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The term "natural" is ubiquitous in advertising and branding, but limited research has investigated how consumers respond and relate to naturalness. Some researchers have documented preferences for natural products, specifically food, but there has been scant investigation of the psychological antecedents of such preferences, especially in the critical, multi-trillion-dollar domain of healthcare. Using publicly available country-level data from 41 countries and individual-level experimental and survey data from the lab and online panels, we find converging evidence that consumers do indeed differ in their preferences for relatively natural versus artificial healthcare options. These differences are influenced by the extent to which they subscribe to the Protestant Work Ethic (PWE)—a belief system that influences judgments and behaviors across diverse domains—such that people who subscribe strongly (vs. weakly) to the PWE are more likely to prefer natural healthcare options because they are more averse to external intervention in general. Further, belief in the PWE makes consumers more sensitive to the intrusiveness of an intervention than to its extent. Theoretical and substantive implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I recontextualize Weber's ideal type in the philosophy of natural science and economics in terms of idealization. The goal is to promote the appreciation of this methodology in contemporary social science and improve upon some Weberians' underdeveloped interpretations. Drawing on Weber's methodological writing and study of the Protestant ethic, I argue that the philosophy of idealization and Weber's ideal type share methodological characteristics: both support the selection of a research topic by isolating a particular component of reality and then constructing an imagination based on empirical materials and thought experimentation. By using the imagination as a benchmark, investigators counterfactually and contrastively explain why a particular case was observed as it was, as opposed to other possible outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multilevel marketing (MLM) involvement can adversely affect consumer wellbeing. We examine how individual beliefs about work predict participation and financial losses in MLMs. As MLMs are presented to the marketplace as low-barrier opportunities to start one's own business, we suggest that this may speak directly to people who strongly endorse Protestant work ethic (PWE), making them more inclined toward MLM participation, and financial outcomes associated with that participation. Using a place-based (county level) MLM data set from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC; n = 326,487), and a consumer survey (n = 515), we find evidence that PWE is positively associated with participation in MLMs (studies 1 and 2), and that PWE predicts estimated financial losses among those who lost $1000 or more (study 1) but financial gains in a more general sample of MLM participants (study 2). Implications for research, marketing, and consumer advocacy are discussed.

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Max Weber's thesis on the decisive influence of Protestant ethic on the formation and development of modern capitalism has become one of the best-known and widely shared canonical claims in social sciences. Since its publication at the beginning of the 20th century, this thesis, supported by subsequent great works by the German classic, has rarely been the subject of major controversy. The work of correcting Weber's thesis was undertaken in the late 20th century by Michael Novak. Novak's correction is not confrontational, but complementary. The American thinker abandons the research area of minority Protestant communities, which caught Weber's attention, and undertakes an analysis of the broader religious tradition, developing both before and after the Reformation. In particular, the achievements of Pope John Paul II, interpreted by Novak in terms of the renewal of a liberty current of Catholic social thought, provide important corrective data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critiques the centrality of work in capitalist societies and looks at people who have abandoned their location-bound jobs for the lifestyle of a digital nomad. Five months of fieldwork in Thailand during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic revealed that digital nomads aspired to have autonomy over their work, including reducing their work time. However, pursuing their ideal meant negotiating the desire to minimise labour hours on the one hand and guilt about not fitting the hegemonic values of hard work on the other. Digital nomads try to overcome the dominant work ethic in their talk about working productively. While these digital nomads generally spoke of 'productivity' in terms of autonomy and efficiency, concerns over 'appearing lazy' shifted the register to mainstream concepts of productivity, such as 'hard work'. Drawing on philosophers of work and the need to take utopias seriously, this article proposes that even if small-scale and individualised, digital nomads' attempts to reorganise their working lives are an important critique of work, especially in post-COVID trends toward more remote working. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines how heterosexual consumers react to advertising featuring same-sex couples. Across three studies, we find that heterosexual consumers report higher levels of disgust in response to advertising featuring same-sex couples in comparison to mixed-sex couples, which results in more negative attitudes toward the advertisement and the advertised brand. We also find that moral-identity priming reduces disgust elicited by advertising featuring same-sex couples and improves attitudes toward the advertisement and the brand. However, we find that moral-identity priming is ineffective for consumers with high social dominance orientation. For these consumers, portraying same-sex couples as possessing Protestant work ethic traits decreases disgust and improves attitudes toward the advertisement and the brand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, business historians have started to become more interested in the relevance of Max Weber's Protestant Work Ethic thesis. This article builds on this recent work by providing an in-depth case study of the career of the Wesleyan wool entrepreneur Isaac Holden (c. 1807–97) in order to assess and evaluate the usefulness of Weber's work for our understanding of the ways in which religious beliefs can influence commercial decision-making. Ultimately, what it suggests is that, whilst Weber's work offers a valuable starting point for business historians looking to explore the links between religion and business, there is a need for more consideration to be given not only to the theological differences that existed between different branches of Protestantism, but also the informal institutional pressures and constraints that influenced Protestant entrepreneurs in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People often assume that costlier means lead to better outcomes, even in the absence of an objective relationship in the specific context. Such cost–benefit heuristics in goal pursuit have been observed across several domains, but their antecedents have not been fully explored. In this research,the authors propose that a person’s tendency to use cost–benefit heuristics depends on the extent to which that person subscribes to the Protestant Work Ethic (PWE), an influential concept originally introduced to explain the rise of capitalism. The PWE is a core value predicated on the work-specific belief that hard work leads to success, but people who subscribe strongly to it tend to overgeneralize and align other work-unrelated cognitions for consistency. Across ten studies (N=1,917) measuring and manipulating PWE, robust findings show that people who are high (vs. low) in PWE are more likely to use cost–benefit heuristics and are more likely to choose costlier means in pursuit of superior outcomes. Suggestions are provided for how marketers may identify consumers high versus low in PWE and tailor their offerings accordingly.

The present paper responds to calls to integrate a more explicitly intersectional framework and agenda to vocational psychology. We elucidate how several matrices of domination (i.e., interlocking systems of oppression) may shape the working lives of Americans. Although vocational psychology has made limited progress in exploring two such matrices—the impact of White supremacy and Patriarchy—and expanding research, theory, and clinical work to increasingly diverse populations, we argue that other oppressive systemic forces have been largely overlooked. In response to this gap, a close analysis of how our economic system (i.e., late-stage capitalism, neoliberalism) and Christian hegemony (i.e., protestant work ethic, the prosperity gospel) have impacted the workforce is provided. Finally, to center intersectional perspectives on change, we argue that vocational psychology must pivot to a more activist stance and provide recommendations for research, training, and clinical work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrating research on social exclusion with the broader literature on system justification and flexible responses to threats, we propose a novel coping strategy that individuals may use in the face of social exclusion. In particular, we suggest that because exclusion often feels unexpected, it will lead individuals to bolster the system-justifying worldview that people get what they deserve, as excluded individuals attempt to cognitively cope with the threatened order and predictability of their world. Supporting our prediction, in Study 1, social exclusion (vs. inclusion) led participants to increasingly endorse descriptive meritocratic beliefs suggesting that hard work leads to success in society. This effect was mediated by the perceived unexpectedness of the interaction outcome, providing key evidence for our hypothesized process. Study 2 used individual differences in rejection sensitivity to provide further support for our unexpectedness account, demonstrating that exclusion heightens meritocratic beliefs only insofar as participants tend to find exclusions unexpected. The results expand our understanding of the cognitive mechanisms by which people cope with social exclusion and highlight the malleability of system-justifying ideologies in response to interpersonal factors. © 2013, SAGE Publications. All rights reserved.

