Given the negative costs of exclusion and the relevance of belongingness for humans, the experience of exclusion influences social affiliation motivation, which in turn is a relevant predictor of prosocial behavior. Skin conductance is a typical measure of the arousal elicited by emotions. Hence, we argued that both inclusion and exclusion will increase skin conductance level due to the increase of either positive affect or anger affects, respectively. Moreover, we argued that emotional arousal is also related to social (...) class='Hi'>affiliation motivation and prosocial behavior. A total of 48 students were randomly allocated to either an inclusionary or exclusionary condition and their skin conductance levels were recorded during an experiment in which they completed an online questionnaire and played the game “Cyberball.” Results indicated that (a) individuals who perceived high exclusion felt angrier than individuals perceiving high inclusion, who feel positive affect; (b) no differences were evidenced in terms of skin conductance between exclusion and inclusion situations; (c) over-aroused individuals were less motivated to affiliate; and (d) individuals with lower affiliation motivation behaved in a less prosocial way. The results were congruent to the argument that behaving prosocially may be a way to gain the desired affiliation. (shrink)

To examine the psychological origins of sex-typed news preferences, an online newsmagazine was presented to 246 German participants in a quasi-experimental design. The presented articles featured equal portions of social/interpersonal and achievement/performance topics. Newsreaders' selective news exposure was unobtrusively logged. Results show that, even when various intervening factors are eliminated, women read more about social/interpersonal topics than men did, and men spent more time on achievement/performance-related news than women. Newsreaders' self-esteem and gender role orientation influenced the preference of news content. (...) This contribution will also discuss the effects of sex-typed news exposure. (shrink)

The current study introduces the Multi-Motive Grid Mobility in an age-stratified sample that aims to disentangle six motive components – hope of success, hope of affiliation, hope of power, fear of failure, fear of rejection, and fear of power – in mobility-related and mobility-unrelated scenarios. Similar to the classical Multi-Motive Grid, we selected 14 picture scenarios representing seven mobility and seven non-mobility situations. The scenarios were combined with 12 statements from the MMG. Both the MMG-M and (...) MMG were assessed to allow comparability between psychometric criteria. The results of confirmatory factor analyses yielded a good model fit for a six-factor solution with an additional mobility factor for the MMG-M. Internal consistency of the items was similar to the MMG. Lastly, we investigated associations between the motive components and mobility-related variables. We found that risk awareness was positively related to all fear components in both mobility and non-mobility scenarios. Most importantly, physical constraint was positively associated with fear of rejection and fear of power in mobility situations underlining the importance to create support systems to reduce these concerns in people’s everyday lives. (shrink)

The implicit motivational needs for power, achievement, and affiliation are highly relevant in the context of sports. Sport enables people to experience achievement incentives like mastering challenges as well as social incentives such as recognition by teammates. Further, McClelland’s (1986) hypothesized that implicit motives are particularly associated right-hemisphere functions. Therefore, this preregistered study, conducted online, examines motivational needs using a standard picture-story exercise (PSE) and their associations with indicators of laterality, sports participation, and competition in gymnasts (N = 67). (...) Further it explores how implicit motives interact with suitable motivational incentives in the prediction of sports performance. Results partly confirm a link between indictors of cerebral rightward laterality and implicit motives, showing that the implicit affiliation and achievement motives are positively associated with an indicator of emotional-perceptional laterality (chimeric-faces task), but not with an indicator of motor laterality (turning bias). Moreover, the implicit achievement motive was positively correlated with training hours. The implicit affiliation motive was negatively associated with competition level. The presence of achievement incentives (perceived control, failure) and affiliation incentives (training together or alone) did not interact with corresponding motives to predict sports performance. (shrink)

Research from psychology, neurobiology and behavioral economics indicates that a binary view of motivation, based on approach and avoidance, may be too reductive. Instead, a literature review suggests that at least seven distinct motives are likely to affect human decisions: “consumption/resource seeking,” “care,” “affiliation,” “achievement,” “status-power,” “threat approach” (or anger), and “threat avoidance” (or fear). To explore the conceptual distinctness and relatedness of these motives, we conducted a semantic categorization task. Here, participants were to assign provided words to one (...) of the motives. By applying principal component analysis to the categorization assignments we represent the semantic inter-relations of these motives on a two-dimensional space, a “semantic atlas.” This atlas suggests that, while care and affiliation are conceptually close, affiliation is closer to threat avoidance (or fear); opposite to these motives we find achievement, consumption and power, with the latter lying closer to threat approach (or anger). In a second study, we asked participants to rate how well the motive-specific words obtained in the first study described their currently experienced feelings. We find that semantically close motives are also more likely to be experienced together, that is, we replicate most of the semantic relations in the “subjective atlas.” We discuss our findings in comparison to other multi-dimensional models of motivation, which show clear similarities. In addition to these motivational atlases, we provide a database of motive-specific words, together with the valence and arousal scores. These can be used for future research on the influence of motives on decision making. (shrink)

Miller and Rodgers (2001) proposed a central nervous system based Ontogenetic Bonding System that operates across the life course to promote succorant, 1 affiliative, sexual, and nurturant bonds. I discuss features of this theoretical framework that can inform Depue & Morrone-Strupinsky's (D&M-S's) model. Most important, I suggest that the affiliative reward processes D&M-S describe are better conceptualized as subserving the affect/motivation of affection. Footnotes1 “Succorance” is a term coined by Murray (1938) to describe a general tendency to seek the help (...) and protection of others. (shrink)

