Hidden Influence Research Articles

Online Manipulation: Hidden Influences in a Digital World

Privacy and surveillance scholars increasingly worry that data collectors can use the information they gather about our behaviors, preferences, interests, incomes, and so on to manipulate us. Yet what it means, exactly, to manipulate someone, and how we might systematically distinguish cases of manipulation from other forms of influence — such as persuasion and coercion — has not been thoroughly enough explored in light of the unprecedented capacities that information technologies and digital media enable. In this paper, we develop a definition of manipulation that addresses these enhanced capacities, investigate how information technologies facilitate manipulative practices, and describe the harms — to individuals and to social institutions — that flow from such practices. We use the term “online manipulation” to highlight the particular class of manipulative practices enabled by a broad range of information technologies. We argue that at its core, manipulation is hidden influence — the covert subversion of another person’s decision-making power. We argue that information technology, for a number of reasons, makes engaging in manipulative practices significantly easier, and it makes the effects of such practices potentially more deeply debilitating. And we argue that by subverting another person’s decision-making power, manipulation undermines his or her autonomy. Given that respect for individual autonomy is a bedrock principle of liberal democracy, the threat of online manipulation is a cause for grave concern.

EVALUATIVE RESPONSES IN MODERN ENGLISH FICTION

The process of communication implies information exchange, mutual influence, and evaluation of speakers. An addressee is an important participant of this process, yet little is known about him as a person who receives and evaluates an addresser’s utterance. This is particularly significant because the addressee influences the further course of communication by his/her own responses due to the rules of turn taking. An evaluative response is thus an evaluative speech act that serves as the perlocutionary effect of an addresser’s utterance and simultaneously expresses some intention concerning an interlocutor. The present paper aims to identify, classify and analyse the types of evaluative responses from a pragmatic perspective. The empirical material consists of 30 modern American and British novels, or 3400 dialogues containing evaluative responses. The theoretical basis of the investigation integrates the main principles of pragmalinguistics and speech act theory. In view of this, we suggested a pragmatic typology of evaluative responses based on an addressee’s speech reaction to the received stimulus. The study claims the universality of an evaluative response as a speech act. It may provide not only emotional perception of reality but also contribute to its adequate comprehension and even exert direct or hidden influence on verbal and nonverbal actions of an interlocutor.

Is Hatred a Major Factor Determining the Contemporary Social Imaginary? / Ist der Hass ein bestimmender Faktor des gegenwärtigen sozialen Imaginären?

Summary In my paper, I analyze hate as one of the important factors that influence and structuralize the symbolic sphere. In the first step, I define the notion of “symbolic sphere”. Then, I analyze hate from the phenomenological and psychoanalytical points of view. My next step is a historical digression, concerning the place of hate in the social order. Next, I describe some important phenomena of the contemporary societies conditioned by the influence of hatred. Finally, I investigate which notions of the social theory are adequate to describe this kind of phenomena. Hate has been most frequently apprehended as a sudden eruption of bare violence. It was supposed to transform the symbolic sphere through sharp, directly aggressive, and often unexpected actions. Nevertheless, in societies wherein the symbolic legitimization of the political and social order was established as the consequence of the Second World War, a deep change in the attitude toward the bare and direct expression of violence took place. Acts of hate in the public sphere became morally delegitimized and symbolically repressed. We should ask then: if the bare violence and the hate determining this violence disappeared from the sphere of social praxis, although they still shape the social imaginary, how are they really founded? Thus, to answer these questions, I will have to ask not about the direct impact of hatred, but about its hidden influence.

