Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) is a method for exploring inner experience. DES subjects carry a random beeper in natural environments; when the beep sounds, they capture their inner experience, jot down notes about it, and report it to an investigator in a subsequent expositional interview. DES is a fundamentally idiographic method, describing faithfully the pristine inner experiences of persons. Subsequently, DES can be used in a nomothetic way to describe the characteristics of groups of people who share some common characteristic. (...) This paper describes DES and compares it to Petitmengin’s [Phenomenol Cogn Sci, this issue] second-person interview method. (shrink)

When using sample data to decide whether two populations differ, laypeople attend to the difference between group means, but largely overlook within-group variability (Obrecht, Chapman, & Gelman, 2007). We show, first, that laypeople know about and use story-implied variability when making pairwise comparisons. Then we demonstrate that participants' sensitivity to variance in a dataset is boosted when presented in a context that implies consistent variance information. Statistical data were couched in stories about electrical conductivity measurements obtained from element samples (...) (low-variability category) or body weight measurements from samples of peoples (high-variability category). We manipulated, between participants, whether the data variance matched or mismatched the story-implied variability. Participants who received data in a matching context showed high sensitivity to variance, while those in the mismatching condition did not. Laypeople use statistical data to make reasonable inferences when those data are provided in a context that makes sense. (shrink)

Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) is an approach to apprehending and describing pristine inner experience in high fidelity. The DES participant wears a random beeper in her natural environments. The beep cues the participant to jot down notes about her inner experience that was ongoing at the moment of the beep. A subsequent expositional interview produces a description of the beeped experience. It is likely that the fidelity of those descriptions iteratively increases across sampling days as participant and investigator acquire skill (...) at bracketing presuppositions about the nature of the participant's experience. (shrink)

Do we need neuroethics? This provocative question, posed almost 20 years after a series of landmark neuroethics conferences in North America (Marcus 2002; Canadian Institutes of Health Research 2002), can’t be answered briefly. We can, however, consider some of the most important arguments in favor of neuroethics. First, neuroethics may appear to be needed because neuroscience offers a new lens on human morality. This is an argument made by neuroscientists Michael Gazzaniga (Gazzaniga 2005) and (to some extent) Jean-Pierre Changeux (Changeux (...) & Ricoeur 2000; Changeux 1981)— though the latter does not use the term “neuroethics” explicitly. But is neuroscience really a unique or superior source of information about morality? Second, it may seem that neuroethics is needed to address the daunting ethical problems that are raised specifically by advances in neuroscience, including new technologies. But here again, there are reasons for nurturing healthy skepticism. (shrink)

Cranial electrotherapy stimulation is a neuromodulation tool used for treating several clinical disorders, including insomnia, anxiety, and depression. More recently, a limited number of studies have examined CES for altering affect, physiology, and behavior in healthy, non-clinical samples. The physiological, neurochemical, and metabolic mechanisms underlying CES effects are currently unknown. Computational modeling suggests that electrical current administered with CES at the earlobes can reach cortical and subcortical regions at very low intensities associated with subthreshold neuromodulatory effects, and studies using electroencephalography (...) and functional magnetic resonance imaging show some effects on alpha band EEG activity, and modulation of the default mode network during CES administration. One theory suggests that CES modulates brain stem, limbic, and cortical regions and increases relative parasympathetic to sympathetic drive in the autonomic nervous system. There is no direct evidence supporting this theory, but one of its assumptions is that CES may induce its effects by stimulating afferent projections of the vagus nerve, which provides parasympathetic signals to the cardiorespiratory and digestive systems. In our critical review of studies using CES in clinical and non-clinical populations, we found severe methodological concerns, including potential conflicts of interest, risk of methodological and analytic biases, issues with sham credibility, lack of blinding, and a severe heterogeneity of CES parameters selected and employed across scientists, laboratories, institutions, and studies. These limitations make it difficult to derive consistent or compelling insights from the extant literature, tempering enthusiasm for CES and its potential to alter nervous system activity or behavior in meaningful or reliable ways. The lack of compelling evidence also motivates well-designed and relatively high-powered experiments to assess how CES might modulate the physiological, affective, and cognitive responses to stress. Establishing reliable empirical links between CES administration and human performance is critical for supporting its prospective use during occupational training, operations, or recovery, ensuring reliability and robustness of effects, characterizing if, when, and in whom such effects might arise, and ensuring that any benefits of CES outweigh the risks of adverse events. (shrink)