As part of the social distancing measures for preventing the spread of COVID-19, many university courses were moved online. There is an assumption that online teaching limits opportunities for fostering interpersonal relationships and students’ satisfaction of the basic need for relatedness – reflected by experiencing meaningful interpersonal connections and belonging – which are considered important prerequisites for student motivation and vitality. In educational settings, an important factor affecting students’ relatedness satisfaction is the teachers’ behavior. Although research suggests that relatedness satisfaction (...) may be impaired in online education settings, to date no study has assessed how university lecturers’ relatedness support might be associated with student relatedness satisfaction and therefore, student motivation and vitality. This study tested this mediating relationship using data collected during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study also investigated whether the relations were moderated by a high affiliation motive which reflects a dispositional wish for positive and warm relationships. The possible importance of the communication channel selected by the lecturers and the format of a class were also investigated. In a sample of N = 337 students, we tested our hypotheses using structural equation model. Results confirmed mediation, but not moderation. The use of video chat seems to facilitate the provision of relatedness support but our data did not show that the format of a class was associated with relatedness. Our findings indicate that both teaching behavior and the technical format used to deliver lectures play important roles in student experiences with online classes. The results are discussed in light of other research conducted during the pandemic. (shrink)

David McClelland’s research on the different kinds of (implicit) motives and how to measure them has a substantial influence on contemporary psychology of motivation. He did not, however, reflect on the nature of implicit motives in much detail. In this paper I fill this gap. I argue that implicit motives should not be understood as mental states the agent has no introspective access to. Instead, I propose that the implicit motives that McClelland and others in the field distinguish – the (...) power, achievement, and affiliation motive – are generic descriptions of specific ends an agent may act for. These motives are implicit, because they are not explicitly expressed but merely implied in what the agent does, thinks, and feels. Establishing whether an agent acts for or has a certain implicit motive, then, is a matter of interpreting the agent’s expressions. This proposal is in line with and explains the empirical findings. (shrink)

Many studies of bribery acknowledge the important role of bribe-givers, but their true motives remain unclear. We propose that the likelihood of bribery depends on the willingness of an organization to affiliate with local parties or to be successful in a host country, or to have power over local parties. We further argue that different opportunities, either pervasive or arbitrary, facilitate different types of motives that affect the likelihood of bribery. In addition, we investigate the effect of perceived fairness on (...) the likelihood of bribery. We employ a 3 (motives: affiliation vs. achievement vs. power) × 2 (opportunities: pervasiveness vs. arbitrariness) × 2 (perceived fairness: high vs. low) factorial design in experimental settings among Executive MBA students in southern Taiwan. Our findings indicate that, when companies perceive a higher level of distributive fairness, high-achieving organizations are more likely to offer a bribe when the condition is pervasive. When they have a powerful motive, arbitrariness engenders a higher likelihood of bribery. When they perceive less distributive fairness, there are no significant differences between motive and opportunity. (shrink)

Introduced in _Psychoanalysis and Motivation _ and further developed in _Self and Motivational Systems_, _The Clinical Exchange _, and _A Spirit of Inquiry _, motivational systems theory aims to identify the components and organization of mental states and the process by which affects, intentions, and goals unfold. Motivation is described as a complex intersubjective process that is cocreated in the developing individual embedded in a matrix of relationships with others. Opening by placing motivational systems theory within a contemporary dynamic systems (...) theory, Lichtenberg, Lachmann, and Fosshage then respond to critics of motivational systems theory. The authors present revisions to their approach to the original five motivational systems, adding two more: an affiliative and a caregiving motivational system. The authors go on to suggest, using ideas garnered from complexity theory and fractals, that motivational systems theory can help us understand how a continuity of self can be maintained despite near-constant fluctuations in interpersonal relations. They then consider how the making of inferences, explicitly and implicitly, is shaped by motivation, before applying their theory to an actual human experience - love - to demonstrate the interplay of multiple shifting motivations within an individual. Last, they present new looks at the clinical applicability of their research. Grounded in observational research of infants but relevant to psychoanalysis at any stage of life, motivational systems theory has evolved via the combined experiences of these three analysts for more than 20 years, and remains an important contribution to our understanding of the driving forces behind human experience. (shrink)

Emotions evolved to guide animals in pursuing specific motives and goals. They function as short-term alertors and regulators of behaviour and can be grouped into their evolved functions. Emotions can coregulate/influence each other, where one emotion can activate or suppress another. Importantly, affiliative emotions, that arise from experiencing validation, care and support from others, have major impacts on how people process and respond to threats and emotions associated with threats. Hence, exploring how affiliative emotional experiences change and transform the capacity (...) to cope with threat and pursue life goals, are salient research issues. (shrink)

Extraversion has two central characteristics: (1) interpersonalengagement, which consists of affiliation (enjoying and valuing close interpersonal bonds, being warm and affectionate) and agency (being socially dominant, enjoying leadership roles, being assertive, being exhibitionistic, and having a sense of potency in accomplishing goals) and (2) impulsivity, which emerges from the interaction of extraversion and a second, independent trait (constraint). Agency is a more general motivational disposition that includes dominance, ambition, mastery, efficacy, and achievement. Positive affect (a combination of positive feelings (...) and motivation) is closely associated with extraversion. Extraversion is accordingly based on positiveincentivemotivation. (shrink)

Using a panel data of 806 U.S. firms from 2006 to 2015, we find that in their ratings of corporate social responsibility performance, firms with top managers who attended religiously affiliated schools outperform their peers with no such managers. The positive relationship between religious school attendance and CSR performance is stronger among firms with lower level of community religiosity or less external monitoring. Our findings lend support to early theoretical work that suggests managerial CSR-oriented values can be key motivating factors (...) for CSR initiatives. (shrink)

Depue & Morrone-Strupinsky (D&M-S) do not address how a reward system accommodates the motivational dilemmas associated with (a) the decision to approach versus avoid conspecifics, and (b) self versus other tradeoffs inherent in behaving altruistically toward bonded relationship partners. We provide an alternative evolutionary view that addresses motivational conflict, and discuss implications for the neurobiological study of affiliative bonds.

