Assessing Diagnostic Expertise of Counselors Using the Cochran–Weiss–Shanteau (CWS) Index

Counseling studies have shown that increasing experience is not always associated with better judgments. However, in such studies performance is assessed against external criteria, which may lack validity. The authors applied the Cochran–Weiss–Shanteau (CWS) index, which assesses the ability to consistently discriminate. Results showed that novice counselors performed almost on the same level as very experienced counselors. The authors thus replicated earlier findings with a novel approach: applying an internal coherence criterion.     

Who's the Best? A Relativistic View of Expertise

The dictionary and the expert performance approach view an expert as one who, after sufficient training and experience in a domain, can perform the requisite tasks above a threshold level. In contrast, we argue for a performance‐based approach that implies expertise is a continuum; the experts are the best performers. Most tasks in which expertise can be demonstrated have an underlying core of judgment, including domains in which the tasks call for judgment to be overlain with performance, prediction, or instruction. To evaluate judgment, we employ the metaphor of the judge as a measuring instrument. Like an instrument, expert judgment according to the performance‐based approach has three key properties: discrimination, consistency, and validity. Validity requires ground truth and is usually difficult to establish; but the other two properties are readily observable, and they are combined in the Cochran–Weiss–Shanteau index. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Traces of the artist: Sensitivity to the role of the artist in children's pictorial reasoning

In three studies we investigated the question of whether children consider the attributes of the artist (sentience, age level, affective style, emotion) when making judgments about the traces (drawings) made by that artist. In Study 1, 2–5‐year‐old children were asked to find pictures drawn by a machine, an adult, an older and a younger child. Results indicated that children younger than 4 years do not consider the artists' attributes when making judgments, but 4‐ and 5‐year‐olds do. Furthermore, whereas the oldest children were adept at both machine‐person (sentience) and person‐person (age) contrasts, 4‐year‐olds succeeded only with person‐person contrasts. In Study 2, videotaped artists displayed differences in degree of agitation (affective style) while drawing, and this attribute was manipulated in the drawing by varying line density, asymmetry, line overlap and line gap, or all four features, across stimuli. Three‐ and five‐year‐old children judged whether a calm or agitated person drew the stimuli. Findings showed that five‐year‐old, but not 3‐year‐old, children easily completed the task. In Study 3, 3‐, 5‐ and 7‐year‐old children judged whether happy or sad artists made paintings of matching emotional tone. Performance on this picture judgment task was contrasted with performance on three theory of mind tasks (false belief, emotion and interpretative). The results indicated that 5‐ and 7‐year‐olds successfully judged the impact of artists' emotions on paintings, but 3‐year‐olds did not. Performance on the picture task was related to that on the false belief task, but not to the emotion or interpretive tasks. Taken together, the results suggest that children's view of visual symbols includes a consideration of the qualities of the artist beginning around 5 years, and there appears to be a common link between judgments of the mind behind the visual symbol in the picture task and judgments of mental state reasoning in the false belief task.     

A unifying interpretation of different models for the integration of information when evaluating gambles

Abstract.— Experimental results reported by Sjöberg, Anderson and Shanteau, and Tversky on the structure underlying judgments of the utility of gambles are discussed. Although the authors find different models applicable to their data, it is shown that they may all have the same theoretical basis. Differences in experimental design such as stimulus ranges and response measures used in the experiments may explain the divergent results reported earlier.     

Walker on the voluntariness of judgment 1

In his paper ‘The Voluntariness of Judgment’ Mark Thomas Walker claims that judgments are voluntary acts. According to Walker, theoretical reasoning can be seen as an instance of practical reasoning, and the outcomes of practical reasoning are actions. There are two reasons why Walker's argument does not establish this conclusion: (i) There are non‐reflective judgments which cannot reasonably be described as instances of practical reasoning; Walker's argument does not apply to these judgments, (ii) If one judges that p as a result of deliberation, one has had no choice sincerely to judge as well that non‐p instead of p, that is, one cannot judge contrary to one's evidence. Therefore, reflective judgments are not voluntary actions. Walker cannot show that reflective judgments are voluntary, because he fails to give a clear notion of a voluntary action and the role of choice.     

