The aim of this research is to find the operating level manager’s interpersonal competence. The total subjects of this research are 139 operating level managers. The subjects of this research are divided by the big-five personality trait, such as openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Researcher used questionnaire which is based on Likert scale to collect the data of this research. The data was analyzed by descriptive statistics with SPSS program 12 th version. The result of this (...) research shows that openness to experience and neuroticism tipe of personality has higher interpersonal competence score than the other personality tipes.  . (shrink)

Promoting interpersonal helping among coworkers is an important aim for any organisation that cares about employee well-being. Drawing on guilt aversion hypothesis, this research focuses on the power of social expectations in promoting prosocial behaviour among employees and investigates the role of anticipated guilt for failing to meet coworkers’ expectations. In two preregistered studies, the effect of beneficiary expectation on benefactors’ anticipated guilt and intention to help was investigated. In Study 1, Japanese participants (n = 284) recalled a situation (...) when they helped a coworker spontaneously, and evaluated perceived beneficiary expectation to receive help, as well as anticipated guilt for not helping. Beneficiary expectation positively predicted anticipated guilt, and the effect was stronger when the beneficiary was a same-status colleague, and when interpersonal helping frequency in the organisation was low. Study 2 (n = 499) employed vignettes and manipulated beneficiary expectation. A mediational model revealed that beneficiary expectation leads to more anticipated guilt for not helping, which, in turn, increases employees’ intention to help. Together, these studies show that employees are sensitive to their coworkers’ expectations, and guilt-averse; therefore, interpersonal helping among employees may be promoted by establishing legitimate expectations of prosociality in the workplace. (shrink)

The main question of this paper is how people may agree in their interpersonal comparisons of wellbeing. These comparisons are important in social ethics and for policy purposes. The paper firstly examines grounds for convergence in easy cases. Then comes a more difficult case of low convergence in order to explore a way to increase it. For this, concepts from the empirical subjective well-being literature are used: life satisfaction and vignettes. Ideas of John Harsanyi and Serge Kolm thereby receive (...) a new look. (shrink)

Most moral and political theories require us to make interpersonal comparisons of welfare. This poses a challenge to the popular view that welfare consists in the satisfaction of preferences or des...

When they interact in everyday situations, people constantly create new fragments of social reality: they do so when they make promises or agreements, but also when they submit requests or answer questions, when they greet each other or express gratitude. This type of social reality ‘in the small,’ that we call interpersonal reality, is deontic in nature as all other kinds of social reality; what makes it somewhat special is that its deontology applies to the very same persons who (...) create it through a process of intentional collaboration. Aim of this paper is to show that interpersonal reality can be accounted for in terms of a suitable concept of interpersonal responsibility. To this purpose we first discuss the deontology that is constitutive of interpersonal reality; then we show how such deontology can be entailed by relationships of interpersonal responsibility; and finally we argue that these relationships are created by executing suitable communicative acts, understood as actions performed with a reflexive communicative intention. (shrink)

This study examines the direct and indirect effects of interpersonal fairness on employees’ willingness-to-stay and organisation-based self-esteem through affective commitment among manufacturing workers in Tema, Ghana. Using the survey design, 300 manufacturing workers in Tema were conveniently sampled for the study. The confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling were used to analyse the data. Results indicated that affective commitment partially mediated the relationship between interpersonal fairness and employees' willingness-to-stay. Affective commitment also fully mediated the interpersonal fairness- (...) organisation based self-esteem relationship. Results further showed that organisation based self-esteem partially mediated the affective commitment and willingness to stay relationship, such that, an increase in organisation-based self-esteem leads to a decrease in employees’ willingness-to-stay. These findings emphasised the roles of interpersonal fairness and affective commitment in organisations, where affective commitment increases as a result of an increase in interpersonal fairness and makes employees have an intention to stay. The findings imply that employees who are very confident and have higher organisation-based self-esteem stand lower chances of staying in their current organisations. This study is the first to examine how affective commitment transfers the effects of interpersonal fairness unto employees’ intention-to-stay among manufacturing workers in Ghana. (shrink)

When it comes to understanding the nature of social cognition, we have—according to the standard view—a choice between the simulation theory, the theory-theory or some hybrid between the two. The aim of this paper is to argue that there are, in fact, other options available, and that one such option has been articulated by various thinkers belonging to the phenomenological tradition. More specifically, the paper will contrast Lipps' account of empathy—an account that has recently undergone something of a revival in (...) the hands of contemporary simulationists—with various accounts of empathy found in the phenomenological tradition. I discuss the way Lipps was criticized by Scheler, Stein and Husserl, and outline some of the core features of their, at times divergent, alternatives. I then proceed by considering how their basic take on empathy and social cognition was taken up and modified by Schutz—a thinker whose contribution to the analysis of interpersonal understanding has been unjustly neglected in recent years. (shrink)