How are individuals affected by their own self-interested unethical behavior? Although self-interested unethical behavior commonly occurs as people attempt to advantage themselves, we argue that this unethical behavior can have deleterious implications for individuals and their social relationships. We propose that engaging in self-interested unethical behavior is positively related to state paranoia—an aversive psychological state. In turn, the social cognitive biases underlying state paranoia can prompt people to misjudge the potential for social threat. This may motivate them to curtail coworker-directed (...) affiliative behavior, thereby inadvertently undermining their social relationships. Our predictions were supported across four studies, including a behavioral study in a controlled environment, a recall study, a field survey in a single organization, and a two-wave survey. Theoretical and practical implications include highlighting the importance of understanding the personal and social consequences of self-interested unethical behavior as well as the impact of state paranoia in the workplace. (shrink)

The present study evaluated the relationship between job satisfaction and unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB), directly as well as indirectly, through organizational commitment. Multidimensional constructs were utilized for job satisfaction and organizational commitment to provide a granular understanding of how these constructs can motivate employees to engage in UPB, which can threaten organizations' success and diminish the public's confidence in organizations. In order to test these relationships, a diverse sample of 617 participants was recruited through the online survey distribution platform Amazon (...) Mechanical Turk (MTurk®) to test the theoretical model using structural equation modeling (SEM). The results indicated that identification, affiliation, and exchange commitment served as intervening variables between growth satisfaction and UPB, while no significant indirect effect of internal work motivation on UPB was found. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

The present study evaluated the relationship between job satisfaction and unethical pro-organizational behavior, directly as well as indirectly, through organizational commitment. Multidimensional constructs were utilized for job satisfaction and organizational commitment to provide a granular understanding of how these constructs can motivate employees to engage in UPB, which can threaten organizations' success and diminish the public's confidence in organizations. In order to test these relationships, a diverse sample of 617 participants was recruited through the online survey distribution platform Amazon Mechanical (...) Turk to test the theoretical model using structural equation modeling. The results indicated that identification, affiliation, and exchange commitment served as intervening variables between growth satisfaction and UPB, while no significant indirect effect of internal work motivation on UPB was found. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

This article focuses on social reformer Caroline Bartlett Crane and her association with club women for municipal reform during the Progressive Era. Using archival material, the author examines the actual process of Progressive social reform in which Crane used social networks, sociology, and Social Gospel ideals to achieve positive social change. The author also addresses recent critiques of Progressive women reformers regarding their motivations, accomplishments, and their ultimate legacy in Progressive Era social change.

Psychometrically sound short scales are required to comprehensively and yet economically assess fundamental motives in research settings such as large-scale assessments. In order to provide such a time- and cost-efficient instrument, we conducted three studies to develop further and validate 16 German scales with three items each assessing fundamental motives [16 motives research scales ]. In Study 1, we applied a top–down construction process to develop a preliminary item pool on the basis of a thorough revision of existing construct definitions. (...) In Study 2, we chose an approach that allowed us to balance the optimization of psychometric properties with content coverage to select three-item scales for each of the 16 motives. For the item selection process, we combined exploratory factor analyses, confirmatory factor analyses, ant colony optimization algorithm, and Mokken scale analyses. In Study 3, we cross-validated the results obtained in Study 2 and placed the 16mrs in a nomological network consisting of Big Five traits and Power, Achievement, Affiliation, Intimacy, and Fear motives. The results of these studies indicate that the 16mrs can be used to reliably and validly assess fundamental motives that represent a level of personality that differs from the Big Five and covers motivational aspects beyond the well-established Power, Achievement, Affiliation, Intimacy, and Fear motives. Limitations concerning the reliability of the Autonomy scale and the empirical discrimination of the Dominance and Status scales are discussed. In addition to the validated German version, we also provide the English translation of the items, which, however, need to be validated before use. (shrink)

In inclusive dance settings, where people with different abilities and talents come together, the role of facilitators is essential in guiding the process of inclusion. Their behavior gives sensitive information to the individual about one’s status within the own-group affiliation. Even today, very little research on the motivation for facilitating inclusivity in dance contexts exists. This case study will examine the facilitator’s motivation by juxtaposing current theory next to experiences of seven experts of contemporary dance facilitation in Europe. Good (...) opportunities for meaningful interactions can be created in a dance setting: it promotes a deeper sense of community, gives us the feeling of belonging, generates respect and inclusion, and helps to prevent the feeling of loneliness. This research report sheds light on the motivation of being the facilitator of dance for heterogeneous groups and reveals three factors from the data. First, to be led by an artistic motivation, second, to have a vision in terms of changing the society, and third, to have another personal motivation. The motivation of the facilitator is regarded as highly important for inclusive work, as the person who facilitates plays a key role in these successful processes of inclusion. (shrink)

Sexual motivation is a fundamental behavior in human. For a long time, this behavior has been somehow ignored from psychological and neuroscientific research. In this article - reflecting the collaboration of a clinical psychologist and a neuroscientist - we show that in the current period, sexual affiliation is one of the most promising affiliation context to articulate a debate, a dialog and convergence points between psychoanalysis and neuroscience. Recent data on healthy sexual behavior and its compulsive variant are (...) discussed under the prism of neuroscience and psychoanalysis. Keywords: brain; fMRI; sexual affiliation (Published: 20 January 2012) Citation: Socioaffective Neuroscience & Psychology 2012, 2 : 11814 - DOI: 10.3402/snp.v2i0.11814. (shrink)

This project places at its center the urgency for a more responsive organ transplant policy in the United States. It studies how relationships and affinity affiliations motivate intimate exchanges, including human biological markets. Specifically, the article considers whether affinity relationships might serve as a platform in the domain of organ transplantation and if so, whether the law should tolerate discriminatory behavior in the human biologics realm. In defining affinity relationships, the article speaks primarily to race, gender, and sexual orientation. Its (...) theoretical underpinnings, however, could also apply to religion. The theoretical hunch of the article is that affinity relationships could play a role in motivating transplant procurement. (shrink)

