Determinants of Fast-Food Consumption in Romania: An Application of the Theory of Planned Behavior

This study explores drivers of fast-food consumption in Romania using the Theory of Planned Behavior. We analyze 532 responses to an online survey and use partial least squares path modeling to estimate the relationships between the intention to consume fast food and its possible determinants. Our results show that the most significant predictor is the subjective norms (injunctive norms: β = 0.218, p < 0.001; descriptive norms: β = 0.192, p < 0.001). Among the affective and cognitive attitudes, only the latter is statistically significant in predicting the intention (β = 0.088, p = 0.020), while perceived behavioral control is not significantly associated with intention toward fast-food consumption. We explain how our results can help policymakers to design better interventions on public health concerns about fast-food consumption and population obesity, especially children obesity.

A Study of Human Attitude, Persuasion And Ethics Towards The Adoptation Of Sustainable Technology Among Malaysian SMEs

This research investigates the impact of human attitudes, human persuasion and human ethics towards the adoption of sustainable technology among the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia. There is a lacuna in the literature of the focusing on the human factors (attitudes, persuasions and ethical belief) of adoption of sustainable technology in the SMEs context in emerging economy such as Malaysia. The study develops a comprehensive model of sustainable technology adoption considering the strengths and limitations of the existing models. The main theories utilized this paper include the theory of reasoned action (TRA), theory of planned behavior (TPB), attribution theory (AT), environmental attitudes model and the triple bottom line model. The theoretical framework developed for this study is based on the premise of the above theories. A total of 234 sample taken from 2369 SMEs in Malaysia. The major finding of this research suggest that affective attitudes, cognitive attitudes, reasoned persuasion, sentimental persuasion, anthropocentrism and altruism significantly impact adoption mechanism of sustainable technology in a Malaysian setting. These findings are later highlighted in this paper. The implications, limitations and future research avenue are highlighted in the paper.

Activity as a dominant of conceptual legal realism

The subject of this research is the concept of activity &ndash; one of the semantic characteristics of conceptual legal realism. The latter is viewed as a certain paradigm or gnoseological strategy, which serves as the basis for the development of cognitive attitudes. Legal realism is often erroneously reduced to the regional and local schools and trends of the legal thought. However, the study of legal realism as a conceptual technique, which has different interpretation of one of the central and meaning-making themes in the history of legal thought, allows introducing significant clarifications into the understanding of realism in jurisprudence from the perspective of the history of its formation, as well as heuristic capabilities in modern legal science. Activity is viewed as one of the key characteristics of the realistic approach towards law, taking into account various interpretations of realism. The novelty of this research consists in examination of the problem of realism in jurisprudence and its fundamental semantic characteristics through the prism of conceptual approach. The problem of psychology of activity, which was actively developed by the Soviet philosophical-psychological school, is closely related to the development of realistic interpretations of law in the contemporary history of legal thought. The author substantiates the position that application of the construct on the differentiation of the objective meaning from subjective-personal sense in the area of cognition of law allows to critically reconsider such trends on the modern legal thought that position themselves as the varieties of legal realism, clarify possible directions in the development of realism in jurisprudence.

Competitive Strategy in Employees with Self-Oriented and Socially-Oriented Perfectionism

The present research featured competitive strategy aimed at achieving different goals in professional activity of employees with different intensity of perfectionism. It resulted in a definition of perfectionism based on the role of personality orientation in competitiveness, the subject content of personality orientation, and available publications on the subject content of perfectionism, its types, and their relationship. The type of perfectionism depends on personal characteristics that manifest themselves in competitive environment. Therefore, perfectionist orientation shapes completive strategy in employees. The research involved 142 employees (112 women, 30 men) aged 19–62. The procedure for identifying various types of perfectionist orientation combined the type of perfectionism, achievement motivation, and cognitive attitudes. The paper also introduces criteria for distinguishing self-oriented and socially-oriented perfectionism. The main goal of competition strategy in subjects with self-oriented perfectionism was formulated as demonstration of individual work pattern, while in subjects with sociallyoriented perfectionism it was high quality of activity. The first appeared to be fuelled by the internal motivation and dependence on others. However, criticism and disapproval can affect the desire to achieve the goal. The second was fuelled by security reasons and resulted in actions aimed at retaining the achieved advantages. Both groups hardly saw colleagues as rivals.

A Qualitative Theory of Cognitive Attitudes and their Change

Abstarct We present a general logical framework for reasoning about agents’ cognitive attitudes of both epistemic type and motivational type. We show that it allows us to express a variety of relevant concepts for qualitative decision theory including the concepts of knowledge, belief, strong belief, conditional belief, desire, conditional desire, strong desire, and preference. We also present two extensions of the logic, one by the notion of choice and the other by dynamic operators for belief change and desire change, and we apply the former to the analysis of single-stage games under incomplete information. We provide sound and complete axiomatizations for the basic logic and for its two extensions.

