When two actors have the same mental state but one happens to harm another person (unlucky actor) and the other one does not (lucky actor), the latter elicits a milder moral judgement. To understand how this outcome effect would affect post-harm interactions between victims and perpetrators, we examined how the social role from which transgressions are perceived moderates the outcome effect, and how outcome effects on moral judgements transfer to agentic and communal interpersonal goals. Three vignette experiments (N = 950) (...) revealed similar outcome effects on moral judgement across social roles. In contrast, outcome effects on agentic and communal goals varied by social role: victims exhibited the strongest outcome effects and perpetrators the weakest, with bystanders falling in between. Moral judgement did not mediate the effects of outcome severity on interpersonal goals. We discuss the possibility that outcome severity raises normative expectations regarding post-harm interactions that are unrelated to moral considerations. (shrink)

In the standard volunteer’s dilemma (VoD), a single prosocial act (i.e., volunteering) yields the optimal overall outcome. Whereas the volunteer’s outcome is certain, the defector’s outcome depends on what others do. This research addressed the confounding of prosocial responses with uncertainty avoidance in the standard VoD. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 102) considered 18 hypothetical one-shot two-person VoD scenarios with certain, risky, and uncertain outcomes when volunteering. In Experiment 2, participants (N = 496) considered three hypothetical one-shot two-person VoD (...) scenarios; a certain VoD and two uncertain VoDs of which one had a lower expected collective outcome of volunteering than the certain VoD and the other a higher one. Results suggest that volunteering does not reflect a desire to avoid uncertainty but to maximize expected collective outcomes, reinforcing the assumption that the high volunteering rates we see in a standard VoD are due to social/moral preferences and social projection. (shrink)

The experimental research paradigm lies at the core of empirical psychology. New data analytical and computational tools continually enrich its methodological arsenal, while the paradigm’s mission remains the testing of theoretical predictions and causal explanations. Predictions regarding experimental results necessarily point to the future. Once the data are collected, the causal inferences refer to a hypothesis now lying in the past. The experimental paradigm is not designed to permit strong inferences about particular incidents that occurred before predictions were made. In (...) contrast, historical research and scholarship in other humanities focus on this backward direction of inference. The disconnect between forward-looking experimental psychology and backward-looking historical (i.e., narrative) psychology is a challenge in the postmodern era, which can be addressed. To illustrate this possibility, I discuss three historical case studies in light of theory and research in contemporary psychology. (shrink)

Regardless of the clarity of the patterns they produce, individual differences in reasoning cannot validate norms of rationality. With improved reliability, these correlations will simply reveal which sorts of biases go together and which predict the intelligence of the decision maker. It seems necessary, therefore, to continue efforts to define rational thought independently of intelligence.

Mainstream social psychology focuses on how people characteristically violate norms of action through social misbehaviors such as conformity with false majority judgments, destructive obedience, and failures to help those in need. Likewise, they are seen to violate norms of reasoning through cognitive errors such as misuse of social information, self-enhancement, and an over-readiness to attribute dispositional characteristics. The causes of this negative research emphasis include the apparent informativeness of norm violation, the status of good behavior and judgment as unconfirmable null (...) hypotheses, and the allure of counter-intuitive findings. The shortcomings of this orientation include frequently erroneous imputations of error, findings of mutually contradictory errors, incoherent interpretations of error, an inability to explain the sources of behavioral or cognitive achievement, and the inhibition of generalized theory. Possible remedies include increased attention to the complete range of behavior and judgmental accomplishment, analytic reforms emphasizing effect sizes and Bayesian inference, and a theoretical paradigm able to account for both the sources of accomplishment and of error. A more balanced social psychology would yield not only a more positive view of human nature, but also an improved understanding of the bases of good behavior and accurate judgment, coherent explanations of occasional lapses, and theoretically grounded suggestions for improvement. Key Words: Bayesian inference; biases; normative models; personality; positive psychology; rationality; reasoning; social behavior; social judgment; social psychology. (shrink)

This book does not only attempt to clarify concepts used in the context of dialectical reasoning but also develops an epistemological theory by answering the question: What does it mean to possess a language? The epistemological theory then is used to ground the basis of social science in the logic of our common-sense language. This logic is viewed as more comprehensive than traditional formalized logic, which is viewed as only one though an important aspect of the more general and basic (...) logic of our common-sense language. (shrink)

Many commentators agree with our view that the problem-oriented approach to social psychology has not fulfilled its promise, and they suggest new research directions that may contribute to the maturation of the field. Others suggest that social psychology is not as focused on negative phenomena as we claim, or that a negative focus does indeed lay the most efficient path toward a general understanding of social cognition and behavior. In this response, we organize the comments thematically, discuss them in light (...) of our original exposition, and reiterate that we seek not a disproportionately positive social psychology but a balanced field that addresses the range of human performance. (shrink)

Om samfundsudviklingen i Sverige med udgangspunkt i aktuel forskning inden for sociologi, nationaløkonomi og statsvidenskab, og samtidig et stridsskrift mod nyliberalismen.

