Often biased but rarely in doubt: How initial reactions to stigmatized applicants affect interviewer confidence

Building on a metacognitive framework of heuristic judgments, we investigate the effect of applicant stigma on interviewers’ overconfidence in their (biased) judgments. There were 193 experienced interviewers conducting a face-to-face interview with an applicant who was facially stigmatized or not, and who was visible (traditional interview) or not (partially blind interview), to the interviewer during the rapport-building stage. In traditional interviews, interview judgments of stigmatized applicants were negatively biased, and interviewers reported overconfidence in these judgments. This effect was partially mediated by the interviewer’s professional performance during rapport building. Interview procedure moderated both the direct and indirect effect (through professional performance) of applicant stigma on interviewer confidence. Results show that interviewer (over)confidence in biased judgments is driven by the initial effects of, and reactions to, the stigmatized applicant.     

Post‐merger identification as a function of pre‐merger identification,relative representation,and pre‐merger status

This experiment examined the impact of pre‐merger identification (low, high), pre‐merger group status (low, high) and relative representation (low, high) upon identification with a new merger group. In the first phase of the study, 156 university students were assigned to a pre‐merger team of ‘inductive’ thinkers. Pre‐merger identification was manipulated by giving the participants feedback about the extent to which they used the inductionist style. Pre‐merger status was manipulated by informing participants that their team had performed worse or better than a deductionist team on a decision‐making task. In the second phase, the two pre‐merger teams were combined into a merger team of analyst thinkers. Relative representation was manipulated by maintaining most or none of the features of the pre‐merger team in this new merger team. The results revealed that high pre‐merger identifiers identified more strongly with the merger group than did low pre‐merger identifiers, but only when the relative representation was high. Pre‐merger status did not influence post‐merger identification. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Measuring coherence

This paper aims to contribute to our understanding of the notion of coherence by explicating in probabilistic terms, step by step, what seem to be our most basic intuitions about that notion, to wit, that coherence is a matter of hanging or fitting together, and that coherence is a matter of degree. A qualitative theory of coherence will serve as a stepping stone to formulate a set of quantitative measures of coherence, each of which seems to capture well the aforementioned intuitions. Subsequently it will be argued that one of those measures does better than the others in light of some more specific intuitions about coherence. This measure will be defended against two seemingly obvious objections.     

Tactile perception of thermal diffusivity

The thermal diffusivity of an object is a parameter that controls the rate at which heat is extracted from the hand when it touches that object. It is an important feature for distinguishing materials by means of touch. In order to quantitatively describe the ability of human observers to discriminate between materials on the basis of heat extraction rate, we conducted an experiment in which this heat extraction was performed in a controlled way. In different conditions, subjects were repeatedly asked to select from two stimuli the one that cooled faster. The discrimination threshold was around 43% of the extraction rate. A rate that was twice as slow also yielded twice the absolute threshold. When we halved the temperature difference between the beginning and end of the stimulus, the threshold did not change as much. In separate experiments, we investigated the different cues that were available in the stimulus: initial cooling rate and end temperature. Both cues were used for discrimination, but cooling rate seemed to be the most important.     

Development of trust and reciprocity in adolescence

We investigate the development of two types of prosocial behavior, trust and reciprocity, as defined using a game-theoretical task that allows investigation of real-time social interaction, among 4 age groups from 9 to 25 years. By manipulating the possible outcome alternatives, we could distinguish among important determinants of trust and reciprocity that are related to the risk and benefit of trusting. The results demonstrate age-related changes in sensitivity to outcome for others from late childhood until late adolescence, with different developmental trajectories for trust and reciprocity and differential sensitivity to risk and benefit for self and others.     

Seeing and feeling volumes: The influence of shape on volume perception

The volume of common objects can be perceived visually, haptically or by a combination of both senses. The present study shows large effects of the object's shape on volume perception within all these modalities, with an average bias of 36%. In all conditions, the volume of a tetrahedron was overestimated compared to that of a cube or a sphere, and the volume of a cube was overestimated compared to that of a sphere. Additional analyses revealed that the biases could be explained by the dependence of the volume judgment on different geometric properties. During visual volume perception, the strategies depended on the objects that were compared and they were also subject-dependent. However, analysis of the haptic and bimodal data showed more consistent results and revealed that surface area of the stimuli influenced haptic as well as bimodal volume perception. This suggests that bimodal volume perception is more influenced by haptic input than by visual information.     

Proving Possession of Arbitrary Secrets While not Giving them Away: New Protocols and a Proof in GNY Logic

This paper introduces and describes new protocols for proving knowledge of secrets without giving them away: if the verifier does not know the secret, he does not learn it. This can all be done while only using one-way hash functions. If also the use of encryption is allowed, these goals can be reached in a more efficient way. We extend and use the GNY authentication logic to prove correctness of these protocols.     

Bootstrap Confirmation Made Quantitative

Glymour’s theory of bootstrap confirmation is a purely qualitative account of confirmation; it allows us to say that the evidence confirms a given theory, but not that it confirms the theory to a certain degree. The present paper extends Glymour’s theory to a quantitative account and investigates the resulting theory in some detail. It also considers the question how bootstrap confirmation relates to justification.     

Rational emotive behavior therapy successes and failures: Eight personal perspectives

Eight experts in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) provided personal examples of their own successes and failures in applying REBT to themselves. The experts actively talked to themselves both rationally and irrationally. Understandably, there were far more shoulds, oughts, musts, and have to’s in the narratives in which the experts described when they failed to use REBT than when they succeeded in using REBT. Rational self-talk was more prevalent in the examples of how REBT was successfully used by the experts. Reprinted from Journal of Counseling & Development, Summer 2001, Volume 79. ACA. Reprinted with permission. No further reproduction authorized without written permission from the American Counseling Association.