I examine the once popular claim according to which interpersonal comparisons of welfare are necessary for social choice. I side with current social choice theorists in emphasizing that, on a narrow construal, this necessity claim is refuted beyond appeal. However, I depart from the opinion presently prevailing in social choice theory in highlighting that on a broader construal, this claim proves not only compatible with, but even comforted by, the current state of the field. I submit that all in (...) all, the most accurate philosophical assessment consists not in flatly rejecting this necessity claim, but in accepting it in a suitably revised form. (shrink)

This paper summarizes and rebuts the three standard objections made by social choice theorists against interpersonal utility. The first objection argues that interpersonal utility is measningless. I show that this objection either focuses on irrelevant kinds of meaning or else uses implausible criteria of meaningfulness. The second objection argues that interpersonal utility has no role to play in social choice theory. I show that on the contrary interpersonal utility is useful in formulating goals for social choice. (...) The third objection argues that interpersonal utility in social choice theory can be replaced by clearer notions. I show that the replacements proposed are unsatisfactory in either interpersonal utility's descriptive or explanatory role. My conclusion is that interpersonal utility has a legitimate place in social choice theory. (shrink)

We build on the emerging research that shows aversive subordinate workplace behaviors are likely related to abusive supervision in the workplace. Specifically, we develop and test a moderated-mediation model outlining the process of abusive supervision based on the stressor-emotion model of counterproductive work behavior. We argue that subordinate interpersonal deviance prompts supervisor negative emotions, which then leads supervisors to engage in abusive supervision. We also argue that subordinate organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is likely to play a crucial role in (...) predicting abusive supervision. We argue that interpersonal deviance is more likely to prompt abusive supervision through supervisor negative emotions when the magnitude of an employee’s engagement in OCB is weaker. Study 1, a time-lagged field study, tests and provides support for the relationships among our key variables (Hypotheses 1–3). Study 2, utilizing multisource field data (i.e., subordinate–supervisor dyads), replicates the results from Study 1 and provides support for the entire moderated-mediation model while controlling for tenure with supervisor, subordinate task performance, and subordinate conscientiousness. We find general support for our predictions. We conclude with a discussion of theoretical and practical implications as well as future research directions. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the nature of our epistemic entitlement to rely on certain belief-forming processes—perception, memory, reasoning, and perhaps others—is not restricted to one's own belief-forming processes. I argue as well that we can have access to the outputs of others’ processes, in the form of their assertions. These two points support the conclusion that epistemic entitlements are “interpersonal.” I then proceed to argue that this opens the way for a non-standard version of anti-reductionism in the (...) epistemology of testimony, and a more “extended” epistemology—one that calls into question the epistemic significance that has traditionally been ascribed to the boundaries separating individual subjects. (shrink)

This article argues that there is a natural solution to carry out interpersonal comparisons of utility when the theory of gambles is supplemented with a group operation of joint receipts. If so, three types of people can exist, and the two types having multiplicative representations of joint receipt have, in contrast to most utility theories, absolute scales of utility. This makes possible, at least in principle, meaningful interpersonal comparisons of utility with desirable properties, thus resolving a long standing (...) philosophical problem and having potentially important implications in economics. Two behavioral criteria are given for the three classes of people. At this point the relative class sizes are unknown. (shrink)

Getting clear about the nature and basis of interpersonal relating is a central concern of many recent debates in the philosophy of mind. The first section of this chapter highlights some basic facts about the complexity and multifaceted character of interpersonal relating and briefly overviews some of its most prominent dysfunctions. Popular mind-minding hypotheses which claim that the dysfunctions in question are rooted in impaired capacities for attending to and attributing mental states to others are then introduced. Next, (...) recent evidence from cognitive psychology and neuroscience with which these mind-minding hypotheses must be made compatible is summarized. The important differences between two main philosophical frameworks-frameworks that offer opposing ways of understanding the nature of mind minding capacities are then highlighted. Focusing on these differences, the final section highlights how adoption of these philosophical frameworks matters to thinking about the prognosis and strategies for the treatment of certain mental disorders. (shrink)

