Diminishing Solidarity

Cases of acts of solidarity can be divided into at least two groups. Solidarity in a narrow sense of the term refers to what I label project-related solidarity; it is prevalent in the modern world at least as much as it was found in past worlds. In contrast, the philosophical discussions of "solidarity" refer to the altruism and mutuality typically found in close human relationships. This concept of "solidarity" is theoretically unfruitful and even misleading. I propose to abandon the term "solidarity" in order to regain sight of the individual phenomena. When these are taken into consideration, a return to the community is no longer called for. I rather argue that modern societies are perfectly capable of inspiring feelings of loyalty and civic virtues, though not by resorting to the old sources of "solidarity". Modern forms such as free associations, participation and, not least, the existence of a liberal society itself are sufficient. Public discussions of solidarity are additionally distorted by frequent appeals to a normative sense of the term. The argument put forward in this collectivist context that an obligation of solidarity results from gratefulness to the community is not found to be convincing. Individuals are not obliged to be grateful to a nation in a way that would be normatively binding.     

Personality inference from voice quality: The loud voice of extroversion

Investigated the process of personality inference from voice quality using 24 male American stimulus persons who served as subjects in simulated jury discussions. Applying a Brunswikian lens model of the inference process, criteria, distal cues, proximal cues and attributions were measured by independent groups of judges: personality criteria by three peers of each stimulus person and, on the basis of content-masked voice samples, distal voice quality indicator cues by six phoneticians, proximal voice percept by ten naive judges, personality attributions by nine naive judges. Only extroversion attributions correlate significantly with the criterion, replicating earlier findings. For the inference of extroversion, contrary to other traits which apparently cannot be inferred accurately from voice quality, the following conditions are met: (a) the criterion is associated with ecologically valid voice energy cues (vocal effort and dynamic range), (b) these indicator cues are adequately represented as proximal voice percepts (particularly loudness and sharpness), and(c) percept utilization in the judges' inferential strategy corresponds to the association between criterion and distal indicator cues. Path-analytic procedures are used to test empirically the adequacy of the inference model to (a) account for the variance in the attributions, and (b) explain significant correlations between criteria and attributions in terms of mediating variables.     

Atkinson's “risk preference” model

Several revisions of Atkinson's risk preference model have been proposed in the last 10 years. The advantage of such revisions, shifting the maximum of the approach tendency to the difficult range in predicting choice behavior, is discussed. After summarizing the results of a series of studies on choice behavior in achievement-related situations, the conclusion is drawn that such a revision is unnecessary. Choice behavior is in agreement with the prediction of the original model when expectancies are assessed in the proper way. There may be other good reasons to revise Atkinson's original model. However, the tendency to choose difficulty levels with objective success probabilities less than .50 is not a reason.     

Sind empirische Theorien falsifizierbar?

Die Frage: sind empirische Theorien falsifizierbar? ist natürlich trivialerweise zu verneinen, falls man Theorien nicht als Mengen von Aussagen, sonden z. B., wie Sneed/Stegmüller, als mengentheoretische Strukturen plus intendierte Anwendungsbereiche auffaßt. Daß die Antwort, zumindest dann, wenn man die Fragestellung auf bestimmte physikalische Theorien einschränkt, auch bei Zugrundelegung der sogenannten Aussagen-Konzeption (statement view) nicht anders lautet, ist hingegen schon weniger trivial — obgleich seit langem bekannt, spätestens nämlich seit Duhems berühmter Argumentation gegen die Möglichkeit eines experimentum crucis. Andererseits beruht eine der derzeit einflußreichsten methodologischen Theorien, die von Popper, gerade auf der gegenteiligen Behauptung. Erst jüngst noch hat Popper seine Falsifizierbarkeits-Annahme, vor allem gegen Kritiken von Lakatos und Putnam, zu verteidigen versucht; die gleiche Intention verfolgen auch zwei Aufsätze von Musgrave. Es erscheint mir daher angebracht, kurz auf das Problem der Falsifizierbarkeit von empirischen Theorien zurückzukommen. Vorweg noch zwei Bemerkungen zur Terminologie: 1) Ich verwende, ohne mich auf den Versuch einer genaueren Explikation einzulassen, den Begriff ?(physikalische) Theorie“ in dem für den statement view geläufigen Sinne, wonach eine (deterministische) Theorie aus einer Menge von allgemeinen (deterministischen Natur-)Gesetzen besteht. Es sei ausdrücklich darauf hingewiesen, daß dies wenigstens partiell dem sonst üblichen Sprachgebrauch zuwider läuft: die ?Theorie des Planetensystems“ und die ?Mondtheorie“, beispielsweise, sind keine Theorien im genannten Sinne, weil sie außer auf allgemeinen Naturgesetzen noch auf spezifischen nicht-gesetzesartigen Annahmen beruhen. Andrerseits dürfte diese Deutung des Begriffs ?Theorie“ zumindest mit derjenigen von Popper übereinstimmen. — 2) Daß eine Aussage bzw. Aussagenmenge T falsifizierbar ist, soll, wie bei Popper, bedeuten, daß Basissätze (wahre oder falsche) existieren, die zusammen mit T eine inkonsistente Satzmenge bilden; m.a.W.: falsifizierbar ist T ?in the simple logical sense of being logically incompatible with some basic statements. It has ‘potential falsifiers’“. Basissätze sind dabei, grob gesagt, als Darstellungen von Beobachtungs-Befunden aufzufassen; Genaueres interessiert hier nur insoweit, als es sich umraum-zeitlich singuläre (Existenz-) Sätze handeln muß. Entsprechend soll schließlich T als falsifiziert gelten, wenn es wahre bzw. anerkannte oder akzeptierte Basissätze gibt, die T widersprechen. (Poppers Forderung, daß diese Basissätze ein reproduzierbares Phänomen beschreiben, also eine — allgemeine — ?falsifizierende Hypothese“ bewähren müssen, kann im vorliegenden Zusammenhang außer Betracht bleiben).     

