Mere Label Research Articles

Sociolinguistic study of kilba personal names

This paper delves into the sociolinguistic factors and semantic implications of Kilba names and naming systems. It explores how names are given in Kilba community, explaining the cultural and social meanings attached to names .The research method involves primary data collection from aged parents in the Hong local government of Adamawa State, as well as secondary sources such as books, journal articles, and online materials. Contextual and conventional theories of meaning were used as guide for the study. The analysis categorizes Kilba names names into five main groups based on their significance and origins. The findings highlight the importance of names as identifiers of individual personalities and reflect the unique circumstances or situations surrounding a child’s birth. This study concludes that the significance of names to Kilba people is beyond mere labels, but a reflection of socio-cultural values, beliefs, and experiences.

More than labels: neural representations of emotion words are widely distributed across the brain.

Although emotion words such as "anger," "disgust," "happiness," or "pride" are often thought of as mere labels, increasing evidence points to language as being important for emotion perception and experience. Emotion words may be particularly important for facilitating access to the emotion concepts. Indeed, deficits in semantic processing or impaired access to emotion words interfere with emotion perception. Yet, it is unclear what these behavioral findings mean for affective neuroscience. Thus, we examined the brain areas that support processing of emotion words using representational similarity analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging data (N = 25). In the task, participants saw 10 emotion words (e.g. "anger," "happiness") while in the scanner. Participants rated each word based on its valence on a continuous scale ranging from 0 (Pleasant/Good) to 1 (Unpleasant/Bad) scale to ensure they were processing the words. Our results revealed that a diverse range of brain areas including prefrontal, midline cortical, and sensorimotor regions contained information about emotion words. Notably, our results overlapped with many regions implicated in decoding emotion experience by prior studies. Our results raise questions about what processes are being supported by these regions during emotion experience.

Ill, but Still Attractive? The Impact of Mental Illness on Attractiveness Perceptions and Social Judgment.

In line with the "beautiful-is-good" heuristic, numerous studies show that physically attractive individuals are perceived in a more positive light. However, building on previous findings suggesting that the "beauty-good" relationship is bidirectional, the present research investigates how information on a stigmatized attribute impacts attractiveness perceptions and social judgments. Within a controlled experimental design, we present evidence that the mere label of mental illness (i.e., schizophrenia) decreased the positivity of personality evaluations and perceived attractiveness of a male target that had previously been validated to be highly attractive. Consistent with the "good-is-beautiful" heuristic, a mental illness label led to decreased perceptions of attractiveness, which was mediated by the inference of less positive personality characteristics. This finding lends further support for the bidirectional nature of the "beauty-good" relationship and provides a valuable avenue for future research on the multifaceted ways in which the stigma of mental illness affects social perceptions.

NUA 45, a dry bean cultivar, builds a subtle brand in Zimbabwe against all odds

Global business today is driven by brands, each with a unique story, but rarely of a product that is a public good. Building a brand requires careful planning, creativity, and an understanding of the target market. Borrowing from various brand concepts and frameworks, this paper explores how a government-bred common bean cultivar., NUA 45, defied the odds to create a new identity and association in Zimbabwe. Firstly, the cultivar overcame the general lack of promotion investment in government-bred (public) common bean cultivars. Secondly, being a red mottle-colored cultivar in a red-speckled (sugar type) bean-predominated country, NUA 45 had to break the preference typecasts. Thirdly, NUA 45 was among the first generation of biofortified bean cultivars enriched with iron (Fe) and zinc (Zn), some of the most sought-after micronutrients in a world ridden with hidden hunger. Overcoming these market barriers required a systematic approach to awareness creation, collaboration, and commercialization, avoiding the tragedy of the commons, and instead, achieving a win-win situation for all stakeholders. This entailed understanding the needs and preferences of different value chain actors, developing messages, and engaging local farmers, retailers, aggregators, and private and public sector partners to promote NUA 45. Lastly, developing compelling stories and leveraging digital channels to reach new customers that sought personal experiences, moved the cultivar name from a mere label to a spontaneously endorsed lifestyle and a brand that ‘spread like wildfire’ across the country and the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) region. The NUA 45 brand broke new ground for other biofortified bean cultivars and non-sugar bean cultivars. Following its release in seven other countries, NUA 45 pioneered listing on the SADC regional variety catalog.