"George Hagman looks anew at psychoanalytic ideas about art and beauty through the lens of current developmental psychology that recognizes the importance of attachment and affiliative motivational systems. In dialogue with theorists such as Freud, Ehrenzweig, Kris, Rank, Winnicott, Kohut, and many others, Hagman brings the psychoanalytic understanding of aesthetic experience into the 21st century. He amends and extends old concepts and offers a wealth of stimulating new ideas regarding the creative process, the ideal, beauty, ugliness, and -perhaps his most (...) original contribution-the sublime. Especially welcome is his grounding of aesthetic experience in intersubjectivity and health rather than individualism and pathology. His emphasis on form rather than the content of an individual's aesthetic experience is a stimulating new direction for psychoanalytic theory of art. With this work Hagman stands in the company of his predecessors with this deeply-learned, sensitively conceived, and provocative general theory of human aesthetic experience." Ellen Dissanayake, author of "Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began" and "Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes From and Why.". (shrink)

Multiple studies revealed detrimental effects of face masks on communication, including reduced empathic accuracy and enhanced listening effort. Yet, extant research relied on artificial, decontextualised stimuli, which prevented assessing empathy under more ecologically valid conditions. In this preregistered online experiment (N = 272), we used film clips featuring targets reporting autobiographical events to address motivational mechanisms underlying face mask effects on cognitive (empathic accuracy) and emotional facets (emotional congruence, sympathy) of empathy. Surprisingly, targets whose faces were covered by a mask (...) (or a black bar) elicited the same level of empathy motives (affiliation, cognitive effort), and accordingly, the same level of cognitive and emotional empathy compared to targets with uncovered faces. We only found a negative direct effect of face coverings on sympathy. Additional analyses revealed that older (compared to young) adults showed higher empathy, but age did not moderate face mask effects. Our findings speak against strong negative face mask effects on empathy when using dynamic, context-rich stimuli, yet support motivational mechanisms of empathy. (shrink)

The initial problem which motivated the writing of this thesis arose from reading of Emile by Rousseau. In this work, it was possible to detect the influence of different theoretical approaches, such as rationalism and empiricism, inspiring the development of the educational plan designed by Rousseau for his imaginary student (Emile). The very core question of the present thesis regards to whether there was a theory of knowledge pertaining to Rousseau’s philosophical thinking and, if so, how it was related to (...) his theories of education. In the set of his oeuvre, Rousseau’s affiliation to authors like Descartes, Leibniz, Locke and Malebranche, as well as Condillac, Diderot, D’Holbach and Helvétius was discovered. As the reading of the great philosophical work of Rousseau progressed, an original knowledge theory was discovered, of the kind which accepts the coexistence of opposite thoughts. Pedagogy, in the context of (the work) Emile, arose out of the miscellany of such theories and also for the intense philosophical maturing process on the core of Rousseau’s thinking. This study intended, therefore, to understand the origin and development of Rousseau’s theory of knowledge, and also to figure out how the philosopher formulated his theories on Education, especially in Emile. The object of this research, materialized through the extensive bibliography of the Swiss philosopher, was intensively read and analyzed. The methodology used was that of comparative, descriptive and critical documentary research of the mentioned authors. This research is divided into three sections: the first one intends to investigate the philosophical influence from different authors on the foundations of Rousseau’s epistemology; the second section addresses Rousseau’s theories of Education; the third and final part investigates the link between theory of knowledge and Education within Rousseau’s philosophical thought. -/- . (shrink)

THERE are two conflicting motives in Husserlian phenomenology, one of which leads, in my view, to a more genuinely transcendental philosophy. According to one of its original programs, phenomenology was to be a descriptive science of essences and essential structures of various regions of phenomena and also of the empty region of object in general. The concern with meanings, as contradistinguished from essences, is equally original; it pervades the Prolegomena and the first three of the logical investigations and, of course, (...) the first volume of the Ideas. But the specifically phenomenological enterprise of clarification of meanings—and this is the second of the two motives-slowly moves to the forefront, for a while overshadowed by the essentialism of the beginning, but later on freed from it and reasserting its primacy as the philosophical activity par excellence. The concern with essences affiliates phenomenology to the classical rationalistic tradition, while the concern with meanings brings it closer to the empiricistic tradition. If in the former enterprise phenomenology appears to be an essentialism of Aristotelian sort, in the latter, Hume remains its acknowledged precursor. One of my contentions, which I will try to substantiate in the following pages, is that the peculiarly Husserlian sort of transcendental phenomenology develops out of the second concern rather than from the first. This rather broad claim needs to be qualified in various ways, which I will be doing as we proceed. For the present, I may perhaps add this much: there is a conception of transcendental subjectivity which can be reached only through an eidetic phenomenology of essences: on such a theory, transcendental subjectivity is the essence of empirical consciousness, transcendental ego is the essence of the empirical ego. But this is not exactly Husserl’s conception of ‘transcendental'. The transcendental according to Husserl is not the essence of the empirical, but the domain in which the meanings constituting the empirical have their origin. However, I should add that these two points of view are intertwined, in Husserl’s thought, in such a strange manner that my efforts to separate them may seem futile. They influence each other: there are, as a matter of fact, two conceptions of essence in Husserl, one of which is, in my view, closer than the other one to the specifically Husserlian conception of transcendental subjectivity. So also in the theory of meaning, the early essentialism did cast its shadow, but as soon as it is freed from essentialism it lays the foundation of a more truly phenomenological transcendental philosophy. (shrink)

This paper gives a first theoretical formulation to a religious phenomenon which has not received much attention in philosophical discourse so far despite appearing in different highly heterogeneous religions. Vicarious religious ordinance refers to cases in which a living or deceased fully mature human being is knowingly or unknowingly assigned a religious affiliation without their consent or the consent of their dependents. I shall first offer three real-world examples of vicarious religious ordinance from Mormonism, Islam, and Shintoism and then (...) raise some normative concerns. I suggest (i) that vicarious religious ordinance does not fit neatly into current debates about religious epistemology, especially the recent debate on religious disagreement. I argue (ii) that normative questions as to why vicarious religious ordinance elicits indignation in its ‘victims’ is not easily explained through adducing similar examples. This paper aims to motivate further coordinated research on this topic. (shrink)

