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Many recent definitions of lying are based on the notion of what is said. This paper argues that says-based definitions of lying cannot account for lies involving non-literal speech, such as metaphor, hyperbole, loose use or irony. It proposes that lies should instead be defined in terms of assertion, where what is asserted need not coincide with what is said. And it points to possible implications this outcome might have for the ethics of lying. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In our study, we aimed to analyse the effect of child gender on parental and child interactive play behaviour, as well as to determine relations between parental general knowledge of child development and parental play behaviour in two developmental periods, namely toddlerhood and early childhood. The sample included 99 children (50 toddlers 1-3 years-old; 49 preschoolers 3-5 years-old) and their parents. Parent-child interactive play with a standard set of toys was observed and assessed in the home setting. We found that parental and child play behaviours were closely related in both age groups. In addition, child's gender affected child, but not parental, play behaviour such that girls more frequently established the content of play, sustained play frame, and used more symbolic transformations during play than boys did. Parents' general knowledge of child development was associated with both parental education and parental play behaviour. The findings are applicable to different professionals working with children and their parents in the preschool period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grand challenges stress the importance of multi-disciplinary research, a multi-actor approach in examining the current state of affairs and exploring possible solutions, multi-level governance and policy coordination across geographical boundaries and policy areas, and a policy environment for enabling change both in science and technology and in society. The special nature of grand challenges poses certain needs in evaluation practice: (a) the need for learning at the operational, policy and, especially, system level; and (b) the importance of a wider set of impacts and behavioural change. The examination of the usefulness of evaluations as learning tools thus becomes relevant as does the way current evaluation practices address broader impacts and issues such as behavioural additionality. The suitability of existing evaluation contexts in meeting the specific issues posed by the 'grand challenges' orientation is also worth examining. The paper argues that learning at the policy and system levels is largely unaddressed while concepts such as behavioural additionality are still underexploited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans constantly adjust their social relationships and choose new partners of good reputations, thereby promoting the evolution of cooperation. Individuals have to pay a cost to build a reputation, obtain others' information and then make partnership adjustments, yet the conditions under which such costly behaviors are able to evolve remain to be explored. In this model, I assume that individuals have to pay a cost to adjust their partnerships. Furthermore, whether an individual can adjust his partnership based on reputation is determined by his strategic preference, which is updated via coevolution. Using the metaphor of a public goods game where the collective benefit is shared among all members of a group, the coupling dynamics of cooperation and partnership adjustment were numerically simulated. Partner-switching behavior cannot evolve in a public goods game with a low amplification factor. However, such an effect can be exempted by raising the productivity of public goods or the frequency of partnership adjustment. Moreover, costly partner-switching behavior is remarkably promoted by the condition that the mechanism of reputation evaluation considers its prosociality. A mechanism of reputation evaluation that praises both cooperative and partner-switching behaviors allows them to coevolve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A particular type of self-control is exercised when the conflict between immediate and delayed consequences is associated with consequences that are more favorable either for the individual or for the group. In such cases, responding under the control of delayed consequences that are favorable for the group is characteristic of ethical self-control. This study investigated the selection, maintenance and transmission of ethical self-control in an arrangement depicting a macrocontingency. Participants in two microcultures were exposed to an ABAB design in which individuals repeatedly chose a row in a colored 10 x 10 matrix. In all conditions, choosing odd-numbered rows produced three tokens that could be exchanged for money, and choosing even-numbered rows produced only one token. In B conditions, even row responses had a second effect, which was to add one item to a cumulative effect comprising school items to be donated later to a public school. Thus, in B conditions, choosing an even row exemplified ethical self control. Microcultures comprised 16-18 generations of three participants as one participant was replaced after every 20th cycle. The results demonstrated the effectiveness of cumulative effect in the implementation and maintenance of ethical self-control responses, but only after a long exposure to the macrocontingency. The change in participants across generations may have also contributed to a longer exposure to the contingencies being required for the selection of ethical self-control responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethical self-control