Recent epistemology offers an account of what it is to know other persons. Such views hold promise for illuminating several issues in philosophy of religion, and for advancing a distinctive approach to religious epistemology. This paper develops an account of interpersonal knowledge, and clarifies its relation to propositional and qualitative knowledge. I then turn to our knowledge of God and God's knowledge of us, and compare my account of interpersonal knowledge with important work by Eleonore Stump on "Franciscan" (...) knowledge. I examine how interpersonal knowledge may figure in liturgical practice, in diffusing the problem of divine hiddenness, and in motivating a novel understanding of divine love. I also explore the possibility of epistemic injustice arising from dismissal or neglect of our religious testimony to one another, or of divine testimony to humanity, focusing specifically on the import of interpersonal knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper I consider how thinking emerges out of human infants' relatedness towards the personal and non-personal world. I highlight the contrast between cognitive aspects and cognitive components of psychological functioning, and propose that even when thinking has become a partly separable component of the mind, affective and conative aspects inhere in its nature. I provide illustrative evidence from recent research on the developmental psychopathology of autism. In failing to adopt a developmental perspective, contemporary theorizing has displaced thinking from (...) where it is properly situated - intimately woven with feeling as well as action, and infused with qualities of interpersonal relatedness from which its structure is derived. (shrink)

I introduce an underdiscussed type of moral luck, which I call interpersonal moral luck. Interpersonal moral luck characteristically occurs when the actions of other moral agents, qua morally evaluable actions, affect an agent’s moral status in a way that is outside of that agent’s capacity to control. I suggest that interpersonal moral luck is common in collective contexts involving shared responsibility and has interesting distinctive features. I also suggest that many philosophers are already committed to its existence. (...) I then argue that agents who are susceptible to interpersonal moral luck are usually for this reason defeasibly entitled to make demands of those agents who are the source of that luck. This is the phenomenon of normative entanglement. I conclude by discussing some of the important ways in which normative entanglement can shape the norms that govern the actions of agents in collective contexts as well as explain some of our intuitions about what participants in these contexts owe one another. (shrink)

We show that knowledge satisfies interpersonal independence, meaning that a non-trivial sentence describing one agent’s knowledge cannot be equivalent to a sentence describing another agent’s knowledge. The same property of interpersonal independence holds, mutatis mutandis, for belief. In the case of knowledge, interpersonal independence is implied by the fact that there are no non-trivial sentences that are common knowledge in every model of knowledge. In the case of belief, interpersonal independence follows from a strong interpersonal (...) independence that knowledge does not have. Specifically, there is no sentence describing the beliefs of one person that implies a sentence describing the beliefs of another person. (shrink)

Everything is constantly changing. Our emotions are one of the primary ways we track, evaluate, organize, and motivate responsive action to those changes. Furthermore, emotions are inherently interpersonal. We learn what to feel from others, especially when we are children. We “catch” other people’s emotions just by being around them. We get caught in escalating response–counterresponse emotional sequences. This all takes place in time, generating complex patterns of interpersonal emotional dynamics. This review summarizes theory, empirical findings, and key (...) challenges for future research regarding three processes that contribute to interpersonal affective dynamics: (a) Convergence of social partners’ emotional responses to the external world, (b) emotional reactivity of social partners to each other, and (c) interpersonal emotion regulation. (shrink)

Within the growing developmental literature on children's testimonial learning, the emphasis placed on children's evaluations of testimonial evidence has shielded from view some of the more collaborative dimensions of testimonial learning. Drawing on recent philosophical work on testimony and interpersonal trust, we argue for an alternative way of conceptualizing the social nature of testimonial learning. On this alternative, some testimonial learning is the result of a jointly collaborative epistemic activity, an activity that aims at the epistemic goal of true (...) belief, but that does so by means of an irreducibly social process. (shrink)

Semiotic objections to market exchange of a good or service maintain that such exchanges signal an inappropriate attitude to the good or to associated individuals, and that this provides a weighty reason against having or participating in such markets. This style of argument has recently come under withering attack from Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski (2015a, 2015b). They point out that the significance of any market exchange is explained by a contingent semiotic norm. Given the tremendous value that could be (...) realised by markets in, for instance, bone marrow, or kidneys, deferring to such norms across the board would have very significant opportunity costs. In the absence of any rationale for these norms, they should be ignored completely. We provide one important rationale. Unlike many semiotic objections to markets, we provide a broadly consequentialist semiotic argument. We argue that a range of behaviours play important signalling roles in interpersonal social practices; in particular, in practices involving caring, esteem, and testimony. Markets in these behaviours would distort these signals. Moreover, many of the productive advantages yielded by markets rely in turn on positive market norms that also inhibit the signalling behaviours associated with these nonmarket behaviours. We conclude that there will inevitably be trade-offs between the distributive advantages of new markets and these interpersonal social practices. (shrink)

