A new driver behavior model to create realistic urban traffic environment

This paper presents a new driver behavior model, which emulates various driving styles (i.e. behaviors) for different categories of drivers. The model was highly parametric and was developed based on a two-layer Hierarchical Concurrent State Machines (HCSM) programming framework. Our study has been specifically oriented to create a realistic urban traffic environment with hazardous situations typical of real life in a driving simulator, and let the novice drivers to practice in a safe environment. In our study, we used TRAFIKENT driving simulator as a test-bed. Experiments and evaluations demonstrated satisfactory results in terms of behavioral validity of our model.     

The Relationship Between Learning Needs and Fatalism Tendency in Women Who Have a Relative with Breast Cancer

Journal of Religion and Health - The aim of this study was to determine the information-support needs and level of meeting these needs, the tendency of fatalism trend, and the relationship between...     

I Am so Happy ‘Cause My Best Friend Makes Me Feel Unique: Friendship, Personal Sense of Uniqueness and Happiness

Decades of empirical research leave no doubt that friendship experiences are consistent correlates of happiness. Yet, little is known about how friendships are related to happiness. The present study examined personal sense of uniqueness as a mediator of the relationship between same-sex best friendship quality and happiness in three samples each employing a different measure of happiness (n = 2,429). Results provided support to the mediational model in every sample and showed that it was gender invariant. The findings suggest that one reason why the quality of friendships is related to happiness is because friendship experiences promote individuals’ feelings of uniqueness. The implications of the findings for friendship and happiness research are discussed and directions for future research are outlined.     

An Evaluation of Alternative Ways of Computing the Creativity Quotient in a Design School Sample

Certain educational programs and jobs require selecting individuals based on their creativity. Tests of creativity are commonly based on divergent thinking tasks. The scoring of the ideational output of such tasks should ideally be done based on fluency (the number of ideas generated), flexibility (the number of categories into which the generated ideas can be partitioned), and originality (the number of unique or unusual ideas). However, most scoring procedures do not take into account all three dimensions. Building on the Creativity Quotient (CQ) measure (Snyder, Mitchell, Bossomaier & Pallier, 2004 Snyder , A. , Mitchell , J. , Bossomaier , T. , & Pallier , G. ( 2004 ). The creativity quotient: An objective scoring of ideational fluency . Creativity Research Journal , 16 , 415 – 420 .[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), which covers fluency and flexibility, an adjusted CQ and two CQs based on diversity type measures are proposed. Findings indicated that an adjusted measure that weights categories based on their discriminative power was most strongly related to other predictors of performance on creative tasks and thus presents an important advance over the original CQ.     

From outsiders to kingmakers: a comparative study of political Salafism in Egypt and political Haredism in Israel

ABSTRACT

How and why have fundamentalists, who aim to defend religion and tradition from modernity by advocating a new return to the fundamentals of religious belief and behaviour, become politically successful when one would expect them to remain marginal in their mass appeal given their belief in one true faith, exclusive organisations, limited ideological appeal and strict codes of conduct for their followers? To study this puzzle, this article utilises a cross-religious comparative study looking at how political Salafism in Egypt and political Haredism in Israel both moved from the margins of the political spectrum to its centre despite very different socio-political contexts. Building on literature addressing religious revival in Christian churches in the US, this article hypothesises that fundamentalists gained ground because the state’s ambiguous secularism allowed for the emergence of a ‘religious market,’ in which fundamentalists’ niche appeal allowed them to position themselves as kingmakers.     

Intentional and Non-Intentional Assessments of Emotion Experiences: Comparisons of Old and New Measures

In two studies, we compared intentional and non-intentional measures of emotional well-being in terms of reliability and validity. In the first study, we expanded on the findings of ?im?ek (2011 ?im?ek, Ö. F. (2011). An Intentional Model of Emotional Well-Being: The Development and Initial Validation of a Measure of Subjective Well-Being. Journal of Happiness Studies, 12, 421–442. [Google Scholar]) by showing that an intentional measure of emotional well-being, namely the Emotional Well-Being Scale, accounted for unique variance in both negative and positive mental health indicators above and beyond the variance accounted for by Larsen and Diener's Scales (1992), which measures all dimensions of affect circumplex. The correlated traits-correlated uniqueness model results showed that the original-intentional version of the Emotional Well-Being Scale explained more variance in the measurement model than the non-intentional version. The second study showed that the results were similar for the intentional vs. non-intentional versions of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedules (Watson, Clark &; Tellegen, 1988 Watson, D., Clark, L. A., &; Tellegen, A. (1988). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 1063–1070. [Google Scholar]). The intentional version of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedules accounted for more variance in the criteria than the non-intentional version.     

Moderator Role of Looming Cognitive Style (LCS) in the Relationship Between Attentional Control and Anxiety: Difference Between Shifting and Focusing Dimensions

Attentional control (AC) that is composed of shifting and focusing dimensions had been suggested as a transdiagnostic risk factor, associated with development and maintenance of various psychological disorders. In comparison, Looming Cognitive Style (LCS) had been documented as a trait-based, disorders-specific characteristic that is linked to high levels of subjectively felt anxiety. The present study investigated whether individual differences in LCS moderated the association of shifting and focusing with anxiety. Participants were 402 individuals between ages 18 and 68 recruited through advertisements posted on various forums, e-mail groups, and social media websites. They filled out questionnaires assessing AC, LCS, anxiety, and depression online. Results of the moderation analyses indicated that at high levels of LCS, low attentional shifting ability was associated with more intense anxiety. A similar relationship with LCS was not observed for focusing. In conclusion, for individuals who have high LCS and low shifting ability, content of and distress coming from looming images is experienced in a more intense manner due to difficulty in shifting to another (perhaps less anxiety provoking) content more flexibly. The findings are providing support for the interactive–synergistic perspective, indicating that deficits in shifting capacity may potentiate negative impact of looming cognitions.     

Impact of Self-Orientations and Work-Context–Related Variables on the Well-Being of Public- and Private-Sector Turkish Employees

The authors (a) explored the impact of individual differences in self-orientations (i.e., relatedness and individuation) of 383 Turkish public- and private-sector employees on their basic need satisfaction at work and their well-being (i.e., life satisfaction and psychological well-being); (b) considered differences in perceived autonomy- and relatedness-supportiveness of the work contexts; and (c) tested a model in which the relationship between self-orientations and well-being is partially mediated by the perceived supportiveness of the work context and the need satisfaction of employees at work, using structural equation modeling. Results suggest that self-orientations of employees predict their well-being both directly and indirectly through the mediation of perceived supportiveness and need satisfaction provided by the work context, which seem to vary according to sector type.     

Parenting styles and learned resourcefulness of Turkish adolescents

This study investigated the differences among 834 high school students regarding learned resourcefulness in terms of perceived parenting style and gender. The data were gathered by administering the Parenting Style Inventory (PSI) and Rosenbaum's Self-Control Schedule (SCS). The results of ANOVA pertaining to the scores of learned resourcefulness yielded a significant main effect for parenting style groups. Neither the main effect for gender nor the gender and parenting style interaction effect was significant. The findings suggest that those who perceived their parents as authoritative had a relatively high level of learned resourcefulness as compared to those who perceived their parents as neglectful and authoritarian. Findings also indicated that those who perceived their parents as indulgent had a higher level of learned resourcefulness than those who perceived their parents as neglectful and authoritarian.