Psychological science can benefit from a theoretical unification with other social sciences. Social psychology in particular has gone through cycles of repression, denying itself the opportunity to see the calculating element in human interaction. A closer alignment with theories of evolution and theories of interpersonal (and intergroup) games would bring strategic reasoning back into the focus of research. (Published Online April 27 2007).

A. L. Kroeber, who together with C. Kluckhohn wrote a now classical review of the concept of culture (1958), claimed that the most significant accomplishment of anthropology in the first half of the twentieth century was the extension and clarification of the concept of culture. In the book mentioned they analyzed about 300 different definitions of the concept. In a critical review of Kroeber's and Kluckhohn's book their colleague L. A. White contests Kroeber's claims and writes: “On the contrary, I (...) believe that confusion has increased as conceptions of culture have been multiplied and diversified” (1954, p. 461). (shrink)

We extend Ivancovsky et al.'s finding on the association between curiosity and creativity by proposing a sequential causal model assuming that (a) curiosity determines the motivation to seek information and that (b) creativity constitutes a capacity to act on that motivation. This framework assumes that both high levels of curiosity and creativity are necessary for information-seeking behavior.

We elaborate on Glowacki's claim that humans are more capable of establishing peace than other mammals. We present three aspects suggesting caution. First, the social capabilities of nonhuman primates should not be underestimated. Second, the effect of these capabilities on peace establishment is nonmonotonous. Third, defining peace by human-centered values introduces a fallacy.

We agree with Sijilmassi et al. that historical myths are a tool for coalition recruitment. We argue, however, that a close fit between an evolved entity and an identified function does not imply that the latter is the critical evolutionary trigger. We also propose an alternative individual-centric explanation: Historical myths reduce uncertainty by providing cognitive and behavioral guidance.

We discuss and expand Boyer's idea of ownership coordination. Interpersonal similarity, we suggest, can moderate the attainment of coordination: Perceived similarity predicts coordination costs, whereas actual similarity dictates coordination success and the severity of illusory assumptions regarding a shared understanding of ownership. The example of similarity highlights the complexity of the social projection process uncritically assumed behind ownership coordination.

When deciding on an online purchase, consumers often face a plethora of information. Yet, individuals consumers differ greatly in the amount of information they are willing and able to acquire and process before making purchasing decisions. Extensively processing all available information does not necessarily promote good decisions. Instead, the empirical evidence suggests that reviewing too much information or too many choice alternatives can impair decision quality. Using simulated contract conclusion scenarios, we identify distinctive types of information processing styles and find (...) that certain search and selection strategies predict the quality of the final choice. Participants chose a cellular service contract in a web-based environment that closely resembled actual online settings in the country of study. Using information processing data obtained with tracking software, we identify three consumer segments differing along two dimensions – the extent dimension, referring to the overall effort invested in information processing, and the focus dimension, referring to the degree to which someone focuses on the best available options. The three subgroups of respondents can be characterized as follows: consumers with a low-effort and low-focus information processing strategy ; consumers with a moderate-effort and high-focus information processing strategy ; and consumers with high-effort and low-focus information processing strategy. The three groups differed not only in their information processing but also in the quality of their decisions. In line with the assumption of ecological rationality, most successful search strategies were not exhaustive, but instead involved the focused selection and processing of a medium amount of information. Implications for effective consumer information are provided. (shrink)

According to the view that humans are conscious automata, the experience of conscious will is illusory. Epistemic theories of causation, however, make room for causal will, planned behavior, and moral action.

The underutilization of base rates is a consistent finding. The strong claim that base rates are ignored has been rejected and this needs no further emphasis. Following the path of “normal science,” research examines the conditions predicting changes in the degree of underutilization. A scientific revolution that might dethrone the heuristics and biases paradigm is not in sight.

In social dilemmas, expectations of reciprocity can lead to fully determined cooperation concurrent with the illusion of choice. The choice of the dominant alternative (i.e., defection) may be construed as being free and rational, but only at the cost of being incompatible with a behavioral science claiming to be deterministic.