What is it to know someone? Epistemologists rarely take up this question, though recent developments make such inquiry possible and desirable. This paper advances an account of how such interpersonal knowledge goes beyond mere propositional and qualitative knowledge about someone, giving a central place to second-personal treatment. It examines what such knowledge requires, and what makes it distinctive within epistemology as well as socially. It assesses its theoretic value for several issues in moral psychology, epistemic injustice, and philosophy of (...) mind. And it offers an account of the complex content in play if interpersonal knowledge is to be understood in terms of its mental states and their functions. (shrink)

On the orthodox view in economics, interpersonal comparisons of utility are not empirically meaningful, and "hence" impossible. To reassess this view, this paper draws on the parallels between the problem of interpersonal comparisons of utility and the problem of translation of linguistic meaning, as explored by Quine. I discuss several cases of what the empirical evidence for interpersonal comparisonsof utility might be and show that, even on the strongest of these, interpersonal comparisons are empirically underdetermined and, (...) if we also deny any appropriate truth of the matter, indeterminate. However, the underdetermination can be broken non-arbitrarily (though not purely empirically) if (i) we assign normative significance to certain states of affairs or (ii) we posit a fixed connection between certain empirically observable proxies and utility. I conclude that, even if interpersonal comparisons are not empirically meaningful, they are not in principle impossible. (shrink)

A BSTRACT: I argue that theory theory approaches to autism offer a wholly inadequate explanation of autistic symptoms because they offer a wholly inadequate account of the non-autistic understanding of others. As an alternative I outline interaction theory, which incorporates evidence from both developmental and phenomenological studies to show that humans are endowed with important capacities for intersubjective understanding from birth or early infancy. As part of a neurophenomenological analysis of autism, interaction theory offers an account of interpersonal problems (...) that is fully consistent with the variety of social and nonsocial symptoms found in autism. (shrink)

Due to the hyperspecialization so prevalent nowadays, interdisciplinary research is a demanding kind of epistemic activity. The concept of intellectual virtue as presented by responsibilist approaches of virtue epistemology could offer an effective counterweight to this challenge but raises the question of what epistemic virtues are necessary for interdisciplinarity. Based on a qualitative study, we identify and heuristically conceptualize a relevant subset of epistemic virtues required by interdisciplinarity that we call _interpersonal intellectual virtues. _These virtues are personal character traits that (...) facilitate the reciprocal acquisition and distribution of knowledge _with_ and _through_ other people. By their very nature, they are only exercised in an interpersonal relationship that seeks an epistemic good, so in some sense, they are at the intersection of social virtues and intellectual virtues. We use Jason Baehr’s four-dimensional proposal for the essential components of intellectual virtues (motivational, affective, skill, and judgment) to show that these interpersonal traits are indeed epistemic virtues. Some examples of interpersonal intellectual virtues are intellectual empathy, intellectual respect, and intellectual trust, among others. Intellectual empathy is a paradigmatic case that we analyze in more detail. Finally, we suggest that interpersonal intellectual virtues are the key character traits of people involved in any successful collective epistemic endeavor, interdisciplinary research being a privileged context in which we can clearly see their manifestation. (shrink)

This essay defends a three-dimensional response-model theory of recognition of persons, and discusses the related phenomenon of recognition of reasons, values and principles. The theory is three-dimensional in endorsing recognition of the equality of persons and two kinds of relevant differences: merits and special relationships. It defends a ‘response-model’ which holds that adequacy of recognition of persons is a matter of adequate responsiveness to situation-specific reasons and requirements. This three-dimen- sional response-model is compared to Peter Jones’s view, which draws the (...) distinction between status and merit recognition, and mediated and unmediated recognition. The essay discusses a number of questions related to how recognition of situation-specific reasons, and more general values and principles, is related to recognition of persons. The three- dimensional response-model of recognition of persons is in principle compatible with a constructivist view, which holds that the validity of values and principles is dependent on acknowledgement or endorsement. But even if one is a realist on that issue and thinks of validity as independent of acknowledgement, acknowledging relevant values, reasons and principles is a hugely important precondition of actual interpersonal recognition. The essay analyses these connections. (shrink)

The relationship of climate and monetary resources to various freedoms can be enriched if the conceptual links psychobehavioral adaptations are conceptualized more broadly as reflections of a richer cultural context that involves multiple physical and psychological resources, as proposed by social resource theory and a number of models of the emergence of social meaning.

