The literatures on both authentic leadership and behavioral integrity have argued that leader integrity drives follower performance. Yet, despite overlap in conceptualization and mechanisms, no research has investigated how authentic leadership and behavioral integrity relate to one another in driving follower performance. In this study, we propose and test the notion that authentic leadership behavior is an antecedent to perceptions of leader behavioral integrity, which in turn affects follower affective organizational commitment and follower work role performance. Analysis of a survey (...) of 49 teams in the service industry supports the proposition that authentic leadership is related to follower affective organizational commitment, fully mediated through leader behavioral integrity. Next, we found that authentic leadership and leader behavioral integrity are related to follower work role performance, fully mediated through follower affective organizational commitment. These relationships hold when controlling for ethical organizational culture. (shrink)

The Individual and the Political Order examines major theoretical perspectives, both historical and contemporary, in major issues in social and political philosophy. It combines accessibility with appreciation of philosophical complexity and discusses applied issues, such as morality and war, as well as theoretical approaches to justice, rights, and democratic liberal thought.

Cancer is a singular cellular state, the emergence of which destabilises the homeostasis reached through the evolution to multicellularity. We present the idea that the onset of the cellular disobedience to the metazoan functional and structural architecture, known as the cancer phenotype, is triggered by changes in the cell's external environment that occur with ageing: what ensues is a breach of the social contract of multicellular life characteristic of metazoans. By integrating old ideas with new evidence, we propose that with (...) ageing the environmental information that maintains a multicellular organisation is eroded, rewiring internal processes of the cell, and resulting in an internal shift towards an ancestral condition resulting in the pseudo‐multicellular cancer phenotype. Once that phenotype emerges, a new local social contract is built, different from the homeostatic one, leading to tumour formation and the foundation of a novel local ecosystem. (shrink)

In their paper “Research approvals iceberg: how a ‘low-key’ study in England needed 89 professionals to approve it and how we can do better” Petrova and Barclay highlight concerns with the health research regulatory environment in the UK. As long-standing chairs of NHS research ethics committees, researchers, and also academics in research ethics, we are also often frustrated with the regulatory process in the UK. However, we think that Petrova and Barclay’s analysis is misleading because it conflates research ethics with (...) governance and funding processes, thus failing to adequately distinguish between the national coordinating function of the Health Research Authority, local research governance processes, and interactions with research sponsors and/or the Clinical Research Network. (shrink)

The literature on deep brain stimulation (DBS) and adaptive DBS (aDBS) raises concerns that these technologies may affect personality, mood, and behavior. We conducted semi-structured interviews with researchers (n = 23) involved in developing next-generation DBS systems, exploring their perspectives on ethics and policy topics including whether DBS/aDBS can cause such changes. The majority of researchers reported being aware of personality, mood, or behavioral (PMB) changes in recipients of DBS/aDBS. Researchers offered varying estimates of the frequency of PMB changes. A (...) smaller majority reported changes in personality specifically. Some expressed reservations about the scientific status of the term ‘personality,’ while others used it freely. Most researchers discussed negative PMB changes, but a majority said that DBS/aDBS can also result in positive changes. Several researchers viewed positive PMB changes as part of the therapeutic goal in psychiatric applications of DBS/aDBS. Finally, several discussed potential causes of PMB changes other than the device itself. (shrink)

Language’s intentional nature has been highlighted as a crucial feature distinguishing it from other communication systems. Specifically, language is often thought to depend on highly structured intentional action and mutual mindreading by a communicator and recipient. Whilst similar abilities in animals can shed light on the evolution of intentionality, they remain challenging to detect unambiguously. We revisit animal intentional communication and suggest that progress in identifying analogous capacities has been complicated by (i) the assumption that intentional (that is, voluntary) production (...) of communicative acts requires mental-state attribution, and (ii) variation in approaches investigating communication across sensory modalities. To move forward, we argue that a framework fusing research across modalities and species is required. We structure intentional communication into a series of requirements, each of which can be operationalised, investigated empirically, and must be met for purposive, intentionally communicative acts to be demonstrated. Our unified approach helps elucidate the distribution of animal intentional communication and subsequently serves to clarify what is meant by attributions of intentional communication in animals and humans. (shrink)

Guilt and shame are self-conscious emotions with implications for mental health, social and occupational functioning, and the effectiveness of sports practice. To date, the assessment and role of athlete-specific guilt and shame has been under-researched. Reporting data from 174 junior elite cricketers, the present study utilized exploratory factor analysis in validating the Athletic Perceptions of Performance Scale, assessing three distinct and statistically reliable factors: athletic shame-proneness, guilt-proneness, and no-concern. Conditional process analysis indicated that APPS shame-proneness mediated the relationship between general (...) and athlete-specific distress. While APPS domains of guilt-proneness and no-concern were not significant mediators, they exhibited correlations in the expected direction with indices of psychological distress and well-being. The APPS may assist coaches and support staff identify players who may benefit from targeted interventions to reduce the likelihood of experiencing shame-prone states. (shrink)

