Activity rescheduling: reasoned or habitual?

Utility maximization is widely used to model individuals’ activity scheduling and rescheduling behavior. Utility maximization is based on the assumption that the modeled behavior is the result of a reasoned decision. An alternative to a planned behavior is habitual behavior, whose execution process has become automatic due to its repeated performance. Compared to activity scheduling, little is known about the activity rescheduling behavior. In this paper, we focus our attention on the rescheduling behavior. We step back and ask a basic question: is the activity rescheduling behavior reasoned or habitual? Our initial expectation is that rescheduling behavior is mostly habitual behavior due to its feature of repeated performance. We answer this question by conducting an experiment. Results from the experiment confirm our original null hypothesis that rescheduling behavior is mostly a habitual behavior.     

Factors Related to the Long-Term Course of PTSD in Older Ex–Prisoners of War

This study examined relationships between socioenvironmental factors occurring in later-life and current and changing PTSD symptom levels in a sample of 177 community-dwelling World War II and Korean era ex–prisoners of war. Factors examined included negative life events, negative health events, social support, and death acceptance. PTSD was assessed at Time 1. PTSD and the later-life factors were then assessed 4 years later (Time 2). Cross-sectional analysis examined the relationship of the later-life factors to current PTSD symptomatology. Longitudinal analysis examined their relationship to changing PTSD symptomatology over the 4-year interval. Negative health changes, social support, and death acceptance were significantly related to current and changing PTSD symptomatology, but negative life events were not. The authors conclude that health and psychosocial factors that may occur in later-life can be related to PTSD symptom levels even many decades after a traumatic experience.     

A Spanish translation of Mehrabian and Russell's emotionality scales for environmental consumer psychology

The development of a translation of Mehrabian and Russell's scales for the measurement of pleasure, arousal and dominance from the original English to a Spanish version for use in Venezuela is described. The translated scales were administered to two samples of middle‐class Venezuelan consumers (n = 127,n = 127) between the ages of 20 and 50, among whom males and females were represented approximately equally. Internal reliability (measured by Cronbach's alpha) and scale validity (measured by factor analysis) indicate that the translated scales are suitable for consumer and other social psychological research in Spanish. Copyright © 2002 Henry Stewart Publications Ltd.     

Are We Rarely Free? A Response to Restrictivism

Arguments for Restrictivism – the position that we are rarely free– have been proposed by incompatibilists Peter van Inwagen and David Vander Laan among others. This article is concerned much more with these arguments than with quantifying the frequency of free actions. There are two general ways to argue for restrictivism. First, one may take a Negative Strategy, arguing that the situations in which one is not free are common and predominant. Second, one may focus on situations in which one is apparently free, and argue directly that these situations are rare – the Inventory Strategy. I conclude that both types of arguments for restrictivism are unconvincing.     

Maxwell–Boltzmann Statistics And The Metaphysics Of Modality

Two arguments have recently been advanced that Maxwell-Boltzmann particles areindistinguishable just like Bose–Einstein and Fermi–Dirac particles. Bringing modalmetaphysics to bear on these arguments shows that ontological indistinguishabilityfor classical (MB) particles does not follow. The first argument, resting on symmetryin the occupation representation for all three cases, fails since peculiar correlationsexist in the quantum (BE and FD) context as harbingers of ontic indistinguishability,while the indistinguishability of classical particles remains purely epistemic. The secondargument, deriving from the classical limits of quantum statistical partition functions,embodies a conceptual confusion. After clarifying the doctrine of haecceitism, a thirdargument is considered that attempts to deflate metaphysical concerns altogether byshowing that the phase-space and distribution-space representations of MB-statisticshave contrary haecceitistic import. Careful analysis shows this argument to fail as well,leaving de re modality unproblematically grounding particle identity in the classicalcontext while genuine puzzlement about the underlying ontology remains for quantumstatistics.     