Preventing exploitation in human subjects research requires a benchmark of fairness against which to judge the distribution of the benefits and burdens of a trial. This paper proposes the ideal market and its fair market price as a criterion of fairness. The ideal market approach is not new to discussions about exploitation, so this paper reviews Wertheimer's inchoate presentation of the ideal market as a principle of fairness, attempt of Emanuel and colleagues to apply the ideal market to human subjects (...) research, and Ballantyne's criticisms of both the ideal market and the resulting benchmark of fairness. It argues that the criticism of this particular benchmark is on point, but the rejection of the ideal market is mistaken. After presenting a complete account of the ideal market, this paper proposes a new method for applying the ideal market to human subjects research and illustrates the proposal by considering a sample case. (shrink)

This paper examines a model of income and quality of life that controls the love of money, job satisfaction, gender, and marital status and treats employment status (full-time versus part-time), income level, and gender as moderators. For the whole sample, income was not significantly related to quality of life when this path was examined alone. When all variables were controlled, income was negatively related to quality of life. When (1) the love of money was negatively correlated to job satisfaction (...) and (2) job satisfaction was positively related to both income and quality of life, income was negatively related to quality of life for full-time, high-income, and male employees. When these two conditions failed to exist, income was not related to quality of life for part-time, median- or low-income, and female employees. This model provides new insights regarding the impact of the love of money and job satisfaction on the income–quality of life relationship. (shrink)

BackgroundThe sustained rise in negative mental health reports among university students is a source of continued global concern, and investigation continues into potential contributors to this rise. This includes the increased prevalence of risky sexual behaviors. Related is the increased prevalence of pornography use. Our study sought to explore the potential relationship between compulsive use of pornography and mental health in university students.MethodsOur sample consisted of university students from Franciscan University of Steubenville, Steubenville, Ohio. An anonymous survey was sent (...) to all students at the university over the age of 18. The survey was comprised of the following: demographic questions, questions on pornography use and perception, a modified version of the Compulsive Internet Use Scale assessing various factors associated with compulsive internet pornography use, questions assessing emotional and sexual states relative to pornography use, and the 21-question version of the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale.ResultsOur results indicate that 56.6% of those surveyed reported lifetime pornography use, with a significantly higher proportion of males than females reporting such use. The majority of students reported accessing pornography through internet-related technologies. Additionally, 17.0, 20.4, and 13.5% of students reported severe or extremely severe levels of depression, anxiety and stress, respectively, with compulsive pornography use significantly affecting all three mental health parameters in both sexes. Exploratory Factor Analysis identified three factors suggesting emotional coping, dependence and preoccupation for the mCIUS items and three factors reflecting interoceptive, impotent, and extrinsic characteristics for the EmSS items. Regression analysis indicated that various demographics, items pertaining to reduced control and social impairment, and other variables pertaining to pornography use predicted mental health outcomes. Faith, morals and personal motivation were the primary variables reported to help reduce pornography use.ConclusionOur analyses indicate a significant relationship between mental health and pornography use, including behaviors reflecting behavioral addictions, highlighting the necessity for a better understanding and consideration of the potential contribution of internet pornography to negative mental health among university students. (shrink)

Background: Family sense of coherence can be defined as the cognitive map of a family that enables the family to deal with stress during their lifetime. FSOC is the degree to which a family perceives family life as comprehensible, manageable, and meaningful. To the best of our knowledge, few studies have used this scale, and very few have evaluated FSOC Scale psychometric properties.Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties of the original FSOC Scale in a sample of (...) Portuguese caregivers of children aged between 10 and 15 years.Methods: A total of 329 caregivers completed a sociodemographic questionnaire and the FSOC Scale. Analyses were performed to evaluate the factor structure of the FSOC Scale with 26 items as well as composite reliability, internal consistency, convergent-related validity, and discriminant-related validity of the scale scores.Results: The findings supported a three-factor solution for a 13-item version that maintains the original FSOC Scale structure. The three FSOC dimensions presented a good fit to the data. Cronbach’s alpha, composite reliability, and convergent-related validity were considered very good for the FSOC Scale. No evidence of discriminant-related validity was found for the dimensions of FSOC.Conclusion: The findings support the use of the Portuguese FSOC Scale for research and clinical purposes with Portuguese caregivers. Future research is necessary to further develop a European Portuguese version of the FSOC Scale.Implications: This study provides a psychometric evaluation of FSOC Scale characteristics in a Portuguese sample. The results are helpful for clinicians and family therapists who work with families since it could help them to assess the resources of families and their ability to cope with adversity and enhance their strengths. (shrink)

