Object Language/On Defining Sculpture

Object Language In the current era we in the Western, developed world, have almost universal free and uninhibited access to almost every piece of information in existence. Increasingly, regardless of the source, material presented to us as fact has become increasingly suspect. Together, these two things mean this endless stream of data is useless. The question is how to combat this decline, how to reverse the process of a meaningless, constant data-dump. The answer lies in the language used to communicate information. Language is the means by which we communicate complex ideas and knowledge from person to person. Language is something ubiquitous in our society, we see it, we hear it, it is so constant we do not even consider it as a part of the concepts it is used to convey. Altering language is one of the subtlest ways that information can still be obfuscated. Sculpture has the capability to reframe its own context. This is the great privilege evidenced numerous times by such works as Duchamp’s Fountain and enumerated by prominent art historians. Transforming something into sculpture implies that the purpose of the work is, at least in part, to reframe the subject matter of the piece. Translating language into sculpture is an effort to reframe this system. The process takes that which is recognizable and readily consumable and obfuscates it, putting barriers between us, the reader, and the idea expressed. That which is freely given is valueless, easily discarded, and ignored. By transforming the content into sculpture the idea is elevated, made enigmatic, even esoteric. The ideas in the context of this show are not freely given. They have been rendered inaccessible and there must be effort expended to understand the message. These ideas must be earned. This makes them more valuable and much harder to ignore or discard. Information is the most powerful tool we have, its possession saves us from the mistakes of the past, it is what guides us through our present, and it is what ensures our future. When information becomes valueless it is altogether too easy for it to be taken away; we lose the most important tool we have in self determination. The supplemental images are of the art exhibition entitled Object Language, produced by the artist, that this thesis is a companion to

Ethically Adrift: How Others Pull Our Moral Compass from True North, and How We Can Fix It

This chapter is about the social nature of morality. Using the metaphor of the moral compass to describe individuals' inner sense of right and wrong, we offer a framework to help us understand social reasons why our moral compass can come under others' control, leading even good people to cross ethical boundaries. Departing from prior work focusing on the role of individuals' cognitive limitations in explaining unethical behavior, we focus on the socio-psychological processes that function as triggers of moral neglect, moral justification and immoral action, and their impact on moral behavior. In addition, our framework discusses organizational factors that exacerbate the detrimental effects of each trigger. We conclude by discussing implications and recommendations for organizational scholars to take a more integrative approach to developing and evaluating theory about unethical behavior

Dangerous Expectations: Breaking Rules to Resolve Cognitive Dissonance

When entering task performance contexts we generally have expectations about both the task and how well we will perform on it. When those expectations go unmet, we experience psychological discomfort (cognitive dissonance), which we are then motivated to resolve. Prior research on expectancy disconfirmation in task performance contexts has focused on the dysfunctional consequences of disconfirming low performance expectations (i.e., stereotype threat). In this paper we focus on the dysfunctional consequences of disconfirming high performance expectations. In three studies, we find that individuals are more likely to break rules if they have been led to expect that achieving high levels of performance will be easy rather than difficult, even if breaking rules means behaving unethically. We show that this willingness to break rules is not due to differences in legitimate performance as a function of how easy people expect the task to be, or whether their expectations are set explicitly (by referring to others’ performance) or implicitly (as implied by their own prior performance). Instead, using a misattribution paradigm, we show that cognitive dissonance triggered by unmet expectations drives our effects

Racial and Socioeconomic Disparities in Biological and Perceived Chronic Stress: Does Group Identification Matter?

Objective: Hair cortisol has been recently identified as a biological index of stress via long-term alterations in HPA activity, although population norms and relationships to perceived stress measures have not yet been established. In the present study, 135 adults (ages 18-66; M = 30.26, SD = 12.80; 87 females) from the diverse UMass Boston campus participated in a study assessing chronic stress (via hair cortisol), perceived stress (via self-reported indices), and health indictors (WHR and blood pressure). Since hair grows on average 1cm per month, we captured approximately 3 months of retrospective cortisol levels. Results: Hair cortisol was uncorrelated with subjective stress indices, unless collapsed into a composite across several domains. Differences in objective and subjective stress measures were found for sociodemographic factors including racial/ethnic identity, sex, and SES. Specifically, highest hair cortisol levels were found by gender (males were higher) and race (minorities were higher), whereas subjective stress was positively associated with race (minorities were higher), and negatively associated with SES and age. Subjective stress was not significantly different by gender. Examining interactions of predictors, results obtain that Race by SES predicted hair cortisol, perceived stress, well-being, and health indicators but in unexpected directions. Minorities in high SES had the greatest hair cortisol, subjective stress, systolic blood pressure, waist cm, and lower reported well-being, compared to the non-minority high SES group The unexpected findings of deleterious outcomes for high SES minorities suggest the necessity of further studies examining social identity, the prevalence of discrimination in high SES, and potential protective factors. Moreover, these findings give evidence that hair cortisol, as a biomarker of long-term HPA activity, may not always be correlated with perceptions of stress across specific domains, but rather may provide a broad non-specific assessment of chronic stress, where objective and subjective indices may be uncoupled

The Cheater’s High: The Unexpected Affective Benefits of Unethical Behavior

Many theories of moral behavior assume that unethical behavior triggers negative affect. In this article, we challenge this assumption and demonstrate that unethical behavior can trigger positive affect, which we term a “cheater’s high.” Across 6 studies, we find that even though individuals predict they will feel guilty and have increased levels of negative affect after engaging in unethical behavior (Studies 1a and 1b), individuals who cheat on different problem-solving tasks consistently experience more positive affect than those who do not (Studies 2–5). We find that this heightened positive affect does not depend on self-selection (Studies 3 and 4), and it is not due to the accrual of undeserved financial rewards (Study 4). Cheating is associated with feelings of self-satisfaction, and the boost in positive affect from cheating persists even when prospects for self-deception about unethical behavior are reduced (Study 5). Our results have important implications for models of ethical decision making, moral behavior, and self-regulatory theory

Stressing the Hormone: Biological and Psychosocial Factors associated with Chronic Stress

Chronic stress has been associated with a constellation of deleterious psychological and physical health outcomes. We collected cortisol from hair (CORT) to assess chronic stress retrospectively for 3 months’ time (3cms). Over two studies from the UMass Boston campus and the local community, we recruited in t1: 134 adults (ages 18-67; M = 29.49, SD = 12.48) and t2: 145 adults (ages18-30, M = 22.56, SD = 3.54) to participate on two studies assessing objective biological stress (via hair cortisol), subjective perceived stress (via self-reports), psychosocial factors, and health indicators. In follow-up Study 2, we also included indices of perceived discrimination, cardiovascular parameters, and affective vigilance. Results: t1: CORT levels were positively associated with Total perceived stress and one health indicator: systolic blood pressure. An SES by Race interaction predicted both higher CORT and perceived stress, although higher SES did not always confer the expected benefit of higher SES: minorities in high SES had the greatest CORT, systolic blood pressure, and lowest self-rated health. Results: t2: Perceived stress measures and new measures of discrimination were negatively associated with well-being and health. Higher racial/ethnic pride was associated with better health, but also increased daily discrimination and waist-to-hip ratio. The SES by Race interaction was again associated with Total perceived stress and minorities in higher SES reported greatest Total stress. Minorities also showed the greatest vigilance. Specifically, African-Americans had the longest latencies for social devaluation words during a modified Stroop, the greatest city stress, and the greatest pride/identity for heritage group