Intensified job demands originate in the general accelerated pace of society and ever-changing working conditions, which subject workers to increasing workloads and deadlines, constant planning and decision-making about one’s job and career, and the continual learning of new professional knowledge and skills. This study investigated how individual characteristics, namely negative and positive affectivity related to competence demands, and multitasking preference moderate the association between IJDs and cognitive stress symptoms among media workers. The results show that although IJDs were associated with (...) higher cognitive stress symptoms at work, that is, difficulties in concentration, thinking clearly, decision-making, and memory, competence demands-related negative affectivity explained the most variance in cognitive stress symptoms. In addition, IJDs were more strongly associated with cognitive stress symptoms at work in individuals with high competence demand-related negative affectivity, and low multitasking preference. Altogether, the present findings suggest that HR practices or workplace interventions to ease employees’ negative affectivity from increasing competence demands at work could usefully support employees’ effective cognitive functioning when confronted with IJDs. (shrink)

The authors present climate change and antibiotic resistance as emergent biosocial phenomena—ongoing products of massively multiple interactions among human lifestyles and broader life processes. They argue that response to climate change and antibiotic resistance is often framed by two varieties of biosocial imagination. Anthropocentric imaginations privilege the question of human distinctiveness. Anthropomorphic imaginations privilege the question of whether biosocial processes can be modeled in terms of centers of moral and causal responsibility. Together, these frame the matter of response in terms (...) of deliberate human action. The authors argue that, considered as emergent biosocial phenomena, climate change and antibiotic resistance “diffract” deliberate human action and thus limit the value of this frame by rendering the human/nonhuman and intended/nonintended distinctions that are crucial to its practical operation locally irrelevant. Alternative biosocial imaginations currently developing around climate change and antibiotic resistance that allow for “diffraction” and therefore frame response differently are considered. (shrink)

Most Western democracies established women's policy agencies to improve the status of women by the 1990s. However, the political context has changed drastically: developments such as welfare state reform, multilevel governance, regionalization and decentralization have impinged on opportunities for agencies and women's movements to mobilize. One of the book's key questions is how have women's policy agencies been able to develop, maintain or enhance their roles in the transformed political context and how have women's movements adapted to change in twelve (...) states. (shrink)

BackgroundEgg freezing has emerged as a technology of assisted reproductive medicine that allows women to plan for the anticipated loss of fertility and hence to preserve the option to conceive with their own eggs. The technology is surrounded by value-conflicts and is subject to ongoing discussions. This study aims at contributing to the empirical-ethical debate by exploring women’s viewpoints on egg freezing in Austria, where egg freezing for social reasons is currently not allowed.MethodsQ-methodology was used to identify prevailing viewpoints on (...) egg freezing. 46 female participants ranked a set of 40 statements onto a 9-column forced choice ranking grid according to the level of agreement. Participants were asked to explain their ranking in a follow-up survey. By-person factor analysis was used to identify distinct viewpoints which were interpreted using both the quantitative and the qualitative data.ResultsThree distinct viewpoints were identified:(1) “women should decide for themselves”,(2) “we should accept nature but change policy”, and (3) “we need an informed societal debate”. These viewpoints provide insights into how biomedical innovations such as egg freezing are perceived by women in Austria and illustrate the normative tensions regarding such innovations.ConclusionsAcknowledging the different prioritizations of values regarding assisted reproductive technologies is important to better understand the underlying normative tensions in a country where egg freezing for social reasons is currently not allowed. The study adds new empirical insights to the ongoing debate by outlining and discussing viewpoints of those directly affected: women. Following up on the lay persons perspective is particularly important in the context of future biomedical innovations that may challenge established norms and create new tensions. It therefore also adds to the societal debate and supports evidence-informed policy making in that regard. (shrink)

