Ever since the outbreak of the coronavirus disease, people have been flooded with vast amounts of information related to the virus and its social consequences. This paper draws on social amplification theory and the extended parallel process model and assesses the following: how two amplification stations—news media and peoples’ personal networks—influence the risk-related perceptions of people and how these risk-related perceptions impact people’s health-protective behaviors. This study surveyed 1,946 participants. The results indicate that peoples’ exposure to news media significantly and (...) positively predicted both perceived efficacy and perceived threat. It also shows that peoples’ exposure to risk-related information through their personal networks negatively predicted their perceived efficacy, but it positively predicted their perceived threat. The mediating effect of fear was examined, and the result was contradictory to the EPPM. In short, this study reveals the underlying mechanism of individuals’ exposure to risk information, processing, and precautionary measures. (shrink)

De Neys argues against assigning exclusive capacities to automatic versus controlled processes. The dual implicit process model provides a theoretical rationale for the exclusivity of automatic threat processing, and corresponding data provide empirical evidence of such exclusivity. De Neys's dismissal of exclusivity is premature and based on a limited sampling of psychological research.

Humans are not only fearful apes, but we also communicate our fear using social cues. Social fear displays typically elicit care and assistance in the real world and the lab. But in the psychology and neuroscience literature fearful expressions are commonly interpreted as “threat cues.” The fearful ape hypothesis suggests that fearful expressions should be instead considered appeasement and vulnerability cues.

Though stereotype threat is most well-known for its ability to hinder performance, it actually has a wide range of effects. For instance, it can also cause stress, anxiety, and doubt. These additional effects are as important and as central to the phenomenon as its effects on performance are. As a result, stereotype threat has more far-reaching implications than many philosophers have realized. In particular, the phenomenon has a number of unexplored “epistemic effects.” These are effects on our epistemic (...) lives—i.e., the ways we engage with the world as actual and potential knowers. In this paper I flesh out the implications of a specific epistemic effect: self-doubt. Certain kinds of self-doubt can deeply affect our epistemic lives by exacerbating moments of epistemic injustice and by interacting with pernicious ideals of rationality. In both cases, self-doubt can lead to a person questioning their own humanity or full personhood. Since we have reasons to believe that stereotype threat can trigger this kind of self-doubt, then stereotype threat can affect various aspects of ourselves besides our ability to perform to our potential. It can also affect our very sense of self. (shrink)

This article examines joint action initiatives among small- and medium-sized enterprises in the manufacturing industries in developing countries in the context of the ascendancy of corporate social responsibility and the proliferation of a variety of international accountability tools and standards. Through empirical fieldwork in the football manufacturing industry of Jalandhar in North India, the article documents how local cluster-based SMEs stay coupled with the global CSR agenda through joint CSR initiatives focusing on child labor. Probing further, however, also reveals patterns (...) of selective decoupling in relation to core humanitarian and labor rights issues. Through in-depth interviews with a wide range of stakeholders involved in the export-oriented football manufacturing industry of Jalandhar in North India, the article highlights the dynamics of coupling and decoupling taking place, and how developing country firms can gain credit and traction by focusing on high visibility CSR issues, although the plight of workers remains fundamentally unchanged. The authors revisit these findings in the discussion and concluding sections, highlighting the main research and policy implications of the analysis. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the interrelated topics of stereotype threat and attributional ambiguity as they relate to gender and gender identity. The former has become an emerging topic in feminist philosophy and has spawned a tremendous amount of research in social psychology and elsewhere. But the discussion, at least in how it connects to gender, is incomplete: the focus is only on cisgender women and their experiences. By considering trans women's experiences of stereotype threat and attributional ambiguity, (...) we gain a deeper understanding of the phenomena and their problematic effects. (shrink)

This article examines the representation of the United Nations in speeches delivered by its Secretary-General. It focuses on the role of metaphor in constructing a common ‘imagining’ of international diplomacy and legitimizing an international organizational identity. The SG legitimizes the organization, in part, through the delegitimization of agents/actions/events constructed as threatening to the international community and to the well-being of mankind. It is a desire to combat the forces of menace or evil which are argued to motivate and determine the (...) organizational agenda. This is predicated upon an international ideology of humanity in which difference is silenced and ‘working towards the common good’ is emphasized. This is exploited to rouse emotions and legitimize institutional power. Polarization and antithesis are achieved through the employment of metaphors designed to enhance positive and negative evaluations. The article further points to the constitutive, persuasive and edifying1 power of topic and situationally motivated metaphors in speech-making. (shrink)

