Imprecise Probabilities and Unstable Betting Behaviour

Many have argued that a rational agent's attitude towards a proposition may be better represented by a probability range than by a single number. I show that in such cases an agent will have unstable betting behaviour, and so will behave in an unpredictable way. I use this point to argue against a range of responses to the ‘two bets’ argument for sharp probabilities.     

Who Wears the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Hijab</Emphasis>? Predictors of Veiling in Greater Jakarta

Indonesia is home to the world’s largest Muslim population. In contrast to much of the Middle East, veiling in Indonesia is neither a deeply rooted cultural practice, nor it is universally practised among Muslim women. Just 30 years ago it was rare to see an Indonesian woman wearing a hijab or veil. Today, veiling has become a relatively common practice, particularly among middle-class Muslim women living in urban areas. Although statistics on the prevalence of veiling are scant, the fact of growing use of headscarves is widely accepted in the literature. This paper examines sociodemographic correlates of veiling among young women in the capital region of Indonesia. We analyse a representative sample of 1443 Muslim women aged 20–34 in Greater Jakarta in 2010. About 26% of the women surveyed wore the veil. We found a moderately strong association between veiling and other measures of religiosity, including self-reported subjective religiosity and frequency of reading religious texts. Our multivariate analysis suggests a positive association between educational attainment and the likelihood of veiling among young Muslim women. In discussing these findings, we draw upon the qualitative component of our study and the literature on Islam, gender, and modernity in Indonesia. The paper highlights the difficulty encountered examining the practice of veiling as a binary choice, and as a measure of religiosity.     

Are you talking to the future me? The moderator role of future self‐relevance on the effects of aging salience in retirement savings

Increasing the salience of aging has been shown to be a promising strategy to promote young adults' interest in saving for retirement. However, the processes responsible for this effect are still largely unknown. We hypothesize that increased savings choices will only occur when participants are also engaged in self‐relevant thoughts about their own future. Participants were exposed to a fictitious website advertising financial products. Study 1 (n = 78; M_age = 20.87) primed age salience and future self‐relevance orthogonally and showed that priming aging only caused increases in retirement investment decisions when self‐relevance was also high. Study 2 (n = 91; M_age = 23.40) tested whether the effects of age priming were due specifically to age or to a broader focus on the future. The study confirmed that investment decision effects are specific to exposure to the aging prime and not merely priming the future. The effects were also specific to investment in retirement funds and not just depositing money in a checking account. These findings have both theoretical and practical implications for the psychology of aging and retirement planning.     

Emotion,Evaluation, Desire,Behavior and Goals: a <Emphasis Type="Italic">Eudaimonistic</Emphasis> View

In this essay I examine the conceptual relation between emotions and their corresponding evaluations, desires, behavior and goals. Such conceptual relation is of the utmost importance in order to account for the unity or oneness of emotion, for if the different aspects of emotion are linked conceptually, then to have one such aspect would imply having all the others. After I discuss how emotions are related to their corresponding evaluations, desires and behavior, I show how each aspect of emotion is related to the others. Next, I argue that indeed there is such conceptual or quasi-conceptual relation between emotions, evaluations and conative or desiderative states (i.e. desires or wishes). However, while intentional behavior in terms of actions is conceptually related to some emotions, other times the emotion-specific desires are either non-forward-looking, and thus do not give rise to intentional actions, or they may be overridden, and the resultant behavioral manifestations are not conceptually related to emotion. Next, I argue that emotions are eudaimonistic, in the sense that they are essentially concerned with important goals, concerns and attachments that comprise our conception of the good life and well-being. Finally, I examine the conceptual relation between emotions and their respective goals, and argue that while emotions logically presuppose such goals, the reverse is not the case.     

The Dimensions of Generalized Prejudice within the Dual-Process Model: the Mediating Role of Moral Foundations

In our study we investigated how individualizing and binding moral foundations partially mediate the relationship between the attitudinal clusters of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO), and the dimensions of generalized prejudice. We found that binding moral foundations partially mediate the association between RWA and negative attitudes towards dissident and dangerous groups, while individualizing moral foundations had a positive relationship with the evaluations of all three clusters of dissident, dangerous, and derogated outgroups, and partially mediated the effects of both SDO and RWA. Based on these results we claim that intergroup attitudes are at least partly determined by moral concerns, and different personal needs activate or inhibit different moral concerns. Furthermore, while individualizing moral foundations seem to have a universal prejudice reducing effect, the effect of binding foundations is selective, increasing prejudice principally against dangerous and derogated outgroups that threaten one’s personal need for security and certainty.     

Rule-violations sensitise towards negative and authority-related stimuli

Rule violations have usually been studied from a third-person perspective, identifying situational factors that render violations more or less likely. A first-person perspective of the agent that actively violates the rules, on the other hand, is only just beginning to emerge. Here we show that committing a rule violation sensitises towards subsequent negative stimuli as well as subsequent authority-related stimuli. In a Prime-Probe design, we used an instructed rule-violation task as the Prime and a word categorisation task as the Probe. Also, we employed a control condition that used a rule inversion task as the Prime (instead of rule violations). Probe targets were categorised faster after a violation relative to after a rule-based response if they related to either, negative valence or authority. Inversions, however, primed only negative stimuli and did not accelerate the categorisation of authority-related stimuli. A heightened sensitivity towards authority-related targets thus seems to be specific to rule violations. A control experiment showed that these effects cannot be explained in terms of semantic priming. Therefore, we propose that rule violations necessarily activate authority-related representations that make rule violations qualitatively different from simple rule inversions.     

Math Intervention For Latino Parents and Kindergarteners Based on Food Routines

Family food routines are important contexts through which children develop math knowledge and skills. The Food For Thought (FFT) program teaches Latino parents strategies to develop their kindergarten children's math abilities during family food routines such as grocery shopping and cooking. We examined whether attendance to FFT was related to children's math outcomes at post-test (right after program completion). Sixty-eight low-income Latino parents and their kindergarten children (M?=?71 months) participated in the four-week program taking place in schools. Children's math skills (counting, numeral recognition and cardinal understanding) were assessed at pre- and post-test. The association between parents' attendance to FFT meetings and children′s math outcomes at post-test depended on children's initial levels of math skills (i.e., math skills at pre-test). Children with lower initial math skills whose parents attended more FFT meetings had more advanced math outcomes at post-test, than children with lower initial math skills whose parents attended fewer FFT meetings. The effect size of this interaction was moderate, d?=?0.46. Limitations and future directions of this early math intervention targeting Latino families are discussed.