Perceptions and assessments of socialism versus the US System: experimental evidence

ABSTRACT We address three main research questions in this paper. Do U.S. citizens have a realistic view of the U.S. political and economic system? Do citizens have a realistic view of what socialism looks like in most other Western style democracies? And finally, are differences between perception and reality modified by partisan identification and ideology? We run survey experiments with college students in two national universities located in the South in which we randomly ask respondents to evaluate political and economic systems based on either a label (“Socialism” or “The US System”) or a reasonable description of these systems’ main characteristics. Results. Across all participants, the label “Socialism” is slightly less preferred, but respondents are neutral between descriptions of a Socialist system and the current US system. Partisan and ideological differences are evident, however, as Democrats and Liberals rank the descriptions and labels of each system equally (indicating positive perceptions of Socialism), while Republicans and Conservatives assess the description of Socialism much more favorably than the mere label. Our results suggest that partisans do not simply differ in their evaluation of Socialism, but in the conception of what Socialism is. There also appear to be discrepancies in perceptions among partisans about how the US political and economic system is organized, but surprising agreement in evaluating the system as it exists.

Bridging the empathy gap: or not? Reactions to ingroup and outgroup facial expressions

AbstractPrior research suggests that group membership impacts behavioral and self-reported responses to others’ facial expressions of emotion. In this paper, we examine how the mere labelling of a face as an ingroup or outgroup member affects facial mimicry (Study 1) and judgments of genuineness (Study 2). In addition, we test whether the effects of group membership on facial mimicry and perceived genuineness are moderated by the presence of tears (Study 1) and the motivation to cooperate (Study 2). Results from both studies revealed group-specific biases in facial mimicry and judgments of genuineness. However, introducing cooperative goals abolished differences in judgments of genuineness of facial expressions displayed by ingroup and outgroup members. Together, the findings provide insights into how intergroup biases in emotion perception operate and how they can be reduced by introducing cooperative goals.

Classification of halal hotels based on industrial perceived value: a study of Indonesia and Thailand

PurposeThe research aims to classify halal hotels based on Islamic values as embodied in both physical and non-physical attributes.Design/methodology/approachThis study explores the perceived values of business owners of the halal hotels.FindingsPerceptions of hotel owners are divided into three types: those who view the value of halal hotel only in terms of branding and attracting consumers; those who consider the ideology behind halal hotels based on strong Islamic values; and those who avoid halal branding but implement Islamic values in their hotels. For the hotel industry, halal certification is not a priority because a minimum effort at implementing halal standards can already attract Muslim customers. This case is especially true for countries where Muslims make up the majority of the population.Research limitations/implicationsThis study was limited to a case study in Bandung and Bangkok as a representative of halal tourism in Asia. Hence, it could be extended by conducting comparative studies with other cities in Association of South East Asian Nation which already declare to develop halal tourism.Practical implicationsThe findings of this research show that there is a large variety of halal hotel products, depending on the Islamic values upheld, which is causing difficulties for the government in creating standards. Then the result can help inform the government in establishing the strategic framework of halal tourism development, more particularly in the formulation of policy for industrial actors.Originality/valueThe findings contribute to the concept of product-centered business, in which it is generally assumed that industrial actors are frequently focused on the mere label of “halal” and ignore the true values. However, the research shows that some industrial actors put Islamic values first instead of the mere halal label, and another case shows that some of them implement Islamic values in their business but avoid halal branding. This empirical evidence shows that in halal hotels, the concept of product-centered is not always proper. The quality of halal hotel products depends on the Islamic value of the owner, not always influenced by business imperatives.

