Cognitive Biases in Playing the Lottery: Estimating the Odds and Choosing the Numbers

Three experiments were conducted to examine the operation of the representativeness and anchoring and adjustment heuristics in lottery play. Subjects in Experiments 1 and 2 indicated their chances of winning a lottery with an objective probability of 1 in 10. Consistent with the anchoring and adjustment heuristic, subjects (in both experiments) perceived their chances of winning to be greater when the lottery was based on a single event than when it was based on a disjunctive event. Subjects in these two experiments also selected numbers to play in a pick-3 (Experiment 1) or pick-4 (Experiment 2) lottery. Consistent with the representativeness heuristic, subjects in Experiment 2 demonstrated a preference for numbers without repeating digits. This also occurred in Experiment 3 wherein the numbers actually played in the Indiana daily Pick-3 lottery were examined.     

Hillel's maxim: Framework for psychological health

Mental health practitioners continually struggle to find a simple framework for describing the characteristics of the psychologically healthy individual. Hillel's often quoted saying provides relevant insight into the healthy personality and a convenient framework against which to examine psychological health.     

The representation and integration in memory of spatial and nonspatial information

A series of experiments investigated whether people could integrate nonspatial information about an object with their knowledge of the object's location in space. In Experiments 1 and 3, subjects learned the locations of cities on a fictitious road map; in Experiments 2, 4, and 5, subjects were already familiar with the locations of buildings on a campus. The subjects then learned facts about the cities on the maps or the buildings on the campus. The question of interest was whether or not these nonspatial facts would be integrated in memory with the spatial knowledge. After learning the facts, subjects were given a location-judgment test in which they had to decide whether an object was in one region of the space or another. Knowledge integration was assessed by comparing levels of performance in two conditions: (a) when a city or a building name was primed by a fact about a neighboring city or building, and (b) when a city or a building name was primed by a fact about a distant city or building. Results showed that responses in Condition a were faster or more accurate, or both faster and more accurate, than responses in Condition b. These results indicate that the spatial and nonspatial information were encoded in a common memory representation.     

Contributions of subjective-tone to tone-phoneme identification

We measured subjective-tone identification thresholds evoked by acoustically filtered complex tones and compared them to Mandarin-Chinese tone-phoneme identification thresholds previously measured under the same filtering conditions. Tone phonemes were identified at intensities below subjective-tone identification thresholds, suggesting subjective tone is not necessary for tone-phoneme identification. Lower subjective-tone thresholds evoked by resolved harmonics rather than unresolved harmonics were consistent with pattern recognition theories of pitch perception.The authors thank Donald Gans and Richard Klich for all their help.     

Electroencephalogram asymmetry during emotionally evocative films and its relation to positive and negative affectivity

The purpose of the present study was to determine if there were differences in hemispheric lateralization during the experience of emotions and if those differences were related to personality style. College-age adult subjects selected for high positive and negative affectivity on Tellegen's Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ; Tellegen, 1982) viewed video stimuli selected for their emotionally evocative nature and rated the intensity of the emotions they experienced. The ongoing electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded while they watched the video clips. Analyses of the EEG data revealed that there were differences in regional activation during the emotional video clips, especially for those stimuli selected to elicit either happy or disgust emotions. These results support the hypothesis that the right hemisphere is specialized for the experience of certain negative affects, whereas the left hemisphere is specialized for the experience of certain positive affects. The findings also indicated some support for the theory that individual differences in personality style are related to differing levels of hemispheric arousal.     

Computer-Assisted Careers Guidance Systems and Organisational Change

This article describes a study conducted to identify the range of potential influences that a computer-assisted careers guidance system (PROSPECT (HE)) had on the functioning of organisations (careers services in higher education). Data from six institutions indicated that use of PROSPECT (HE) was associated with important and varied change within the organisations. It appears that when a careers service seeks opportunities for change, CACG systems can be an important catalyst for change in two respects: by providing a focal point for achieving previously established goals; or, as a consequence of system use, by making staff aware of the potential for new organisational goals.     

A typology of personal and environmental sexual harassment: Research and policy implications for the 1990s

Most of the research conducted on sexual harassment over the last decade and a half has used categories that are neither mutually exclusive nor exhaustive. This has created problems for researchers: it is difficult to compare results from one study to another, harassment types that have scholarly and legal-policy relevance are omitted, and the ability of researchers to inform legal and policy decisions is diminished as a result of these problems. A comprehensive categorization of harassment types that addresses these methodological problems is presented. Specifically, 11 specific types of harassment—4 types of Verbal Requests, 3 Verbal Remarks, and 4 Nonverbal Displays—are presented with examples from research and legal literatures. Recommendations for reconceptualizing research definitions of harassment as well as for diversifying the methodological approaches to the topic are made.