Gender stereotype theory suggests that men are generally perceived as more masculine than women, whereas women are generally perceived as more feminine than men. Several scales have been developed to measure fundamental aspects of gender stereotypes (e.g., agency and communion, competence and warmth, or instrumentality and expressivity). Although omitted in later version, Bem's original Sex Role Inventory included the items “masculine” and “feminine” in addition to more specific gender-stereotypical attributes. We argue that it is useful to be able to measure (...) these two core concepts in a reliable, valid, and parsimonious way. We introduce a new and brief scale, the Traditional Masculinity-Femininity (TMF) scale, designed to assess central facets of self-ascribed masculinity-femininity. Studies 1–2 used known-groups approaches (participants differing in gender and sexual orientation) to validate the scale and provide evidence of its convergent validity. As expected the TMF reliably measured a one-dimensional masculinity-femininity construct. Moreover, the TMF correlated moderately with other gender-related measures. Demonstrating incremental validity, the TMF predicted gender and sexual orientation in a superior way than established adjective-based measures. Furthermore, the TMF was connected to criterion characteristics, such as judgments as straight by laypersons for the whole sample, voice pitch characteristics for the female subsample, and contact to gay men for the male subsample, and outperformed other gender-related scales. Taken together, as long as gender differences continue to exist, we suggest that the TMF provides a valuable methodological addition for research into gender stereotypes. (shrink)

This paper sheds further light on the contextual boundaries in the relationship between high-performance work practices and employee wellbeing. In particular, we analyze whether this relationship is moderated by health-oriented leadership behavior which describes the extent to which leaders value, are aware of, and protect their followers’ health at work. Our analyses are based on employee data from Germany, covering two points in time. Findings show positive associations between HPWPs and happiness-related and health-related wellbeing outcomes. The positive relationship between HPWPs (...) and employee wellbeing is weaker the more employees experience leadership behavior in terms of staff care. Thus, our results provide further evidence for a substitutive or compensatory effect between HRM and leadership. (shrink)

The meaning of the noun 'creation', and the verb 'to create', range from the traditional theological idea of God creating ex nihilo to a more recent sense of the process of artistic conception. This collection of thirteen essays, written by scholars of music, literature, the visual arts, and theology, explores the complicated relationship between medieval rituals and theology, and the development of an idea of human artistic creation, which came to the fore in the sixteenth century. The volume concentrates on (...) the period from the Carolingians to the Counter-Reformation but also includes some twentieth-century musicians. Each essay is dedicated to a particular topic concerned with ritual or artistic beginnings, inventions, harmony and disharmony, as well as representations or celebrations of creation. Central themes include the interplay of the ideas of God as creator, of God acting and recreating in medieval liturgy, of God as artist - the deus artifex of the Pythagorean cosmology, which was occasionally referred to as recently as the early nineteenth century -and, finally, of the homo creator, a concept in which man reflected (and eventually replaced) God in his artistic creativity. This book therefore features new, significant, individual contributions from a range of scholarly disciplines, but, taken as a whole, it also constitutes a complex interdisciplinary study, with large-scale historical constructions. (shrink)

Multiple contraction (simultaneous contraction by several sentences) and iterated contraction are investigated in the framework of specified meet contraction (s.m.c.) that is extended for this purpose. Multiple contraction is axiomatized, and so is finitely multiple contraction (contraction by a finite set of sentences). Two ways to reduce finitely multiple contraction to contraction by single sentences are introduced. The reduced operations are axiomatically characterized and their properties are investigated. Furthermore, it is shown how iterated contraction can be reduced to single-step, single-sentence (...) contraction. However, in this framework the outcome of iterated contraction depends unavoidably on the order in which the inputs are received. This order-dependence makes it impossible to treat two inputs on an equal footing. Therefore it is often preferable to perform changes involving several pieces of information as multiple rather than iterated change. (shrink)

