Can Reasons and Values Influence Action: How Might Intentional Agency Work Physiologically?

In this paper, we demonstrate (1) how harnessing stochasticity can be the basis of creative agency; (2) that such harnessing can resolve the apparent conflict between reductionist (micro-level) accounts of behaviour and behaviour as the outcome of rational and value-driven (macro-level) decisions; (3) how neurophysiological processes can instantiate such behaviour; (4) The processes involved depend on three features of living organisms: (a) they are necessarily open systems; (b) micro-level systems therefore nest within higher-level systems; (c) causal interactions must occur across all the boundaries between the levels of organization. The higher levels constrain the dynamics of lower levels. The experimental evidence and theoretical arguments are shown to be consistent with previous research on the neuronal mechanisms of conscious choice, and with the interconnected multi-level processes by which organisms harness stochasticity, whether conscious or unconscious.

     

The Development of a Short Form of an Irrational/Rational Beliefs Scale

Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy - This study developed a short form of the Attitudes and Beliefs Scale-2 (ABS-2), a measure of Ellis’s irrational and rational...     

The Right to Belong: Individual Motives and Youth Gang Initiation Rites

The current study uses a mixed-methods approach to describe the nature and context of the initiations undergone by 54 participants among a sample of 73 incarcerated gang members. The study describes and compares types of initiation and how they vary based on individual characteristics of the individuals being initiated. Three general types of initiation are found: (1) the ego violent event, (2) the crime commission, and (3) the expressive violence toward others. An ego violent initiation was more frequent among younger prospective members and those who were coerced into joining. Individuals who were looking for respect were more likely to be required to perpetrate an act of violence toward someone in order to get in. No individual characteristics were associated with crime commission type. The policy implications of such findings are discussed in conclusion.     

Professional Decision-Making in Research (PDR): The Validity of a New Measure

In this paper, we report on the development and validity of the Professional Decision-Making in Research (PDR) measure, a vignette-based test that examines decision-making strategies used by investigators when confronted with challenging situations in the context of empirical research. The PDR was administered online with a battery of validity measures to a group of NIH-funded researchers and research trainees who were diverse in terms of age, years of experience, types of research, and race. The PDR demonstrated adequate reliability (alpha = .84) and parallel form correlation (r = .70). As hypothesized, the PDR was significantly negatively correlated with narcissism, cynicism, moral disengagement, and compliance disengagement; it was not correlated with socially desirable responding. In regression analysis, the strongest predictors of higher PDR scores were low compliance disengagement, speaking English as a native language, conducting clinical research with human subjects, and low levels of narcissism. Given that the PDR was written at an eighth grade reading level to be suitable for use with English as a second language participants and that only one-fourth of items focused on clinical research, further research into the possible roles of culture and research ethics training across specialties is warranted. This initial validity study demonstrates the potential usefulness of the PDR as an educational outcome assessment measure and a research instrument for studies on professionalism and integrity in research.     

A violation of dominance and the consumption value of gambling

We document an apparently widespread violation of dominance in the horse‐racing betting market in the UK, and use the systematic variation in the incidence of this violation to estimate the consumption value of gambling. Betting‐shop gamblers in the UK face a tax on gambling of 10%, but have the choice of paying the tax either at the time of wager or on any return on a successful bet. It can be shown, however, that the latter act is strictly dominated by another action in which tax is paid on the wager. Despite this, more than 18% of bets appear to be placed by gamblers who choose to pay tax on the return. We explore the hypothesis that this apparent violation of rationality may be explained by a component of utility which represents the consumption value of gambling, which in turn varies with the amount wagered. We then estimate this component from a dataset consisting of a record of 25,000 individual bets using probit analysis of the tax decision. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evaluating the influence of time of day on activity engagement in persons with dementia

Dementia is a serious disease affecting a growing number of people. With the onset of dementia comes a decline in social activity engagement that can negatively impact multiple aspects of a person's life. Research suggests that time of day may influence a person with dementia's behavior, including activity engagement, but such research is limited. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the influence of time of day on engagement in activities in persons diagnosed with dementia. An alternating treatments design was used with three participants to measure activity engagement during two times of day, morning and afternoon, and during two activities, a moderately preferred and a low preferred. Results showed no differentiation in engagement between morning and afternoon activities for all three participants, with high levels of engagement during both times of day. For two participants, results showed no differentiation in engagement between moderately preferred and low preferred activities. For one participant, levels of engagement were higher during moderately preferred activities than during low preferred activities.     

Cell phones and grades: examining mediation by perceived control and anxiety

Social Psychology of Education - Considerable evidence shows that cell phone use (CPU) is detrimental to students’ academic achievement. However, researchers have yet to consider whether or...     

基于脑结构像的精神分裂症机器学习分类

将机器学习应用于精神疾患的临床和基础研究是近年来的趋势。研究者将机器学习应用于精神分裂症患者及高危人群的T1加权像和弥散张量成像的脑影像数据中, 为了解疾病的生理病理学机制提供帮助。回顾以往研究发现额叶及颞叶的脑结构特征具有较高的区分能力, 行为数据和脑影像数据结合的分类效果优于单模态数据。现阶段研究存在样本量不足和泛化能力欠缺的局限, 未来研究应注意扩大样本量、制定标准化的分类方法, 从而进一步探究机器学习在精神疾患中的作用。     

Social discounting of pain

Impatience can be formalized as a delay discount rate, describing how the subjective value of reward decreases as it is delayed. By analogy, selfishness can be formalized as a social discount rate, representing how the subjective value of rewarding another person decreases with increasing social distance. Delay and social discount rates for reward are correlated across individuals. However no previous work has examined whether this relationship also holds for aversive outcomes. Neither has previous work described a functional form for social discounting of pain in humans. This is a pertinent question, since preferences over aversive outcomes formally diverge from those for reward. We addressed this issue in an experiment in which healthy adult participants (N = 67) chose the timing and intensity of hypothetical pain for themselves and others. In keeping with previous studies, participants showed a strong preference for immediate over delayed pain. Participants showed greater concern for pain in close others than for their own pain, though this hyperaltruism was steeply discounted with increasing social distance. Impatience for pain and social discounting of pain were weakly correlated across individuals. Our results extend a link between impatience and selfishness to the aversive domain.