More Rational or More Emotional Than Others? Lay Beliefs About Decision-Making Strategies

Research demonstrates that people utilize both reasoning and feeling in decision making and that both strategies can be advantageous. However, little is known about how people perceive their decision-making relative to others. Despite research findings and popular appeals supporting the use of affective decision processes, across a series of studies, we find that individuals believe they rely more on reasoning, and less on feelings, than others. These effects are driven by the motivation to self-enhance where, in most contexts, individuals believe the use of reasoning is superior, and self-enhancing, compared to the use of feelings. Consistent with this mechanism, beliefs that one’s decisions are more rational than others’ are as follows: (a) stronger for those who exhibit greater beliefs in the superiority of reasoning (vs. feeling), (b) attenuated when the decision context precludes motivational thinking about the self or the self is affirmed, and (c) reversed when the use of feelings is perceived as more self-enhancing. We demonstrate downstream consequences (e.g., decision delegation), rule out alternative explanations, and discuss practical implications of these lay beliefs.     

Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory (ECBI): Norwegian norms to identify conduct problems in children

This article presents the first Norwegian standardization of an assessment tool specifically designed to measure childhood conduct problems. Norwegian norms for the Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory (ECBI) based on data obtained from a random population sample (N= 4063) of children in the age range of 4 to 12 years are presented. The sample was drawn from rural and urban areas within three Norwegian town districts. Clinical and research advantages of having a properly standardized assessment tool for this specific subclass of childhood psychiatric problems in Norway are discussed.     

The Localization of Pitch Perception on the Basilar Membrane

Durations of four categories of perceptions in the binocular rivalry of 3.9° bright contours were considered. Distributions of durations of perceptions of each of the rivalry categories and of all rivalry reports together were tested against five standard distributions. The empirical distributions showed no tendency to fit any of the standard theoretical distributions well. The results suggest that speculations concerning the underlying mechanisms of binocular rivalry based on observations of the durations of rivalry reports may not be useful until the distributions of durations are satisfactorily described.     

Conditional standard errors of measurement for composite scores on the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence-Third Edition

A specific recommendation of the 1999 Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing by the American Educational Research Association, the American Psychological Association, and the National Council on Measurement in Education is that test publishers report estimates of the conditional standard error of measurement (SEM). Procedures for calculating the conditional (score-level) SEM based on raw scores are well documented; however, few procedures have been developed for estimating the conditional SEM of subtest or composite scale scores resulting from a nonlinear transformation. Item response theory provided the psychometric foundation to derive the conditional standard errors of measurement and confidence intervals for composite scores on the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence-Third Edition.     

Is timely information always better? The effect of feedback frequency on decision making

Recent advances in information technology make it possible for decision makers to track information in real-time and obtain frequent feedback on their decisions. From a normative sense, an increase in the frequency of feedback and the ability to make changes should lead to enhanced performance as decision makers are able to respond more quickly to changes in the environment and see the consequences of their actions. At the same time, there is reason to believe that more frequent feedback can sometimes lead to declines in performance. Across four inventory management experiments, we find that in environments characterized by random noise more frequent feedback on previous decisions leads to declines in performance. Receiving more frequent feedback leads to excessive focus on and more systematic processing of more recent data as well as a failure to adequately compare information across multiple time periods. These results suggest that caution be used in the design and implementation of real-time information systems.     

CLASSICAL CONDITIONING OF DECREASES IN HUMAN SYSTOLIC BLOOD PRESSURE1

Decrease in human systolic blood pressure of 4.35 mm Hg (range: 0 to 12 mm Hg) were classically conditioned in normal and hypertensive subjects using a delayed conditioning paradigm in which a 30-sec auditory stimulus (the conditioned stimulus) was followed immediately by tilting the subject 15° head-down to elicit small decreases in blood pressure. Conditioning occurred within five trials. A control group demonstrated that sensitization of the reflex by repeated tilting could not account for the blood-pressure decreases associated with the conditioned stimulus in experimental subjects.     

Gender differences in loneliness and depression of university students seeking counselling

Gender differences in loneliness and depression were examined among university students seeking counselling. The short-form UCLA Loneliness Scale (ULS-8) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) were completed by 325 counselling seekers (107 males and 218 females) in Israel. Males were significantly higher in loneliness than females, while females were significantly higher in depression than males. The greater loneliness of male counselling-seekers than that of females is discussed, as well as the possibility of a response set. Implications for assessment and counselling are suggested.     

Professional Ethics of Software Engineers: An Ethical Framework

The purpose of this article is to propose an ethical framework for software engineers that connects software developers’ ethical responsibilities directly to their professional standards. The implementation of such an ethical framework can overcome the traditional dichotomy between professional skills and ethical skills, which plagues the engineering professions, by proposing an approach to the fundamental tasks of the practitioner, i.e., software development, in which the professional standards are intrinsically connected to the ethical responsibilities. In so doing, the ethical framework improves the practitioner’s professionalism and ethics. We call this approach Ethical-Driven Software Development (EDSD), as an approach to software development. EDSD manifests the advantages of an ethical framework as an alternative to the all too familiar approach in professional ethics that advocates “stand-alone codes of ethics”. We believe that one outcome of this synergy between professional and ethical skills is simply better engineers. Moreover, since there are often different software solutions, which the engineer can provide to an issue at stake, the ethical framework provides a guiding principle, within the process of software development, that helps the engineer evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of different software solutions. It does not and cannot affect the end-product in and of-itself. However, it can and should, make the software engineer more conscious and aware of the ethical ramifications of certain engineering decisions within the process.