What purpose can be served by empirically unsubstantiated speculation in ethics? In answering that question, we need to distinguish between the major branches of ethics. In foundational moral philosophy, the use of speculative examples is warranted to the extent that ethical principles and theories are assumed to be applicable even under the extreme circumstances referred to in these examples. Such an assumption is in need of justification, and it cannot just be taken for granted. In applied ethics, the use of (...) unrealistic scenarios is more difficult to justify. It can be positively harmful if it diverts our attention from more urgent issues. Neuroethics is one of the areas of applied ethics where speculative scenarios have taken up much of the attention that could instead have been devoted to problems that are relevant for the treatment and care of patients. Speculative ethics has often been defended with mere possibility arguments that may at first hand seem difficult to refute. It is shown with examples how such claims can be defeated with a combination of science and argumentation analysis. (shrink)

Empathy is an integral aspect of human existence. Without at least a basic ability to access others’ affective life, social interactions would be well-nigh impossible. Yet, recent studies seem to show that the means we have acquired to access others’ emotional life no longer function well in what has become our everyday business – technologically mediated interactions in digital spaces. If this is correct, there are two important questions: (1) What makes empathy for frequent internet users so difficult? and (2) (...) What can we do to alleviate the negative consequences? Correspondingly, the aim of this paper is twofold. First, we identify structural differences between offline and technologically mediated interactions that can explain why digital empathy is harder to achieve. Second, drawing on the literature on ‘situated affectivity,’ we consider the idea of modifying digital spaces in ways specifically designed to ‘scaffold’ empathy where our evolved mechanisms fail. Section 2 argues that empathy is requires _interpreting_ the behavior of _embodied subjects_. Section 3 identifies three factors that are crucial for this interpretative endeavor: the empathizer’s _affective repertoire_, their _perceptual input_, and their _background knowledge_. Section 4 argues that technologically mediated interactions differ from face-to-face interactions with regard to these factors in ways which render our evolved empathy mechanisms less effective in the digital world. Section 5 introduces the idea that situational factors can serve as ‘empathic scaffolds,’ i.e., as ‘tools’ that can ‘shape’ people’s empathic reactions. Section 6 wraps up the main line of reasoning, responds to objections and invites further scholarship. (shrink)

This is a reply to a comment by Kåre Letrud [Letrud, Kåre. 2019. “The Gordian Knot of Demarcation: Tying Up Some Loose Ends.” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 32 : 3–11. doi:10...

Generalizations of partial meet contraction are introduced that start out from the observation that only some of the logically closed subsets of the original belief set are at all viable as contraction outcomes. Belief contraction should proceed by selection among these viable options. Several contraction operators that are based on such selection mechanisms are introduced and then axiomatically characterized. These constructions are more general than the belief base approach. It is shown that partial meet contraction is exactly characterized by adding (...) to one of these constructions the condition that all logically closed subsets of the belief set can be obtained as the outcome of a single (multiple) contraction. Examples are provided showing the counter-intuitive consequences of that condition, thus confirming the credibility of the proposed generalization of the AGM framework. (shrink)

A possible world semantics for preference is developed. The remainder operator () is used to give precision to the notion that two states of the world are as similar as possible, given a specified difference between them. A general structure is introduced for preference relations between states of affairs, and three types of such preference relations are defined. It is argued that one of them, actual preference, corresponds closely to the concept of preference in informal discourse. Its logical properties are (...) studied and shown to be plausible. (shrink)

Two types of measures of probabilistic uncertainty are introduced and investigated. Dispersion measures report how diffused the agent’s second-order probability distribution is over the range of first-order probabilities. Robustness measures reflect the extent to which the agent’s assessment of the prior (objective) probability of an event is perturbed by information about whether or not the event actually took place. The properties of both types of measures are investigated. The most obvious type of robustness measure is shown to coincide with one (...) of the major candidates for a dispersion measure, the mean square deviation measure. (shrink)

