Neutral Perspective Research Articles

Effects of a brief cognitive reappraisal intervention on reductions in alcohol consumption and related problems.

Research has shown links between interpersonal conflict and problematic drinking behaviors as a way to cope. The present research examined the effects of a brief interpersonal conflict cognitive reappraisal intervention on short-term reductions in alcohol-related problems in a sample of college student drinkers. Undergraduates who were regular drinkers (N = 190) participated in a randomized control online study, completing self-reported measures of alcohol consumption and alcohol-related problems at baseline and 2 weeks later. After completing the baseline survey, participants completed a brief writing intervention during which they were asked to reflect on a recent interpersonal conflict and write about it from 1 of 3 possible perspectives, 2 of which were targeting cognitive reappraisal (i.e., a neutral, third-party perspective and the other party's perspective), their own perspective, or to reflect on their activities that day (control). Results from negative binomial regression models supported both reappraisal conditions: Compared with control, those who thought about the conflict from a neutral third-party perspective and those who thought about the conflict from the other party's perspective reported significantly fewer drinking problems at follow-up. Results from this study suggest preliminary efficacy of a single-session writing intervention aimed at reappraising interpersonal conflict. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Neutral and Presumptive Doubt Perspectives of Professional Skepticism and Auditor Job Outcomes

Neutral and Presumptive Doubt Perspectives of Professional Skepticism and Auditor Job Outcomes

Neutrality and satisfaction in the mediation session: party and mediator perspectives

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the relationship between perceptions of mediators acting symmetrically (treating parties equally) and transparently (providing an explanation of past or future behavior) with parties’ assessments of the neutrality of their mediator and satisfaction with the mediation process.Design/methodology/approachThis mixed-method study surveyed parties and mediators from 35 naturally occurring mediation sessions at community mediation centers about their perceptions of neutrality, symmetry, transparency and satisfaction.FindingsThe results showed that parties overwhelmingly assessed their mediators as acting neutrally. Compared to parties’ assessments of mediator neutrality, mediators rated their own neutrality even higher. Symmetry and transparency were both positively correlated with parties’ assessment of mediator neutrality and also emerged as qualitative themes. Speaking order and talk time did not significantly correlate with perception of symmetry. Overall, symmetry appeared to be a more salient factor in parties’ assessment of mediator neutrality than transparency. Both neutrality and symmetry were positively correlated with party satisfaction with the mediation process, but transparency was not.Research limitations/implicationsThe present study provides a foundation for future research in understanding neutrality from both parties and mediators’ perspectives. The primary limitation was a small sample size and possible selection bias in achieving the sample.Practical implicationsThe study found that symmetry and transparency are useful strategies for managing party perceptions of mediator neutrality and party satisfaction with the mediation process.Originality/valueThis study is one of only a few empirical research studies that investigated the parties’ perspective of mediator neutrality. The study provides a foundation for future research in understanding neutrality from both parties and mediators’ perspectives.

Benefits over Threats: Understanding Community’s Motivation to Participate in Restoration Initiatives in Gunung Leuser National Park, Sumatra

Gunung Leuser National Park (GLNP), one of Indonesia’s most important conservation sites, has been facing serious pressures due to human activities both within its boundaries and in the buffer zones, leaving a large extent of degraded land in GLNP and its vicinity. As a response, the government along with several civil society organizations have been conducting restoration projects, especially around the borders of GLNP with concessions and villages. A centerpiece of many of these restoration initiatives is community participation. However, there have been limited studies to understand the driving factors of local people participation in such initiatives. In order to better understand what drives community participation in restoration initiatives around GLNP, we conducted a random survey to 111 respondents living in Sei Serdang and Namo Sialang Villages (Langkat District, North Sumatra), where restoration initiatives have been introduced. We found that they do not have a strong dependence on natural resources, which likely explains their rather neutral perspective on forests, i.e. they do not perceive any relations between forests, their livelihood, and threats due to deforestation. The absence of forest protection-related custom among population, mainly due to the cultural heterogeneity resulted from inward migration, further enhances their view on forests. Therefore, those who participated in the restoration initiatives were primarily driven by the opportunity to get additional income and improve their welfare. Based on these findings, we recommend that future restoration-related interventions in GLNP should appropriately consider community perception towards forests to ensure project sustainability and better resources management.

