《孙子兵法》与管理心理学

管理心理学是现代管理理论的一个重要组成部分。而它的一些基本原理,早在2000多年前已经产生,在《孙子兵法》中,已蕴含了丰富的管理心理学原理,如对于士兵个体的需要、动机与行为,士兵的情感与行为,军事群体的心理变化趋势,群体的凝聚力与士气,指挥者的心理与行为等,都有精辟论述。这是《孙子兵法》在国内外被广泛应用于现代管理的重要原因之一。我们应认真提炼、总结《孙子兵法》中的管理心理学精华,将其运用于现代管理。     

Ghrelin level negatively predicts quality of life in obese women

A cross-sectional cohort study was conducted to investigate whether ghrelin level in obese women predicts the quality of life (QOL). A total of 307 subjects fulfilled the criteria: (1) age between 20 and 65 years old, (2) body mass index ≥27 kg/m² (3) waist circumference ≥80 cm were enrolled in the study. All subjects were assigned to one of the plasma ghrelin level categories according to the quartiles. The median of age and BMI of the 307 obese women were 45 ± 18 years and 29.9 ± 4.1 kg/m², respectively. The main outcome evaluated is the associations of plasma ghrelin level and QOL, which were evaluated using multiple linear regression analysis. Results of linear trend test show significant statistical difference in plasma lipoproteins (triglyceride, cholesterol, HDL-cholestero and LDL-cholesterol = and levels of obesity-related hormone peptides, including leptin, adiponectin, insulin among quartiles of ghrelin. Multiple liner regression analysis of serum obesity-related hormone peptide level and QOL using stepwise method shows ghrelin concentration was the only predictor of QOL, including PCS-12 level (β = ?0.18, p = 0.001), MCS-12 level (β = ?0.14, p = 0.009), WHOQOL-BREF scores: physical (β = ?0.13, p = 0.03), psychological (β = ?0.16, p = 0.007), social (β = ?0.21, p?= < 0.001), and environmental (β = ?0.22, p?= <0.001), after adjusting other factors for obese female subjects. This study demonstrated that ghrelin concentration is strongly associated with QOL level among obese women. Hence, ghrelin concentration might be a valuable marker to be monitored in obese women.     

Metaphorical mapping between raw–cooked food and strangeness–familiarity in Chinese culture

Previous research has demonstrated metaphorical mappings between physical coldness–warmth and social distance–closeness. Since the concepts of interpersonal warmth are frequently expressed in terms of food-related words in Chinese, the present study sought to explore whether the concept of raw–cooked food could be unconsciously and automatically mapped onto strangeness–familiarity. After rating the nutritive value of raw or cooked foods, participants were presented with morphing movies in which their acquaintances gradually transformed into strangers or strangers gradually morphed into acquaintances, and were asked to stop the movies when the combined images became predominantly target faces. The results demonstrated that unconscious and automatic metaphorical mappings between raw–cooked food and strangeness–familiarity exist. This study provides a foundation for testing whether Chinese people can think about interpersonal familiarity using mental representations of raw–cooked food and supports cognitive metaphor theory from a crosslinguistic perspective.     

羞怯与敌对的关系:同伴侵害和偏执的复合中介效应

对648名在校大学生进行大学生羞怯量表、SCL-90、同伴侵害量表的施测,以考察偏执、同伴侵害在羞怯与敌对的关系中的作用。结果发现:(1)个体的羞怯程度可以显著正向预测敌对倾向;(2)偏执、同伴侵害在羞怯与敌对的关系中起多重中介作用;(3)羞怯也可以通过同伴侵害对偏执思维的影响预测敌对倾向。     

Increased social distance makes people more risk-neutral

Individuals are consistently observed to be risk-averse over gains and risk-seeking over losses. This study examined whether increased social distance would change these behavioral patterns. To test our hypothesis, social distance was manipulated by asking the participants to make decisions either for themselves or for another person (Experiment 1), either for a known person or for an unknown person (Experiment 2), and either for a close friend or for a distant friend (Experiment 3). The results of Experiments 1 and 3 showed that increased social distance made people more risk-neutral, and such an effect was stronger in the gain domain than in the loss domain. However, the effect of social distance was not observed in Experiment 2. These findings suggest that risk preferences are influenced by the social distance between decision makers and beneficiaries.     

