Gender Discrimination and the Workplace: An Examination of Rational Bias Theory

Previous research concerning the rationalbias theory of workplace discrimination has beenconfined largely to narrow student samples. This studyextends that work with an experimental-survey design in which employed participants were asked bothhow others respond to conditions classically elicitingrational bias discrimination, and how they believepeople behave in their own firms. Participants were 148 men and 158 women (88.6% Caucasian, 4.6%Hispanic, 4% Asian, and 2.8% other racialidentification) with graduate business degrees from apublic university. Results show evidence of continuingdiscrimination, and support the theory predicting rational biasgender discrimination in the workplace. Gender ofrespondent and locus of control (defined by Spector'sWork Locus of Control scale) are also shown to be related to rational bias discrimination.Suggestions are made for further development and testingof rational bias theory.     

Paradox,truth and logic part I: Paradox and truth

Conclusion The discussion of the semantics of inconsistent truth theories now comes to a pause. The preceding is of course but a sketch; many interesting questions remain to be answered. The second part of this essay, however, will not seek to answer them. Rather, I will turn to the discussion of the proof theory of truth theory: the local and global logic of truth.Under the first heading, I show how to replace the inductive construction of models with an appropriate infinitary proof theory, and relate this on the one hand to the so-called dependence approach to inductive truth theories (Davis, 1979; Yablo, 1982) and on the other to van Fraassen's fact semantics for relevance logic.Under the second heading, I offer formals systems which capture the inferences valid in all approximate models. Not surprisingly, these turn out to be relevant logics.With formalism in hand, I discuss finally the extent to which the gap and/or glut approach can in fact be said to solve the paradoxes; that is, to allow us to say that the very language we are speaking is of the sort described in our theory.     

The opponent process theory and affective reactions

Solomon (1980) proposed an opponent process theory to account for motivational and affective dynamics. This theory asserts that the brain avoids extremes of emotional experience by countering the stimulation it receives with an opposite or opponent reaction. Opponent processes are thought to be responsible for the characteristic changes in affective experience that occur over time, and to account for the dynamics of affective response to such stimuli as skydiving and sauna bathing, which have heretofore been difficult to explain. However, the relevance of this theory for affective experiences in general (beyond physical stimuli and addictions) has yet to be demonstrated. The present paper examines opponent process theory predictions in two settings, involving affective responses to situation-scenarios and emotion-provoking slides. In each study, significant habituation to both positive and negative affective stimuli was found, as the opponent process theory would predict. Subjects also showed a reversal of affect when the stimuli were reversed from positive to negative or vice versa. However, contrary to opponent process theory predictions, there was no evidence that withdrawal responses were greater after habituation to the affective stimulus. The only instance of a significant difference in withdrawal responses was actually in a direction opposite to that which the opponent process theory predicts. All other predicted differences were not significant. The opponent process theory, therefore, was not supported in these data and appears to need revision or qualification as to its domains of application.     

Impaired positive inferential bias in social phobia

People with social phobia report anticipatory and retrospective judgments about social situations that appear consistent with a negative interpretative bias. However, it is not at all clear that biased interpretative inferences are made "on-line;" that is, at the time that ambiguous information is first encountered. In a previous study, volunteers who were anxious about interviews were found to lack the positive on-line inferential bias that was characteristic of nonanxious controls but also failed to show a bias favoring threatening inferences (C. R. Hirsch & A. Mathews, 1997). This finding was confirmed in the present study, in which social phobic patients showed no evidence of making on-line emotional inferences, in contrast with socially nonanxious controls who were again clearly biased in favor of positive inferences. The authors concluded that nonanxious individuals are characterized by a benign on-line inferential bias, but that this is impaired in people with social phobia.     

Observers can voluntarily shift their psychometric functions without losing sensitivity

Psychometric sensory discrimination functions are usually modeled by cumulative Gaussian functions with just two parameters, their central tendency (μ) and their slope (1/σ). These correspond to Fechner's "constant" and "variable" errors, respectively. Fechner pointed out that even the constant error could vary over space and time and could masquerade as variable error. We wondered whether observers could deliberately introduce a constant error into their performance without loss of precision. In three-dot vernier and bisection tasks with the method of single stimuli, observers were instructed to favour one of the two responses when unsure of their answer. The slope of the resulting psychometric function was not significantly changed, despite a significant change in central tendency. Similar results were obtained when altered feedback was used to induce bias. We inferred that observers can adopt artificial response criteria without any significant increase in criterion fluctuation. These findings have implications for some studies that have measured perceptual "illusions" by shifts in the psychometric functions of sophisticated observers.     

