Despite a growing body of literature focused on understanding experiences of workplace dignity, attention has centered almost exclusively on employees with lower-level jobs. As a result, little is known about how workplace dignity and indignity are experienced by employees with middle- and upper-level jobs and how their experiences differ from those with lower-level jobs. We address these absences by interviewing employees from a diversity of lower-, middle-, and upper-level jobs about their experiences of indignity at work. We outline common dignity (...) threats, along with typical emotional responses and recourses employees use at each level. We find lower-level employees experience chronic dignity threats from being disrespected, devalued, demeaned, and dehumanized, to which their most typical response is endurance. Middle-level employees experience periodic dignity threats due to undermining of their work, confidence, and reputation. For them, the typical response is strategizing. Finally, on the rare occasions upper-level employees experience dignity threats, it usually is due to a disregard of their special expertise or denial of special rights, to which they respond by rising above. (shrink)

Arguments about the morality of the use of deception in patient care have been conducted largely in an empirical vacuum, with few data about the situations in which deception occurs. Do staff frequently deceive their patients and, if so, under what conditions? Can the consequences of deception always be foreseen? What justifications do staff use to explain their behaviour? The small-scale study reported here on the uses of deception by nurses when attempting to reassure patients provides information on these questions. (...) The results suggest that deception can have deleterious effects on trust and increase the emotional distance between patients and staff. (shrink)

Causal and predictive learning research often employs intuitive and familiar hypothetical scenarios to facilitate learning novel relationships. The allergist task, in which participants are asked to diagnose the allergies of a fictitious patient, is one example of this. In such studies, it is common practice to ask participants to ignore their existing knowledge of the scenario and make judgments based only on the relationships presented within the experiment. Causal judgments appear to be sensitive to instructions that modify assumptions about the (...) scenario. However, the extent to which prior knowledge continues to affect competition for associative learning, even after participants are instructed to disregard it, is unknown. To answer this, we created a cue competition design that capitalized on prevailing beliefs about the allergenic properties of various foods. High and low allergenic foods were paired with foods moderately associated with allergy to create two compounds; high + moderate and low + moderate. We expected high allergenic foods to produce greater competition for associative memory than low allergenic foods. High allergenic foods may affect learning either because they generate a strong memory of allergy or because they are more salient in the context of the task. We therefore also manipulated the consistency of the high allergenic cue-outcome relationship with prior beliefs about the nature of the allergies. A high allergenic food that is paired with an inconsistent allergenic outcome should generate more prediction error and thus more competition for learning, than one that is consistent with prior beliefs. Participants were instructed to either use or ignore their knowledge of food allergies to complete the task. We found that while participants were able to set aside their prior knowledge when making causal judgments about the foods in question, associative memory was weaker for the cues paired with highly allergenic foods than cues paired with low allergenic foods regardless of instructions. The consistency manipulation had little effect on this result, suggesting that the effects in associative memory are most likely driven by selective attention to highly allergenic cues. This has implications for theories of causal learning as well as the way causal learning tasks are designed. (shrink)

Intra- and intergroup conflict are likely to have been recurrent features of human evolutionary history; however, little research has investigated the factors that affect men’s combat alliance decisions. The current study investigated whether features of previous one-on-one combat with an opponent affect men’s interest in allying with that opponent for future group combat. Fifty-eight undergraduate men recruited from a psychology department subject pool participated in a one-on-one laboratory fight simulation. We manipulated fight outcome, perceived fighter health asymmetry, and the presence (...) of a witness over six sets of five rounds of fighting. Following each set, we asked men how interested they would be in allying with their opponent for future group combat. We found that men were more interested in allying with their opponent for future group combat if their opponent won the fight or if a witness was present, but perceived fighter-health asymmetry did not affect men’s decision to ally with their opponent. Exploratory analyses revealed a two-way interaction between fight outcome and the presence of a witness, such that winners without a witness present expressed less interest in allying with their opponent for future group combat. Our findings suggest that men attend to the benefits of allying with a man who has demonstrated relatively superior fighting ability. Alliance with a previous opponent for group combat may vary with the relationship value of the opponent and the utility of demonstrating cooperativeness to third-party observers. These findings inform our understanding of coalition formation. (shrink)