Insight has been investigated under the assumption that participants solve insight problems with insight processes and/or experiences. A recent trend has involved presenting participants with the solution and analysing the resultant experience as if insight has taken place. We examined self-reports of the aha experience, a defining aspect of insight, before and after feedback, along with additional affective components of insight (e.g., pleasure, surprise, impasse). Classic insight problems, compound remote associates, and non-insight problems were randomly interleaved and presented to participants. (...) Solution feedback increased ratings of aha experience in both insight and non-insight problems, with this result being driven by responses to solutions that were initially incorrectly generated. Ratings of aha for correctly generated solutions decreased after the correct solution was presented. These findings have implications for insight research paradigms as well as informing teaching methods. (shrink)

Background: Mental healthcare needs person-tailored interventions. Experience Sampling Method (ESM) can provide daily life monitoring of personal experiences. This study aims to operationalize and test a measure of momentary reward-related Quality of Life (rQoL). Intuitively, quality of life improves by spending more time on rewarding experiences. ESM clinical interventions can use this information to coach patients to find a realistic, optimal balance of positive experiences (maximize reward) in daily life. rQoL combines the frequency of engaging in a relevant context (a (...) ‘behavior setting’) with concurrent (positive) affect. High rQoL occurs when the most frequent behavior settings are combined with positive affect or infrequent behavior settings co-occur with low positive affect. Methods: Resampling procedures (Monte Carlo experiments) were applied to assess the reliability of rQoL using various behavior setting definitions under different sampling circumstances, for real or virtual subjects with low-, average- and high contextual variability. Furthermore, resampling was used to assess whether rQoL is a distinct concept from positive affect. Virtual ESM beep datasets were extracted from 1058 valid ESM observations for virtual and real subjects. Results: Behavior settings defined by Who-What contextual information were most informative. Simulations of at least 100 ESM observations are needed for reliable assessment. Virtual ESM beep datasets of a real subject can be defined by Who-What-Where behavior setting combinations. Large sample sizes are necessary for reliable rQoL assessments, except for subjects with low contextual variability. rQoL is distinct from positive affect. Conclusion: rQoL is a feasible concept. Monte Carlo experiments should be used to assess the reliable implementation of an ESM statistic. Future research in ESM should asses the behavior of summary statistics under different sampling situations. This exploration is especially relevant in clinical implementation, where often only small datasets are available. (shrink)

In the context of long waiting time to access rehabilitation services, a large majority of settings use referral prioritization to help manage waiting lists. Prioritization practices vary greatly between settings and there is little consensus on how best to prioritize referrals. This paper describes the prioritization processes for physiotherapy services in Québec and its potential implications in terms of equity in access to services. This is a secondary analysis of a survey of outpatient physiotherapy departments conducted in 2015 across publicly (...) funded hospitals in Québec. In many settings, persons with acute orthopaedic conditions were prioritized while chronic conditions were given a lower priority. There were 72 different combinations of prioritization criteria used in outpatient physiotherapy departments. Variability was also observed in the type of personnel involved in the prioritization process, the number of priority levels used to rank the referrals and the source of information used to prioritize referrals. These results highlight potential issues regarding equity in access to physiotherapy services: the prioritization of persons with acute conditions to the detriment of those with chronic conditions, the lack of consensus on a fair prioritization process and the importance to adequately assess patients’ needs for treatment. Further research and interventions on prioritization criteria and processes are needed to ensure equitable access to physiotherapy services, especially in the public sector. (shrink)

Buddhism, one increasingly hears, is an 'eco-friendly' religion. It is often said that this is because it promotes an 'ecological' view of things, one stressing the essential unity of human beings and the natural world. Buddhism, Virtue and Environment presents a different view. While agreeing that Buddhism is, in many important respects, in tune with environmental concerns, Cooper and James argue that what makes it 'green' is its view of human life. The true connection between the religion and environmental thought (...) is to be found in Buddhist accounts of the virtues - those traits, such as compassion, equanimity and humility, that characterise the life of a spiritually enlightened individual. Central chapters of this book examine these virtues and their implications for environmental attitudes and practice. Buddhism, Virtue and Environment will be of interest not only to students and teachers of Buddhism and environmental ethics, but to those more generally engaged with moral philosophy. Written in a clear and accessible style, this book presents an original conception of Buddhist environmental thought. The authors also contribute to the wider debate on the place of ethics in Buddhist teachings and practices, and to debates within 'virtue ethics' on the relations between human well-being and environmental concern. (shrink)

