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Mill's Harm Principle: A Study In The Application Of 'On Liberty', Sandra J. Peart

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

English philosopher and political economist John Stuart Mill argued that people learn by choosing: this is how they become creative and productive individuals. For this reason, and because he felt that individuals are typically the most capable people to make their own choices, Mill was highly skeptical of restrictions on choice placed by a third party, such as the state.

Mill famously separated actions into two categories: (1) self-regarding actions that do not affect others; and (2) other-regarding actions that do affect, and may harm, others. In the former category he placed thought and discussion, tastes and pursuits, and association, …

Coping In The Time Of Covid-19: Mindsets And The Stories We Tell, Whitney Becker, Jeni L. Burnette, Crystal L. Hoyt

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Across two studies (N = 803), we explored how meaning-making systems (i.e., mindsets and narrative identity) are related to each other as well as to coping in the wake of challenges faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Study 1, we find that struggle-is-enhancing, relative to struggle-is-debilitating, mindsets predicted stories defined by elements of personal control with opportunities for growth (agency) and an emphasis on the positive, rather than on the suffering (redemptive). Stronger enhancing mindsets and agentic as well as redemptive narratives predicted more adaptive coping, including less negative affect, less avoidance, and positive expectations for future success. In …

Pro-Integration Policies And The Occupational Expectations Of Immigrant Youth, Volha Chykina

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Europe is experiencing heightened public attention toward anti-immigration policy reforms and restrictions. Despite the potential importance of these policy changes, we do not know whether these policies influence how immigrant children perceive their futures in their host countries. Employing secondary data analysis of the Program for International Student Assessment and the Migrant Integration Policy Index data, I show that a decrease in policy support for immigrant integration is associated with a decrease in how good of a job immigrant children expect to have when they are adults. Since students’ occupational expectations influence their eventual status attainment, this article shows that …

Consensus, Convergence, And Covid-19: The Ethical Role Of Religious Reasons In Leaders’ Response To Covid-19, Marilie Coetsee

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Focusing on current efforts to persuade the public to comply with COVID-19 best practices, this essay examines what role appeals to religious reasons should (or should not) play in leaders’ attempts to secure followers’ acceptance of group policies in contexts of religious and moral pluralism. While appeals to followers’ religious commitments can be helpful in promoting desirable public health outcomes, they also raise moral concerns when made in the contexts of secular institutions with religiously diverse participants. In these contexts, leaders who appeal to religious reasons as bases of justification for imposing COVID policies may seem to fail to show …

Harnessing Growth Mindsets To Help Individuals Flourish, Jeni L. Brunette, Crystal L. Hoyt, Joseph Billingsley

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Psychologists are uniquely positioned to help with our collective obligation to advance scientific knowledge in ways that help individuals to flourish. Growth mindsets may offer one such tool for improving lives, yet some research questions the potential to replicate key findings. The aims in the current work are to help explain mixed results and outline ways to improve intervention impact. To reach these goals, we first offer a brief overview of the links between growth mindsets and psychological flourishing. Second, we outline key theories of causal mechanisms and summarize sources of meaningful heterogeneity in growth mindset interventions, with a focus …

Well-Being In The Time Of Covid-19: Do Metaphors And Mindsets Matter?, Jeni L. Burnette, Crystal L. Hoyt, Nicholas Buttrick, Lisa A. Auster-Gussman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Communications about the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) often employ metaphors, which can help people understand complex issues. For example, public health messages may focus on “fighting” the disease, attempting to rouse people to action by instilling a sense of urgency. In contrast, change-focused metaphors may foster growth mindsets and self-efficacy—cornerstones of well-being and action. We randomly assigned participants to read one of two articles—either an article about coronavirus that focused on fighting the war or an article that highlighted the possibility of change. In Study 1 (N = 426), participants who read the war, relative to the change, message …

