Empirical or Normative Disagreements: A Critique of Yi & Phillips

Current theories of social cognition assume that implicit bias is influenced by early socialization experiences. To the extent that implicit biases reflect traces of past experiences, they should form slowly over time and grow with repeated experience. However, most research examining implicit bias in children indicates that levels of bias do not vary across age groups (i.e., age invariance). This article reviews the dominant theoretical interpretation of age invariance in implicit bias and considers alternative interpretations for these findings in light of several methodological and theoretical limitations. Specifically, the available evidence cannot distinguish between the effects of cohort versus development, category versus exemplar, attitude activation versus application, ingroup versus outgroup evaluation, or attitude-versus control-oriented processes. When considered from a developmental perspective, these issues suggest plausible alternative interpretations of age invariance, with important implications for understanding the mechanisms underlying the formation of implicit cognition and theories of implicit cognition.

Interest‐free loans are a common feature of low‐income rural economies. In much of the economics literature, lending at zero and positive interest are viewed as being highly segmented in the community, with interest‐free loans an essential component of long‐term mutual consumption agreements between households. An alternative interpretation is that zero‐interest loans are a credit contract that, in lieu of interest, includes an option allowing the lender to tax the borrower at a future date. This option can take a variety of forms, including the provision of labor or draft animal services or possibly a future loan. In this paper, we develop and test a model of household contract choice between zero– and positive–interest rate loans that builds on this alternative perspective. It highlights the role of borrower and lender attributes and the economic environment in which they interact in determining contract choice. Enforcement considerations are secondary. We use a unique household‐level data set for rural China for the mid‐1930s to examine key predictions of the model.

One of the difficulties with putting across messages about drug use is that the problem is more complicated than many of us would like to believe. The drug issue usually attracts our attention through media presentations which seek to reduce the issue to a single, instantly comprehensible message but in the process an inaccurate and largely false impression is created. Even amongst many drug workers and researchers, there is an avoidance of anything that smacks of theory, and a preference for action, even if that action is based on nothing more than personal prejudice and guesswork. Furthermore, stereotyped and inaccurate views of addiction are not uncommon even within the ranks of those who work intimately with drug problems, where there is all too frequently a lack of coherence in terms of the work carried out, and an unwillingness to consider alternative interpretations. Perhaps most of all, there is the belief that the 'truth' about the nature and causes of addiction can be revealed by methods which rely principally on asking people to answer questions or express opinions about their own or other people's drug use. However, answering questions and stating opinions are behaviours in their own right, which have dynamics all of their own. For these reasons, it is important to consider existing knowledge on the way people answer questions and explain their actions, since understanding these processes may yield fresh perspectives on the issue under investigation. The Myth of Addiction attempts to provide such an alternative perspective in the area of drug use and misuse. Whilst the ideas contained are not new, they represent a species of argument which is neglected, primarily because it is slightly more complicated than the more popular theories of drug use. The argument presented in The Myth of Addiction is basically that people take drugs because they want to, and because it makes sense for them to do so given the choices available, rather than because they are compelled to by the pharmacology of the drugs they take. Nonetheless, we generally prefer to conceptualise our drug abusers in terms which imply that their behaviour is not their own to control. This picture arises because it is the picture we want to have, and the view is supported by a body of data consisting largely of people's self reports, opinions and statements of belief. This body of data, whilst potentially of great value in certain respects, is frequently put to uses for which it is ill suited; it does not always mean what we think it means. When asked questions by members of the research establishment, it is functional for drug users to report that they are addicted, forced into theft, harassed by stressful life events, and driven into drug use by forces beyond their capacity to control. The central argument of this book is that such self reports have their own internal functional logic which is independent of reality, and that other research methods and forms of analysis would consequently produce a different picture. Furthermore, the fact that the explanations people provide for their behaviour make some reference to their own motives and intentions is hardly new; it is a central feature of social interaction, and not specific to drug users.

PurposeMuseums and academics collaborating to create knowledge and learning opportunities is a current innovative strand of museum theory and practice. Working together across boundaries, incorporating a range of communication tools both inside and outside of the exhibition, the objective is to make the past more accessible to adults and children alike. The paper reflects the authors’ respective recent experiences of presenting alternative perspectives and interpretations on history that mattered, namely, a unique exhibition and publication entitled Recovery: Women’s Overseas Service in World War One. The authors offer a number of “signposts” for museums and academics to consider ahead of embarking on collaborative projects. The paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approachTheorising and reflecting on the research and curation of a public history museum exhibition that included high levels of community engagement.FindingsThe authors offer a number of “signposts” for museums and academics to consider ahead of embarking on collaborative projects utilising a collective impact framework and argue that these “signposts” are likely pre-requisites for successful museum-academic partnerships.Originality/valueSuccessful partnerships and collaborations between the museum and the tertiary sector do not happen through goodwill and shared philosophies alone. This paper reflects the authors’ respective recent experiences of presenting alternative perspectives and interpretations on history that mattered, namely, a unique exhibition and publication entitled Recovery: Women’s Overseas Service in World War One.

