How Encouraging Niceness Can Incentivize Nastiness: An Unintended Consequence of Advertising Reform

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minah H. Jung ◽  
Clayton R. Critcher
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
Political Advertising ◽  
Unintended Consequence ◽  
The Public ◽  
Consistent Effect ◽  
Perceived Credibility ◽  
Truth Value ◽  
Ironic Effects

Enacted in an effort to discourage negative political advertising, American regulations mandate that candidates endorse their ads (“My name is ___, and I approve this message.”). Four studies suggest that mandatory endorsements enhance the perceived credibility of some ads these regulations were designed to discourage. This research tests for what types of messages mandatory endorsements have this effect, and why. Mandatory endorsements boosted evaluations of policy-focused attack ads—those typically plagued by overcomeable skepticism—but had no consistent effect on positive or character-focused ads. Mandatory endorsements boost ad believability—largely outside of participants' awareness—for two reasons: (1) the tagline offers a legitimizing association with regulation and (2) the candidates' own personally delivered endorsement language offers an implicit promise of the ads' truth value. The authors discuss how these findings bring order to and extend previous work on mandatory endorsements and ironic effects of communications requirements. Finally, they consider how regulations could be reformed to promote the public good by informing (without misleading) the electorate.

scholarly journals Crime and Punishment: Adam Smith’s Theory of Sentimental Law and Economics

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Pia Paganelli ◽  
Fabrizio Simon
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
Criminal Behavior ◽  
Law And Economics ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Unintended Consequence ◽  
Systematic Bias ◽  
The Public ◽  
Legal Sanctions ◽  
Rational Calculation ◽  
The Individual

For Adam Smith a crime is not the result of a rational calculation of loss and gain, but the consequence of envy and a vain desire to parade wealth to attract the approbation of others, combined with a natural systematic bias in overestimating the probability of success. Similarly, Smith does not conceive of legal sanctions as a rational deterrent, but as deriving from the feeling of resentment. While the prevailing approach of the eighteenth century is a rational explanation of crime and a utilitarian use of punishment, Adam Smith instead builds his theory of criminal behavior and legal prosecution consistently on the sentiments. A well-functioning legal system is thus an unintended consequence of our desire to bring justice to the individual person, not the result of a rational calculation to promote the public good, just like a well-functioning economic system is the unintended consequence of our desire to better our own condition, not the result of a rational calculation to promote public good.

Positional Commitments and the Public Good: Perceptions of a Defecting Group Leader

1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark E. Sibicky ◽  
Cortney B. Richardson ◽  
Anna M. Gruntz ◽  
Timothy J. Binegar ◽  
David A. Schroeder ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
Group Leader ◽  
The Public

Finding Fault with the Nexus Pipeline? Agency Capture and the Public Good

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Andrew R. Kear
Keyword(s):  
Natural Gas ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Environmental Impact Statement ◽  
Gas Industry ◽  
The Public ◽  
Fracturing Process ◽  
Natural Gas Industry ◽  
Regulatory Commission

Natural gas is an increasingly vital U.S. energy source that is presently being tapped and transported across state and international boundaries. Controversy engulfs natural gas, from the hydraulic fracturing process used to liberate it from massive, gas-laden Appalachian shale deposits, to the permitting and construction of new interstate pipelines bringing it to markets. This case explores the controversy flowing from the proposed 256-mile-long interstate Nexus pipeline transecting northern Ohio, southeastern Michigan and terminating at the Dawn Hub in Ontario, Canada. As the lead agency regulating and permitting interstate pipelines, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is also tasked with mitigating environmental risks through the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act's Environmental Impact Statement process. Pipeline opponents assert that a captured federal agency ignores public and scientific input, inadequately addresses public health and safety risks, preempts local control, and wields eminent domain powers at the expense of landowners, cities, and everyone in the pipeline path. Proponents counter that pipelines are the safest means of transporting domestically abundant, cleaner burning, affordable gas to markets that will boost local and regional economies and serve the public good. Debates over what constitutes the public good are only one set in a long list of contentious issues including pipeline safety, proposed routes, property rights, public voice, and questions over the scientific and democratic validity of the Environmental Impact Statement process. The Nexus pipeline provides a sobering example that simple energy policy solutions and compromise are elusive—effectively fueling greater conflict as the natural gas industry booms.

Sentientist Democracy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alasdair Cochrane
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public

Chapter 3 asks what kinds of institutions are needed to protect the worth and rights of sentient creatures. The chapter’s ultimate claim is that they are best protected by democratic institutions: that is, institutions which are participative, deliberative, and representative, and underpinned by a set of entrenched rights. Crucially, the chapter further argues that those institutions should be comprised of dedicated animal representatives. The job of those representatives should be to act as trustees of the interests of ‘animal members’ of the political community. In other words, their job should be to translate the interests of animals with whom we share a ‘community of fate’ into their deliberations with other representatives over what is in the public good.

‘Everything Belongs to God’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Rech
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Private Ownership ◽  
Social Conflicts ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wealth Redistribution ◽  
Social Teachings

This chapter examines and contextualizes Sayyid Qutb’s doctrine of property and social justice, which he articulated at a time of deep social conflicts in Egypt. The chapter describes how Qutb, along with other writers concerned with economic inequality in the 1920s–40s such as Hasan al-Banna (1906–1949) and Abd al-Razzaq al-Sanhuri (1895–1971), conceptualised private ownership as a form of power that must be limited by religious obligations and subordinated to the public good. The chapter further shows that Qutb made this notion of restrained property central to a broader theory of social justice and wealth redistribution by combining the social teachings of the Qur’an with the modern ideal of the centralized interventionist state. Arguably this endeavour to revitalise the Quranic roots of Islamic charity and simultaneously appropriate the discourse of modern statehood made Qutb’s position oscillate between legalism and anti-legalism.

Japan’s higher education and the public good

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Futao Huang ◽  
Tsukasa Daizen ◽  
Lilan Chen ◽  
Kiyomi Horiuchi
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Public Good ◽  
The Public
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