The affect heuristic in judgments of risks and benefits

This paper re‐examines the commonly observed inverse relationship between perceived risk and perceived benefit. We propose that this relationship occurs because people rely on affect when judging the risk and benefit of specific hazards. Evidence supporting this proposal is obtained in two experimental studies. Study 1 investigated the inverse relationship between risk and benefit judgments under a time‐pressure condition designed to limit the use of analytic thought and enhance the reliance on affect. As expected, the inverse relationship was strengthened when time pressure was introduced. Study 2 tested and confirmed the hypothesis that providing information designed to alter the favorability of one's overall affective evaluation of an item (say nuclear power) would systematically change the risk and benefit judgments for that item. Both studies suggest that people seem prone to using an ‘affect heuristic’ which improves judgmental efficiency by deriving both risk and benefit evaluations from a common source—affective reactions to the stimulus item. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Comparison of treatment seeking compulsive buyers in Germany and the United States

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this pilot study was to compare a German (Bavaria) and an American (North Dakota) sample of women suffering from compulsive buying. METHOD: Thirty-eight German and 39 American female compulsive buyers were screened with the Compulsive Buying Scale (CBS), and the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale-Shopping Version (Y-BOCS-SV) prior to entering a group treatment study. Psychiatric co-morbidity was assessed with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I disorders (SCID). RESULTS: There were no statistically significant differences between the German sample and the American sample with regard to age (mean 43.7 and 45 years, respectively), and with regard to the scores on the CBS and the Y-BOCS-SV. A high lifetime co-morbidity rate with Axis I disorders, especially mood disorders, anxiety disorders, substance use disorders, OCD, and binge eating disorder was detected in both samples. Almost all participants met criteria for at least one lifetime Axis I disorder. However, German compulsive buyers showed significantly higher current prevalence rates of any affective disorder, and higher current and lifetime prevalence rates of any anxiety disorder and somatoform disorder. In addition, German compulsive buyers were significantly more likely to have more than one Axis I disorder. CONCLUSION: The groups did not differ with regard to age and with regard to the severity of compulsive buying and showed a high co-morbidity with Axis I disorders. However, the German compulsive buying sample presented with significantly more psychiatric co-morbidity compared to the American sample. Further research is needed to provide a better understanding of this disorder in general and cross-culturally.     

Examinations of identity invariance in facial expression adaptation

Faces provide a wealth of information essential to social interaction, including both static features, such as identity, and dynamic features, such as emotional state. Classic models of face perception propose separate neural-processing routes for identity and facial expression (Bruce & Young, 1986), but more recent models suggest that these routes are not independent of each other (Calder & Young, 2005). Using a perceptual adaptation paradigm in the present study, we attempted to further examine the nature of the relation between the neural representations of identity and emotional expression. In Experiment 1, adaptation to the basic emotions of anger, surprise, disgust, and fear resulted in significantly biased perception away from the adapting expression. A significantly decreased aftereffect was observed when the adapting and the test faces differed in identity. With a statistical model that separated surface texture and reflectance from underlying expression geometry, Experiment 2 showed a similar decrease in adaptation when the face stimuli had identical underlying prototypical geometry but differed in the static surface features supporting identity. These results provide evidence that expression adaptation depends on perceptual features important for identity processing and thus suggest at least partly overlapping neural processing of identity and facial expression.     

Awareness of Genetic Counseling and Perceptions of its Purpose: A Survey of the Canadian Public

Genetic counseling can result in better outcomes when clients understand what to expect, and at least theoretically, at some point in their lifespan, anyone could be referred for or benefit from genetic counseling. Thus, in order to identify (and ultimately address) issues around awareness of genetic counseling and perceptions of its purpose, we surveyed the Canadian general population. We acquired 1,000 telephone numbers corresponding to a demographically representative sample of Canada from Survey Sampling International, and invited individuals to participate in a telephone-based survey. We administered a purpose-designed survey (in either French or English) comprising questions regarding: demographics, whether or not the individual had heard of genetic counseling, and 15 Likert scale-rated (strongly disagree—strongly agree) items about the possible purposes of genetic counseling. Responses to these 15 items were used to generate a total “knowledge score”. Of the 1,000 numbers, n?=?372 could not be reached, and the survey was successfully administered to n?=?188 individuals (response rate 30 %). Most respondents (n?=?129, 69 %) had not heard of genetic counseling, and substantial proportions thought that genetic counseling aims to prevent genetic diseases and abnormalities, help couples have children with desirable characteristics, and help people to understand their ancestry. These data could be used to inform the strategy for development of future awareness efforts, and as a baseline from which to measure their effects.     