J.S. Mill’s advocacy of liberty was based only in part on his harm principle. He also endorsed two other principles that considerably extend the scope of liberty: first, a principle of individual liberty that is based on the value of positive freedom and of developing individuality, and second, a principle of free trade or economic freedom that is based on the value of economic efficiency. An analysis is offered of how these three principles are combined in Mill’s account of liberty (...) and how they connect with his antipaternalism. It is proposed that his appeal in On Liberty to positive freedom and the development of individuality provides a uniting principle that makes his view on liberty cohere with his utilitarianism. (shrink)

We investigated, by means of the Reverse Correlation Task, visual representations of the culturally dominating group of local people held by sojourners as a function of their degree of cross-cultural adaptation. In three studies, using three different methods with three independent samples of sojourners and seven independent samples of Portuguese and US-American raters, we gathered clear evidence that poor adaptation goes along with more negative representations of locals. This indicates that sojourner adaptation is reflected, at a social-cognitive level, in the (...) valence of outgroup representations. (shrink)

Collective migration is a key process that is critical during development, as well as in physiological and pathophysiological processes including tissue repair, wound healing and cancer. Studies in genetic model organisms have made important contributions to our current understanding of the mechanisms that shape cells into different tissues during morphogenesis. Recent advances in high‐resolution and live‐cell‐imaging techniques provided new insights into the social behavior of cells based on careful visual observations within the context of a living tissue. In this review, (...) we will compare Drosophila testis nascent myotube migration with established in vivo model systems, elucidate similarities, new features and principles in collective cell migration. (shrink)

A formal language is introduced that contains expressions for the dependency of a legal relation on the claims that the concerned individuals make and on the permissions that they grant. It is used for a classification of legal relations into six major categories: categorical obligation, categorical permission, claimable obligation, grantable permission, claim-dependent obligation and grant-dependent permission. Legal rights may belong to any of these six categories, but the characteristics of a right-holder are shown to be different in each of the (...) six types. (shrink)

Theoria, Volume 88, Issue 2, Page 273-275, April 2022.

Climate science denial has a perhaps surprisingly strong standing in anthroposophy. Anthroposophical deniers of climate science usually do not contest the existence of global warming, but they ascribe it to “cosmic” processes that are largely described in astrological terms. Thoroughly refuted claims that ongoing global warming depends on variations in solar activity have been adopted by anthroposophists. This article proposes three major explanations for the persistence of climate science denial in the anthroposophical movement: Anthroposophists constantly look for guidance on scientific (...) issues in the writings of their founder Rudolf Steiner, who made claims far off from the mainstream science of his time. They consider the material world to be constantly influenced by “spiritual” factors, including astrological constellations and a host of supernatural beings. Finally, they cherish ideas on a predetermined, largely cyclic, cosmic plan, of which humanity is a part. (shrink)

We encounter the notion of coherence in many branches of philosophy. This overview introduces some basic distinctions that can be used to characterize concepts of coherence. After that, two formal frameworks for the analysis of coherence are introduced. The first of these is based on the logic of support relations. It is used to show that coherentism and foundationalism may be combinable rather than antithetical. The second framework assumes that coherence comes in degrees and that it can be measured in (...) probability-based units. The properties of such measures is discussed, and so are the difficulties in constructing a measure of coherence that satisfies intuitively reasonable constraints. (shrink)

A money-pump is a thought experiment involving a person whose preferences form a circle. Repeatedly, she pays some money to go from one alternative to another that she likes better. When she has paid her way around the full circle she is back at the starting-point, but with less money. Money-pumps have been used to show that certain preference patterns are irrational since they make a person exploitable. Formal tools can be used to analyze money-pumps in a precise manner, distinguish (...) between different types of money-pumps, and investigate decision strategies to avoid their pernicious effects. Although money-pumps are rather contrived constructions, these investigations have practical relevance since there seem to be decision situations in the real world with the same structure. (shrink)

Theoria, Volume 87, Issue 1, Page 3-6, February 2021.

Theoria, Volume 88, Issue 5, Page 883-886, October 2022.

Theoria, Volume 87, Issue 5, Page 1015-1019, October 2021.