Antecedents and Consequences of Real-Time Affective Reactions at Work

Based partly on Weiss and Cropanzano's (H. M. Weiss & R. Cropanzano, 1996) Affective Events Theory, hypotheses were stated about likely antecedents and consequences of positive and negative real-time affective reactions at work. Somewhat different antecedents and consequences were predicted for positive as opposed to negative affective reactions. Affective reactions were operationalized as the average of up to 50 reports of momentary positive and negative feelings collected at work over a 2-week period. Structural equation analyses suggest that the data are consistent with the theoretical model proposed. As expected, job characteristics and positive dispositional affectivity predict positive affective reactions, role conflict and negative affectivity predict negative affective reactions, positive affective reactions predict affective commitment and helping behavior, and intention to leave is predicted by attitudes rather than by affective reactions. The results are consistent with Affective Events Theory as well as with 2-domain models that propose different causes and consequences of positive versus negative affect.     

Estimating national populations: cross‐cultural differences and availability effects

Estimates of national population were studied in two experiments. In Experiment 1, Canadian and Chinese undergraduates rated their knowledge of 112 countries and then estimated the population of each. In Experiment 2, Canadians rated their knowledge of 52 countries and then provided population estimates for these primed countries and for a comparable set of 52 unprimed countries. In Experiment 1, participants from both nations produced estimates that resembled those obtained from Americans in prior studies (Brown and Siegler, 1992 , 1993 , 1996 , 2001 ). However, there were several reliable cross‐national differences in performance which appear to reflect cross‐cultural differences in task‐relevant naive domain knowledge. In addition, both experiments produced findings consistent with the claim that availability‐based intuitions play an important role in this task. In Experiment 1, cross‐national differences in rated knowledge predicted cross‐national differences in estimated population; in Experiment 2, primed country names elicited larger population estimates than unprimed country names. We conclude by arguing for the general utility of this hybrid approach to real‐world estimation. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Amicus Curiae Brief for the United States Supreme Court on Mental Health Issues Associated With “Physician‐Assisted Suicide”

After providing background material related to the Supreme Court cases on “physician‐assisted suicide” (Washington v. Glucksberg, 1997, and Vacco v. Quill, 1997), this article presents the amicus curiae brief that was submitted to the United States Supreme Court by 2 national mental health organizations, a state psychological association, and an ad hoc coalition of mental health professionals. The document focuses on the role mental health professionals can play in discussions about hastened death. In particular, it is asserted that mental health professionals can assess capacity the decision‐making process, and the role of coercion in such decisions. The effect of the brief on the Supreme Court and within the organizations involved is also discussed.     

Adorno on the Ethical and the Ineffable

The thesis is that Adorno has a normative ethics, albeit a minimal and negative ethics of resistance. However Adorno's ethical theory faces two problems: the problem of the availability of the good and the problem of whether a normative ethics is consistent with philosophical negativism. The author argues that a correct of understanding the role of the ineffable in Adorno's Negative Dialectics solves both problems: it provides an account of the availability of the good that is consistent with his philosophical negativism. The author counters the prevalent objection that Adorno's aporetic philosophy, like some negative theology, leads to irrationalism and mysticism. The parallel with negative theology is developed by means of a comparison with Nicholas of Cusa. Drawing on Wittgentstein's saying/showing distinction and Adrian Moore's work the author argues that Nicholas and Adorno can be seen to share a philosophically defensible notion of ineffable knowledge.     

"Really? She Blicked the Baby?": Two-Year-Olds Learn Combinatorial Facts About Verbs by Listening

ABSTRACT— Children use syntax to guide verb learning. We asked whether the syntactic structure in which a novel verb occurs is meaningful to children even without a concurrent scene from which to infer the verb's semantic content. In two experiments, 2-year-olds observed dialogues in which interlocutors used a new verb in transitive ("Jane blicked the baby!") or intransitive ("Jane blicked!") sentences. The children later heard the verb in isolation ("Find blicking!") while watching a one-participant event and a two-participant event presented side by side. Children who had heard transitive dialogues looked reliably longer at the two-participant event than did those who had heard intransitive dialogues. This effect persisted even when children were tested on a different day, but disappeared when no novel verb accompanied the test events ( Experiment 2 ). Thus, 2-year-olds gather useful combinatorial information about a novel verb simply from hearing it in sentences, and later retrieve that information to guide interpretation of the verb.