Showing papers on "Situational ethics published in 1977"

The emergence of norms

Abstract: This book provides an account of the emergence of norms. Put very crudely, the main thesis of this book is that certain types of norms are possible solutions to problems posed by certain types of social interaction situations. The problems are such that they inhere in the structure (in the game-theoretical sense of structure) of the situations concerned. Three types of paradigmatic situations are dealt with. They are referred to as Prisoners' Dilemma-type situations; co-ordination situations; and inequality (or partiality) situations. Each of them, it is claimed, poses a basic difficulty, to some or all of the individuals involved in them. Three types of norms, respectively, are offered as solutions to these situational problems. It is shown how, and in what sense, the adoption of these norms of social behaviour can indeed resolve the specified problems.

Compliance‐gaining message strategies: A typology and some findings concerning effects of situational differences

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to investigate the possible control strategies a persuader may use and to determine how situational differences affect a persuader's strategic choices. By modifying an earlier study of Marwell and Schmitt, dimensions of control strategies were sought in four situations: interpersonal, long‐term consequences; interpersonal, short‐term consequences; nonin‐terpersonal, long‐term consequences; and noninterpersonal, short‐term consequences. Respondents were obtained from students at a Midwestern state university and a community college, and from army recruiters enrolled in a college extension course. Results indicated that situational differences affected the cluster structures and led to the conclusion that a general typology of control strategies is improbable.

Personal and Situational Determinants of Attribution of Responsibility for an Accident

Abstract: An experiment was conducted to examine the hypothesis that self-protective attribution of responsibility for accidents is a function of personal relevance, situational relevance, and severity of the accident's consequences. As predicted, high personal and high situational relevance between the accident perpetrator and the subject-observers lessened their attributions of responsibility for a severe accident relative to a mild one, whereas low personal and high situational relevance increased their assignment of responsibility for a severe accident. Furthermore, the variability of subjects' responsibility attributions was significantly greater when both relevance cues were present than when they were absent. These findings were taken as evidence for two self-protective attribution tendencies: (1) "blame-avoid-ance," in which the observer is motivated to eschew blame should he become involved in a severe accident, and (2) "harm-avoidance, " in which the observer is motivated to preclude a severe accident fro...

Sex Differences in Political Attitudes and Behavior: The Case for Situational Factors

Abstract: S EX DIFFERENCES IN ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOR are nowhere more evident than in politics. But they also exist at the level of the mass public. Survey data have shown that women, as compared to men, tend to be less politically efficacious, less politically interested, have less political information, and are less likely to participate in politics.1 The explanations usually advanced for this phenomenon are either preadult sex-role socialization, or situational and structural factors encountered in adulthood.2 Dominant in the literature has been the socialization model. As part of sex-role sociali-

Principals' Perceived Effectiveness, Innovation Effort, and the School Situation

Abstract: Administrator effectiveness is difficult to define and measure. This concept constitutes, however, a necessary prerequisite for developing a disciplined body of knowledge in educational administration. The re lationships among three performance and two situational variables are explored, and the theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Situational Identity and Ethnicity among Ghanaian University Students

Abstract: A number of recent studies have challenged the concept of an ethnic grou as an absolute category and emphasised that ethnic identity is influenced by the context of the social situation in which the behaviour occurs.2 Analyst of migrant communities in both West Africa and the Copperbelt have documented the existence of situational ethnicity as a phenomenon in which individual or group identity is defined in terms of categories which vary in their level of inclusiveness. Situational factors have increasingly come to be viewed as influencing the individual's definition of his role as a member of more inclusive groups which allows him to relate to a more culturally heterogeneous community in terms of common elements of identity.3 Studies concentrating upon the political significance of ethnic identity in public interactions have also stressed that situational factors may play a more important role than cultural similarity in developing more inclusive identity groupings.4 Finally, analysts dealing with the problems of multiple ethnic loyalties have stressed that individuals and groups have an array of alternate identities from which to choose. They will adopt — or be perceived by others as maintaining — different ethnic identities in different situations.

Principals' Attitudes Toward Work and Co-workers, Situational Factors, Perceived Effectiveness, and Innovation Effort

Abstract: The basic postulate was partially supported that administrator per formance is contingent upon different combinations of individual style and situation components. Although the explained variance l...

