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Jordan Peele's horror movie, Us, takes moral ambiguity to its logical extreme by creating a world, or, rather, two worlds, in which good and evil mirror each other on multiple planes—the narrative, the visual, the spatial, the racial, the ethical—and by its use of a biblical verse—Jer 11:11. The Wilsons, who inhabit "our" world, view the "Tethered", who inhabit a nether world, as evil insofar as they have emerged from the shadows to terrorize and kill them. The Tethered, however, view the humans as evil, insofar as they take for granted the ability to enjoy and act in the world. Like the prophet Jeremiah, the film draws the audience's attention to its own iniquity—and the consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report on two experiments that aimed to test the hypothesis that English listeners orient to full pronunciation forms—"canonical forms"—in judging the tempo of speech that features deletions. If listeners orient to canonical forms, this should mean that the perceived tempo of speech containing deletions is highly relative to the speech's articulation rate calculated on the basis of surface phone strings. We used controlled stimuli to test this hypothesis. We created sentences with one ambiguous word form (for example, support~sport), to give half of the listeners an orthographic form that includes support and the other half an otherwise identical orthographic form with sport. In both experiments, listeners judged the tempo of the sentences, which allowed us to assess whether the difference in imposed interpretation had an impact on perceived tempo. Experiment 1 used a tempo rating task in which listeners evaluated the tempo of experimental stimuli relative to comparison stimuli, on a continuous scale. Experiment 2 used a tempo comparison task in which listeners judged whether second members of stimulus pairs were slower or faster than first members. Both experiments revealed the predicted effect of the imposed word interpretation: sentences with an imposed "schwa" interpretation for the ambiguous word form were judged faster than (the same) sentences with an imposed "no schwa" interpretation. However, in both experiments the effect was small and variables related to the experimental design had significant effects on responses. We discuss the results' implications for our understanding of speech tempo perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on in-depth interviews with 29 active drug robbers (25 male, 4 female) from St. Louis, MO (USA), we explore restraint among people and in circumstances where there should be none. Focusing on greed restraint at the crime's payoff point (i.e., not taking everything one could when rewards are seized), we identify the decision-making constructs and conceptual pathways by which this happens and discuss their implications for improved specification of the relationship between criminal propensity, self-regulation, and risk sensitivity. We contend that self-centeredness is the one dimension of criminal propensity that is sufficiently receptive to risk sensitivity to make self-regulation possible, and that individuals with low trait self-control can show state self-control when ambiguity aversion and reference point expectations align to sate anomic greed. This refinement offers novel pathways for future study of dual-influence models of crime, and suggests that offender decision-making is best conceptualized as a process that unfolds during crimes rather than a discrete event that precedes them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While results-based performance measurement has become a common practice in governing relationships with external stakeholders, many nonprofits are struggling with severe tensions when implementing results-based management practices inside the organization. This article draws on performance management research in accounting and management to analyze why results-based management poses particular challenges for nonprofits. As its first contribution, the article conceptualizes dedication to values as a particular characteristic of nonprofit organizations that involves high role ambiguity among nonprofit staff. Second, it specifies a particular tension associated with results-based management practices in values-focused work: Results-based management helps to reduce role ambiguity, but by doing so it creates role conflict. Third, the article proposes the interactive use of results-based information as an approach to how organizations with a high dedication to values can increase role clarity for nonprofit staff, while avoiding role conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For qualitative data analysis (QDA), researchers assign codes to text segments to arrange the information into topics or concepts. These annotations facilitate information retrieval and the identification of emerging patterns in unstructured data. However, this metadata is typically not published or reused after the research. Subsequent studies with similar research questions require a new definition of codes and do not benefit from other analysts' experience. Machine learning (ML) based classification seeded with such data remains a challenging task due to the ambiguity of code definitions and the inherent subjectivity of the exercise. Previous attempts to support QDA using ML rely on linear models and only examined individual datasets that were either smaller or coded specifically for this purpose. However, we show that modern approaches effectively capture at least part of the codes' semantics and may generalize to multiple studies. We analyze the performance of multiple classifiers across three large real-world datasets. Furthermore, we propose an ML-based approach to identify semantic relations of codes in different studies to show thematic faceting, enhance retrieval of related content, or bootstrap the coding process. These are encouraging results that suggest how analysts might benefit from prior interpretation efforts, potentially yielding new insights into qualitative data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempts to address the 'scant attention' (to use Barney Glaser's words) given to formal grounded theory by revisiting and reformulating the concept of accuracy (interchangeably used with accurate descriptions and empirical evidence) which Glaser blames to be the reason behind grounded theorists neglecting formal grounded theorizing. A novel concept called pragmatic accuracy is introduced to meet the requirements of formal grounded theorizing. Pragmatic accuracy by supplementing inductive reasoning with abductive places methodological self-consciousness at the center of formal grounded theorizing as there is a continual need for scrutinizing the core assumptions of a researcher and those of their participants'. This study does not entirely reject Glaser's approach of shunning accuracy. Rather it teases out the contradiction between Glaser's words and practice towards qualitative descriptions and shows how he, in a coauthored formal grounded theory, recognizes the importance of empirical references and explanatory definitions. Along with Glaser, Charmaz' and Kearney's views on accuracy are also unpacked and brought in harmony with the requirements of formal grounded theorizing. A case is made through pragmatic accuracy to encourage a sustained focus on the inclusion of empirical content in an emerging formal theory to increase its