About Some Peculiarities of Expressive Syntax in English Popular Press

The article is devoted to the problems of expressive syntax and its role in transmitting the author’s communicative intentions. According to the dominating cognitive-discourse paradigm at present, scientists are interested in researching the manifestations of the author’s perception of transmitted information and their impact on the form of its presentation. Due to the dominating role of mass media in the contemporary world, it seems of great importance to reveal the way they influence the collective mind of the readers. In this connection expressive syntax plays a very important role in the process of communication via media text. The main aim of the research is to analyze functional and linguistic peculiarities of expressive syntax in media texts as a means of the author-reader interaction. In this article the research of the expressive syntax means is conducted on the basis of two English magazines. The topics and cognitive peculiarities of the readers play a great role in choosing proper expressive means and are required to be considered as a system. The results of the analysis show that the main means of expressive syntax in popular press is a parenthetical phrase serving to give the author’s comments, define terms and toponyms, or add extra information, satisfying the readers’ curiosity. The result also shows that due to different cognitive attitudes, types of creation (individual or collective) and segments of its targeted audience, National Geographic articles, unlike The Economist ones, contain more variable means of expressive syntax.

Means of Representation of the Idioglossas “Children”, “Family”, “Life” in the Novel by F.M. Dostoevsky “The Brothers Karamazov”

The article introduces the main idioglossas ("Children", "Family", "Life") of F.M. Dostoevsky's novel "The Brothers Karamazov", which are understood as mental and cognitive categories, according to Yu.N. Karaulov, the constants of certain author's lines in the text, and describes the means of their representation (phonosemantic, lexical, phraseological and syntactic). The study of phonetic shells and the meanings of the words that form considered idioglossas, it is proved that representation in their meanings and words as a psycholinguistic phenomenon exhibits the traits of the writer's language personality development, his worldview and value system. The author's choice of exact lexemes and their syntagmatic partners included in the studied idioglossas demonstrates the harmonization of the nature of the language sign: a) the sound supports the meaning; b) the meanings of 'children', 'family', 'life' are interdependent. The novelty of the study is determined by the fact that it defines the semantic components of the idioglossas "Children", "Family", "Life" and the means of their representation. On the basis of computer phonosemantic analysis of words, their sound content is characterized. The novelty of the research is connected with the understanding of harmony or disharmony of the language sign and the ideological and aesthetic content expressed in the text by Dostoevsky. The research methods include: the method of system analysis of semantic relations, computer analysis of phonosemantics of words, phenomenological and others. The author reveals the significance of each idioglossa for the implementation of the main concepts of the work, which form its ideological core and indicate the author's mental and cognitive attitudes aimed at depicting the life of the Karamazov family which reflects the tragedies of the contradictory Russian life. The research results can be applied in the theory of author's lexicography; in the process of creating mental maps of the Russian language personality based on the description of author's idioglossas; in teaching university philological courses.

Philosophy and religion in the works of P. A. Florensky

The object of this research is the philosophical works of the Russian religious thinker P. A. Florensky. The subject is the extensive concept of religious philosophy, which brings certain clarity to the question of separation of the unity of philosophy and religion that takes place in modern thought. Throughout centuries, the philosophy has been defined in relation to religion. Only in the Renaissance Era, scholars and philosophers came to the conclusion that these two sciences can exist separately and pursue their initial goals. Theology should be proving the existence of God and comprehensibility of God for human mind and, most importantly, for faith. The theme of philosophy is human and existence. The main conclusions of lies in the statement that philosophy and religion do not contradict each other, neither on the subject matter nor in the fundamental cognitive attitudes that develop the ideas of human in their being. In the early XX century, the following situation has formed in Russia: if the philosophy does not acknowledge the existence of God, it no longer is considered a full-fledged science and should cease to exist. Only the materialistic trend in philosophy denied the existence of God. It has been overcome by such thinkers as N. Berdyaev, S. Frank, P. Struve, S. Bulgakov, and other. The aggravation of this issue at the turn of centuries resulted in the fact that the scholars have found&nbsp; the religious topic particularly painful and fatal for the individual.

Economic Stressors, COVID-19 Attitudes, Worry, and Behaviors among U.S. Working Adults: A Mixture Analysis

Since the unfolding of the novel coronavirus global pandemic, public health research has increasingly suggested that certain groups of individuals may be more exposed to the virus. The aim of this contribution was to investigate whether workers grouped into several latent classes, based on two perceived economic stressors, would report different levels of enactment of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommended behaviors to prevent the spread of such virus. We also tested propositions regarding the potential differential predictors of compliance behavior, differentiating between cognitive (i.e., attitudes toward the CDC guidelines) and affective (i.e., COVID-specific worry) predictors. Using a longitudinal dataset of 419 U.S. workers, we did not find significant differences among the levels of CDC guidelines enactment across three latent classes, representing a range of economic vulnerability. We found that cognitive attitudes were a significantly stronger predictor of compliance with CDC guidelines for workers in the most economically secure class, whereas worry was a significantly stronger predictor of compliance for the most vulnerable counterpart. We discuss these findings in light of the Conservation of Resources theory and other health behavior theories, being mindful of the need to further understand the differential impact of this health and economic crisis on employees facing economic stressors.