Lawyers’ Role-Induced Bias Arises Fast and Persists Despite Intervention

Law students randomly assigned to represent one side in a legal argument in the classroom exhibit substantial role-induced prediction bias for their side within only 40 minutes of their role assignment. Reminding students that prediction requires a more neutral perspective than advocacy does not attenuate the bias. The bias occurs evenly in male and female participants, who also report equal confidence in their predictions.

Trolling and Hate Content on Social Media Platforms

Amount of users on social media platforms have increased manifold in past few years due to availability of discounts/EMI on smart phones and cheap internet services. There has been a hike in social media users especially from teenage groups (age group 13-19) and people who are on verge of retirement/already retired or are in their later part of life (age group 50+). There has been a surge in trolling, hate content and other harmful content on various social media platforms in last few years. The various platforms have failed to control the content which is being uploaded, posted or shared. Often, the content seems entertaining for majority and they save it and forward it to their various social circles. Some choose to ignore it, while those who get offended indulge in the notorious conversation(s) and thus a chain of replies begins. It can be entertaining or abusive depending upon the content, who initiated it and who the targets are. Mostly, from neutral perspective, it is suspicious, abusive or harmful. There seems to be violation of the freedom of expression at times on these social media platforms. Though the platforms give the option of reporting the content(s), post(s), page(s) or channel(s), the social media users at large doesn’t opt to use it. It has been found that people don’t want to indulge in reporting these activities because it is not related to them or they believe that these platforms don’t take any reports/complaints seriously or it is complete waste of time or else it is a complicated process. Still, there is a section of users who report these activities irrespective of whether they are themselves target or not. They believe that it is their moral responsibility and someone must apply the clutches to these trollers and hate content perpetrators. There are positive as well negative usages of any technology which are available for disposal by mankind, here social media platforms. Therefore, it is a collective responsibility of society in large and social media users in particular to use it in fair and impartial manner. The various platforms are ethically and morally bound to take actions on abusive and hateful content on their platforms and make it safe for all.

Universalismo entre religiões e modernidade: a fundamentação do universalismo epistemológico-moral por meio da cooperação entre razão e religião

O artigo tem por objetivo desenvolver uma crítica à noção de modernidade ou racionalismo moderno apresentada em teorias da modernidade contemporâneas, marcada pela ideia de uma autonomia e de uma autossuficiência da razão no que tange à fundamentação de uma noção vinculante de universalismo epistemológico-moral, criticando-se a percepção, própria a essas teorias, de que o racionalismo profano e secularizado, concebido como uma perspectiva imparcial, neutra, formal e impessoal em termos axiológico-metodológicos, seja suficiente para garanti-lo, sem necessidade da religião e da metafísica. Com isso, seu segundo objetivo consiste em argumentar em favor de um universalismo político-religioso que aponta para a incapacidade dessa noção purista e independente de razão em gerar e sustentar, sem o próprio trabalho de fundamentação e de aplicação metafísico-religioso, um conteúdo universal de direitos humanos. O trabalho escora-se em revisão bibliográfica de teorias da modernidade contemporâneas, a partir de uma crítica a seu pressuposto central, a autonomia, a autorreferencialidade e a autossuficiência da razão relativamente à religião e à metafísica, propondo, como conclusão, a necessária correlação de razão e religião-metafísica como o caminho e conteúdo do universalismo epistemológico-moral.

Recipient Design in Communicative Pointing.

A long‐standing debate in the study of human communication centers on the degree to which communicators tune their communicative signals (e.g., speech, gestures) for specific addressees, as opposed to taking a neutral or egocentric perspective. This tuning, called recipient design, is known to occur under special conditions (e.g., when errors in communication need to be corrected), but several researchers have argued that it is not an intrinsic feature of human communication, because that would be computationally too demanding. In this study, we contribute to this debate by studying a simple communicative behavior, communicative pointing, under conditions of successful (error‐free) communication. Using an information‐theoretic measure, called legibility, we present evidence of recipient design in communicative pointing. The legibility effect is present early in the movement, suggesting that it is an intrinsic part of the communicative plan. Moreover, it is reliable only from the viewpoint of the addressee, suggesting that the motor plan is tuned to the addressee. These findings suggest that recipient design is an intrinsic feature of human communication.

