An influential line of thinking in behavioral science, to which the two authors have long subscribed, is that many of society's most pressing problems can be addressed cheaply and effectively at the level of the individual, without modifying the system in which the individual operates. We now believe this was a mistake, along with, we suspect, many colleagues in both the academic and policy communities. Results from such interventions have been disappointingly modest. But more importantly, they have guided many (though (...) by no means all) behavioral scientists to frame policy problems in individual, not systemic, terms: To adopt what we call the “i-frame,” rather than the “s-frame.” The difference may be more consequential than i-frame advocates have realized, by deflecting attention and support away from s-frame policies. Indeed, highlighting the i-frame is a long-established objective of corporate opponents of concerted systemic action such as regulation and taxation. We illustrate our argument briefly for six policy problems, and in depth with the examples of climate change, obesity, retirement savings, and pollution from plastic waste. We argue that the most important way in which behavioral scientists can contribute to public policy is by employing their skills to develop and implement value-creating system-level change. (shrink)

Introduction George Loewenstein, Daniel Read, and Roy F. Baumeister P _L sychology and economics have a classic love-hate relationship. ...

Conflicts of interest can lead experts to give biased and corrupt advice. Although disclosure is often proposed as a potential solution to these problems, we show that it can have perverse effects. First, people generally do not discount advice from biased advisors as much as they should, even when advisors’ conflicts of interest are disclosed. Second, disclosure can increase the bias in advice because it leads advisors to feel morally licensed and strategically encouraged to exaggerate their advice even further. As (...) a result, disclosure may fail to solve the problems created by conflicts of interest and may sometimes even make matters worse. (shrink)

Conflicts of interest can lead experts to give biased and corrupt advice. Although disclosure is often proposed as a potential solution to these problems, we show that it can have perverse effects. First, people generally do not discount advice from biased advisors as much as they should, even when advisors’ conflicts of interest are disclosed. Second, disclosure can increase the bias in advice because it leads advisors to feel morally licensed and strategically encouraged to exaggerate their advice even further. As (...) a result, disclosure may fail to solve the problems created by conflicts of interest and may sometimes even make matters worse. (shrink)

Recent research finds that people respond more generously to individual victims described in detail than to equivalent statistical victims described in general terms. We propose that this “identified victim effect” is one manifestation of a more general phenomenon: a positive influence of tangible information on generosity. In three experiments, we find evidence for an “identified intervention effect”; providing tangible details about a charity’s interventions significantly increases donations to that charity. Although previous work described sympathy as the primary mediator between tangible (...) information and giving, current mediational analyses show that the influence of tangible details can operate through donors’ perception that their contribution will have impact. Taken together with past work, the results suggest that tangible information of many types promotes generosity and can do so either via sympathy or via perceived impact. The ability of tangible information to increase impact points to new ways for charities to encourage generosity. (shrink)

George Loewenstein is one of the pioneers of the rapidly growing field of behavioral economics. For over twenty years he has been working at the intersection of economics and psychology and is one of the few people of whom it can be said that their work is equally respected and well known within both disciplines. This book brings together a selection of his papers focusing on what he calls "exotic preferences"-- the disparate motives that drive human behavior. Anoriginal (...) introduction outlines Loewenstein's general approach to research, and there are short introductions to each paper outlining briefly when, how and why they came to be written, providing a fascinating and vivid insight into the process of intellectual creativity. (shrink)

Contrary to the many accounts of the destructive effects of strong emotions, this article argues that the most serious problems facing the world are caused by a deficiency rather than an excess of emotions. It then shows how an evolutionary account of emotion can explain when and why such deficiencies occur.