Evagrius and his Legacy. Edited by Joel Kalvesmaki and Robin Darling Young

In recent years there has been an explosion of scholarly interest in the thought and writings of Evagrius of Pontus. This is due largely to the increasing availability of accessible translations of his work; most of the Greek corpus was translated into English in 2003 by Robert Sinkewicz, and works preserved only in Syriac are now being translated and becoming more widely known. The twelve essays in this volume include work from leading Evagrian scholars whose purpose is to show how in spite of the controversies which ruined his reputation Evagrius’s thought has been massively influential in the development of the Christian spiritual tradition. In the introduction the editors argue that Evagrius should not be seen primarily as a desert solitary; he was a philosopher and theologian in the tradition of Clement and Origen, deeply biblical and Christian, but also steeped in the assumptions and practices of Hellenistic mind-training. Columba Stewart traces the diverse ways in which Evagrius’s thought continued to develop in two very different worlds beyond Byzantium, both in the Latin and the Syriac churches. In parts of the Syrian world, Evagrius was freely mentioned, quoted, and even regarded as a saint; in the Latin-speaking world the teacher disappears under the cloud of condemnation, though the teaching remains, disguised and transformed by John Cassian and Gregory the Great and continuing to have a hidden influence on western monasticism. Anthony J. Watson adds to this a survey of Evagrius’s influence on Christian thought in Persia and central Asia, where works lost in Greek and Latin circles continued to be freely circulated.

Groundwater: A Hidden Influence on River Shape

A new study shows how groundwater influences river dynamics and channel pattern.

A Centennial Symposium in Honor of Josiah Royce

Josiah Royce died on September 14th, 1916, and the Josiah Royce Society and the Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society have collaborated on a special issue honoring his centennial. After a brief sketch of the history and current state of Royce scholarship, I introduce six papers that were selected under the theme of “Royce’s Hidden Influence(s).” Three concern his relation to German philosophy other than Hegel (Fichte, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer), one revisits a 1916 Festschrift, and two look at his influence on twentieth century thought via C.I. Lewis and Howard Thurman.

Identifying latent dynamic components in biological systems.

In computational systems biology, the general aim is to derive regulatory models from multivariate readouts, thereby generating predictions for novel experiments. In the past, many such models have been formulated for different biological applications. The authors consider the scenario where a given model fails to predict a set of observations with acceptable accuracy and ask the question whether this is because of the model lacking important external regulations. Real‐world examples for such entities range from microRNAs to metabolic fluxes. To improve the prediction, they propose an algorithm to systematically extend the network by an additional latent dynamic variable which has an exogenous effect on the considered network. This variable's time course and influence on the other species is estimated in a two‐step procedure involving spline approximation, maximum‐likelihood estimation and model selection. Simulation studies show that such a hidden influence can successfully be inferred. The method is also applied to a signalling pathway model where they analyse real data and obtain promising results. Furthermore, the technique can be employed to detect incomplete network structures.

The hidden influence on the Shape of Training

Medical education and postgraduate medical training in the United Kingdom have undergone much government reorganisation in recent years. The most recent structural upheavals came in the form of Modernising Medical Careers and the Medical Training Application Service, whose rushed introduction in 2007 led to a protest march by doctors, national news headlines, professorial resignations, and ministerial apologies. This personal perspective on the Shape of Training review sits in the context of this history, showing how these past events have quickly been forgotten and important lessons ignored.1 The independent Shape of Training review aimed to look at the current and future healthcare needs of patients in the United Kingdom and how medical training can match these needs. The Shape of Training review steering group (including the four UK health departments, Health Education England, National Education Scotland, and other major professional medical organisations) appointed David Greenaway, professor of economics at the University of Nottingham, as chair in February 2012. The review’s recommendations were published at the end of 2013 and included proposals to train more generalist doctors, introduce shorter training programmes, and change the point of full General Medical Council (GMC) …

Rendering of manipulative implicitness' means in business discource translation (based on German advertising letters