This paper presents the experimental results of a “Transcontinental Ultimatum Game” implemented between India and France. We use a standard ultimatum game, but in one treatment Indian subjects made offers to French subjects (ItoF treatment) and, in another treatment, French subjects made offers to Indian subjects (FtoI treatment). We observed that FtoI treatment bargaining mostly ended up with unequal splits of money in favor of French, while nearly equal splits were the most frequent outcome in ItoF treatment interactions. The experimental (...) results are organized through a standard social reference model, modified for taking into account the different marginal value of money for bargainers. In our model bargaining is driven by relative standings comparisons between players, occurring in terms of real earnings (that is monetary earnings corrected for a purchasing power factor) obtained in the game. The norm of equity behind the equalization of real earnings is called local equity norm, and contrasted to a global equity norm which would encompass the wealth of players beyond the game. According to what we observed, no beyond-game concern seems to be relevantly endorsed by subjects. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes processes potentially contributing to interpersonal anxiety transfer, including object-directed social appraisal, empathic worry, and anxiety contagion, and reviews evidence for their operation. We argue that these anxiety-transfer processes may be exploited strategically when attempting to regulate relationship partners’ emotion. More generally, anxiety may serve as either a warning signal to other people about threat (alerting function) or an appeal for emotional support or practical help (comfort-seeking function). Tensions between these two interpersonal functions may account for (...) mutually incongruent interpersonal responses to expressed anxiety, including mistargeted interpersonal regulation attempts. Because worry waxes and wanes over time as a function of other people's ongoing reactions, interpersonal interventions may help to alleviate some of its maladaptive consequences. (shrink)

In 1975, Colwyn Trevarthen first presented his groundbreaking explorations into the early origins of human intersubjectivity. His influential model dictates that, during intimate and playful spontaneous face-to-face protoconversations, the emotions of both the 2–3-month-old infant and mother are nonverbally communicated, perceived, mutually regulated, and intersubjectively shared. This primordial basic interpersonal interaction is expressed in synchronized rhythmic-turn-taking transactions that promote the intercoordination and awareness of positive brain states in both. In this work, I offer an interpersonal neurobiological model of (...) Trevarthen’s intersubjective protoconversations as rapid, reciprocal, bidirectional visual-facial, auditory-prosodic, and tactile-gestural right brain-to-right brain implicit nonverbal communications between the psychobiologically attuned mother and the developing infant. These co-constructed positive emotional interactions facilitate the experience-dependent maturation of the infant’s right brain, which is in an early critical period of growth. I then address the central role of interpersonal synchrony in intersubjectivity, expressed in a mutual alignment or coupling between the minds and bodies of the mother and infant in face-to-face protoconversations, as well as how these right brain-to-right brain emotional transmissions generate bioenergetic positively charged interbrain synchrony within the dyad. Following this, I offer recent brain laterality research on the essential functions of the right temporoparietal junction, a central node of the social brain, in face-to-face nonverbal communications. In the next section, I describe the ongoing development of the protoconversation over the 1st year and beyond, and the co-creation of a fundamental energy-dependent, growth-promoting social emotional matrix that facilitates the emergence of the highly adaptive human functions of mutual play and mutual love. In the final section, I discuss the clinical applications of this interpersonal neurobiological model of intersubjectivity, which has a long history in the psychotherapy literature. Toward that end, I offer very recent paradigm-shifting hyperscanning research that simultaneously measures both the patient and therapist during a psychotherapeutic interaction. Using the Trevarthen’s two-person intersubjective model, this research demonstrates changes in both brains of the therapeutic dyad and the critical role of nonverbal communications in an emotionally-focused psychotherapy session. These studies specifically document interbrain synchronization between the right temporoparietal junction of the patient and the right temporoparietal junction of the clinician, a right brain-to-right brain nonverbal communication system in the co-constructed therapeutic alliance. Lastly, I discuss the relationship between the affect communicating functions of the intersubjective motivational system and the affect regulating functions of the attachment motivational system. (shrink)

This paper is about the role of interpersonal comparisons in Harsanyi's aggregation theorem. Harsanyi interpreted his theorem to show that a broadly utilitarian theory of distribution must be true even if there are no interpersonal comparisons of well-being. How is this possible? The orthodox view is that it is not. Some argue that the interpersonal comparability of well-being is hidden in Harsanyi's premises. Others argue that it is a surprising conclusion of Harsanyi's theorem, which is not presupposed (...) by any one of the premises. I argue instead that Harsanyi was right: his theorem and its weighted-utilitarian conclusion do not require interpersonal comparisons of well-being. The key to making sense of this possibility is to treat Harsanyi's weights as dimensional constants rather than dimensionless numbers. (shrink)