The authors of the target article briefly discuss the issue of “sample ownership” when scientists collaborate with citizen science partners (Wiggins and Wilbanks 2019). This is an important issue,...

It was a generally accepted tenet of ancient literary criticism that an excess of sibilants was cacophonous. To discover if and to what extent this antipathy is discernible in the actual practice of the main Latin poets, random samples of 50 lines from each were analysed. The results of this analysis are set out in Table I.

This study explores the complex relationships between anomalous experiences, mental health, creativity, and psi within a sample of 113 visual artists in three art schools. The main objective was to assess whether psi could play a role in the emergence of anomalous experiences and their association with mental health and creativity. Participants took part in a retro-priming task, already used by Bem to assess unconscious precognitive abilities. They then completed three questionnaires evaluating anomalous experiences, mental health, and creativity. The (...) results show no significant effect on the retro-priming task, but the number of anomalous experiences reported by each participant was significantly correlated with their retro-priming performance. Creativity did not correlate with retro-priming, except for one subscale, the use of analogies. Anomalous experiences as a whole were correlated with mental health and creativity, in keeping with the high rate of unusual experiences previously reported in artistic populations. The theoretical implication of these findings and possible directions for future studies are discussed. (shrink)

Professional identity and competent ethical behaviors of nursing students are commonly developed through curricular inclusion of professional nursing values education. Despite the enactment of this approach, nursing students continue to express difficulty in managing ethical conflicts encountered in their practice. This descriptive correlational study explores the relationships between professional nursing values, self-esteem, and ethical decision making among senior baccalaureate nursing students. A convenience sample of 47 senior nursing students from the United States were surveyed for their level of internalized (...) professional nursing values (Revised Professional Nursing Values Scale), level of self-esteem (Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale), and perceived level of confidence in ethical decision making. A significant positive relationship (p < 0.05) was found between nursing students’ professional nursing values and levels of self-esteem. The results of this study can be useful to nursing educators whose efforts are focused on promoting professional identity development and competent ethical behaviors of future nurses. (shrink)

The aim of this analysis was to examine the effects on stature in two nationally representative samples of Polish 19-year-old conscripts of maternal and paternal education level, and of degree of urbanization, before and after the economic transition of 1990. Data were from two national surveys of 19-year-old Polish conscripts: 27,236 in 1986 and 28,151 in 2001. In addition to taking height measurements, each subject was asked about the socioeconomic background of their families, including paternal and maternal education, and the (...) name of the locality of residence. The net effect of each of these social factors on stature was determined using four-factor analysis of variance. The secular trend towards increased stature of Polish conscripts has slowed down from a rate 2·1 cm per decade across the period 1965–1986 to 1·5 cm per decade between 1986 and 2001. In both cohorts, mean statures increase with increasing size of locality of residence, paternal education and maternal education. The effect of each of these three social factors on conscript height is highly significant in both cohorts. However, the effect of maternal education has increased substantially while that of size of locality of residence and paternal education diminished between 1986 and 2001. These results imply that the influence of parental education on child growth cannot be due solely to a relationship between education and income, but is also perhaps a reflection of household financial management which benefits child health and growth by better educated parents, regardless of level of income. In addition they suggest that, irrespective of whether there are one or two breadwinners in the family, it is the mother, more so than the father, who is principally responsible for the extent to which such management best favours child health and growth. The asymmetry between the importance of maternal as against paternal education for child growth, clearly seen in the 1986 cohort, became more accentuated in 2001, after the abrupt transition from a command to a free-market economy in the early 1990s. (shrink)

It was a generally accepted tenet of ancient literary criticism that an excess of sibilants was cacophonous. To discover if and to what extent this antipathy is discernible in the actual practice of the main Latin poets, random samples of 50 lines from each were analysed. The results of this analysis are set out in Table I.