applicability and generalizability. The reformulated pragmatic accuracy also offers two lengths for formal grounded theories, article-length and book-length, depending upon the requirements of the topic and the researcher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitive modifications during ageing can affect decision-making competence (DMC). As this ability is central to the preservation of autonomy, our study aims to investigate how it changes in elderly adults and to determine whether such changes are linked to the deterioration of executive functions and working memory. To this end, 50 young adults and 50 elderly adults were assessed with executive, working memory, and DMC tasks. The latter comprised the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and a scenario task based on situations inspired by everyday life, under conditions of both risk and ambiguity. The results revealed lower performances in old than in young adults for the updating, inhibition, and working memory tasks. The IGT failed to distinguish between the two age groups. However, the scenario task did permit such a distinction, with young adults seeking more risky and ambiguous choices than elderly adults. Moreover, updating and inhibition capacities appeared to influence DMC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lexical ambiguity is pervasive among Chinese characters as many of them are polysemantic, with one orthographic form carrying unrelated meanings, related meanings, or sometimes both unrelated and related meanings. A large-scale database with ambiguity measures for simplified Chinese characters has yet to be developed, which could greatly benefit psycholinguistic research on the Chinese language or cross-language comparisons. This article reports two sets of ratings by native speakers, the perceived number of meanings (pNoM) for 4,363 characters and the perceived relatedness of meanings (pRoM) for a subset of 1,053 characters. These rating-based ambiguity measures capture the representational nuance about a character's meanings stored in average native speakers' mental lexicon, which tends to be obscured by dictionary- and corpus-based ambiguity measures. Consequently, they each account for a reliable portion of variance in the efficiency of character processing, above and beyond the effects of character frequency, age of acquisition, and other types of ambiguity measures. Theoretical and empirical implications with regard to the plurality and the relatedness of character meanings, the two focal aspects of debate on lexical ambiguity, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of developed countries, a lot of research has been done to uncover and identify the problems school leaders face in their work but little is known about the school leadership of underdeveloped countries. In a quest to discover contextual problems in terms of role conflict and role ambiguity of school leaders, this qualitative study tries to capture the experiences of principals in Nepal through in-depth interviews of six community school principals. The findings reveal that the major sources of role conflict and ambiguity for principals from Nepal are problematic power-sharing, low job autonomy, dual role conflict, limited professional development training, and lack of leadership knowledge. The study has several policy-level implications such as importance of hiring principals with proven leadership skills and increasing the leadership skills of current principals to ensure that they can tackle these challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the most notorious, mixed Roma and non-Roma Romanian neighbourhood of Bucharest, structurally accumulated problems of governance turn into practical challenges that need to be tackled with the means at each person's disposal. Under conditions of capitalist incorporation and prolonged crises on the post-socialist periphery, the main protagonists of this account—male members of an extended network of Spoitori Roma with diverse livelihoods—strive for relative independence not only from market forces but also from actors who may expose them to abuse. In this article, I reflect on personalized value struggles associated with marketization. Instead of accepting sectorial divisions between formality and informality, I show how marketization elucidates moral evaluations of being and doing good among men who hope to be or become "their own bosses" in precarious urban conditions. Distinguishing folk and analytic concepts, my analysis engages with the moral contestation of the "good" and the ambiguity of value-based human endeavours among different layers of contemporary economic life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through this pulsating textual exploration, I viscerally uncover the potentialities of positionality and reflexivity in the context of research and pedagogical practice by tending to the emergent tensions of my own lived/living body. I weave in and out of the interstitial intimacies of embodied, performative, and living inquiries in situating myself amid my multi-identities and social locations to unearth how embodied arts-based approaches cultivate sensorial, cultural, and critical consciousness and invite multidimensional representations of human experience that transgress fixed dichotomies of insider/outsider status in qualitative research. This sensorial inquiry dwells in the in-between sites of breath and bone, ambiguity, and paradox, to reveal how embodied arts-integrated inquiries offer transformative possibilities for (re)humanization, healing, and social justice in arts-based and qualitative research and educational practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a rejoinder to a comment made by Adrian Duşa and Axel Marx regarding the evaluation of qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). The authors address four points raised by Duşa and Marx, including the failure to propose an enhancement of benchmarks, the use of constants in QCA, the neglect of logical remainders, and the reanalysis of a previous study. The authors argue that adherence to benchmarks can create harm, explain the rationale behind their set-up, and discuss the misinterpretation of Boolean conditionality. They also highlight the issue of model ambiguity in QCA and suggest alternative methods such as coincidence analysis (CNA) and combinational regularity analysis (CORA). [Extracted from the article]

