In this article, I further analyze the notion of the effectiveness of argumentative strategies, introduced in Jovičić, 2001. The most relevant achievements of the theories of reasonable discussion and the theories of persuasion are called to mind with the aim of explaining the mechanism of the argumentative effectiveness. As a result, a procedure for evaluating the effectiveness of argumentative strategies is suggested.

Although serotonin, testosterone, and genes contribute to sociopathy, the relationships are probably indirect and subject to modifiers (e.g., present only under certain conditions of rearing and temperament). Age at menarche may be a marker variable as well as a causal factor. Since the genders differ in all four areas, sex differences in sociopathy represent a very complex interaction of these factors.

Mealey's work has several interesting implications: It refutes the charge that sociobiology paints a cynical portrait of human nature and adopts a one-sided reductionism; it exemplifies a general theoretical scheme for constructing evolutionary biopsychosocial models of human behavior; and it has the practical effect of promoting and informing early intervention in children at risk for psychopathic disorder.

We applied a technique borrowed from the field of bioethics to test whether justice-related factors influence laypersons’ decisions concerning business ethics. In the first experiment, participants judged the acceptability of remuneration policies and in the second that of executive bonuses. In each study, participants judged a set of 36 situations. To create the scenarios, we varied retributive justice—the amount of remuneration; procedural justice—the clarity of the procedure that determined the remuneration; distributive justice—the extent of the distribution of bonus payments amongst (...) employees; and restorative justice—a special compensation for hazardous working conditions or accidents at work. K-means clustering of all 36 judgments revealed four different personal positions in both experiments. One group of people readily accepted all situations. The other three groups’ judgments were mainly a function of distributive justice modulated in different ways by the context determined by the other variables. Furthermore, people conceive of distributive justice as categorical: Acceptability judgments only increase if companies give bonuses to all employees. Granting bonuses to a subset does not increase acceptability. Our results are useful for policy makers and provide business ethics researchers with a novel technique. (shrink)

In this brief commentary the author concentrates on the treatment perspectives of Mealey's model. The main weakness of the model is that it does not provide a satisfactory theoretical connection between treatment and different types of target behavior. Even within the primary-secondary distinction, there are large individual differences that should not be overlooked in the planning of treatment.

Social responsibility is typically examined at the firm level, yet there are instances in which consumers’ social responsibility perceptions of the firm’s product brands differ from social responsibility perceptions with regard to the firm [i.e., corporate social responsibility ]. This article conceptualizes brand social responsibility and delineates it from CSR. Following the development of a BSR scale, this research demonstrates variations in consumers’ social responsibility perceptions across product brands even if they are owned by the same corporation and compete in (...) the same product category. BSR is distinct from CSR, and better predicts consumers’ responses to product brands compared to corporate level measures. Consistent with the conceptual distinction, this research demonstrates the unique contribution of BSR and CSR in predicting product brand and corporate outcomes, respectively. From a theoretical viewpoint, this research is one of the few to examine differences between product brand and CSR. From a managerial viewpoint, the consideration of social responsibility at the product brand level facilitates the assessment of social responsibility perceptions across brands in brand portfolios managed under a mixed-branding or house-of-brands strategy. (shrink)

We conducted an online study of projected behavioral and emotional responses to escalating terrorist threat. The study employed scenarios in which terrorists targeted commercial airliners with missiles at an international airport. An important feature of attacks on commercial flights is that unlike many other terrorist threats, exposure to the risk can be controlled simply be refusing to fly. Nine scenarios were constructed by crossing two between-subjects factors, each with three levels: (1) planned government protective actions and (2) social norm, expressed (...) as variation in airline ticket sales. Scenarios also incorporated descriptions of three increasingly severe attacks; this was a within-subjects factor. After each description, we asked respondents to imagine they had planned a vacation to a destination 2,500 km away, and we examined their projected fear and behavior. Fear increased and more trips were canceled as the attacks escalated. Government protective actions and social norm had little impact on either fear or planned flying. (shrink)

Drawing on the mood-behaviour model (Gendolla, 2000), two studies investigated informational effects of mood on effort-related cardiovascular response. Experiment 1 manipulated mood state (positive, negative) and task difficulty (easy, difficult, extremely difficult). Effects on cardiovascular reactivity were as expected: On the easy level, reactivity was weak in a positive mood, but strong in a negative mood; on the difficult level, reactivity was strong in a positive mood, but weak in a negative mood; on the extremely difficulty level mood had no (...) effect. Experiment 2 manipulated mood only. As predicted, subjective demand and cardiovascular response were both higher in a negative mood than in a positive mood and the mood effect on cardiovascular response diminished after statistically controlling for the demand appraisals. Neither study revealed any mood effects on cardiovascular response during the mood inductions. (shrink)

Sociobiological explanation requires both a reliable and a valid definition of the sociopathy phenotype. Mealey assumes that such reliable and valid definition of sociopathy exists in her A review of psychiatric literature on the diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder clearly demonstrates that this assumption is faulty. There is substantial disagreement among diagnostic systems (e.g., RDC, DSM-III) over what constitutes the antisocial phenotype, different systems identify different individuals as sociopathic. Without a valid definition of sociopathy, sociobiological theories like Mealey's should be (...) viewed as entirely speculative. (shrink)

Everyday memory tasks often require that researchers focus on output-bound measures of memory. As a result, nonmemorial processes (e.g., report option and grain size) may influence recall accuracy. These nonmemorial processes, usually eliminated by laboratory researchers, have the potential to explain some anomalous results and may even be useful to enhance everyday recollection.