Having considered the role of ethics in Indian mystical teachings in a previous, related, essay I would like to consider the same question in its western religious contexts in the present paper, beginning with the Christian mystical tradition. As is the case with Asian traditions charges of moral unconcern are widely directed at Christian mystics, but they are false. Christian mystics are not indifferent to morality nor do they disconnect morality from an intrinsic relationship to their mystical quest. Augustine would (...) already teach that the story of Leah and Rachel was an instructive allegory in which the active life represented by Leah was intrinsic to the contemplative life represented by Rachel while Gregory the Great would unambiguously assert: ‘We ascend to the heights of contemplation by the steps of the active life’, defining the active life as: ‘to dispense to all what they need and to provide those entrusted to us with the means of subsistence’. These representative early samples of the salience of ethical behaviour to the life of contemplation could be multiplied at great length, and almost without exception in the teaching of the major Christian mystics. This historical exegetical exercise, however, is in the present circumstances, both out of place and I hope unnecessary. Instead, the more general, more enigmatic, more repercussive, issues raised by the place and significance of morality within the Christian mystical tradition need attending to. (shrink)

An object in continuous motion is perceived ahead of the briefly flashed object, although the two images are physically aligned , the phenomenon called flash-lag effect. Flash-lag effects have been found also with other continuously changing features such as color, pattern entropy, and brightness as well as with streamed pre- and post-target input without any change of the feature values of streaming items in feature space . We interpret all instances of the flash-lag as a consequence of a more fundamental (...) property of conscious perception in general: acceleration of the speed with which samples of perceptual information become represented in explicit format immediately after the stimulation onset. Decreased visual latency of the samples of stimulus information from the streamed input leads to the relative perceptual lag for the separately flashed stimulus because it is not preceded by adjacent sensory input that would have accelerated its perception. Experimental support for the notion of perceptual acceleration is reviewed. (shrink)

Objectives— To explore British community pharmacists' views on PAS , including professional responsibility, personal beliefs, changes in law and ethical guidance.Design— Postal questionnaireSetting— Great BritainSubjects— A random sample of 320 registered full-time community pharmacistsResults— The survey yielded a response rate of 56%. The results showed that 70% of pharmacists agreed that it was a patient's right to choose to die, with 57% and 45% agreeing that it was the patient's right to involve his/her doctor in the process and to (...) use prescription medicines, respectively. Forty-nine per cent said that they would knowingly dispense a prescription for use in PAS were it to be legalised and 54% believed it correct to refuse to dispense such a prescription. Although 53% believed it to be their right to know when they were being involved in PAS, 28% did not. Most pharmacists said that they would wish to see the inclusion of a practice protocol for PAS in the code of ethics of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain in the event of a change in the law on PAS. In addition, 89% would wish to see PAS included in the Conscience Clause of the CE-RPSGB. Males were found to be significantly less likely to favour PAS than females , as were those declaring an ethnic/religious background of consideration when dealing with ethical issues in practice compared with their counterparts .Conclusion— Pharmacists view their professional responsibility in PAS to be more obligatory than a physician's, in having to provide the means for PAS. It is worrying that a proportion of the respondents prefer to remain in ignorance of the true purpose of a prescription for PAS; a finding at odds with current developments within the pharmaceutical profession. A practice protocol for PAS and an extension of the conscience clause should be considered in the event of PAS becoming legal. Such measures would allow the efficient provision of the pharmaceutical service whilst at the same respecting the personal beliefs of those who object to cooperating in the ending of a life. (shrink)

The linkage between ethical judgment and ethical behavioral intention was investigated. The Multidimensional Ethics Scale (MES) was used to measure ethical judgment ratings of hypothetical behaviors in retail, sales, and automobile repair scenarios. Confirmatory factor analysis on a sample of 300 undergraduate business students showed that a model with three latent variables representing three correlated ethical dimensions of moral equity, relativism, and contractualism, three correlated scenario latent variables, and correlated residuals presented a good fit to the data. Further, structural (...) models of the relationship of ethical judgment to behavioral intentions revealed that behavioral intentions were more highly related to the scenario factors than to the ethical dimensions across three scenarios. Adding a method factor to the model improved goodness-of-fit and changed some structural model conclusions. (shrink)