is conceived of as self-controlled responding under concurrent contingencies involving (conflicts of) consequences for the individual, and consequences for the group. The study assessed the production of ethical self-control repertoires in laboratory microcultures under four different macrocontingency arrangements. The experiment was held with eleven groups of four college students each. They were exposed to a task that required a choice of odd or even rows in an 8x8 matrix. Odd rows produced higher individual reinforcements and delayed aversive consequences for the group, thus being labeled impulsive selfish choices; even rows produced lower reinforcements for the individual participant, but positive delayed consequences for the group, thus labeled ethical selfcontrolled choices. Each group was exposed to only one condition. In the first condition, each participant was exposed alone to the task, producing high rates of impulsive selfish choices. In the second condition, the four participants were exposed to the task together, with access to one another's choices and being allowed to talk. The result was a high rate of ethical self-controlled choices. In the third condition, participants were exposed to the task together, could talk, but had no direct access to each other's choices, which also resulted in a high rate of ethical self-controlled choices. In the fourth condition, participants were exposed to the task together, but could not talk, and had no access to each other's choices. Results from this experiment show a higher rate of impulsive selfish choices. The data on the four conditions suggest that the possibility of verbal interaction has more effect on the emergence of ethical selfcontrolled responses than access to each other's responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rationale: The neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) has been shown to modulate a variety of human social behaviors. However, little is known about its impact on emotional memory processing. Previous research demonstrated both memory-enhancing and memory-impairing oxytocinergic effects. Methods: We investigated the influence of a single (prior to encoding) and a repeated (prior to encoding and retrieval) intranasal administration of OXT on recognition memory for stimuli taken from the International Affective Picture System. In addition, we assessed the interaction of emotion regulation during encoding and OXT-induced memory effects. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled design, 80 healthy young males performed an emotion regulation task followed by a surprising recognition memory task after 60 min. Results: Results show that repeated OXT administration significantly improved memory certainty for negative social stimuli. Regarding the influence of emotion regulation, the promnestic effect of OXT was more pronounced when participants had been instructed to increase their negative emotions during encoding. Conclusions: Our findings indicate that OXT facilitates the processing of negative social stimuli during memory encoding and retrieval, possibly by enhancing the perception of aversive aspects in social situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complexity of group dynamics occurring in small group interactions often hinders the performance of teams. The availability of rich multimodal information about what is going on during the meeting makes it possible to explore the possibility of providing support to dysfunctional teams from facilitation to training sessions addressing both the individuals and the group as a whole. A necessary step in this direction is that of capturing and understanding group dynamics. In this paper, we discuss a particular scenario, in which meeting participants receive multimedia feedback on their relational behaviour, as a first step towards increasing self-awareness. We describe the background and the motivation for a coding scheme for annotating meeting recordings partially inspired by the Bales’ Interaction Process Analysis. This coding scheme was aimed at identifying suitable observable behavioural sequences. The study is complemented with an experimental investigation on the acceptability of such a service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many attempts are underway for developing meeting support tools, but less attention is paid to the evaluation of meetingware. This article describes the development and testing of an instrument for evaluating meeting tools. First, we specified the object of evaluation—meetings—by means of a set of input, process, and outcome factors. Then, we designed the process of evaluation, consisting of, first, the generation of meeting behavior in the form of a controlled series of meetings within the context of a project and, second, the measurement of the identified meeting factors. To measure these factors, a rating scale, questionnaires, and information flow analysis were used. Next, the instrument was tested, and the factors for successful meetings were determined in 13 projects in which four participants had to meet four times. The evaluation instrument proved to be a reliable and useful aid for the development and improvement of meeting tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When a New York City man risked his own life to save a stranger on the subway tracks, the New York Times interpreted his behavior not in terms of virtue but as a product of certain ‘hard-wiring’ he happened to possess. In denying virtue, the Times followed a school of thought that is pervasive in social science (referred to in this paper as the ‘individualists’) who, for example, explain charitable donations by pointing out tax deductions, explain volunteer work by revealing the