This chapter explains the interpersonal addition theorem. The theorem leads to two remarkable points. Firstly, it links the aggregation of good across the dimension of people with its aggregation across the dimension of states of nature. The result is that, in favourable circumstances, it links the value of equality in the distribution of good with the value of avoiding risk to good. The chapter also explains this link. The second point is even more remarkable. The theorem shows that general (...) utility is the sum of individual utilities. Since these utilities represent the general and individual betterness relations, this may seem, at first glance, to say that general good is the total of individual good. Joined with the addition theorem Bernoulli's hypothesis implies the utilitarian principle of distribution, which implies in turn that there is no value in avoiding inequality in the distribution of good between people. The chapter discusses the assessment of Bernoulli's hypothesis. (shrink)

An unresolved issue in the occupational health literature that is of both theoretical and practical importance is whether interpersonal conflicts, aggression and bullying at work are distinct or overlapping phenomena for exposed workers. In this study, we addressed this question empirically by employing a Latent Class (LC) analysis using cross-industry data from 6,175 Belgian workers. We found that a two-factor solution with a conflict-aggression factor and a bullying factor had the best fit. Employees with low exposure to workplace conflicts-aggression (...) and bullying perceived the phenomena as mostly overlapping. Reversely, employees who were exposed more frequently to the phenomena perceived them as more distinct - especially so for workplace bullying. Conflicts-aggression and bullying seem to be perceived as separate phenomena given their distinctive relationships with criterion variables in the domain of well-being and strain. These findings entail that a simple unifying approach or a single label for the three phenomena is not appropriate, at least from a measurement point of view and from the different perspectives of those exposed. Our results have important implications for the theoretical understanding of the concepts of interpersonal conflicts, aggression and bullying, and for practitioners who have to assist those involved with how to handle these problems and who have to develop legal as well as internal policies for the prevention and management of these issues at the workplace. (shrink)

What is the proper unit of analysis in the psycholinguistics of dialog? While classical approaches are largely based on models of individual linguistic processing, recent advances stress the social coordinative nature of dialog. In the influential interactive alignment model, dialogue is thus approached as the progressive entrainment of interlocutors' linguistic behaviors toward the alignment of situation models. Still, the driving mechanisms are attributed to individual cognition in the form of automatic structural priming. Challenging these ideas, we outline a dynamical framework (...) for studying dialog based on the notion of interpersonal synergy. Crucial to this synergetic model is the emphasis on dialog as an emergent, self-organizing, interpersonal system capable of functional coordination. A consequence of this model is that linguistic processes cannot be reduced to the workings of individual cognitive systems but must be approached also at the interpersonal level. From the synergy model follows a number of new predictions: beyond simple synchrony, good dialog affords complementary dynamics, constrained by contextual sensitivity and functional specificity. We substantiate our arguments by reference to recent empirical studies supporting the idea of dialog as interpersonal synergy. (shrink)

I argue that we get an account of social invisibility that best fits our practice of moral complaint if we reject orthodoxy and accept a quite different view of what it is to see another person as a person. On my view, seeing a person as a person is inseparable from caring about her in person-specific ways—hence from a disposition to a range of interpersonal emotional responses to her point of view. Thus, a person’s humanity is invisible to us, (...) according to this picture, when we are unreceptive to her power to influence our attitudes and will through her own attitudes and will. (shrink)

A social partner’s emotions communicate important information about their motives and intentions. However, people may discount emotional information that they believe their partner has regulated with the strategic intention of exerting social influence. Across two studies, we investigated interpersonal effects of communicated guilt and perceived strategic regulation in trust games. Results showed that communicated guilt mitigated negative effects of trust violations on interpersonal judgements and behaviour. Further, perceived strategic regulation reduced guilt’s positive effects. These findings suggest that people (...) take emotion-regulation motives into account when responding to emotion communication. (shrink)

We compare a number of influential approaches to human communication with the aim of understanding what it means for interpersonal communication to be a form of social action. In particular, we discuss the large-scale social normativity advocated by speech act theory, the view of communication as small-scale social interaction proper of Gricean approaches, and the intimate connection between communication and cooperation defended by Tomasello. We then argue in favor of a small-scale view of communication capable of accounting for the (...) normative effects of communicative acts; to this purpose, we introduce the concept of interpersonal normativity and analyze its relationship with communicative intentions. (shrink)

In this volume a diverse group of economists, philosophers, political scientists, and psychologists address the problems, principles, and practices involved in comparing the well-being of different individuals. A series of questions lie at the heart of this investigation: What is the relevant concept of well-being for the purposes of comparison? How could the comparisons be carried out for policy purposes? How are such comparisons made now? How do the difficulties involved in these comparisons affect the status of utilitarian theories? This (...) collection constitutes the most advanced and comprehensive treatment of one of the cardinal issues in social theory. (shrink)