Effects of outcome and trial frequency on the inverse base-rate effect

The inverse base-rate effect is a bias in contingency learning in which participants tend to predict a rare outcome for a conflicting set of perfectly predictive cues. Although the effect is often explained by attention biases during learning, inferential strategies at test may also contribute substantially to the effect. In three experiments, we manipulated the frequencies of outcomes and trial types to determine the critical conditions for the effect, thereby providing novel tests of the reasoning processes that could contribute to it. The rare bias was substantially reduced when the outcomes were experienced at equal rates in the presence of predictive-cue frequency differences (Exp. 2), and when the predictive cues were experienced at equal rates in the presence of outcome frequency differences (Exp. 3). We also found a consistent common-outcome bias for novel cue compounds. The results indicate the importance of both cue and outcome frequencies to the inverse base-rate effect, and reveal a combination of necessary conditions that are not well captured by appealing to inferential strategies at test. Although both attention-based and inferential theories explain some aspects of these data, no existing theory fully accounts for these effects of relative novelty.     

Inference,explanation, and asymmetry

Explanation is asymmetric: if A explains B, then B does not explain A. Traditionally, the asymmetry of explanation was thought to favor causal accounts of explanation over their rivals, such as those that take explanations to be inferences. In this paper, we develop a new inferential approach to explanation that outperforms causal approaches in accounting for the asymmetry of explanation.

     

Wide-Coverage Probabilistic Sentence Processing

This paper describes a fully implemented, broad-coverage model of human syntactic processing. The model uses probabilistic parsing techniques, which combine phrase structure, lexical category, and limited subcategory probabilities with an incremental, left-to-right pruning mechanism based on cascaded Markov models. The parameters of the system are established through a uniform training algorithm, which determines maximum-likelihood estimates from a parsed corpus. The probabilistic parsing mechanism enables the system to achieve good accuracy on typical, garden-variety language (i.e., when tested on corpora). Furthermore, the incremental probabilistic ranking of the preferred analyses during parsing also naturally explains observed human behavior for a range of garden-path structures. We do not make strong psychological claims about the specific probabilistic mechanism discussed here, which is limited by a number of practical considerations. Rather, we argue incremental probabilistic parsing models are, in general, extremely well suited to explaining this dual nature—generally good and occasionally pathological—of human linguistic performance.     

Inferential Intensionality

The paper is a study of properties of quasi-consequence operation which is a key notion of the so-called inferential approach in the theory of sentential calculi established in [5]. The principal motivation behind the quasi-consequence, q-consequence for short, stems from the mathematical practice which treats some auxiliary assumptions as mere hypotheses rather than axioms and their further occurrence in place of conclusions may be justified or not. The main semantic feature of the q-consequence reflecting the idea is that its rules lead from the non-rejected assumptions to the accepted conclusions.First, we focus on the syntactic features of the framework and present the q-consequence as related to the notion of proof. Such a presentation uncovers the reasons for which the adjective inferential is used to characterize the approach and, possibly, the term inference operation replaces q-consequence. It also shows that the inferential approach is a generalisation of the Tarski setting and, therefore, it may potentially absorb several concepts from the theory of sentential calculi, cf. [10]. However, as some concrete applications show, see e.g.[4], the new approach opens perspectives for further exploration.The main part of the paper is devoted to some notions absent, in Tarski approach. We show that for a given q-consequence operation W instead of one W-equivalence established by the properties of W we may consider two congruence relations. For one of them the current name is kept preserved and for the other the term W-equality is adopted. While the two relations coincide for any W which is a consequence operation, for an arbitrary W the inferential equality and the inferential equivalence may differ. Further to this we introduce the concepts of inferential extensionality and intensionality for q-consequence operations and connectives. Some general results obtained in Section 2 sufficiently confirm the importance of these notions. To complete a view, in Section 4 we apply the new intensionality-extensionality distinction to inferential extensions of a version of the ukasiewicz four valued modal logic.     

