Where is (im)balance? Necessity and construction of evaluated cut‐off points for effort‐reward imbalance and overcommitment

The use of cut‐off values is common in research on the effort‐reward imbalance (ERI) model. They are often used to identify health risk situations or behaviour at work, although little is known about their diagnostic properties. The aim of the study was to investigate empirically cut‐off points for the effort‐reward ratio and the overcommitment (OC) scale. The study was based on a sample of 302 teachers. According to the International Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders‐10 (ICD‐10), 115 subjects suffered from a mood disorder. The control group consisted of 187 matched healthy subjects. Receiver‐operating characteristic analyses were conducted using the ERI ratio and OC as diagnostic variables. A mood disorder served as gold standard reference test. Results demonstrated the ability of the effort‐reward ratio and OC to discriminate between diseased and healthy individuals. However, a comparison of the areas under the curve revealed a significantly higher diagnostic power for the effort‐reward ratio. According to the Youden index, optimal cut‐off points were ERI>0.715 and OC>16. Furthermore, sensitivity and specificity for different cut‐off values are presented. Results point to shortcomings in the ERI literature using established approaches to define cut‐off points. Validating cut‐off values is of particular importance in order to ensure valid results in ERI research.     

The role of chance events in the school-to-work transition: The influence of demographic, personality and career development variables

Chance events are considered important in career development, yet little empirical research is available on their predictors and consequences. The present study investigated socio-demographic (gender, nationality, school-type), personality (openness, locus of control) and career development variables (career decidedness, career planning) in relation to perceived chance events with a retrospective (N = 229, eleventh grade), and 1-year longitudinal prospective study (N = 245, eighth/ninth grade) among Swiss adolescents. The results showed that the majority of both groups reported a significant influence of chance events on their transition from compulsory school to vocational education or high school. Importance of chance events related to socio-demographics and personality but not career preparation. Career preparation and chance events predicted subjective career success in terms of wish correspondence and overall satisfaction with transition outcome among the younger cohort. Implications include the necessity to integrate both thorough career preparation and chance events in theory and counseling practice.     

Separating response‐execution bias from decision bias: Arguments for an additional parameter in Ratcliff's diffusion model

Diffusion model data analysis permits the disentangling of different processes underlying the effects of experimental manipulations. Estimates can be provided for the speed of information accumulation, for the amount of information used to draw conclusions, and for a decision bias. One parameter describes the duration of non‐decisional processes including the duration of motor‐response execution. In the default diffusion model, it is implicitly assumed that both responses are executed with the same speed. In some applications of the diffusion model, this assumption will be violated. This will lead to biased parameter estimates. Consequently, we suggest accounting explicitly for differences in the speed of response execution for both responses. Results from a simulation study illustrate that parameter estimates from the default model are biased if the speed of response execution differs between responses. A second simulation study shows that large trial numbers (N>1,000) are needed to detect whether differences in response‐execution times are based on different execution times.     

Virtual social interactions in social anxiety--the impact of sex, gaze, and interpersonal distance

In social interactions, interpersonal distance between interaction partners plays an important role in determining the status of the relationship. Interpersonal distance is an important nonverbal behavior, and is used to regulate personal space in a complex interplay with other nonverbal behaviors such as eye gaze. In social anxiety, studies regarding the impact of interpersonal distance on within-situation avoidance behavior are so far rare. Thus the present study aimed to scrutinize the relationship between gaze direction, sex, interpersonal distance, and social anxiety in social interactions. Social interactions were modeled in a virtual-reality (VR) environment, where 20 low and 19 high socially anxious women were confronted with approaching male and female characters, who stopped in front of the participant, either some distance away or close to them, and displayed either a direct or an averted gaze. Gaze and head movements, as well as heart rate, were measured as indices of avoidance behavior and fear reactions. High socially anxious participants showed a complex pattern of avoidance behavior: when the avatar was standing farther away, high socially anxious women avoided gaze contact with male avatars showing a direct gaze. Furthermore, they showed avoidance behavior (backward head movements) in response to male avatars showing a direct gaze, regardless of the interpersonal distance. Overall, the current study proved that VR social interactions might be a very useful tool for investigating avoidance behavior of socially anxious individuals in highly controlled situations. This might also be the first step in using VR social interactions in clinical protocols for the therapy of social anxiety disorder.     