Lay Theories Of Heroism And Leadership: The Role Of Gender, Communion, And Agency, Crystal L. Hoyt, Scott T. Allison, Agatha Barnowski, Aliya Sultan

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Whereas leadership is generally perceived as a masculine enterprise, heroism research suggests that people view heroes as similarly masculine, but having more feminine traits. We predicted that heroes will be evaluated higher than leaders in communion but not differ in agency. In Study 1, heroes were perceived to have higher communion and similarly high agency as leaders. In Studies 2 and 3, we replicated these trait ratings focusing on perceptions of typical heroes/leaders (S2) and personal heroes/leaders (S3). In Study 4, we showed that the greater level of communion associated with heroes is independent of their gender. In Study 5, …

Do Education System Characteristics Moderate The Socioeconomic, Gender And Immigrant Gaps In Math And Science Achievement?, Katerina Bodovsk, Ismael Munoz, Soo-Yong Byun, Volha Chykina

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Using data from the 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study for 45 countries, we examined the size of socioeconomic, gender, and immigrant status related gaps, and their relationships with education system characteristics, such as differentiation, standardization, and proportion of governmental spending on education. We find that higher socioeconomic status is positively and significantly associated with higher math and science achievement; immigrant students lag behind their native peers in both math and science, with first generation students faring worse than second generation; and girls show lower math performance than boys. A higher degree of differentiation makes socioeconomic gaps larger …

The Rawlsian Mirror Of Justice, Jessica Flanigan

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Libertarians(like me) generally disagree with orthodox Rawlsians (like Samuel Freeman) about whether Rawlsian principles of distributive justice are compatible with libertarianism.¹In this essay, I set out to explain why. In section 1, I describe the problem, which is essentially that libertarians think the Rawlsian framework does not rule out anti-statist, capitalist, and broadly libertarian approaches to distributive justice and orthodox Rawlsians think that it does. I propose that this problem arises because the Rawlsian framework is underspecified in two ways. First, the Rawlsian framework has a lot of moving parts, so people with different pre-theoretical intuitions can use …

Randomized Trial Of A Single-Session Growth Mind-Set Intervention For Rural Adolescents’ Internalizing And Externalizing Problems, Jessica L. Schleider, Jeni L. Burnette, Laura Widman, Crystal L. Hoyt, Mitchell J. Prinstein

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Objective. Adolescents living in rural regions of the United States face substantial barriers to accessing mental health services, creating needs for more accessible, non-stigmatizing, briefer interventions. Research suggests that single-session “growth mindset” interventions (GM-SSIs)—which teach the belief that personal traits are malleable through effort—may reduce internalizing and externalizing problems in adolescents. However, GM-SSIs have not been evaluated among rural youth, and their effects on internalizing and externalizing problems have not been assessed within a single trial, rendering their relative benefits for different problem types unclear. We examined whether a computerized GM-SSI could reduce depressive symptoms, social anxiety symptoms, and …

Mindsets Of Health And Healthy Eating Intentions, Fanice M. Thomas, Jennifer L. Burnette, Crystal L. Hoyt

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Across two studies, we examined the relation between mindsets of health, expectancy-value and eating intentions. We also explored if relations are stronger for African Americans compared to White Americans. In Study 1, we conducted a correlational study (N= 158) to examine initial relations among constructs. In Study 2, we employed an experimental design (N = 205), and randomly assigned participants to either a growth mindset or a fixed mindset of health condition. In both studies, we measured participants’ mindsets of health, expectancy-value beliefs, healthy eating intentions, past eating habits and demographics.

