Cyberbullying is a serious global problem that affects many teenagers and university students. Recent studies have explored the relationship between personality traits and cyberbullying, but the mechanism needs further research. This paper examines the impact of personality traits on cyberbullying perpetration of Chinese university students and the moderating role of Internet self-efficacy and gender. By random cluster sampling, 549 university students participated in filling out the self-report questionnaires. The results revealed: conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness were significantly negatively correlated with cyberbullying (...) perpetration. The stratified regression showed that ISE moderated the relation between agreeableness and cyberbullying. Gender moderated the relationship between agreeableness and cyberbullying, and openness and cyberbullying. (shrink)

Most discussions of racial fetish center on the question of whether it is caused by negative racial stereotypes. In this paper I adopt a different strategy, one that begins with the experiences of those targeted by racial fetish rather than those who possess it; that is, I shift focus away from the origins of racial fetishes to their effects as a social phenomenon in a racially stratified world. I examine the case of preferences for Asian women, also known as ‘yellow (...) fever’, to argue against the claim that racial fetishes are unobjectionable if they are merely based on personal or aesthetic preference rather than racial stereotypes. I contend that even if this were so, yellow fever would still be morally objectionable because of the disproportionate psychological burdens it places on Asian and Asian-American women, along with the role it plays in a pernicious system of racial social meanings. (shrink)

This research investigates whether required employee green behavior can spill over to a proactive form of green behavior termed green advocacy. Drawing on self-perception theory, we theorize and test a moderated mediation model in which required employee green behavior is positively associated with green advocacy via the mediation of pro-environmental self-identity, with the strength of such association contingent upon employee moral identity. Data collected in three waves from 297 employees at a large manufacturing firm in China provide support for the (...) research model. Results show that pro-environmental self-identity explains the positive association between required employee green behavior and green advocacy and that its mediating role is stronger when moral identity is higher (vs. lower). This study advances workplace green behavior research by identifying a novel psychological path and extending knowledge about a boundary condition. (shrink)

Through numbers of studies on the formation of equivalence relations and causal induction, it is known that human beings tend to consider conditional statements ``if p then q " as biconditional statements ``if and only if p then q ": we call the tendency to perceive ``if p then q " as ``if q then p " the ``symmetry bias". On the other hand, many studies on children's word learning have pointed out that children tend to expect each object has (...) only one label. This is so-called the ``mutual exclusivity bias". This bias implies. (shrink)

This chapter distinguishes between two concepts of moral responsibility. We are responsible for our actions in the first sense only when those actions reflect our identities as moral agents, i.e. when they are attributable to us. We are responsible in the second sense when it is appropriate for others to enforce certain expectations and demands on those actions, i.e. to hold us accountable for them. This distinction allows for an account of moral responsibility for implicit bias, defended here, on which (...) people may lack attributability for actions caused by implicit bias but are still accountable for them. What this amounts to is leaving aside appraisal-based forms of moral criticism such as blame and punishment in favor of non-appraising forms of accountability. This account not only does more justice to our moral experience and agency, but will also lead to more effective practices for combating the harms of implicit bias. (shrink)

What responsibility do individuals bear for structural injustice? Iris Marion Young has offered the most fully developed account to date, the Social Connections Model. She argues that we all bear responsibility because we each causally contribute to structural processes that produce injustice. My aim in this article is to motivate and defend an alternative account that improves on Young’s model by addressing five fundamental challenges faced by any such theory. The core idea of what I call the “Role-Ideal Model” is (...) that we are each responsible for structural injustice through and in virtue of our social roles, i.e. our roles as parents, colleagues, employers, citizens, etc., because roles are the site where structure meets agency. In short, the Role-Ideal Model explains how individual action contributes to structural change, justifies demands for action from each particular agent, specifies what kinds of acts should be undertaken, moderates between demanding too much and too little of individual agents, and provides an account of the critical responses appropriate for holding individuals accountable for structural injustice. (shrink)

Prominent memeticists like Daniel Dennett and Susan Blackmore have made claims far more radical than those included in Dawkins’ original proposal, which provoked increasingly heated debates and arguments over the theoretical significance as well as limits or flaws of the entire memetic enterprise. In this paper, I examine closely some of the critical points taken by Kate Distin in her penetrating engagement with those radical claims, which include such ideas as the thought that we are meme machines as much as (...) gene machines, the thesis that there is no conscious self inside those machines, and the claim that a complex interplay of replicators and environment is all there is to life (Blackmore 1999: 241). It is hoped that a viable thesis concerning a deep-seated normativity emerges from my discussion. (shrink)

Grasping the link between some deep yet naturalized form of normativity and the emergence of human intentionality in the natural evolutionary process is a key to re-enchantment of nature.