"How did the Greeks discover incommensurability?" This is one of the most puzzling 'scripts' of the history of mathematics. The 'movie' usually shows a Pythagorean (Hippasus or Archytas for example) drawing a square with its diagonals (or a pentagon with its golden sections on sides and diagonals) (von Fritz 1944), or drawing dots in a square (Knorr 1975), or even making some computations (successive subtractions, ccvGixpocipeaic) (Fowler 1987), and exclaiming: "But this is impossible! If I am not wrong, this means that geometrical, continuous magnitudes cannot be reduced to numbers, discrete entities! Pythagoras was wrong!". Then a meeting of the sect takes place and all Pythagoreans swear to keep the secret of the 'scandal'. A Grundlagenkrisis for the ancient Pythagoreanism follows, for whose solution a brand new axiomatization will be necessary, which will lead to Eudoxus and Euclid. This movie deserves great attention because its scenes are the background of our modern perception of the mathematical continuum, and, at the same time, these scenes are forced by this perception. To question the movie means also to discuss the most basic and undisputed premises of our current philosophical view of mathematics. It is the aim of this paper to try to shed some light on the connection between the historical interpretation of the discovery of incommensurability and our idea of continuum: this is what I mean by a 'cognitive' approach. To this aim I am going to outline an alternative historical interpretation of the involved discovery, centered on music instead of geometry, which in turn suggests an alternative view of the continuum considered as something far from being 'natural' and 'empirical'. My aim is to address the music-theoretical origin of the discovery of incommensurability, together with the question why this origin was subsequently forgotten, while at the same time the theory of incommensurability was translated into a geometric form. I claim that there were two main reasons for both the oblivion and the translation: first, the negative character of this discovery vs. the positive character of the geometric version (side-diagonal of the square, or of the pentagon); second, the connected breakdown of the ancient musical-arithmetical idea of 'linear numerical magnitude'. This alternative perspective looks at mathematics as deeply involved in the whole culture, its discoveries being always perceived by the protagonists through the glasses of the general cognitive aspects of a civilization, so that I can say that nothing relevant in mathematics can be actually and distinctly discovered 'empirically' or 'by

This paper attempts to articulate the rise of ecological economics as a transdisciplinary approach on the research of sustainability. Intensive debates on the relationships between socio-economic development and ecological-environmental conservation have arisen since the 1960s. An emerging field of ecological economics has shifted the focus of the debates from limits of growth to sustainable development. This alternative interpretation goes beyond the perspective of neoclassical economics to view economy and humans as subsystems of ecosystems. In theory, the major objectives of ecological economics are to fill the gap between ecology and economics and to advocate a common framework that encourages productive dialogue and synthesis across a broad range of disciplines and approaches. In practice, it calls for control mechanisms to keep economic systems in balance with ecosystems. Highlighted is the view that ecological economics promotes a transdisciplinary approach that goes beyond the narrow boundaries of conventional disciplines to develop an alternative perspective on human-natural interactions as basis for effective policies for sustainability.

Background This study explores whether people with intellectual disabilities make links between events, beliefs and emotions in dialogues about real life, emotive events. Methods A cognitive-emotive interview was used to assist nineteen adults with intellectual disabilities and nineteen adults without disabilities in generating an account of an emotive, interpersonal event. Participants also completed a cognitive mediation task and an assessment of intellectual and verbal ability. Results Participants with intellectual disabilities generated fewer beliefs within their dialogues than those without disabilities and were less likely to provide alternative perspectives on events. The ability to make links between events, beliefs and emotions within a dialogue was not associated with performance on a cognitive mediation task, or with general or verbal IQ. Conclusions Participants with intellectual disabilities had more difficulty than those without disabilities in making links between events, beliefs and emotions. Within a therapeutic context, they are likely to require assistance to reflect on events and consider alternative interpretations, which take into account individual and environmental factors.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to consider existing debates within the sociology of work, particularly the re-emergence of labour process theory (LPT) and the “collective worker”, in relation to resistance at work. Through presentation of primary data and a dialectical discussion about the nature of ideology, the paper offers alternative interpretations on long-standing debates and raises questions about the efficacy of workplace resistance.Design/methodology/approachThe design of this methodology is an ethnographic study of a call centre in the North-East of England, a covert participant observation at “Call Direct” supplemented by semi-structured interviews with call centre employees.FindingsThe findings in this paper suggest that resistance in the call centre mirrors forms of resistance outlined elsewhere in both the call centre literature and classical workplace studies from the industrial era. However, in presenting an alternative interpretation of ideology, as working at the level of action rather than thought, the paper reinterprets the data and characterises workplace resistance as lacking the political potential for change often emphasised in LPT and other workplace studies.Originality/valueThe original contribution of this paper is in applying an alternative interpretation of ideology to a long-standing debate. In asking sociology of work scholars to consider the “reversal of ideology”, it presents an alternative perspective on resistance in the workplace and raises questions about the efficacy of workplace disobedience.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present an alternative perspective to the article on consumer vulnerability recently published in this journal by Russell-Bennett et al. (2024).Design/methodology/approachThe approach is collegial but firm in its analysis of their discussion about how vulnerable consumers feel and react, as offered without appropriate review and details from previous research.FindingsThe perspective given by the authors is found to lack sufficient substance and foundation in the consumer vulnerability literature across several leading journals in the field. Alternative interpretations are presented and articulated.Originality/valueAll ideas expressed as a counter to their arguments come from decades of experiences working with vulnerable peoples across multiple contexts and communities.