Stakeholder literature tends to presume that effective stakeholder dialogue, occurring directly or indirectly, among a focal firm, local communities, governments, and nongovernmental organizations is desirable for successful firm–stakeholder relationships. Even if theoretically desirable, effective dialogue does not always occur. There are two key theory-informing lessons in Botnia’s Fray Bentos successful green field pulp mill investment and start-up in Western Uruguay. First, critics could not halt the project politically supported by Uruguay in an expanding multi-party international dispute. Second, the Botnia corporate (...) communications process did not succeed in building consensus relationships, and attention was not paid to discourse creating shared meanings among all stakeholders. Participatory relationships were few, and successful dialogue was at best limited to supporters. This article uses discursive analysis to examine how newspaper and press release texts and language used therein both shaped and reflected the dynamically changing nature of firm–stakeholder relations in the Fray Bentos dispute. Despite the focal firm’s professed good intentions to create participatory relationships with its stakeholders during the building project, various stakeholders opposed the project and Botnia was caught in the crossfire of heated debate between Uruguay and Argentina. Three different frames changing over time are identified: the investment frame, the conflict frame, and the political frame. The analysis shows that the relationships between the focal firm and stakeholders involved many meanings only partly shared, due in part to a lack of corporate appreciation for the role of language in managing firm–stakeholder relationships. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the changes in Finnish managers' corporate responsibility perceptions from 1994 to 2004. Following earlier research, the concept of corporate responsibility is operationalised using the stakeholder approach. Empirically, we ask how managers' views on stakeholder issues have changed during the 10-year research period, and how managers' stakeholder orientation compares with their economic orientation. The data were collected using a survey research instrument in the years 1994, 1999 and 2004. The research results show a (...) positive change in managers' corporate responsibility perceptions during this time period. In addition, managers' stakeholder orientation seems to be in balance with their economic orientation. However, the economic context – in terms of both their own company's economic position and the general economic situation – has an effect on managers' stakeholder orientation. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the changes in Finnish managers' corporate responsibility perceptions from 1994 to 2004. Following earlier research, the concept of corporate responsibility is operationalised using the stakeholder approach. Empirically, we ask how managers' views on stakeholder issues have changed during the 10‐year research period, and how managers' stakeholder orientation compares with their economic orientation. The data were collected using a survey research instrument in the years 1994, 1999 and 2004. The research results show a (...) positive change in managers' corporate responsibility perceptions during this time period. In addition, managers' stakeholder orientation seems to be in balance with their economic orientation. However, the economic context – in terms of both their own company's economic position and the general economic situation – has an effect on managers' stakeholder orientation. (shrink)

This paper analyses managers'' moral decision-making, and studies the role of ethical theories in it by following the research tradition using the multidimensional ethics scale. The research question is: what kinds of ethical dimensions do Finnish business managers reveal when they are making moral decisions, and how have these dimensions changed in the 1990s? This question is answered by examining what kinds of factors emerge when the multidimensional ethics scale is used to analyse Finnish managers'' attitudes toward moral dilemmas. The (...) results show that Finnish managers'' decision-making reflects a variety of ethical theories. Teleological thinking is strongly emphasised by Finnish managers, and relativist thinking is used as well, but often combined with either deontology or justice thinking. In addition, a strong moralistic dimension emerged in Finnish managers'' decision-making. The analysis was carried out in two different surveys in years 1994 and 1999, and the results show that the ways of decision-making were more complex at the end of the 1990s than almost six years earlier. (shrink)

Taking multidimensional ethics scale approach, this article describes an empirical survey of top managers’ moral decision-making patterns and their change from 1994 to 2004 during morally problematic situations in the Finnish context. The survey questionnaire consisted of four moral dilemmas and a multidimensional scale with six ethical dimensions: justice, deontology, relativism, utilitarianism, egoism and female ethics. The managers evaluated their decision-making in the problems using the multidimensional ethics scale. Altogether 880 questionnaires were analysed statistically. It is concluded that relying on (...) the utilitarian principles is a core ethical evaluation criterion amongst top business managers in Finland. This study proves that managers’ moral decision-making patterns change over time. According to the results of this research, managers’ moral decision-making became more multidimensional during the study period. The change is explained by the inclusion of female ethics items in the scale which allows managers to show more diversity in their decision- making, the change in the Finnish economic context from depression to economic prosperity and growth during the study period, which is conducive to the spread of post materialist values, such as the importance of social relations and the increasing public discussion of the importance ethical issues in business. (shrink)

As of September 2005, the co-founders of Waste Concern, an organisation dedicated to improving waste recycling in Bangladesh, are considering making a change to their model in order to get approval from the municipal government for a large-scale composting site. Since its inception in 1995, Waste Concern has followed a decentralised composting model whereby each composting site is a small-scale operation processing 3 tons of organic waste per day. In this model, they have relied on land and waste supply from (...) the Dhaka City Council (DCC) municipal government. Now, they are working with Dutch-based World Wide Recycling BV (WWR) to set up a 700-ton per day composting plant, which will enable them to earn tradable certificates for US$11 per ton of reduced methane gas, making it the first in the world to garner credits through composting waste under the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). To launch the composting site, they face the hurdle of getting DCC’s approval. They have three alternatives: (1) follow through with the original plan whereby the municipality would supply both the land and waste, which entails waiting for DCC’s approval; (2) purchase the land for the composting site and rely on the municipality for a waste supply; or, (3) purchase the land and take on the responsibility of waste collection themselves. In their considerations, they need to weigh the financial and social aspects and determine an appropriate structure for their organisation. (shrink)

