Jie Gao

According to doxastic pragmatism, certain perceived practical factors, such as high stakes and urgency, have systematic effects on normal subjects’ outright beliefs. Upholders of doxastic pragmatism have so far endorsed a particular version of this view, which we may call threshold pragmatism. This view holds that the sensitivity of belief to the relevant practical factors is due to a corresponding sensitivity of the threshold on the degree of credence necessary for outright belief. According to an alternative but yet unrecognised version of doxastic pragmatism, practical factors affect credence rather than the threshold on credence. Let’s call this alternative view credal pragmatism. In this paper, I argue that credal pragmatism is more plausible than threshold pragmatism. I show that the former view better accommodates a cluster of intuitive and empirical data. I conclude by considering the issue of whether our doxastic attitudes’ sensitivity to practical factors can be considered rational, and if yes, in what sense.

Women account for a large proportion of the hotel industry. Work-life conflict has become one of the main obstacles to the organizational commitment of women. Thus, this study investigates the relationship for women between work-life balance, as an independent variable, and organizational commitment, as a dependent variable. Specifically, we examine women's work-life balance in the hospitality industry and compare women's organizational commitment under different levels of work-life balance. Then, we assess whether women's work-life balance and organizational commitment are associated with their sociodemographic characteristics. Data were collected from 525 women employees in China. Multiple linear regression analyses were conducted to identify the relationship between work-life balance and organizational commitment. The results showed that work-life balance had a significant effect on organizational commitment. There was also a significant relationship between women's sociodemographic characteristics, work-life balance, and organizational commitment.

This paper studies a special scheduling problem under hierarchical management in nurse staff. This is a more complex rostering problem than traditional nurse scheduling. The first is that the rostering requirements of charge nurses and general nurses are different under hierarchical management. The second is that nurses are preferable for relative fair rather than absolute fair under hierarchical management. The model aims at allocating the required workload to meet the operational requirements, weekend rostering preferences, and relative fairness preferences. Two hybrid heuristic algorithms based on multiobjective grey wolf optimizer and three corresponding single heuristic algorithms are employed to solve this problem. The experimental results based on real cases from the Third People’s Hospital, Panzhihua, China, show that MOGWO does not as good as it does on other engineering optimization. However, the hybrid algorithms based on MOGWO are better than corresponding single algorithms on generational distance and spacing of Pareto solutions. Furthermore, for relative fair rostering objective, NSGAII-MOGWO has more power to find the optimal solution in the dimension of relative fairness.

This article serves as a step-by-step guide of a new application of Q-methodology to investigate people’s preferences for multivariate stimuli. Q-methodology has been widely applied in fields such as sociology, education and political sciences but, despite its numerous advantages, it has not yet gained much attention from experimental psychologists. This may be due to the fact that psychologists examining preferences, often adopt stimuli resulting from a combination of characteristics from multiple variables, and in repeated measure designs. At present, Q methodology has not been adapted to accommodate. We therefore developed a novel analysis procedure allowing Q-methodology to handle these conditions. We propose a protocol requiring five analyses of a decision process to estimate: the preference of stimuli, the dominance of variables, the individual differences, the interaction between individual differences and preference, and the interaction between individual differences and dominance. The guide comes with a script developed in R to run the five analyses; furthermore, we provide a case study with a detailed description of the procedure and corresponding results. This guide is particularly beneficial to conduct and analyze experiments in any research on people’s preferences, such as experimental aesthetics, prototype testing, visual perception, etc.

PurposeGiven the digital transformation of service businesses by providing online food services and the influence of online reviews on consumers’ purchasing decisions, this study examines how service recovery attributes in different stages influence relationship marketing strategies, i.e., relationship quality and customer loyalty after service failure. This study is built upon a revised service recovery cycle model by accounting for three stages and their corresponding attributes; whereon a conceptual stage model of service recovery is proposed. This conceptual stage model incorporates stages of service recovery, their respective attributes, and how they influence relationship marketing strategies.Design/methodology/approachAn online marketing company was employed for data collection in 2019, which resulted in 301 valid responses. A Structural Equation Model was conducted with all the data to test the relationships between the constructs. The individual measurement model was tested using the Exploratory Factor Analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis. A structural model was estimated using AMOS to test all the hypotheses.FindingsThe findings demonstrate that the attributes paired with the first two stages of service recovery can significantly influence consumer loyalty in a positive state. The findings also manifest the intermediary role that relationship quality has played in the association of service recovery and consumer loyalty, which implies that the food delivery businesses could attain a more comprehended relationship quality with consumers through active and timely compensatory service recovery consumer loyalty to the food businesses.Originality/valueThis study examines how these different stages of the service recovery cycle influence the decision-making of relationship marketing strategies on the prerequisite of service failure. This study aspires to expand the service recovery research by objectifying a conceptual stage model of service recovery, incorporating stages’ recovery attributes and how these recovery attributes reciprocally influence relationship quality and customer loyalty.

Type 2 diabetes mellitus is related to a variety of cognitive impairments that may even progress to dementia. Studies have found the angular gyrus is a cross-modal integration hub that is involved in a variety of cognitive processes. However, few studies have focused on the patterns of resting-state functional connections of the AG in patients with T2DM. This study explored the functional connection between the AG and the whole brain and the relationship between the FC and clinical/cognitive variables in patients with T2DM. 44 patients with T2DM and 43 sex-, age-, and education-matched healthy controls underwent resting-state fMRI and received neuropsychological assessments. Compared with the control group, the T2DM group showed abnormal rsFCs between the AG and multiple brain regions. The FC between the left AG and the left medial temporal lobe in the T2DM group was positively correlated with scores on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, after a Bonferroni correction. Collectively, patients with T2DM have abnormal FCs between the AG and extensive brain regions that may be related to various cognitive processes.

Through featuring a historical review of the L2 speaking assessment scales applied in related studies, this paper targets at providing responses for the following three questions How are the scales assessing L2 speaking anxiety developed and adapted in related research? What are the frequently adopted methods for validating speaking anxiety scales? How is L2 speaking anxiety represented and interpreted with a dynamic approach? Based on analyzing the development process of frequently-used scales for assessing test anxiety, foreign language classroom anxiety, and speaking anxiety, the author classified the scales into three categories: test-based scales measuring speaking anxiety, classroom-based scales measuring speaking anxiety, and activity-based scales measuring L2 speaking anxiety. As for the scale validation methods, Classical Testing Theory and Rasch measurement were introduced as two major statistical paradigms for guaranteeing the reliability of the scales. This paper also summarizes the emerging themes generalized from research focusing speaking anxiety assessment, where the dynamic approach is discussed as a guideline to interpret the relationship among anxiety, language performance, and other factors involved in language learning. This paper ends with highlighting possible directions for anxiety-related research in the future, where technology intervention and the “positivity ratio” might become new attempts for pedagogical design.