Labelling affects agreement with political statements of right-wing populist parties.

In light of the recent rise of right-wing populist parties across Europe, it is an intriguing question under which conditions people agree with right-wing political statements. The present study investigates whether mere labelling of political statements as endorsed by a right-wing populist party influences people's agreement with such statements. In the study (pre-registered; N = 221 German voters), it is shown than that supporters of the right-wing populist party indicated higher agreement with the statements when they were labelled as being endorsed by the party (vs. not labelled), whereas non-supporters indicated lower agreement with the labelled than with the non-labelled statements. We conclude that labelling of the very same political statements changes voters' agreement with these statements. The results imply that rather than (dis)agreeing with the content of the statements per se, people may (dis)agree with right-wing populist statements because they come from a specific source (i.e., the right-wing populist party).

Exploring the Relation Between Q Methodology and Phenomenology: Designing Conditions of Instruction Based on the Phenomenological Concepts of Variation and Horizons

This article investigates the relation between Q methodology and phenomenology. The common characteristics of Q and phenomenology have been discussed by Q methodologists, but these discussions have remained at an abstract level. They look at how Q is close to the aims of phenomenology, but they provide little guidance on how to apply Q in a more phenomenological manner. As a result, phenomenology can easily become a mere label rather than a mode of enquiry. This can lead to overlooking important aspects when elaborating research designs for Q studies. It also leads phenomenologists to discard Q as a tool to achieve their goals. The contribution of this article lies not only in linking the purpose of Q to phenomenology but also in the identification of elements that can be manipulated by the researcher when designing a Q study in order to collect and analyze Q data in a phenomenological way. We suggest that the tools used by phenomenologists, specifically variations, can be applied in Q to improve the quality of the data collected. A framework is proposed to identify variations based on the different horizons described in phenomenology, supported by an illustrative single-case study.

Source memory for advertisements: The role of advertising message credibility

Advertising is seen as an untrustworthy source because of the perceived self-interest of the advertisers in presenting product information in a biased or misleading way. Regulations require advertising messages in print and online media to be labeled as advertisements to allow recipients to take source information into account when judging the credibility of the messages. To date, little is known about how these source tags are remembered. Research within the source-monitoring framework suggests that source attributions are not only based on veridical source memory but are often reconstructed through schematic guessing. In two experiments, we examined how the credibility of advertising messages affects these source attribution processes. The source of the messages affected judgments of credibility at the time of encoding, but the source tags were forgotten after a short period of time. Retrospective source attributions in the absence of memory for the source tags were strongly influenced by the a priori credibility of the messages: Statements with a low a priori credibility were more likely to be (mis)attributed to advertising than statements with high a priori credibility. These findings suggest that the mere labeling of untrustworthy sources is of limited use because source information is quickly forgotten and memory-based source attributions are strongly biased by schematic influences.

Regulating the Scope of Employment in the Gig Economy: Towards Enhanced Rights at Work in the Age of Uber

The growth of the gig economy sector presents challenges for employment lawyers. Firms such as Uber label their workforce as ‘independent contractors’, meaning many in the gig economy often lie outside the parameters of employment protection laws. Fortunately, recent cases show that courts are not prevented by the mere label of ‘independent contractor’ from holding those working in the gig economy as workers. However, as this paper argues, it is not satisfactory to rely solely on litigation to enhance rights at work in the gig economy. The Taylor Review 2017 suggests that updatingstatutory definitions of personal scope is needed to address the issue. Many commentators and think tanks have labelled this proposal as too pragmatic and argue that a uniform testof employment is preferable. The main thesis of this paper is that pragmatic change, building on the progress made in case law, would be more effective. This is because the retention of an intermediary category of worker, or ‘dependent contractor’, allowsfor both flexibility and enhanced rights. Nonetheless, the government has not implemented any form of legislative change, meaning that over one million people in the gig economy remain without the rights they should be entitled to. This paper concludes that legislative change is therefore greatly needed to protect gig economy workers.