As of September 2005, the co-founders of Waste Concern, an organisation dedicated to improving waste recycling in Bangladesh, are considering making a change to their model in order to get approval from the municipal government for a large-scale composting site. Since its inception in 1995, Waste Concern has followed a decentralised composting model whereby each composting site is a small-scale operation processing 3 tons of organic waste per day. In this model, they have relied on land and waste supply from (...) the Dhaka City Council (DCC) municipal government. Now, they are working with Dutch-based World Wide Recycling BV (WWR) to set up a 700-ton per day composting plant, which will enable them to earn tradable certificates for US$11 per ton of reduced methane gas, making it the first in the world to garner credits through composting waste under the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). To launch the composting site, they face the hurdle of getting DCC’s approval. They have three alternatives: (1) follow through with the original plan whereby the municipality would supply both the land and waste, which entails waiting for DCC’s approval; (2) purchase the land for the composting site and rely on the municipality for a waste supply; or, (3) purchase the land and take on the responsibility of waste collection themselves. In their considerations, they need to weigh the financial and social aspects and determine an appropriate structure for their organisation. (shrink)

The article analyzes the experience of climate anxiety. The investigation is phenomenological in the sense that I will attempt to show that contemporary climate anxiety has a distinctive structure and philosophical meaning, which make it different from both psychological anxiety and existential anxiety, as commonly understood. I will also draw out the consequences of my phenomenological analysis for climate politics. My contention is that forms of prefigurative climate politics can respond to the profound disorientation and apathy regarding our future and (...) help us face down the hyperbolic nihilism shadowing us. (shrink)

In this article, we use content and cluster analysis on a global sample of 200 social entrepreneurial organizations to develop a typology of social entrepreneuring models. This typology is based on four possible forms of capital that can be leveraged: social, economic, human, and political. Furthermore, our findings reveal that these four social entrepreneuring models are associated with distinct logics of justification that may explain different ways of organizing across organizations. This study contributes to understanding social entrepreneurship as a field (...) of practice and it describes avenues for theorizing about the different organizational approaches adopted by social entrepreneurs. (shrink)

In early 19th‐century German medicine many doctors had a strong interest in historical pathology. They investigated the historical records of fevers and epidemics in detail, trying to find out how the changing influence of the epidemic constitution worked and hoping that history would help them to define specific disease entities. The underlying theory of this endeavour was that diseases undergo a historical development similar to the evolution of plants and animals. This paper tries to show that historical pathology was, in (...) its time, a legitimate attempt to solve the most urgent problems of empirical medicine. (shrink)

The article investigates the consequences for feminist politics of the neoliberal turn. Feminist scholars have analysed the political changes in the situation of women that have been brought about by neoliberalism, but their assessments of neoliberalism’s consequences for feminist theory and politics vary. Feminist thinkers such as Hester Eisenstein and Sylvia Walby have argued that feminism must now return its focus to socialist politics and foreground economic questions of redistribution in order to combat the hegemony of neoliberalism. Some have further (...) identified post-structuralism and its dominance in feminist scholarship as being responsible for the debilitating move away from socialist or Marxist paradigms. I share their diagnosis to the extent that it is my contention that the rapid neoliberalization characterising the last thirty years has put women and feminist thought in a completely new political situation. However, in contrast to those feminist thinkers who put the blame for the current impasse on the rise of poststructuralist modes of thought, it is my contention that the poststructuralist turn in feminist theory in the 1980s and 1990s continues to represent an important theoretical advance. I will discuss Foucault’s genealogy of neoliberalism in order to assess the ways it can contribute to feminist theory and politics today. I contend that Foucault can provide a critical diagnostic framework for feminist theory as well as for prompting new feminist political responses to the spread and dominance of neoliberalism. I will also return to Nancy Fraser and Judith’s Butler’s seminal debate on feminist politics in the journal Social Text (1997) in order to demonstrate that a critical analysis of the economic/cultural distinction must be central when we consider feminist forms of resistance to neoliberalism. (shrink)