Researchers have identified the phenomena of moral distress through many studies in Western countries. This research reports the first study of moral distress in Iran. Because of the differences in cultural values and nursing education, nurses working in intensive care units may experience moral distress differently than reported in previous studies. This research used a qualitative method involving semistructured and in-depth interviews of a purposive sample of 31 (28 clinical nurses and 3 nurse educators) individuals to identify the types (...) of moral distress among clinical nurses and nurse educators working in 12 cities in Iran. A content analysis of the data produced four themes to describe the nurses’ moral distress. The four themes were as follows: (a) institutional barriers and constraints; (b) communication problems; (c) futile actions, malpractice, and medical/care errors; (d) inappropriate responsibilities, resources, and competencies. The results demonstrate that moral distress for intensive care unit nurses is different and that the nursing leaders must reduce moral distress among nursing in intensive care. (shrink)

Elliott Sober can be understood as advancing two distinct arguments that similarly conclude that evolutionary theory does not say that Scriven’s infamous twins have the same fitness, despite the twins’ identical genotypes and phenotypes. The first argument relies on denying that evolutionary theory can say that the twins are in the same environment, and the second relies on asserting an epistemic access asymmetry between token fitness and trait fitness. Motivated by good reasons, I respond to both of these arguments by (...) showing that the theory of evolution by natural selection has adequate means for determining whether the twins are in the same environment via causal-probabilistic decomposition, and that equivalence in fitness can be asserted even from a partial theory of fitness, regardless of epistemology. Finally, I point out an absurd result regarding genetic drift as indiscriminate sampling that follows if Sober’s conclusion is true. (shrink)

Several features of cosmology are of striking philosophical interest. Unlike other branches of physics which deal with kinds of occurrences and relations, cosmology investigates only one unique entity, the physical universe. Hence the science cannot avail itself of standard inductive procedures which depend on the assembling of samples. Cosmologists are therefore obliged to choose between two other procedures. Mr. Bondi calls them the "extrapolative" and the "axiomatic-deductive" lines of thought. The former starts from physical laws known to hold of terrestrial (...) or near-terrestrial phenomena. It then tries to frame an answer to the question: "What is the largest set of phenomena to which these laws can be applied consistently and successfully?" The result of this approach has been the construction of a number of "models" of the universe at large, each patterned on verified laws of physics. The axiomatic-deductive approach starts from certain a priori assumptions which are held to underlie any physical science whatever and which are equivalent to certain suppositions about the structure of the universe. From these assumptions, together with special axioms adopted for the purpose, the laws of cosmology are deduced. Then the deductions are checked with the observational data. Here again, various models of the cosmos have resulted. (shrink)

The informed consent process presents challenges for psychological trauma research (e.g. Institutional Review Board [IRB] apprehension). While previous research documents researcher and IRB-member perspectives on these challenges, participant views remain absent. Thus, using a mixed-methods approach, we investigated participant views on consent guidelines in two convenience samples: crowdsourced (N = 268) and undergraduate (N = 265) participants. We also examined whether trauma-exposure influenced participant views. Overall, participants were satisfied with current guidelines, providing minor feedback and ethical reminders for researchers. Moreover, (...) participant views for consent were similar irrespective of trauma-exposure. Our study has implications for IRBs and psychological researchers. (shrink)

Objective To determine the attitudes of Egyptian patients regarding their participation in research and with the collection, storage and future use of blood samples for research purposes. Design Cross-sectional survey. Study population Adult Egyptian patients (n=600) at rural and urban hospitals and clinics. Results Less than half of the study population (44.3%) felt that informed consent forms should provide research participants the option to have their blood samples stored for future research. Of these participants, 39.9% thought that consent forms should (...) include the option that future research be restricted to the illness being studied. A slight majority (66.2%) would donate their samples for future genetic research. Respondents were more favourable towards having their blood samples exported to other Arab countries (62.0%) compared with countries in Europe (41.8%, p<0.001) and to the USA (37.2%, p<0.001). Conclusions This study shows that many individuals do not favour the donation of a blood sample for future research. Of those who do approve of such future research, many favour a consent model that includes an option restricting the future research to the illness being studied. Also, many Egyptians were hesitant to have their blood samples donated for genetic research or exported out of the Arab region to the USA and European countries. Further qualitative research should be performed to determine the underlying reasons for many of our results. (shrink)