Our target article distinguishes between policy approaches that seek to address societal problems through intervention at the level of the individual (adopting the “i-frame”) and those that seek to change the system within which those individuals live (adopting the “s-frame”). We stress also that a long-standing tactic of corporations opposing systemic change is to promote the i-frame perspective, presumably hoping that i-frame interventions will be largely ineffective and more importantly will be seen by the public and some policy makers as (...) a genuine alternative to systemic change. We worry that the i-frame focus of much of behavioral science has inadvertently reinforced this unhelpful focus on the individual. In this response to commentators, we identify common themes, build on the many constructive suggestions to extend our approach, and reply to concerns. We argue, along with several commentators, that a key role of behavioral public policy is to clarify how to build support for systemic reforms for which there is a broad consensus in the policy community, but which are opposed by powerful special interests. (shrink)

In this letter, we argue that an economic perspective on the mind has played—and should continue to play—a central role in the development of cognitive science. Viewing cognition as the productive application of mental resources puts cognitive science and economics on a common conceptual footing, paving the way for closer collaboration between the two disciplines. This will enable cognitive scientists to more readily repurpose economic concepts and analytical tools for the study of mental phenomena, while at the same time, enriching (...) our understanding of the modern economy, which is increasingly driven by mental, rather than physical, production. (shrink)

A wide range of medical institutions have developed and implemented policies to mitigate the adverse consequences of conflicts of interest. These newly implemented policies, which include regulation of industry contact with physicians and hospitals, controls on gifts from industry, and greater transparency in industry sponsored activities, have generated considerable controversy.Formulating and evaluating policies in a neutral, unbiased fashion can be difficult for those personally affected. When people have a stake in an issue, they tend to process information in a selective (...) fashion that supports their personal interests, a phenomenon known as “motivated reasoning.” When decision makers with preexisting opinions are exposed to information, they are inclined to selectively use the information to arrive at conclusions that justify their prior beliefs. When confronted with information that contradicts existing views, people evaluate it with greater skepticism. Additionally, once decision makers have reached a decision, they are likely to evaluate subsequent evidence in a biased manner that supports their decision. (shrink)

Physicians are affected by the conflict of interest (COI) policies they help formulate. This study examines whether physicians evaluate these policies impartially. One hundred and seventy-nine physicians, 224 financial advisors, and 1,430 members of the general public evaluated the fairness and efficacy of a COI policy in either a medical or financial context. Physicians were more critical of the medical COI policy compared to a financial COI policy, while financial professionals displayed the reverse pattern and control respondents rated both policies (...) similarly. This suggests a bias against COI policies by those who will be directly affected. (shrink)

Global Economy, Global Justice explores a vital question that is suppressed in most economics texts: "what makes for a good economic outcome?" Neoclassical theory embraces the normative perspective of "welfarism" to assess economic outcomes. This volume demonstrates the fatal flaws of this perspective--flaws that stem from objectionable assumptions about human nature, society and science. Exposing these failures, the book obliterates the ethical foundations of global neoliberalism. George DeMartino probes heterodox economic traditions and philosophy in search of an ethically viable (...) alternative to welfarism. Drawing on the work of Amartya Sen, DeMartino proposes the egalitarian principle of the "global harmonization of capabilities" to guide economics. This principle provides a basis for resisting oppression the world over while nevertheless demanding respect for cultural diversity. DeMartino puts this principle to work adjudicating contemporary debates over global policy regimes, and completes thebook with a set of deeply egalitarian global policies for the year 2025. Global Economy, Global Justice 's engaging prose will appeal to those seeking to understand the intersection between economics and political philosophy. Its focus on the normative foundations of contemporary policy disputes makes it unique in the literature on globalization. (shrink)

Written in the 1960s, TRUTH AND METHOD is Gadamer's magnum opus.