This volume explores various aspects of risk taking. It offers an analysis of financial, entrepreneurial and social risks, as well as a discussion of the ethical implications of empirical findings. The main issues examined in the book are the financial crisis and its implications for business ethics. The book discusses unethical behaviour as a reputational risk (e.g., in the case of Goldman Sachs) and the question is raised as to what extent the financial crisis has changed the banks’ entrepreneurial strategy. (...) The book presents an analysis of the reasons leading to the crisis and identifies them as ethical dilemma structures. In addition, it looks at general questions regarding ethical behaviour and risk taking, such as: To what extent does the social embeddedness or abstraction play a role in guaranteeing ethical behaviour? What conclusions can be drawn from institutional or evolutionary perspectives on risk management? Finally, the book discusses further issues that become factors of risk within and between societies, such as work insecurity, corruption or the problem of facilitation payments as a risk in international transactions. (shrink)

The robotics industry is growing rapidly, and to a large extent the development of this market sector is due to the area of social robotics – the production of robots that are designed to enter the space of human social interaction, both physically and semantically. Since social robots present a new type of social agent, they have been aptly classified as a disruptive technology, i.e. the sort of technology which affects the core of our current social practices and might lead (...) to profound cultural and social change. -/- Due to its disruptive and innovative potential, social robotics raises not only questions about utility, ethics, and legal aspects, but calls for “robo-philosophy” – the comprehensive philosophical reflection from the perspectives of all philosophical disciplines. This book presents the proceedings of the first conference in this new area, “Robo-Philosophy 2014 – Sociable Robots and the Future of Social Relations", held in Aarhus, Denmark, in August 2014. The short papers and abstracts collected here address questions of social robotics from the perspectives of philosophy of mind, social ontology, ethics, meta-ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, intercultural philosophy, and metaphilosophy. -/- Social robotics is still in its early stages, but it is precisely now that we need to reflect its possible cultural repercussions. This book is accessible to a wide readership and will be of interest to everyone involved in the development and use of social robotics applications, from social roboticists to policy makers. (shrink)

This article takes as its point of departure Luce Irigaray'sElemental Passions, in which a woman‐speaker tries to make her lover and the discipline of philosophy understand that she is not how they have imagined her to be; that she is not at all but that she keeps becoming through perpetual movement. The article investigates Irigaray's investment in a form of materialist difference feminism that offers conceptual links to the posthumanist work of Karen Barad's agential realism, especially her theorization of intra‐action. (...) The link between Irigaray and Barad is established via a diffractive reading that incorporates the dance/movement research practice of Contact Improvisation. Although expressed through written language,Elemental Passionscreates the impression of the woman‐speaker dancing, of encountering herself, her environment, and her lover through moved and moving contact, searching for a practice of moving‐together, feeling‐with, and feeling‐between that can be experienced in an improvised dance duet. Exploring how touch and the sharing of weight in Contact Improvisation challenges boundaries and establishes ever‐changing configurations and entanglements between dancers, the article proposes that Irigaray's woman‐speaker envisions herself as a posthuman/ist woman and that improvised dancing offers a practice of intra‐action through which she can encounter the world in her becoming. (shrink)

Most Western democracies established women's policy agencies to improve the status of women by the 1990s. However, the political context has changed drastically: developments such as welfare state reform, multilevel governance, regionalization and decentralization have impinged on opportunities for agencies and women's movements to mobilize. One of the book's key questions is how have women's policy agencies been able to develop, maintain or enhance their roles in the transformed political context and how have women's movements adapted to change in twelve (...) states. (shrink)

The paper discusses the disciplinary production of the normative feminine body and analyses the shift that has taken place in the rationality underpinning our current techniques of gender. I argue that Foucault’s radical intervention in feminist philosophy, and more generally in the philosophy of the body, has been the crucial claim that any analysis of embodiment must recognize how power relations are constitutive of the embodied subjects involved in them. His studies of disciplinary technologies show how bodies are constructed through (...) mundane, everyday habits and techniques as certain kinds of subjects. Similarly, feminist appropriations of Foucault’s thought have demonstrated how feminine subjects are constructed through patriarchal, disciplinary practices of beauty. My argument is that that there have been significant changes in the last decades in the rationality underpinning these techniques of gender, however, which have emerged in tandem with the rise of the neoliberal, economic subject. I will appropriate Foucault’s idea of governmentality, and particularly of neoliberal governmentality, as an alternative framework to discipline for studying the contemporary construction of the feminine body. I will show that it provides us with a more comprehensive conceptual framework for understanding the construction of the feminine body in its current form. (shrink)