According to one version of the Causal Theory, an action is a mental or bodily event caused by an intention to act. Deliberate action requires prior planning. The practical syllogism is interpreted as a summary description of the planning process, where the conclusion reports the agent's intention. Social action differs from individual action in that only the former requires coordination of one's action with members of a group. This difference is reflected in the intention with which we act, labeled 'we-intention' (...) by Raimo Tuomela. Reports of we-intentions are the conclusions of interpersonal practical syllogisms. We-intentions differ from individual intentions both cognitively and conatively. The cognitive component of a we-intention includes a representation of the pattern of group activity into which one's action fits, as well as expectations of other's actions; the conative component includes at least one socially generated motive. These cognitive and conative components of we-intention find their explication in cognitive and motivational psychology and related fields. (shrink)

According to a popular strategy amongst economists and philosophers, in order to solve the problem of interpersonal utility comparisons, we have to look at how ordinary people make such comparisons in everyday life. The most recent attempt to develop this strategy has been put forward by Goldman in his “Simulation and Interpersonal Utility” (Ethics 4:709–726, 1995). Goldman claims, first, that ordinary people make interpersonal comparisons by simulation and, second, that simulation is reliable for making interpersonal comparisons. (...) In this paper, I focus on Goldman’s latter claim. After updating Goldman’s account of how ordinary people make interpersonal comparisons in the light of Goldman’s newest formulation of his simulation theory of mental ascription (Goldman, Simulating Minds. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006), I develop and assess Goldman’s arguments in favour of the reliability of simulation for interpersonal comparisons. I argue that, under certain conditions, there may be room for a scientifically acceptable solution to the problem of interpersonal utility comparisons. (shrink)

The traumatic stress experienced by our black healthcare colleagues is often overlooked. This work contextualizes workplace racism, identifies some interpersonal barriers limiting anti-racist growth, and calls for solidarity.

Many philosophers endorse the idea that there can be no moral responsibility without a moral community and thus hold that such responsibility is essentially interpersonal. In this paper, various interpretations of this idea are distinguished, and it is argued that no interpretation of it captures a significant truth. The popular view that moral responsibility consists in answerability is discussed and dismissed. The even more popular view that such responsibility consists in susceptibility to the reactive attitudes is also discussed, and (...) it is argued that this view at best supports only an etiolated interpretation of the idea that moral responsibility is essentially interpersonal. (shrink)

Empathy is an extensively studied construct, but operationalization of effective empathy is routinely debated in popular culture, theory, and empirical research. This article offers a process-focused approach emphasizing the relational functions of empathy in interpersonal contexts. We argue that this perspective offers advantages over more traditional conceptualizations that focus on primarily intrapsychic features. Our aim is to enrich current conceptualizations and empirical approaches to the study of empathy by drawing on psychological, philosophical, medical, linguistic, and anthropological perspectives. In doing (...) so, we highlight the various functions of empathy in social interaction, underscore some underemphasized components in empirical studies of empathy, and make recommendations for future research on this important area in the study of emotion. (shrink)

Violence is an extremely prevalent problem in the United States and throughout the world, and it is a major contributing factor to increased mortality and mortalityty. These facts are well documented in the recent Report on violence and Health published by the World Health Organization. This report, which is likely to become a landmark document in the public health community, defines violence broadly as: The intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against (...) a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation. This World Health Organization definition encompasses three types of violence: 1) suicide and selfharm, 2) collective violence, and 3) interpersonal violence.Interpersonal violence is defined asviolence inflicted by an individual or small group of individuals and includes youth violence, violence between intimate partners, other forms of family violence such as abuse of children and the elderly, rape and sexual assault by strangers, and violence in institutional settings such as schools, workplaces, nursing homes and prisons. (shrink)

Tomasello et al. provide a convincing account of the origins of cultural cognition. I highlight how emotionally grounded sharing of experiences (not merely or predominantly intentions) is critical for the development of interpersonal understanding and perspective-sensitive thinking. Such sharing is specifically human in quality as well as motivation, and entails forms of self–other connectedness and differentiation that are essential to communication and symbolic functioning.

