Artificial intelligence (AI) and its introduction into clinical pathways presents an array of ethical issues that are being discussed in the JME. 1–7 The development of AI technologies that can produce text that will pass plagiarism detectors 8 and are capable of appearing to be written by a human author 9 present new issues for medical ethics. One set of worries concerns authorship and whether it will now be possible to know that an author or student in fact produced submitted (...) work. That seems likely to be a general worry for secondary and higher education, as well as for all academic journals. Thus far generative AI chatbots do not seem to be able to produce a fully referenced and well-argued ethics article, but they probably could generate a blog or student essay that would... (shrink)

In this article we set the context for this special issue focusing on individual and organizational reintegration in the aftermath of transgressions that violate ethical and legal boundaries. Following a brief introduction to the topic we provide an overview of each of the four articles selected for this special issue. We then present a number of potentially fruitful empirical, theoretical, and normative directions management and ethics scholars might pursue in order to further advance this evolving literature.

Although there is much discussion exploring the potential causes of plagiarism, there is limited research available which provides evidence as to the academic interventions which may help reduce this. This paper discusses a bespoke English for Academic Purposes programme introduced at the university level, aimed at improving the academic writing standards of students, reducing plagiarism, and detecting cases of contract cheating. Results from 12 semesters of academic misconduct data demonstrate a 37.01% reduction in instances of detected plagiarism following the intervention, (...) but due to limited data, cannot demonstrate a direct impact on reducing detected rates of contract cheating. The results also show a lower than expected proportion of plagiarised assignments among submissions. (shrink)

Is there a compensation gap between female CEOs and male CEOs? If so, are there mechanisms to mitigate the compensation gap? Extending role congruity theory, we argue that the perception mismatch between the female gender role and the leadership role may lead to lower compensation to female CEOs, resulting in a gender compensation gap. Nevertheless, the compensation gap may be narrowed if female CEOs display agentic traits through risk-taking, or alternatively, work in female-dominated industries where communal traits are valued. Additionally, (...) we expect that female CEOs’ risk-taking is less effective in reducing the gender compensation gap in female-dominated industries due to the conflicting emphases on agentic and communal traits. Leveraging a sample of Chinese publicly listed firms, we find support for our hypotheses. Overall, this study contributes to the ethics literature on income inequality issues, by highlighting the effectiveness of potential mechanisms to close the gender compensation gap between female and male CEOs. (shrink)

Scholars have long suggested that CEOs can benefit from corporate philanthropy. However, little is known about this relationship in contexts of authoritarian capitalism such as China, where the state not only uses its control of economic entities to pursue social goals but also plays a key role in CEOs’ careers. We theorize how corporate philanthropy among state-controlled firms increases the CEO’s likelihood of receiving career benefits from the state in the form of outside directorships. Outside directorships represent an important form (...) of social capital in the Chinese context, and corporate philanthropy is an important mechanism through which social capital can be acquired. In addition, we theorize how two factors—the degree of state ownership and the number of independent directors on the CEO’s board—moderate this relationship. Analyzing a 12-year panel of state-controlled, publicly-listed firms in China comprising 6,594 firm-year observations, we find general support for our ideas. In so doing, we contribute to scholarship on the business–society relationship and corporate governance in the context of authoritarian capitalism. (shrink)

Is synaesthesia cognitively useful? Individuals with time–space synaesthesia experience time units as idiosyncratic spatial forms, and report that these forms aid them in mentally organising their time. In the present study, we hypothesised that time–space synaesthesia would facilitate performance on a time-related cognitive task. Synaesthetes were not specifically recruited for participation; instead, likelihood of time–space synaesthesia was assessed on a continuous scale based on participants’ responses during a semi-structured interview. Participants performed a month-manipulation task, which involved naming every second month (...) or every third month in reverse-chronological order, beginning and ending with a target month. Using hierarchical multiple regression, we found that time–space synaesthesia corresponded with faster performance on both versions of the task. We propose that time–space synaesthesia may expedite the cognitive manipulation of time-based information. Our results also indicate that synaesthesia is far less unusual than widely believed. (shrink)

