Effects of group decision rules on decisions involving continuous alternatives: The unanimity rule and extreme decisions in mock civil juries

Two experiments examined the effects of majority and unanimity decision rules on group decisions involving continuous alternatives. Each experiment used mock civil juries to test three hypotheses related to the claim that when the distribution of group members’ initial preferences is skewed, the group’s decision will be influenced more by the presence of outlier members under unanimity rule than under majority rule. Experiment 1 tested the hypotheses using a punitive damages case and positively skewed preference distributions. Experiment 2 tested the hypotheses using a compensatory damages case and manipulating the skewness of preference distributions in a 2 (group decision rule) × 2 (valence of skewness) factorial design. In both experiments, the extreme (outlier) member’s individual preference was significantly correlated with the group decision only under unanimity rule. A simple thought experiment based on the experimental results is suggested regarding the implications of using unanimity or majority rule for making decisions in civil juries.     

Threat as a Motivator of Political Activism: A Field Experiment

The research reported here examined the effects of two potential motivators of political activism—policy change threat and policy change opportunity—in a field experiment. Different versions of a letter were sent by a political lobbying organization to potential contributors. One version highlighted threats of undesirable policy changes, another version highlighted opportunities for desirable policy changes, and the third version did neither. Policy change threat increased the number of financial contributions made to the interest group, but policy change opportunity did not. Policy change opportunity increased the number of signed postcards returned to be sent to President Clinton, but policy change threat did not. These findings highlight the impact of interest group recruitment strategies on citizen responsiveness and demonstrate the need to account for sources of motivation in order to more fully understand when, why, and how citizens choose to become politically active.     

Intelligence and school readiness in preschool children with prenatal drug exposure.

This prospective, longitudinal study examined factors affecting intelligence and school readiness in children 4-5 years of age with prenatal cocaine/opiate exposure. Intelligence and school readiness scores were not significantly different for the drug-exposed group (N = 104) than for unexposed, demographically matched controls (N = 35), although both groups scored slightly below average. Caregivers of drug-exposed children scored significantly lower in intelligence and reading achievement than caregivers of controls; both were below average. Caregiver reading scores accounted for the largest variance in both child intelligence and school readiness; for school readiness, birth weight also contributed but was less important in the model. Neither prenatal drug exposure nor continuing caregiver drug use was significant in the regression analyses. The relationship between child scores and caregiver reading achievement is consistent with studies showing the importance of a stimulating, supportive home environment, and suggests interventions to foster caregiver literacy skills and facilitate caregiver-child cognitive interactions such as reading to the child.     

The Effect of Transformational and Transactional Leadership Perceptions on Feedback-Seeking Intentions

This paper explores the relationship between leadership style as operationalized by trans-formational/transactional leadership (Bass, 1985) and feedback-seeking behavior. Participants ( n = 132) were presented with a vignette describing either a transformational or a transactional leader. Leadership style (transformational leader) was significantly related to higher feedback-seeking intentions. Further, controlling for manipulated leadership style, participants' perceptions of leader consideration behaviors resulted in higher feedback-seeking intentions. These findings suggest that not only does exposure to a certain leader affect feedback-seeking behavior, but also perceptions of certain characteristics of a leader's behavior are important. These findings explain one potential mechanism through which transformational leaders might affect the development of their subordinates and raises interesting implications for leadership coaching.     

Maintaining Hope in the Face of Evil

P. G. Zimbardo (2001) and M. E. P. Seligman (in an interview with S. Carpenter, 2001) discuss evil and hope in response to the September 11, 2001, disaster. The implications for counseling are presented with an emphasis on how counselors can maintain hope for themselves and their clients in the face of evil.     

Decision-Making About Inherited Cancer Risk: Exploring Dimensions of Genetic Responsibility

Since genetic information has implications for family members, some choices about genetic risk may be influenced by perceptions of responsibility to relatives. Drawing upon 25 semi-structured interviews with test recipients in Canada, this study explored decisions about inherited breast-ovarian and colon cancer. Qualitative data analysis revealed the pervasive significance of genetic responsibility in test decisions. We highlight three dimensions of genetic responsibility: 1) to know about the self for self; 2) to know about the self for others; 3) to know about the self to oblige others to know. It is argued that these dimensions of genetic responsibility have implications for test decisions, family relationships and other family members’ desire to know (or not know) and to act (or not act) with respect to their own genetic risk. In particular, genetic responsibility may play out as a framing of a relative’s moral obligation to know their risk that could obviate any interest they might have in not knowing. We conclude that perceptions of responsibility to—and of−other family members be thoroughly explored in genetic counseling sessions.     

Ethical theory, “common morality,” and professional obligations

We have two aims in this paper. The first is negative: to demonstrate the problems in Bernard Gert’s account of common morality, in particular as it applies to professional morality. The second is positive: to suggest a more satisfactory explanation of the moral basis of professional role morality, albeit one that is broadly consistent with Gert’s notion of common morality, but corrects and supplements Gert’s theory. The paper is in three sections. In the first, we sketch the main features of Gert’s account of common morality in general. In the second, we outline Gert’s explanation of the source of professional moral rules and demonstrate its inadequacy. In the third section, we provide an account of our own collectivist needs-based view of the source of the role-moral obligations of many professional roles, including those of health care professionals.

Do tests of executive functioning predict ability to downregulate emotions spontaneously and when instructed to suppress?

Behavioral regulation is a hallmark feature of executive functioning (EF). The present study investigated whether commonly used neuropsychological test measures of EF (i.e., working memory, Stroop, trail making, and verbal fluency) were related to ability to downregulate emotion both spontaneously and when instructed to suppress emotional expressions. To ensure a wide range of EF, 24 frontotemporal lobar degeneration patients, 7 Alzheimer's patients, and 17 neurologically normal controls participated. Participants were exposed to an acoustic startle stimulus (single aversive noise burst) under three conditions: (1) unwarned, (2) warned with no instructions (to measure spontaneous emotion downregulation), and (3) warned with instructions to suppress (to measure instructed emotion downregulation). Results indicated that higher verbal fluency scores were related to greater emotion regulation (operationalized as reduction in body movement and emotional facial behavior when warned of the impending startle) in both regulation conditions. No relationships were found between emotion regulation in these conditions and the other EF measures. We conclude that, of four commonly used measures of EF, verbal fluency best indexes the complex processes of monitoring, evaluation, and control necessary for successful emotion regulation, both spontaneously and following instructions to suppress.