Cognitive Biases and Emotional Wisdom in the Evolution of Conflict Between the Sexes

Two recent theories within evolutionary psychology have produced novel insights into conflict between the sexes. According to error management theory (EMT), asymmetries over evolutionary time in the cost-benefit consequences of specific social inferences have produced predictable cognitive biases. Women, for example, appear to underinfer commitment in response to signals of resource display. Men often overinfer a woman's sexual desire when she merely smiles at or casually touches them. These inferential biases, according to EMT, represent functional adaptations rather than markers of irrationality in information processing. According to strategic interference theory , certain "negative emotions" function to motivate action to reduce conflict produced by impediments to preferred social strategies. Emotions such as jealousy and anger, rather than reducing rationality, may embody inherited ancestral wisdom functional in dealing with interference inflicted by other individuals. These evolution-based theories have produced novel empirical discoveries and challenge traditional theories anchored in the premise that cognitive biases and negative emotions necessarily lead to irrationality.     

Opponent processes in human emotions? An experimental investigation of hedonic contrast and affective interactions

Three hypotheses of opponent process theory (e.g., Solomon, 1980) were examined: (1) Following the removal of emotionally charged stimuli, an emotional response opposite in hedonic tone to the initial affective response will occur; (2) this response occurs as a reaction to the initial affective response (and is not the result of perceptual processes or reinterpretations of the situation); and (3) when opponent affective processes cooccur, they tend to cancel each other's effects.Individuals were led to associate happiness and sadness with stimuli through hypnotic inductions; other stimuli were conditioned to the emotional responses that followed the offset of these stimuli. On both physiological and self-report measures, affective afterreactions were observed following the termination of a stimulus eliciting happiness in a context where this result could not be attributed to individuals' perceptions of the likelihood of future pleasant events or to changes in the individuals' adaptation levels. In agreement with previous findings, no afterreaction following the termination of a stimulus eliciting sadness was observed. Evidence that affective processes interact was also obtained. When opponent affective processes cooccur, they appear to interact and cancel. When two nonopponent affective processes are elicited simultaneously, they appear to add or average. This result supports the assumption, common to many theories of emotion, that affective processes interact to determine individuals' observed emotional states.It is my pleasure to thank Patricia Barchas, Gordon Bower, Nelson Donegan, Mary Rothbart, Roger Shepard, and Philip Zimbardo for their advice and encouragement, and to express a special thanks to Phoebe Ellsworth for her invaluable assistance.     

Inferentialism,degrees of commitment,and ampliative reasoning

Our purpose in this paper is to contribute to a practice-based characterization of scientific inference. We want to explore whether Brandom’s pragmatist–inferentialist framework can suitably accommodate several types of ampliative inference common in scientific reasoning and explanation (probabilistic reasoning, abduction and idealisation). First, we argue that Brandom’s view of induction in terms of merely permissive inferences is inadequate; in order to overcome the shortcoming of Brandom’s proposal, we put forward an alternative conception of inductive, probabilistic reasoning by appeal to the notion of degrees of commitment. Moreover, we examine the sorts of inferential commitments operative in other types of ampliative inferences, such as abduction or reasoning involving idealizations and assumptions. We suggest that agents engaging in these forms of reasoning often undertake restricted inferential commitments, whose scope and reach are more limited that in the case of the commitments associated with full beliefs.

     

Different developmental patterns of simple deductive and probabilistic inferential reasoning

In three studies, we examined simple counterexample-based and probabilistic reasoning in children 6, 7, and 9 years of age. In the first study, participants were asked to make conditional (if-then) inferences under both categorical (certain or uncertain) and probabilistic instructions. Results showed that 6-year-olds respond to both forms of inference in similar ways, but whereas probabilistic conditional inferences showed little development over this period, categorical inferences clearly improved between 6 and 7 years of age. An analysis of the children's justifications indicated that performance under categorical instructions was strongly related to counterexample generation at all ages, whereas this was true only for the younger children for inferences under probabilistic instructions. These findings were replicated in a second study, using problems that referred to concrete stimuli with varying probabilities of inference. A third study tested the hypothesis that children confused probability judgments with judgments of confidence and demonstrated a clear dissociation between these two constructs. Overall, these results show that children are capable of accurate conditional inferences under probabilistic instructions at a very early age and that the differentiation between categorical and probabilistic conditional reasoning is clear by at least 9 years ofage. These results are globally consistent with dual-process theories but suggest some difficulties for the way that the analytic-heuristic distinction underlying these theories has been conceptualized.     

