The marketing of industrial real estate: application of Taguchi loss functions

The marketing of industrial real estate is a resource‐consuming endeavour for all parties involved consisting of many objectives that, in many cases, may be in conflict with one another. One method of minimizing resource requirements, especially time, while increasing the probability of a successful match is to select properties for presentation that maximizes buyer utility. Zionts (1992) indicated one area for future research in multiple criteria decision‐making (MCDM) is in the development of ‘Eclectic Approaches’ using old ideas in a new way to help develop MCDM approaches. In this paper Taguchi loss functions, a procedure commonly used in quality control, is proposed as a tool that can be used by industrial real estate professionals to more efficiently determine the property that most closely matches the buyer's needs. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Landmarks as beacons and associative cues: Their role in route learning

Relatively little is known about how people use the landmarks in their environment to learn routes. Landmarks are commonly regarded as associative cues--stimuli that enable recall of directional responses that lead closer to the navigator's goal. We contrast the function of landmark as associative cue with that of a beacon-a landmark near enough to a goal that moving toward it leads the navigator closer to his or her goal. In five experiments, participants learned a route through a simple desktop virtual environment. In the first three experiments, routes were learned better when their landmarks served as beacons than as associative cues. Two additional experiments showed that the acquired route knowledge depends on the function that landmarks serve during learning. Beacon-based route knowledge is less enduring and relatively less likely to involve knowledge of directions in the environment than is the route knowledge formed from landmarks that serve as associative cues.     

Validity of a Brief Measure of Parental Affective Attitudes in High-Risk Preschoolers

The current study investigated psychometric properties of the Family Affective Attitude Rating Scale (FAARS) for assessing parents' thoughts and feelings about their child, coded from a 5-min speech sample. Parental affective attitudes derive from previous experiences of parenting and child behavior, representations of the parent-child relationship and broader parental characteristics. Data were collected from mother-child dyads at ages 2 and 3 (N?=?731; 49?% female) from a multi-ethnic and high-risk community sample. Multi-informant observations of parenting and questionnaire measures were used to test construct and discriminant validity. FAARS showed good internal consistency and high inter-rater agreement. Affective attitudes were related to mothers' perceptions of their daily hassles, their reports of conflict with their child, and observed measures of positive and harsh parenting. Negative affective attitudes uniquely predicted later child problem behavior, over and above maternal reports of and observed measures of parenting. Overall, results support the validity of FAARS coding in mothers of preschoolers, a previously untested group. FAARS is a novel measure, directly assessing maternal perceptions of the parent-child relationship, and indirectly providing an index of maternal affect, stress, and depressive symptoms. Its brevity and cost-effectiveness further enhance the potential use of the FAARS measure for clinical and research settings.     

Therapeutic alliance and weight gain during cognitive behavioural therapy for anorexia nervosa

This study examined the relationship between therapeutic alliance and primary symptom change (weight gain) during CBT for anorexia nervosa. The aims were threefold: (1) to establish the strength of the therapeutic alliance across the treatment, (2) to determine whether early therapeutic alliance is associated with the completion of CBT for this client group, and (3) to determine the direction of the relationship between therapeutic alliance and weight gain. Adult outpatients (N = 65) with a diagnosis of anorexia nervosa (or atypical anorexia nervosa) completed a measure of alliance at session six and at the end of treatment. Weight was recorded at the start of treatment, session six and at the end of treatment. The strength of the alliance was consistently high in the sample. However, early therapeutic alliance was not associated with either the likelihood of completing treatment or subsequent weight gain. In contrast, both early and later weight gain were associated with the strength of subsequent alliance. These findings indicate that it might be advisable to focus on techniques to drive weight gain rather than rely on the therapeutic alliance to bring about therapeutic change.     

Time for Reflection: A Critical Examination of Polychronicity

Both researchers and practitioners are increasing their attention to the multitasking demands of contemporary work contexts, and previous work suggests polychronicity plays a central role in the motivation of individuals to perform multiple tasks simultaneously. However, our detailed examination of existing literature reveals a wide range of conceptualizations and operationalizations of this construct, as well as incongruent results concerning the effects of polychronicity on behavior and performance. In this article, we develop recommendations for defining and measuring polychronicity more precisely, we examine and compare existing work on predictors of polychronicity, and we address the equivocal relationship between polychronicity and performance. We conclude with implications for future research.     

From adorable to worthless: implicit and self‐report structure of highly evaluative personality descriptors

So‐called highly ‘evaluative’ personality judgments (e.g. describing someone as exceptional, odd, or vile,) are an integral component of people's daily judgments of themselves and others. However, little is known about the conceptual structure, psychological function, and personality‐relevance of these kinds of attribution. Two studies were conducted to explore the internal (i.e. implicit) and external (i.e. self‐report) structure of highly evaluative terms. Factor analyses of semantic‐similarity sortings and self‐reports on several representative samples of highly evaluative personality adjectives yielded internal and external structures that were very similar. Both types of structure included five dimensions representing distinction, worthlessness, depravity, unconventionality, and stupidity. The robustness of the uncovered dimensions across the two studies suggests that typically excluded highly evaluative personality terms, far from being behaviorally ambiguous and psychologically uninformative, allude to meaningful dispositions that people both implicitly understand and possess to different degrees. These findings also suggest that highly evaluative personality judgments are organized around the basic domains of morality (i.e. depravity), power (distinction and worthlessness), peculiarity (unconventionality), and intelligence (stupidity). We discuss the implications of our findings for the study of self‐ and other‐esteem processes, personality perception, and the Big Seven factor model of personality. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.