Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 51, Issue 4, Page 373-412, Fall 2023.

This article analyzes the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) decoupling and financial market outcomes. CSR decoupling refers to the gap between CSR disclosure and CSR performance. More specifically, we analyze the effect of CSR decoupling on analysts’ forecast errors, cost of capital, and access to finance. We also examine the moderating effect of forecast errors on relationships between CSR decoupling and cost of capital and access to finance. For a sample of U.S. firms consisting of 7,681 firm-year observations for (...) the period 2006–2015, our empirical evidence supports the idea that a wider gap results in higher analysts’ forecast errors, a greater cost of capital, and reduced access to finance. In addition, our results show that forecast errors enhance the effect of the CSR decoupling on cost of capital and access to financial resources. We also note that external monitoring, in the form of greater analysts’ coverage, reduces CSR decoupling. (shrink)

This study investigates the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on society, business, and management, using a qualitative approach centered on the analysis of interviews and a review of literature. Text mining techniques were applied through the KH Coder tool, allowing for a detailed exploration of how AI is transforming these three dimensions. The results reveal significant changes in management practices, deep economic impacts, and relevant social changes brought about by the rapid adoption of AI. The originality of this study lies (...) in the combination of qualitative analysis with the exploration of textual data, providing a comprehensive view of the ethical and practical implications of AI. It also acknowledges limitations, such as the rapid pace of technological development and the potential bias in the perceptions collected. This work contributes to a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities presented by AI, and suggests pathways for ethical and effective integration. (shrink)

If I lead a life of virtue, that may well be good for you. But will it also be good for me? The idea that it will—or even must—is an ancient one, and its appeal runs deep. For if this idea is correct then we can provide everyone with a good reason—arguably the best reason—for being virtuous. However, for all the effort which has been invested in defending the idea, by some of the best minds in the history of philosophy, (...) it remains unproven. Worse, in this skeptical age hardly anyone really believes it. I don't really believe it either, at least not in its strongest forms, but I think that the question is nonetheless worth examining. Even if we cannot show that virtue and self-interest coincide, we can at least measure the breadth of the gap between them. (shrink)

Anhedonia is a risk factor for suicide and poor treatment response in depressed individuals. Most evidence-based psychological therapies target symptoms of heightened negative affect instead of deficits in positive affect and typically show little benefit for anhedonia. Viewing positive scenes through virtual reality has been shown to increase positive affect and holds great promise for addressing anhedonic symptoms. In this pilot study, six participants with clinically significant depression completed 13 sessions of exposure to positive scenes in a controlled VR environment. (...) Significant decreases were found in self-reported anhedonia, depression, anxiety, and impairments in functioning from baseline to 1-month follow-up. Negative affect decreased over all 13 sessions, and positive affect increased over sessions 8–13. Results suggest that positive experiences in VR may be a novel avenue for the treatment of anhedonia in depressed individuals. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 4, May 2020, Page 104-105.

Pain and reward have crucial roles in determining human behaviors. It is still unclear how pain influences different stages of reward processing. This study aimed to assess the physical pain’s impact on reward processing with event-related potential method. In the present study, a flash sale game was carried out, in which the participants were instructed to press a button as soon as possible to obtain the earphone after experiencing either electric shock or not and finally evaluated the (...) outcome of their response. High-temporal-resolution electroencephalogram data were simultaneously recorded to reveal the neural mechanism underlying the pain effect. The ERP analyses revealed that pain affected the feedback processing reflected by feedback-related negativity and P300. Specifically, participants in the nopain situation exhibited greater FRN discrepancy between success and failure feedbacks relative to that in the pain situation. Moreover, the P300 amplitude was enhanced in the nopain condition compared to the pain condition regardless of the feedback valence. These results demonstrate that the pain reduced the sensitivity to the reward valence at the early stage and weakened the motivational salience at the late stage. Altogether, this study extends the understanding of the effect of pain on reward processing from the temporal perspective under a purchasing situation. (shrink)

The vital role of reward in guiding visual attention has been supported by previous literatures. Here, we examined the motivational impact of monetary reward feedback stimuli on visual attention selection using an event-related potential component called stimulus-preceding negativity and a standard contextual cueing paradigm. It has been proposed that SPN reflects affective and motivational processing. We focused on whether incidentally learned context knowledge could be affected by reward. Both behavior and brain data demonstrated that contexts followed by (...) reward feedback not only gave rise to faster implicit learning but also obtained a larger CC effect. (shrink)

Volume 24, Issue 7-8, November - December 2019, Page 865-884.