Investigation of the concept of beauty via a lock-in feedback experiment

Lock-in feedback circuits are routinely used in physics laboratories all around the world to extract small signals out of a noisy environment. In a recent paper (M. Kaptein, R. van Emden, and D. Iannuzzi, paper under review), we have shown that one can adapt the algorithm exploited in those circuits to gain insight in behavioral economics. In this paper, we extend this concept to a very subjective socio-philosophical concept: the concept of beauty. We run an experiment on 7414 volunteers, asking them to express their opinion on the physical features of an avatar. Each participant was prompted with an image whose features were adjusted sequentially via a lock-in feedback algorithm driven by the opinion expressed by the previous participants. Our results show that the method allows one to identify the most attractive features of the avatar

Conceptions of God, normative convictions and socially responsible business conduct: An explorative study among executives

The case for socially responsible business conduct is often made from an economical or ethical perspective with the organization as level of analysis. This paper focuses on the relationship between the religious belief of corporate decision-makers and socially responsible business conduct. Based on in-depth interviews with twenty Dutch executives from different religious backgrounds, we find much inductive evidence of a relationship between their conception of God, norms and values and business conduct. We also find that executives with a monotheistic conception of God display a stronger orientation toward socially responsible business conduct than executives with a pantheistic conception of God.Socially responsible business conduct; religion; values; ethics; leadership

Motives of Socially Responsible Business Conduct

The social and ecological challenges that governments face have raised their interest in socially responsible business conduct (SRBC). In this article we analyze the motives of executives to perform SRBC. We distinguish three types of motives: financial, ethical and altruistic motives. We test the hypotheses on a sample of 473 executives. The estimation results show that SRBC is driven by a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motives, but that the intrinsic motives are stronger than the extrinsic motive.intrinsic motivation;extrinsic motivation;corporate social responsibility;socially responsible business conduct

Attrition-enhanced total resolution leads to homochiral families of amino acid derivatives

The total resolution of five structurally similar racemizable amino acid derivatives, three of which have racemic crystal structures, was performed simultaneously. By enantioselective incorporation in an amino acid derivative that forms a conglomerate the other four were deracemized on attrition-induced grinding. The outcome of the resolution was random (R) or (S), but all compounds had the same absolute configuration and high enantiomeric purities.