In Study 1, stronger growth mindsets of health predicted …

Understanding Sexual Prejudice: The Role Of Political Ideology And Strategic Essentialism, Crystal L. Hoyt, Thekla Morgenroth, Jeni L. Burnette

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Despite the increased visibility and acceptance of the LGBTQ community, sexual minorities continue to face prejudice and discrimination in many domains. Past research has shown that this prejudice is more prevalent among those holding conservative political views. In two studies, we merge strategic essentialism and motivated ideology theoretical perspectives to empirically investigate the link between political orientation and sexual prejudice. More specifically, we examine how conservatives strategically use different forms of essentialism to support their views of gay individuals and their reactions to messages aimed at changing essentializing beliefs. In Study 1 (N = 220), we demonstrate that conservatives endorse …

Political Advantage, Disadvantage, And The Demand For Partisan News, Allison M.N. Archer

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

In this article, I argue that the national political environment can meaningfully affect variation in aggregate demand for partisan media. I focus on the relationship between the political context—namely, political advantage and disadvantage derived from elections—and media demand in the form of partisan newspaper circulations. Using a data set that characterizes the partisan slant of local newspapers and their circulation levels between 1932 and 2004, I find that when parties are electorally advantaged in presidential contests, demand for their affiliated newspapers decreases relative to demand for papers affiliated with disadvantaged parties. I uncover evidence of similar patterns in a case …

Theorizing About Human Capacity: A View From The Nineteenth Century, Sandra J. Peart, David M. Levy

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Discussions of eugenic policy of the nineteenth century are too often isolated from the larger debates in political economy over human capacity. These debates centered on two questions. First, do all people have roughly the same capabilities, or do some groups have a lower capacity than others? Second, capacity for what? In the nineteenth century political economists in the tradition of Adam Smith through John Stuart Mill argued that, as Gordon Tullock would later put it, “people are people” and there are no racial or other distinctions to be made about our capabilities for labor market, family formation, or other …

Limits On The Application Of Motivational Homogeneity In The Work Of Buchanan And The Virginia School, David M. Levy, Sandra J. Peart

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

At its founding, the set of ideas that came to be known as Virginia Political Economy originated from the work of Rutledge Vining, James Buchanan, Warren Nutter, Ronald Coase, and Gordon Tullock. In terms of scholarly stature, that short list comprises two Nobel Prize winners (Buchanan and Coase) and a recipient of the American Economic Association Distinguished Fellow award (Tullock). It also includes an economist (Nutter) who, in the midst of the Cold War, described the Soviet economy more accurately than any of the major experts in that field. Virginia Political Economy was characterized by four foundational principles: the endogeneity …

The Almost Inevitable Failure Of Justice, Thad Williamson

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

In his final book, Where Do We Go From Here (1967), Martin Luther King, Jr., warned that the struggle for black equality had moved into a more difficult phase that would test the moral commitments of white America to democracy. King commented that, for most whites, the battles over school desegregation and the Civil Rights Act had merely "been a struggle to treat the Negro with a degree of decency, not of equality." King's warning about the thinness of the country's commitment to democracy was combined with a profound optimism that ending poverty and creating a truly free society was …

Weight Beliefs And Messages: Mindsets Predict Body-Shame And Anti-Fat Attitudes Via Attributions, Jeni L. Burnette, Crystal L. Hoyt, Carol S. Dweck, Lisa Auster-Gussman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

In two samples (N=247, N= 291), we examined the link between beliefs and messages about the changeable (incremental theory) vs. fixed (entity theory) nature of weight, attributions for weight, and body shame. We recruited participants using online sampling, employing a correlational design in Study 1 and an experimental design in Study 2. Across both studies, we found evidence for the stigma-asymmetry effect—incremental, relative to entity beliefs/messages of weight predicted both (a) stronger onset responsibility attributions, indirectly increasing body shame and (b) stronger offset efficacy attributions, indirectly decreasing body shame. Study 2 replicated the stigma-asymmetry effect with anti-fat …

Punishment And Reconciliation: Augustine, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Punish the sin, not the sinner; easier said than done. Preaching on the second Psalm and purporting to address 'all who judge the earth,' Augustine wrestled with the problems attending punishment and reconciliation. The results recorded in his sermons and correspondence as well as in a few treatises perplex yet are worth considering before we investigate Augustine's more explicit remarks on the punishment of Donatist dissidents resisting reconciliation with the African church from which, he insisted, their predecessors had seceded in the early fourth century. At stake during Augustine's tenure as bishop, toward the end of that century and three …

