Stated reasons for reducing work-commute by car

A survey is reported that requested work-commuters by car to state reasons that would make them reduce car use for the work commute. All participants (n = 1218) were employed by companies located in the center of a medium-size Swedish city (pop. 82,000). Among 76% of the car users (n = 602) who stated any reasons, the most frequent were improved public transport and work from home some days. Shorter travel times, an increased frequency of service and lower fares were the most frequent reasons for increasing public transport use.     

Constructivist coding: learning from selective feedback

Although much learning in real-life environments relies on highly selective feedback about outcomes, virtually all cognitive models of learning, judgment, and categorization assume complete and representative feedback. We investigated empirically the effect of selective feedback on decision making and how people code experience with selective feedback. The results showed that, in contrast to a commonly raised concern, performance was not impaired following learning with selective and biased feedback. Furthermore, even in a simple decision task, the experience that people acquired was not a mere recording of the observed outcomes, but rather a reconstruction from general task knowledge.     

Escalation of commitment with transparent future outcomes

A frequent case of irrational decision making is the tendency to escalate commitment to a chosen course of action after unsuccessful prior investments of money, effort, or time (sunk costs). In previous research it is argued that escalation does not occur when future outcomes and alternative investments are transparent. Inconsistent with this argument, in an experiment in which undergraduates were presented fictitious investment problems with sunk costs, escalation was demonstrated when full information was given about investment alternatives and estimates of future returns. Thus, it is indicated that people may escalate despite knowing that it will not make them economically better off. A more comprehensive understanding of escalation requires disentangling people's noneconomic reasons for escalation.     

Emotional Well-Being Related to Time Pressure,Impediment to Goal Progress,and Stress-Related Symptoms

We propose that emotional well-being in everyday life is partially related to the balance of positive and negative affect associated with everyday routine activities. Factors that interfere with positive affect associated with such activities would therefore have negative impacts on emotional well-being. Supporting that time pressure is one such factor, we find in Study 1 for a representative sample of Swedish employees (n = 1507) answering a survey questionnaire that emotional well-being has a negative relationship to time pressure. In Study 2 we test the hypothesis that the negative effect of time pressure on emotional well-being is jointly mediated by impediment to goal progress and time stress. In another survey questionnaire a sample of Swedish employees (n = 240) answered retrospective questions about emotional well-being at work and off work, experienced impediment to goal progress, experienced time pressure, and stress-related symptoms. Statistical mediation analyses supported the proposed hypothesis.