The recent debate about justice and responsibility increasingly tries to accommodate a new type of agentive situation in which local short-term actions have global long-term consequences due to the action’s embedding in complex interactional networks. Currently the debate is shifting focus from the spatial to the temporal dimension of such wide-scope results of individual actions. This shift from “global ethics” to “intergenerational ethics” and, in particular, “climate ethics” requires some new analytical concepts, however. A definition of wide-scope responsibility aimed at (...) articulating our moral concerns about emergent effects in complex systems, such as climate change, is needed. Working from Iris Marion Young’s “social connection model of responsibility,” a notion of shared ecological responsibility with global and intergenerational scope can be developed. This account is not affected by the so-called non-identity objection to intergenerational ethics. From an action-theoretic rather than normative perspective, the account is “ethically parametrized” in the sense that it can be combined with different conceptions of structural and intergenerational justice. The account can be used to support a concrete climate policy proposal: the “Greenhouse Development Rights Framework.”. (shrink)

The authors would like to correct a misspelling in the name of one of the authors due to a typographical error. The name should read Atur Turakhia, not Artur Turakhia. This does not change the conclusions or interpretations presented.

Although music is known to be a part of everyday life and a resource for mood and emotion management, everyday life has changed significantly for many due to the global coronavirus pandemic, making the role of music in everyday life less certain. An online survey in which participants responded to Likert scale questions as well as providing free text responses was used to explore how participants were engaging with music during the first wave of the pandemic, whether and how they (...) were using music for mood regulation, and how their engagement with music related to their experiences of worry and anxiety resulting from the pandemic. Results indicated that, for the majority of participants, while many felt their use of music had changed since the beginning of the pandemic, the amount of their music listening behaviors were either unaffected by the pandemic or increased. This was especially true of listening to self-selected music and watching live streamed concerts. Analysis revealed correlations between participants’ use of mood for music regulation, their musical engagement, and their levels of anxiety and worry. A small number of participants described having negative emotional responses to music, the majority of whom also reported severe levels of anxiety. (shrink)

Taking multidimensional ethics scale approach, this article describes an empirical survey of top managers' moral decision-making patterns and their change from 1994 to 2004 during morally problematic situations in the Finnish context. The survey questionnaire consisted of four moral dilemmas and a multidimensional scale with six ethical dimensions: justice, deontology, relativism, utilitarianism, egoism and female ethics. The managers evaluated their decision-making in the problems using the multidimensional ethics scale. Altogether 880 questionnaires were analysed statistically. It is concluded that relying on (...) the utilitarian principles is a core ethical evaluation criterion amongst top business managers in Finland. This study proves that managers' moral decision-making patterns change over time. According to the results of this research, managers' moral decision-making became more multidimensional during the study period. The change is explained by (1) the inclusion of female ethics items in the scale which allows managers to show more diversity in their decisionmaking, (2) the change in the Finnish economic context from depression to economic prosperity and growth during the study period, which is conducive to the spread of post materialist values, such as the importance of social relations and (3) the increasing public discussion of the importance ethical issues in business. (shrink)

Due to the innovative possibilities of digital technologies, the issue of increasing automation is once again on the agenda – and not only in the industry, but also in other branches and sectors of contemporary societies. Although public and scientific discussions about automation seem to raise relevant questions of the “old” debate, such as the replacement of human labor by introducing new technologies, the authors focus here on the new contextual quality of these questions. The debate should rethink the relationship (...) between technology and work with regard to quantitative and qualitative changes in work. In this article, our example will be the introduction of automation in industry, which has been reflected in the widely recognized study by Frey and Osborne in 2013. They estimated the expected impacts of future computerization on US labor market outcomes as very high, specifically regarding the number of jobs at risk. Surprisingly, this study was the starting point of an intensive international debate on the impact of technologies on the future of work and the role of technological change in working environments. Thus, according to the authors, “old” questions remain important, but they should be reinterpreted for “new” societal demands and expectations of future models of work. (shrink)

This volume offers eleven philosophical investigations into our future relations with social robots--robots that are specially designed to engage and connect with human beings. The contributors present cutting edge research that examines whether, and on which terms, robots can become members of human societies. Can our relations to robots be said to be "social"? Can robots enter into normative relationships with human beings? How will human social relations change when we interact with robots at work and at home? The authors (...) of this volume explore these questions from the perspective of philosophy, cognitive science, psychology, and robotics. The first three chapters offer a taxonomy for the classification of simulated social interactions, investigate whether human social interactions with robots can be genuine, and discuss the significance of social relations for the formation of human individuality. Subsequent chapters clarify whether robots could be said to actually follow social norms, whether they could live up to the social meaning of care in caregiving professions, and how we will need to program robots so that they can negotiate the conventions of human social space and collaborate with humans. Can we perform joint actions with robots, where both sides need to honour commitments, and how will such new commitments and practices change our regional cultures? The authors connect research in social robotics and empirical studies in Human-Robot Interaction to recent debates in social ontology, social cognition, as well as ethics and philosophy of technology. -/- The book is a response to the challenge that social robotics presents for our traditional conceptions of social interaction, which presuppose such essential capacities as consciousness, intentionality, agency, and normative understanding. The authors develop insightful answers along new interdisciplinary pathways in "robophilosophy," a new research area that will help us to shape the "robot revolution," the distinctive technological change of the beginning 21st century. (shrink)