Self-associated stimuli produce stronger intentional binding.

Self-generated actions are important for survival; they influence perception, especially the subjective time between the action and its outcome, known as intentional binding (IB). Whereas most studies on IB have examined the role of action being associated with the self or not, the role of the outcome being associated with the self or not has received less attention. The major models or mechanisms proposed to explain IB do not explicitly discuss the role of self-association without confounding it with intentionality, causality, and prediction. In this study for the 1st time, we used the self-related processing paradigm to investigate the importance of self-association in IB and the potential importance of postdictive mechanisms in self-associated IB. We used a shape-label matching task to associate different identities like self, friend, and stranger with different geometrical shapes like circle, square, and triangle. After the shape-label matching task, participants performed an IB task, in which they estimated the perceived magnitude of the duration between the action and the ensuing outcome. All the outcomes in this task were unpredictable and were not causally related to any particular action. Results revealed that participants reported the perceived interval between their action and the self-associated outcome to be shorter (i.e., stronger IB) compared to a friend- or stranger-associated outcome, demonstrating that mere labeling of a neutral geometrical shape with self leads to stronger IB. The results point to a potentially important role of postdictive mechanisms in IB and agency associated with self-related processing, which is independent of causality and prediction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

A Wolf in the City: Tyranny and the Tyrant in Plato's Republic by Cinzia Arruzza

Reviewed by: A Wolf in the City: Tyranny and the Tyrant in Plato's Republic by Cinzia Arruzza Mark A. Johnstone Cinzia Arruzza. A Wolf in the City: Tyranny and the Tyrant in Plato's Republic. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. xi + 296. Cloth, $74.00. In this excellent book, Cinzia Arruzza offers the first book-length study of Plato's prominent treatment, in the Republic, of tyranny and the tyrannical character type. The book is divided into two parts of roughly equal length, entitled "Tyranny and Democracy" and "The Tyrant's Soul," each subdivided into three chapters. Part I focuses on Plato's political thought, and Part II on his moral psychology. Although the two parts could be read independently, Arruzza insists, rightly, that they inform and enhance each other, and are best read together. This reflects her conviction that the psychological and political strands in the Republic are inextricably intertwined. Arruzza's main claims in Part I are that Plato's detailed depictions of tyranny and the tyrant in Republic 9 (i) represent an amalgam of well-established literary tropes, not a critique of some specific historical individual or regime, and (ii) are best understood as part of his attack on democracy. Both claims are grounded in the idea, defended in chapter 1, that common depictions of tyranny in (primarily fifth-century) Greek literature played an important role in shaping democratic self-understanding. Specifically, Arruzza argues, negative literary depictions of tyranny served as a kind of "inverted mirror" in which democrats might "contemplate the key features of democratic practice by way of opposition" (9). Plato's key move in the Republic, Arruzza maintains, was to unsettle democrats' use of tyranny as an inverted mirror by identifying as the opposite of tyranny, not democracy, but rather a society ruled by philosophers. Indeed, Plato goes further: democracy is not only not the opposite of tyranny, but also tyranny's natural progenitor—both because a regime ruled by popular opinion will be susceptible to capture by a demagogue, and also because democracy's valorization of freedom (understood merely as lack of constraint) and characteristic hedonism naturally lead people to aspire to the tyrant's life. Arruzza's claims here are original, well defended, and plausible. Her interpretation also explains some features of the Republic that have puzzled or frustrated interpreters: Plato's stereotypical and exaggerated depiction of the tyrant; his portrait's failure to align with any particular historical figure; his low ranking of democracy among corrupt regimes; and his claim that tyranny naturally "grows" out of democracy. The book's first part also nicely illustrates two general features of Arruzza's approach to Plato. The first is her focus [End Page 750] on Plato's appropriations of literary tropes for his own distinctive purposes (the image of the tyrant as a wolf is a prominent example running through the book). The second is her opposition to any tendency to "prune" Plato—that is, to try to "save him from himself" by marginalizing strains of his thought that go against the grain of modern sensibilities, including his critique of democracy (4–5). The second part of the book explores the psychology of Plato's tyrant. Its three chapters correspond to the three parts of the Republic's tripartite soul: "appetite," "spirit," and "reason." Arruzza takes as her working hypothesis a moderate form of "realism" about parts of the soul: they are real entities, not mere labels for kinds of desire, but do not each have their own reasoning powers. Her main claims are: (i) Plato depicts the tyrannical man as governed by appetite and eros (which is sexual, but not itself an appetite); (ii) spirit, best understood as a "drive to self-assertion" (193), plays an important and underrecognized role in the tyrant's psyche (Plato's imagery of the tyrant as a wolf reflects the hardened and corrupt state of his soul's spirited part); and (iii) the tyrant has strong intellectual capacities (his enslaved rational part remains active; indeed, he is a person of great talent: a "philosophical nature gone astray" [247]). Arruzza's discussion of the tyrant's moral psychology is sophisticated, rich, and nuanced. Especially...

