Alternative Models of Price Behavior in Dyadic Negotiations: Market Prices, Reservation Prices, and Negotiator Aspirations

Three competing predictors of price are manipulated in a two-party distributive negotiation. These include prevailing market prices, negotiator reservation prices, and negotiator aspirations. We offer a cognitive interpretation of how each type of information is incorporated into the negotiator′s thought processes as an alternative cognitive reference point. In two studies varying the levels of these three factors, only reservation prices, not prevailing market prices or negotiator aspirations, account for significant variance in negotiated outcomes. Discussion is offered, suggesting that the negotiator as decision maker may experience a "dominant reference point" effect. When multiple pieces of relevant information are available, the negotiator may only be able to focus on one of them. Among the three predictors studied, the reservation price may be cognitively interpreted as the most absolute limit.     

Meeting the Evil God Challenge

The evil God challenge is an argumentative strategy that has been pursued by a number of philosophers in recent years. It is apt to be understood as a parody argument: a wholly evil, omnipotent and omniscient God is absurd, as both theists and atheists will agree. But according to the challenge, belief in evil God is about as reasonable as belief in a wholly good, omnipotent and omniscient God; the two hypotheses are roughly epistemically symmetrical. Given this symmetry, thesis belief in an evil God and belief in a good God are taken to be similarly preposterous. In this paper, we argue that the challenge can be met, suggesting why the three symmetries that need to hold between evil God and good God – intrinsic, natural theology and theodicy symmetries – can all be broken. As such, we take it that the evil God challenge can be met.     

The psychology of voting action on the psychological origins of electoral research, 1939–1964

This article examines the development of psychologically oriented voting behavior research between 1939–1964. It intends to show the psychological basis of the Columbia and Michigan approaches and its implications for the analysis of electoral behavior. It is argued that, in spite of the large differences commonly perceived between these two approaches, there is much similarity between them, both with regard to their psychological roots as to their principal conclusions.     

Correction to: Numerals and neural reuse

Synthese - The original publication contained an incorrect copyright holder.     

Untersuchungen zur Lehre von der Gestalt

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Perspectival representation and fallacies in metaethics

Abstract

The prevailing theoretical framework for theorising about representation construes all representation as involving objective representational contents. This classic framework has tended to drive philosophers either to claim that evaluative judgements are representations and therefore objective, or else to claim that evaluative judgements are not really representations, because they are not objective. However, a more general, already well-explored framework is available, which will allow theorists to treat evaluative judgements as full-fledged representations (thus doing justice to their representational aspects) while leaving open whether they are objective. Such a more general conception of representational content is exemplified, e.g. by Lewis’s ‘centred contents’ and Gibbard’s framework of ‘contents of judgement’, thus it is not new. I shall start in §1 by introducing the more general framework of perspectival contents and then illustrate in §2 how awareness of it can help expose the fallaciousness of certain widely used forms of argumentation in metaethics.     

The Assessment of Individual Personality by Projective Tests: Current Problems

The Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI) has been recently developed as an alternative to the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and shares some of its psychometric advantages and disadvantages with the MMPI-168, a short form of the MMPI. The current study compared the structure and utility of the MCMI and MMPI-168 for a general hospital inpatient psychiatric population. Overall, the two instruments were highly correlated and found to have conceptually similar factor structures. Empirical comparison of the factor structures indicated that construct validity is greatest for neurotic traits. Both instruments demonstrated a similar utility in predicting discharge diagnosis.