The mother sacrificing herself while rescuing someone else's child is a red herring. Neither behaviorism nor cognitivism can explain it. Unlike behaviorism, however, the cognitive process of projection can explain cooperation in one-shot social dilemmas.

We consider an underdeveloped feature of De Neys's model. Decisions with multiple intuitions per option are neither trivial to explain nor rare. These decision scenarios are crucial for an assessment of the model's generalizability and adequacy. Besides monitoring absolute differences in intuition strength, the mind might add the strengths of intuitions per choice option, leading to competing and testable hypotheses.

English summary: Ideas of man and concepts of the body are closely linked, and are a key factor in defining anthropological theories and problems. In addition, they are closely connected to the social structure of each cultural region, which itself has a continuous influence on human actions and attitudes, but which at the same time is also the result of human actions and attitudes. Scholars from various disciplines used this as their basis to explore the subject in their own cultural (...) field, each of them taking the perspective of their own methodological approach. The studies incorporate both, text and image sources. It is the authors' common goal to provide a precise description of specific anthropological developments which are dependent on time and culture and to include a discussion of basic issues of the conditio humana. German description: Menschenbilder und Korperkonzepte gehoren eng zusammen und bestimmen massgeblich anthropologische Lehren und Fragestellungen. Sie sind zudem eng mit der Sozialstruktur des jeweiligen Kulturraums verflochten, wobei dieselbe zwar ununterbrochen konditionierenden Einfluss auf menschliche Handlungen und Haltungen hat, sie aber zugleich auch das Ergebnis menschlicher Handlungen und Haltungen ist. Auf diesen Grundlagen haben sich Wissenschaftler unterschiedlicher Disziplinen zusammengefunden, um aus der Perspektive ihres jeweiligen methodischen Ansatzes dem Thema in ihrem jeweiligen Kulturbereich nachzugehen. Dabei werden Textquellen ebenso in die Untersuchungen mit einbezogen wie Bildquellen. Gemeinsames Ziel ist, zeit- und kulturgebundene Spezialentwicklungen prazise zu profilieren und Grundfragen der conditio humana in den Blick zu nehmen. (shrink)

In this paper, I am going to offer a reconstruction of a challenge to intuition-based armchair philosophy that has been put forward by experimental philosophers of a restrictionist stripe, which I will call the 'master argument'. I will then discuss a number of popular objections to this argument and explain why they either fail to cast doubt on its first, empirical premise or do not go deep enough to make for a lasting rebuttal. Next, I will consider two more promising (...) objections, the grounding objection and the expertise objection, which aim at the second, epistemic premise of the argument. Against this background, I will then suggest what I call 'conservative restrictionism' as the most reasonable default reaction to the experimentalist challenge, which is a combination of the two views of local restrictionism and methodological conservativism. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that knowledge in health care is a multidimensional dynamic construct, in contrast to the prevailing idea of knowledge being an objective state. Polanyi demonstrated that knowledge is personal, that knowledge is discovered, and that knowledge has explicit and tacit dimensions. Complex adaptive systems science views knowledge simultaneously as a thing and a flow, constructed as well as in constant flux. The Cynefin framework is one model to help our understanding of knowledge as a personal construct (...) achieved through sense making. Specific knowledge aspects temporarily reside in either one of four domains – the known, knowable, complex or chaotic, but new knowledge can only be created by challenging the known by moving it in and looping it through the other domains. Medical knowledge is simultaneously explicit and implicit with certain aspects already well known and easily transferable, and others that are not yet fully known and must still be learned. At the same time certain knowledge aspects are predominantly concerned with content, whereas others deal with context. Though in clinical care we may operate predominately in one knowledge domain, we also will operate some of the time in the others. Medical knowledge is inherently uncertain, and we require a context-driven flexible approach to knowledge discovery and application, in clinical practice as well as in health service planning. (shrink)

Given the rich diversity of research fields usually ascribed to chemistry in a broad sense, the present paper tries to dig our characteristic parts of chemistry that can be conceptually distinguished from interdisciplinary, applied, and specialized subfields of chemistry, and that may be called chemistry in a very narrow sense, or 'the chemical core of chemistry'. Unlike historical, ontological, and 'anti-reductive' approaches, I use a conceptual approach together with some methodological implications that allow to develop step by step a kind (...) of cognitive architecture for chemistry, which basically contains: (1) systematic chemical knowledge on the experimental level; (2) clarification of chemical species; (3) chemical classification systems; (4) theoretical foundation through the chemical theory of structural formulas. In a succeeding paper the results will be checked for resisting physicalistic reduction. (shrink)

