The “false consensus effect”: An egocentric bias in social perception and attribution processes

Evidence from four studies demonstrates that social observers tend to perceive a “false consensus” with respect to the relative commonness of their own responses. A related bias was shown to exist in the observers' social inferences. Thus, raters estimated particular responses to be relatively common and relatively unrevealing concerning the actors' distinguishing personal dispositions when the responses in question were similar to the raters' own responses; responses differing from those of the rater, by contrast, were perceived to be relatively uncommon and revealing of the actor. These results were obtained both in questionnaire studies presenting subjects with hypothetical situations and choices and in authentic conflict situations. The implications of these findings for our understanding of social perception phenomena and for our analysis of the divergent perceptions of actors and observers are discussed. Finally, cognitive and perceptual mechanisms are proposed which might account for distortions in perceived consensus and for corresponding biases in social inference and attributional processes.     

A digital encoder for field recording of behavioral,temporal, and spatial information in directly computer-accessible form

Digitorg is an inexpensive, portable, field-operable event recorder for recording both behavioral and spatial information in real-time on audiotape. Its capacity is 256 codes. Behavioral information is recorded by pressing buttons on a keyboard and spatial information is recorded by touching a magnetic wand to a paper map overlying a matrix of switches. The audiotape recordings are played through a simple interface into a small computer, producing a permanent record of the time and identity of each event. The record is then available for analysis. Digitorg is discussed in relation to the general value of analyzing spatially differentiated behavior sequences.     

The perception of stop consonant voicing by Spanish-English bilinguals

The performance of Spanish-English bilinguals in two perception tasks, using a synthetic speech continuum varying in voice onset time, was compared with the performance of Spanish and English monolinguals. Voice onset time in speech production was also compared between these groups. Results in perception of bilinguals differed from that of both monolingual groups. Results of bilingual production in their two languages conformed with results obtained from each monolingual group. The perceptual results are interpreted in terms of differences in the use of available acoustic cues by bilingual and monolingual listeners of English and Spanish.     

A comparison of the predictive validity of typical and maximal personality measures

Most personality tests are based on concepts assessing typical performance, and tests of this sort have not been generally successful in predicting criterion behaviors with useful levels of efficiency. Ability tests, which call for maximal performance, have been much more successful as predictors of criterion outcomes. Following a model derived from ability tests, predictors requiring separate typical and maximal self-reports of emotional expressivity were compared to measures of typical and maximal emotional expression in the laboratory. For angry expression, self-reports of maximal expressivity tended to outpredict self-reports of typical expressivity for both typical and maximal laboratory measures of angry expression. Although similar trends were observed for elation, the advantage of maximal self-report measures over typical self-report measures was negligible. Results were discussed in terms of both experimental and clinical implications.     

Patterns of self-disclosure in homosexual and heterosexual college students

Two hypotheses concerning self-disclosure were investigated and confirmed in the present study, comparing homosexual and heterosexual college students. The first hypothesis was that self-disclosure, as measured by the Jourard Self-Disclosure Questionnaire, would be positively correlated with psychological femininity. The second hypothesis was that homosexual males and heterosexual females would exhibit similar patterns of high disclosure and femininity. No significant differences were found in total disclosure between homosexuals and heterosexuals, although homosexuals disclosed less to father, and more to friends than to parents. The conclusion was that psychological femininity and masculinity are more important than biological sex in determining self-disclosure.     

Visual timing in hitting an accelerating ball

To investigate the timing of actions relative to events in the environment, we observed subjects leaping to punch a falling ball. We analysed their knee and elbow angles as functions of time for three ball-drop heights, finding that the differences in the functions for the different heights could be explained on the basis that the subjects were gearing their actions to a particular optic variable. This variable specifies the time remaining before contact with an object if the closing velocity is constant; for the falling ball it gives an increasingly accurate estimate of the time-to-contact. Our visuo-moto control model incorporates a delay parameter, the value of which was estimated from the data. In addition, correlations indicated that the knee and elbow were generally quite tightly coupled. The relationship of this task to laboratory tracking tasks and to the timing of actions in everyday life is described.     

Strategic Revenue Management under Uncertainty: A Case Study on Real Estate Projects in India

This paper proposes an approach for strategic revenue management under uncertainty for real estate projects. It integrates three modelling techniques: first, artificial neural network integrated support vector machines for forecasting the profit and loss‐making real estate residential projects; second, analytical network process approach using decision making trials and evaluation laboratory methodology for establishing interrelationships among factors; and third, multiobjective genetic algorithm approach for obtaining optimal numbers and types of apartments in a real estate project. We compare the respective revenues generated with the new number of apartments and price from the suggested revenue maximization model and that of the old practiced one through a case study of India. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.