On Valuing and the Good Life

Theunissen develops the emerging positive proposal by specifying that in virtue of which human beings are relationally valuable. Her starting point is that human value depends on the distinctive relationship we bear to objects and activities of value. In her view this is the capacity for having final ends: roughly, the capacity for pursuing interests, projects, relationships, and self-ideals for their own sake. She offers a new account of this complex cognitive, affective and behavioral disposition, and the analysis contributes to discussions of valuing and care. How does the capacity for having final ends ground our value? By identifying connections between valuing and the good life, Theunissen defends the claim that it grounds our value by making us relationally valuable in the sense that it makes us able to lead a good life—a life that is of value, in the first place, for the person who leads it.

Competitor Perceptions in Tourism Coopetition

Our study aims at understanding how coopeting tourism managers perceive their competitors. Competitor perceptions are consequential because they have implications for interfirm relationships. Collaboration with competitors offers benefits otherwise unattainable, such as improved destination marketing, more successful attracting of tourists, increased tourism product complexity, and better service, but is used to various degrees by tourism firms. We use a purposeful sampling procedure for maximum heterogeneity to select interviewees from Polish tourism DMO member firms. We inductively code and thematically group their perceptions to find that tourism managers develop a detailed understanding of collaboration with competitors and precisely identify their competitors, but interpret this so as to either facilitate collaboration or to remain in rivalrous mode, depending on their behavioral disposition. We propose a framework for developing perceptions with mindsets in a pivotal role.

Going against the Flow: The Effects of Dynamic Sensorimotor Experiences on Consumer Choice

Sensorimotor experiences of going against the flow can affect the choices consumers make. Eight experiments show that consumers who experience the sensation of going against the flow pick alternatives that are normatively not preferred (experiments 1a and 1b). These effects are evident only when the sensations are dynamic and self-experienced (experiments 2a and 2b), subjective feelings are elicited (experiments 4a and 4b), and no other objective, external norm information is supplied (experiment 5). Experiences of going against the flow typically involve both movement and direction and are represented in memory schematically. Re-experiencing these sensations leads to the activation of this schematic representation and elicits a feeling-based behavioral disposition to do something different, or to go against one’s initial inclination (experiment 3), leading participants to pick an option that is normatively not preferred.

Rationality, Morality, and Exit

The morality and rationality issue is explored from an Axelrod-type perspective; that is, it is discussed in terms of recurrent-prisoner's-dilemma-type games and behavioral strategies or programs for playing them. We argue that intuitive notions of rationality and morality can be shown to be mutually compatible if two assumptions are made: (1) that morality is specified as a general behavioral disposition or program whose rationality is to be determined in comparison to alternative behavioral programs and (2) that the recurrent game is specified as a prisoner's dilemma game with an exit option. The results of a simulation experiment are presented, showing that a “moral program” (specified as one that never defects, but exits in response to an opponents defection) is successful in competition with a variety of alternative programs, including Tit for Tat.