In this paper, I will characterize a phenomenon I call ‘self-appointed speaking-for’, and show how it constitutes a counter-example to Miranda Fricker’s definition of testimonial injustice (TI), expanding our understanding of the category. Self-appointed speaking-for occurs when one speaks on behalf of or in place of another individual or group without their authorization. It is the sort of phenomenon that occasions complaints like, ‘You put words in my mouth’; that happens when someone else answers a question directed at you; or (...) when someone purports to represent the perspective of a group they are not affiliated with or entitled to represent. I argue that this is a central case of Fricker’s testimonial injustice, on the grounds that it inflicts the same harms as other kinds of TI — particularly demeaning someone in their capacity as a giver of knowledge — in a way that is both epistemically and ethically culpable. TI is wrong not only for the harms it generates but also because its cause — prejudice — is ethically wrong and bad epistemic practice. As I show, self-appointed speaking-for is wrong for the same reasons as prejudice is, no matter what motivates it. (shrink)

According to Positioning Theory, participants in narrative interaction can position themselves on a representational level concerning the autobiographical, told self, and a performative level concerning the interactive and emotional self of the tellers. The performative self usually is much harder to pin down, because it is a non-propositional, enacted self. In contrast to everyday interaction, psychotherapists regularly topicalize the performative self explicitly. In our paper, we study how therapists respond to clients' narratives by interpretations of the client’s conduct, shifting from (...) the autobiographical identity of the told self, which is the focus of the client’s story, to the present performative self of the client. Drawing on video-recordings from three psychodynamic therapies (tiefenpsychologisch fundierte Psychotherapie) with 25 sessions each, we will analyze in detail five extracts of therapists‘ shifts from the representational to the performative self. We highlight four findings: • Whereas clients’ narratives often serve to support identity-claims in terms of personal psychological and moral characteristics, therapists rather tend to focus on clients’ feelings, motives, current behavior and ways of interacting. • In response to clients’ stories, therapists first show empathy and confirm clients’ accounts, before shifting to clients’ performative self. • Therapists ground the shift to clients’ performative self by references to clients’ observable behavior. • Therapists do not simply expect affiliation with their views on clients’ performative self. Rather they use such shifts to promote the clients’ self-exploration. Yet, if clients resists to explore their selves in more detail, therapists more explicitly ascribe motives and feelings that clients do not seem to be aware of. The shift in positioning levels thus seems to have a preparatory function for engendering therapeutic insights. (shrink)

We find that agency problems are embedded in firm's excess and abnormal equity investments that are mainly dictated by controlling shareholder's motives and ethical choices manifested in ownership and board structure. The excess equity investment is gauged with respect to industry average. The abnormal equity investment is specifically referred to the number of nominal investment companies that are fully controlled by the controlling owners while subject to little governance. Our empirical evidences of 345 Taiwanese non-financial listed firms show that firm's (...) excess and abnormal equity investments are negatively correlated with controlling shareholder's cash flow rights while are positively correlated with the control-cash flow deviation, and board affiliation. The results are supportive of the positive incentive hypothesis and the negative entrenchment hypothesis put forth by La Porta et al. and Claessen et al.. The negative relation between equity investment and firm's value further supports the agency postulation that corporate excess and abnormal equity investments represent a leeway for controlling shareholder to exploit wealth of minority shareholders. This study potentially contributes to the literature of business ethics by portraying an empirically testable linkage from controlling owner's ethical choices to his actions and therefore firm's value. (shrink)

This paper discusses two theses about Plato that Nietzsche defends in his lectures on the Athenian philosopher offered by him at the University of Basel during the 1870s. Nietzsche’s first claim concerns Plato’s philosophy: relying on Aristotle, Nietzsche holds that Plato was initially brought to a metaphysically motivated version of scepticism as a result of his affiliation to the Cratilian interpretation of Heraclitus. Although the Socratic method of defining and testing concepts as well as its metaphysical complement, the theory (...) of Forms, has allowed Plato to overcome this kind of metaphysically motivated scepticism, Nietzsche argues that such an overcoming is only provisional if one needs to accept the authenticity of Parmenides, then the arguments displayed in this later dialogue lead to a sceptical conclusion regarding the theory of Forms. The second claim advanced by Nietzsche in his lectures concerns Plato’s philosophical character, which is identified with the figures of the legislator and the political reformer. According to Nietzsche, all of Plato’s philosophical commitments must ultimately be interpreted in the light of his political project, for here there is no place for scepticism anymore. (shrink)

The emergence of predatory journals is a global threat for scientific integrity, particularly in under-resourced settings such as low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). A bilingual course on predatory publishing using a distance education approach was developed for Moroccan researchers as a response to the imperative need for training on research ethics to implement good scientific practices. A cross-sectional survey-based study was conducted to evaluate outcomes after delivering two education sessions in both French and English. Before this course, 40% of participants (...) indicated that they don’t verify journal quality before manuscript submission and most of them consider Scopus indexing and the impact factor as the best criteria for journal publication. Approximately 50% of surveyees did not have previous information on predatory journals before the webinar. Pressure to publish by supervisors, institutions of affiliation, or funding agencies, was noticed in 43.4% of participants. After the webinar course was delivered, remarkably, the proportion of participants with knowledge on predatory publishing was meaningfully increased from 48.9% to 81%. Importantly, 83.7% of participants indicated that they are motivated to share their new knowledge on predatory publishing with their colleagues. Moreover, the majority of respondents (73.8%) reported that publishing their research in predatory journals may damage their career and professional future. Promisingly, nearly a half or more of participants recommended the use of training based on distance education, surveillance of researchers by their mentors and affiliations, and social networks to increase awareness on predatory publishing. Almost all participants were satisfied with the content of the webinar. Trainers and research institutions in LMICs should benefit from the advent of distance education using webinar platforms to increase awareness on the issue of predatory publishing in their settings. (shrink)

