opportunity structure, which is shaped by multi-level relational dynamics. We show the changing agency of three intermediary tribal groups (i.e. the Tibetans in northwestern China, Uriyangqad Mongols, and Jurchens) who were situated between the sedentary Chinese and nomadic Mongols during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) through a systematic study with horse trade data. The group-based and officially-regulated horse trade constituted the most important linkage between the intermediaries and these two power centers. We study the changes in the dynamics of their contact during trade, and explain why these intermediaries became client, client to two patrons, and broker in their trade with the Chinese and Mongols in different eras. We argue that the position of the intermediaries did not provide definite advantages for their exploitation, nor did it paralyze them with any concrete disadvantages. Rather, their position offered them unpredictable opportunities that arose from their relational dynamics with the power centers. Moreover, the self-serving and local interests of the intermediaries, and the strategies and tactics that they used, determined their capacity to respond to emerging and unpredictable opportunities and capitalize on them. (shrink)

Entrepreneurship is vital in solving the challenges involved in the employment of college students in China. The two viewpoints on the relationship between employment and entrepreneurship are the refugee effect and the entrepreneurial effect. However, the micro-mechanism of this association is yet to be comprehensively discussed. Based on the refugee effect and entrepreneurial effect, along with the entrepreneurial values as the mediating mechanism and the entrepreneurial environment as the moderating variable, this study establishes a theoretical model exploring the impact of (...) employment pressure on necessity entrepreneurship and opportunity entrepreneurship of college students. Moreover, it selected 14 universities covering the eastern, central, and western regions of China. A total of 1,187 college students were surveyed anonymously using a standardized questionnaire. Then, SPSS 24.0 and Mplus 7.0 were employed to process and analyze the data, and the Structural Equation Modeling was established to test the hypothesis. The results demonstrated that employment pressure had a significant positive impact on college students’ necessity for entrepreneurship. Also, employment pressure indirectly affected necessity entrepreneurship and opportunity entrepreneurship through the mediating effect of entrepreneurial values. The entrepreneurial environment positively moderated the relationship between employment pressure, necessity entrepreneurship, and opportunity entrepreneurship and moderated the mediating effect of entrepreneurial values. That is, in a favorable entrepreneurial environment, entrepreneurial values have a stronger mediating effect. Starting from cognitive psychology, this study explored the micro-psychological mechanism of individual employment pressure that has influenced entrepreneurial motivation. It has enriched the existing literature on the entrepreneurship theory of college students, underlining that the hypothesis on refugee effect and entrepreneurial effect is also applicable at the micro-level. On top of that, it has provided a practical reference for the employment and entrepreneurship of current Chinese college students. (shrink)

In the era of digital economy, the impact of innovation resources on high-quality economic growth has become increasingly prominent. There are many researches on the influencing factors of innovation performance. The purpose of this study is to explore the factors that affect the innovation performance of high-end manufacturing clusters in China based on the dual perspectives of digital economy and innovation network. A total of 194 valid questionnaires were collected. And structural equation modeling has been used to test the proposed (...) research models and hypotheses. The results indicated that, the higher the centrality of the innovation network, the more the cluster enterprises can play the centrality advantage, which has a significant positive impact on the innovation performance of the cluster. Similarly, both the strength and density of innovation networks also impacted on cluster innovation performance, but to a lesser extent. We also found that the digital empowerment derived from the digital economy can get rid of the limitations caused by spatial distance and lead to the improvement of resource utilization, which plays a positive moderating role between innovation network and innovation capacity. Implications for digital economy and innovation networks to improve the quality of innovation performance are provided. (shrink)

The Zhuangzi is perhaps the one and only work in classical Chinese philosophy that never fails to blow one's mind with its exquisite intertwining of high frivolousness, literary power, ambiguity, ambivalence, profundity and provocativeness all at once. There is urgent need of a translation able to transmit this paradoxical reading experiences as it is. Happily, all of these qualities, with the possible exception of ambiguity, are revealed in Brook Ziporyn's Zhuangzi: The Complete Writings, with both poetry and precision. Through a (...) hermeneutical approach that inter-contextualizes each line and each word of the thirty-three chapters, especially many controversial places, he makes the chaotic and unsystematic text... (shrink)

For many energy companies in China, green brand strategy is becoming an important approach to enhance competitive advantage. However, greenwashing behaviors result in a crisis of trust. Existing research focuses on green marketing, but is silent on the institutional view of the trust crisis resulting from greenwashing by energy brands. Thus, this study takes a decoupling perspective from institutional theory and considers legitimacy, energy policy management, and green brand theories to shed light on the path from the decoupling of an (...) energy brand from green promise to green energy brand trust and the role of brand legitimacy and brand loyalty. It then analyzes survey data to conclude that DEBG not only has a direct negative effect on GEBT but also has an indirect influence through the vital mediating role of green energy brand legitimacy. Moreover, brand loyalty is a moderating factor and can alleviate the energy brand trust crisis. These findings not only can enrich the theories of energy brand management and green marketing but also offer important implications for energy policy management. (shrink)

Editor’s AbstractGuo Qiyong is one of China's leading scholars of Confucianism, and in this essay proposes a distinctive way of thinking about Mainland New Confucianism that is notable for excluding Jiang Qing, Chen Ming, and some other self-identified Mainland New Confucians. Guo says that the fundamental political goal of all New Confucians has been “liberalism”; he argues that values like democracy and human rights can be both universally shared and yet retain distinctive, local differentiations.

