The Nature and Etiology of Uncertainty

2021 ◽  
pp. 12-30
Author(s):  
Paul K.J. Han
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Metacognitive Awareness ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
General Phenomenon ◽  
Exchange Of Information ◽  
Working Definition ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Science Literature ◽  
Definition Of

Chapter 2 examines the nature and etiology of uncertainty in medicine. It reviews existing conceptions of uncertainty and demonstrates the diversity of ways in which it has been defined, both in and outside of medicine. It describes the meaning and functions of metacognition, and offers a working definition of uncertainty as the metacognitive awareness of ignorance. Referencing various insights from the social science literature, the chapter describes how uncertainty as a more general phenomenon is both psychologically generated by novelty, discrepancy, and deliberation and socially constructed and transmitted through the exchange of information.

Was Stalin’s Revolution from Above a Rational Strategy of Modernization?

2021 ◽  
pp. 85-90
Author(s):  
George W. Breslauer
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
The Social ◽  
Revolutionary Violence ◽  
Social Science Literature

Strategies of modernization are legion within the social science literature. Stalin’s Revolution from Above—but not the Great Terror—is set within this literature as a revolutionary, as opposed to a reformist, strategy. Features of the revolutionary strategy may have been considered necessary to urgently create the capacity to defend the country in a hostile world. But the extent of revolutionary violence against the peasantry cannot be justified in those terms.

scholarly journals A formative evaluation of a pay-for-performance system

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsey Joseph ◽  
Kate Emmett ◽  
Joha Louw-Potgieter
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Formative Evaluation ◽  
Pay For Performance ◽  
Administrative Staff ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
Line Managers ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Science Literature ◽  
Managerial Implications

Orientation: Pay-for-performance (PFP) systems emerged during the 1980s as performance improvement tools. However, research findings have shown contradictory evidence as to whether these systems motivate employees to improve their performance. Research purpose: The main aim of this evaluation was to assess whether a PFP system, which a South African university introduced for administrative employees, improved their performance. A secondary aim was to examine whether the university implemented the system as it intended to.Motivation for the evaluation: The motivation for this evaluation was to add to the social science literature on the effectiveness of PFP systems. There are many contradictions in the literature and further exploration of whether these systems deliver their intended outcomes seemed overdue.Research design, approach and method: The evaluators used a descriptive design. They administered a customised questionnaire, to which 391 university staff members responded. Of these, 129 were line managers and 262 were administrative staff.Main findings: The administrative staff, whose working lives the PFP system affected, thought that it did not improve their performance. Both line managers and administrative staff indicated that the pay aspect of the system did not differentiate between poor and excellent performance.Practical/managerial implications: The evaluators made practical recommendations for improving the implementation of the system.Contribution/value-add: This evaluation contributed to the social science literature on the effectiveness of PFP systems by showing that poor implementation rather than poor design often lies at the root of a system that does not deliver its intended outcomes.

scholarly journals The Courts in American Public Culture

Daedalus ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 143 (3) ◽  
pp. 140-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan S. Silbey
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal Reasoning ◽  
Public Culture ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Institutional Practice ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Science Literature ◽  
Public Imagination

In American public imagination, courts are powerful but also impotent. They are guardians of citizens' rights but also agents of corporate wealth; simultaneously the least dangerous branch and the ultimate arbiters of fairness and justice. After recounting the social science literature on the mixed reception of courts in American public culture, this essay explains how the contradictory embrace of courts and law by Americans is not a weakness or flaw, nor a mark of confusion or naïveté. Rather, Americans' paradoxical interpretations of courts and judges sustain rather than undermine our legal institutions. These opposing accounts are a source of institutional durability and power because they combine the historical and widespread aspirations for the rule of law with a pragmatic recognition of the limits of institutional practice; these sundry accounts balance an appreciation for the discipline of legal reasoning with desires for responsive, humane judgment.