Electronic gambling machines are among the most harmful forms of gambling. The structural characteristics of EGMs prolong and reinforce gambling similarly to other habit-forming technologies. In Finland, the wide availability of EGMs in non-casino locations is likely to further reinforce the habit-creating nature of gambling offer by incorporating EGMs into everyday practices. The COVID-19 pandemic changed the landscape of gambling in Finland. The most visible change was the closure of land-based EGMs in non-casino environments, arcades, and the casino in March (...) 2020. Since then, the status of EGMs has varied depending on the pandemic situation. The current qualitative study focuses on how Finnish past-year gamblers experience prolonged EGM closures and occasional re-openings 1 year into the pandemic. The data consist of responses to an online questionnaire eliciting experiences as well as interviews. To aid our analysis, we employ the sociological pragmatist theory of the concept of “habit.” The analysis focuses on gambler experiences on EGM shutdowns and re-openings, and views on whether closures have contributed to abstaining from gambling or to shifting to other gambling products. Policy implications of the results are discussed. (shrink)

This article argues that changes in the organization of social reproduction, defined to include the activities, attitudes, behaviors, emotions, responsibilities, and relationships involved in maintaining daily life, can explain historical differences in women's political self-organization. Examining the Progressive period, the 1930s, and the 1960s and 1970s, the authors suggest that the conditions of social reproduction provide the organizational resources for and legitimation of women's collective action.

Attitudes toward robots influence the tendency to accept or reject robotic devices. Thus it is important to investigate whether and how attitudes toward robots can change. In this pilot study we investigate attitudinal changes in elderly citizens toward a tele-operated robot in relation to three parameters: (i) the information provided about robot functionality, (ii) the number of encounters, (iii) personality type. Fourteen elderly residents at a rehabilitation center participated. Pre-encounter attitudes toward robots, anthropomorphic thinking, and personality were assessed. Thereafter the (...) participants interacted with a tele-operated robot (Telenoid) during their lunch (c. 30 min.) for up to 3 days. Half of the participants were informed that the robot was tele-operated (IC) whilst the other half were naïve to its functioning (UC). Post-encounter assessments of attitudes toward robots and anthropomorphic thinking were undertaken to assess change. Attitudes toward robots were assessed with a new generic 35-items questionnaire (attitudes toward social robots scale: ASOR-5), offering a differentiated conceptualization of the conditions for social interaction. There was no significant difference between the IC and UC groups in attitude change toward robots though trends were observed. Personality was correlated with some tendencies for attitude changes; Extraversion correlated with positive attitude changes to intimate-personal relatedness with the robot (r = 0.619) and to psychological relatedness (r = 0.581) whilst Neuroticism correlated negatively (r = -0.582) with mental relatedness with the robot. The results tentatively suggest that neither information about functionality nor direct repeated encounters are pivotal in changing attitudes toward robots in elderly citizens. This may reflect a cognitive congruence bias where the robot is experienced in congruence with initial attitudes, or it may support action-based explanations of cognitive dissonance reductions, given that robots, unlike computers, are not yet perceived as action targets. Specific personality traits may be indicators of attitude change relating to specific domains of social interaction. Implications and future directions are discussed. (shrink)

Science is at present passing through a credibility crisis*. One could almost say a moral crisis. As a matter of fact we are standing at a turning point in the relationship between science and society, a turning point marked by the change from a social evolution characterized by high productivity and growth, into an evolution which might lead humanity to a new balance between individuality and collectivity.At the beginning of the 20th century and during its second half the scientific world (...) had suffered the impact of two significant revolutions: first of physics and then of biology. The basic discoveries in the field of physics led to applications in realms of energy, transportation, communication, electricity, electronics, and data processing. (shrink)

