A Comparative Analysis of the Influence of Economic Culture on East and West German Consumers' Subjective Product Meanings

Les consommateurs des économies planifiées ont développé des savoir-faire différents de ceux adoptés par les consommateurs des économies de marché. Alors que les premiers ont appris à localiser les produits, les seconds se sont exercès à comparer et à choisir entre les produits proposés. Dans le domaine alimentaire, l' ancienne Allemagne de l' Est offrait une série de produits quantitativement suffisants mais peu variés et de qualityé médiocre ou moyenne. Les produits étaient vendus dans tout le pays a des prix imposés. Désormais, la variété et la diversité des qualityés est la měme qu'à l' Ouest et l' on constate des variations de prix considérables. On a étudié les différences entre les consommateurs de l' Est et de l' Ouest en comparant des échantillons de consommateurs de Kiel et de Rostock. On a analysé leur perception des produits alimentaires (du fromage et des plats surgelés) et comment ils les rattachaient à des valeurs (à partir d' une approche moyens-fins ). Les dimensions perceptives de base, qui émanent des caractéristiques concrètes des produits, sont les měmes partout, quoique la perception soit plus précise à l' Ouest qu'à l' Est. L' analyse des valeurs fondamentales de l' existence chez les consommateurs allemands de l' Est et de l' Ouest (gřce au Schwartz Value Inventory ) a montré que ceux de l' Est se portaient sur les valeurs collectives et ceux de l' Ouest sur les valeurs individuelles. L' analyse du lien que les consommateurs établissent entre les caractéristiques concrètes des produits et les valeurs fondamentales de la vie montra qu'il y avait de légères     

Introduction to Facet Theory and its Applications

Although facet theory has roots in Guttman's writings as early as the 1950s (cf. Guttman, 1954), frequent applications of facet analysis did not begin to appear until around the 1970s. Guttman first applied his theoretical perspective to problems in the area of the structure of intelligence (e.g. Guttman, 1957; 1965). In the years that have followed since those early publications, empirical research using facet theory has flourished in countries on several continents and in a wide variety of content areas in the social and behavioural sciences. This introduction first briefly reviews the basic principles underlying facet theory. Then it introduces the six papers that follow in which facet theory is applied to research in psychology.     

Criminalising Unknowing Defence

Should a legal plea of self‐ or third‐party defence include an ‘awareness component’ that requires that the actor was aware of the justificatory facts at the time of action? Some theorists argue that in cases of so‐called unknowing defence, where an actor in fact averts an otherwise unavoidable danger to himself or another person although unaware at the time of action that this is what he is doing, the objective facts alone should allow a plea of self‐ or third‐party defence. Cases of unknowing defence raise issues that are highly significant to the nature of justification and liability. In this article I reject some common approaches to this issue and I offer an account of why acts of unknowing defence are appropriately subject to criminal liability for the complete offence (e.g. murder).     

Interestingness—A Neglected Variable in Discourse Processing

Symptomatic of a contemporary concern with affective factors in cognitive processing, a corpus of research is now emerging on the role of interestingness in discourse processing. This research has concentrated on narrative prose and has adopted a structural approach, arguing for the centrality of event and discourse structure in producing an affect like interest. The authors point out that this approach considers only one type of interest—knowledge-triggered—to the exclusion of another important type—value-triggered. A more comprehensive understanding of interest will only be achieved by researching other genres, such as exposition, and by considering the multiple sources of interest-producing conditions. We suggest the notion of “informational significance” as an inclusive term, and underline the need for a process-based understanding of interest.     

Accounting for Missing Correlation Coefficients in Fixed-Effects MASEM

Meta-analytic structural equation modeling (MASEM) is increasingly applied to advance theories by synthesizing existing findings. MASEM essentially consists of two stages. In Stage 1, a pooled correlation matrix is estimated based on the reported correlation coefficients in the individual studies. In Stage 2, a structural model (such as a path model) is fitted to explain the pooled correlations. Frequently, the individual studies do not provide all the correlation coefficients between the research variables. In this study, we modify the currently optimal MASEM-method to deal with missing correlation coefficients, and compare its performance with existing methods. This study is the first to evaluate the performance of fixed-effects MASEM methods under different levels of missing correlation coefficients. We found that the often used univariate methods performed very poorly, while the multivariate methods performed well overall.