Children's Preference for Television Programs: Long‐Tail Evidence1

It has been hypothesized recently that many social phenomena and consumer choices are characterized by a long‐tail distribution. We investigated the preferences of 4‐ to 8‐year‐old children in the domain of television programs, and found a long‐tail distribution of children's preference, characterized by Zipf's law. We also found a high awareness of parents about the preferences of their children, even about those that they judged negatively. Our findings might have useful implications for the study of consumers' behavior and for research on complex interactions between psychological and socioeconomic factors.     

Torture, Terrorism and the State: a Refutation of the Ticking-Bomb Argument

abstract   Much of the literature on torture in recent years takes the position of denouncing the barbarity of torture, while allowing for exceptions to this veto in extreme circumstances. The ticking-bomb argument, where a terrorist is tortured in order to extract information of a primed bomb located in a civilian area, is often invoked as one of those extreme circumstances where torture becomes justified. As the War on Terrorism intensifies, the ticking-bomb argument has become the dominant line of reasoning used by both academics and policy advisers to justify a legalized, state-sponsored program of torture.
This paper argues for the unconditional refutation of any attempt to justify torture, without exceptions. We argue against the consequentialist reasoning of the ticking-bomb argument not from a deontological position, but on consequentialist grounds. Empirical evidence suggests that the institutionalization of torture practices creates serious problems. Torture interrogation fails to fulfil its initial purpose as a low-cost life saver, while its long-term potential is the devastation of democratic institutions.     

A mixed‐method approach to sense of coherence,health behaviors,self‐efficacy and optimism: Towards the operationalization of positive health attitudes

Posadzki, P., Stockl, A., Musonda, P. & Tsouroufli, M. (2010). A mixed‐method approach to sense of coherence, health behaviors, self‐efficacy and optimism: Towards the operationalization of positive health attitudes. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 51, 246–252. This study discusses the results of a cross‐sectional survey of healthy college students in Poland. More specifically, it describes, explores, and explains the relationships between psychological variables/models such as health behaviors (HB), sense of coherence (SOC), level of optimism (LOO), and self‐efficacy (SE) among college students. These separate constructs have also been used to operationalize a positive health attitude (PHA) as a novel construct. The social survey was carried out at three higher education institutions in Poland in January 2006. The random sample of 455 undergraduate students was taken from five different faculties: Physiotherapy, Physical Education, Tourism and Recreation, English Philology and Polish Philology. Four reliable and validated research tools were used to collect the data: Juczynsky’s Health Behaviour Inventory (HBI); Antonovsky’s Sense of Coherence Questionnaire (SOC‐29); Schwarzer & Jerusalem’s Generalized Self‐Efficacy Scale (GSES); and Seligman’s Scale (SS). The results indicate statistically significant differences (p < 0.001) between these four variables: for example, the healthier health behaviors the stronger the sense of coherence, level of optimism and self‐efficacy. It was also demonstrated that LOO, SOC, SE, and HB correlate with one another. Finally, these variables create an explicit empirical‐theoretical pattern. All the research results from REGWQ tests, Pearson’s correlation coefficient and cluster analysis suggest the existence of conceptual similarities between these four variables and/or the existence of some broader scientific construct such as PHA. However, this needs to be examined further. These results could be a good indicator for future research among different faculties or age groups.