The evolution of sex in eukaryotes represents a paradox, given the “twofold” fitness cost it incurs. We hypothesize that the mutational dynamics of the mitochondrial genome would have favored the evolution of sexual reproduction. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) exhibits a high‐mutation rate across most eukaryote taxa, and several lines of evidence suggest that this high rate is an ancestral character. This seems inexplicable given that mtDNA‐encoded genes underlie the expression of life's most salient functions, including energy conversion. We propose that negative (...) metabolic effects linked to mitochondrial mutation accumulation would have invoked selection for sexual recombination between divergent host nuclear genomes in early eukaryote lineages. This would provide a mechanism by which recombinant host genotypes could be rapidly shuffled and screened for the presence of compensatory modifiers that offset mtDNA‐induced harm. Under this hypothesis, recombination provides the genetic variation necessary for compensatory nuclear coadaptation to keep pace with mitochondrial mutation accumulation. (shrink)

The order of discovery can have a profound effect upon the way in which we think about the function of a gene. In E. coli, recA is nearly essential for cell survival in the presence of DNA damage. However, recA was originally identified, as a gene required to obtain recombinant DNA molecules in conjugating bacteria. As a result, it has been frequently assumed that recA promotes the survival of bacteria containing DNA damage by recombination in which DNA strand exchanges occur. (...) We now know that several of the processes that interact with or are controlled by recA, such as excision repair and translesion synthesis, operate to ensure that DNA replication occurs processively without strand exchanges. Yet the view persists in the literature that recA functions primarily to promote recombination during DNA repair. With the benefit of hindsight and more than three decades of additional research, we reexamine some of the classical experiments that established the concept of DNA repair by recombination, and we consider the possibilities that recombination is not an efficient mechanism for rescuing damaged cells, and that recA may be important for maintaining processive replication in a manner that does not generally promote recombination. BioEssays 23:463–470, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Disclosure of health information is a sensitive matter, particularly in the context of serious illness. In conservative societies—those which predominate in the developing world—direct truth disclosure undoubtedly presents an ethical conundrum to the modern physician. The aim of this study is to explore the truth disclosure practices of physicians in Jordan, a developing country. In this descriptive, cross-sectional study, 240 physicians were initially selected by stratified random sampling. The sample was drawn from four major hospitals in Amman, Jordan. A closed-ended (...) questionnaire was distributed and completed by self-report. A total of 164 physicians completed the questionnaire. Thirty-seven physicians usually withheld the diagnosis of “serious illness” from patients, while 127 physicians usually divulged the information directly. Among the latter, 108 physicians made exceptions to their disclosure policy. Specialists were more likely to withhold health information. Non-disclosure was primarily motivated by request from the patient’s family. In twenty cases, non-disclosure was undertaken independently. In conclusion, most respondents opt to disclose the truth; however, the vast majority of these respondents make exceptions. Instances of non-disclosure are primarily motivated by sociocultural constructs. (shrink)

This study examines the socioeconomic and familial background of Irish Catholic priests born between 1867 and 1911. Previous research has hypothesized that lack of marriage opportunities may influence adoption of celibacy as part of a religious institution. The present study traced data from Irish seminary registries for 46 Catholic priests born in County Limerick, Ireland, using 1901 Irish Census returns and Land Valuation records. Priests were more likely to originate from landholding backgrounds, and with landholdings greater in size and wealth (...) than the local average. Priests were found to originate from families with more sons than the national average, but with similar numbers of daughters. These findings are discussed in relation to competition for resources and lineage survival strategies. (shrink)