Tone of voice in Japanese conversation

Abstract: An experimental study of the role of tone of voice in Japanese conversations, using both Japanese and American subjects, has uncovered situational determinants of voice quality not related to emotion. Some of these variations are perceived differently by the two sets of subjects, some in the same way. The nature of the situational determinants casts new doubt on the plausibility of 'language' as a natur;al subset of human communications. (Tone of voice, non-linguistic communication, ethnography of communication, Japan.) When a beggar at the door says, 'I'm hungry', and a child not wanting to go to bed says, 'I'm hungry', what remains the same in those two utterances has traditionally been considered linguistic, and what changes has been considered non-linguistic (Bloomfield I933: I42, I59). Two major intellectual currents in linguistics and anthropology have combined to make that distinction less rigid than the written records of linguistics indicate was true for the years up to the I960s. (A complementary much different oral tradition can be traced to Edward Sapir.) In linguistics, the detailed investigation of variation in speech behavior by individuals in different situations, and by groups of speakers within a speech community, has been led by William Labov (I972) and C.-J. Bailey (1972) and has been justified on grounds related to the requirements of a satisfactory linguistic theory. Some of the variation in the two utterances of 'I'm hungry', above are now dealt with as linguistic in import. In anthropology, an orientation toward field study and integrative theory of communication has been led by Dell Hymes (I964), who has argued that the theoretical outlook that distinguishes ethnography of communication from linguistics is necessary for an understanding of human communication. Harvey Sarles (I969) has persuasively demonstrated that a very similar orientation, especially insofar as it challenges assumptions about 'language' based more on faith than on observations, will be required before human communication can be understood in a comparative framework that includes other species, and in a framework that integrates man as a biological as well as a cultural being.

The origins of the social war in South Yorkshire : a study of capitalist evolution and labour class realization in one industrial region, c.1750-1855

Abstract: This study seeks to advance the possibility of producing 'total history' in which the working or labour class assumes its rightful place at the centre of interpreted action. This requires a practical and intellectual approach that is inspired by the Marxist tradition. In chronologically ordered chapters dealing with economic realities (the organization and dynamics of an industrial economy where cutlery, related metalware manufacture, linen making, coal. mining and iron and steel manufacture were dominant) and the realities of social conflict, the main focus remains on the latter. The periodization which orders this study is of course artificial. It derives a certain validity from the clustering of 'moments' in the progress of working people in their popular and class struggles with economic and political exploitation. My main aim was to penetrate and evaluate the nature and levels of labour class consciousness. The sources dictated that I only encountered the consciousness of vanguard groups. My evaluation was largely situational but it also shows an appreciation of the unity of historical development created by the inheritance of traditions and experiences, a process that is reinforced by persistent and unyielding processes of economic conditioning. This study mainly limits itself to what happened in one industrial region. This and the 'situational.' approach restrict the level of generalization. When more regional and town studies have been attempted in a similar progress can be made towards higher order generalizations. Hopefully my ideas and evidence concerning 'invisible exploitation', Methodist revivalism, the revolutionary 'underground', armed insurrection and its links with more recognizable forms of constitutionalist struggle, the strength of organized labour, trade union economism and the 'economic' and 'political' labour aristocracies of the 1830's and 1840's may serve to complement other people's work and stimulate positive (and critical) reactions in the future.

Situational hyperactivity: a social system approach

Abstract: A sociological approach for viewing hyperactivity has been proposed. Its explanatory power may at this time be limited to differentiating between situational hyperactivity and a medical model for explaining the syndrome. Further research could serve to expand and illuminate this theory. However, even as presently formulated, by focusing on situational hyperactivity we have a perspective that returns meaning to the child's behavior. We can now inquire as to what hyperactive children can tell us about school systems, family structure, and the position of children in our own society. Putting meaning back into explanations of behavior can produce greater insights into our understanding of children and the social systems in which they operate.

Some Situational Factors Improving Cognitive Conflict Reduction and Interpersonal Understanding

Abstract: An important program of psychological laboratory research on cognitive conflict is based on Hammond's (1965) lens model. Most representative of this work is the triple-system case in which two persons conflict in their judgments on a mutual task of known structure and properties. Built into this case are two constraints reflecting characteristics of some conflict settings: task outcome feedback and the requirement that the conflicting parties reach a consensus. Minimal conflict reduction is evidenced in these experiments because the demands of outcome feedback orient the subjects to adapt to the changing policy dictated by the task rather than that defined by the other person. To examine the situational limits of these findings, a study was designed for a double-system case comprised of the two policy makers, but in which the structure and properties of the task are undetermined. Hence, no feedback was provided; moreover, joint judgments were made optional. Another deviation from the paradigm involved sel...