The article reviews the occurrence of linguistic manipulation, which has a hidden influence on an addressee. The study of business discourse focuses on business correspondence, represented by different text types according to their functional feature. The author characterizes the structure and functions of an advertising letter that has hidden impact on an addressee. The notion of linguistic manipulation is defined and the role of implicit information in the process of false conclusions‘ inducing is pointed out within the study. It is also mentioned that the implicit sense of advertising letters is based on sense riddle, which is decoded by the knowledge of extratextual reality. The article points out the major types of linguistic manipulations and expressive language means for their realization, summarizes the process of identification and representation of implicit information. The author figures out the types of implicit senses according to representation methods and means of implicit information. The process of implicit information rendering is emphasized, which is dedicated to evaluative presuppositions, implemented through the evaluative vocabulary and rhetorical figures. The article stresses that the latters help an addressee to extract necessary information owing the determination of relationships of cause and effect between the components of an utterance. The process of deducing the conventional, subject and communicative implicatures is taken into consideration. The article uncovers the peculiarities of conventional implicatures and their indicators. The author points out that an addressee implements his / her convictions and stereotyped concepts for the subject implicature deduction, which may provoke the false conclusions. It is also stressed that the conventional meaning of used words and their referents, cooperative principle and its maxims, the context of an utterance and background knowledge are needed for deducing the communicative implicature providing that above mentioned information is relevant to both communication participants. The article summarizes the major peculiarities and methods of representation the manipulative implicitness in German advertising letters‘ translation.

Anxious or Differentiation? The Impacting of the New Generation of Migrant Workers’ Growing Demand Strength on Their Organizational Identification and Intra-Job Embedded

After getting rid of the survival of rationality among the first generation of migrant workers, 160 million population of new generation of migrant workers in China are treating migrant to work in cities as seeking better lifestyle changes and more development needs. They have more work high expectations and are more focused on self-realization of career. However, in the face of institutional barriers and social exclusion, what were the hidden influence factors that impacted their organizational identity and embedded for their behaviors as helpless and differentiation? From the perspective of growth need strength, this article has selected the relevant measurement scales to verify their positive and interference effect of the new generation of migrant workers embedded within organizational identification. The results show that growth need strength influences positively on their organizational identification and intra-job embeddedness. The effecting relation is also interfered partially by their growth need strength. Conclusions can enhance the organizational identification and job intra-embeddedness, and improve their performance of the new generation of migrant workers.

Unconstrained Strategies and the Variance-Kurtosis Trade-Off

In this paper, we study unconstrained strategies through a re-specification of classic meanvariance utility and, as a reference implementation, a long-only strategy based on Canadian and U.S. bond markets. First, we capture the underlying economic forces that drive benchmark indices in the two economies as orthogonal components of yields. We find that bond indices in the two markets are sensitive to components that account for lesser total yield variability. Next, we develop a new polynomial utility function that captures the kurtosis effects found in the sensitivities to lower-eigenvector components. In our unconstrained strategy, excess kurtosis triggers portfolio adjustments and the resulting returns outperform those of traditional meanvariance optimization. The re-specified utility function introduces iso-risk contour lines that account for abrupt adjustments of portfolios to eigenvectors of hidden influence.

Unconstrained strategies and the variance-kurtosis trade-off

In this article, we study unconstrained strategies through a respecification of classic mean-variance utility and, as a reference implementation, a long-only strategy based on Canadian and US bond markets. First, we capture the underlying economic forces that drive benchmark indices in the two economies as orthogonal components of yields. We find that bond indices in the two markets are sensitive to components that account for lesser total yield variability. Next, we develop a new polynomial utility function that captures the kurtosis effects found in the sensitivities to lower-eigenvector components. In our unconstrained strategy, excess kurtosis triggers portfolio adjustments and the resulting returns outperform those of traditional mean-variance optimization. The respecified utility function introduces iso-risk contour lines that account for abrupt adjustments of portfolios to eigenvectors of hidden influence.

Iso-Effect Contours and Implications About Bond Market Strategy

Canadian bonds move with U.S. markets, in relationships that are captured by orthogonal components of yields in these two economies. At the same time, U.S. and Canadian bond indices are sensitive to components that account for a lesser proportion of total variability in yields. The mean-variance optimization model underperforms these indices as it does not capture this sensitivity to the lesser components. A re-specified utility function introduces iso-effect contour lines that account for abrupt adjustments of portfolios to the eigenvectors of hidden influence. A trading rule derived from this function outperforms the indices, using data from the 2008 crisis. The investor is provided a tool to decide if risk is justified based on the associated iso-effect contour lines.

