Amit E, Koralnik J, Posten A-C, Muethel M, Lessig L.
Institutional corruption revisited: exploring open questions within the institutional corruption literature. Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal. 2017.
Abstract
Institutional corruption is typically viewed as a subset of corruption that is legal and systemic. There has been a surge of scholarship on institutional corruption in recent years, brought on in large part by a definition put forth by Lessig (2009b; 2013). Scholars have examined institutional corruption in various domains, such as Congress, the Department of Defense, and the pharmaceutical industry (Gilga, 2014; Sah & Fugh-Berman, 2013; Thompson, 2013). The growing body of research on institutional corruption has contributed to a much greater understanding of the legal corruption that is widespread in both public and private institutions; it has also raised new questions about institutional corruption. This paper systematically reviews the existing literature on institutional corruption and examines some of these remaining open questions. Specifically, we focus on the topics of institutional purpose, the funder-institution relationship, public trust, and personal responsibility, as they pertain to institutional corruption. Finally, we explore proposed solutions to institutional corruption, namely conflict of interest disclosure, conflict of interest elimination, and blinding.
amit_koralnik_posten_muethel_lessig_2017_institutional_corruption_revisited.pdf Amit E, Fedorenko E, Hoeflin C, Hamzah N.
An asymmetrical relationship between visual and verbal thinking: converging evidence from behavior and fMRI. NeuroImage. 2017;152 :619-627.
Abstract
Humans rely on at least two modes of thought: verbal (inner speech) and visual (imagery). Are these modes independent, or does engaging in one entail engaging in the other? To address this question, we performed a behavioral and an fMRI study. In the behavioral experiment, participants received a prompt and were asked to either silently generate a sentence or create a visual image in their mind. They were then asked to judge the vividness of the resulting representation, and of the potentially accompanying representation in the other format. In the fMRI experiment, participants had to recall sentences or images (that they were familiarized with prior to the scanning session) given prompts, or read sentences and view images, in the control, perception, condition. An asymmetry was observed between inner speech and visual imagery. In particular, inner speech was engaged to a greater extent during verbal than visual thought, but visual imagery was engaged to a similar extent during both modes of thought. Thus, it appears that people generate more robust verbal representations during deliberate inner speech compared to when their intent is to visualize. However, they generate visual images regardless of whether their intent is to visualize something or to think verbally. One possible interpretation of these results is that visual thinking is somehow primary, given the relatively late emergence of verbal abilities during human development and in the evolution of our species.
amit_et_al_2017_neuroimage.pdf