Applying prospect theory to pilot weather-related decision-making: The impact of monetary and time considerations on risk taking behaviour

One of the key findings of prospect theory is that people tend to treat potential gains differently to potential losses. Consistent with earlier findings across a range of areas, pilots were risk averse when faced with an uncertain situation involving monetary gains and risk seeking when faced with a monetary loss. Prospect theory has largely been used to explore monetary decision-making; however, “time” is potentially a more important consideration for pilots than money. For example, how much time can be flown with the current fuel onboard. It was found that pilots' decision behaviour changed when faced with a decision involving time, with pilots risk averse for both a time gain and a time loss situation. Pilots appeared to prefer to know precisely the time required for a journey, rather than take a gamble on a potential short cut. Evidence also suggests pilots were more likely to take risks in situations that they perceive they have more control over (e.g. air traffic delays) compared to dynamic weather-related events. There was some evidence to suggest pilots do not consider a decision in terms of an end state, but rather in terms of losses and gains from their current state. The final part of the study found evidence that it may be possible to predict pilot risk taking behaviour using self-report decision frames.     

Correcting the Brain? The Convergence of Neuroscience,Neurotechnology, Psychiatry,and Artificial Intelligence

Science and Engineering Ethics - The incorporation of neural-based technologies into psychiatry offers novel means to use neural data in patient assessment and clinical diagnosis. However, an...     

The Participation and Motivations of Grant Peer Reviewers: A Comprehensive Survey

Science and Engineering Ethics - Scientific peer reviewers play an integral role in the grant selection process, yet very little has been reported on the levels of participation or the motivations...     

Social citizenship and social psychology

This paper outlines the concept of social citizenship, which was first theorized in the late 1940s alongside the creation of the UK welfare state and concerns citizens' rights to a basic income and standard of living. It suggests that social citizenship—particularly welfare provision—is a useful and important topic for social psychological research, albeit one that has been largely overlooked. We provide an overview of key developments in social citizenship and consider the impact of 30‐plus years of neoliberal governance in Western democracies, which has resulted in ongoing changes to how welfare rights and responsibilities are configured, such as policies that make social citizenship rights contingent on conduct. We outline social scientific work that examines these shifting ideas of citizenship, personhood, welfare, and conditionality and make the case for a critical discursive psychological approach, which we illustrate with a brief empirical example. We suggest that critical discursive social psychology is particularly well‐placed to examine how psychological assumptions are built into both policy and lay discourse and how these can legitimate interventions designed to work on the conduct of the unemployed, such as therapeutic and behavior change initiatives. Finally, we argue that psychology is faced with a choice; while there are opportunities for the discipline to contribute to the design and implementation of such initiatives, to do so requires accepting the basic values of the underpinning neoliberal agenda. Instead, it is vital to place these assumptions under the critical microscope and explore how they work to obscure structural disadvantage.     

A comparison of multiple reinforcer assessments to identify the function of maladaptive behavior

Functional analysis results indicated that maladaptive behaviors displayed by a 25-year-old man with profound mental retardation were maintained by attention from caregivers and possibly, to a lesser degree, by access to tangible items. A concurrent-schedules procedure was then used to study the relative reinforcing value for maladaptive behavior of attention versus tangible items. Results of the concurrent-schedules assessment and subsequent functional communication training indicated that preference for attention versus access to a tangible object varied.