Contribución al análisis sociológico de la creatividad y la digitalización del campo cultural: creación, intermediación y crisis

La llamada transición al paradigma digital está erosionando la autonomía del campo cultural que se había conseguido durante los siglos XIX y XX, subyugándolo a las dinámicas económicas y tecnológicas. Sin embargo, el discurso hegemónico tiende a interpretar esta como un proceso netamente positivo para la creatividad, centrando la atención en el aumento de la disponibilidad de recursos informativos y de herramientas para la creación. No obstante, un análisis desde las teorías y los conceptos de la sociología de la cultura nos revela un balance más ambivalente. Si bien la noción de autoría y creación puede ser interpretada desde un punto de vista más cooperativo y relativista, es discutible que pueda ser eliminada. Además, si bien el análisis de la intermediación cultural debe tener en cuenta el papel más complejo y activo de los intermediarios, difícilmente se puede concebir el sistema cultural sin su existencia. En definitiva, el artículo se propone contrastar los discursos sobre la transición a lo digital con las teorías clásicas y contemporáneas de la sociología de la cultura para, de este modo, plantear futuras líneas de investigación sociológica sobre las consecuencias en los agentes y en la industria cultural en su conjunto. Con ello se pretende generar una perspectiva neutral que tenga en consideración los efectos sociales y sistémicos de la tecnología en la creatividad de los sectores culturales.

Specialty matters. Analysis of health journalists’ coverage about vaccines

This study examines specific professional patterns among health journalists, and assesses whether these differ from those among generalists in the case of vaccines. 131 articles were analysed from national newspapers in Spain, of which 52% (n=68) were written by specialised health journalists. Content analysis was undertaken to examine the differences in terms of journalistic genre, frames, tone, sources and length of the article. Results revealed key journalistic patterns and confirmed that health journalists perform significantly differently than other authors in terms of journalistic genre, tone, sources and length of the article. Health journalists wrote more features and less opinion articles, from a more neutral perspective, using a wider number of scientific sources, especially those from professional associations and scientific journals. These findings provide insights into the process of health journalism, and identify potential aspects to further develop the profession for the broad dissemination of health news to the public.

A Study on Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction in Nigerian Healthcare Sector

Purpose - The core objective of the research is to explore the quality of services provided by the Nigerian health care sector that lead to know the satisfaction levels of the consumers. Research design, data, and methodology - After a meticulous literature review, the researchers administered a two part questionnaire to know the service gaps and satisfaction levels of the customers. The research carried out with a sample of 400 respondents but received only 150 responses from the residents around Adamawa state. The collected data was edited, coded, and analyzed with the SPSS latest version with the descriptive and inferential statistical tools. Results - Majority of the respondents expressed their discontentment over the responsiveness of the service providers when compared to tangibility and reliability quality variables. There is no relationship between the quality variable tangibility and overall satisfaction. Related to the overall satisfaction, 42 percent of respondents have neutral perspective indicated that they are either satisfied or dissatisfied as against the 43.3 percent of dissatisfied customers. Conclusions - This research proffers invaluable information to the entire Nigerian health-care sector to review their existing delivery of services to improve patient satisfaction. This research is first of its kind concentrated to know the quality of health-care services and customers overall satisfaction in Nigeria.

Governance Intensity and Incidence: Assessing State-Level Financial Governance in Brazil

The recent growth of new governance indicators requires a discussion about the misconceptions of transposing means and goals from business administration into the public sphere. For this purpose, Public Value theory can provide a neutral perspective for the current studies of public governance, which implies the need for reassessment of some of the former indicators. In this paper, we demonstrate the feasibility of this theoretical construction and propose a quantitative multidimensional indicator for state-level public finance in Brazil. Based exclusively on attendance of legal requirements, a 15-year sample for all Brazilian States brought different results from the previous findings, revealing that the quality of governance is uncorrelated with the wealth, breaking the inequality assumption that the richer states perform better than the poor ones.

La Selección terminológica referida al golpe y dictadura militar en textos escolares de historia durante el período 2002-2014

This article presents a study about the terminology used to refer to the Chilean military coup and dictatorship in high school History textbooks. Terms represent specialised concepts in a specific subject field and reflect the conceptualisation of reality of a given disciplinary community in a socio-temporal context. Term choice influences how readers access specialised knowledge. This study aimed at analysing the point of view about the military coup and dictatorship conveyed by term choice in Chilean history textbooks; and determine whether this point of view changed across time. For that purpose, the term variants referring to the main concepts of the historical period were analysed in a corpus of history textbooks distributed by the Chilean Ministry of Education between 2002 and 2014 to students in second and third year of secondary education. A semantic analysis was carried out, which took into account the conceptual information, the abstraction level of the categories and the point of view (positive, negative or neutral) reflected by term variants. Results showed that terminology remains quite stable throughout the years and convey mainly a neutral perspective about the historical events. These results are not coherent with the pluralist perspective recommended by the Ministry of Education in the curriculum guidelines.