Responses to moral dilemmas in medical students and psychiatric residents

Abstract: There has been an increasing interest in the area of medical ethics as indicated not only by the recent proliferation of books and articles but also in the re-emergence of crucial moral issues such as euthanasia, abortion and the like. The difficulty with the existing literature is that these reports are often descriptive, anecdotal and situationally relative to the decision maker. In this study, the authors utilized a cognitive developmental approach to studying responses to moral situations not only because this approach is cross-culturally universal but also because it is not subject to situational variables. In this regard, the results of the assessment of medical students and psychiatric residents are presented as well as a comparison of moral reasoning stages in relation to the C.M.A. Code of Ethics. Recommendations for further research are presented.

Effect of Outgroup Responses on Perceptions of Leader Effectiveness

Abstract: The present study was designed to explore the possibility that personal treatement of a leader by outgroup members would influence the ingroup members' perception of the leader's effectiveness. Although all ingroup members perceived their situation as being unsatisfactory and held out little hope for change, leaders who were treated in a friendly fashion by outgroup members were perceived as being more effective by members of their own groups than were leaders who were treated in a hostile fashion by outgroup members. Early investigations of leadership were designed to uncover physical or constitutional factors, as well as personality traits, which might best account for leadership ascendency and maintenance (for reviews see Mann; Stogdill). Although the trait approach is consonant with the popular notion that leaders are born and not made and the Great Man theory of history (Asch), research did not yield a consistent pattern of qualities which could be considered a basis for leadership. As a consequence, the focus shifted to the study of situational determinants of leadership (Gibb; Hollander). This approach is based on the notion that situational factors are crucial in determining the constellation of traits that are necessary for leadership. It suggests, first, that any number of individuals possessing the necessary attributes for moving the group towards its goal are potential leaders in that particular situation and second, that those same attributes might be inappropriate for leadership of another group in another situation. Although the situational approach is not problem free (Killian), it has led to a number of fruitful investigations (Gibb). These investigations in turn have indicated a number of variables which, in specific situations, might affect leadership ascendency and maintenance. Particular attention has been directed to one such variable by Zurcher as a result of a field study of community action committees set up in Topeka, Kansas. Zurcher suggests that leaders of individual committees, who gained recognition and acceptance by officials of the Office of Economic Opportunity, were seen by members of their own groups as profiting from their association with establishment figures and consequently were perceived as being distant from group members and perhaps no longer worthy of maintaining their leadership position. The present study was designed to explore the possibility that personal treatment of a leader by outgroup members would influence the ingroup members' perception of that leader's effectiveness and affect his ability to maintain his *This research was supported by a grant from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. I thank R. A. Altemeyer, H. J. Keselman, L. Klein, M. Malkin, and G. Oczkowski for their advice and assistance at various stages of this study.

Social and situational deterrninants of interview decisions: implications for the employment interview

Abstract: Schrnitt, Neal. Social and situational deterrninants of interview decisions: implications for the employment interview. Personel Psychology, v. 29, n. 1, p. 79-101, 1976.

A Situational Perspective in Casework Theory

Abstract: Attempts in social casework to develop a unifying theory have tended to show either an emphasis on theories of the individual or the social system

Relationship between internal-external control score and trait-situational attribution

Abstract: According to attribution theory (2) a person believes that others behave as they do because they have certain traits, whereas one's own behavior results from the situation. However, there may be individual differences in such attributions (1, 3). We hypothesized that inner controllers (4) would more frequently than external controllers reject situational, "external" control of their own behavior and think of themselves as trait-dominated. Three classes of college students (N = 62) anonymously rated themselves and a "best friend of the same sex" on a 25-trait checklist with presence or absence of each trait and "depends on the situation" as alternatives. Then each person took the Rotter Internal-External Control scale. People did circle "depends on the situation" more frequently for themselves (M = 10.58, SD = 6.19) than for their best friends (M = 8.81, SD = 6.08; z = 3.79, P .lo). These results may reflea an ambiguity in the concept of situational control. Some students said afterward that they took it to mean the provision of a reason for a behavior but with freedom of decision, whereas others reported perceiving the situation as over-riding all options. What is meant by behavior resulting from the situation appears to vary from person to person. REFERENCES 1. JONES, E. E. How do people perceive the causes of behavior? American Scienrisr,