Bentham’s binary form of maximizing utilitarianism

Jeremy Bentham is often interpreted as defending a satisficing, rather than maximizing, version of utilitarianism, where an act is right as long as it produces more pleasure than pain. This lack of maximization is surprising given Bentham’s maximizing slogan ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’. Against the satisficing interpretation, I argue that Bentham consistently defends a maximizing version of utilitarianism, where an act’s consequences are compared to those of not performing the act. I show that following this version of utilitarianism requires that one realizes the greatest happiness for all affected individuals.     

Executive Function and Theory of Mind in Children with ADHD: a Systematic Review

In developmental research, the relationship between Executive Function (EF) and Theory of Mind (ToM) has been extensively assessed, and EF has been considered a condition for ToM. However, few researchers have studied the relationship between EF and ToM in clinical populations, especially that of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by symptoms of inattention and motor hyperactivity/impulsivity, in which EF is largely impaired. Using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) model, 201 English and Spanish articles evaluating EF and ToM in ADHD were chosen. Fifteen papers met the inclusion criteria and were selected for further analysis. The first study dates from 2001. Most of the studies’ designs are cross-sectional, include mostly male children, have a small sample size, and were conducted in European countries. Unlike tasks assessing EF, tasks assessing ToM were heterogeneous across studies. The EFs most correlated with ToM were inhibitory control, working memory, cognitive flexibility, and attention. Interest in studying the relationship between EF and ToM in ADHD is recent,but increasing based on new findings and tuning of ToM instruments. However, while an association between EF and ToM is indicated in ADHD, the degree of prediction and predictability of one over the other cannot yet be established because of the studies’ heterogeneity.     

Does Age Make a Difference? Age as Moderator in the Association Between Time Perspective and Happiness

A balanced time perspective can help retaining or improving happiness. Research shows shifts in time perspective while ageing. In order to reach a better understanding of the value of time perspective in different age groups, results are reported of a survey (n = 525), which examines the moderating role of age in the association between time perspective and happiness. Time perspective was measured by the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI) (Zimbardo and Boyd in J Personal Soc Psychol 77:1271–1288, 1999) and to measure happiness, the Subjective Happiness Scale of Lyubomirsky and Lepper (Soc Indic Res 46:137–155, 1999) was used. Regression analysis shows that time perspective is indeed associated with happiness and that, although the assumed shifts in time perspective over time were not found, age does act as a moderator of this association. With ageing, the negative association between a past-negative time perspective and happiness weakens. These results add to our understanding of the theoretical concept of time perspective and shed new light on the value of a balanced time perspective for someone’s wellbeing. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Economic Freedom,Income Inequality and Life Satisfaction in OECD Countries

Since Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century in 2014, scientific interest into the impact of income inequality on society has been on the rise. However, little is known about the mediating role of income inequality in the relationship between market institutions and subjective well-being. Using panel analysis on a sample of 21 OECD countries to test the effects of five different types of economic freedom on income inequality, we find that fiscal freedom, free trade and freedom from government regulation increase income inequality, whereas sound money decreases income inequality. Income inequality is found to have a negative effect on life satisfaction. Mediation tests show that income inequality mediates the influence of fiscal freedom, free trade and freedom from government regulation on life satisfaction.     

Development of the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale - Short Version (SCAS-S)

The literature provides several examples of anxiety symptoms questionnaires for children. However, these questionnaires generally contain many items, and might not be ideal for screening in large populations, or repeated testing in clinical settings. The Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale (SCAS) is an extensively used and evaluated 44-item questionnaire developed to assess anxiety symptoms in children, and provides a sound base for the development of an abbreviated anxiety symptoms questionnaire. Although methodological standards have been presented in how to develop abbreviated questionnaires, previous studies have often suffered from several limitations regarding validating procedures. Guided by these methodological standards, the current study aimed at developing an abbreviated version of the SCAS, while retaining the content, convergent, and divergent validity of the original scale. A school-based sample (n?=?750) was used to reduce the number of items, and an independent school-based sample (n?=?371) together with a clinical sample (n?=?93), were used to validate the abbreviated scale. The abbreviated version of the SCAS contained 19 items, it showed a clear factor structure as evaluated in the independent sample, and it performed as good as the original questionnaire regarding classification accuracy, convergent, and divergent validity. In our view, the abbreviated version is a very good alternative to the original scale especially for younger children, in initial screening, or in order to reduce response burden.     