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

Emissions arising from the production and consumption of food are acknowledged as a major contributor to climate change. From a consumer’s perspective, however, the sustainability of food may have many meanings: it may result from eating less meat, becoming vegetarian, or choosing to buy local or organic food. To explore what food sustainability means to consumers, and what factors lead to changes in food practice, we adopt a sociotechnical approach to compare the food consumption practices in North West England with (...) two differing consumer groups. The first, supermarket shoppers ‘embedded’ in the mainstream food regime; and the second, who self-identify as sustainable food practitioners, and who perform a range of sustainable food consumption practices. We examine how our two groups experience changes in food practices and identify ‘fractures’ stemming from lifecourse and public events that emerge as points where change might occur. We suggest that ‘sharing spaces’ would be one possibility for prompting and nurturing fractures that can lead to greater sustainability in food practices. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to gain an understanding of why employees misuse information systems resources in the workplace. Rather than consider “intention,” as existing behavioral research commonly does, this study investigates actual behavior and employs IS resource misuse as the dependent variable. Data from a web-based survey are analyzed using the partial least squares approach. In light of the dual-process approach and the theory of planned behavior, the findings suggest that IS resource misuse may be both an intentional (...) type of behavior and an unreasoned action. Perceived behavioral control influences employees’ IS resource misuse actions via their desires or intentions, whereas attitude toward such misuse affects these actions via employees’ desires alone. Subjective norm is found not to affect employees’ IS resource misuse via either desires or intentions. In terms of its theoretical contribution, this study considers unethical behavior in information systems by incorporating a dual-process model and the theory of planned behavior. With regard to its managerial significance, the study’s results will help managers to better understand why employees commit IS resource misuse within organizations. (shrink)

This book moves toward building a new and more comprehensive theory of literature, philosophy, psychology, and art. The extremely popular work of Ken Wilber, unites the best of both western and eastern thought and affirms that the stages of consciousness, more refined than that of the reasoning mind, do exist.

Mitigating response distortion in answers to sensitive questions is an important issue for business ethics researchers. Sensitive questions may be asked in surveys related to business ethics, and respondents may intend to avoid exposing sensitive aspects of their character by answering such questions dishonestly, resulting in response distortion. Previous studies have provided evidence that a surveying procedure called the randomized response technique is useful for mitigating such distortion. However, previous studies have mainly applied the RRT to individual dichotomous questions in (...) face-to-face survey settings. In this study, we focus on behavioral research examining the relationships between latent variables, which are unobserved variables measured by multiple items on Likert or bipolar scales. To demonstrate how the RRT can be applied to obtain valid answers from respondents answering a self-administered online questionnaire with Likert and bipolar scales, we build a behavioral model to study the effect of punishment severity on employees’ attitudes toward misuse of information systems resources in the workplace, which in turn influence misuse behavior. The survey findings meet our expectations. The respondents are generally more willing to disclose sensitive data about their attitudes and actual behavior related to misuse when the RRT is implemented. The RRT’s implications for causal modeling and the advantages and challenges of its use in online environments are also discussed. (shrink)

The Science Granting Councils Initiative (SGCI) in Africa aims to strengthen the capacities of selected science granting councils (SGCs) in sub-Saharan Africa in order to support research and evidence-based policies that will contribute to Africa’s economic and social development. As part of SGCI, a study was conducted in 2021 to investigate strategies that have been adopted by fifteen SGCs participating in SGCI in promoting ethical practice in research and innovation. Data collection for the study was mainly based on a data (...) abstraction form that was completed for each country by an assigned focal person with a background in research ethics. The focal persons relied on various methods including document and website review and interviews with senior officers at the SGCs. The study specifically sought to describe the strategies and activities being implemented by the 15 SGCs in promoting ethics and integrity in research and innovation. The study revealed various strategies that were being implemented by the 15 SGCs aimed at promoting ethics in research and innovation including requiring proof of research ethics committee approval before releasing research funds and the inclusion of ethics questions in the application form for funding. It was observed that some activities and strategies were generic to most SGCs for example the development of general/standard guidelines for the conduct of research in each respective country. Overall, the different SGCs were involved in a broad spectrum of activities aimed at promoting research ethics and this paper presents an opportunity for cross fertilization of ideas. By providing a summary of the various strategies that SGCs are using in promoting ethical conduct of research, it is hoped that this paper will lead to improvements in the ways SGCs provide support and oversight over the research that they fund. (shrink)

In psychological contract research, the side of the supervisor is strongly underexposed. However, supervisors are responsible for maintaining relationships with both their subordinates and senior management and are likely to be influenced by events unfolding in these relationships. In this study, we state that supervisor well-being may be affected by subordinates who fail to meet their obligations. This study adds to psychological contract research by developing an understanding of how and when subordinate psychological contract breach (PCB) is associated with supervisor (...) emotional exhaustion. Through a weekly diary survey among 56 Dutch supervisors, we test hypotheses about the relationships between subordinate PCB and the emotional exhaustion of the supervisor, the mediating role of perceptions of performance pressure by the supervisor in this relationship, and the moderating role of i-deals between the supervisor and senior management. Multilevel analyses support the first two hypotheses, but contradictory to our expectations show that the positive association between subordinate PCB and the emotional exhaustion of the supervisor is strengthened when the supervisor has high levels of i-deals with senior management. We discuss the findings in relation to their contribution to psychological contract theory. (shrink)

ABSTRACTFacial expressions play a central role in diverse areas of psychology. However, facial stimuli are often only validated by adults, and there are no face databases validated by school-aged c...