As a result of many years of reading about and teaching Max Weber's famous Protestant ethic thesis, I have developed an approach to covering this material in both my undergraduate and graduate theory courses which has been beneficial to students and has helped them make sense of the rather complex argument developed by Weber. I provide a working model of all such scholarly inquires linked to the Science Triad, culminating in a five-step approach to organizing and explaining the Weber thesis. In addition, I provide an annotated bibliography of selected scholarly ruminations on Weber's work in general and the Protestant ethic thesis in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We revisit Max Weber's hypothesis on the role of Protestantism for economic development. We show that nationalism is crucial to both, the interpretation of Weber's Protestant ethic and empirical tests thereof. For late nineteenth-century Prussia, we reject Weber's suggestion that Protestantism mattered due to an "ascetic compulsion to save." Moreover, we find that income levels, savings, and literacy rates differed between Germans and Poles, not between Protestants and Catholics, using pooled MCO and VI regressions. We suggest that this result is due to anti-Polish discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the second half of the nineteenth century an unprecedented number of prisons were built across the Western‐influenced world. However, many more developed from repurposed and modified buildings. By applying space syntax analysis to examples from the then British colony of Malta, this article investigates the commonalities of penal space across a series of purpose‐built and refashioned prisons, taking into consideration key architectural phases resulting from remodelling. Rejecting the notion that Maltese developments are merely symptomatic of British colonialism, the spread of Western prisons is cast in terms of wider trends and the global spread of a particular type of penal space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the relationships between the four dimensions of the protestant work ethic (internal locus of control, asceticism, hard work, anti‐leisure) and organizational counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs). Based on a sample of Chinese employees, the results from two‐wave lagged data (N = 691) indicated that the asceticism dimension and the anti‐leisure dimension were negatively associated with CWBs. These associations were moderated by party affiliation, indicating that party members had a stronger negative relationship between these constructs than non‐party members did. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In diesem Aufsatz würdigt Heinz Kurz den Beitrag Max Webers zu den Sozial- und insbesondere Wirtschaftswissenschaften aus Anlass seines 100. Todestages. Nach einem Überblick über Leben, Werk und Wirken geht er kurz auf Webers methodologische Betrachtungen und seine Rolle im „Werturteilsstreit" im Verein für Socialpolitik ein. Es folgt eine Auseinandersetzung mit Webers Aussagen zur Werttheorie und Grenznutzenlehre. Der Hauptteil der Arbeit gilt Webers Beiträgen zur Religionsökonomik. Nach einer Zusammenfassung des Werks „Die protestantische Ethik und der ‚Geist' des Kapitalismus" und der darin exemplarisch behandelten historischen Macht von Ideen beleuchtet der Autor einige Aussagen Webers vor dem Hintergrund der neueren Theorie und macht auf Grenzen des Arguments aufmerksam. Es folgt ein Überblick über die Aufnahme des Werks damals und heute und die große Bedeutung der „Weber-These" in der modernen Religions- und Kulturökonomik. Nach einer kurzen Erörterung des Verhältnisses von Weber zu Marx wirft Kurz ein Streiflicht auf Webers Beitrag zum Verständnis von Macht und Herrschaft. Webers Werk erweist sich als gewaltige Schatzkammer von Ideen, von denen mehrere noch darauf warten, aufgegriffen zu werden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents Max Weber as an economist and as a social scientist. Weber’s relations to economics, philosophy and sociology are discussed. Max Weber has more in common with economists than it might seem at first sight. His principle of value neutrality has become the foundation of the methodology of social sciences, including economics. The second point shared by Max Weber with standard economics is methodological individualism. The third point which a modern economist can learn from Max Weber is the concept of the ideal type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Mediterranea - Ricerche Storiche is the property of Mediterranea-Ricerche Storiche and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This research aimed to analyze the moderating effect that Protestant work ethics (PWE) have on the relationship between human resources practices (HRP) and (a) work engagement (WE) and (b) organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). The sample consisted of 299 participants. The results revealed that PWE moderates the relationship between HRP and WE and OCB through five dimensions. The dimensions of PWE-leisure and PWE-centrality of work are moderators between the HRP and the WE. The dimensions of PWE-morality–ethics, PWE-wasted time, PWE-delay of gratification, and PWE-leisure moderate the relationship between HRP and OCB. The analysis offers additional evidence to existing literature in understanding how human resources practices facilitate the development of work engagement and citizenship behaviors. The workers’ values play an essential role here to strengthen that relationship and mitigate its harmful effects.