Termination of information evaluation in auditing

A screening decision is about whether a candidate fails to meet a decision maker's criteria and must be rejected, or whether it meets the criteria and can be accepted. Image theory contends that screening decisions are based on a simple, noncompensatory process that focuses solely upon the candidate's negative attributes. This contention has received empirical support in a job screening context in which students role-played a hypothetical person seeking a job. But how robust is image theory's prediction? The present work was done in the context of professional auditors screening prospective clients. The client screening context is a particularly interesting setting to test the implications of image theory. If auditors reject clients with negative attributes, as predicted by image theory, this will indicate that some clients are being denied access to a socially useful service. Further, auditors can accept prospective clients with negative attributes and simply adjust the audit plan and fees to compensate for the client's riskiness. Thus, it is not clear that the preliminary findings obtained in a job screening context will generalize to the audit context. On the other hand, results consistent with the image theory prediction would suggest a robust theory. Even in the client screening context, where auditors used their own criteria to screen prospective clients, we found overwhelming support for image theory's view of screening. The results indicate the potential payoffs of image theory as a robust framework to address audit and other substantive problems. Implications of a noncompensatory, negative oriented, client screening strategy are discussed.     

Interpersonal Deception

Interpersonal deception theory (IDT) frames deception as a communication activity and examines deception within interactive contexts. One key element of the theory is the role of suspicion in prompting behavior changes. An experiment testing several suspicion-related hypotheses paired participants (half friends, half strangers) for interviews during which interviewees (EEs) lied or told the truth and interviewers (ERs) were induced to be (moderately or highly) suspicious (or not). Results confirmed that suspicion and deceit were perceived when present, suspicion was manifested through nonverbal behaviors but with different behavioral patterns for moderately versus highly suspicious ERs, and suspicion affected sender behavior. Relational familiarity moderated some behaviors. Results are discussed in terms of mutual influence processes and the dynamic nature of communication in interpersonal deception.     

Defensive reactions of “wild-type” and “Domesticated” wild rats to approach and contact by a threat stimulus

Selective breeding of wild rats over many generations on the basis of low or high defensive threat and attack to human approach and contact has produced highly polarized “domesticated” and “wild-type” animals. Because the selection procedure selectively involves these two defense patterns, and these clearly differ in the two groups, it is of interest to determine if other, nonselected, defensive behaviors to threat stimuli also change. “Domesticated” and “wild-type” rats of the thirty-fifth generation were run in a fear defense test battery (F/DTB) to systematically evaluate defensive behaviors to a variety of present threat stimuli. “Domesticated” rats showed reduced avoidance and slower flight speed to an approaching experimenter, reduced jump/startle response to handelap and dorsal contact, less vocalization and boxing to vibrissae stimulation or to an anesthetized conspecific, and reduced defensiveness to an attempted pickup by the experimenter. These results indicate that selective bi-directional breeding for defensive threat and attack to human approach and contact produces group differences in a variety of defensive behaviors, and in defensiveness to stimuli other than those on which the selection was based. © 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Hungry people prefer larger bodies and objects: The importance of testing boundary effects

Several lab-based studies have indicated that when people are hungry, they judge larger women's bodies as more attractive, compared to when they are satiated. These satiety-dependent judgements are assumed to provide explanatory power when it comes to the noted cross-cultural differences in attitudes towards women's adiposity, whereby people who live in regions that are under greater nutritional stress tend to have more favourable attitudes towards bigger bodies. However, it is premature to assume that women's bodies are the proper or actual domain of the satiety-dependent judgement shifts found within research study testing contexts until stimuli other than female bodies have also been tested: The research programme falls into the trap of confirmation bias unless we also seek out disconfirmatory evidence and test the boundaries of the effects of hunger. Accordingly, we collected attractiveness judgements of female and male bodies manipulated to vary in size by varying level of adiposity, and objects manipulated to vary in size, from 186 participants who also reported their current hunger level. We found that larger sizes of stimuli in general, and women's bodies in particular, especially when judged by women, were judged as more attractive by the hungrier participants. We discuss these patterns in the context of the Insurance Hypothesis, the Environmental Security Hypothesis, and the impact of hunger on acquisition.     

Assessment to identify learner-specific prompt and prompt-fading procedures for children with autism spectrum disorder

Few studies have evaluated the use of assessment to identify the most efficient instructional practices for individuals with autism spectrum disorder. This is problematic as these individuals often have difficulty acquiring skills, and the procedures that may be efficient with one individual may not be for others. The experimenters conducted instructional assessments to identify the most efficient prompt type (model, partial physical, full physical) and prompt-fading procedure (progressive delay, most-to-least, least-to-most) for teaching auditory–visual conditional discriminations for individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Each assessment was conducted at least twice, and a final generality test combined the most and the least efficient prompt type and prompt-fading procedure for teaching novel auditory–visual conditional discriminations. The results demonstrated learner-specific outcomes for the prompt type assessment, whereas the least-to-most prompt fading procedure was most efficient for all participants.     

Evaluating preference for and reinforcing efficacy of fruits and vegetables compared with salty and sweet foods

Children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder are often more selective in their food preferences than their typically developing peers. Additionally, many preferred food selections have minimal nutritional value. We evaluated the preference for, and reinforcing efficacy of, fruits and vegetables compared with salty and sweet foods, which are often used as edible reinforcers. Multiple-stimulus preference assessments were conducted to identify preferred foods, and reinforcer assessments were conducted to determine the reinforcing efficacy of more preferred foods. Fruits and vegetables were sometimes preferred over salty or sweet foods and often functioned as reinforcers. Future research should incorporate fruits and vegetables into preference assessments when identifying putative reinforcers.     

Cumulative consequences of stigma: Possessing multiple concealable stigmatized identities is associated with worse quality of life

Large health disparities exist between stigmatized and nonstigmatized groups. In addition to experiencing and anticipating greater discrimination, members of stigmatized groups also tend to demonstrate greater ruminative tendencies in response, which may lead to these poor health outcomes. Even among stigmatized groups, differences in the visibility of stigma lead to different mechanisms through which stigma takes its toll. Previous work has primarily focused on the impact of belonging to a single marginalized group; however, people often belong to multiple marginalized groups, and this likely affects both their health outcomes and their anticipation of stigma. In the current study, we focused on individuals with concealable stigmatized identities (CSIs)—socially stigmatized identities that are not immediately apparent to others—and created a measure of concealable marginalization that captures multiple group memberships. We predicted that those possessing a greater number of CSIs would anticipate more stigma from others, and, in turn, ruminate more about the stigma, which would negatively impact the health. Surveying N = 288 adults with CSIs, we found that possessing a greater number of marginalized concealable identities predicted worse self-reported physical quality of life. These relationships were partially mediated by greater anticipated stigma and brooding rumination in regard to their CSI. This work illuminates a more complete picture of how living with CSIs can take its toll on health.