In this essay, we discuss how Descartes arrives at his mature view of material causation. Descartes’ position changes over time in some very radical ways. The last section spells out his final position as to how causation works in the world of material objects. When considering Descartes’ causal theories, it is useful to distinguish between ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ causation. The vertical perspective addresses God’s relation to creation. God is essential being, and every being other than God depends upon God in (...) order to exist and to continue in existence.Thus, from the vertical perspective, the act of creating and fact of coming into existence are co-extensive notions. This metaphysical/theological framework is the basis of Descartes’ commitment to three interrelated notions: that genuine causes and effects occur simultaneously; that causing is appropriately the case only when the cause is acting; and the view that God is the efficient, total, and continuous cause of everything that exists and every action that occurs. So from the vertical perspective, things are nothing without God’s continuous creation, and there is a problem in articulating how they are said to have independent being and causal efficacy. It is in terms of these commitments that Descartes’ views on horizontal, or material, causation must be approached. We will make apparent the radical extent to which his account of intra-worldly causation abandons his earlier and more traditional views about material causation. To this end we discuss Descartes’ journey to his mature position by emphasizing the growing epistemic limitations of his philosophy, which culminate in what we call his epistemic stance. (shrink)

Two main uses of categories are classification and feature inference, and category labels have been widely shown to play a dominant role in feature inference. However, the nature of this influence remains unclear, and we evaluate two contrasting hypotheses formalized as mathematical models: the label special-mechanism hypothesis and the label super-salience hypothesis. The special-mechanism hypothesis is that category labels, unlike other features, trigger inference decision making in reference to the category prototypes. This results in a tendency for prototype-compatible inferences because (...) the labels trigger a special mechanism rather than because of any influences they have on similarity evaluation. The super-salience hypothesis assumes that the large label influence is due to their high salience and corresponding impact on similarity without any need for a special mechanism. Application of the two models to a feature inference task based on a family resemblance category structure yields strong support for the label super-salience hypothesis and in particular does not support the need for a special mechanism based on prototypes. (shrink)

A fundamental fact about human minds is that they are never truly alone: all minds are steeped in situated interaction. That social interaction matters is recognized by any experimentalist who seeks to exclude its influence by studying individuals in isolation. On this view, interaction complicates cognition. Here, we explore the more radical stance that interaction co-constitutes cognition: that we benefit from looking beyond single minds toward cognition as a process involving interacting minds. All around the cognitive sciences, there are approaches (...) that put interaction center stage. Their diverse and pluralistic origins may obscure the fact that collectively, they harbor insights and methods that can respecify foundational assumptions and fuel novel interdisciplinary work. What might the cognitive sciences gain from stronger interactional foundations? This represents, we believe, one of the key questions for the future. Writing as a transdisciplinary collective assembled from across the classic cognitive science hexagon and beyond, we highlight the opportunity for a figure-ground reversal that puts interaction at the heart of cognition. The interactive stance is a way of seeing that deserves to be a key part of the conceptual toolkit of cognitive scientists. (shrink)

Psychopathy is a disorder characterized by severe and frequent moral violations in multiple domains of life. Numerous studies have shown psychopathy-related limbic brain abnormalities during moral processing; however, these studies only examined negatively valenced moral stimuli. Here, we aimed to replicate prior psychopathy research on negative moral judgments and to extend this work by examining psychopathy-related abnormalities in the processing of controversial moral stimuli and positive moral processing. Incarcerated adult males (N = 245) completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging protocol (...) on a mobile imaging system stationed at the prison. Psychopathy was assessed using the Hare Psychopathy Checklist–Revised (PCL-R). Participants were then shown words describing three types of moral stimuli: wrong (e.g., stealing), not wrong (e.g., charity), and controversial (e.g., euthanasia). Participants rated each stimulus as either wrong or not wrong. PCL-R total scores were correlated with not wrong behavioral responses to wrong moral stimuli, and were inversely related to hemodynamic activity in the anterior cingulate cortex in the contrast of wrong > not wrong. In the controversial > noncontroversial comparison, psychopathy was inversely associated with activity in the temporal parietal junction and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These results indicate that psychopathy-related abnormalities are observed during the processing of complex, negative, and positive moral stimuli. (shrink)