While new regulations obligate or recommend people to wear medical masks at public places to prevent further spread of the Covid-19 virus, there are still open questions as to what face coverage does to social emotional communication. Previous research on the effects of wearing veils or face-covering niqabs showed that covering of the mouth led to the attribution of negative emotions and to the perception of less intense positive emotions. The current study compares a sample from the Netherlands with (...) a sample from the United Arab Emirates on their perception of emotions from faces covered by a niqab, censoring black bars, or uncovered faces. The results show that covering the mouth area leads to greater anxiety in participants in both countries. Furthermore, although participants did not report greater decoding difficulties for faces that were covered as compared to fully visible, results show that face coverage did influence emotion perception. Specifically, happiness and anger were perceived as being less intense. Further, face coverage by a niqab, as compared to black bars, yielded lower emotional intensity ratings. We conclude that face coverage in particular can modulate the perception of emotions, but that affective contextual cues may play a role as well. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Organizations constitute morally-complex environments, requiring organization members to possess levels of moral courage sufficient to promote their ethical action, while refraining from unethical actions when faced with temptations or pressures. Using a sample drawn from a military context, we explored the antecedents and consequences of moral courage. Results from this four-month field study demonstrated that authentic leadership was positively related to followers’ displays of moral courage. Further, followers’ moral courage fully mediated the effects of authentic leadership on followers’ ethical (...) and pro-social behaviors. Theoretical and practical implications for further integrating the work on moral courage, authentic leadership and ethics are discussed. (shrink)

Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) attempts to apprehend in high fidelity pristine inner experience (the naturally-occurring, directly-apprehended phenomena that fill our waking lives, including inner speaking, visual imagery, sensory awarenesses, etc.). Previous DES investigations had shown individual differences in the frequency of inner speaking ranging from nearly zero to nearly 100% of the time. In early 2020, the Internet was ablaze with comments expressing astonishment that constant internal monologue was not universal. We invited Lena, a university student who believed she had (...) constant internal monologue, to participate in a DES analog of a pre-registered study: We would announce, on the Internet, that we would conduct a fully transparent DES investigation and roll out videos of the DES interviews (and annotated transcripts) as they occurred in (almost) real-time, something like “reality TV about inner experience,” so that spectators could examine for themselves our characterizations of Lena and how we arrived at them. We describe here the procedure and its findings: Lena did _not_ have frequent internal monologue (contrary to her expectations); she _did_ have frequent visual imagery (to her surprise); and we speculated about the frequent presence of two simultaneous “centers of gravity” of her experience. The entire procedure is available for inspection. (shrink)

This article addresses the research question: “How do Dutch highly educated Muslim women of Moroccan descent use prayer in dealing with problems?” The theoretical framework was mainly based on the work of Pargament et al. regarding religious coping. The empirical part of the study consisted of a quantitative and a qualitative part. This article presents results of the quantitative part. For the quantitative part of our research, 177 questionnaires were collected using snowball sampling. We asked respondents about their praying practices (...) and their ways of religious coping, using the Brief RCOPE. The connection and communication in their prayer with a loving, caring, benevolent God is the main religious way in which these Muslim women of Moroccan descent cope with all kinds of problems. This use of prayer as a way of coping can be clarified through the psychological functions of religiosity and prayer that are suggested by Pargament, Koenig, and Perez. Prayer could help them in: finding meaning, being master over their circumstances and controlling their emotions, finding comfort and closeness to God, experiencing intimacy with others and closeness to God, and transforming their way of life. We did find few negative religious coping strategies, such as negative feelings towards God or alienation. This is in line with research results of Abu Raiya and Pargament. As Islam implies surrender to God, it may be difficult for Muslims to admit their religious distress, doubts, and struggles. (shrink)