The first part of my paper offers a brief characterization of what I call the non-hegemonic tradition of interpretation of Nietzsche's metaphilosophical program. In the second part, I suggest some small adjustments in the main argument of this tradition of interpretation. In general terms, the non-hegemonic tradition can be characterised by the claim that Nietzsche is a legitimate heir of the metaphilosophical programme first formulated by Friedrich Albert Lange in his ˜History of Materialism and Critique of its Significance for the (...) Present". None of the main interpreters of Nietzsche that I affiliate with this tradition of interpretation has formulated this claim quite explicitly, but I do not think that this characterization is inappropriate and I submit they could all accept it in the terms put forward in the present article. The main thesis states that Lange provides Nietzsche not so much with substantive theses as with the formal aspects of a philosophical programme whose content is drawn from other sources. This is the case, for example, in the attempt (in his early works) to mobilise Schopenhauer's metaphysics without committing himself to his epistemic claims. The attempt to execute this programme is surrounded by tensions that result not so much from Lange's sceptical theses as from what ultimately motivates them: the imperative of intellectual consciousness. This conflict remains unresolved as long as Nietzsche remains committed to the thesis of practical idealism according to which it is up to philosophy to satisfy certain metaphysical needs that are anthropologically unavoidable. The commitment to this anthropological thesis is what effectively places the young Nietzsche in the company of Kant, Schopenhauer and Lange. As soon as Nietzsche has abandoned this youthful commitment, he is prepared to revise his metaphilosophical convictions. (shrink)

This paper discusses two theses about Plato that Nietzsche defends in his lectures on the Athenian philosopher offered by him at the University of Basel during the 1870s. Nietzsche’s first claim concerns Plato’s philosophy: relying on Aristotle, Nietzsche holds that Plato was initially brought to a metaphysically motivated version of scepticism as a result of his affiliation to the Cratilian interpretation of Heraclitus. Although the Socratic method of defining and testing concepts as well as its metaphysical complement, the theory (...) of Forms, has allowed Plato to overcome this kind of metaphysically motivated scepticism, Nietzsche argues that such an overcoming is only provisional if one needs to accept the authenticity of Parmenides, then the arguments displayed in this later dialogue lead to a sceptical conclusion regarding the theory of Forms. The second claim advanced by Nietzsche in his lectures concerns Plato’s philosophical character, which is identified with the figures of the legislator and the political reformer. According to Nietzsche, all of Plato’s philosophical commitments must ultimately be interpreted in the light of his political project, for here there is no place for scepticism anymore. (shrink)

Previous studies have been split over how to view family owners’ CSR engagement, arguing that they either engage in or disengage from CSR based on different motives (i.e., preserving socio-emotional wealth vs. seeking rent expropriation). Focusing on family owners in business groups, this study integrates these divergent views. We hypothesize that family owners would pursue both motives simultaneously by optimizing the level of CSR of each affiliated firm depending on their ownership level. Furthermore, we argue that this tendency is moderated (...) by group-level contexts. Using a sample of Korean business groups, we found that family ownership is negatively associated with affiliated firms’ CSR. Also, this negative relationship is more pronounced when firms belong to business groups with more charitable corporate foundations and when business networks are greater in their scope and scale. This study contributes to the literature by offering a more complete understanding of how family owners make CSR decisions in business group contexts. (shrink)

The “fearful ape hypothesis” could be regarded as one aspect of a more general “suffering ape hypothesis”: Humans are more likely to experience negative emotions (e.g., fear, sadness), aversive symptoms (e.g., pain, fever), and to engage in self-harming behavior (e.g., cutting, suicide attempts) because these might motivate affiliative, consolatory, and supportive behavior from their prosocial environment thereby enhancing evolutionary fitness.

Moral emotions are evolved mechanisms that function in part to optimize social relationships. We discuss two moral emotions— disgust and the “cuteness response”—which modulate social-engagement motives in opposite directions, changing the degree to which the eliciting entity is imbued with mental states (i.e., mentalized). Disgust-inducing entities are hypo-mentalized (i.e., dehumanized); cute entities are hyper-mentalized (i.e., “humanized”). This view of cuteness—which challenges the prevailing view that cuteness is a releaser of parental instincts (Lorenz, 1950/1971)—explains (a) the broad range of affiliative behaviors (...) elicited by cuteness, (b) the marketing of cuteness to children (by toy makers and animators) to elicit play, and (c) the apparent ease and frequency with which cute things are anthropomorphized. (shrink)

"Why are there 'transsexuals' but not 'transracials'?" "Why is there an accepted way to change sex, but not to change race?" I have repeatedly heard these questions from theorists puzzled by the phenomenon of transsexuality. Feminist thinkers, in particular, often seem taken aback that in the case of category switching the possibilities appear to be so different. Behind the question is sometimes an implicit concern: Does not the (hypothetical or real) example of individual “transracialism” seem politically troubling? And, if it (...) is, does not the case of transsexuality merit equivalent critique? Or, conversely, if one accepts transsexuals as people with legitimate demands (e.g., on medical resources or single-sex spaces), then would one not also be committed to accepting the putative transracial in analogous ways? Understanding the ontological constraints and possibilities with regard to transforming one’s identity is, I suggest, a project that should accompany ethical evaluation of those transformations. Under what circumstances is it (un)ethical to leave behind a gender or racial group with which one has once been affiliated? This question is, again, especially pressing for radical thinkers who endorse the claims that race and gender taxonomies are internally hierarchical and constituted through relations of oppression, domination, and normalization. Changing one’s identity under these circumstances will surely always be linked, however tenuously, to consideration of the larger political and cultural milieu in which such changes are advantageous or disadvantageous, complicit with oppressive norms and/or resistant to them. To illuminate these larger questions, in this paper, I first provide three examples of the analogy thesis in feminist thinking about race and sex change, each of which draws ethical conclusions about individual motivation, political strategy, or public policy, premised on the assumption that race and sex change are equivalent phenomena. None of these accounts consider the genealogy of each category as significant to contemporary possibilities. I next offer a descriptive analysis that highlights different norms at play in contemporary North American understandings: Sex–gender, I argue, is essentialized as a property of the individual’s body, while race is essentialized with reference to both the body and ancestry. This analysis, I conclude, shows politically significant disanalogies between the categories, and reveals the importance of genealogical accounts of race and sex in thinking ethically about changing ourselves. (shrink)