The COVID-19-pandemic brought massive changes in the provision of psychotherapy. To contain the pandemic, many therapists switched from face-to-face sessions in personal contact to remote settings. This study focused on psychodynamic therapists practicing Guided Affective Imagery, Hypnosis and Autogenous Relaxation and their subjective experiences with psychotherapy via telephone and videoconferencing during the first COVID-19 related lockdown period in March 2020 in Austria. An online survey completed by 161 therapists produced both quantitative and qualitative data with the latter being subject to (...) a qualitative content analysis. Our research suggests that telephone and videoconferencing are considered valuable treatment formats to deliver psychodynamic psychotherapy. However, therapists’ experiences with remote psychotherapy are multifaceted and ambiguous. In particular, the findings raise questions concerning the maintenance of the therapeutic alliance, the development of the analytic process, the sensitivity to unconscious communication, and the indication for certain types of patients that still need further investigation. Our research indicates that the long-standing reticence toward remote treatments offers among psychodynamic therapists is becoming more differentiated and partially dissolves as therapists gain experiences in their use. Attitudes are becoming more open. At the same time, the way is being prepared to take a closer look at the specific processes and dynamics of remote psychotherapy and to examine them critically in future studies. (shrink)

Technological innovations such as next generation sequencing and DNA hybridisation enrichment have resulted in multi‐fold increases in both the quantity of ancient DNA sequence data and the time depth for DNA retrieval. To date, over 30 ancient genomes have been sequenced, moving from 0.7× coverage (mammoth) in 2008 to more than 50× coverage (Neanderthal) in 2014. Studies of rapid evolutionary changes, such as the evolution and spread of pathogens and the genetic responses of hosts, or the genetics of domestication and (...) climatic adaptation, are developing swiftly and the importance of palaeogenomics for investigating evolutionary processes during the last million years is likely to increase considerably. However, these new datasets require new methods of data processing and analysis, as well as conceptual changes in interpreting the results. In this review we highlight important areas of future technical and conceptual progress and discuss research topics in the rapidly growing field of palaeogenomics. -/- . (shrink)

Abstract Internet communication technology has been said to affect our sense of self by altering the way we construct “personal identity,” understood as identificatory valuative narratives about the self; in addition, some authors have warned that internet communication creates special conditions for moral agency that might gradually change our moral intuitions. Both of these effects are attributed to the fact that internet communication is “disembodied.” Our aim in this paper is to establish a link between this complex of claims and (...) past and ongoing research in phenomenology, empirical psychology and cognitive science, in order to formulate an empirical hypothesis that can assist development and evaluation of recent technology for embodied telecommunication. We first suggest that for the purposes of interdisciplinary exchange, personal identity is formally best represented by a selection function that (for temporal intervals of variable length) “bundles” capacity ascriptions into identificatory narratives. Based on this model, we discuss which cultural changes engendered by the internet affect the construction of personal identity in ways that diminish our ethical sensitivies. In a second step, working from phenomenological claims by Martin Buber, we argue that disembodied communication severs two modes of cognitive function, preconceptual and conceptual, which tie together moral motivation, self-experience, and identity construction. We translate Buber’s claims into the theoretical idiom of the “theory of cognitive orientation,” a psychological theory of motivation that links up with recent research in embodied cognition. In a third step, we investigate whether the embodiment of the internet with communication robots (e.g., telenoids) holds out the prospect of reverting this structural change at least partially. We conclude by formulating an empirical hypothesis (for researchers in cognitive science) that has direct import, we submit, on the question whether embodied telecommunication promises a new form of ethically sensitive self-constituting encounter. Content Type Journal Article Category Special Issue Pages 1-23 DOI 10.1007/s13347-012-0064-9 Authors Johanna Seibt, Department for Philosophy and the History of Ideas, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark Marco Nørskov, Department for Philosophy and the History of Ideas, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark Journal Philosophy & Technology Online ISSN 2210-5441 Print ISSN 2210-5433. (shrink)

In aging humans, aerobic exercise interventions have been found to be associated with more positive or less negative changes in frontal and temporal brain areas, such as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and hippocampus, relative to no-exercise control conditions. However, individual measures such as gray-matter (GM) probability may afford less reliable and valid conclusions about maintenance or losses in structural brain integrity than a latent construct based on multiple indicators. Here, we established a latent factor of GM structural integrity based (...) on GM probability assessed by voxel-based morphometry, magnetization transfer saturation, and mean diffusivity. Based on this latent factor, we investigated changes in structural brain integrity during a six-month exercise intervention in brain regions previously reported in studies using volumetric approaches. Seventy-five healthy, previously sedentary older adults aged 63–76 years completed an at-home intervention study in either an exercise group (EG;n= 40) or in an active control group (ACG;n= 35). Measures of peak oxygen uptake (VO2peak) taken before and after the intervention revealed a time-by-group interaction, with positive average change in the EG and no reliable mean change in the ACG. Significant group differences in structural brain integrity changes were observed in the right and left ACC, right posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), and left juxtapositional lobule cortex (JLC). In all instances, average changes in the EG did not differ reliably from zero, whereas average changes in the ACG were negative, pointing to maintenance of structural brain integrity in the EG, and to losses in the ACG. Significant individual differences in change were observed for right ACC and left JLC. Following up on these differences, we found that exercising participants with greater fitness gains also showed more positive changes in structural integrity. We discuss the benefits and limitations of a latent-factor approach to changes in structural brain integrity, and conclude that aerobic fitness interventions are likely to contribute to brain maintenance in old age. (shrink)

