Friendships,Subjective Age,and Life Satisfaction of Women in Midlife

The authors conducted a study of 422 women, ages 31 to 77 years, to explore the relationships among friendship networks, subjective age, and life satisfaction. Friendship network size was related to lower subjective age but not to chronological age. More frequent visits with friends were related to lower subjective age and to higher life satisfaction. Satisfaction with the number of friends and a larger number of friends were related to higher levels of life satisfaction. Subjective age, group belonging, and being someone's best friend were significant predictors of life satisfaction.     

Implicit beliefs of emotion and anxiety in psychotherapy

Motivation and Emotion - Implicit theories about the malleability of emotion and anxiety (i.e., mindsets) are related to clinically relevant outcomes. However, a paucity of research in clinical...     

Alternative Models of Price Behavior in Dyadic Negotiations: Market Prices, Reservation Prices, and Negotiator Aspirations

Three competing predictors of price are manipulated in a two-party distributive negotiation. These include prevailing market prices, negotiator reservation prices, and negotiator aspirations. We offer a cognitive interpretation of how each type of information is incorporated into the negotiator′s thought processes as an alternative cognitive reference point. In two studies varying the levels of these three factors, only reservation prices, not prevailing market prices or negotiator aspirations, account for significant variance in negotiated outcomes. Discussion is offered, suggesting that the negotiator as decision maker may experience a "dominant reference point" effect. When multiple pieces of relevant information are available, the negotiator may only be able to focus on one of them. Among the three predictors studied, the reservation price may be cognitively interpreted as the most absolute limit.     

Testing an Economic Approach to Resource Dilemmas

This article applies a market mechanism derived from principles of welfare economics to a social dilemma simulation in the laboratory. In Study 1, half of the five-person groups were offered the opportunity to voluntarily "buy-out" one or more group members in an effort to conserve a shared, scarce resource. Most groups offered the intervention achieved at least one member buy-out per game. Yet, despite the smaller size of the groups, these groups did not sustain the resource pool any longer than control groups that were left intact. In fact, the results were in the opposite direction. Subjects behaved in a more self-interested manner. In Study 2, the "buy-out" intervention was varied to test the robustness of Study 1′s result. It was found that the intervention was not sensitive to changes in the specifics of operationalization. Discussion is offered regarding the complexity of market-based interventions in social choice situations and the need for improved understanding of the micro-mediating links between market dynamics and individual- and group-level behavior.     

Multiple-objective weighting factor auxiliary optimization problems

In this paper we consider the generation of efficient solutions using weighting factor, qth-power approaches for some non-convex auxiliary function optimization forms. Algorithms are given for finding e-optimal solutions for these optimization problems.     

A multiple-objective dispersion problem

In this paper we study a multiple-objective dispersion problem from an efficient solution and value function perspective. A general fundamental theorem on non-dominance is given and a polar co-ordinate elimination heuristic is given for the case of R². Some general results are given for the existence of a linearly weighted objective function whose maximal value will give a most preferred solution, for convex or concave value functions, and a heuristic is developed for the case where these conditions do not hold.     

Noncompetition Agreements and the Counseling Profession: An Unrecognized Reality for Private Practitioners

Restrictive covenants are proven means of limiting competition and need to be understood by counselors. The authors consider the American Counseling Association's (ACA) position on noncompetition agreements between employers and employees in light of case law from other service professions and conclude that ACA members are uninformed and available sources of information (i.e., ACA Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice, ACA, 1995) do not provide needed information. The absence of information about this important topic puts members at risk in an increasingly competitive private practice market. The authors propose guidelines for responding to this issue.     

Causal judgment from contingency information: Relation between subjective reports and individual tendencies in judgment

In two experiments, participants made causal judgments from contingency information for problems with different objective contingencies. After the judgment task, the participants reported how their judgments had changed following each type of contingency information. Some reported idiosyncratic tendencies--in other words, tendencies contrary to those expected under associative-learning and normative rule induction models of contingency judgment. These idiosyncratic reports tended to be better predictors of the judgments of those who made them than did the models. The results are consistent with the view that causal judgment from contingency information is made, at least in part, by deliberative use of acquired and sometimes idiosyncratic notions of evidential value, the outcomes of which tend, in aggregate, to be highly correlated with the outcomes of normative procedures.     

An investigation of age-related factors in the age-job-satisfaction relationship

Most researchers have found a positive linear relation between age and job satisfaction. We attempted to account for this relationship by measuring variables that had been proposed to be causal factors. Subjects were 496 city and county managers working in Florida. Potential explanatory variables were (a) job congruence (the difference between what managers prefer and what they perceive they have in a job), (b) internal-external locus of control, and (c) related demographics-age, salary, organizational tenure, position tenure, and organizational level. Multiple regression analyses found that job congruence and work locus of control accounted for almost all of the variance in the age-satisfaction relationship. This study supports the job change hypothesis, which proposes tha older workers get more of what they want out of work.