Introduction -- The mischievous neuron -- The shadow of determinism -- The essential freedom -- A tempest in the brain -- Neurological disturbance -- The seat of the will -- The somatic-marker hypothesis -- The readiness potential -- The grand illusion -- Neuronal destiny -- The revolution of the brain -- Seeds of corruption -- Morality's end -- The depths of consciousness -- A challenge for experience -- The boundlessness of reason -- Rise of the moral agent -- The palace (...) of the mind. (shrink)

For decades, intelligence and achievement tests have registered significant differences between people of different races, ethnicities, classes, and genders. We argue that most of these differences are explained not as reflections of differences in the distribution of intellectual virtues but as evidence for the metacognitive mediation of the intellectual virtues. For example, in the United States, blacks typically score worse than whites on tests of mathematics. This might lead one to think that fewer blacks possess the relevant intellectual virtues, or (...) that they possess them less fully. However, research on stereotype threat shows that when blacks are not reminded of their race, they do much better on these tests than when they are. Simply raising to salience the race of the student triggers the activation of the stereotype, which in turn leads to poorer performance. However, learning about stereotype threat to a large extent immunizes people against it. This suggests that the psycho-social dimension of intelligence that recognizes the possibility of effects like stereotype threat is a crucial mediating variable in the development and expression of the intellectual virtues. The Socratic, “Know thyself” needs to be expanded to, “Know thyself and thy society.” Self-knowledge and knowledge of relevant stereotypes are a necessary condition for optimal development and expression of the other intellectual virtues. (shrink)

Taking seriously the value of cultural competence in healthcare requires at least three general commitments. First, it involves accepting the view that patients' health beliefs and behaviors are influenced to a significant degree by their own social and cultural practices. Second, it requires careful attention to how health professionals typically respond to patients' different social and cultural standards at various levels of the healthcare delivery system. And third, it calls for developing interventions that are sensitive to these first two issues (...) to assure the delivery of quality healthcare for culturally diverse patients. This much is plain, insofar as we are talking about the broadest of commitments necessary to support the value of cultural competence in healthcare. But what other, more specific commitments are implied in accepting the value of cultural competence? (shrink)

Corporate and commercial values are inducing some healthcare organizations to prescribe a customer service model that reframes the provision of nursing care. In this paper it is argued that such a model is incommensurable with nursing conceived as a moral practice and ultimately places nurses at risk. Based upon understanding from ongoing research on compassion fatigue, it is proposed that compassion fatigue as currently experienced by nurses may not arise predominantly from too great a demand for compassion, but rather from (...) barriers to enacting compassionate care. These barriers are often systemic. The paradigm shift in which healthcare environments are viewed as marketplaces rather than moral communities has the potential to radically affect the evolution of nursing as a discipline. (shrink)

This paper discusses the puzzle of blackmail, i.e. the way in which the threat of an otherwise legally permissible action can in some cases constitute blackmail. It argues that the key to understanding blackmail is in terms of coercion and threats, and the effect such threats have on the validity of a victim’s consent. The nature of coercion and of coercive threats is considered in detail to support the thesis that threats are prima facie impermissible, though often justified all-things-considered. (...) The puzzle of blackmail arises due to the fact that the law rarely has regard to an agent’s motives in acting, whereas this is the focus of the puzzling cases. (shrink)

One of the most noticeable trends in recent years has been the increasing reliance of public decision-making processes on algorithms, i.e. computer-programmed step-by-step instructions for taking a given set of inputs and producing an output. The question raised by this article is whether the rise of such algorithmic governance creates problems for the moral or political legitimacy of our public decision-making processes. Ignoring common concerns with data protection and privacy, it is argued that algorithmic governance does pose a significant (...) class='Hi'>threat to the legitimacy of such processes. Modelling my argument on Estlund’s threat of epistocracy, I call this the ‘threat of algocracy’. The article clarifies the nature of this threat and addresses two possible solutions. It is argued that neither solution is likely to be successful, at least not without risking many other things we value about social decision-making. The result is a somewhat pessimistic conclusion in which we confront the possibility that we are creating decision-making processes that constrain and limit opportunities for human participation. (shrink)

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, reaction quarantine, social distancing, and economic crises have posed a greater risk to physical and psychological health. Such derogatory mental health stigma is associated with adverse outcomes in the student population. The purpose of the current study is to provide a timely evaluation of the COVID-19 pandemic and its adverse effects on students’ psychological well-being to sustain economic sustainability. A thorough review of the literature and current studies, significant emphasis of socio-demographic indicators, interpretation of physical (...) symptoms, home quarantine activities, and COVID-19 unique stressors were extracted. Data were collected through electronic surveys from 640 university students at local and foreign universities. The findings revealed substantial adverse effects resulting in varying levels of stress, symptoms of depression, and specific discomfort in the case. Among COVID-19 stressors, financial instability, unpredictability toward future/career, and media exposure have been described as common factors that cause poor psychological well-being and weaken economic sustainability. COVID-19, quarantine, self-isolation, and onerous interventions primarily weaken university students’ mental health. The emphasis on this vulnerable category, however, is substantially absent from the literature. This research addresses the urgent need to develop possible solutions and preventive measures to promote economic sustainability by ensuring students’ psychological well-being. (shrink)