This article contributes to the body of stakeholder literature by providing an in-depth analysis of the dynamics of stakeholder relationships as a part of change in value creation. The article presents an argument that the stakeholder salience model as a tool for analyzing stakeholder relationships is not sufficient for understanding business value creation. In the recent stakeholder literature, understanding business value creation has become an important theme. Through an analysis of an empirical case, the article shows how the three stakeholder (...) relationship attributes, legitimacy, power and urgency help to reveal the definitive stakeholders and to capture dynamics of stakeholder relations. However, in the case of strategic change, where the value creation of a firm is in transition, a more profound understanding of stakeholder relationships is needed. As a result of our empirical analysis, six characteristics of stakeholder relationships were identified. To conclude, the question of who and what really counts should be replaced by the question of how value is created in stakeholder relationships. (shrink)

Art therapy encourages the use of art materials to express feelings and thoughts in a supportive environment. Art materials differ in fluidity and are postulated to thus differentially enhance emotional response (the more fluid the material the more emotion). Yet, to the best of our knowledge, this assumption has not been empirically tested. The current study aimed to examine the emotional and physiological responses to art making with different art materials. We were particularly interested in vagal activity, indexed by heart (...) rate variability (HRV), because of its association with numerous health related outcomes. In this study, fifty adults (mean age 33 ± 10.27 years, 52% males) participated in a repeated measures experiment, in which they were requested to draw with three art materials (order randomized) differing in their level of fluidity (pencil, oil-pastels and gouache paint) intermittent with periods of music. We measured the emotional response to art making with each material using a self-report measure and matrices of HRV using a wearable electrocardiogram (ECG) device. We calculated two indices of HRV, one indicative of parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) activity, and one indicative of sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity. Art making with gouache paint and oil pastels resulted in improved positive mood, while pencil did not. Art making explained approximately 35% of the variability in parasympathetic reactivity, which may indicate changes in emotional regulation processes during the art-making task. Yet, fluidity was not sufficient to explain the reaction to art-making. Surprisingly, the largest suppression of PNS and augmentation of the SNS occurred during art-making with oil-pastels and not with Gouache. Moreover, PNS and SNS reactivity to oil-pastels were related to emotional valance, which may point to emotional engagement. We can conclude that art-making with oil-pastels, first created in Japan in 1924 to increase self-expression of students, results in a unique emotional and physiological responses. These findings might be explained by the enhanced tactile experience of art-making with oil-pastels along with their relative fluidity, triggering an arousal pattern. Further studies that take the format and presentation of the materials as well as the content of the artwork, into account, are needed. (shrink)

A Scientific Integrity Consortium developed a set of recommended principles and best practices that can be used broadly across scientific disciplines as a mechanism for consensus on scientific integrity standards and to better equip scientists to operate in a rapidly changing research environment. The two principles that represent the umbrella under which scientific processes should operate are as follows: Foster a culture of integrity in the scientific process. Evidence-based policy interests may have legitimate roles to play in influencing aspects of (...) the research process, but those roles should not interfere with scientific integrity. The nine best practices for instilling scientific integrity in the implementation of these two overarching principles are Require universal training in robust scientific methods, in the use of appropriate experimental design and statistics, and in responsible research practices for scientists at all levels, with the training content regularly updated and presented by qualified scientists. Strengthen scientific integrity oversight and processes throughout the research continuum with a focus on training in ethics and conduct. Encourage reproducibility of research through transparency. Strive to establish open science as the standard operating procedure throughout the scientific enterprise. Develop and implement educational tools to teach communication skills that uphold scientific integrity. Strive to identify ways to further strengthen the peer review process. Encourage scientific journals to publish unanticipated findings that meet standards of quality and scientific integrity. Seek harmonization and implementation among journals of rapid, consistent, and transparent processes for correction and/or retraction of published papers. Design rigorous and comprehensive evaluation criteria that recognize and reward the highest standards of integrity in scientific research. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the changes in managers’ moral attitudes, stakeholder orientation and economic interests from 1994 to 2004. Dataare presented concerning 8-10 stakeholder groups and 50-58 moral issues.