This paper explores how leadership is addressed within Australia's National Children's Education and Care Workforce Strategy (ACECQA, 2021). The Workforce Strategy has been widely welcomed, arriving at a time of unprecedented workforce pressures in the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector. Yet, on close examination there appears an absence of focus on leaders as a distinct group within the ECEC workforce. Considering leadership is unequivocally central to retaining and sustaining early childhood educators, this absence of focus is noteworthy. First, the paper unpacks what is currently known about ECEC leadership. Then, how leadership in the policies under consideration is constructed as a problem in relation to quality and capability. Next, silences and ambiguities in how the strategy addresses the retention of leaders and their wellbeing is discussed. Ultimately it is argued that we need more understanding of the experiences of leaders as a distinct subset of the ECEC workforce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author engages the essay form and body in this creative nonfiction essay as trans*textual. A trans*textual essay, as methodological and literary, attends to textual movement and a textual body lacking traditional cohesive devices, such as transitional sentences and naming practices. This article's approach to the essay privileges ambiguity and not-knowing by using common security questions to authenticate identity in digital spaces in order to structure a personal history. Wrong body and wrong name discourse often oversimplify trans* experience. Taking "identity theft" as its initial provocation, this article unpacks the complexity of naming, identity, intimacy, erasure, and personal history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dual-process theory of career decision-making (DTC; Xu, 2021a ; 2021b) resulted from a synthesized and critical reflection of career decision-making and related models in the contemporary psychosocial context of career development. The DTC features persistent decision uncertainty as a salient condition of contemporary career decision-making, and its theoretical framework and predictive model establish DTC's conceptual and empirical foundation, respectively. However, the DTC and the career decision-making literature in general still lack a process-oriented prescriptive model that foregrounds decision uncertainty. Consequently, the extant literature fails to prescribe key decision-making components and procedures under decision uncertainty. Thus, drawing on the DTC, decision-making science, and existing models of career decision-making, we propose a four-stage process model, which involves four interlinked macro stages and micro steps within each stage. The model also involves five propositions to explain and predict the effects of important personal and environmental factors on the process and outcomes of each stage. We describe the DTC process model and use a case example to illustrate how the model can be applied in practice. Together, the DTC's theoretical framework, predictive model, and process-oriented prescriptive model constitute a comprehensive theory regarding dynamic career decision-making and adaption in an uncertain world and offer diverse research and practical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contrast to prototypical facial expressions, we show less perceptual tolerance in perceiving vague expressions by demonstrating an interpretation bias, such as more frequent perception of anger or happiness when categorizing ambiguous expressions of angry and happy faces that are morphed in different proportions and displayed under high- or low-quality conditions. However, it remains unclear whether this interpretation bias is specific to emotion categories or reflects a general negativity versus positivity bias and whether the degree of this bias is affected by the valence or category of two morphed expressions. These questions were examined in two eye-tracking experiments by systematically manipulating expression ambiguity and image quality in fear- and sad-happiness faces (Experiment 1) and by directly comparing anger-, fear-, sadness-, and disgust-happiness expressions (Experiment 2). We found that increasing expression ambiguity and degrading image quality induced a general negativity versus positivity bias in expression categorization. The degree of negativity bias, the associated reaction time and face-viewing gaze allocation were further manipulated by different expression combinations. It seems that although we show a viewing condition-dependent bias in interpreting vague facial expressions that display valence-contradicting expressive cues, it appears that the perception of these ambiguous expressions is guided by a categorical process similar to that involved in perceiving prototypical expressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dual-process theory of career decision-making (DTC) adds to the conversation about understanding and facilitating career decision-making from a more realistic and inclusive perspective and highlights the joint operation of decision ambiguity and ambiguity management strategies in career decision-making. However, a psychometrically sound measure of decision ambiguity is lacking. Thus, the current study used two samples of U.S. college students to develop and initially validate a measure of decision ambiguity (CDMA). Study 1 (n = 195) developed the CDMA and found initial evidence for a unidimensional structure. Study 2 (n = 271) cross-validated the unidimensional structure of the CDMA and supported the convergent, discriminant, concurrent, and incremental validities of the CDMA. Specifically, the results supported (1) the differential associations of the CDMA with need for information and with neuroticism/negative affectivity, lack of readiness, and interpersonal conflicts, (2) the positive association between the CDMA and choice/commitment anxiety, and (3) the incremental predictions of the CDMA for career decidedness, career certainty, and major satisfaction over and beyond need for information. Therefore, the current study offers a psychometrically sound measure of decision ambiguity, which has potential to facilitate the scientific inquiry and social justice application of the DTC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We write in response to an article published in this journal by Andrew Ortony titled "Are All 'Basic Emotions' Emotions? A Problem for the (Basic) Emotions Construct." The author claimed that "for all its elevated status as a basic emotion, surprise fails to satisfy the minimal requirements that [he] proposed for something to be an emotion, and if it is not an emotion, it cannot possibly be a basic emotion." Although we acknowledge the concerns brought forth by Ortony, we respectfully disagree with his conclusion about surprise. To make a case against the assertion that surprise is valence-free, we summarize an extensive body of work showing that surprise is indeed valenced—in a specific manner (i.e., ambiguously valenced)—and that it meets all of Ortony's criteria for an emotion. In other words, rather than being described as neither positive nor negative, this emotion is either positive or negative. We consider the data with respect to surprise as a basic emotion, and we dispute the definitions of basic emotions as "widely divergent." Future work is needed to continue defining an emotion, and a basic emotion, but we believe this is a worthy effort toward shaping a still evolving field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Serious emergencies exacerbate the uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity of the external environment, creating survival challenges for organizations and employees. During emergencies, it becomes more difficult for organizations to leverage organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) from their employees to survive existential crises. From the perspective of resource exchange and investment, we explore the ways that organizations can collaboratively overcome difficulties by motivating their employees to engage in OCBs. Our findings show that (1) a psychosocial safety climate (PSC) that is adopted by an organization can effectively stimulate employee OCBs, which are of greater help to organizations than to coworkers, (2) resilience may be a psychological resource that explains the stimulating effect of a PSC on OCBs, and (3) employee trait gratitude enhances the role of resilience