Many studies concerning deviant innovation behavior mainly focus on the influence of personality differences or leadership styles, and there is a lack of attention given to internal cognitive factors related to actors. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the internal mechanism of perceived support for innovation on deviant innovation behavior. A two-wave study was conducted among 393 knowledge workers from 10 knowledge-intensive enterprises in the People's Republic of China. Model 4 and Model 14 from SPSS macro PROCESS (...) are used to test the mediating effect of innovation commitment and the moderating effect of threatened self-identity, respectively. The findings suggest that perceived support for innovation can significantly predict deviant innovation behavior; innovation commitment fully mediates the relationship between perceived support for innovation and deviant innovation behavior; public threat to self-identity plays a moderating role in the relationship between innovation commitment and deviant innovation behavior; and public threat to self-identity moderates the mediating effect of innovation commitment on perceived support for innovation and deviant innovation behavior. This study enriches the research on antecedent variables of deviant innovation behavior, and highlights the important role of situational factors on the whole mechanism. (shrink)

Sally Haslanger has recently argued that philosophical focus on implicit bias is overly individualist, since social inequalities are best explained in terms of social structures rather than the actions and attitudes of individuals. I argue that questions of individual responsibility and implicit bias, properly understood, do constitute an important part of addressing structural injustice, and I propose an alternative conception of social structure according to which implicit biases are themselves best understood as a special type of structure.

Recent research has uncovered the dark side of creativity by finding that creative individuals are more likely to engage in unethical behavior. However, we argue that not all creative individuals make trouble. Using moral self-regulation theory as our overarching theoretical framework, we examine individuals’ moral identity as a boundary condition and moral disengagement as a mediating mechanism to explain when and how individual creativity is associated with workplace deviant behavior. We conducted two field studies using multi-source data to test our (...) hypotheses. In Study 1, the results indicated that creativity positively predicted moral disengagement for those low in moral identity. In Study 2 with multi-wave data, we replicated the finding that moral identity moderated the effect of creativity on moral disengagement in Study 1 and further revealed that moral disengagement mediated the interactive effects of creativity and moral identity on workplace deviant behavior. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

Moral agency is limited, imperfect, and structurally constrained. This is evident in the many ways we all unwittingly participate in widespread injustice through our everyday actions, which I call ‘structural wrongs’. To do justice to these facts, I argue that we should distinguish between summative and formative moral criticism. While summative criticism functions to conclusively assess an agent's performance relative to some benchmark, formative criticism aims only to improve performance in an ongoing way. I show that the negative sanctions associated (...) with summative responses are only justifiably imposed under certain conditions when persons exercise their agency wrongly — conditions that do not always hold for structural wrongs. Yet even in such cases we can still use formative responses, which are warranted whenever agents fall short of moral ideals. Expanding our repertoire of moral criticism to include both summative and formative responses enables us to better appreciate both the powers and limitations of our agency, and the complexity of moral life. (shrink)

Now that society is in a period of transition, the lack of norms for moral values is becoming an increasingly serious issue. People in commerce talk about commerce, and those "going out to sea" talk about the sea.

Prior research on corporate misconduct pays extensive attention to single misconduct behaviors. However, little research has addressed recidivism – the repeated behaviors of corporate misconduct. Based on institutional theory and using the context of emerging economies where recidivism plays a considerable role, we propose the path dependency of corporate recidivism and suggest that three influential factors exist: internal preconditioning, inter-organizational imitation, and the prevailing external evaluation. Our event history analysis of 1,036 listed companies in China over the period 2001–2008 statistically (...) confirms our hypotheses. We conclude the paper by outlining the implications for both theory and practice. (shrink)

Iris Marion Young’s influential Social Connections Model of responsibility offers a compelling approach to theorizing structural injustice. However, the precise nature of the kind of responsibility modelled by the SCM, along with its relationship to the liability model, has remained unclear. I offer a reading of Young that takes the difference between the liability model and the SCM to be an instance of a more longstanding distinction in the literature on moral responsibility: attributability vs. accountability. I show that interpreting the (...) SCM as a conception of accountability resolves a number of objections, while also highlighting the SCM’s distinctive stance on the relationship between ethics and politics. (shrink)

Through statistical analysis of datasets describing single cell shape following systematic gene depletion, we have found that the morphological landscapes explored by cells are composed of a small number of attractor states. We propose that the topology of these landscapes is in large part determined by cell‐intrinsic factors, such as biophysical constraints on cytoskeletal organization, and reflects different stable signaling and/or transcriptional states. Cell‐extrinsic factors act to determine how cells explore these landscapes, and the topology of the landscapes themselves. Informational (...) stimuli primarily drive transitions between stable states by engaging signaling networks, while mechanical stimuli tune, or even radically alter, the topology of these landscapes. As environments fluctuate, the topology of morphological landscapes explored by cells dynamically adapts to these fluctuations. Finally we hypothesize how complex cellular and tissue morphologies can be generated from a limited number of simple cell shapes. (shrink)

