Overestimating the Importance of the Given Information in Multiattribute Consumer Judgment

Consumer judgment often is based on incomplete or limited knowledge of the relevant attributes. We performed 3 experiments to investigate why these judgments are often insensitive to set size and why evaluations based on limited information tend to be stronger (more extreme and confident) than is warranted. The findings indicate that the importance of the given or known attributes is often overestimated, leading to evaluations that are overly extreme. The experiments also revealed important factors moderating this insensitivity to limited information. The overweighing of the given evidence was attenuated when participants were knowledgeable of the target domain. Overweighing and the formation of extreme judgments based on limited information was also diminished when participants considered their judgmental criteria prior to evaluating a target or when a comparison target described by different attributes was present.     

When Small Means Comfortable: Relations Between Product Attributes in Two‐Sided Advertising

The processes that mediate the effectiveness of 2‐sided advertising were studied. We predicted that (a) 2‐sided (vs. 1‐sided) advertisements increase perceived source credibility and that (b) the logical relation between the negative and positive product attributes mentioned in the 2‐sided ad (e.g., little space, implying a cozy atmosphere) facilitates favorable inferences about the positive attributes, especially when recipients have sufficient time to process the message content. Results supported these predictions. However, the effects of message type and processing time on attitudes were mediated by inferences about positive attributes but not by perceived source credibility. Implications of these findings for consumer judgment and decision making are discussed.     

The Reliability and Validity of Big Five Inventory Scores With African American College Students

The reliability and validity of scores on the Big Five Inventory (BFI; O. P. John, E. M. Donahue, & R. L. Kentle, 1991) were examined in a sample of 336 African American college students. Results indicated moderate reliability and structural validity for BFI scores. Additionally, BFI subscales had few meaningful correlations with self‐esteem and social desirability. La fiabilidad y la validez de los resultados del Inventario “Big Five” (BFI; O. P. John, E. M. Donahue, y R. L. Kentle, 1991) se examinan en una muestra de 336 estudiantes universitarios afro‐americanos. Los resultados indican una fiabilidad moderada y una validez estructural para los resultados del BFI. Adicionalmente, las subescalas del BFI tuvieron pocas correlaciones importantes con el auto‐estima y el deseo social.     

Taking consciousness seriously: A defense of Cartesian dualism

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

Criminal attitudes to violence: Development and preliminary validation of a scale for male prisoners

Two studies report on the development and preliminary psychometric properties of a new scale measuring criminal attitudes to violence. In Study 1, the responses of a mixed sample of male prisoners were used to select 20 scale items from a larger pool. The final scale (the Criminal Attitudes to Violence Scale; CAVS) was designed so that it had a single‐factor structure and was uncorrelated with a measure of social desirability bias. It demonstrated high internal reliability, and a strong relationship to a self‐report measure of physical aggression. Significant differences were found in CAVS mean scores for various offence history comparisons, such as whether or not the offender was currently on sentence for a violent conviction. In the second study, most results from the first study were replicated with an independent sample of male prisoners. Further, compared to another scale measuring attitudes to aggression [the EXPAGG Instrumental subscale; Archer and Haigh, 1997b], the CAVS was a better predictor of general attitudes to crime. Mean CAVS scores were again significantly higher for current violent offenders than those on sentence for other types of offences. Lastly, the CAVS was moderately predictive of estimated risk of reconviction and re‐imprisonment. Overall these results suggest that this scale measures the construct of attitudes to criminal violence, which partially overlaps two other constructs: attitudes to aggression and attitudes to crime. Aggr. Behav. 30:484–503, 2004. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Emergence, Probability, and Reductionism

Abstract. Philosopher‐theologian Bernard J. F. Lonergan defines emergence as the process in which “otherwise coincidental manifolds of lower conjugate acts invite the higher integration effected by higher conjugate forms” (Insight, [1957] 1992, 477). The meaning and implications of Lonergan's concept of emergence are considered in the context of the problem of reductionism in the natural sciences. Examples are taken primarily from physics, chemistry, and biology.     

Kevin Corcoran (ed.), Soul,Body and Survival

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

Who uses services for homeless people? An investigation amongst people sleeping rough in London

From a sample of 389 homeless people in London, the characteristics of those who used services for homeless people are presented and the implications for service planning and delivery explored. Staff providing services for this client group need knowledge about drug use and the confidence to work effectively with homeless drug users. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Consideration Set Overvaluation: When Impossibly Favorable Ratings of a Set of Brands Are Observed

Consumers often focus on the characteristics of one brand and consider insufficiently the characteristics of other brands. Singular evaluation processes often result in judgments of a focal brand that are more extreme than warranted. This research investigates the extent to which this extremity effect generalizes to a consideration set consisting of multiple brands. Three experiments show that a set of favorably regarded brands is perceived as more favorable than would be possible if the salience manipulation had no effect. In Experiment 1, participants overestimated the likelihood that the best brand in the market was included in the presented set. In Experiment 2, the average rank assigned to the brands in the presented set was inflated. Extreme judgments were observed regardless of whether the focal set of brands was offered by a specialty store with a high‐quality reputation or by a general merchandise store with a low‐quality reputation. In Experiment 3, extreme intentions to buy now from the focal store were reduced when a comparative (vs. singular) judgment task was performed, but only when the need for cognitive closure was low as opposed to high. The results suggest that singular evaluation processes lead to consideration set overvaluation regardless of which particular favorably regarded brands happen to be included in the set.     

Children's and adults' recall of children's news stories in both print and audio‐visual presentation modalities

Research into adults' recall from different presentation modalities has demonstrated a recall advantage for print over television yet recent research indicates that children remember television news better than print news. An experiment was conducted by comparing children's and adults' recall of children's news stories presented in two different modalities, television and print, in order to establish whether children's recall advantage for television is dependent on their age or level of reading proficiency. A sample of 40 adults, 40 13‐year‐olds and 40 11‐year‐olds were presented with children's news stories, either in their original televised form or in a print version. All participants were aware they would be tested for recall. The results of the cued recall test indicated that children from both age groups learned more from the television news than from the print versions, regardless of age or reading proficiency and that adults remembered equal amounts from both presentation modalities. For the 11‐year‐olds the advantage of television was only found for information that had been accompanied by redundant pictures in the televised version, providing support for the dual‐coding hypothesis. For 13‐year‐olds the recall of television was not dependent on the addition of redundant visual information. Viewers and readers were found to invest the same amounts of mental effort, but reported levels of invested mental effort were found to be dependent on age and level of reading proficiency. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.