in mediating the relationship between a PSC and helping behaviors (but not civic virtue behaviors). Our findings not only reveal the mechanisms by which organizations can stimulate employee OCBs when the two face survival challenges during serious emergencies but also provide a recommendation for managers to focus on employee mental health and resilience during crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Putting queer theory in dialogue with critical infrastructure studies, this article proposes a theoretically, methodologically and empirically expansive reading of queer epistemologies. Reiterating the expansiveness of queer theory as an intellectual and political endeavour, the article argues that queering might also be perceived, and engaged with, as a theoretical and practical concern with non-linear, ambiguous, never-fully-knowable textures of subjectivity, self and social life, such as those implicated in mega-infrastructure development. Exploring this, the article develops the case for approaching queering as (un)knowing – an epistemology to foreground ambiguities of the social – intended to build expansive forms of solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on the Moral Foundations Theory and findings regarding the linkage of values, convictions and beliefs, the aim of the study was to compare people displaying various constellations of moral foundations regarding their tolerance of ambiguity, fear of COVID-19 (FCV), endorsement of COVID-19 conspiracy theories and the extent to which they believed in the effectiveness of five COVID-19 preventive measures. This study was self-report- and questionnaire-based (N = 212), performed on the general public (aged from 18 to 65). Moral foundations clustered into four groups: Individualizing, Binding, Anti-Individualizing and Generally Moral. The endorsement of Individualizing values (Harm/Care, Fairness/Reciprocity) was linked to higher FCV and higher rating of the effectiveness of COVID-19 preventive measures. Endorsing Binding values (Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect and Purity/Sanctity) was related to lower tolerance of ambiguity and displaying higher conspiracy beliefs. Findings are discussed in the light of their meaning of values for socially responsible behaviour during a pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While research has identified a five-factor model of career decision-making difficulty based on meta-analytical evidence and cross-cultural comparison, the field lacks an elaborated theoretical account of the joint operation of the five decision difficulties. The current study drew on the dual-process theory of career decision-making (DTC) to examine the interplay of the five decision difficulties in predicting career decidedness in the Chinese context. Study 1 developed and validated measures of decision ambiguity, advance in narrowing down, and career decidedness in a sample of Chinese college students (n = 180). Study 2 examined the structural model using another sample of Chinese college students (n = 408). Focusing on the relations of the five major decision difficulties to career decidedness, the results did not support the standalone mechanism of confusion management but supported the standalone mechanism of ambiguity management. Additionally, the results supported the crossover mechanism from confusion management to ambiguity management and the crossover mechanism from ambiguity management to confusion management. The results not only shed light on the role of each difficulty but also offer evidence for the interplay of key DTC macro elements. The practical implications based on the joint operation of the five decision-making difficulties are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars voice increasing interest in strategic ambiguity—a strategy whereby parties intentionally conceal their positions on divisive issues. Scholars contend that strategic ambiguity can help European parties broaden their electoral appeals. Although they identify several tactics and styles of position-blurring, the observational literature has yet failed to capture different variants of ambiguous rhetoric, let alone evaluate their effect on the vote. In this article, I rely on cross-country survey experiments that utilize representative samples of around 22,000 respondents from 14 European countries to evaluate the effect of four varieties of ambiguity : vagueness, ambivalence, flip-flopping, and negative messaging. I investigate the impact of ambiguous rhetoric vis-a-vis the context of competition facing the party. The findings reveal that the consequences of ambiguity vary by the actual form it takes and the context of competition facing the party. First, among the varieties, vague and ambivalent variants were superior to negative messaging or flip-flopping. Second, ambiguity helped the party in the absence of popular policy offers in the party system, while it backfired when competitors explicitly agreed with the voter. The findings imply that ambiguity is generally a useful strategy, but its benefits do not extend to rhetorical tactics that harm the party's valence image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines what vice-principals in Singapore experience as constraints to their leadership practice, and how they deal with these constraints, cognisant that role misalignment for vice-principals presents barriers to schools achieving optimal effectiveness. This qualitative study seeks to hear the voices of vice-principals, to uncover the contextual richness of their experiences through interviews with 28 vice-principals. Coding involved a mix of codes from the literature and from the interviews, with member checking of the findings. Vice-principals in Singapore face two main constraints: role ambiguity and role conflicts. These are mainly a structural issue, given the dual expectations of vice-principals to support their principals and to lead. The problems are heightened when there are clashes of values, with vice-principals conflicted between two sources of authority: administrative and professional. Framing the constraints faced by vice-principals under role ambiguity and role conflicts raises these constraints to a theoretical and organisational level. The study proposes a link between the concepts of role ambiguity and role boundaries and illustrates how role ambiguity and conflicts can be disempowering. However, the study also shows that ambiguity need not always be a constraint but can be positive under some conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In biological motion perception, movements of several point lights can evoke a vivid impression of living animals, including humans. Recent studies have reported that male point-light walkers tend to be perceived as facing toward the viewer more than female walkers, and have hypothesized that the gender-based facing bias arises from motion signals. The purpose of this study was to test this hypothesis under experimental conditions where binocular disparity was added to biological motion stimuli. In the two experiments reported here, participants were presented with disparity-defined female and male point-light figures facing toward or away from the viewer. In Experiment 1, we measured "facing-the-viewer" responses in upright and inverted walker configurations. It was found that the facing bias was greater for the male walker than for the female walker in most disparity magnitudes, regardless of walker inversion. In Experiment 2, the walker stimuli were replaced by static snapshots of the walkers. The results showed that the facing bias did not differ between the female and male static figures. These results suggest that motion signals play an important role in producing the gender-based facing bias, even when binocular disparity is added to biological motion stimuli. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitive conflict is regarded as a crucial factor in triggering subsequent adjustments in cognitive control. Recent studies have suggested that the implementation of control following conflict detection might be domain-general in that conflict experienced in the language domain recruits control processes that deal with conflict experienced in non-linguistic domains. During language comprehension, humans often have to recover from conflicting interpretations as quickly and accurately as possible. In this study, we investigate how people adapt to conflict experienced during processing semantically ambiguous sentences. Experiments 1 to 3 investigated whether such semantic conflict produces the congruency sequence effect (CSE) within a subsequent manual Stroop task and whether Stroop conflict leads to adjustments in semantic processing. Experiments 4 to 6 investigated whether semantic conflict results in conflict adaptation in subsequent sentence processing. Although processing conflict was consistently experienced during sentence reading and in the Stroop task, we did not observe any within-task or cross-task adaptation effects. Specifically, there were no cross-task CSEs from the linguistic task to the Stroop task and vice versa (experiments 1–3)—speaking against the assumption of domain-general control mechanisms. Moreover, experiencing conflict within a semantically ambiguous sentence did not ease the processing of a subsequent ambiguous sentence (experiments 4–6). Implications of these findings will be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous literature has recognized the importance of social relationship in understanding people's engagement in aggressive behavior. Yet, largely due to data limitations, only few studies have empirically explored how social status precisely influences interpersonal violence. In this research, we investigate the determinants of peer-to-peer violence by focusing on individual's positions in the status hierarchy within adolescent peer networks. More specifically, our study examines and demonstrates the extent to which the likelihood of interpersonal violence rises, first, as a function of one's status (popularity) and, second, due to ambiguity between status positions of the parties involved in a physical altercation. Using a unique dataset collected on school-based children in Laos (Lao People's Democratic Republic) in 2016 (N = 1,332), we employ exponential random graph models to show the influence of status on the odds of involvement in on-campus violence. Results indicate that higher status, that is, more popular, students are more likely to be involved in a physical fight compared to their lower status counterparts. Moreover, we find a significant degree of similarity in status among students who engage in a fight. In other words, status ambiguity surrounding dyads in the peer network increases the likelihood of bringing them into a conflict situation. Our findings provide implications for understanding how social status shapes the dynamics of negative networks. By analyzing sociocentric network data, the present study extends and moves beyond prior findings mainly based on individual-level (non-dyadic) data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines whether English native speakers and highly proficient non-native speakers make comparable use of plausibility information during online sentence processing. Two sentence types involving temporarily ambiguous structural configurations—subordinate-clause ambiguity sentences and sentences with adjacent/split verb-particle constructions (VPCs)—were tested in a self-paced reading task. In the subordinate-clause ambiguity sentences, the pattern of reading times indicated that both native and non-native speakers used plausibility to recover from initial structural misanalysis. Native speakers were also able to use this information during syntactic and semantic reanalysis in the sentences involving split VPCs. Non-native speakers, however, showed persistent processing difficulty for split VPC sentences, regardless of plausibility. These results are taken to indicate that both native speakers and non-native speakers use plausibility information to recover from misanalysis, even in sentences that require major syntactic revision. The only clear limit on non-native speakers' ability to use this information related to lexico-syntactic/semantic processing difficulty, in that they appeared to be unable to use this information to recover from misanalysis associated with the structural properties of English VPCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dichotomy of the Necessity and Opportunity motivation (Push-Pull model) has been frequently used to explain Women Entrepreneurial Motivation (WEM) unvaryingly in most situations. The literature indicates a need for clarity and precision in the context-specific conceptualization of this construct. Understanding the disparities between WEM in developed and developing nations will further clear the ambiguity. The current article addresses this gap in three stages. Systematically analyzing 103 articles published in WEM research, an exhaustive list of all WEM factors is built and categorized as necessity and opportunity motivation using Computer-Aided Qualitative Data Analysis Software (CAQDAS) assisted Thematic Content Analysis (TCA). Subsequently, necessity and opportunity motivation themes are generated and the related sub-themes and their constituents are identified. Finally, the contextual differences in WEM tendencies are highlighted in the light of women entrepreneurship in developed and developing nations. The main contribution of this review, apart from the comprehensive consolidation of WEM factors, is the revelation of the clear contextual difference in the usage and connotation of certain WEM factors in developed and developing countries. These contextual insights of WEM may provide future research scholars as well as policymakers with an improved understanding of necessity and opportunity motivation factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research aimed to clarify whether middle adolescents' risk-taking is driven by reduced ambiguity aversion. In Study 1, we explored the development of ambiguity aversion using an adaptation of the classic Ellsberg paradox with early adolescents (10–11 years old), middle adolescents (14–16 years old), and young adults (20–25 years old). Study 2 examined the development of ambiguity aversion depending on the ambiguity level in middle adolescence compared with adults. These two studies revealed that only early adolescents did not demonstrate ambiguity aversion. In contrast, middle adolescents and adults showed strong ambiguity aversion irrespective of ambiguity level. These findings support the idea that the period of young adolescence could be the start of ambiguity aversion development, although this tendency to avoid ambiguous options is already developed in middle adolescence. This finding might have important public health implications and suggests that prevention