In this ambitious study of the development of Charles Peirce 's realism, Mateusz Oleksy attempts "to show that over the course of his entire career Peirce significantly modified his position on realism ". Oleksy differentiates between Peirce 's earlier scholastic realism and Peirce 's mature realism, which Oleksy calls pragmatic realism. "One of the main theses of this book," he proclaims in the introduction, "is that PR is incompatible with SR as a whole, and that it replaces the latter in (...) Peirce 's mature thought". Oleksy proposes to defend this thesis in the four ensuing chapters, "knowing very well that Peirce would most likely protest, since all throughout his career he declared loyalty to SR". (shrink)

Although attentional bias is considered a key characteristic of anxiety problems, the psychometric properties of most AB measures are either problematic or unknown. We conducted two experiment...

We modify the payment rule of the standard divide the dollar (DD) game by introducing a second stage and thereby resolve the multiplicity problem and implement equal division of the dollar in equilibrium. In the standard DD game, if the sum of players’ demands is less than or equal to a dollar, each player receives what he demanded; if the sum of demands is greater than a dollar, all players receive zero. We modify this second part, which involves a harsh (...) punishment. In the modified game $(D\!D^{\prime })$ , if the demands are incompatible, then players have one more chance. In particular, they play an ultimatum game to avoid the excess. In the two-player version of this game, there is a unique subgame perfect Nash equilibrium in which players demand (and receive) an equal share of the dollar. We also provide an $n$ -player extension of our mechanism. Finally, the mechanism we propose eliminates not only all pure strategy equilibria involving unequal divisions of the dollar, but also all equilibria where players mix over different demands in the first stage. (shrink)

In this paper I ponder the moral status of conditional threats, in particular the extent to which a threatened party would be permitted to use (lethal) defensive force. I first investigate a mugger case before turning briefly to the more complicated issue of national defence in the face of an invading army. One should not exaggerate the level of protection people under threat owe their conditioned killers simply because what is extorted is of little value. After all, either the (...) conditional threat is willing to kill for something she has no claim on at all, or, if she has a just claim on it - or good reason to believe that she has - she is willing to kill to (re)acquire something of not much worth. In both cases the moral culpability of the conditional threat could be seen as reducing her claim on protection from harm. (shrink)

Radioactivity accompanied by ionizing radiation has always existed on the Earth, as well as in space, and so in every living tissue there are traces of radioactivity. With the discovery of the said radiation and identifying its effects on the human body, the fear of this phenomenon appeared. At high doses radiation causes serious tissue damages, while at small doses it can cause cancer and induce genetic defects. The best antidote for fear is knowledge. It is important to know the (...) margins safety of radiation for human life. As a result, the topic of radioactive contamination of the environment has now become one of the most significant. In recent years the radon problem is a subject of a wide debate of geologists, geophysicists, ecologists, physicians, specialists in radiometry, and, of course, philosophers and sociologists, since the need for assessing the potential radon danger concerns human lives, human functions in society, and human future. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted the production of a vast amount of COVID-19-themed brand commercials, in an attempt to exploit the salience of the topic to reach more effectively the consumers. However, the literature has produced conflicting findings of the effectiveness of negative emotional contents in advertisings. The present study aims at exploring the effect of COVID-19-related contents on the hemodynamic brain correlates of the consumer approach or avoidance motivation. Twenty Italian participants were randomly assigned to two different groups that (...) watched COVID-19-related or non-COVID-19-related commercials. The hemodynamic response [oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin modulations] within the left and right prefrontal cortices was monitored with Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy while brand commercials were presented, as the prefrontal lateralization was shown to be indicative of the attitude toward the brand and of the approach-avoidance motivation. First, the findings showed that the COVID-19-related contents were able to prompt emotional processing within the PFC to a higher extent compared to contents non-related to COVID-19. Moreover, the single-channel analysis revealed increased O2Hb activity of the left dorsolateral PFC compared to the left pars triangularis Broca’s area in the group of participants that watched the COVID-19-related commercials, suggesting that the commercials may have driven participants to dedicate more attention toward the processing of the emotional components compared to the semantic meaning conveyed by the ad. To conclude, despite expressing unpleasant emotions, commercials referring to the highly emotional pandemic experience may benefit the advertising efficacy, increasing the capability to reach customers. (shrink)