We are never illness or disease, but, rather, always their sum in the world of day-to-day experience. Disease and illness are not closed systems, but mutually constitutive and continuously interacting worlds. In the patient’s case it is always experience as well. Pain, sickness and death help make that particular experienced identity unavoidable, and at some level ultimately inaccessible to medicine’s changing understanding of disease and tools for managing it. Health—rather than cost containment, specific conditions, or technologies—should be the central focus (...) for health care and health-care reform. A compelling reason to focus on health comes from the observation that the prevalence of disease over the .. (shrink)

We define a forcing poset which adds a club subset of a given fat stationary set S⊆ω2\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${S \subseteq \omega_2}$$\end{document} with finite conditions, using S-adequate sets of models as side conditions. This construction, together with the general amalgamation results concerning S-adequate sets on which it is based, is substantially shorter and simpler than our original version in Krueger :119–136, 2014).

Part I presents a quantitative-empirical outline of chemistry, esp. preparative chemistry, concerning its dominant role in today's science, its dynamics, and its methods and aims. Emphasis is laid on the poietical character of chemistry for which a methodological model is derived. Part II discusses standard distinction between science and technology, from Aristotle (whose theses are reconsidered in the light of modern sciences) to modern philosophy of technology. Against the background of results of Part I, it is argued that all these (...) distinctions fail, because the underlying concepts of science are either out-dated, one-sided, or arbitrary. A deeper understanding of today's sciences requires, in particular, a philosopical investigation of chemistry. (shrink)

Chemistry is by far the most productive science concerning the number of publications. A closer look at chemical papers reveals that most papers deal with new substances. The rapid growth of chemical knowledge seriously challenges all institutions and individuals concerned with chemistry. Chemistry documentation following the principle of completeness is required to schematize chemical information, which in turn induces a schematization of chemical research. Chemistry education is forced to seek reasonable principles of selectivity, although nobody can have an overview any (...) more. Philosophical evaluation of the growth of chemical knowledge proves that at the same time chemical ‘nonknowledge’ increases more rapidly. An analysis of reasons, why chemists are making new substances at all, shows that the proliferation of new substances is for the most part an end in itself. The present paper finally argues for the need of a rational discourse among chemists on the aims of chemistry. (shrink)

This paper reports research on the influence of corporate and individual characteristics on managers'' social orientation in Germany. The results indicate that mid-level managers expressed a significantly lower social orientation than low-level managers, and that job activity did not impact social orientation. Female respondents expressed a higher social orientation than male respondents. No impact of the political system origin (former East Germany versus former West Germany) on social orientation was shown. Overall, corporate position had a significantly higher impact on social (...) orientation than did the characteristics of the individuals surveyed. (shrink)

We continue the study of adequate sets which we began in (Krueger in Forcing with adequate sets of models as side conditions) by introducing the idea of a strongly adequate set, which has an additional requirement on the overlap of two models past their comparison point. We present a forcing poset for adding a club to a fat stationary subset of ω 2 with finite conditions, thereby showing that a version of the forcing posets of Friedman (Set theory: Centre (...) de Recerca Matemàtica, Barcelona, 2003–2004, Trends in Mathematics. Birkhäuser Verlag, 2006) and Mitchell (Trans Am Math Soc 361(2):561601, 2009) for adding a club on ω 2 can be developed in the context of adequate sets. (shrink)

A unique selection of the most significant interviews given by Hannah Arendt, including the last she gave before her death in 1975. Some are published here in English for the first time. Arendt was one of the most important thinkers of her time, famous for her idea of "the banality of evil" which continues to provoke debate. This collection provides new and startling insight into Arendt's thoughts about Watergate and the nature of American politics, about totalitarianism and history, and her (...) own experiences as an emigre. Hannah Arendt: The Last Interview and Other Conversations is an extraordinary portrait of one of the twentieth century's boldest and most original thinkers. As well as Arendt's last interview with French journalist Roger Errera, the volume features an important interview from the early 60s with German journalist Gunter Gaus, in which the two discuss Arendt's childhood and her escape from Europe, and a conversation with acclaimed historian of the Nazi period, Joachim Fest, as well as other exchanges. These interviews show Arendt in vigorous intellectual form, taking up the issues of her day with energy and wit. She offers comments on the nature of American politics, on Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, on Israel; remembers her youth and her early experience of anti-Semitism, and then the swift rise of the Hitler; debates questions of state power and discusses her own processes of thinking and writing. Hers is an intelligence that never rests, that demands always of her interlocutors, and her readers, that they think critically. As she puts it in her last interview, just six months before her death at the age of 69, "there are no dangerous thoughts, for the simple reason that thinking itself is such a dangerous enterprise.". (shrink)