Anxiety disorders are one of the most prevalent mental health disorders, affecting up to a third of the population during their lifetime (Bandelow & Michaelis, 2015; Baxter et al., 2013). Attention...

Due to the increasingly heterogeneous trajectories of aging, gerontology requires theoretical models and empirical methods that can meaningfully, reliably, and precisely describe, explain, and predict causes and effects within the aging process, considering particular contexts and situations. Human behavior occurs in contexts; nevertheless, situational changes are often neglected in context-based behavior research. This article follows the tradition of environmental gerontology research based on Lawton’s Person-Environment-Interaction model and the theoretical developments of recent years. The authors discuss that, despite an explicit time (...) component, current P-E models could be strengthened by focusing on detecting P-E interactions in various everyday situations. Enhancing Lawton’s original formula via a situationally based component not only changes the theoretical perspectives on the interplay between person and environment but also demands new data collection approaches in empirical environmental research. Those approaches are discussed through the example of collecting mobile data with smartphones. Future research should include the situational dimension to investigate the complex nature of person environment interactions. (shrink)

Throughout the development of an "ethic of care" different from an "ethic of justice," the relationship between the two has been problematic. Are they theories between which one must choose? Are they complementary? Are they domain-specific? In support of my view that neither is adequate by itself, I here examine the private domain of care of the dying by intimates, and find there important issues both of care and of justice.

Are people rational? This question was central to Greek thought and has been at the heart of psychology and philosophy for millennia. This book provides a radical and controversial reappraisal of conventional wisdom in the psychology of reasoning, proposing that the Western conception of the mind as a logical system is flawed at the very outset. It argues that cognition should be understood in terms of probability theory, the calculus of uncertain reasoning, rather than in terms of logic, the calculus (...) of certain reasoning. (shrink)

The Céli Dé monks as we see them in the texts associated with their monasteries had a reputation for extreme asceticism. Following their leader, MáelRúain, who had an especially stern reputation for rigorous observance, they believed heaven had to be earned by saying many prayers, by penitential practices and by intense personal effort and striving on the part of each individual monk. To this end, they engaged in such practices as rigorous fasting, long vigils, confession of sins, strict Sabbath observance (...) and devotional practices involving many prayers. Their view of humanity and of creation generally was negative and they saw God as a stern judge. However, there was another aspect to Céli Dé monasticism which we see in the Félire Óengusso, the metrical martyrology compiled by Óengus the Culdee, a monk of Tallaght. We see from his Félire that he understood holiness as a gift of God’s grace, both for the saints in heaven, whom he describes as ‘radiant’ and ‘shining like the sun’, and for those still on earth, through the mercy and graciousness of God himself. His Félire was compiled as an act of devotion to Jesus and the saints, whom he addresses in terms of great warmth, tenderness and intimacy, in expressions which prefigure the language of the medieval mystics. So by studying the lives of these two monks, MáelRúain and Óengus, his protégée, as case studies, we can see that for the Céli Dé, holiness was less a matter of ‘either asceticism or mysticism’, but rather ‘both and’. (shrink)

This dissertation originated in a reasoned conviction that character is of crucial importance for moral theory; that its neglect in the modern period is regrettable. Considerations of character can illuminate judgments of the rightness of actions and the goodness of ends. Indeed, good character is one of the greatest goods. Further, the understanding of character and its development provides an essential link between moral theory and social philosophy. ;The particular content of this dissertation is Kant's theory of character. Recent scholars (...) have illuminated his treatment of character and the virtues; although these interpretations are valuable, there remains a need for the systematic articulation of the theory as a whole. ;My procedure has been to establish preliminary criteria for any theory of character, in the form of questions to which any adequate theory must given cogent answers, and then to discover Kant's answers to those questions. After the theory has been articulated, its adequacy is assessed. ;In Chapter One I review recent literature, contrasting act-centered with agent-centered approaches, and propose tentative criteria for theory of character. Chapters Two and Three present the rudiments of Kant's theory, and Chapter Three addresses standard criticisms. Chapter Four presents Kant's view of the development of character in its social context, and Chapter Five the problem which Kant's view of women's character presents for his theory as a whole. The final chapter evaluates its strengths and weaknesses. ;Although Kant's theory is shown to be flawed by his underlying conception of human nature, and by his inconsistent view of female character, I shall argue that it is basically sound. His analysis of character as related to choice, reason, freedom and society is comprehensive, and his emphasis on the importance of the moral agent, rather than on outcomes or general rules, makes him preeminently a philosopher of character. (shrink)