campaigns should consider early adolescence to be a particularly vulnerable age group for risky behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In comparison to the natural sciences, there is a lack of empirically grounded social scientific research which addresses how people arrive at forming pleasurable interpretations of physical activity participation. Both social and natural conceptualisations of the bodily sensations evoked via physical activity involvement have also been restricted to pain and pleasure and pleasure-displeasure dualisms. Nevertheless, there is general agreement across these disciplines that pleasurable interpretations of physical activity participation encourage regular and sustained future involvement. We draw on carnal sociology to explain life history interview data from 30 varied physical activity careers to argue that corporeal experiences of being physically active are more ambiguous than existing pleasure-pain dualisms suggest. Furthermore, interpreting these ambiguous corporeal senses as pleasurable was of central importance to sustaining a prolonged physical activity career, which we argue is a carnal skill that can be learned. This skill, possessed by those interviewees with the most prolonged physical activity careers, had been acquired through becoming accustomed to the unique situated sensual ambiguities of particular physical activities, as a type of existential connoisseurship. Future research might pay more attention to the ambiguity of physical activity involvement, the carnal interpretation of which carries important consequences for the likelihood of long-term participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deviating from human norms in human-looking artificial entities can elicit uncanny sensations, described as the uncanny valley. This study investigates in three tasks whether configural deviation in written text also increases uncanniness. It further evaluates whether the uncanniness of text is better explained by perceptual disfluency and especially deviations from specialized categories, or conceptual disfluency caused by ambiguity. In the first task, lower sentence readability predicted uncanniness, but deviating sentences were more uncanny than typical sentences despite being just as readable. Furthermore, familiarity with a language increased the effect of configural deviation on uncanniness but not the effect of non-configural deviation (blur). In the second and third tasks, semantically ambiguous words and sentences were not uncannier than typical sentences, but deviating, non-ambiguous sentences were. Deviations from categories with specialized processing mechanisms thus better fit the observed results as an explanation of the uncanny valley than ambiguity-based explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The story of Jael is interpreted in many different ways; the two main ones are that she is a hero to Israel, or she is a deceitful murderer. An incident that occurred in the Cape Flats, South Africa, some years ago throws light on local women's interpretation of the Jael story. In the contemporary incident, a woman killed her son, but was viewed by women in the community not as a murderer but as a fellow-sufferer. In this study, women in the community and women in prison (some for murder) read the Jael text, act out the story, and share their views of what was happening in the biblical text. It is clear that contemporary women living in a violent community can contribute to a better understanding of the Jael text through their many parallel experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The employee behavior literature is very much dominated by studies on "good" or "positive" behaviors, but relatively little has been researched on the negative attitudes and behaviors of people within the workplace, in particular, job dissatisfaction and counterproductive work behavior (CWB). Therefore, the present study is intended to (1) investigate the influence of job stressors (i.e., role overload, role conflict, role ambiguity, and organizational constraints) on job dissatisfaction among university staff and (2) examine the influence of job dissatisfaction on university staff's CWB. Data was gathered through 266 questionnaires and tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling. The results revealed that organizational constraints, role overload, and role ambiguity are significant stressors that increase job dissatisfaction, which in turn, increase CWB. Thus, the findings highlight the vital role of specific job stressors (i.e., role overload, role ambiguity, and organizational constraints) in causing job dissatisfaction and CWB among university staff. The findings contribute to the stressor-emotion model and Herzberg's motivation-hygiene theory. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this study was to explore middle aged mothers' and young adult daughters' perceptions of the impact of non-death loss. This qualitative study explored perceptions of loss and boundary ambiguity of 24 mother-daughter dyads through individual interviews. All mothers and daughters described losses such as illness, the daughters' launching, and dissolution of relationships that impacted the mother-daughter relationship. Comparison of mothers' and daughters' descriptions of the impacts of loss revealed convergence and divergence in their descriptions of associated levels of boundary ambiguity. Although experiences of loss do seem to be a universal human experience, perceptions regarding the impact of loss on both the individual and the mother-daughter dyad vary greatly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Semantic Settling Dynamics model postulated that the seemingly inconsistent effects of lexical ambiguity are, in fact, a systematic manifestation of the specific dynamics that arise as a consequence of the amount of time spent in processing. The model has thus far been tested by prolonging lexical decision and comparing homonymous, polysemous, and unambiguous words in a factorial design. Here, we kept the strategy of task manipulation but tested the model by using continuous measures as indices of the level of lexical ambiguity and their slopes as indices of the effect size. We expressed the size of the polysemy effect as the slope of the effect of entropy of sense probability distribution and the size of the homonymy effect as the redundancy of sense probability distribution. Comparing lexical decision tasks with the shorter and longer time spent in processing, we observed the predicted decrease in the effect of the polysemy level as well as the predicted increase in the effect of homonymy level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although dysfunctional career decision-making beliefs represent an important assessment and intervention area in career counseling, the empirical foundation and the general mechanism of the dysfunctionality of dysfunctional career decision-making beliefs remain not fully clear. Based on the dual-process theory of career decision-making, the current study used a sample of U.S. college students (n = 200) and examined a longitudinal mediation model in which dysfunctional career decision-making beliefs predict subsequent career decidedness, career commitment, and academic major satisfaction through ambiguity aversion. The results supported the hypothesized mediation model in that dysfunctional career decision-making beliefs negatively predicted subsequent career