Beyond Virtue Signaling: Perceived Motivations for Pronoun Sharing

Sharing one’s pronouns when introducing oneself is an emerging practice intended to prevent assumptions of what pronouns to use when referring to others. This practice may make people comfortable sharing their pronouns so that they are not misgendered and may signal inclusiveness to transgender and nonbinary (TGNB) people. What shapes people’s perceptions of the motivation behind pronoun sharing? Three preregistered experiments conducted in the United States (N=8,219) reveal that people perceive three underlying motivations for pronoun sharing when they learn that someone shared their pronouns in a workplace introduction: reputation signaling (trying to enhance their reputation), norm signaling (authentically attempting to influence others to adopt a new norm), and rule following (conforming to an existing norm). We also show that features of social context such as the sharer’s TGNB identity and the normativeness of the action influence which motivations observers infer. In general, we find that perceptions of more authentic and collective benefit-oriented norm signaling are higher when the sharer is a member of a minority (e.g., a transgender person, or someone sharing their pronouns at a workplace in which it is non-normative). However, belonging to a group whose values are strongly aligned with trans-inclusivity (i.e., working at an LGBTQ nonprofit that commonly uses pronouns) also leads to perceptions of authentic norm signaling, even though someone who shares their pronouns is not a minority in that context. This research provides novel evidence of social perceptions of trans-inclusive behavior.

Ecological Values Theory: Beyond Conformity, Goal-Seeking, and Rule-Following in Action and Interaction

Values have long been considered important for psychology but are frequently characterized as beliefs, goals, rules, or norms. Ecological values theory locates them, not in people or in objects, but in ecosystem relationships and the demands those relationships place on fields of action within the system. To test the worth of this approach, we consider skilled coordination tasks in social psychology (e.g., negotiating disagreements, synchrony and asynchrony in interactions, and selectivity in social learning) and perception-action (e.g., driving vehicles and carrying a child). Evidence suggests that a diverse array of values (e.g., truth, social solidarity, justice, flexibility, safety, and comfort) work in a cooperative tension to guide actions. Values emerge as critical constraints on action that differ from goals, rules, and natural laws, and yet provide the larger context in which they can function effectively. Prospects and challenges for understanding values and their role in action, including theoretical and methodological issues, are considered.

El problema del seguimiento de reglas en Michael Oakeshott

The role of rules in our normative practices constitutes a relevant philosophical problema, mainly associated with Wittgenstein’s philosophy, but to which Michael Oakeshott has also attempted to answer. Not surprisingly, some scholars have found parallels between their conceptions of human practices and rule-following. Through an exegesis of the notion and uses of the rule in Oakeshott's works, this article aims to clarify the link between rule-following and normative authorization. In this way, it will be possible to to decide the originality and specificity of Oakeshott’s contribution and settle the question of the differences with the Wittgensteinian problematization of rule-following.

On the assumption of self-reflective subjectivity

Contemporary social theory has consistently emphasized habitual action, rule-following, and role-performing as key aspects of social life, yet the challenge remains of combining these aspects with the omnipresent phenomenon of self-reflective conduct. This article attempts to tackle this challenge by proposing useful distinctions that can facilitate further interdisciplinary research on self-reflection. To this end, I argue that we need a more sophisticated set of distinctions and categories in our understanding of habitual action. The analysis casts light on the idea that our contemporary social theories of self-reflection are not consistent with everyday notions of agential knowledgeability and accountability, and this conclusion indicates the need to reconceptualize discourse and subjectivity in non-eliminative terms. Ultimately, the assumption of self-reflective subjectivity turns out to be a theoretical necessity for the conceptualization of discursive participation and democratic choice.

Part VIII Compliance, Implementation, and Effectiveness, Ch.51 Compliance Theory

This chapter describes the conceptual and theoretical challenges raised by efforts to understand international environmental agreement (IEA) compliance and effectiveness. Both compliance and non-compliance can arise for reasons unrelated to an IEA's causal influence. Equating IEA compliance (comparing state behaviours to legal standards) with IEA influence can overstate the latter by conflating IEA-induced compliance and ‘coincidental’ compliance, in which state behaviours meet IEA standards for reasons unrelated to the IEA. States may negotiate IEA obligations that require no change in their behaviours, may comply because doing so is cheaper than violation, or may lack the capacity to violate IEA rules. Equating non-compliance with a lack of IEA influence also misleads because it ignores the fact that IEAs can lead states to take well-intended actions that fall short of legal standards, as when IEAs set ambitious obligations or exogenous changes put compliance out of reach. Indeed, IEAs with aggressive obligations may be highly effective despite having high non-compliance rates. Thus, the chapter argues that investigations of compliance improve to the extent that scholars use them to identify the causal influence of IEAs rather than a causal assessment of rule-following.

Complexes, rule-following, and language games: Wittgenstein’s philosophical method and its relevance to semiotics

This paper forges links between early analytic philosophy and the posits of semiotics. I show that there are some striking and potentially quite important, but perhaps unrecognized, connections between three key concepts in Wittgenstein’s middle and later philosophy, namely, complex (Philosophical Grammar), rule-following (Philosophical Investigations), and language games (Philosophical Investigations). This reveals the existence of a conceptual continuity between Wittgenstein’s “early” and “later” philosophy that can be applied to the analysis of the iterability of representation in computer-generated images. Methodologically, this paper clarifies to at least some degree, the nature, progress and promise of an approach to doing philosophy and semiotics from a modally modest perspective that sees in the intellectual products of humanities, and not in unreflective empiricism, the future of scientific development. This hybrid, non-reductionist approach shows, among other things, that semiotic processes are encoded by specific types of complexes in computer-generated images that display iterability in time and space.