Financial prospect relativity: context effects in financial decision‐making under risk

We report three studies in which methodologies from psychophysics are adapted to investigate context effects on individual financial decision‐making under risk. The aim was to determine how the range and the rank of the options offered as saving amounts and levels of investment risk influence people's decisions about these variables. In the range manipulation, participants were presented with either a full range of choice options or a limited subset, while in the rank manipulation they were presented with a skewed set of feasible options. The results showed that choices are affected by the position of each option in the range and the rank of presented options, which suggests that judgments and choices are relative. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An investigation of persuasion and sentencing severity with mock juries

The extent to which the personal characteristics of individual mock jurors affect participation and influence with other jurors within the deliberation process was the focus of this investigation. A predeliberation locus of control measure, along with two conditions of jury composition (heterogenous vs homogenous with respect to the locus of control measure) were used to investigate interactions among sentencing severity, persuasiveness in deliberation, and demographic characteristics among 96 jurors. Results indicated that group sentences were significantly more severe than predeliberation sentences and that postdeliberation shifts were significantly more pronounced for the heterogenous juries than for the homogeneous juries.     

Abstracts

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Absolute and Relative Biases in Estimations of Personal Risk1

Two studies examined the accuracy of personal risk estimates, as determined by comparing mean estimates made by college students with population statistics for college-educated individuals. Study 1 suggested that optimistic biases (the tendency for people to think they are less at risk than the average person) arise more because people overestimating the average person's risk than because they underestimate their own risk. In Study 2, subjects rated their risk after being presented with risk statistics that were 150%, 100%, or 50% of the true values. Subjects' estimates decreased with decreases in the comparison statistics, as if subjects attempted to preserve their “below-average” status, but they changed less than did the statistics and were actually pessimistic in comparison to the 50% values. Implications for interventions designed to influence risk perceptions are discussed.     

Book reviews

Islam: a challenge for Christianity (Concilium 1994/3). Hans Kung & Jurgen Moltmann (Eds), 1994. London, Concilium; Maryknoll, SCM Press; London, Orbis Books. 163 pp., pb. £8.95, ISBN 0–334–030269.

Cultures in Conflict: Christians, Muslims and Jews in the age of discovery. Bernard Lewis, 1995. New York, Oxford University Press. 101 pp., hb., $16.95, ISBN 0–19–509026–8.

Beyond Faith and Infidelity: the Sufi poetry and teachings of Mahmud Shabistari. L. Lewisohn, 1995. Richmond, Surrey, Curzon Press. 344 pp. pb. £14.99, 0–7007–0343–8.

The Prophet's Pulpit: Islamic preaching in contemporary Egypt. [Comparative Studies on Muslim Societies, 20]. Patrick Gaffney, 1994. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press. 367 pp., hb. £40.00, ISBN 0–520–08471–3, pb. £15.95, ISBN 0–520–08472–1.

Sufi and Scholar on the Desert Edge: Muhammad b. CA1i al‐Sanūsi and his Brotherhood. K. S. Vikor, 1995. London, Hurst & Co. 310 pp. hb. £37.50, ISBN 1 85065 218 X.

Children of Islam. Marie Parker‐Jenkins, 1995. Stoke‐on‐Trent, Trentham Books Ltd. 162 pp., £12.95, ISBN 1–85856 034 9.     

A follow-up study of cognitive bias in generalized anxiety disorder

Patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) without concurrent depression (n = 11) and normal controls (n = 17) were tested twice, about 2 months apart, on a modified Stroop colour-naming task, which presented anxiety-related, depression-related and neutral words in masked and unmasked exposure conditions. GAD patients received cognitive behaviour therapy in the test-retest interval, and were also retested at follow-up, about 20 months after initial testing. GAD patients showed interference in colour-naming negative words across both masked and unmasked conditions before treatment, but not post-treatment, compared with controls. Reduced interference effects of masked threat words over time correlated with reduced ratings of anxious thoughts at post-treatment, and at follow-up, in GAD patients. Thus, the preconscious bias for threat information in GAD appears to vary over time in association with changes in anxious thoughts and worries.     

Criminal sentence recommendations in a simulated rape trial: Examining juror prejudice in Canada

This experiment examined the moderating influence of judicial instructions on prejudicial sentencing recornmendations in a simulated videotaped rape trial. Subjects were 243 Canadian university students who were randomly assigned to one of eight conditions and asked to assume the role of juror. In the rape trial, the race of the defendant and victim were varied (either White or Black) and in half of the conditions the judge's instructions to the jury were excluded. Results indicated a 2 (defendant race) × 2 (victim race) × 2 (judicial instructions) interaction with interracial rape generating longer sentence recommendations in the presence of judicial instructions and intra-racial rape eliciting longer sentence allotment in the absence of judicial instructions. Results are contrasted with reports on juror decision-making in the U.S.