Faustlos: Evaluation of a curriculum to prevent violence in elementary schools

The “Faustlos”¹ curriculum, an adaptation of the American Second Step program, for the prevention of aggressive behaviors of elementary school children was evaluated in a 3-year control group study (30 classes served as an experimental group, 14 classes as a control group). The results show significant changes in the emotional competences and prosocial developments of children aged 6–9 years. Children who participated in the “Faustlos” lessons showed significantly reduced anxiety and internalizing behaviors compared with the control group. The parents’ ratings of their children's behavior (according to the Child Behavior Checklist) provided clear evidence of improved social behavior outside the school environment.     

Simulating social interaction to address deficits of autistic spectrum disorder in children.

Autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) is diagnosed on the basis of impairment in reciprocal social interaction and language, and rigidity of behavior. This brief paper describes the development of an experimental intervention for preschool children newly diagnosed with ASD. The rationale for this intervention is the hypothesis that failure to attend to social cues in very early life, of itself, may bear a large share of responsibility for core social and communicative deficits. The intervention, therefore, uses eye-tracking to monitor and trigger rewards for attention to facial expression and direction of gaze.     

Ecumenical Engagement with Eastern Minority Churches in Muslim States: Pro Oriente’s Encounters and Legacies in Syria and Egypt

The former Viennese Cardinal Franz König and his foundation Pro Oriente have been prominent actors in the establishment of ecumenical relations between the Catholic Church and Oriental Orthodox Churches since the Second Vatican Council. This article discusses the Christian-Muslim relations dimension of this ecumenical engagement with Middle Eastern churches in the practical field of ecumenical travel to Syria and Egypt. This intertwining of ecumenical and inter-religious engagement is studied on the basis of archival collections and journalistic accounts that make it possible to grasp the administrative process of ‘travelling diplomacy’. The analysis links the practical work of ecumenical relations to the historical legacies of the Western encounter with Islam in the post-Ottoman area. I shall argue that Pro Oriente’s approach was based on a new post-Vatican II theological vision of Islam. Although this did include reorientation with regard to traditional orientalist perceptions, ecumenism also became caught up in political dilemmas that were connected to either an orientalist perception of ecumenical relations (Egypt) or religious legitimization of an authoritarian regime (Syria).     

Do people make decisions under risk based on ignorance? An empirical test of the priority heuristic against cumulative prospect theory

Brandstätter, Gigerenzer, and Hertwig [Brandstätter, E., Gigerenzer, G., & Hertwig, R. (2006). The Priority Heuristic: Making choices without trade-offs. Psychological Review, 113(2), 409–432] put forward the priority heuristic (PH) as a fast and frugal heuristic for decisions under risk. According to the PH, individuals do not make trade-offs between gains and probabilities, as proposed by expected utility models such as cumulative prospect theory (CPT), but use information in a non-compensatory manner and ignore information. We conducted three studies to test the PH empirically by analyzing individual choice patterns, decision times and information search parameters in diagnostic decision tasks. Results on all three dependent variables conflict with the predictions of the PH and can be better explained by the CPT. The predictive accuracy of the PH was high for decision tasks in which the predictions align with the predictions of the CPT but very low for decision tasks in which this was not the case. The findings indicate that earlier results supporting the PH might have been caused by the selection of decision tasks that were not diagnostic for the PH as compared to CPT.     

Multiple-reason decision making based on automatic processing

It has been repeatedly shown that in decisions under time constraints, individuals predominantly use noncompensatory strategies rather than complex compensatory ones. The authors argue that these findings might be due not to limitations of cognitive capacity but instead to limitations of information search imposed by the commonly used experimental tool Mouselab (J. W. Payne, J. R. Bettman, & E. J. Johnson, 1988). The authors tested this assumption in 3 experiments. In the 1st experiment, information was openly presented, whereas in the 2nd experiment, the standard Mouselab program was used under different time limits. The results indicate that individuals are able to compute weighted additive decision strategies extremely quickly if information search is not restricted by the experimental procedure. In a 3rd experiment, these results were replicated using more complex decision tasks, and the major alternative explanations that individuals use more complex heuristics or that they merely encode the constellation of cues were ruled out. In sum, the findings challenge the fundaments of bounded rationality and highlight the importance of automatic processes in decision making.