The Relationships Between Suggestibility, Influenceability, and Relaxability

This research explores the relationships between relaxability and various aspects of suggestibility and influenceability. The Jacobson Progressive Muscle Relaxation procedure was used to induce relaxation. Tests of direct suggestibility, relating to the susceptibility of overt suggestions, and indirect suggestibility, referring to indirect hidden influence, as well as self-description questionnaires on suggestibility and the tendency to comply were used. Thayer's Activation-Deactivation Adjective Check List, measuring various kinds of activation and used as a pre- and posttest, determined the efficacy of the relaxation procedure. Indirect, direct, and self-measured suggestibility proved to be positively related to the ability to relax, measured by Thayer's subscales relating to emotions. Compliance was not related to relaxability. The results are discussed in terms of the aspects of relaxation training connected with suggestibility.

Thomas Aquinas on the Emotions

Despite its enormous historical influence, Thomas Aquinas’s account of the emotions has been neglected since the early modern period. Recently however, it has been drawing renewed attention from scholars in a number of disciplines. This paper gives an overview of Aquinas’s account of the emotions and the state of contemporary scholarship. It describes his fundamentally positive attitude toward desire and emotion, and then it shows the centrality of his theory of the emotions to his ethics and his understanding of virtue. In the course of its argument, the paper examines the relationship between reason and emotion, the inseparable link between emotion and virtue, the influence of Christology on Aquinas’s understanding of the emotions, and the moral normativity of unspecified passion. It also compares Aquinas to David Hume. Finally, it proposes a tentative explanation for why Aquinas was motivated to give more attention to emotion in his writings than any previous philosopher or theologian, and it discusses Aquinas’s hidden influence in contemporary philosophy and theology of emotion.

Playing In or Out of Character: User Role Differences in the Experience of Interactive Storytelling

Interactive storytelling (IS) is a promising new entertainment technology synthesizing preauthored narrative with dynamic user interaction. Existing IS prototypes employ different modes to involve users in a story, ranging from individual avatar control to comprehensive control over the virtual environment. The current experiment tested whether different player modes (exerting local vs. global influence) yield different user experiences (e.g., senses of immersion vs. control). A within-subject design involved 34 participants playing the cinematic IS drama "Emo Emma"( 1 ) both in the local (actor) and in global (ghost) mode. The latter mode allowed free movement in the virtual environment and hidden influence on characters, objects, and story development. As expected, control-related experiential qualities (effectance, autonomy, flow, and pride) were more intense for players in the global (ghost) mode. Immersion-related experiences did not differ over modes. Additionally, men preferred the sense of command facilitated by the ghost mode, whereas women preferred the sense of involvement facilitated by the actor mode.

Book Review: Numbers Rule your World: The Hidden Influence of Probability and Statistics on Everything you do

Book Review: Numbers Rule your World: The Hidden Influence of Probability and Statistics on Everything you do

The Simplicity Intuition and Its Hidden Influence on Philosophy of Mind

<i>The Simplicity Intuition and Its Hidden Influence on Philosophy of Mind</i>

Dad's hidden influence: A father's legacy to a child's health may start before conception and last generations

Dad's hidden influence: A father's legacy to a child's health may start before conception and last generations

The overselling of hormone replacement therapy.

The news that part of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) was stopped early because women treated with combined estrogen-progestin therapy experienced higher rates of breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, and overall harm has rocked women and physicians across the country. But the most important part of this story has received little attention: why did the medical and research community ever believe that hormone replacement therapy (HRT) prevented or treated disease? Not a single controlled trial has ever shown that HRT prevented cardiovascular disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, or wrinkles, nor that it was an effective treatment for depression or incontinence. For decades, physicians have acted as an unwitting volunteer sales force for pharmaceutical companies that have promoted HRT for disease prevention in the complete absence of controlled trials supporting this claim. Advertising and detailing have been only a small part of this campaign; far more effective is the hidden influence that pharmaceutical companies have on the information that physicians receive through continuing medical education activities, where the benefits of HRT had been espoused for decades.