In cognitive science, there is a tacit norm that phenomena such as cultural variation or synaesthesia are worthy examples of cognitive diversity that contribute to a better understanding of cognition, but that other forms of cognitive diversity (e.g., autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder/ADHD, and dyslexia) are primarily interesting only as examples of deficit, dysfunction, or impairment. This status quo is dehumanizing and holds back much-needed research. In contrast, the neurodiversity paradigm argues that such experiences are not necessarily deficits but rather (...) are natural reflections of biodiversity. Here, we propose that neurodiversity is an important topic for future research in cognitive science. We discuss why cognitive science has thus far failed to engage with neurodiversity, why this gap presents both ethical and scientific challenges for the field, and, crucially, why cognitive science will produce better theories of human cognition if the field engages with neurodiversity in the same way that it values other forms of cognitive diversity. Doing so will not only empower marginalized researchers but will also present an opportunity for cognitive science to benefit from the unique contributions of neurodivergent researchers and communities. (shrink)

An empirical study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (King, L. A. and C. K. Nappa: 1998, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75(1), 156-165) concludes that people generally believe meaning and happiness are essential elements of the good life, whereas money is relatively unimportant. Yet, the authors also state that although "we do know what it takes to make a good life...we still behave as if we did not." The authors are suggesting that despite a general (...) belief that money is relatively unimportant in creating happiness, many people continue to focus their behaviors on increasing income and wealth. This is the classic conflict between the folk wisdom that money cannot buy happiness, on the one hand, and a continued focus by many people on achieving material success on the other. The issue is of particular importance to business professionals, not only because profit maximization is the central focus of business, but also because college students often pursue business as a profession for the express purpose of maximizing personal income and wealth. In the business world a focus on personal financial success is the norm. Wealth and income are honored. The purpose of this is to critically analyze psychological studies comparing happiness and financial success. The results are then contrasted with philosophical wisdom and religious writings comparing happiness and money. The intent is to determine whether psychological studies provide incremental insights into the connection between financial success and happiness. (shrink)

© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present new observations of the low-mass companion to HD 984 taken with the Gemini Planet Imager as a part of the GPI Exoplanet Survey campaign. Images of HD 984 B were obtained in the J and H bands. Combined with archival epochs from 2012 and 2014, we fit the first orbit to the companion to find an 18 au orbit with a 68% confidence interval between 14 and 28 au, an eccentricity (...) of 0.18 with a 68% confidence interval between 0.05 and 0.47, and an inclination of 119°with a 68% confidence interval between 114°and 125°. To address the considerable spectral covariance in both spectra, we present a method of splitting the spectra into low and high frequencies to analyze the spectral structure at different spatial frequencies with the proper spectral noise correlation. Using the split spectra, we compare them to known spectral types using field brown dwarf and low-mass star spectra and find a best-fit match of a field gravity M6.5 ±1.5 spectral type with a corresponding temperature of K. Photometry of the companion yields a luminosity of log=2.88 ± 0.07 dex with DUSTY models. Mass estimates, again from DUSTY models, find an age-dependent mass of 34 ±1 to 95 ±4 M Jup. These results are consistent with previous measurements of the object. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Lee Kerckhove and Sara Waller (hereafter K & W) argue that the concept of personhood is irrelevant for the abortion debate.1 Surprisingly, this irrelevance is due merely to the fact that the predicate ‘being a person’ — hereafter ‘personhood’ — is inherently vague. This vagueness, they argue, reduces ‘personhood’ to incoherency and disqualifies the notion from being a useful moral concept. In other words, if ‘personhood’ isn’t a precise notion with well-defined boundaries, then it cannot be (...) of any use in the debate over the permissibility of abortion. This argument is mistaken. While it may be true that ‘personhood’ is irrelevant for the debate over abortion (a substantive issue not dealt with in this paper), it is not true that ‘personhood’ should be disqualified merely because it is vague. Section 2 of the paper is a quick survey in which I briefly review the importance of ‘personhood’ in some of the more recent literature concerning the moral status of abortion. Section 3 is a reconstruction of K & W’s argument against the relevancy of ‘personhood’ and a criticism showing why their argument fails. Section 4 approaches the use of a vague predicate in moral debate and explores the application of ‘personhood’ given three contemporary solutions to vagueness: degree theory, epistemicism and supervaluationism. (shrink)

Krueger & Funder (K&F) make the familiar accusation that social psychologists focus too much on what people do wrong, rather than on what they do right. Although there is some truth to their charge, their accusations are overstated and their conclusions are incorrect. The field is far less problem-focused than they suggest, and the proposed consequences of this approach are more imagined than real.