decidedness, career commitment, and academic major satisfaction, and ambiguity aversion mediated all three links. Therefore, the present study not only shows that dysfunctional career decision-making has a pervasive detrimental role in career decision-making but also sheds light on the intricate relationship between dysfunctional career decision-making beliefs and ambiguity management in career decision-making. The limitations of this study and suggestions for future research are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizations that have a clear and unambiguous focus acquire greater legitimacy, which raises their capacity for mobilization. Using data on terrorist organizations, this paper explores two empirical implications of this claim: A terrorist organization's survival and lethality will be threatened to the extent that it has an ambiguous ideological identity. Analyses using panel data from the Extended Data on Terrorist Groups (EDTG) test these arguments for 474 global terrorist organizations observed over 1970–2016. The key empirical predictions are that ambiguity inhibits lethality and curtails survival. This paper finds support for these claims, controlling for competition from rivals and allies, ethno-nationalist or Islamic ideological orientation, and a variety of other measures of organizational capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Failure to acknowledge that one has been the victim of sexual violence is an important, yet understudied, barrier that prevents women from seeking appropriate support following sexual violence. Drawing from a literature of demonstrating the benefits of self-distancing when evaluating emotionally charged personal information, the effects of self-distancing on acknowledgment of sexual assault were tested. Four experimental studies (N total = 1,609) manipulated perspective-taking, either by asking women to imagine a series of hypothetical sexual encounters as experiences that happened to themselves or to their friends, or by asking women to describe a sexual experience from a first- or third-person perspective. Findings from the studies suggest that taking another person's perspective can help women to label ambiguous sexual experiences as more inappropriate and coercive. Notably, this did not seem to stem from women downplaying or dismissing experiences when they imagined themselves, as they reported anticipating more negative and less positive emotions in the scenarios where they imagined themselves compared to a friend. Nonetheless, in spite of the stronger anticipated negative emotional response when imagining themselves, women were less open to information about resources associated with sexual assault and support when they imagined themselves compared to a friend. This pattern of findings replicated for own, past sexual experiences but only to the extent that women spontaneously engaged in distanced perspective-taking themselves. This research suggests in addition to using contextual information to disambiguate and determine whether a sexual experience was inappropriate, taking a distanced perspective might provide a route through which women can come to terms with the experience and open up to the use of community-based services and sexual assault resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human geographers investigating socio-environmental change in resource frontiers often encounter illicit activities occurring alongside the licit processes they study. These encounters pose logistical challenges to conducting research and moral and analytical dilemmas for researchers. Illicit activities produce what we refer to as spheres of ambiguity, which obscure certain information, relationships, and phenomena surrounding them. We address the dearth of analytical tools for approaching the uncertainty this generates by bringing concepts from agnotology—the study of ignorance—to bear on research conducted amidst illicit activity, offering a framework for systematically evaluating ambiguous field data that is incompletely observed or reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has suggested that individuals' resolution of temporal ambiguity relies on experiences in physical domains, as well as on future event valence and emotional experiences. In the current study, we investigate whether the interpretation of a temporally ambiguous question is modulated by the day of the week on which the study was conducted. We asked participants (N = 208) to resolve the ambiguous time question on different days of the week (Monday or Friday). The results of the experiment indicate differences in processing of temporal ambiguity between different days of the week. The study raises the interesting possibility that days of the week can have important implications for resolving temporal ambiguity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We illuminate third-party research participant consent with, for, and by adults with developmental disabilities by examining consent as an iterative, ongoing process. We use an instrumental case study of three adults with developmental disabilities who, together with their third-party consent providing parents, participated in a broader conversation and video analysis study of how family members are part of decision-making by adults with developmental disabilities. Adults with developmental disabilities comprising our case demonstrated discomfort that left us with questions about the relational nature of third-party consent. We performed a directed content analysis of transcripts and video data corresponding to moments of discomfort, resulting in categories of one- distress, two- non-disclosure, and three- evasion. Our findings illustrate ambiguities where consent was at stake and where there appeared to be no ultimate "Yes" or "No" interpretation. We conclude that expressions of resistance to research participation by adults with developmental disabilities displayed in our data were assertions of autonomy that occurred in relation, yet ran counter to, the agendas of researchers and third-party consent providing parents. We offer recommendations for researchers in the developmental disability field and for qualitative researchers more broadly who might encounter similar ambiguities amidst the relational workings of consent. Greater analytic attention to the relational dynamics of consent has potential to expand ethical commitments of qualitative researchers beyond the limited range of meanings offered in ethics board approvals and signed consent forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article starts from the observation that most voters know relatively little about positions and plans of political parties, especially when European Union politics is concerned. One reason for this could be that the main sources for political information, party communication and mass media coverage, provide voters only little concrete information about positions and plans of political parties. We ask how concretely, respectively vaguely, political parties and mass media communicate political positions prior to the 2014 European Parliament elections. We conducted a quantitative content analysis of all European Union–related press releases from 46 national political parties and of all European Union–related articles of 14 national quality newspapers from 7 European countries 12 weeks before the 2014 European Parliament elections. Our analysis shows that press releases as well as media coverage