Changing Owners, Changing Content: Does Who Owns The News Matter For The News?, Allison M.N. Archer, Joshua D. Clinton

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

The press is essential for creating an informed citizenry, but its existence depends on attracting and maintaining an audience. It is unclear whether supply-side effects – including those dictated by the owners of the media – influence how the media cover politics, yet this question is essential given their abilities to set the agenda and frame issues that are covered. We examine how ownership influences media behavior by investigating the impact of Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) in August 2007. We collect data on every front-page story and editorial for 27 months, and we …

Wealth Inequality And Activism: Perceiving Injustice Galvanizes Social Change But Perceptions Depend On Political Ideologies, Crystal L. Hoyt, Aaron J. Moss, Jeni L. Burnette, Annette Schieffelin, Abigail Goethals

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

What motivates people to engage in activism against wealth inequality? The simple answer is, perceiving injustice. However, the current work demonstrates that these perceptions depend on political ideologies. More specifically, for political liberals who frequently question the fairness of the economic system, messages simply describing the extent of the inequality (distributive injustice) are enough to motivate activism (Study 1). For political conservatives, who are inclined to believe that inequality results from fair procedures, messages must also detail how the system of economic forces is unjust (procedural injustice; Studies 2 and 3). Together, these studies suggest perceiving injustice can galvanize social …

"Everybody's Got To Wonder What's The Matter With This Cruel World Today": Social Consciousness And Political Commentary In "Love And Theft" And Modern Times, Thad Williamson

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Bob Dylan has spent much of the past fifty years trying to escape the label of "protest singer.” Over the past decade, there have been plenty of serious topics for the topically minded song writer to address: the Iraq War, threats to civil liberties, rising economic inequality, the financial collapse of 2008 and "Great Recession" that followed. Unlike his musical peers Neil Young (Living with War [2006]) and Bruce Springsteen (Wrecking Ball [2012]), Dylan to date has not addressed those events in any direct way, through new topical songs, in the last stage of his career.

Marlowe’S Radical Reformation: Christopher Marlowe And The Radical Christianity Of The Polish Brethren, Kristin M.S. Bezio

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Although scholars of both literature and history have made arguments for Christopher Marlowe’s religious belief in Catholicism, the Church of England, and even atheism (which could have been conflated with both by different parties during his lifetime), few consider the belief system of the Polish Brethren, a precursor to Unitarianism established by one Faustus Socinus. This essay uses historical and social network analyses to suggest a close tie between Marlowe’s acquaintances and believers in Socinianism. Clues in Doctor Faustus and Massacre at Paris suggest Marlowe’s skepticism concerning the doctrines of Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism. Furthermore, repeated references to Poland and …

Social Psychological Approaches To Women And Leadership Theory, Crystal L. Hoyt, Stefanie Simon

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

In this chapter, we take a social psychological approach to understanding gender and leadership. In doing so, we explain how both the social context and people’s perceptions influence leadership processes involving gender. The theoretical approaches taken by social psychologists are often focused on one of these two questions: (1) Are there gender differences in leadership style and effectiveness? and, (2) What barriers do women face in the leadership domain? We begin our chapter by reviewing the literature surrounding these two questions. We then discuss in detail one of the greatest barriers to women in leadership: the prejudice and discrimination that …

Real, Intended Change: Business Movements?, Gill Robinson Hickman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

We are well aware that the economy, environment and organizations in today’s global context are highly interdependent and interconnected. This interdependence contributes to the blurring of lines among business, nonprofit and government entities to the extent that new forms of organization are emerging to tackle socioeconomic and sociopolitical issues that only the political system and social movements confronted in the past.