Next SectionIn an online study conducted separately in the UK and the US, participants rated the acceptability and fairness of four interventions: two types of financial incentives and two types of medical interventions. These were stated to be equally effective in improving outcomes in five contexts: weight loss and smoking cessation programmes, and adherence in treatment programmes for drug addiction, serious mental illness and physiotherapy after surgery. Financial incentives were judged less acceptable and to be less fair than medical interventions (...) across all five contexts. Context moderated the relative preference between rewards and penalties: participants from both countries favoured rewards over penalties in weight loss and treatment for serious mental illness. Only among US participants was this relative preference moderated by perceived responsibility of the target group. Overall, participants supported funding more strongly for interventions when they judged members of the target group to be less responsible for their condition, and vice versa. These results reveal a striking similarity in negative attitudes towards the use of financial incentives, rewards as well as penalties, in improving outcomes across a range of contexts, in the UK and the USA. The basis for such negative attitudes awaits further study. (shrink)

This study examines a proposed model whereby ethical leadership positively influences the level of meaning followers experience in their work, which in turn positively impacts followers’ levels of work engagement and organizational identification, as well as reduces their levels of workplace envy. We further hypothesized that cognitive reappraisal strategies for emotional regulation would moderate the ethical leadership–meaningful work relationship. The model was tested in a stratified random field sample of 440 employees and their direct supervisors in the aviation industry (...) in Turkey. Results based on data collected at two points in time showed that ethical leadership has a significant and positive direct effect on engagement and organizational identification, as well as indirect effects on those two outcomes through meaningfulness. Finally, results show that ethical leadership has a significant negative direct effect on workplace envy. Further, results showed that cognitive reappraisal emotion regulation strategy positively moderates, i.e., strengthens, the relationship between ethical leadership and meaningful work. (shrink)

In this study, we examined the role of social learning theory in explaining academic dishonesty among 673 college students in the United States, France, and Greece. We found support for social learning theory such that perceived peer dishonesty was incrementally valid as a predictor of self-reported academic dishonesty across three countries beyond personal factor of conscientiousness and demographic factor of age. Contrary to expectation, perceived penalty for academic cheating received support in the U.S. sample only. Justification for academic dishonesty (...) contributed incremental variance after controlling for other factors including age, conscientiousness, perceived penalty for cheating and peer dishonesty across three countries. In addition, cultural differences accounted for almost 50% of the explained variance in academic dishonesty with French students reportedly engaged in significantly more academic cheating behavior than Greek and U.S. students. Discussion and implications for business ethics teaching and research were discussed. (shrink)

Data fraud and selective reporting both present serious threats to the credibility of science. However, there remains considerable disagreement among scientists about how best to sanction data fraud, and about the ethicality of selective reporting. The public is arguably the largest stakeholder in the reproducibility of science; research is primarily paid for with public funds, and flawed science threatens the public’s welfare. Members of the public are able to make meaningful judgments about the morality of different behaviors using moral intuitions. (...) Legal scholars emphasize that to maintain legitimacy, social control policies must be developed with some consideration given to the public’s moral intuitions. Although there is a large literature on popular attitudes toward science, there is no existing evidence about public opinion on data fraud or selective reporting. We conducted two studies—a survey experiment with a nationwide convenience sample, and a follow-up survey with a representative sample of US adults —to explore community members’ judgments about the morality of data fraud and selective reporting in science. The findings show that community members make a moral distinction between data fraud and selective reporting, but overwhelmingly judge both behaviors to be immoral and deserving of punishment. Community members believe that scientists who commit data fraud or selective reporting should be fired and banned from receiving funding. For data fraud, most Americans support criminal penalties. Results from an ordered logistic regression analysis reveal few demographic and no significant partisan differences in punitiveness toward data fraud. (shrink)

