Low‐price guarantees as advertisement strategy and compensation policy: The more,the better?

Companies sometimes employ a “lowest price or more than the difference back” policy (i.e., a price‐beating guarantee). We investigated whether such a policy is more effective to attract and retain customers than when the exact price difference is promised (i.e., a price‐matching guarantee). The first study revealed that about 60% of the marketers and shop owners in our sample thought that beating price differences is a more effective strategy than matching price differences. However, the four subsequent studies challenged this assumption. Specifically, the advertisement as well as the provision of price‐beating refunds did not have an incremental positive effect on customers' general attitudes in terms of trust, brand perception, loyalty, and shopping intentions beyond the level that was already reached by price‐matching refunds. Moreover, our mediation analyses revealed that the null effect of price‐matching versus price‐beating was mediated by fairness perceptions. From a theoretical perspective, these results are in line with a fairness account, which holds that people do not only evaluate the economic value of an outcome, but also take equality considerations into account. Because price‐beating is literally more expensive than price‐matching, from a practical point of view, companies should be informed that the employment of a price‐beating guarantee is a cost‐ineffective advertisement strategy and compensation policy.     

Introducing Emotioncy as a Potential Source of Test Bias: A Mixed Rasch Modeling Study

This article attempts to present emotioncy as a potential source of test bias to inform the analysis of test item performance. Emotioncy is defined as a hierarchy, ranging from exvolvement (auditory, visual, and kinesthetic) to involvement (inner and arch), to emphasize the emotions evoked by the senses. This study hypothesizes that when individuals have high levels of emotioncy for specific words, their test performance may systematically change, resulting in test bias. To this end, 355 individuals were asked to take a 40-item vocabulary test along with the emotioncy scale. Mixed Rasch model was employed to flag differential item functioning items. Results illustrated that the test takers with high emotioncy toward specific words outperformed the ones in the low-emotioncy group, characterizing emotioncy as a potential source of test bias.     

BACS: The Brussels Artificial Character Sets for studies in cognitive psychology and neuroscience

Written symbols such as letters have been used extensively in cognitive psychology, whether to understand their contributions to written word recognition or to examine the processes involved in other mental functions. Sometimes, however, researchers want to manipulate letters while removing their associated characteristics. A powerful solution to do so is to use new characters, devised to be highly similar to letters, but without the associated sound or name. Given the growing use of artificial characters in experimental paradigms, the aim of the present study was to make available the Brussels Artificial Character Sets (BACS): two full, strictly controlled, and portable sets of artificial characters for a broad range of experimental situations.     

Validity of Functional Ambulation Performance Score for the evaluation of spatiotemporal parameters of children's gait

Gait characteristics of a healthy adult population have been used to develop the Functional Ambulation Profile (FAP) score to evaluate gait in patients with neuromuscular or musculoskeletal involvement (A. J. Nelson, 1974). Further technological progress allowed a more precise recording of walk parameters and propitiated the development of the Functional Ambulation Performance Score (FAPS). The authors aimed to explore the evolution of the FAPS in healthy children to determine what the lower limit of age would be to ensure reliability of this score. Participants were 32 children with normal development. A GAITRite? walkway was used to log the spatiotemporal parameters. Compared with values obtained in adults, the average FAPS was significantly lower for children under 12 years old. The interparticipant variability was particularly high for the younger children and decreased with age. Similar trends were observed regarding the intraparticipant variability. In conclusion, the authors observed that the FAPS is not suitable to compare the gait of different children younger than 12 years old. At least, the adult standards used to calculate FAPS would need to be modified if the score has to be applied to a pediatric population.     

Do Managers Use Feedback Seeking as a Strategy to Regulate Demands–Abilities Misfit? The Moderating Role of Implicit Person Theory

Purpose  

This study examined to what extent managers who hold an incremental implicit person theory (i.e., believe that personal attributes are relatively malleable) rely on proactive strategies to address imbalances between demands and abilities.     

Can Religious Beliefs be a Protective Factor for Suicidal Behavior? A Decision Tree Analysis in a Mid-Sized City in Iran, 2013

This study aimed to assess using tree-based models the impact of different dimensions of religion and other risk factors on suicide attempts in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Three hundred patients who attempted suicide and 300 age- and sex-matched patient attendants with other types of disease who referred to Kerman Afzalipour Hospital were recruited for this study following a convenience sampling. Religiosity was assessed by the Duke University Religion Index. A tree-based model was constructed using the Gini Index as the homogeneity criterion. A complementary discrimination analysis was also applied. Variables contributing to the construction of the tree were stressful life events, mental disorder, family support, and religious belief. Strong religious belief was a protective factor for those with a low number of stressful life events and those with a high mental disorder score; 72 % of those who formed these two groups had not attempted suicide. Moreover, 63 % of those with a high number of stressful life events, strong family support, strong problem-solving skills, and a low mental disorder score were less likely to attempt suicide. The significance of four other variables, GHQ, problem-coping skills, friend support, and neuroticism, was revealed in the discrimination analysis. Religious beliefs seem to be an independent factor that can predict risk for suicidal behavior. Based on the decision tree, religious beliefs among people with a high number of stressful life events might not be a dissuading factor. Such subjects need more family support and problem-solving skills.     

The relationship between social-cultural attitudes and behavioral measures of cognitive style: a meta-analytic integration of studies

The present meta-analysis investigates the relationship between social-cultural right-wing attitudes and objective measures of cognitive style on a set of 124 unique samples, with a total of 29,209 participants. Intolerance of ambiguity and cognitive ability yielded relationships of moderate strength with right-wing attitudes, whereas only mixed evidence was obtained for rigidity, complexity, and field dependence. In the discussion, we compare the present weak to moderate relationships with a meta-analysis conducted by Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, and Sulloway (2003b), included predominantly self-report measures of cognitive style, reporting moderate to strong relationships between conservatism. The need to study cognitive ability as a basis of ideological attitudes is also discussed.     

L’équipe paramédicale à l’hôpital psychiatrique : Retentissement actuel d’une évolution de deux décennies Analyse d’un entretien de supervision

At the advent of the reform of nursing education in France, this study attempts to give an overview of changes in the work practices of nurses and the employment of nurse’s aides in psychiatric wards of hospitals. Based on the assumption that interaction acts as an interface between the individual on one side and collective systems on the other, the authors approach this issue by analyzing a supervisory meeting of a caregiving team in a psychiatric hospital.     

Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Orientation: Relationships With Various Forms of Racism

Previous research revealed that right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO) are strongly related to racism. However, this line of inquiry neglected to study these relationships for various forms of racism. In Study 1, it was found in a Flemish heterogeneous adult sample ( N = 146) that RWA and SDO bore about equally strong relationships with biological racism, symbolic racism, ethnocentrism, and aversive racism. Study 2 revealed in a heterogeneous adult sample ( N = 176), also administered in Flanders (Belgium), that RWA was positively related to both subtle and blatant prejudice, whereas SDO was positively related only to blatant prejudice. Moreover, RWA differentiates better between different types of racists composed on the basis of scores on the racism dimensions. The implications of these results for RWA- and SDO-based prejudice are discussed.