Predictors of verdict and punitive damages in high-stakes civil litigation

This research investigated demographic and attitudinal- psychological predictors of verdict and amount of punitive damages awarded in high-stakes civil litigation. Four hundred and forty-six surrogate jurors, selected to be representative of actual jurors, were exposed to realistic case presentations in insurance, tobacco, and pharmaceutical cases that were about to go to trial. Hierarchical regression revealed that perceptions of the existence of a litigation crisis predicted verdict in the tobacco and pharmaceutical cases after controlling for all other variables. Demographic variables predicted verdict and punitive damage awards only modestly and in different ways in the three cases. Need for cognition, strength of will and rationality, and a perception that there is a litigation crisis predicted the amount of punitive damages awarded in the tobacco case. Litigation crisis also predicted the amount of punitive damages awarded in the pharmaceutical case. Implications for jury selection are discussed.     

Bochenski on Property Identity and the Refutation of Universals

An argument against multiply instantiable universals is considered in neglected essays by Stanislaw Lesniewski and I.M. Bochenski. Bochenski further applies Lesniewski’s refutation of universals by maintaining that identity principles for individuals must be different than property identity principles. Lesniewski’s argument is formalized for purposes of exact criticism, and shown to involve both a hidden vicious circularity in the form of impredicative definitions and explicit self-defeating consequences. Syntactical restrictions on Leibnizian indiscernibility of identicals are recommended to forestall Lesniewski’s paradox.     

Propositions, Sets, and Worlds

If we agree with Michael Jubien that propositions do not exist, while accepting the existence of abstract sets in a realist mathematical ontology, then the combined effect of these ontological commitments has surprising implications for the metaphysics of modal logic, the ontology of logically possible worlds, and the controversy over modal realism versus actualism. Logically possible worlds as maximally consistent proposition sets exist if sets generally exist, but are equivalently expressed as maximally consistent conjunctions of the same propositions in corresponding sets. A conjunction of propositions, even if infinite in extent, is nevertheless itself a proposition. If sets and hence proposition sets exist but propositions do not exist, then whether or not modal realism is true depends on which of two apparently equivalent methods of identifying, representing, or characterizing logically possible worlds we choose to adopt. I consider a number of reactions to the problem, concluding that the best solution may be to reject the conventional model set theoretical concept of logically possible worlds as maximally consistent proposition sets, and distinguishing between the actual world alone as maximally consistent and interpreting all nonactual merely logically possible worlds as submaximal. I am grateful to the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS), Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), for supporting this among related research projects in philosophical logic and philosophy of mathematics during my Resident Research Fellowship in 2005-2006.     

Gender Differences in the Relationship of Anger and Depression in a Clinical Sample

This study examined the relationship of anger dimensions with depression in a clinical sample. Results suggest that the differences between women and men in nonclinical samples typically used in this research may not generalize completely to clinical samples. Further evidence is presented to support the contention that the relationship between anger and depression is important for both men and women.     

Continuous Dynamics in Real-Time Cognition

ABSTRACT— Real-time cognition is best described not as a sequence of logical operations performed on discrete symbols but as a continuously changing pattern of neuronal activity. The continuity in these dynamics indicates that, in between describable states of mind, mental activity does not lend itself to the linguistic labels relied on by much of psychology. We discuss eye-tracking and mouse-tracking evidence for this temporal continuity and provide geometric visualizations of mental activity, depicting it as a continuous trajectory through a state space (a multidimensional space in which locations correspond to mental states). When the state of the system travels toward a frequently visited region of that space, the destination may constitute recognition of a particular word or a particular object; but on the way there, the majority of the mental trajectory is in intermediate regions of that space, revealing graded mixtures of mental states.     

Manipulating noise frequencies alters hemispheric contributions to decision making

Participants listened to the Asian disease problem framed in terms of either gains or losses and chose between two plans to combat the disease. All participants heard the problem embedded in other sounds; for some it was the relatively lower-frequency information, and for others it was the relatively higher-frequency information. The classic framing effect appeared only for those participants for whom the problem was the relatively lower-frequency information (p<.05). These results suggest that mixing filtered speech signals and noise may be a way to assess the role of the left and right hemisphere in various aspects of decision making.     

Career Counseling in New Zealand

The author examines articles published in a special issue of the New Zealand Journal of Counselling that highlight career topics in New Zealand. Parallels are drawn between these topics and similar ones identified by M. Savickas (2003a) for advancing career counseling in the United States. The author argues that the similarity of career issues in both New Zealand and the United States indicates that these issues are universal concerns and need to be addressed for career counseling to develop as a profession.     

Psychological Essentialism of Human Categories

ABSTRACT— Psychological essentialism is an ordinary mode of category representation that has powerful social-psychological consequences. This article reviews those consequences, with a focus on the distinctive ways people perceive, evaluate, and interact with members of human categories they essentialize. Why and when people engage in this mode of thinking remain open questions. Variability in essentialism across cultures, categories, and contexts suggests that this mode of representing human categories is rooted in a naturalistic theory of category origins, combined with a need to explain differences that cross category boundaries.     

Inferring the popularity of an opinion from its familiarity: a repetitive voice can sound like a chorus

Despite the importance of doing so, people do not always correctly estimate the distribution of opinions within their group. One important mechanism underlying such misjudgments is people's tendency to infer that a familiar opinion is a prevalent one, even when its familiarity derives solely from the repeated expression of 1 group member. Six experiments demonstrate this effect and show that it holds even when perceivers are consciously aware that the opinions come from 1 speaker. The results also indicate that the effect is due to opinion accessibility rather than a conscious inference about the meaning of opinion repetition in a group. Implications for social consensus estimation and social influence are discussed.