George Berkeley (1685-1753) is the superstar of Irish Philosophy. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1700 and became a fellow in 1707. In 1724 he resigned his Fellowship to become Dean of Derry, and in 1734 he was made Bishop of Cloyne. He settled in Oxford in 1752 and died the following year. The work of George Berkeley is marked by its diversity and range. His writings take in such topics as mathematics, psychology, politics, health, economics, deism and (...) education, as well as that with which he is most associated - philosophy. Whatever topic he dealt with, his grasp of the subject matter was always impressive and his criticisms of his contemporaries often acute. Among the most noteable of the British Empiricists, he took his starting point from Locke's new 'way of ideas', but he rejected abstract ideas and the possibility of real existence outside perception. It is for this doctrine that he is most known - that there is no such thing as matter, and that things are collections of ideas which can exist only in our minds and only for so long as they are perceived. This philosophy, summed up in his phrase 'to be is to be perceived', he termed 'immaterialism'. A.C. Fraser's collection includes a series of what were previously unpublished notes by Berkeley on all the main topics of his philosophy. This, the 1901 edition, was the first complete edition of his works. (shrink)

A brilliant and comprehensive history of the creation of the modern Western mind. Soul Machine takes us back to the origins of modernity, a time when a crisis in religious authority and the scientific revolution led to searching questions about the nature of human inner life. This is the story of how a new concept—the mind—emerged as a potential solution, one that was part soul and part machine, but fully neither. In this groundbreaking work, award-winning historian George Makari shows (...) how writers, philosophers, physicians, and anatomists worked to construct notions of the mind as not an ethereal thing, but a natural one. From the ascent of Oliver Cromwell to the fall of Napoleon, seminal thinkers like Hobbes, Locke, Diderot, and Kant worked alongside often-forgotten brain specialists, physiologists, and alienists in the hopes of mapping the inner world. Conducted in a cauldron of political turmoil, these frequently shocking, always embattled efforts would give rise to psychiatry, mind sciences such as phrenology, and radically new visions of the self. Further, they would be crucial to the establishment of secular ethics and political liberalism. Boldly original, wide-ranging, and brilliantly synthetic, Soul Machine gives us a masterful, new account of the making of the modern Western mind. (shrink)

Throughout The Blessed and Boundless God, he proves his doctrine by demonstrating God's incomparableness in His being, attributes, works, and words. Swinnock is a pastor-theologian who views theology as the means by which we grow in acquaintance with God and, consequently, in godliness.

We present five experiments and simulation studies to establish late analogical abstraction as a new psychological phenomenon: Schema abstraction from analogical examples can revive otherwise inert knowledge. We find that comparing two analogous examples of negotiations at recall time promotes retrieving analogical matches stored in memory—a notoriously elusive effect. Another innovation in this research is that we show parallel effects for real‐life autobiographical memory (Experiments 1–3) and for a controlled memory set (Experiments 4 and 5). Simulation studies show that a (...) unified model based on schema abstraction can capture backward (retrieval) effects as well as forward (transfer) effects. (shrink)

The current paper examines whether knowledge of an ethical principle influences moral awareness and ethical decision making. Using hypothetical scenarios and a behavioral task, three experiments examine the effects of deepening people’s knowledge of ethical principles. In each study, an analogical encoding learning intervention led to greater knowledge of an ethical principle, which in turn resulted in a greater likelihood of moral awareness and making ethical decisions. These findings suggest that moral awareness is partly a matter of the depth of (...) individuals’ knowledge of ethical principles. The findings provide further reasons to link work on ethics with work on expertise and knowledge transfer as well as indicate new approaches to ethics training. (shrink)

Berkeley's idealism started a revolution in philosophy. As one of the great empiricist thinkers he not only influenced British philosophers from Hume to Russell and the logical positivists in the twentieth century, he also set the scene for the continental idealism of Hegel and even the philosophy of Marx. There has never been such a radical critique of common sense and perception as that given in Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge (1710). His views were met with disfavour, and his response (...) to his critics was the Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous. This edition of Berkeley's two key works has an introduction which examines and in part defends his arguments for idealism, as well as offering a detailed analytical contents list, extensive philosophical notes, and an index. (shrink)