This paper investigates the aperiodic sampled-data control for a chaotic system. Firstly, Takagi–Sugeno fuzzy models for the chaotic systems are established. The lower and upper bounds of the sampling period are taken into consideration. Then, the criteria for mean square exponential stability analysis and aperiodic sampled-data controller synthesis are provided by means of linear matrix inequalities. And the real sampling patterns can be fully captured by constructing suitable Lyapunov functions. Finally, an illustrative example shows that the proposed method is effective (...) to guarantee that the system’s states are stable with aperiodic sampled data. (shrink)

Feminist philosophers have challenged a wide range of gender injustices in professional philosophy. However, the problem of precarity, that is, the increasing numbers of contingent faculty who cannot find permanent employment, has received scarcely any attention. What explains this oversight? In this article, I argue, first, that academics are held in the grips of an ideology that diverts attention away from the structural conditions of precarity, and second, that the gendered dimensions of such an ideology have been overlooked. To do (...) so, I identify two myths: the myth of meritocracy and the myth of work as its own reward. I demonstrate that these myths—and the two-tier system itself—manifest an unmistakably gendered logic, such that gender and precarity are mutually reinforcing and co-constitutive. I conclude that feminist philosophers have particular reason to organize against the casualization of academic work. (shrink)

Although previous research has examined the effectiveness of various levels of punitive reactions to misconduct, researchers have given leader leniency relatively inadequate attention. Prior studies consistently suggest the beneficial effects of reacting less punitively toward misconduct. The current research challenges this notion by delineating a mixed effect of leader leniency on subordinate psychological and behavioral reactions. Building on social exchange theory (i.e., reciprocity norm and rank equilibration norm) and motive attribution literature, the authors argue that when subordinates hold high levels (...) of instrumental motive attribution, leader leniency relates positively to subordinate psychological entitlement, which in turn leads to workplace deviance. In contrast, when subordinates develop high levels of value-expressive motive attribution, leader leniency is positively associated with their felt obligation toward leaders, which positively influences their subsequent organizational citizenship behavior. The results of a field study, a scenario experiment, and a recall experiment conducted to test these hypotheses confirm the double-edged effects of leader leniency. These findings have important implications for theory and practice. (shrink)

My objective here is to motivate certain distinctive forms of dynamic normativity at some level deeper than that of our ordinary usage of ‘norm’ or ‘rule’ in the prescriptive sense of ‘ought’-forms of normativity not only bound by evolution but ultimately, via the same dynamic process, giving rise to our prescriptive-normative practices. As a theoretical backdrop for this motivation, I give a review of the familiar frog case in the studies of representational content from a new perspective: i.e., try to (...) reveal the diachronic holism embedded in Millikan’s teleo-semantic functions via a thought experiment called ‘the frog prince’. Then I will show how such a version of diachronic holism relates to my proposed notions of dynamic normativity. (shrink)

In light of interpreting a paradox of irrationality, vaguely expressed by Donald Davidson in the context of explaining weakness of will, I attempt to show that it contains a significant thesis regarding the cognitive as well as motivational basis of our normative practice. First, an irrational act must involve both a rational element and a non-rational element at its core. Second, irrationality entails free and intentional violation of fundamental norms which the agent deems right or necessary. Third, "normative interpretation" is (...) only possible for objects that are both natural events and capable of mental operations which presuppose some freedom of will as well as constructive representation of the surrounding reality. Fourth, there is always a question of whether we strike the best balance between fitting individual mental items consistently with the overall behavior pattern and keeping our critical ability in following certain normative principles which constitute our rational background. Fifth, the paradox of irrationality reflects and polarizes a deep-seated tension in the normative human practice under the ultimate constraints of nature. Finally, the ultimate issue is how we can find the best lines on which our normative rational standards are based-"best" in the sense that they are close enough to limits of human practical potentialities and are not too high as to render our normative standards idle or even disastrous. (shrink)

Ockham’s connotation theory is essential to his ontological program. To carry out and justify his ontological project of eliminating alleged entities falling under eight Aristotelian categories, Ockham needs and in effect uses a connotation theory which provides him a recursive semantics for the mental language. Another important thesis about Ockham’s connotation theory, pointed out recently by Claude Panaccio and now widely accepted, is that Ockham allowed simple connotative terms in the mental language. However, among current interpretations of Ockham’s connotation theory, (...) none is able to accommodate both theses. In this paper, I offer a new interpretation, based upon a distinction between metaphysical simplicity and semantic complexity of connotative terms, which I argue can accommodate both. (shrink)