That this is one of the most distinguished books in the excellent Bradford Books cognitive science/philosophy series is suggested by the March 1983 issue of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, in which we find a precis of the book, some twenty commentaries, and Dretske's replies. Physicalists and anti-physicalists in psychology have both stressed the importance of "top-down" strategies and have debated, prospectively, about the likelihood that we eventually will have suitable reductions, or explanatory instantiations, of psychological generations in neurophysiological terms. Dretske (...) takes the more straightforward approach, starting with an avowedly physical notion of information and then trying to show how one can make, building on this foundation, a reasonable construal of knowledge, perception, and belief. Dretske starts with the following information-theoretic specification of a signal's information content: a signal r carries the information that s is F = the conditional probability of s's being F, given r, is l. Thus, to use Dretske's humble example, "My gas gauge carries the information that I still have some gas left, if and only if the conditional probability of my having some gas left, given the reading of the gauge, is l." The parenthetical clause makes the causal character of this analysis clear: the state of the source is related by physical laws to the occurrence of the signal--the gas in the tank causes the gauge reading. Insisting on the conditional probability of l has the advantage of preserving the properties of certainty, transitivity, and addition that we associate with knowledge. If the gas gauge does carry the information that my tank has gas, then my tank must have gas. If my statement that my gauge indicates gas carries the information that it does so indicate, then information flows intact from signal to signal. And finally, if the signal carries the information that s is F, and also carries the information that s is G, then it carries, at the same level of probability assigned each, the information that s is F and G. Now we can, eventually, say that K knows that s is F = K's belief that s is F is caused by the information that s is F. The "eventually" part is important, for what is most instructive and provoking about this book is the way in which Dretske lays out the steps in constructing viable construals of knowledge, perception, and belief out of the root notion of information.--Justin Leiber, The University of Houston. (shrink)

This is the first book to offer the best essays, articles, and speeches on ethics and intelligence that demonstrate the complex moral dilemmas in intelligence collection, analysis, and operations. Some are recently declassified and never before published, and all are written by authors whose backgrounds are as varied as their insights, including Robert M. Gates, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; John P. Langan, the Joseph Cardinal Bernardin Professor of Catholic Social Thought at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown (...) University; and Loch K. Johnson, Regents Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia and recipient of the Owens Award for contributions to the understanding of U.S. intelligence activities. Creating the foundation for the study of ethics and intelligence by filling in the gap between warfare and philosophy, this is a valuable collection of literature for building an ethical code that is not dependent on any specific agency, department, or country. (shrink)

An increasingly long line of high-profile scientific misconduct cases raises the question of whether regulatory policy ought to incorporate more rigorous sanctions for investigators and their institutions. Broad and Wade graphically describe these cases through the early 1980s. They continue to recent times with the cases of Evan Dreyer, Kimon Angelides and Robert Liburdy, Justin Radolf, and others. In addition, recent Congressional investigation into conflict of interest concerns surrounding consulting by National Institutes of Health scientists has raised further questions (...) about ethical standards. The record of continuing scandal suggests that current policy may not be optimal for controlling scientific misconduct. Would an alternative policy better minimize its incidence and associated costs?What should we expect of public policy governing misconduct by American scientists? Surely the public has a right to presume that its tax money is being spent wisely and that any economic rewards from taxpayer funded research are used prudently and in the public interest. (shrink)

An increasingly long line of high-profile scientific misconduct cases raises the question of whether regulatory policy ought to incorporate more rigorous sanctions for investigators and their institutions. Broad and Wade graphically describe these cases through the early 1980s. They continue to recent times with the cases of Evan Dreyer, Kimon Angelides and Robert Liburdy, Justin Radolf, and others. In addition, recent Congressional investigation into conflict of interest concerns surrounding consulting by National Institutes of Health scientists has raised further questions (...) about ethical standards. The record of continuing scandal suggests that current policy may not be optimal for controlling scientific misconduct. Would an alternative policy better minimize its incidence and associated costs?What should we expect of public policy governing misconduct by American scientists? Surely the public has a right to presume that its tax money is being spent wisely and that any economic rewards from taxpayer funded research are used prudently and in the public interest. (shrink)