opportunities contained therein to meet other singles, and so on. Actually, the assumptions and arguments which ground this widespread ‘denial of virtue’ are both empirically and normatively flawed, and the theory itself is belied by data about people doing good for moral reasons. Evidence drawn from personal introspection, from empirical studies of human behavior, from analysis of voting as a civil act, from interpreting peoples’ reaction to Alzheimer’s disease, from critical inspection of the logic of ‘individualist’ social explanations, and from a normative criticism of the products of the ‘individualist’ approach all support a rejection of the ‘individualist’ approach. The deniers of virtue should heed the evidence and pay mind to the amoralizing consequences of their erroneous theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the dry forest of southern Madagascar, a region of global conservation priority, formally protected areas are nearly totally absent. We illustrate how the continued existence of unique forest habitats in the Androy region is directly dependent on informal institutions, taboos, regulating human behavior. Qualitative interviews to map and analyze the social mechanisms underlying forest protection have been combined with vegetation analyses of species diversity and composition. Of 188 forest patches, 93% were classified as protected, and in Southern Androy all remaining forest patches larger than 5 ha were protected. Eight different types of forests, with a gradient of social fencing from open access to almost complete entry prohibitions, were identified. Transgressions were well enforced with strong sanctions of significant economic as well as religious importance. Analyses of species diversity between protected and unprotected forests were complicated because of size differences and access restrictions. However, since, for example, in southern Androy >90% of the total remaining forest cover is protected through taboos, these informal institutions represent an important, and presently the only, mechanism for conservation of the highly endemic forest species. We conclude that social aspects, such as local beliefs and legitimate sanctioning systems, need to be analyzed and incorporated along with biodiversity studies for successful conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on egoism wherein the basis of morality is the pursuit of one's own welfare. It mentions that a substantive egoist specifies a certain state of the person as his ultimate good, while a formal egoist identifies an individual's ultimate good as acting according to the reasons applicable to him. Thus, formal egoistic person does things for others for his own benefit, and not because he expects to merit is some way.

The current debate on "free agency" seems to highlight the romantic aspects of free agent and considers it a genuine response to changing economic conditions (e.g., high-unemployment rate, importance of knowledge in the labor market, the eclipse of organizational loyalty, and self pride). Little attention, if any, has been given to the religious root of the free agency concept and its persistent existence across history. In this paper, the current discourse on free agency and the conditions that have led to its emergence are briefly discussed. The paper focuses on the theological perspectives of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam on the concept. Implications for management and business organizations are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Morality and business ethics are topics facing increased attention in modern management, yet they tend to be looked at only in relation to external relationships. However one of the most important contributions to management practice and theory (human relations) was built upon a sociological theory that was totally concerned with morality. That sociological theory was borrowed by Mayo (the 'father' of human relations) without reading the original theory; consequently he missed the real point that the theory made, i.e. a common morality embracing everyone was necessary to maintain order and social cohesion. Such a morality was only possible when we realised our social dimension through continuous contact with each other. Moral man had to be social man; occupational groups were a way of attempting to achieve this. Yet morality is a dimension of group dynamics and management training rarely mentioned, partly through ignorance, partly through a fear of what discussions of morality might lead on to, and partly through a structural blindness to non-operational problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prosocial acts benefitting others are widespread amongst humans. By contrast, chimpanzees have failed to demonstrate such a disposition in several studies, leading some authors to conclude that the forms of prosociality studied evolved in humans since our common ancestry. However, similar prosocial behavior has since been documented in other primates, such as capuchin monkeys. Here, applying the same methodology to humans, chimpanzees, and capuchins, we provide evidence that all three species will display prosocial behavior, but only in certain conditions. Fundamental forms of prosociality were age-dependent in children, conditional on self-beneficial resource distributions even at age seven, and conditional on social or resource configurations in chimpanzees and capuchins. We provide the first evidence that experience of conspecific companions' prosocial behavior facilitates prosocial behavior in children and chimpanzees. Prosocial actions were manifested in all three species following rules of contingency that may reflect strategically adaptive responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]