In the early decades of the 20th century, women's access to the historical discipline followed fundamentally two paths. For the first time, some (a small minority) entered the profession as academic historians; others worked outside or on the margins of academia, pursuing their research interests as independent scholars. What did being an independent scholar mean for these women? Was it always a form of externally imposed marginalization? My paper argues that this is not the case. First of all, being an (...) independent scholar did not necessarily mean marginality. Some of these women scholars exerted a deep influence on 20th century historiography, and their work is still influential today. Quite apart from posthumous fame, moreover, it should be noted that the lack of academic affiliation did not necessarily preclude for some of these women the possibility of recognition and influence during their lives. Secondly, we should be careful not to assume that being an independent scholar was invariably an externally imposed marginalization. Some of these women scholars can be defined as ‘obligatory amateurs,’ because they were frustrated in their attempt to pursue an academic career. But others, in contrast, deliberately chose independent scholarship over an academic job, and can thus be defined ‘amateurs by choice.’ What was the motivation behind this choice? I argue that an important factor was the resilience of the amateur tradition in historical writing. The amateur tradition offered a strong counterbalance to women's marginality in academia and a source of positive values and models for their participation in the intellectual life. (shrink)

This article examines corporate social disclosures (CSD) in an African developing economy (Mauritius) as provided in the annual reports of listed companies from 2004 to 2007. Informed by the country’s social, political and economic context and legitimacy theory, we hypothesise that the extent and variety of CSD themes (social, ethics, environment and health and safety) will be enhanced post-2004 and will be influenced by profitability, size, leverage and industry affiliation. We find a significant increase in the volume and variety (...) of CSD, although information in relation to social activities remains the most prominent form of disclosure. This is in contrast to previous studies which reported on the primacy of employee disclosures in developing countries. Using a pooled regression analysis, we also observe that size does explain variations in overall CSD and social disclosures, whilst leverage is positively related to changes in environmental and health and safety disclosures. There is no profitability relationship, and the effects of industry affiliation on CSD are non-significant or contrary to expectations. Overall, we assert that legitimacy, as a strategic and managerially driven approach favouring symbolic actions, is the prevailing motivation underlying the progression of CSD in Mauritius. (shrink)

To date, the role of user behavior in the formation of politically homogeneous online environments (oftentimes called echo chambers) is not fully understood. Building on selective exposure research, we introduce the notion of selective political friending, that is, the preference for political like-mindedness in social affiliations on social networking sites. In a pre-registered laboratory experiment with users of social networking sites in Germany (N = 199), we find that users preferably build connections with those who share their opinions toward controversial (...) political issues. Political like-mindedness outperforms other friending criteria such as popularity or career-related fit with another user. Political friending is pronounced when individuals’ pre-existing opinions are strong. The present study points to the necessity to take the motivational complexity into account when studying phenomena linked to political homogeneity on SNS. (shrink)

We find that agency problems are embedded in firm's excess and abnormal equity investments that are mainly dictated by controlling shareholder's motives and ethical choices manifested in ownership and board structure. The excess equity investment is gauged with respect to industry average. The abnormal equity investment is specifically referred to the number of nominal investment companies that are fully controlled by the controlling owners while subject to little governance. Our empirical evidences of 345 Taiwanese non-financial listed firms show that firm's (...) excess and abnormal equity investments are negatively correlated with controlling shareholder's cash flow rights while are positively correlated with the control-cash flow deviation, and board affiliation. The results are supportive of the positive incentive hypothesis and the negative entrenchment hypothesis put forth by La Porta et al. (2002, Journal of Finance 57, 1147-1171) and Claessen et al. (2002, Journal of Finance 57, 2741-2742). The negative relation between equity investment and firm's value further supports the agency postulation that corporate excess and abnormal equity investments represent a leeway for controlling shareholder to exploit wealth of minority shareholders. This study potentially contributes to the literature of business ethics by portraying an empirically testable linkage from controlling owner's ethical choices to his actions and therefore firm's value. (shrink)

Unlike one-to-one threats, terrorist threat texts constitute a form of violence and a language crime that is committed in a complex context of public intimidation, and are communicated publicly and designed strategically to force desired sociopolitical changes [19]. Contributing to law enforcement and threat assessors’ fuller understanding of the discursive nature of threat texts in terrorism context, this paper examines how language is used dialogically to communicate threats and to construct both the purpose of threatened actions and the victims. The (...) paper uses a critical discourse analytic approach and takes a set of eleven digital threat texts made by two jihadists as a case study. It draws on van Dijk’s concept of ideology [64], the law enforcement-based taxonomy of threat types as reported by Napier and Mardigian [40], van Leeuwen’s model of social actor representation and discursive construction of purpose of social actions [69], and Martin and White’s Engagement system [34]. The analysis reveals victims specified and genericised, excluded and adversary. This linguistic construction is underpinned by a dichotomous conceptualisation of the social actors’ affiliations, positions, values, cultural activities, goals, and material and symbolic resources. The threats are delivered to the victims, agents acting on their behalf (e.g. security forces) or property associated with them (e.g. oil refinery), and are of two primary types—direct, and veiled. The former are predominant and serve inter alia to augment the public-intimidation impact of terrorist discourse. Threatened violence is of goal-, means- and/or effect-oriented social purposes, which suggest a categorisation of threats based on these purposes. The analysis reveals a dialectic, refutative nature of argumentation, and a discourse pregnant with heteroglossic utterances that contract (i) to close off and disalign with state officials’ contradictory voices, and (ii) to produce tension, providing clues to terrorists’ motivations and what constitutes the heart of political violence. (shrink)