1000 time-travelers travel back in time, each with the intention of killing their own infant-self. If there is no branching time, then on pain of bringing about a logical contradiction, all must fail. But this seems inexplicable: what is to ensure that the time-travelers are stopped? For a time, this inexplicability objection was thought to provide evidence that there is something incoherent about the possibility of backwards time travel in a universe without branching time. There is now near-consensus, however, that (...) the objection has no bite: there is nothing inexplicable about the mass failure. Lewis, Sider and Ismael independently argue that since it is built into the description of the class of cases considered that the time-travelers must fail – and so we consider only unsuccessful attempts – there is no mystery. Smith argues that the absence of possible worlds at which auto-infanticide is committed suffices as a complete explanation for the failures. And Baron and Colyvan maintain that available causal and logical explanations jointly account for everything that needs accounting for. I argue that these are wrong. There is remaining, problematic inexplicability. For backwards time travel not to lead to logical contradiction, something would need to do logic’s bidding, after all. (shrink)

Millennials are a powerful workforce group and are quickly becoming established business leaders, consumers, and investors. Yet, millennials are often described as a uniformly homogeneous generation, despite mounting evidence of variances across their private and workplace behaviors, attitudes and preferences, and personal values. This article examines the personal value orientations of millennials in the Unites States, reporting consistencies, variations, and contrasts based on a large sample drawn from seven diverse universities. Results of this article suggest more similarities across a national (...) population of millennials than differences, suggesting a national identity among American millennials. Practical implications of our findings and future research are discussed. (shrink)

George Herbert Mead (1863-1931) had a powerful influence on the development of American pragmatism in the twentieth century. He also had a strong impact on the social sciences. This classic book represents Mead's philosophy of experience, so central to his outlook. The present as unique experience is the focus of this deep analysis of the basic structure of temporality and consciousness. Mead emphasizes the novel character of both the present and the past. Though science is predicated on the assumption (...) that the present is predictable based on a thorough knowledge of the past, the experience of the present, says Mead, is an utterly unique moment comparable to no other, and when it is past the novel character of that unique experience is irrevocable. The emergence of novelty within the perceived rational order of reality is the crux of the problem that Mead explores. The present, in his words, is "the emergent event . . . something which is more than the processes that have led up to it and which by its change, continuance, or disappearance, adds to later passages a content they would not otherwise have possessed." The present as "the seat of reality" heavily conditions our retrospective view of the past as much as it helps to shape the future. The novelty of every present experience causes us to reconstruct our preceding experiences to make sense of the past, which is naturally assumed to be the main cause of what we presently experience. Our perspective on reality is thus relative to the conditioning of each new event and it changes continuously as the effects of the present shift our view of the past and future. This emphasis on the integrative, holistic nature of reality, in which everything past, present, and future is a condition of everything else, makes Mead's philosophy highly relevant to today's scientific picture of a quantum universe, where chance and probability play a role in the emergence of reality. Also of great interest is the way in which he extends his basic analysis of temporal-spatial reality to the emergence of mind and consciousness as a natural development of the evolutionary process. This stimulating and provocative work attests to John Dewey's praise of Mead as "the most original mind in philosophy in America" of his generation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The apparent consistency of Sobel sequences famously motivated David Lewis to defend a variably strict conditional semantics for counterfactuals. If Sophie had gone to the parade, she would have seen Pedro. If Sophie had gone to the parade and had been stuck behind someone tall, she would not have seen Pedro. But if the order of the counterfactuals in a Sobel sequence is reversed—in the example, if is asserted prior to —the second counterfactual asserted no longer rings true. This (...) is the Heim sequence problem. That the order of assertion makes this difference is surprising on the variably strict account. Some argue that this is reason to reject the Lewis-Stalnaker semantics outright. Others argue that the problem motivates a contextualist rendering of counterfactuals. Still others maintain that the explanation for the phenomenon is merely pragmatic. I argue that none of these is right, and I defend a novel way to understand the phenomenon. My proposal avoids the problems faced by the alternative analyses and enjoys independent support. There is, however, a difficulty for my view: it entails that many ordinarily accepted counterfactuals are not true. I argue that this cost is acceptable. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)