The paper generalizes and extends the 5 parameters of qualia required to generate subjective experience to physics. It presents the localization parameter and its relation to the collapse of the wave function to arrive at the plausible nature of physical universe and information field. Alternative interpretations and their merits are discussed with the merit of Information Field interpretation presented in this paper. Few important quantum experiments are reviewed in to substantiate and support the information field quantum interpretation. Finally, 8 postulates of information field are developed and enumerated towards the end of the paper. Alternate perspectives proposed historically about the nature of reality are discussed comprehensively. This paper exclusively discusses a new interpretation of non-relativistic quantum physics which does not by any means impact any of the already existing formulations of quantum mechanics.

Strategic alliances have attracted substantial attention from industry and academia over the past three decades. However, due to rapid technological evolution, saturated marketplaces, globalisation of businesses on the one hand and de‐globalisation of the market on the other (as marked by Brexit and the trade war between US and China, COVID‐19 pandemic and the Ukraine war), the strategic environment of businesses is changing quickly. Fundamental and rapid changes in the wider environment necessitate the review of theoretical and practical insights of earlier and emerging studies ‐ to examine the new challenges, issues and paradoxes of strategic alliances. This special issue attempts to provide a forum to allow researchers to question the assumptions underlying existing theory a little further beyond just “gap‐spotting” or “gap‐filling”. This special issue includes four very interesting literature review pieces, which venture deeper into the phenomenon, and explore the opportunities, issues and paradoxes of strategic alliances while adopting alternative theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches and interpretations to address issues of managing strategic alliances and maximising returns from them in the new strategic context.

The restarting of the peace process in the Middle East in 1993 raised the hopes of many in Israel for progress toward resolution of the Arab‐Israeli conflict. Yet the Oslo agreements raised not only hope but also fears. The latter triggered a deep schism and polarization within the Israeli society. These led to a delegitimization campaign by those opposing the peace process that was directed both against the rationale underlying the change of policies and its architects Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The escalation of polarization saw the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin and the seeming paradox of an election victory for the political rightist parties' candidate, Binyamin Netanyahu. Two Israeli social scientists present in dialogue form alternative psychopolitical perspectives and interpretations of the evolution of these critical events.

Mapping uncertainty of ICP-Forest biodiversity data: From standard treatment of diffusion to density-equalizing cartograms

This chapter tells the story of Nickelsdorf, a small Austrian municipality at the Hungarian border. It draws on fieldwork conducted there immediately after the ‘wave of refugees’ in the autumn of 2015. At that time, the Nickelsdorf border station was reactivated and assumed a key role as a site for managing the massive migratory flows. Using arts-based research methods, we show the value of capturing the experiences of border crossing in a period of a crisis bracketed by something like ‘normality’. The project engages with the scholarship on borders, infrastructure and mobilities and, in particular, with mapping methods. Together with local stakeholders, we retravelled sections of the refugee routes and visited the associated sites on bus tours open to the public. Narratives, experiences and insights from the research were translated into comic-style isometric drawings and an animated graphic novel – a technique of ‘mobilized’ representations – to add alternative perspectives and interpretations of the past to the cumulative processes of memory politics. We conceptualize both the live experience on site and the remaining artworks as ‘commemorative actions’, through which the tales of individual fates may trigger empathy and thereby help shape better responses to future crises.

The system of relationships and emotions that develop in the teaching-learning process define the complexity of teachers' education and pose the challenge of bringing out the emotional and affective culture that guides school life. Several studies on teaching practices highlight the tendency to refer to technical aspectsas a key dimension of professionalism, rather than on relational and emotional dimensions that can promote the relationship with student. The creative and unprecedented reconfiguration of professional practice is configured as the outcome of a reflexive process of subjective construction and de-construction of the profession and its development.The paper proposes a reflective training experience, which involved 76 teachers, focused on emotional and relational dimensions on teaching and based on the use of the narrative-autobiographical instruments (diary, narrative, metaphor). The results achieved in the monitoring phase show that the training offered an opportunity to reflect on oneself and one's personal and professional experience, starting from the use of alternative perspectives and interpretations than those that are already in use