The Role of Consciousness in Grasping and Understanding

One sometimes believes a proposition without grasping it. For example, a complete achromat might believe that ripe tomatoes are red without grasping this proposition. My aim in this paper is to shed light on the difference between merely believing a proposition and grasping it. I focus on two possible theories of grasping: the inferential theory, which explains grasping in terms of inferential role, and the phenomenal theory, which explains grasping in terms of phenomenal consciousness. I argue that the phenomenal theory is more plausible than the inferential theory.     

Connectionism, eliminativism, and the semantic view of theories

Recently some philosophers have urged that connectionist artificial intelligence is (potentially) eliminative for the propositional attitudes of folk psychology. At the same time, however, these philosophers have also insisted that since philosophy of science has failed to provide criteria distinguishing ontologically retentive from eliminative theory changes, the resulting eliminativism is not principled. Application of some resources developed within the semantic view of scientific theories, particularly recent formal work on the theory reduction relation, reveals these philosophers to be wrong in this second contention, yet by and large correct in the first.     

Errorless transfer of a discrimination across two continua

A procedure developed earlier (Terrace, 1963) successfully trained a red-green discrimination without the occurrence of any errors in 12 out of 12 cases. Errorless transfer from the red-green discrimination to a discrimination between a vertical and a horizontal line was accomplished by first superimposing the vertical and the horizontal lines on the red and green backgrounds, respectively, and then fading out the red and the green backgrounds. Superimposition of the two sets of stimuli without fading, or an abrupt transfer from the first to the second set of stimuli, resulted in the occurrence of errors during transfer. Superimposition, however, did result in some “incidental learning”. Performance following acquisition of the vertical-horizontal discrimination with errors differed from performance following acquisition without errors. If the vertical-horizontal discrimination was learned with errors, the latency of the response to S+ was permanently shortened and errors occurred during subsequent testing on the red-green discrimination even though the red-green discrimination was originally acquired without errors. If the vertical-horizontal discrimination was learned without errors, the latency of the response to S+ was unaffected and no errors occurred during subsequent testing on the red-green discrimination.     

Quine and the Limit Assumption in Peirce's Theory of Truth

Quine rejects Peirce's theory of truth because, among other things, its notion of a limit of a sequence of theories is defective in that the notion of a limit depends on that of nearer than which is defined for numbers but not for theories. This paper shows that the missing definition of nearer than applied to theories can be supplied from within Quine's own epistemology. The upshot is that either Quine's epistemology must be rejected or Peirce's pragmatic theory of truth is partially vindicated.     

Life Stages, Paradigms, and Patterns in the Twentieth Century

In response to John Wortley's article, Four-Stage Systems of Human Development, that appears in this issue, Stephanie Moss provides an overview of the theories that inform postmodern paradigms of aging. She demonstrates how in contrast to the rigidity of the ancient systems of aging that Wortley discusses, twentieth-century ideas provide flexible models that may be used to discuss the phenomenon of aging without imposing deterministic strictures. Through the yoking of feminist, Marxist, and psychoanalytical theories, Moss delivers a conceptualization of aging that begins to dissolve the binary oppositions that have permeated Western thought through the greater part of the twentieth century.     

Action-effect coupling in pianists

Recent theories have stressed the role of effect anticipation in action control. Such a mechanism requires the prior acquisition of integrated action-effect associations. The strength of such associations should directly depend on the amount of learning, and therefore be most pronounced in motor experts. Using an interference paradigm, we investigated whether evidence of such representations can be demonstrated in expert pianists. Participants were required to play chords on a keyboard in response to imperative visual stimuli. Concurrently, task-irrelevant auditory stimuli (potential action effects) were presented that were congruent or incongruent with the chords to be played. In Experiment 1 we found evidence that expert pianists, compared with non-musicians, have acquired such action-effects representations. Response times were slower when the auditory stimulus was incongruent with the required response. In order to ascertain the locus of interference, we varied imperative stimuli and responses in Experiments 2 and 3. The results indicate that, for the most part, interference occurs on the response level rather than on an abstract level. However, the perception of action effects also evokes processing of abstract features, like the concept of major–minor mode.