Gender Segregation in Childhood: A Test of the Interaction Style Theory

The authors investigated the play/interaction-style theory of gender segregation with a sample of 39 children aged 2 to 5 years (primarily Caucasian). According to this theory, children prefer playmates with styles of play or interaction that are similar to their own. Because such styles are sex differentiated, same-sex playmate preference (i.e., gender segregation) results. The authors observed children during free play to determine preferred playmates and gender segregation level, and they used teacher ratings to derive play/interaction-style scores. The authors used a multiple regression approach to path analysis to analyze effects of sex of participant, participants' play/interaction-style scores, playmates' play/interaction-style scores, and degree of gender segregation to determine their effects on one another. The authors observed significant levels of gender segregation, with highly aggressive or active children displaying less segregation than their peers did. However, gender segregation was not associated with a preference for playmates with similar play or interaction styles.     

Tactile discrimination of shape by octopus

Experiments are described showing that Octopus can be trained to distinguish by touch between a cube and a sphere, a surprising result since previous work has always indicated that octopuses cannot take proprioceptive information into account in learning. It can be shown, however, that the cube/sphere discrimination is made by detecting the distortion imposed on the rims of individual suckers in contact with the corners of the cube. Thus it is shown (1) that a cube with the corners even slightly rounded is less readily distinguishable from a sphere than a cube with sharp corners and, more important, (2) that a narrow rod is readily accepted in place of the cube by trained animals. Indeed, the rod seems to be a “better” cube than the original, and errors of discrimination decrease when it replaces the cube, presumably because it lacks flat surfaces liable to be confused with the surface of the sphere by a system depending on information from sense organs arranged in circles on the rims of the suckers.     

Improving the Social-Behavioral Adjustment of Adolescents: The Effectiveness of a Social Skills Group Intervention

We evaluated the efficacy of a social skills training intervention designed to improve adolescents’ social, emotional and behavioral adjustment, Social Skills Group Intervention-Adolescent (S.S.GRIN-A). Seventy-four adolescents (ages 13–16 years) and their parents were randomly assigned to either the treatment group (N = 40) or a wait-list control group (N = 34). Adolescents in the treatment and control groups were compared on global self-concept, social self-efficacy, internalizing problems, and externalizing problems pre- and post-intervention. Youth in the treatment group demonstrated enhanced global self-concept, increased social self-efficacy, and decreased internalizing problems as compared to youth in the control group. No differences in externalizing behavior were found. We discuss the effectiveness of S.S.GRIN-A as a general program designed for addressing a range of adjustment issues and social skill deficits in adolescents.     

Personality traits prospectively predict verbal fluency in a lifespan sample

In a community-dwelling sample (N = 4,790; age range 14-94), we examined whether personality traits prospectively predicted performance on a verbal fluency task. Open, extraverted, and emotionally stable participants had better verbal fluency. At the facet level, dispositionally happy and self-disciplined participants retrieved more words; those prone to anxiety and depression and those who were deliberative retrieved fewer words. Education moderated the association between conscientiousness and fluency such that participants with lower education performed better on the fluency task if they were also conscientious. Age was not a moderator at the domain level, indicating that the personality-fluency associations were consistent across the life span. A disposition toward emotional vulnerability and being less open, less happy, and undisciplined may be detrimental to cognitive performance.     

Associative change in the representations acquired during conditional discriminations: further analysis of the nature of conditional learning

Three experiments with rats investigated how the associative strengths of the representations that underlie conditional learning change when they are conditioned in compound. The results of each experiment suggest that the representation whose associative strength is most discrepant from the asymptote supported by the outcome of the trial undergoes the greatest change in associative strength. These results parallel those from simple Pavlovian conditioning (e.g., R. A. Rescorla, 2000). are inconsistent with unique-cue and configural accounts of conditional learning, and support a connectionist analysis of learning in which a "winner-takes-all" rule applies to the hidden units that can be activated and acquire associative strength at a given point in time.