Past research demonstrates that emotion recognition is influenced by social category cues present on faces. However, little research has investigated whether holistic processing is required to observe these influences of social category information on emotion perception, and no studies have investigated whether different visual sampling strategies (i.e. differences in the allocation of attention to different regions of the face) contribute to the interaction between social cues and emotional expressions. The current study aimed to address this. Participants categorised happy and angry (...) expressions on own- and other-race faces, and male and female faces. In Experiments 1 and 2, holistic processing was disrupted by presenting inverted faces (Experiment 1) or part faces (Experiment 2). In Experiments 3 and 4 participants’ eye-gaze to eye and mouth regions was also tracked. Disrupting holistic processing did not alter the moderating influence of sex and race cues on emotion recognition (Experiments 1, 2, 4). Gaze patterns differed as a function of emotional expression, and social category cues, however, eye-gaze patterns did not reflect response time patterns (Experiments 3 and 4). Results indicate that the interaction between social category cues and emotion does not require holistic processing and is not driven by differences in visual sampling. (shrink)

While outcomes for children with T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia have improved dramatically, survival rates for patients with relapsed/refractory disease remain dismal. Prior studies indicate that glucocorticoid resistance is more common than resistance to other chemotherapies at relapse. In addition, failure to clear peripheral blasts during a prednisone prophase correlates with an elevated risk of relapse in newly diagnosed patients. Here we show that intrinsic GC resistance is present at diagnosis in early thymic precursor T-ALLs as well as in a subset (...) of non-ETP T-ALLs. GC-resistant non-ETP T-ALLs are characterized by strong induction of JAK/STAT signaling in response to interleukin-7 stimulation. Removing IL7 or inhibiting JAK/STAT signaling sensitizes these T-ALLs, and a subset of ETP T-ALLs, to GCs. The combination of the GC dexamethasone and the JAK1/2 inhibitor ruxolitinib altered the balance between pro- and anti-apoptotic factors in samples with IL7-dependent GC resistance, but not in samples with IL7-independent GC resistance. Together, these data suggest that the addition of ruxolitinib or other inhibitors of IL7 receptor/JAK/STAT signaling may enhance the efficacy of GCs in a biologically defined subset of T-ALL.Leukemia advance online publication, 30 May 2017; doi:10.1038/leu.2017.136. (shrink)

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the perceptions related to ethics and cheating among a representative sample of primarily female undergraduate students, compared to trends reported in the literature. Focus groups were organized to discuss nine scripted questions. Transcripts and audiotapes were analyzed and four main themes emerged: demographics of those who cheat, students’ perceptions of cheating, the role of technology in cheating, and consequences of cheating, including students’ attitudes and behaviors related to reporting cheating incidents. (...) Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory served as the theoretical framework to understand students’ varying perceptions of and justification for cheating, as well as the dynamics of honor code violations, via group discussion. Viewpoints on cheating were regularly discussed and contradictory views were identified related to frequency and justification for cheating. Utilizing the constant comparative method, students mentioned time limitations, and pressure from peers, parents, and professors as reasons to cheat. They also discussed pressures to achieve high grades for acceptance into graduate programs. Students were also reluctant to report their classmates for cheating incidents. Repeated and comprehensive education on ethical behavior is warranted. (shrink)

Integrity is a critical determinant of the effectiveness of research organizations in terms of producing high quality research and educating the new generation of scientists. A number of responsible conduct of research (RCR) training programs have been developed to address this growing organizational concern. However, in spite of a significant body of research in ethics training, it is still unknown which approach has the highest potential to enhance researchers’ integrity. One of the approaches showing some promise in improving researchers’ integrity (...) has focused on the development of ethical decision-making skills. The current effort proposes a novel curriculum that focuses on broad metacognitive reasoning strategies researchers use when making sense of day-to-day social and professional practices that have ethical implications for the physical sciences and engineering. This sensemaking training has been implemented in a professional sample of scientists conducting research in electrical engineering, atmospheric and computer sciences at a large multi-cultural, multi-disciplinary, and multi-university research center. A pre-post design was used to assess training effectiveness using scenario-based ethical decision-making measures. The training resulted in enhanced ethical decision-making of researchers in relation to four ethical conduct areas, namely data management, study conduct, professional practices, and business practices. In addition, sensemaking training led to researchers’ preference for decisions involving the application of the broad metacognitive reasoning strategies. Individual trainee and training characteristics were used to explain the study findings. Broad implications of the findings for ethics training development, implementation, and evaluation in the sciences are discussed. (shrink)