Bigger is better: the influence of physical size on aesthetic preference judgments

The hypothesis that the physical size of an object can influence aesthetic preferences was investigated. In a series of four experiments, participants were presented with pairs of abstract stimuli and asked to indicate which member of each pair they preferred. A preference for larger stimuli was found on the majority of trials using various types of stimuli, stimuli of various sizes, and with both adult and 3‐year‐old participants. This preference pattern was disrupted only when participants had both stimuli that provided a readily accessible alternative source of preference‐evoking information and sufficient attentional resources to make their preference judgments. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Rethinking Sellars’ Myth of the Given: From the Epistemological to the Modal Relevance of Givenness in Kant and Hegel

ABSTRACT

Here, I pursue consequences, for the interpretation of Sellars’ critique of the ‘Myth of the Given’, of separating the modal significance that Kant attributed to empirical intuition from the epistemological role it also played for him. It is argued that Kant’s approach to modality in the Critique of Pure Reason can best be understood as a transcendental variation on Leibniz’s earlier ‘possibilist’ approach that treated the actual world as just one of a variety of possible alternative worlds. In this context, empirical intuitions seem to work like the mythical Givens subject to Sellars’ critique. This Kantian possibilism is then contrasted with an ‘actualist’ alternative approach to modality found in the contemporary work of Robert Stalnaker, but also recognizable in Hegel. In particular, the role of immediate perceptual judgments in Hegel is likened to that played by ‘witness statements’ in Robert Stalnaker’s attempt to distinguish the logic of judgments about the actual world from those about its alternate possibilities.     

Children's moral judgments of commission and omission based on their understanding of second‐order mental states1

Abstract: Children's moral judgments about acts of commission and omission with negative outcomes were studied based on their understanding of mental states. Children (N = 142) in the first, third, and fifth grades made judgments about four tasks composed of two levels of mental states (first‐order or second‐order) and two types of acts (commission or omission). The results showed that the 7‐year‐olds responded considering only first‐order mental states, but the 9‐ and 11‐year‐olds also used second‐order mental states in their judgments. Whether the acts were commission or omission did not make a difference. These results indicate that children can make moral judgments regarding acts of commission and omission based on an understanding of second‐order mental states by approximately the age of 9 years.     

Self-generated cognitive fluency as an alternative route to preference formation

People tend to prefer fluently processed over harder to process information. In this study we examine two issues concerning fluency and preference. First, previous research has pre-selected fluent and non-fluent materials. We did not take this approach yet show that the fluency of individuals’ idiosyncratic on-line interactions with a given stimulus can influence preference formation. Second, while processing fluency influences preference, the opposite also may be true: preferred stimuli could be processed more fluently than non-preferred. Participants performed a visual search task either before or after indicating their preferred images from an array of either paintings by Kandinsky or decorated coffee mugs. Preferred stimuli were associated with fluent processing, reflected in facilitated search times. Critically, this was only the case for participants who gave their preferences after completing the visual search task, not for those stating preferences prior to the visual search task. Our results suggest that the spontaneous and idiosyncratic experience of processing fluency plays a role in forming preference judgments and conversely that our first impressions of preference do not drive response fluency.     

Why people fail to recognize their own incompetence

Successful negotiation of everyday life would seem to require people to possess insight about deficiencies in their intellectual and social skills. However, people tend to be blissfully unaware of their incompetence. This lack of awareness arises because poor performers are doubly cursed: Their lack of skill deprives them not only of the ability to produce correct responses, but also of the expertise necessary to surmise that they are not producing them. People base their perceptions of performance, in part, on their preconceived notions about their skills. Because these notions often do not correlate with objective performance, they can lead people to make judgments about their performance that have little to do with actual accomplishment.     