James MacGregor Burns proclaimed in his groundbreaking book, Leadership, that the effectiveness of leaders “will be tested by the achievement of purpose in the form of real and intended [emphasis added] social change.”¹ Burns explained that social …

Augustine's Punishments, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

During Augustine's life, government authorities were generally friendly to the Christianity he came to adopt and defend. His correspondence mentions one imperial magistrate in Africa, Virius Nicomachus Flavianus, a pagan vicar of Africa who seemed partial to Donatist Christians whom Augustine considered secessionists. Otherwise, from the 390s to 430, assorted proconsuls, vicars, and tribunes sent from the imperial chancery and asked to maintain order in North Africa were willing to enforce government edicts against Donatists and pagans. To an extent, Augustine endorsed enforcement. He was troubled by punitive measures that looked excessive to him, yet scholars generally agree with Peter …

Group Analytics In Adam Smith's Work, David M. Levy, Sandra J. Peart

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

The link between occupation and character began with David Hume and extended by Adam Smith in service to their attack on the doctrine of innate national character. Worker's awareness of the relative approbative rewards to occupation is central to Smith's competitive labor market equilibrium. When the division of labor is extended by growth, the variance of character increases. With this insight Smith was able to offer a race-blind theory of civilization, something that escaped even Hume. 19th century anthropological focus on the variance of character can be seen as a racialization of Smith's work.

The Ethics Problem: Toward A Second-Best Solution To The Problem Of Economic Expertise, David M. Levy, Sandra J. Peart

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

The collective action problem of economic experts was diagnosed acutely by Knight and Pigou in the 1930s. The interest of economists as a group is in pursuing the public good of truth; the interest of an individual economist is in pursuing the private good of happiness. Pigou’s example is the pursuit of political influence. Deviation from truth-seeking devastates the theory of governance as objective inquiry laid out by Knight and John Rawls, as we saw in the eugenic era. We reformulate the Knight–Rawls position as truth-seeking contingent on a presupposed system. The best case for the Knight–Rawls position is transparency, …

Ha Muerto Leslie Matchbox, Ernesto Seman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

La primera creacíon de Leslie Smith y sus socios fue un par de patines para la hija de uno de ellos. No tuvo mas trascendencia que la envidia de sus amigas de colegio. Fue su segunda obra la que vendió más de un millón de copias en poco menos de un año: una versión en miniatura del carruaje que transportó a la Reina Elizabeth II de Inglaterra el día de su coronación. Eso fue en 1953, y para el mismo año, Smith, Smithy Odell ya habian formado Lesney Products y sacaban a la venta uno de los productos más exitosos …

Nudlerías, Ernesto Seman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

"Nudlerías, Nudlerías", diría José María Aznar si fuera argentino y hubiera tratado de desestimar el mangrullo de boludeces derivadas de la difusión de la censura ejercida sobre una nota suya.

Los motivos para no empezar esta discusión son variados. Hemos dicho hasta el hartazgo que Nudler y Wainfeld son de los pocos tipos que nos interesa leer cuando leemos sobre la Argentina, supongo que, como siempre, porque sí El hecho de que se hayan trenzado a tortazos en público no me parece en absoluto relevante, ni que merezca una nota, ni que afecte el buen momento de nadie; lo atribuiría …

Clerical Leadership In Late Antiquity: Augustine On Bishops’ Polemical And Pastoral Burdens, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Augustine returned from Italy to North Africa in 388, apparently elated to have found his calling. The cities he had known, Thagaste and Carthage, and would soon come to know, Hippo Regius, were relatively prosperous, despite taxes collected for the central government which had been making increasing demands since the time of Emperor Constantine. The funds available for municipal improvements were depleted (gravement amputés), Claude Lepelley calculated, siting the African cities in “a history of inexorable decline” from the 380s into the 430s. In the coastal city of Hippo, however, Augustine, as bishop was busy from the late 390s, exchanging …