Dancing with cranes: a humanist perspective on cultural ecosystem services of wetlands

Cultural ecosystem services (CES) are important spatial elements providing humans with recreational, esthetic, spiritual, and other benefits. Yet, because of their immaterial, subjective, qualitative, and unmeasurable nature, this means that scientists, decision-makers, and general public often find their value difficult to grasp. We enrich the CES approach with theoretical insights from humanist geography, where we frame CES as arising from perpetual interactions between humans and their environment. Places are formed through various processes, both organic and planned, which endow people with unique identities, experiences, capabilities, knowledge, and skills. We use the rural wetland area of Lake Hornborga, Sweden, with its complex history of restoration phases, to explore the profound interrelations between environmental spaces and cultural practices expressed in the everyday activities of learning, playing, creating, caring, producing, and consuming. The data was collected through qualitative methods, including interviews, observations, and a focused group interview, in order to capture these unique senses and experiences. Thefindings outline CES as key drivers behind the formation of place, rather than mere labels for inventorying benefits people receive from nature. The presence of the iconic migratory crane is especially conducive to a positive sense of place and the practice of various activities, including tourism, around the wetland. We frame the implications for planning and future research of our findings within a context of ethics.

Detecting Carbon Emission Disclosure Management

This paper measures empirically the extent to which firms manipulate their carbon emission disclosures. Whereas many studies provide empirical evidence for earnings management, the quantitative literature is silent with respect to firms’ intention to manage non-financial disclosures. We fill this gap and develop an empirical model to evaluate whether firms manipulate carbon disclosure in their favor after having incurred environmental controversy costs. Our analyses are based on all firms for which carbon emissions data are available in the Asset4 database. We measure carbon emission disclosure management in two ways: 1) as the (in)consistency between the sign of changes in cost of goods sold (input) and changes in carbon emissions (output), and 2) as the residual from a regression of changes in reported carbon emissions (outputs) on changes in cost of goods sold, depreciation, selling and general administrative expenses, and other operating expenses (inputs). We find support for our hypothesis that firms engage more frequently in decreasing emission disclosure management around years in which they incurred environmental controversy costs. We find no evidence that audits of sustainability reports prevent environmental disclosure management. Thus, external assurance is not able to mitigate the problem of biased environmental disclosures. We attribute this finding to the limited assurance of sustainability report audits. Our findings have implications for the audit profession, which should revise its practice of providing only limited assurance levels on CSR reports and ought to start to transition from a mere labelling to a thorough auditing process. Our results imply that investors and other stakeholders should treat carbon emission disclosures with caution.

CIOMS guidelines remain conservative about vulnerability and social justice.