Mealey distinguishes two types of sociopathy: (1) or obligate, and (2) or facultative. Either sociopathy evolved twice, or one form is derived from the other, e.g., through: (1) genetic assimilation generating polymorphism in the relative strength of biases favoring the development of otherwise facultative strategies, or (2) independently heritable but strategically relevant characteristics biasing the optimal selection of facultative strategies.

Mealey proposes two categorical classes of sociopath, primary and secondary. I criticize this distinction on the basis that constructs of this kind have proved unrealistic in personality taxonomy and that dimensional systems capture reality much more successfully. I suggest how such a system could work in this particular context.

Behavioral biologists have long sought to link behavioral units (e.g., aggression, depression, sociopathy) with biological units (e.g., genes, neurotransmitters, hormones, neuroanatomical loci). These units, originally contrived for descriptive purposes, often lead to misunderstandings when they are reified for purposes of causal analysis. This genetic and biochemical explanation for sociopathy reflects such problems.

Research on the relationship between corporate environmental performance and corporate financial performance has consistently grown and is gaining widespread attention. Given the vast body of CEP–CFP studies, recently scholars have begun to take stock of the cumulative results. However, no study so far has meta-analyzed the findings yielded by event studies assessing the stock market reactions to corporate environmental performance-related events. This paper sets out to close this gap by synthesizing previous empirical results regarding the stock market impact of positive (...) and negative CEP-related events. Results indicate a positive relationship across studies in terms of positive market reactions to positive events and negative reactions to negative events. Furthermore, the findings show that the market reactions are stronger for negative events than for positive events. Finally, this study examines whether methodological artifacts may explain the differences in the findings of the analyzed event studies. (shrink)

This commentary extends arousal theory to suggest an explanation for the well-established inverse correlation between church attendance and involvement in crime. In addition, the results of two surveys of social scientists are reviewed to reveal just how little impact the biosocial/sociobiological perspective has had thus far on social science.

Emotion is critical in Mealey's conceptual arguments. However, several of her assertions about the role of emotion in sociopathy are problematic. Questions are raised regarding the link between lack of anxiety and low levels of secondary emotions such as love and sympathy, the argument that sociopaths are low in anxiety but high in neuroticism, and the designation of anxiety as a secondary emotion.

Parallel to Koriat & Goldsmith's accounting of human memory, there are two distinct approaches in animal learning. Behaviorist approaches focus on quantitative aspects of conditioned response probability, whereas cognitive and ethological approaches focus on qualitative aspects of how memory is used in real life. Moreover, in animal research these distinguishable measures of memory are dissociated in experimental amnesia.

As more criminals are imprisoned, other individuals change their behavior to replace them, as predicted by the theory of strategic behavior. The physiological correlates of sociopathy suggest that research in cognitive neuroscience can lead toward a solution. Promising pathways include building upon current knowledge of self-deceit, the independence of positive and negative emotions, the lateralization of risk and caution, and the conditions promoting prosocial behavior.

What are some metaphysical fundamentals which constitute the reality? This question has occupied philosophers for a long time. The western tradition once dealt with conceptions of earth, air, water, fire, ether whereas the eastern tradition has studied notions like yin-yang(陰陽), taiji(太極), lichi(理氣). The question is now being researched under the name of physicalism or naturalism, and yet what is not yet clarified is the relationship between electromagnetic force as the fundamental of the physical and consciousness as the fundamental of the (...) mental. What is puzzling is that most philosophers insist on the overcoming of the traditional dualism while they tend to accept the distinction between electromagnetic force and consciousness. If they decide that the metaphysical paradigm of the duality is plausible then they should first present the grammar of functions of those concepts like individual, identity, causation. If they can see that the prospect of that traditional metaphysical paradigms are not hopeful, then they better start to look for an alternative metaphysical picture where the world can be understood more holistically. There have been alternative paradigms such as metaphysics of process and integration. It’s time to take a look at one of these. This paper tries to interpret the latter. -/- The notion of integration(誠) has been the subject studied for a long time as a teaching of Zhongyong, one of the key Confucian texts. Many has taken the word “誠” of Zhongyong to mean sincerity or faithfulness. Certainly there are anthropological or ethical dimension to the meaning of the word. But the whole text seems to direct a reader to see how the world is, the metaphysical dimension of the world. I will interpret the major thrust of Zhongyong to say that integration is a metaphysical fundamental. If one is to accept the evolution thesis of the body of human being then she is also to concede the evolution thesis of the mind of human being. If one is positive toward the evolutionary theory of the human mind then she is more likely open-minded toward the powers of the mind of physical things. This may allow to proceed to a thesis that integration is an information consciousness(chapter 1). Suppose that physical things of the world are integrational. Then the integration is not to be given from the outside but from within. Then when things are integrational they become integrators. Integrators are bound to possess some sort of power. I will discuss the thesis that integration is a dispositional power(chapter 2). If all things are bundles of informations then information is ubiquitous(chapter 3) and things may be passive in certain contexts but are active toward their informations, processing them in their own ways. If these three hypotheses are reasonable then my thesis of integration as a metaphysical fundamental would be plausible. (shrink)