(Re)evaluating the Implications of the Autoregressive Latent Trajectory Model Through Likelihood Ratio Tests of Its Initial Conditions

The autoregressive latent trajectory (ALT) model synthesizes the autoregressive model and the latent growth curve model. The ALT model is flexible enough to produce a variety of discrepant model-implied change trajectories. While some researchers consider this a virtue, others have cautioned that this may confound interpretations of the model's parameters. In this article, we show that some—but not all—of these interpretational difficulties may be clarified mathematically and tested explicitly via likelihood ratio tests (LRTs) imposed on the initial conditions of the model. We show analytically the nested relations among three variants of the ALT model and the constraints needed to establish equivalences. A Monte Carlo simulation study indicated that LRTs, particularly when used in combination with information criterion measures, can allow researchers to test targeted hypotheses about the functional forms of the change process under study. We further demonstrate when and how such tests may justifiably be used to facilitate our understanding of the underlying process of change using a subsample (N = 3,995) of longitudinal family income data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.     

Planning Beyond the Next Trial in Adaptive Experiments: A Dynamic Programming Approach

Experimentation is at the heart of scientific inquiry. In the behavioral and neural sciences, where only a limited number of observations can often be made, it is ideal to design an experiment that leads to the rapid accumulation of information about the phenomenon under study. Adaptive experimentation has the potential to accelerate scientific progress by maximizing inferential gain in such research settings. To date, most adaptive experiments have relied on myopic, one‐step‐ahead strategies in which the stimulus on each trial is selected to maximize inference on the next trial only. A lingering question in the field has been how much additional benefit would be gained by optimizing beyond the next trial. A range of technical challenges has prevented this important question from being addressed adequately. This study applies dynamic programming (DP), a technique applicable for such full‐horizon, “global” optimization, to model‐based perceptual threshold estimation, a domain that has been a major beneficiary of adaptive methods. The results provide insight into conditions that will benefit from optimizing beyond the next trial. Implications for the use of adaptive methods in cognitive science are discussed.     

Learning to suppress a distractor is not affected by working memory load

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Where and what we attend to is not only determined by our current goals but also by what we have encountered in the past. Recent studies have shown that people...     

Oceans of stimuli: an individual-based model to assess the role of olfactory cues and local enhancement in seabirds’ foraging behaviour

Animal Cognition - Oceans are extremely dynamic environments, which poses challenges for top-predators such as seabirds to find food resources. Yet, seabirds evolved sensorial abilities (olfactory...     

A mixture model for responses and response times with a higher-order ability structure to detect rapid guessing behaviour

Many educational and psychological assessments focus on multidimensional latent traits that often have a hierarchical structure to provide both overall-level information and fine-grained diagnostic information. A test will usually have either separate time limits for each subtest or an overall time limit for administrative convenience and test fairness. In order to complete the items within the allocated time, examinees frequently adopt different test-taking behaviours during the test, such as solution behaviour and rapid guessing behaviour. In this paper we propose a new mixture model for responses and response times with a hierarchical ability structure, which incorporates auxiliary information from other subtests and the correlation structure of the abilities to detect rapid guessing behaviour. A Markov chain Monte Carlo method is proposed for model estimation. Simulation studies reveal that all model parameters could be recovered well, and the parameter estimates had smaller absolute bias and mean squared error than the mixture unidimensional item response theory (UIRT) model. Moreover, the true positive rate of detecting rapid guessing behaviour is also higher than when using the mixture UIRT model separately for each subscale, whereas the false detection rate is much lower than the mixture UIRT model. The deviance information criterion and the logarithm of the pseudo-marginal likelihood are employed to evaluate the model fit. Finally, a real data analysis is presented to demonstrate the practical value of the proposed model.