Towards statistical multicriteria decision modelling: a first approach

Many real life situations result from decisions taken by a very large number of decision makers. Among them, we may cite road traffic congestion, crowding during shopping, equity market behaviour, distribution of holiday destinations, etc. Furthermore, these decisions often depend on the optimisation of several conflicting criteria. In this paper, we introduce a new multicriteria tool based on Markov chains to model and manage these macroscopic phenomena. Finally, the road traffic congestion problem will be considered to illustrate the applicability of our approach. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Considering reasons for a value influences behaviour that expresses related values: an extension of the value‐as‐truisms hypothesis

Previous research has demonstrated that value‐congruent behaviour is increased after people have considered reasons for or against the value (since values typically lack cognitive support). The present research importantly extends these previous findings. Specifically, based on the reasoning that values can be categorised into different motivational types, it was predicted that considering reasons (i.e. providing cognitive support) for or against a specific value should increase behaviour that expresses a related value. Two studies provided strong support for this central prediction. In Study 1, participants who were asked to consider reasons for or against the values of honesty and loyalty were especially likely to engage in helping behaviour. In Study 2, participants who considered reasons for the value of helpfulness were especially likely to behave in an egalitarian manner (compared to participants who did not consider reasons, and participants who were merely primed with helpfulness). The implications of these findings for when and why considering reasons for a value influences value‐expressive behaviour, as well as some practical implications, are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Olfaction and emotion: The case of autobiographical memory

This study investigated (1) the influence of verbal and conceptual processing on the retrieval and phenomenological evaluation of olfactory evoked memories, and (2) whether the experienced qualities of retrieved information are affected by olfactory exposure per se. Seventy-two older adults were randomized into one of three cue conditions (odor only, name only, or odor name) and asked to relate any autobiographical event for the given cue. The results indicated that semantic knowledge of an odor's name significantly affects the age distribution of memories such that the memory peak in childhood observed for odors only was attenuated. Also, experiential factors such as pleasantness and feelings of being brought back in time were lower when odors were presented with their respective names. Olfactory evoked memories were associated with a higher emotional arousal that could not be accounted for by the perceptual stimulation alone. Taken together, the overall pattern of findings suggests that retrieval of olfactory evoked information is sensitive to semantic and conceptual processing, and that odor-evoked representations are more emotional than memories triggered by verbal information.     

Why does the phonological similarity effect reverse with nonwords?

The detrimental phonological similarity effect (PSE), a robust finding in serial recall of words, sometimes reverses with nonwords. The current study tested the hypothesis that nonwords benefit from phonological similarity because they are harder to retrieve. In two experiments serial recall and serial reconstruction of visually presented words and nonwords were compared. Phonological similarity is known to have a positive effect on item memory and a negative effect on position accuracy in serial recall, and the demands on item retrieval were greatly reduced in the latter task. PSE occurred for words in both tasks and was reversed for nonwords in serial recall, but not in serial reconstruction—a new finding in the literature. The following conclusions can be made: (1) the detrimental PSE on order retrieval occurs irrespective of lexicality, in accordance with prominent short-term memory models; and (2), the positive PSE on item retrieval is crucially affected by lexicality, a finding less well explained by the existing models.     

Goodness of regularity in dot patterns: global symmetry, local symmetry, and their interactions

Goodness is a classic Gestalt notion defined as salience or perceptual strength of a given pattern. All operational models of goodness have assigned a central role to mirror symmetry but not much attention has been paid to the distinction between global and local mirror symmetry, and their possible interactions. We designed eight different types of dot patterns (all consisting of 80 dots), combining different numbers (0, 1, and 2) and relative orientations (parallel or orthogonal to each other) of local and global axes of symmetry (affecting 50% or 100% of the dots, respectively) at different absolute orientations (vertical and horizontal). Each of 640 trials consisted of a short presentation of a new dot pattern, which subjects had to classify as regular or random. We hypothesised that the overall goodness of patterns is not the simple sum of the amount of regularity present in them but depends on the cooperation and competition between symmetries. The results confirmed our hypothesis, showing that performance in this regularity-detection task did not increase in a linear way when some symmetries were added to other symmetries.