The expansion of research on deep brain stimulation (DBS) and adaptive DBS (aDBS) raises important neuroethics and policy questions related to data sharing. However, there has been little empirical research on the perspectives of experts developing these technologies. We conducted semi-structured, open-ended interviews with aDBS researchers regarding their data sharing practices and their perspectives on ethical and policy issues related to sharing. Researchers expressed support for and a commitment to sharing, with most saying that they were either sharing their data (...) or would share in the future and that doing so was important for advancing the field. However, those who are sharing reported a variety of sharing partners, suggesting heterogeneity in sharing practices and lack of the broad sharing that would reflect principles of open science. Researchers described several concerns and barriers related to sharing, including privacy and confidentiality, the usability of shared data by others, ownership and control of data (including potential commercialization), and limited resources for sharing. They also suggested potential solutions to these challenges, including additional safeguards to address privacy issues, standardization and transparency in analysis to address issues of data usability, professional norms and heightened cooperation to address issues of ownership and control, and streamlining of data transmission to address resource limitations. Researchers also offered a range of views on the sensitivity of neural activity data (NAD) and data related to mental health in the context of sharing. These findings are an important input to deliberations by researchers, policymakers, neuroethicists, and other stakeholders as they navigate ethics and policy questions related to aDBS research. (shrink)

Resumo Neste artigo, pretendemos abordar o pensamento de duas mulheres por meio dos conceitos de aniquilamento, que encontramos em Le mirouer des simples ames de Marguerite Porete, e descriação que aparece em Pensateur et grace de Simone Weil. Também usaremos a obra de Weil La connaisance surnaturelle composta pelos Cahiers d’Amérique e Notes ècrites à Londres, onde ela faz referência ao livro de Marguerite Porete. Deste modo, apresentaremos, num primeiro momento, a mística de Marguerite Porete, focando no conceito de aniquilamento. (...) Depois, num segundo momento, mostraremos um pouco da mística de Simone Weil por meio do conceito de descriação. A partir deste segundo momento, já iremos traçando alguns paralelos para mostrar a semelhança entre a mística das duas pensadoras que se refletirá no terceiro momento deste artigo, onde apresentaremos Weil como leitura de Le mirouer des simples ames.In this article we intend to approach the thought of two French philosophers through two concepts: annihilation, found in the Le mirouer des simples ames of Marguerite Porete, and decreation, which appears in the Pensateur et grace of Simone Weil. We will also refer to Weil’s La connaisance surnaturelle, composed of the Cahiers d’Amérique and Notes ècrites à Londres, where she refers to Marguerite Porete’s book. First we present the mysticism of Marguerite Porete, focusing on the concept of annihilation. Next we discuss the mysticism of Simone Weil through the concept of decreation. We then draw some parallels to show the similarity between the mysticism of the two thinkers, and discuss Weil as a reader of Le mirouer des simples ames. (shrink)

Dans le contexte actuel de longs délais d’attente pour accéder aux services de réadaptation, la grande majorité des établissements utilisent la priorisation des demandes de référence pour aider à gérer les listes d’attente. Les pratiques de priorisation varient grandement d’un milieu à l’autre et il y a peu de consensus sur la meilleure façon de prioriser les demandes de référence. Cet article décrit les processus de priorisation de services en physiothérapie au Québec et leurs implications potentielles en termes d’équité dans (...) l’accès aux services. Il s’agit d’une analyse secondaire d’une enquête menée en 2015 auprès des cliniques externes en physiothérapie (n=98 ; la proportion de participation était de 99 %) dans les hôpitaux publics du Québec. Dans de nombreux milieux, les personnes ayant une condition orthopédique aigüe étaient priorisées, tandis que les conditions chroniques recevaient une priorité moindre. Nous avons comptabilisé 72 combinaisons différentes de critères de priorisation utilisées dans les cliniques externes de physiothérapie. Nous avons également observé une variabilité dans le type de personnel impliqué dans le processus de priorisation, le nombre de niveaux de priorité utilisés pour classer les demandes de référence et la source d’information utilisée pour établir la priorisation. Ces résultats mettent en lumière des enjeux potentiels concernant l’équité dans l’accès aux services de physiothérapie : la priorisation des personnes atteintes de conditions aigües au détriment de celles atteintes de conditions chroniques, l’absence de consensus sur un processus de priorisation équitable et la nécessité d’évaluer adéquatement les besoins de traitement des patients. De futures recherches et interventions sur les critères et les processus de priorisation sont nécessaires pour assurer un accès équitable aux services de physiothérapie, en particulier dans le secteur public. (shrink)