The Negro in the Social Science Literature: 1961

1962 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert P. Stuckert ◽  
Irwin D. Rinder
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Science Literature

scholarly journals The Prisoner’s Dilemma as a Conceptual Framework for Understanding Value-Related and Behavioral Changes in Western Societies in the Second Decade of the 21st Century: The Case of Israel

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. p39
Author(s):  
Leehu Zysberg
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Prisoner's Dilemma ◽  
Prisoner’S Dilemma ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Behavioral Changes ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
Social Disintegration ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Science Literature

In the popular media and from time to time in the social science literature, voices are heard describing a process of social disintegration and the deterioration of common values in western societies. What may account for this fragmentation? This article uses the theoretical framework of the prisoner’s dilemma to conceptualize the phenomenon, analyze its causes and processes, and to try and outline directions for dealing with it, using processes and data regarding the Israeli society in recent years.

scholarly journals Laypeople Can Predict Which Social Science Studies Replicate

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Hoogeveen ◽  
Alexandra Sarafoglou ◽  
Eric-Jan Wagenmakers
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Signal Detection Theory ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
Detection Ability ◽  
Strength Of Evidence ◽  
High Profile ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Science Literature

Large-scale collaborative projects recently demonstrated that several key findings from the social-science literature could not be replicated successfully. Here we assess the extent to which a finding’s replication success relates to its intuitive plausibility. Each of 27 high-profile social science findings was evaluated by 233 people without a PhD in psychology. Results showed that these laypeople predicted replication success with above-chance accuracy (i.e., 59%). In addition, when participants were informed about the strength of evidence from the original studies, this boosted their prediction performance to 67%. We discuss the prediction patterns and apply signal detection theory to disentangle detection ability from response bias. Our study suggests that laypeople’s predictions contain useful information for assessing the probability that a given finding will replicate successfully.

Reconsidering Race

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Louis Gates, Jr
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Age Of Discovery ◽  
The Way

Race is one of the most elusive phenomena of social life. While we generally know it when we see it, it's not an easy concept to define. Social science literature has argued that race is a Western, sociopolitical concept that emerged with the birth of modern imperialism, whether in the sixteenth century (the Age of Discovery) or the eighteenth century (the Age of Enlightenment). This book points out that there is a disjuncture between the way race is conceptualized in the social science and medical literature: some of the modern sciences employ racial and ethnic categories. As such, race has a physical, as opposed to a purely social, dimension. The book argues that in order to more fully understand what we mean by race, social scientists need to engage genetics, medicine, and health. To be sure, the long shadow of eugenics and the Nazi use of scientific racism have cast a pall over the effort to understand this complicated relationship between social science and race. But while the text rejects pseudoscience and hierarchical ways of looking at race, it makes the claim that it is time to reassess the Western-based, social construction paradigm. The chapters in this book consider three fundamental tensions in thinking about race: one between theories that see race as fixed or malleable; a second between the idea that race is a universal but modern Western concept and the idea that it has a deeper and more complicated cultural history; and a third between sociopolitical and biological/biomedical concepts of race. Arguing that race is not merely socially constructed, the chapters offer a collection of views on the way that social scientists must reconsider the idea of race in the age of genomics.

Trust and Institutional Dynamics in Japan: The Construction of Generalized Particularistic Trust

2000 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. N. Eisenstadt
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Institution Building ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
Institutional Dynamics ◽  
Institutional Frameworks ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Science Literature

Japan constitutes a very interesting and paradoxical case from the point of view of the place of trust in the processes of institution building and institutional dynamics. This problem has, of course, been the basic thrust of Durkheim's emphasis on the importance of precontractual elements for the fulfillment of contracts seemingly dealing with purely ‘utilitarian’ considerations. But this crucial insight – and problematic – has not been systematically followed up in the social science literature. Only lately it has been again taken up – initially, perhaps paradoxically – from within various rational choice approaches which have come to recognize that continuity of patterns of social interaction and of institutional frameworks cannot be explained by purely rational-utilitarian considerations (Braithwaite and Levi, 1998; Kramer and Tyler, 1993). At the same time the more recent analyses have also pointed to some of the complexities, paradoxes; and problems of the construction of trust in social interaction and institution building.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document