O objetivo do artigo é colocar em evidência algumas disputas em torno da identidade da educação infantil, explorando como tema central os processos de construção e implementação da Base Nacional Comum Curricular para a primeira etapa da educação básica. Para contextualizar nossa argumentação, colocamos a Base em diálogo com outras mudanças no campo das políticas educacionais, que incidem sobre a organização curricular, tais como o Documento Referência para o Sistema de Avaliação da Educação Básica, a Política Nacional de Alfabetização e (...) a Base Nacional Comum para Formação de Professores da Educação Básica, orientações ou normativas que visam produzir definições curriculares, com desdobramentos para a educação das crianças da creche e/ou da pré-escola. A metodologia contemplou revisão bibliográfica e análise documental, incluindo os documentos orientadores para as políticas elaborados pelo Ministério da Educação e o ordenamento legal recente do país. A revisão da literatura aponta no sentido de que grupos de interesse mercantil transnacionais ganham cada vez mais espaço na formulação de políticas educacionais no Brasil, juntamente com outros coletivos ligados a matrizes neoconservadoras e anticientíficas. As repercussões para a organização da oferta de educação infantil são analisadas a partir de estudos que tematizam as especificidades curriculares da educação de crianças de até seis anos, questionando o uso de modelos padronizados de educação, propostas uniformizadas para a formação de docentes e a realização de avaliações em larga escala. Dada à exigência legal de implementação da Base, argumentamos sobre a importância dos movimentos de leitura desse documento a serem realizados nos espaços voltados à formação continuada em serviço no nível local. Essa seria uma condição para efetivar a construção e vivência de currículos mais contextualizados, pensados a partir do documento nacional, mas avançando para além desse, no sentido de garantir um protagonismo das equipes profissionais e colocar crianças concretas no centro do processo de planejamento, promovendo práticas cotidianas em maior consonância com os direitos de aprendizagem e de desenvolvimento, em diálogo com as Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais para a Educação Infantil. Palavras-chave : Educação Infantil. Base. Política Curricular. Formação Continuada. (shrink)

I introduce game-theoretic models for threats to the discussion of threats in speech act theory. I first distinguish three categories of verbal threats: conditional threats, categorical threats, and covert threats. I establish that all categories of threats can be characterized in terms of an underlying conditional structure. I argue that the aim—or illocutionary point—of a threat is to change the conditions under which an agent makes decisions in a game. Threats are moves in a game that instantiate a subgame (...) in which the addressee is ‘under threat’. (shrink)

The existence of predatory animals is a problem in animal ethics that is often not taken as seriously as it should be. We show that it reveals a weakness in Tom Regan's theory of animal rights that also becomes apparent in his treatment of innocent human threats. We show that there are cases in which Regan's justice-prevails-approach to morality implies a duty not to assist the jeopardized, contrary to his own moral beliefs. While a modified account of animal rights that (...) recognizes the moral patient as a kind of entity that can violate moral rights avoids this counterintuitive conclusion, it makes non-human predation a rights issue that morally ought to be subjected to human regulation. Jennifer Everett, Lori Gruen and other animal advocates base their treatment of predation in part on Regan's theory and run into similar problems, demonstrating the need to radically rethink the foundations of the animal rights movement. We suggest to those who, like us, find it less plausible to introduce morality to the wild than to reject the concept of rights that makes this move necessary to read our criticism either as a modus tollens argument and reject non-human animal rights altogether or as motivating a libertarian-ish theory of animal rights. (shrink)

We are discovering more and more about the human genotypes and about the connections between genotype and behaviour. Do these advances in genetic information threaten our free will? This paper offers a philosopher’s perspective on the question.

"In a complex world where competing groups claim to be speaking on behalf of incommensurate versions of 'humanity, ' the authors represented in "In the Name of ...

A striking feature of Confucius' grief at the death of his beloved disciple Yan Hui is its profound intensity, an intensity detectable nowhere else in the <span>Analects</span>. Like his disciples, the reader of the <span>Analects</span> may be puzzled by the depth of Confucius' grief in this instance. In distinct accounts, Philip Ivanhoe and Amy Olberding bring some measure of intelligibility to the Master's grief. While partially plausible, I think their offerings on the matter fall short of being fully satisfying. Specifically, (...) I argue that Olberding's proposal that Confucius loses certain developmental avenues after Hui's death should be augmented with the claim that the great depth of his grief largely follows from the importance of Confucius' <span>expression of virtue</span> in the lives of his disciples. It was Yan Hui who best facilitated his Master's expression of virtue, and with Hui's passing, Confucius loses an avenue to a robust expression of virtue, a loss he laments deeply. (shrink)