Tonic and phasic orientation in full-term and preterm infants

Thirty-three full-term infants and thirty-eight preterm infants (on average born at 30 weeks gestation) were tested for their latency to turn toward checkered stimulus patterns (phasic orienting or "attention-getting") and for the duration of their initial fixation (tonic orienting or "attention-holding"). Plotted against the logarithm of the subjects' postconceptional age, turning latency fell linearly between 36 and 120 weeks, while fixation time fell abruptly at 53 weeks. Preterm and full-term infants showed the same developmental trends, implying that both of these attentional behaviors are biologically timetabled and that neither is greatly affected by premature extrauterine experience. Unexpectedly, phasic orientation in the first 30 postnatal days was significantly faster in preterm than in full-term infants, and fixation times failed to differ. Despite the necessary functional integration of phasic and tonic orienting in mature visual scanning and attention, the present results suggest an independence in their early postnatal development and that neither is mature at birth.     

Vocal cues in emotion encoding and decoding

This research examines the correspondence between theoretical predictions on vocal expression patterns in naturally occurring emotions (as based on the component process theory of emotion; Scherer, 1986) and empirical data on the acoustic characteristics of actors' portrayals. Two male and two female professional radio actors portrayed anger, sadness, joy, fear, and disgust based on realistic scenarios of emotion-eliciting events. A series of judgment studies was conducted to assess the degree to which judges are able to recognize the intended emotion expressions. Disgust was relatively poorly recognized; average recognition accuracy for the other emotions attained 62.8% across studies. A set of portrayals reaching a satisfactory level of recognition accuracy underwent digital acoustic analysis. The results for the acoustic parameters extracted from the speech signal show a number of significant differences between emotions, generally confirming the theoretical predictions.This research was supported by a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Sche 156/8-5). The authors acknowledge collaboration of Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Cologne, in producing professional versions of actor emotion portrayals, and thank Kurt Balser, Theodor Gehm, Christoph Gierschner, Judy Hall, Ursula Hess, Alice Isen, and one anonymous reviewer for helpful comments and contributions.     

On the origin of illusory correlations

Empirical attempts to explain the genesis of illusory correlations have been largely confined to the demonstration of biased recall processes, although it has been acknowledged that perception and encoding processes may also contribute to the illusion. In the present research, illusory correlations between person types (a student versus a clerk) and educational attitudes (liberal versus authoritarian statements) are demonstrated under conditions where selective recall processes are highly unlikely. The cognitive bias that gives rise to the illusion is shown to already be effective when the stimulus information is perceived. Interestingly, there are marked interindividual differences between experimental participants. The results are discussed in the context of the literature on illusory correlations.     

The changing practices of an infant psychiatry program: The McGill experience

The present paper describes the development of a university-based infant psychiatry program. The paper initially highlights the organizational structure of the program that involves some 20 professionals, then reports on 57 infants who presented with disruptive behavior disorders and ends by describing an innovative treatment program for fathers and an attempt to help teenage mothers in caring for their infants. © 1997 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health     

Behavioral routines in decision making: the effects of novelty in task presentation and time pressure on routine maintenance and deviation

This article examines the role of behavioral routines in decision making. In order to induce routines, participants were confronted with recurrent route decisions in a computer-controlled trucking game, which allows for manipulation of routine acquisition and strength. During the final round of the game, time pressure and novelty in task presentation were varied as between-factors. It was hypothesized that time pressure would increase the likelihood of routine maintenance and novelty would increase the likelihood of deviation. Besides individual choices, response latencies and self-reports were additionally assessed to measure the amount of deliberation during decision making. Results show that time pressure strongly increased the probability of routine maintenance, even though the situation indicated the inadequacy of the routine. In contrast, novelty in task presentation provoked routine deviation and increased deliberation, as evident from response latencies and self-reports. Copyright © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.