ObjectiveIn the context of Healthy China, the effect of external motivation on sports anomie behavior from the perspective of gender among Chinese college students was investigated.ParticipantsIn total, 2,340 college students were involved in this study.MethodsThe self-made scales were used, which were about anomie behavior and external motivation in sports. The independent sample T-test was used to compare the sports anomie behavior between male and female students. Then, multiple linear regression analysis was adopted to examine the effects of external motivation on (...) sports anomie behavior.ResultsGirls’ sports anomie behavior was lower than boys. There were significant gender differences in honor motivation, obedience motivation, and economic motivation; girls’ motivations were lower than boys. The academic motivation was negatively correlated with the sports anomie behavior of college students of both genders. The economic motivation was positively correlated with their sports anomie behavior. The honor motivation was negatively correlated with the sports anomie behavior of female college students.ConclusionFemale college students’ sports anomie behavior and external motivation are lower than that of male college students. External motivation had a significant influence on college students’ sports anomie behavior. (shrink)

This research topic (RT) focused on the impact of fitness on cognitive function and development in adolescents and elderly adults from the standpoint of lifespan neuroscience. Adolescent brain development is characterized by multimodal integration of brain anatomical features and function, according to accumulating evidence. The elderly, on the other hand, suffer from age-related cognitive deterioration. Fitness may be a major factor influencing brain growth and cognitive performance throughout these two critical times for neurological development. It is a multidimensional notion that (...) includes cardiovascular fitness, muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, and body composition, as well as motor fitness (balance, agility, speed, power, and coordination). Adolescents and older people may be responsive to intervention trials aimed at improving fitness levels, such as outdoor activities, cardiovascular exercise, and mind-body practice since brain network integration and neural efficiency are rapidly altered during this period. This RT investigates how fitness influences structural and functional brain development, particularly cognitive functions, and emotional health in adolescents and elderly people, as well as training strategies that may assist cognitive progress throughout this time. It includes a clinical trial (1) and original research papers (4) on the influence of fitness on cognitive function and development in adolescents and elderly adults from a lifespan neu... (shrink)

ABSTRACTWushu is widely misunderstood and its essentially combative nature is being challenged in public discussion. Understanding and recovering its essential nature has become a core issue. This...

The works of the Huang-Lao school include the seven chapters of "Tian di" , "Tiandao" , "Tianyun" , "Zaiyou, xia" , "Keyi" , "Shanxing" , and "Tianxia" . In the following we shall refer to these collectively, and by way of abbreviation, as the "Heaven's Way" chapters. Of this group of "essays," the "All Under Heaven" chapter appeared relatively early in time, whereas all the others represented later works in the book Zhuang Zi. In general, however, they all were works (...) produced in the pre-Qin era. The ideas presented by this group of essays are significantly different from those contained in the "inner chapters" of Zhuang Zi, and there are also clear and important differences between the Huang-Lao school and the other schools—namely, the Shu Zhuang school and the Wu Jun school—of latter-day Zhuang Zi thinkers. The ideas presented here of the Huang-Lao school, however, are basically consistent with the characteristics of the ideas conveyed in the "silk-scroll" ancient books on the teachings ascribed to the Yellow Emperor and to Lao Zi that have been discovered in Han-dynasty tombs, and with the way in which Sima Tan described and critiqued the school of Daoism. Therefore, we have called the authors of this group of essays the Huang-Lao school among latter-day Zhuang Zi thinkers. The works of the Huang-Lao school are not only material for the study of the evolving conditions within Zhuang Zi philosophy, but are also important grist for the mill in the study of the "teachings of the Yellow Emperor and of Lao Zi". (shrink)

Dual innovation, which includes exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation, is crucial for firms to obtain a sustainable competitive advantage. The knowledge base of firms greatly influences or even determines the scope, direction, and path of their dual-innovation activities, which drive their innovation process and produce different innovation performances. This study uses data source patents obtained by 285 focal firms in the Chinese new-energy vehicle industry in the period 2015–2020. Five knowledge-base features are selected by analyzing the correlation and multicollinearity, and (...) four different firm clusters are found by using the k-means clustering algorithm. Based on the classification and regression tree algorithm, we mine the potential decision rules governing the dual-innovation performance of firms. The results show that the exploratory innovation performance of firms in different clusters is mainly affected by two different knowledge-base features. Knowledge-base scale is a key factor affecting the exploitative innovation performance of firms. Firms in different clusters can improve their dual-innovation performance by rationally tuning the combination of knowledge-base features. (shrink)

The study of voice behavior examines the inclination of staff and team members to speak up and contribute ideas to the team. In this article, we investigate how factors such as leader-member exchange (LMX), psychological safety and psychological empowerment influence such behavior. Our findings, which are based on a sample of 308 employees working for a state-owned telecommunications company on the Chinese mainland, indicate that ethical leadership promotes employees’ voice behavior through enhanced leader-member exchange, which also leads to greater feelings (...) of psychological safety and psychological empowerment. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

The representatives of modern Neo-Confucianism all greatly value Yi Zhuan and regard it as one of their spiritual resources, and give their own creative interpretations and transformations. Xiong Shili's ontological-cosmological theory takes "qian yuan" as its center; Ma Yifu has a theory of ontology-cultivation centered on "nature-principle"; Fang Dongmei has a metaphysics of production and reproduction; Mou Zongsan takes the view of "completely knowing the fathomless and understanding transformation" as a moral metaphysics; and in Tang Junyi there is a theory (...) of the harmony of doctrines on Heaven and man in which "the knowledge of divine understanding" is its key concept. They employ modern philosophical concepts and thinking to illustrate the cosmology, ontology, theory of life, theory of human nature, theory of spiritual worlds, axiology and their connections in Zhou Yi. They affirm that the characteristics of Chinese philosophy that are different from Western philosophy consist in a naturalist view of vital life, a harmonious view of totality, an axiological view that values exist in natural universe and the world of fact, the pursuit of Good and Beauty, and intuitive experience of inner world. (shrink)