Although the therapeutic misconception (TM) has been well described over a period of approximately 20 years, there has been disagreement about its implications for informed consent to research. In this paper we review some of the history and debate over the ethical implications of TM but also bring a new perspective to those debates. Drawing upon our experience of working in the context of translational research for rare childhood diseases such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy, we consider the ethical and legal (...) implications of the TM for parental consent to research. In this situation, it is potentially the parent who is vulnerable to TM. In our analysis we not only consider the context of informed consent for research but also the wider environment in which the value of research is promoted, more broadly through the media but also more specifically through the communication strategies of patient organizations. All dissemination about developments in research for health runs the risk of portraying an overly optimistic view of the promise of biotechnological solutions and has the potential to encourage a ‘collective’ TM. In this paper we consider the challenge that TM presents to parents as well as explore the ethical and legal responsibilities of researchers to ensure an appropriately informed consent: compatible with a hopeful disposition of parents who consent for the their children whilst avoiding a blind and misleading optimism. (shrink)

Porté aux nues par les écrivains du XIXè siècle qui voyaient en lui le type même du poète maudit, Byron (1788-1824) a subi au XXè siècle un long purgatoire avant d'être enfin reconnu comme une personnalité littéraire de premier plan. Après les traductions en prose du siècle dernier qui, malgré leur mérite, n'offraient qu'un pâle reflet, on redécouvre aujourd'hui toute la virtuosité d'un poète qui jongle avec les rimes et les rythmes et qui demandait donc à être traduit en vers. (...) Ce choix de poèmes n'a d'autre ambition que de donner une meilleure idée de ses œuvres les plus célèbres. On y retrouva des poèmes de circonstances qui transcendent l'anecdote autobiographique, des morceaux de bravoure qui ont fait la réputation de Childe Harold et de Don Juan, sans oublier cet hymne vibrant à la liberté qu'est le Prisonnier de Chillon et, pour finir, la dernière tirade de Marino Faliero, drame peu connu en France et suprême hommage du poète anglais à la Venise de son imagination. (shrink)

In an increasingly complex military operating environment, next generation wargaming platforms can reduce risk, decrease operating costs, and improve overall outcomes. Novel Artificial Intelligence enabled wargaming approaches, based on software platforms with multimodal interaction and visualization capacity, are essential to provide the decision-making flexibility and adaptability required to meet current and emerging realities of warfighting. We highlight three areas of development for future warfighter-machine interfaces: AI-directed decisional guidance, computationally informed decision-making, and realistic representations of decision spaces. Progress in these areas (...) will enable development of effective human-AI collaborative decision-making, to meet the increasing scale and complexity of today’s battlespace. (shrink)

The ability to generate diverse ideas is valuable in solving creative problems ; yet, however advantageous, this ability is insufficient to solve the problem alone and requires the ability to logically deduce an assessment of correctness of each solution. Positive schizotypy may help isolate the aspects of divergent thinking prevalent in insight problem solving. Participants were presented with a measure of schizotypy, divergent and convergent thinking tasks, insight problems, and non-insight problems. We found no evidence for a relationship between schizotypy (...) and insight problem solving. Relationships between divergent thinking and insight problem solving were also surprisingly weak; however, measures of convergent thinking had a stronger relationship with problem solving. These results suggest that convergent thinking is more important than divergent thinking in problem solving. (shrink)

The field of deliberative democracy now generally recognizes the co-dependence of deliberation and voting. The field tends to emphasize what deliberation accomplishes for vote-based decisions. In this paper, we reverse this now common view to ask: In what ways does voting benefit deliberation? We discuss seven ways voting can complement and sometimes enhance deliberation. First, voting furnishes deliberation with a feasible and fair closure mechanism. Second, the power to vote implies equal recognition and status, both morally and strategically, which is (...) a condition of democratic deliberation. Third, voting politicizes deliberation by injecting the strategic features of politics into deliberation—effectively internalizing conflict into deliberative processes, without which they can become detached from their political environments. Fourth, anticipation of voting may induce authenticity by revealing preferences, as what one says will count. Fifth, voting preserves expressions of dissent, helping to push back against socially induced pressures for consensus. Sixth, voting defines the issues, such that deliberation is focused, and thus more likely to be effective. And, seventh, within contexts where votes are public—as in representative contexts, voting can induce accountability, particularly for one’s claims. We then use these points to discuss four general types of institutions—general elections, legislatures, minipublics, and minipublics embedded in referendum processes—that combine talking and voting, with the aim of identifying designs that do a better or worse job of capitalizing upon the strengths of each. (shrink)

Valid consent requires the potential research participant understands the information provided. We examined current practice in 50 proposed Clinical Trials of Investigational Medicinal Products to determine how this understanding is checked. The majority of the proposals ( n = 44) indicated confirmation of understanding would take place during an interactive conversation between the researcher and potential participant, containing questions to assess and establish understanding. Yet up until now, research design and review have not focussed upon this, concentrating more on written (...) material. We propose ways this interactive conversation can be documented, and the process of checking understanding improved. (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)