This paper begins by considering how the revised CIOMS guidelines have progressed beyond a mere labelling approach in the handling of vulnerability.. However, progress is limited as the guidelines remain fixated on voluntariness and harm reduction or prevention. Although these are important considerations, vulnerability could also serve as a robust analytic for the evaluation of situational and pathogenic (or structural) contributions to susceptibilities to harm. They could also provide better guidance on how to differentiate among varying types and degrees of harm, rather than merely noting their presence. The paper concludes by considering vulnerability in relation to especially vulnerable children in health research.

What is physics? The individual and the universal, and seeing past the noise

Along with weaving together observations, experiments, and theoretical constructs into a coherent mesh of understanding of the world around us, physics over its past five centuries has continuously refined the base concepts on which the whole framework is built. In quantum physics, first in non-relativistic mechanics and later in quantum field theories, even familiar concepts of position, momentum, wave or particle, are derived constructs from the classical limit in which we live but not intrinsic to the underlying physics. Most crucially, the very idea of the individual, whether an object or an event, distinguished only in a mere label of identity from others identical to it in all the physics, exists only as an approximation, not an element of underlying reality. Failure to recognize this and seeking alternative explanations in many worlds or multiverses leads only to incoherent logic and incorrect physics. As an example, in a physical system such as an atom in a particular state, physics deals with the universal system of all such atoms but makes no meaningful prediction of the position of an electron or the time of decay of any specific atom. Those are incidental, entirely random among all possible positions and times, even while physics makes very precise predictions for the distribution of the outcomes in measurements on atoms in that state. Physics deals with the universal, not the individual.

Stigmatizing effects of psychological diagnosis in children

Despite the known advantages of the classification of psychological disorders, using formal diagnostic could reduce a story of life and way of behaving to a mere diagnostic label, becoming a tautological explanation that ignores the true explanation of the problem and adds iatrogenic functions and stigmatizing. The present study assesses the influence of diagnostic labels in the performance of psychologists who evaluate the intelligence of a group of children. The Goodenough Test is used for instrumental reasons. The different drawings of a human figure, made by children with standardized psychological development, were labeled as if having been drawn by children with mental retardation, giftedness and normal development. The results show that evaluators, unaware of the falsity of the diagnoses, score the drawings differentially depending on the diagnostic label used. That is, the results evidence the negative influence of a diagnostic label about expectations and treatment to the person diagnosed.

Stigmatizing effects of psychological diagnosis in children

Despite the known advantages of the classification of psychological disorders, using formal diagnostic could reduce a story of life and way of behaving to a mere diagnostic label, becoming a tautological explanation that ignores the true explanation of the problem and adds iatrogenic functions and stigmatizing. The present study assesses the influence of diagnostic labels in the performance of psychologists who evaluate the intelligence of a group of children. The Goodenough Test is used for instrumental reasons. The different drawings of a human figure, made by children with standardized psychological development, were labeled as if having been drawn by children with mental retardation, giftedness and normal development. The results show that evaluators, unaware of the falsity of the diagnoses, score the drawings differentially depending on the diagnostic label used. That is, the results evidence the negative influence of a diagnostic label about expectations and treatment to the person diagnosed.

Sami Place Names and Maps: Transmitting Knowledge of a Cultural Landscape in Contemporary Contexts

ABSTRACTFor the Sami people, place names provide the basis for the transmission of a cultural landscape, through an oral way of mapping built around narratives and the designation of specific landmarks. Based on interviews with members of a mountain-based reindeer herding community in Sweden, we found that their transmission is today ensured through continued oral tradition but also by the increasing use of maps. However, because they follow the western cartographic tradition, official maps are unable to express the continual renewal of Sami place names and the land features that are meaningful to the Sami, and thus fail to convey toponymic knowledge. Inscribing place names on maps transforms them into mere labels: toponymic knowledge has to be transmitted along with its context of emergence, situated at the crossroads of cognitive, perceptive, emotional, and social dimensions. There is an urgent need to conceive new forms of cartography that can guarantee the transmission of toponymic knowledge to future generations, maintaining the relationship that binds the Sami to their environment.