The Effects of Decision Outcome Dispersion Upon Organizational Decision Making

The effects of varying decision outcome dispersion on organizational decision making were investigated under individual and group decision making conditions. Thirty-six female and pg]36 male subjects made decisions for organizational decision scenarios in which outcomes affected primarily the decision maker, people other than the decision maker, or a group of which the decision maker was a member. Subjects rated their levels of perceived risk and confidence in their decisions and made decisions within a simulated context of either a small or a large organization. Results indicated that subjects perceived significantly less risk and more confidence in their decisions when outcomes affected primarily themselves rather than others regardless of whether the decisions were made individually or by a group. Males perceived their decisions as significantly more risky than females. Induced organizational size did not significantly influence decision making.

     

Premenstrual symptoms: the role of irrational thinking.

104 women, between the ages of 18 and 45 years, were surveyed to investigate the relationship between premenstrual symptomatology, as measured by the Modified Menstrual Distress Questionnaire, and irrational thinking, as measured by the General Attitude and Belief Scale. The women who reported greater premenstrual symptomatology also reported significantly higher scores in the "need for comfort" irrationality subscale. This indicated that these women had particular difficulty dealing with hassles and the resulting feelings of tension and irritability in the premenstruum. It was suggested that the absence of significant effects for other rationality-irrationality subscales could be associated with testing at different times during the menstrual cycle. Irrationality, like other conditions (such as anxiety and depression) prevalent in the premenstruum, could change in intensity across phases of the menstrual cycle.     

Using three different types of assessment data for diagnostic purposes.

This study investigated the performance of 38 learning disabled and 16 emotionally impaired children and youth on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children--Revised, Wide Range Achievement Test--Revised, and Minnesota Percepto-Diagnostic Test--Revised. The ages of the children ranged from 8.4 to 16.7 years (M = 12.4, SD = 3.6). The findings suggest that discriminate functional analysis may be useful in the differential diagnosis process. Implications for clinicians are discussed.     

Psychological compensation: a theoretical framework.

The 2 main objectives of this article are to review a variety of literatures in which the concept of compensation is used and to integrate the results of this review into a general framework of compensation. The review focuses on 4 domains of psychological inquiry: compensation for sensory handicaps, cognitive deficits, interpersonal losses, and brain injury. In the proposed framework, underlying dimensions and 4 basic steps in the progression of compensatory behavior are distinguished. The latter include origins, mechanisms, forms, and consequences. Finally, we describe ways in which researchers in particular domains can benefit from the global, process-oriented framework we propose. For most of the areas of compensation research reviewed, investigators can profit from a consideration of a broader selection of dimensions, additional steps in the process, alternative outcomes, and both objective and subjective assessment procedures.     

Dumb August. Freud's "dream interpretation" as a critique of traditional common sense]

Freud's profound scepticism about philosophy and its fondness for philosophical "systems" is well-known. From an early stage, the author of the "Interpretation of Dreams" was convinced that philosophy--like animism--was nothing other than a narcissistic attempt to explain the world systematically from one single point. That point is the ego, synthesising everything manifold, alien and threatening into an intelligible mould and subjecting it to the intellectual censorship of the cogito. Gekle shows that Freud's "Interpretation of Dreams" undercuts and decentralizes the imperialist claims of the ego, thus opening up vistas on the areas where the ego is not sole and undisputed master. At the same time, however, it becomes apparent that the decentralizing work of dream interpretation is itself confronted by a paradox. The insights gained in the process cannot be presented in any other than a theoretical, systematic and hence ego-oriented form.     

Regular and irregular inflection in the acquisition of German noun plurals.

In this paper we study the acquisition of German noun plurals in relation to the question of how children represent regular and irregular inflection. Pinker and Prince (1992) have demonstrated several dissociations between regular and irregular inflection in the English past tense system. However, in English, the default status of -ed is confounded with its high frequency; therefore inflectional systems other than English past tense formation must be examined. The noun plural system in German is particularly interesting, because most nouns have irregular plurals in German and the regular (default) plural is less frequent than several of the irregular plurals. Thus it is unclear how a language learner determines whether German even has a regular plural, and if so what form it takes. Based on longitudinal data from impaired and unimpaired monolingual German-speaking children, we find a striking, statistically significant correlation: plural affixes that are used in overregularizations, namely -n or -s, are left out within compounds. This correlation shows that even impaired children are sensitive to the distinction between regular and irregular morphology. We propose a linguistic analysis of the correlation in terms of Kiparsky's (1982, 1985) level-ordering model plus an additional ordering condition on affixes: default (regular) affixes cannot serve as input to compounding processes.     

Predictors of short-term treatment outcome in bulimia nervosa inpatients.

Recent studies, mostly performed on bulimic outpatients, did not find consistent predictors of treatment outcome in bulimia nervosa. This is the first study to investigate anamnestic and clinical factors predictive of the short-term outcome of hospital treatment in 31 female bulimia nervosa patients with a mean age of 22.9 yr. Treatment outcome was assessed by several self-rating instruments measuring different features of the specific and unspecific psychopathology of bulimia nervosa. The most relevant predictors of the outcome of the 8-week hospital treatment were duration of previous inpatient treatments for bulimia, the intensity of anorexic tendency and the pretreatment level of depression. The majority of predictors tested did not show a strong relationship to treatment outcome. The findings are discussed in relation to results of other studies as well as to possible implications for treatment and research.     

Psychological factors in abortion. A review.

Psychological research is increasingly involved in debates regarding abortion. While recognizing the diversity of ethical and moral issues intertwined with abortion, the American Psychological Association (APA) has focused its involvement on psychological factors, most recently by appointing an expert panel to review the literature on psychological effects. This article notes the history of APA involvement and reports on the panel's conclusions. It presents evidence that abortion is not likely to be followed by severe psychological responses and that psychological aspects can best be understood within a framework of normal stress and coping rather than a model of psychopathology. Correlates of more negative responses following abortion are also discussed.