In this paper I present both a critical appraisal of Humphreys' probabilistic theory of causality and a sketch of an alternative view of the relationship between the notions of probability and of cause. Though I do not doubt that determinism is false, I claim that the examples used to motivate Humphreys' theory typically refer to subjective rather than objective chance. Additionally, I argue on a number of grounds that Humphreys' suggestion that linear regression models be used as a canonical form (...) for the description of causal relations is untenable. I conclude by exploring the variety of ways in which probabilistic elements can be embedded into the structure of causal mechanisms. This investigation suggests both that deterministic mechanisms can produce stochastic behavior and stochastic mechanisms can produce deterministic behavior. Note: Link is to the article in a subscription database available to users affiliated with Butler University. Appropriate login information will be required for access. Users not affiliated with Butler University should contact their local librarian for assistance in locating a copy of this article. (shrink)

Language comprehension requires a simulation that uses neural systems involved in perception, action, and emotion. A review of recent literature as well as new experiments support five predictions derived from this framework. 1. Being in an emotional state congruent with sentence content facilitates sentence comprehension. 2. Because women are more reactive to sad events and men are more reactive to angry events, women understand sentences about sad events with greater facility than men, and men understand sentences about angry events with (...) greater facility than women. 3. Because it takes time to shift from one emotion to another, reading a sad sentence slows the reading of a happy sentence more for women than men, whereas reading an angry sentence slows the reading of a happy sentence more for men than for women. 4. Because sad states motivate affiliative actions and angry states motivate aggressive action, gender and emotional content of sentences interact with the response mode. 5. Because emotion simulation requires particular action systems, adapting those action systems will affect comprehension of sentences with emotional content congruent with the adapted action system. These results have implications for the study of language, emotion, and gender differences. (shrink)

THIS PAPER is not a piece of "research"; it simply offers a series of reflections on the transcendental method. It is occasioned by the realization that, while this method is interesting and important in the opinion of some, it can count on little familiarity in the United States. And where philosophers and students of philosophy make the effort, they have great difficulty appreciating transcendental philosophy or understanding its proposals. This difficulty is, as I say, largely circumstantial and due to a (...) lack of familiarity with the relevant works, but, viewed less superficially, it is motivated by a positive affiliation to another philosophical tradition. In fact, the positions of this other tradition are, if largely in a modern guise, the very ones against which transcendental philosophy reacted. This historical relationship has also systematic relevance. In many ways, pre-transcendental positions seem to have priority: we need only think of formal logic, certain basic stances in empiricist epistemology, common sense. Accordingly, the subjective difficulty of philosophers and students of such persuasions can be treated "objectively," as the difficulty of ever establishing arguments for the transcendental turn or for what Kant calls the "Copernican revolution." Transcendental philosophy must provide arguments, so it seems, on the pre-transcendental level to establish the transcendental position. Further, supposing this problem can be overcome, there is the genuine difficulty of understanding what the transcendental theory actually says and in what way it does its job. And lastly, supposing we find that it lives up to its program, there may still be difficulty with certain implications such that philosophers and students take refuge in non-transcendental positions rather than calling for improvements of transcendental philosophy. In this paper we cannot, of course, fully discuss to what extent the transcendental position can take care of its critics. The paper is mainly concerned with the difficulty of access or introductory argument to transcendental philosophy. (shrink)

This paper concerns the credibility problem for commitments. Commitments play an important role in cooperative human interactions and can dramatically improve the performance of joint actions by stabilizing expectations, reducing the uncertainty of the interaction, providing reasons to cooperate or improving action coordination. However, commitments can only serve these functions if they are credible in the first place. What is it then that insures the credibility of commitments? To answer this question, we need to provide an account of what motivates (...) us to abide by our commitments. We first discuss two conceptions of the nature of the commitments present in joint action and of the norms that govern them. We contend that while normative considerations may have some motivational force, there are reasons to doubt that they, by themselves, could provide a sufficient motivational basis to fully explain why agents abide by their commitments and thus why their commitments are credible. In the next two sections, we discuss two proposals regarding further sources of motivation, reputation management and social emotions. We argue that while reputation management and social emotions certainly play a role in motivating us to act as committed, there are both theoretical and empirical reasons to think that neither captures the most basic motivational force at work in sustaining commitments. We propose instead that the need to belong, i.e., the need to affiliate with others and form long-lasting bonds with them, is what primarily motivates us to interact and engage with those around us and act so as to preserve and reinforce the bonds we have forged with them. We argue that the need to belong is a more basic proximate motivation for conforming to commitments, in the sense both that affiliative behaviors are evidenced much earlier in human development than either reputation management or social emotions and that the need to belong is at least part of an explanation of why we care for our reputation and why we care about others’ assessments of our behavior. (shrink)

Pioneering work in interdisciplinary animal studies, much of it under the rubric of ecofeminism, dates back to the 1970s. Yet animal studies remained an idiosyncratic backwater until its twenty-first-century reinvention as a high-profile area of humanities research. This essay ties the soaring cachet of the new animal studies to a revamped origin story—one beginning in 2002 and claiming Derrida as founding father. In readings of Derrida and leading animal studies theorist Cary Wolfe, I examine the gender politics of animal studies (...) today, especially that affiliated with Wolfe’s formulation of posthumanism. In addition to slighting important ecofeminist precedents, this approach to animal studies is remarkably anxious to distance itself both from emotional attachments to animals and from scholars working on gender, sexuality, and race. I attribute this anxiety in part to the gendered opposition, longstanding in academia, between scholarship frankly motivated by feeling and scholarship whose prestige depends on claims to “masculine” objectivity and theoretical rigor. To counter this logic, I turn to animal studies foremothers Carol Adams and Donna Haraway; despite disagreements on several key issues, Adams and Haraway share a readiness to own their debt to feminist thinking and to see their theoretical work as inseparable from emotional and political commitments to animals. (shrink)