In this article, I discuss the constellation of issues that concern the interpersonal nexus of attention. I do so by drawing a distinction between presentation and revelation as modes of givenness, characterizing the emotional life as peculiar to person, and describing person as essentially interpersonal, articulating the phenomenon of exemplarity in distinction to leadership, in terms of its efficacy, with respect to the types of exemplars, and with a view to how they are related to one another. I (...) conclude by delineating the distinctions between perceptual and epistemic attention and interpersonal attention, and rooting the former in the latter. (shrink)

An important objection to preference-satisfaction theories of well-being is that these theories cannot make sense of interpersonal comparisons of well-being. A tradition dating back to Harsanyi () attempts to respond to this objection by appeal to so-called extended preferences: very roughly, preferences over situations whose description includes agents’ preferences. This paper examines the prospects for defending the preference-satisfaction theory via this extended preferences program. We argue that making conceptual sense of extended preferences is less problematic than others have supposed, (...) but that even so extended preferences do not provide a promising way for the preference satisfaction theorist to make interpersonal well-being comparisons. Our main objection takes the form of a trilemma: depending on how the theory based on extended preferences is developed, either the result will be inconsistent with ordinary preference-satisfaction theory, or it will fail to recover sufficiently rich interpersonal well-being comparisons, or it will take on a number of other arguably odd and undesirable commitments. (shrink)

We propose a view of identity beyond the individual in what we call interpersonal interidentities (IIIs). Within this approach, IIIs comprise collections of entangled stabilities that emerge in recurrent social interaction and manifest for those who instantiate them as relatively invariant though ever-evolving patterns of being (or more accurately, becoming) together. Herein, we consider the processes responsible for the emergence of these IIIs from the perspective of an enactive cognitive science. Our proposal hinges primarily on the development of two (...) related notions: enhabiting and coenhabiting. First, we introduce the notion of enhabiting, a set of processes at the individual level whereby structural interdependencies stabilise and thereafter undergird the habits, networks of habits, and personal identities through which we make sense of our experience. Articulating this position we lean on the notion of a tendency towards an optimal grip, though offering it a developmental framing, whereby iterative states of selective openness help realise relatively stable autonomous personal identities with their own norms of self-regulation. We then extend many of the notions found applicable here to an account of social coenhabiting, in particular, we introduce the notion of tending towards a co-optimal grip as central to the development of social habits, networks of habits, and ultimately IIIs. Such structures, we propose, also emerge as autonomous structures with their own norms of self-regulation. We wind down our account with some reflections on the implications of these structures outside of the interactions wherein they come into being and offer some thoughts about the complex animations of the individual embodied subjects that instantiate them. (shrink)

Until quite recently, it has appeared that eleutheric-conjectural libertarianism (ECL) could not avoid some degree of, very broad, interpersonal utility comparisons (IUCs). And this has been objected to by some of its libertarian critics, notably economists and propertarians. Indeed, this aspect does make the theory less compatible with economics than the rest of the theory and it is thereby a significant problem. This is because one of the main problems that ECL is intended to solve is how an abstract (...) theory of liberty can be compatible with the pro-free-market conclusions of many economists. Being more compatible with economics should make ECL theory more comprehensive, comprehensible, and cogent. (shrink)

Defeasible rules are said to allow for the following two-staged sequence, viz., that p → q and yet p & r → not-q. This is puzzling because in the logic of conditionals the sufficiency of p for q cannot normally be undermined if one adds to the antecedent a further proposition r. Critics argue that the better approach to comprehending defeasibility is explicitly to represent the limiting factor r in a single-stage articulation of the rule, viz., as p & not-r (...) → q. This is a more complete statement of the rule; where the old rule announced, confidently and without qualification, that in circumstances or class of cases p consequence q follows, the new rule admits from the outset that q only follows if we add the qualifier that limits the antecedent circumstances to the smaller class of cases p & not-r. This is not only more complete, the critics argue, it is also a more accurate or truthful statement of the rule. The rule p → q, articulated at the first stage of the defeasible process, is only a pretender encountered along the way to this more complete truth. In this paper I show how, and why, contrary to the critics, the process of private law adjudication supports the multi-staged structure and representation of defeasible legal rules. What matters when one party makes a claim against another party is not so much that the claim is true (or even that it is advanced as a legitimate claim under the rule that is most likely to be true), but rather that the claim is of the sort that the party can justifiably say is true. The latter, at least, is what carries the plaintiff past the initial burden of proof, and what calls for the defendant to reply if the plaintiff is not to carry the day. I illustrate the argument by way of the court’s reluctance in a tort case to entertain a purely statistical basis for a plaintiff’s claim that the defendant has caused her injury. Rather, the court will insist on direct evidence that appears to arise out of the particular circumstances of the case as the plaintiff alleges them to be, and even if, as a purely statistical matter, the latter sort of claim is less likely to be true than the claim grounded in pure statistical likelihood. I relate this argument for defeasible rules (and against rules that are more truthful) to some important arguments offered by the philosopher Stephen Darwall in his recent book The Second Person Viewpoint. Private law’s defeasible rules, I argue, capture the special respect (and interpersonal accountability) that attaches only to rights arising out of “second personal” claiming (and counterclaiming) and which are not realizable merely as a matter of “third personal” (moral) truth. (shrink)