How Does the Public Perceive Alliances?

Abstract World War I was fought by numerous countries siding together as the Central Powers and, respectively, the Allied Powers. The former began with the German Empire and Austria-Hungary and grew to four allies when the Ottoman Empire entered the scene in late 1914 and Bulgaria in late 1915; the latter centred on the alliance between England, France, and Russia and was informally extended to many more countries as they entered into the war ad-hoc by signalling common interests with the core Allied Powers. This article addresses a neglected dimension of the alliance formation phenomenon, namely how alliances were perceived by the public, in contrast to the perceptions of political and military leaders. Were the Central and Allied Powers perceived to be credible alliances – monolithic blocks – in the eyes of contemporaries? We seek to determine the degree of “alliance integration” among pairs of countries by applying cointegration analysis based on prices for securities. It is assumed that the prices of countries perceived as “integrated” should show signs of co-movement. In particular, we focus on the Amsterdam market for foreign government bonds providing us with a neutral perspective. Our analysis is based on the yields for representative bonds traded by 13 belligerent countries not only during the war, but also before and after. Among other findings, we cannot corroborate that investors simply recognized two monolithic blocks fighting the war against each other.

An alternative neutral approach for cross-efficiency evaluation

Abstract Cross-efficiency evaluation is a widespread approach within Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) that has proved to be particularly useful for ranking decision making units. Several cross-evaluation methods have been proposed that differ in the characteristics of the secondary goal imposed to deal with the non-uniqueness of the optimal weights in DEA. In this paper a new secondary goal is defined that addresses the selection of DEA weights from a neutral perspective. The proposed formulation considers two hypothetical units that represent the best and worst possible performers within the given production context and forces their efficiency to be as small and large (respectively) as possible in a simultaneous way. A numerical experiment with randomly generated data has been carried out to study the performance of the suggested approach in comparison with traditional benevolent and aggressive methods. The results corroborate the neutral orientation of the new formulation and validate our proposal as a reasonable alternative to traditional cross-efficiency approaches. Moreover, as a real world example, the approach is applied to the performance evaluation of the world's top Research and Development (R&D) investing companies in the Biopharmaceutical industry.

Seascape genomics reveals adaptive divergence in a connected and commercially important mollusc, the greenlip abalone (Haliotis laevigata), along a longitudinal environmental gradient.

Populations of broadcast spawning marine organisms often have large sizes and are exposed to reduced genetic drift. Under such scenarios, strong selection associated with spatial environmental heterogeneity is expected to drive localized adaptive divergence, even in the face of connectivity. We tested this hypothesis using a seascape genomics approach in the commercially important greenlip abalone (Haliotis laevigata). We assessed how its population structure has been influenced by environmental heterogeneity along a zonal coastal boundary in southern Australia linked by strong oceanographic connectivity. Our data sets include 9,109 filtered SNPs for 371 abalones from 13 localities and environmental mapping across ~800km. Genotype-environment association analyses and outlier tests defined 8,786 putatively neutral and 323 candidate adaptive loci. From a neutral perspective, the species is better represented by a metapopulation with very low differentiation (global FST =0.0081) and weak isolation by distance following a stepping-stone model. For the candidate adaptive loci, however, model-based and model-free approaches indicated five divergent population clusters. After controlling for spatial distance, the distribution of putatively adaptive variation was strongly correlated to selection linked to minimum sea surface temperature and oxygen concentration. Around 80 candidates were annotated to genes with functions related to high temperature and/or low oxygen tolerance, including genes that influence the resilience of abalone species found in other biogeographic regions. Our study includes a documented example about the uptake of genomic information in fisheries management and supports the hypothesis of adaptive divergence due to coastal environmental heterogeneity in a connected metapopulation of a broadcast spawner.