contain more concrete political positions on European Union issues than vague political statements. Other than expected, newspaper coverage provided the public with less concrete information than political actors did. Nevertheless, countries vary with regard to the extent to which party communication or newspaper coverage contain vague statements. We cannot find empirical support that the communication of concrete political positions depends on a party's "extremity" of issue position or on the type of issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a conceptual framework of situational moderators of gender/sex effects in negotiation, risk-taking, and leadership—three masculine-stereotypic domains associated with gender/sex gaps in pay and authority. We propose that greater situational ambiguity and higher relevance and salience of gender/sex increase the likelihood of gender/sex-linked behaviors in these domains. We argue that greater ambiguity increases the extent to which actors and audiences must search inwardly (e.g., mental schema, past experience) or outwardly (e.g., social norms) for cues on how to behave or evaluate a situation and thereby widens the door for gender/sex-linked influences. Correspondingly, we propose that gender/sex effects on behavior and evaluations in these domains will be more likely when gender/sex is more relevant and salient to the setting or task. We propose further that these two situational moderators may work jointly or interactively to influence the likelihood of gender/sex effects in negotiation, risk-taking, and leadership. We conclude by discussing applications of our conceptual framework to psychological science and its translation to practice, including directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various studies within the Good-Enough Approach observe that people often make errors in answering comprehension questions after reading garden-path sentences such as While Anna dressed the baby played in the crib. Recently, it has been claimed that readers form a full syntactic analysis of these sentences, but they do not completely prune the original misanalysis. This article presents evidence that these findings do not hold for all garden-path sentences. The main finding of the Good-Enough Approach—that the comprehension questions targeting the initial misanalysis yield significantly higher rates of incorrect answers after garden-path sentences, in comparison with after control sentences—was replicated here in three self-paced reading experiments on Czech. However, these experiments show a similar pattern of results for other comprehension questions, such as questions targeting an analysis that is not syntactically licensed at any point of processing. These results point out that certain garden-path structures may be very hard to process and that the process of garden-path repair might not be successful at all. Based on these results and the results of previous studies, the idea of a range of difficulty levels for garden-path structures is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this column, the author shares insights on teaching-learning uncovered in considering the experiences of growing up on a farm, illuminated by insights from a treasured childhood book as perceived through the nursing theoretical lens of humanbecoming. Suggestions for planning and planting for the future of nursing are offered and questions are asked as a guide for the nurse teacher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerned with meaning-making and uncovering what the experience is like, hermeneutic phenomenology offers a way to understand shared, interconnected and embodied human existence. Poetry and poetic inquiry provide a powerful way to present nuanced, rich understandings, allowing space for play and ambiguity, revealing fresh and surprising ways of thinking about phenomena. Hermeneutic phenomenology often turns to the poetic for a suitably evocative language capable of bringing forth the richness and nearness of lived experience. Poetic inquiry, in turn, draws its nourishment from the foundational roots of hermeneutic phenomenology; however, this is often less obvious to the neophyte researcher. The paper provides an introduction to phenomenology and hermeneutics, showing how these qualitative approaches lend themselves to each other, and makes explicit a philosophical foundation for poetic inquiry. Whilst methodological frameworks provide vital scaffolding for researchers, they can become rigid; poetry can help researchers flex outside and around more established ways of thinking and writing. Together, hermeneutic phenomenology and poetic inquiry unsettle and disrupt familiar ways of doing, being and seeing our world, allowing the unexpected to emerge and bringing forth new potential understandings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a multidimensional environment, parties may have compelling incentives to obscure their preferences on select issues. This study contributes to a growing literature on position blurring by demonstrating how party leaders purposively create uncertainty about where their party stands on the issue of European integration. By doing so, it theoretically and empirically disentangles the cause of position blurring—parties' strategic behavior—from its intended political outcome. The analysis of survey and manifesto data across 14 Western European countries (1999–2019) confirms that three distinct strategies—avoidance, ambiguity, and alternation—all increase expert uncertainty about a party's position. This finding is then unpacked by examining for whom avoidance is particularly effective. This study has important implications for our understanding of party strategy, democratic representation, and political accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been increasing pressure on men to prevent sexual violence. This study uses data from 25 semi-structured interviews to explore how heterosexual undergraduate men have responded to cultural and organizational pressure to seek consent. Participants answered questions about their recent sexual experiences and attitudes toward campus sexual consent policies. Findings indicate that while participants condone key elements of sexual consent, they do not consistently apply reliable strategies to seek consent. Instead, they use ambiguous social cues that are common in both consensual and nonconsensual sexual interactions, which reinforce the notion that consent is unclear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we engage in productive resistance through exploring the application of an arts-based method in expanding the critical research methodology repertoire in the profession of speech-language pathology. There is a specific focus on the value of painting in the data representation process. We explore how a playful, creative analysis deepened the critical interpretative meaning-making process. In particular, we explain how artful representations in the data analysis process can broaden communication in research beyond the written modality to generate alternative knowledges. We use the concepts of productive ambiguity and unknowing as key conceptual tools to reimagine the data analysis process with particular focus on the process of data representation. We conclude that embracing the uncertainty of creative ways of knowing create possibilities for new meanings and knowledges to emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]