DECISION AFFECT THEORY:

Abstract— How do people feel about the outcomes of risky options? Results from two experiments demonstrate that the emotional reaction to a monetary outcome is nor a simple function of the utility of that outcome Emotional responses also depend on probabilities and unobtained outcomes Unexpected outcomes have greater emotional impact than expected outcomes Furthermore any given outcome is lets pleasant if an unobtained outcome is better We propose an account of emotional experiences associated with outcomes of decisions called decision affect theory. It incorporates utilities expectations and counterfactual companions into hedonic responses. Finally, we show that choices between risky options can be described as the maximization of expected emotional experiences as predicted by decision affect theory That is people choose the risky option for which they expect to feel better on average.     

A metric for integrating theoretically related but statistically uncorrelated constructs

When considering psychological constructs in a pairwise fashion, a 2 x 2 category system, based on median splits, is often adopted for analytic convenience. If theoretical focus is on an individual's integration of the two constructs, then categorical procedures are subject to information loss and unreliability in high density regions of the data. A continuous metric is proposed which ameliorates these problems and is suitable for correlational analyses. The construct of psychological androgyny is used for illustrative purposes.     

Family therapists and families of cult members

One to three million bright young adults have been or are presently involved with “deviant religions,” also known as cults. They, or their families, frequently seek therapeutic aid during or after the involvement, but too few psychologists or other therapists in private practice are adequately prepared to help them. To remedy the situation, information is presented on cults in general, cult members, and families of cult members.     

Discriminative stimulus location as a determinant of positive and negative behavioral contrast in the pigeon

Four pigeons were exposed to a series of two-component multiple schedules of reinforcement that ordinarily yield positive and negative behavioral contrast. The stimuli that signalled the component schedules were sometimes located on the response key and sometimes off. Positive behavioral contrast was observed only when the stimuli were on the key. Negative contrast was observed independent of stimulus location. These data suggest that positive and negative contrast may be causally unrelated, and support an account of contrast in terms of the summation of key pecks that are separately controlled by response-reinforcer and stimulus-reinforcer dependencies.     

Scanning processes and sentence recognition

This report summarizes an experiment designed to study the disruptive effects on immediate recall of interfering with the ability to scan ahead. Sentences were printed on paper tape which was pulled through a window, the size of which could be controlled. There were two exposure widths, three rates of tape movement, and three types of material which varied in length: equational and transitive sentences as well as random strings of words. Errors increase as the exposure width is decreased, and the magnitude of the disruptive effect is most marked for the longer sentences and the faster rate of presentation. A possible explanation is advanced emphasizing the likelihood that Ss store information in a sensory register and scan that register in order to segment sentences into phrases, phrases into words, and words into smaller functional units. As one limits exposure width, one interferes with the transfer of information into the sensory register and with the processing of information after it is stored in the register.