The best way to protect information is never to release it. Yet even the earliest definition of security recognizes availability as a necessary quality. In this work, we seek to quantify the value of information disclosure for web resource evaluation and discovery. Communal evaluation tools help users share ratings on websites, music, and other online resources. This approach assumes that experiences are self-similar, so that a site one person visits is likely to have been evaluated and thus visited by others. (...) Collaborative search tools aim for discovery as opposed to evaluation. Therefore, they assume participants in a collaborative network have large sets of non-overlapping sites so that an increase in network size corresponds to an increase in web coverage. We quantify the value of information sharing for these closely related but sometimes distinct functions. In this paper, we analyzed a dataset that includes eight weeks of browsing history of 1084 college students that live in the same dormitory. Our experiments showed that for discovery, more sharing monotonically improves results; for evaluation, however, there are decreasing marginal returns for each participant added to the network. The subject population was selected for its homogeneity in order to mimic a collaborative network. (shrink)

It is well known to Sartre scholars that Sartre claimed his ethical theory follows from his ontology in his early philosophy. However, this claim had not been examined as closely as it deserved. Some scholars accepted it, but none of them has given a plausible explanation of how ethics is supposed to follow from ontology. Others rejected it, without taking trouble to explore the possible connections between ontology and ethics. ;I think this claim should be taken seriously. For Sartre himself (...) took it seriously; he spent much time and energy developing ethical views that can be based on his ontology. Through a detailed study of two critically important notions in Sartre's early philosophy, "bad faith" and "pure reflection," I give a close and in-depth examination of this claim. On the basis of the examination, I conclude that Sartre's early ethical theory is a "failure." ;The first two chapters are preparatory. In the first chapter I clarify some of Sartre's basic terminologies in his early philosophy. In the second chapter I explicate Sartre's basic ontological project in Being and Nothingness. ;In the third chapter, I study the ontological characters of "pure reflection" that Sartre presented in Being and Nothingness, which prepares the ground for a study of the ethical characters of "pure reflection" in the fifth chapter. ;In the fourth chapter, I study the ethical implication of the ontological characters of bad faith. Through a detailed examination of the notion of "bad faith" in Being and Nothingness, I show that bad faith as Sartre presented it in Being and Nothingness has only trivial and non-salient ethical implication. ;In the fifth and last chapter, I study the ethical characters of pure reflection that Sartre presented in Notebooks for an Ethics, on the basis of which I show that the ethical characters of pure reflection do not exactly follow from its ontological characters. As a result of these studies, I conclude that in Sartre's early philosophy his ethics does not really follow from his ontology. (shrink)

People disagree about the causes of social inequality and how to most effectively intervene in them. These may seem like empirical questions for social scientists, not philosophers. However, causal explanation itself depends on broadly normative commitments. From this it follows that (moral) philosophers have an important role to play in determining those causal explanations. I examine the case of causal explanations of poverty to demonstrate these claims. In short, philosophers who work to reshape our moral expectations also work, on the (...) back end, to restructure acceptable causal explanations—and hence solutions—for social inequality. Empirical and normative inquiry, then, are a two-way street. (shrink)

Statistics play a critical role in biological and clinical research. However, most reports of scientific results in the published literature make it difficult for the reader to reproduce the statistical analyses performed in achieving those results because they provide inadequate documentation of the statistical tests and algorithms applied. The Ontology of Biological and Clinical Statistics (OBCS) is put forward here as a step towards solving this problem. Terms in OBCS, including ‘data collection’, ‘data transformation in statistics’, ‘data visualization’, ‘statistical data (...) analysis’, and ‘drawing a conclusion based on data’, cover the major types of statistical processes used in basic biological research and clinical outcome studies. OBCS is aligned with the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) and extends the Ontology of Biomedical Investigations (OBI), an OBO (Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies) Foundry ontology supported by over 20 research communities. We discuss two examples illustrating how the ontology is being applied. In the first (biological) use case, we describe how OBCS was applied to represent the high throughput microarray data analysis of immunological transcriptional profiles in human subjects vaccinated with an influenza vaccine. In the second (clinical outcomes) use case, we applied OBCS to represent the processing of electronic health care data to determine the associations between hospital staffing levels and patient mortality. Our case studies were designed to show how OBCS can be used for the consistent representation of statistical analysis pipelines under two different research paradigms. By representing statistics-related terms and their relations in a rigorous fashion, OBCS facilitates standard data analysis and integration, and supports reproducible biological and clinical research. (shrink)