The 30‐Sec Sale: Using Thin‐Slice Judgments to Evaluate Sales Effectiveness

A successful sale depends on a customer's perception of the salesperson's personality, motivations, trustworthiness, and affect. Person perception research has shown that consistent and accurate assessments of these traits can be made based on very brief observations, or “thin slices.” Thus, examining impressions based on thin slices offers an effective approach to study how perceptions of salespeople translate into real‐world results, such as sales performance and customer satisfaction. The literature on the accuracy of thin‐slice judgments is briefly reviewed. Then, 2 studies are presented that investigated the predictive validity of judgments of salespeople based on thin slices of the vocal channel. Participants rated 20‐sec audio clips extracted from interviews with a sample of sales managers, on variables gauging interpersonal skills, task‐related skills, and anxiety. Results supported the hypothesis that observability of the rated variable is a key determinant in the criterion validity of thin‐slice judgments. Implications for the use of thin‐slice judgments in salesperson selection and customer satisfaction are discussed.     

Judgments about Felony‐Murder in Hindsight

The purpose of this research was to investigate the role of hindsight bias in application of the felony‐murder law, a controversial rule stating that felons can be held responsible for any foreseeable deaths that occur as a result of their felony. Some versions of the rule involve notions of proximate cause requiring legal decision makers to determine foreseeability and assess case evidence. Those judgments may be biased by outcome information and the process of cognitive sense‐making. Jury eligible participants read a crime vignette modeled on an actual felony‐murder case manipulated with regard to outcome information and relevant case facts. They made likelihood judgments and rated felons on intent and culpability. Results indicated that outcome information biased death likelihood ratings in hindsight but did not significantly affect assessments of case evidence. Implications for further applied cognitive research regarding the felony‐murder rule are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mere exposure has differential effects on attention allocation to threatening and neutral stimuli

The mere exposure (ME) effect is the phenomenon whereby familiar stimuli are rated more positively than their novel counterparts (e.g., Zajonc, 1968). Though the effect of mere familiarity on a variety of affective judgments is robust and well documented, relatively little research has examined the effects of ME on other non-affective outcomes. The current research addressed this issue by examining the effects of ME on selective attention to threatening and neutral stimuli. We predicted and found that threatening stimuli, which typically arouse negative affect and capture attention, were attended to less following ME; conversely, neutral stimuli, which typically do not arouse affect nor capture attention, were attended to more following ME. The implications of these findings for the literatures on mere exposure and attention are discussed as are speculations about mediators of these effects.     

DEPRESSION,LISTLESSNESS, AND MORAL MOTIVATION

Motivational internalism (MI) holds that, necessarily, if an agent judges that she is morally obligated to ø, then, that agent is, to at least some minimal extent, motivated to ø. Opponents of MI sometimes invoke depression as a counterexample on the grounds that depressed individuals appear to sincerely affirm moral judgments but are ‘listless’ and unmotivated by such judgments. Such listlessness is a credible counterexample to MI, I argue, only if the actual clinical disorder of depression, rather than a merely hypothetical example of such listlessness, is the source of this listlessness. However, empirical evidence concerning depression shows that, to the extent that the depressed are motivationally listless at all, they are abnormally listless only with respect to an important class of non‐moral judgments, namely, their prudential normative judgments (i.e., those concerning their own happiness and well‐being), not their moral judgments. Hence, depressed individuals do not constitute a counterexample to MI. This conclusion has important methodological implications concerning how supporters and opponents of MI can best defend their respective theses.     

A Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi

People's evaluations of stimuli may change when they verbally attempt to communicate the reasons underlying their judgments. The reported experiments demonstrate the interactive influence of expertise, verbalizability (i.e., the ease with which stimulus features can be linguistically encoded), and appraisal mode in the verbalization bias phenomenon. In Experiment 1, art novices and experts rated their liking of artworks with compositional features that were easy (e.g., figurative–naturalistic) or difficult (e.g., abstract) to verbalize. When asked to verbalize the reasons underlying their judgments, novices assigned lower ratings to abstract but not figurative works. Experts, in contrast, were not influenced by the verbalization manipulation. Experiment 2 explored the possibility that verbalization bias is attributable to a componential appraisal mode that verbalization induces, rather than the specific reasons that people articulate. We found that verbalizing reasons for liking or disliking one abstract work influenced art novices' judgments of a second work for which they did not attempt to verbalize reasons. Moreover, those who merely attempted to verbalize their perceptual experiences also exhibited this contamination effect. The results of both studies suggest that verbalizing the attributes of complex stimuli can significantly alter the way we evaluate these stimuli.     

Cultivating the Opinionated: The Need to Evaluate Moderates the Relationship Between Crime Drama Viewing and Scary World Evaluations

The literature on cultivation processes assumes that second‐order judgments (e.g., attitudes) are repeatedly updated during viewing (i.e., on‐line) and can be reported when asked. In this article, we propose this reasoning only holds for people high in their need to evaluate (NTE). Low‐NTE individuals do not update their opinions on‐line and have to construct their attitudes memory‐based, limiting the likelihood of finding second‐order relationships. Results from a cross‐sectional survey among 226 adolescents indicate that crime drama viewing and scary world beliefs are only correlated among high‐NTE individuals. NTE does not moderate cultivation through nonfiction. The theoretical implications of memory‐based attitudes for second‐order cultivation are discussed, and suggestions are made for future research on attitudinal media effects.     

Judgments of Sexual Harassment Court Case Summaries

Understanding third-person judgments of sexual harassment is important because of their role in bystander intervention, popular opinion, and perhaps even labeling experiences as harassment. We employed Brunswikian principles of representative design (sampling from natural environments and allowing environmental factors influencing judgments to intercorrelate) and multiple regression plus relative weight analyses to examine judgments about summaries of actual U.S. sexual harassment court cases. Potential factors influencing judgments (cues) were identified and coded by raters. Results suggest that naturally occurring cues were intercorrelated to some extent, and people use different aspects of these rich situations to make judgments. We also found that some less-studied cues (i.e., target's withdrawal from the workplace, number of incidents) are more important than that the previous research would suggest, while some often-studied cues (i.e., status of the harasser, target's response to the harasser) are less important. Participants overall used very few cues, even when many were available. Future research should employ Brunswik's representative design to use more realistic scenarios that allow for intercorrelated, naturally occurring cues. Especially if results can be replicated, theories about how judgments of sexual harassment are made can be developed that reflect the complex realities of sexual harassment judgments that our study revealed. Representative design could also be employed to help theory development in other scenario-based areas of organizational research. Ours is the first study of judgments of sexual harassment that used a Brunswikian approach to study actual court case summaries. This has allowed for a unique examination of this complicated phenomenon.     

Using Ordinal Data to Estimate Cardinal Values

We investigate methods developed in multiple criteria decision‐making that use ordinal information to estimate numerical values. Such methods can be used to estimate attribute weights, attribute values, or event probabilities given ranks or partial ranks. We first review related studies and then develop a generalized rank‐sum (GRS) approach in which we provide a derivation of the rank‐sum approach that had been previously proposed. The GRS approach allows for incorporating the concept of degree of importance (or, difference in likelihood with respect to probabilities and difference in value for attribute values), information that most other rank‐based formulas do not utilize. We then present simulation results comparing the GRS method with other rank‐based formulas such as the rank order centroid method and comparing the GRS methods using as many as three levels of importance (i.e., GRS‐3) with Simos' procedure (which can also incorporate degree of importance). To our surprise, our results show that the incorporation of additional information (i.e., the degree of the importance), both GRS‐3 and Simos' procedure, did not result in better performance than rank order centroid or GRS. Further research is needed to investigate the modelling of such extra information. We also explore the scenario when a decision‐maker has indifference judgments and cannot provide a complete rank order. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.