Ignoring History, Denying Racism: Mounting Evidence for the Marley Hypothesis and Epistemologies of Ignorance

In demonstration of the Marley hypothesis, Nelson, Adams, and Salter showed that differences in critical historical knowledge (i.e., knowledge of past racism) and motivation to protect group esteem predicted present-day racism perceptions among Whites and Blacks attending different, racially homogenous universities. The present Study 1 conceptually replicates these findings among Whites and Blacks attending the same racially diverse university. Consistent with previous findings, Whites (vs. Blacks) displayed less critical historical knowledge, explaining their greater denial of systemic racism. Moreover, stronger racial identity among Whites predicted greater systemic racism denial. A brief Study 2 intervention boosts Whites’ racism perceptions. People who learned the critical history of U.S. housing policy (vs. a control group) acknowledged more systemic racism. The present work interrupts seemingly normal and neutral dominant perspectives, provides mounting evidence for an epistemologies of ignorance framework, and suggests that learning critical history can help propel anti-racist understandings of the present.

The role of first person perspective and vivid imagery in memory for written narratives

ABSTRACTThe use of visualisation techniques in teaching has enabled students to improve their memory and comprehension of written narratives. Psychological research reveals how various factors can influence visualisation and learning, including; adopting a character’s perspective; constructing self-related images; multi-sensory text representing episodic events; and imagery ability. These factors were explored using narratives that represented real events, which contained subjective and objective information. University students (age range 18–25 years) recalled the narratives in a first person, third person and neutral perspective. In the first person perspective, information was connected to their sense of ‘self’, which improved memory. Additionally, the first person perspective improved memory for subjective and objective information for high imagery ability individuals and subjective information for low imagery ability individuals. Overall, the findings suggest that visualisation, first person perspective and narratives representing real experiences improve memory and comprehension. Implications for practice are also discussed.

Integrated biogeography of planktonic and sedimentary bacterial communities in the Yangtze River

BackgroundBacterial communities are essential to the biogeochemical cycle in riverine ecosystems. However, little is presently known about the integrated biogeography of planktonic and sedimentary bacterial communities in large rivers.ResultsThis study provides the first spatiotemporal pattern of bacterial communities in the Yangtze River, the largest river in Asia with a catchment area of 1,800,000 km2. We find that sedimentary bacteria made larger contributions than planktonic bacteria to the bacterial diversity of the Yangzte River ecosystem with the sediment subgroup providing 98.8% of 38,906 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) observed in 280 samples of synchronous flowing water and sediment at 50 national monitoring stations covering a 4300 km reach. OTUs within the same phylum displayed uniform seasonal variations, and many phyla demonstrated autumn preference throughout the length of the river. Seasonal differences in bacterial communities were statistically significant in water, whereas bacterial communities in both water and sediment were geographically clustered according to five types of landforms: mountain, foothill, basin, foothill-mountain, and plain. Interestingly, the presence of two huge dams resulted in a drastic fall of bacterial taxa in sediment immediately downstream due to severe riverbed scouring. The integrity of the biogeography is satisfactorily interpreted by the combination of neutral and species sorting perspectives in meta-community theory for bacterial communities in flowing water and sediment.ConclusionsOur study fills a gap in understanding of bacterial communities in one of the world’s largest river and highlights the importance of both planktonic and sedimentary communities to the integrity of bacterial biogeographic patterns in a river subject to varying natural and anthropogenic impacts.

Creativity and propitiousness in strategic decision making

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the association between positive perceptions of politics (i.e. positive politics) and decision creativity and propitiousness (i.e. reaching unforeseen advantages while limiting unexpected problems). In addition, drawing from threat-rigidity effect theory the authors argue that such relationships will be resilient to external environmental threats and specifically macro-economic uncertainty.Design/methodology/approachThe database for the analyses consisted of 200 strategic decisions gathered from firms located in Dubai.FindingsPositive politics significantly influence decision creativity and propitiousness. Also, macro-economic uncertainty moderates this relationship.Research limitations/implicationsAlthough this research has tried to adopt a more neutral perspective on political behavior, much more work is required to better understand the role and implications of neutral politics in decision-making.Practical implicationsIf decision makers ensure that the concern for the organization’s welfare remains a priority over the self-serving motives of the actors, then politics can enhance decision success.Social implicationsThis paper challenges the long held conventional wisdom that politics in organizations are an important underlying cause of unethical practices, poor decisions and organizational ineffectiveness.Originality/valueThe findings serve to further the understanding of complexities involved in the relationships between political behavior and its consequences.