The paper aims to show that, if S5 is the logic of metaphysical necessity, then no state of affairs in any possible world constitutes any non-trivial evidence for or against the existence of the traditional God. There might well be states of affairs in some worlds describing extraordinary goods and extraordinary evils, but it is false that these states of affairs constitute any (non-trivial) evidence for or against the existence of God. The epistemological and metaphysical consequences for philosophical theology of (...) assuming that S4 or Kσρ is the logic of metaphysical necessity are equally untenable. S4 guarantees that God does not exist if there is the slightest evidence against the existence of God. And Kσρ guarantees that God might survive the loss or acquisition of any essential property at all. (shrink)

The responses of a convenience sample of 83 secondary preservice and preeducation students in three university classes were compared to each other and to a national sample of 1,492 adults on a national poll of science knowledge. The results of the data analyses using simple ANOVA and two-tailed t tests indicated that preservice secondary science teachers in a secondary science methods class are significantly more science literate than preeducation majors and the na tional sample. They were not significantly more science (...) literate than preservice and in-service science teachers in an environmental science methods class. Chemistry majors were significantly more science lit erate than other science and health majors. Additional comparisons between males and females, graduates and undergraduates, and older and younger (younger than 28) students indicated males, graduates, and older students are significantly more science literate than females, undergraduates, and younger students. (shrink)

'So mote it be …' describes a trinity of artworks by Mike Phillips that explore the delicate relationship we have with the extremes of our perception. These data-driven sonifications and visualizations play with the atomic forces that bind the material world as measured through the atomic force microscope (AFM). The works try and locate the trauma of seeing things that are invisible and beyond the resolution of the human eye to a history of cultural experience that similarly tries to (...) see things that might ordinarily have been perceived as occult or at the very least the product of Hollywood. (shrink)

This study explores the capability of academic staff assisted by the Turnitin Artificial Intelligence (AI) detection tool to identify the use of AI-generated content in university assessments. 22 different experimental submissions were produced using Open AI’s ChatGPT tool, with prompting techniques used to reduce the likelihood of AI detectors identifying AI-generated content. These submissions were marked by 15 academic staff members alongside genuine student submissions. Although the AI detection tool identified 91% of the experimental submissions as containing AI-generated content, only (...) 54.8% of the content was identified as AI-generated, underscoring the challenges of detecting AI content when advanced prompting techniques are used. When academic staff members marked the experimental submissions, only 54.5% were reported to the academic misconduct process, emphasising the need for greater awareness of how the results of AI detectors may be interpreted. Similar performance in grades was obtained between student submissions and AI-generated content (AI mean grade: 52.3, Student mean grade: 54.4), showing the capabilities of AI tools in producing human-like responses in real-life assessment situations. Recommendations include adjusting the overall strategies for assessing university students in light of the availability of new Generative AI tools. This may include reducing the overall reliance on assessments where AI tools may be used to mimic human writing, or by using AI-inclusive assessments. Comprehensive training must be provided for both academic staff and students so that academic integrity may be preserved. (shrink)

Philosophers and psychologists make many different, seemingly incompatible parsimony claims in support of competing models of cognition in nonhuman animals. This variety of parsimony claims is problematic. Firstly, it is difficult to justify each specific variety. This problem is especially salient for Morgan's Canon, perhaps the most important variety of parsimony claimed. Secondly, there is no systematic way of adjudicating between particular claims when they conflict. I argue for a view of parsimony in comparative psychology that solves these problems, based (...) on Sober's view that parsimony claims are claims that one model is more plausible given background theory. (shrink)

Sara Ruddick's Maternal Thinking represents a great contribution to moral philosophy-in particular, by bringing women's "private" virtues into the public sphere. However, there remain problems in the analysis which need to be addressed: How can one possibly generalize about the practice of mothering from one, necessarily limited, perspective, given the facts of cultural diversity? Is Ruddick's normative account of mothering congruent with the reflective judgments of others? Is her account of the transformation of parochial mothering into feminist peace work viable? (...) After exploring these three questions, this reviewer calls, with Ruddick, for the telling of more maternal stories, from different cultural, racial and economic perspectives. (shrink)