Preferences for multi-attributed alternatives: Traces, dominance, and numerical representations

This paper analyzes conjoint measurement models allowing for intransitive and/or incomplete preferences. This analysis is based on the study of marginal traces induced on coordinates by the preference relation and uses conditions guaranteeing that these marginal traces are complete.Within the framework of these models, we propose a simple axiomatic characterization of preference relations compatible with the notion of dominance. We show that all such relations have a nontrivial numerical representation.Our results allow us to establish useful connections between two lines of thought in the area of decision analysis with multiple attributes that have largely remained unrelated: the one based on conjoint measurement and the one emphasizing the idea of dominance.     

Judging the strength of designated evidence

Judgments of evidence strength were obtained in a series of vignettes, each containing one or two items of evidence for each of two logically independent hypotheses. Each judgment concerned a designated subset of the presented evidence. Different groups of subjects encountered different but overlapping sets of evidence. We compared groups that judged the same designated evidence for the same hypothesis, but differed in exposure to surrounding (nondesignated) evidence. Results showed clear separation of relevant from irrelevant evidence and of designated from surrounding relevant evidence. This was particularly clear in the second experiment, where judgments of designated evidence remained invariant whether the surrounding evidence supported or contradicted the specified hypothesis. The conjunction fallacy was observed for judgments of evidence strength, but was substantially reduced by a simple instruction. Because subjects can separate evidence, it becomes possible to construct cardinally scaled standards of evidence strength using conjoint-measurement methods.     

Lessons from the Transition to Relational Teletherapy During COVID-19

When the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, clinicians were challenged to maintain continuity of care. Teletherapy became the primary means of service delivery for many who had never or only sparingly used it. The Family Institute at Northwestern University, in response to encouraging findings with respect to the effectiveness of teletherapy and recognizing advantages with respect to access to care, launched our teletherapy services in 2018. As a relationship-based organization, we were keen to exploit the opportunity that teletherapy provides to integrate additional members of the client system into the treatment. Over these two plus years, we have learned a great deal. Our learning was greatly accelerated by our transition to a 100% teletherapy practice in the wake of the pandemic. Teletherapy is a different context. Intentionally managing the context’s constraints and exploiting its strengths is key to providing high-quality couple and family therapy. This step is often overlooked or resisted when teletherapy is an occasional add-on to a face-to-face practice.     

The efficacy of conjoint behavioral consultation on parents and children in the home setting: Results of a randomized controlled trial

The present study is a large-scale randomized trial testing the effects of a family–school partnership model (i.e., Conjoint Behavioral Consultation, CBC) for promoting behavioral competence and decreasing problem behaviors of children identified by their teachers as disruptive. CBC is a structured approach to problem-solving that involves consultants, parents, and teachers. The effects of CBC on family variables that are commonly associated with important outcomes among school-aged children (i.e., family involvement and parent competence in problem solving), as well as child outcomes at home, were evaluated. Participants were 207 children with disruptive behaviors from 91 classrooms in 21 schools in kindergarten through grade 3 and their parents and teachers. Results indicated that there were significantly different increases in home–school communication and parent competence in problem solving for participants in the CBC relative to control group. Likewise, compared to children in the control group, children in the CBC group showed significantly greater decreases in arguing, defiance, noncompliance, and tantrums. The degree of family risk moderated parents' competence in problem solving and children's total problem behaviors, teasing, and tantrums.     

The self in the couple relationship: part 1

This paper discusses the importance of the ‘good-enough’ development of the core self in the couple relationship. It argues that difficulties in the development of the self lie behind a significant number of troubled couple relationships. Part 1 focuses on individual psychotherapy and how changes to the core self are often attended by shifts in the marital relationship. It traces how this occurs through clinical material and analyses what kinds of changes to the self are needed for the couple relationship to function well. Psychodynamic theory is used to understand the core changes over time and how these are related to significant second-order change in the couple relationship. The construct of the ‘transitional space’ is used to theorize the couple relationship. Implications for the practice of individual psychotherapy are discussed. In Part 2, the significance of change in the experience of the self of one or both partners for a successful outcome of couples therapy is discussed, along with the place of work with individual partner(s) in the course of conjoint couples therapy.     

Theory and tests of the conjoint commutativity axiom for additive conjoint measurement

The empirical study of the axioms underlying additive conjoint measurement initially focused mostly on the double cancellation axiom. That axiom was shown to exhibit redundant features that made its statistical evaluation a major challenge. The special case of double cancellation where inequalities are replaced by indifferences–the Thomsen condition–turned out in the full axiomatic context to be equivalent to the double cancellation property but without exhibiting the redundancies of double cancellation. However, it too has some undesirable features when it comes to its empirical evaluation, the chief among them being a certain statistical asymmetry in estimates used to evaluate it, namely two interlocked hypotheses and a single conclusion. Nevertheless, thinking we had no choice, we evaluated the Thomsen condition for both loudness and brightness and, in agreement with other lines of research, we found more support for conjoint additivity than not. However, we commented on the difficulties we had encountered in evaluating it. Thus we sought a more symmetric replacement, which as Gigerenzer and Strube (1983) first noted, is found in the conjoint commutativity axiom proposed by Falmagne (1976, who called it the “commutative rule”). It turns out that, in the presence of the usual structural and other necessary assumptions of additive conjoint measurement, we can show that conjoint commutativity is equivalent to the Thomsen condition, a result that seems to have been overlooked in the literature. We subjected this property to empirical evaluation for both loudness and brightness. In contrast to Gigerenzer and Strube (1983), our data show support for the conjoint commutativity in both domains and thus for conjoint additivity.     

‘Additive difference’ models without additivity and subtractivity

This paper studies conjoint measurement models tolerating intransitivities that closely resemble Tversky's additive difference model while replacing additivity and subtractivity by mere decomposability requirements. We offer a complete axiomatic characterisation of these models without having recourse to unnecessary structural assumptions on the set of objects. This shows the pure consequences of several cancellation conditions that have often been used in the analysis of more traditional conjoint measurement models. Our models contain as particular cases many aggregation rules that have been proposed in the literature.     

The nudging effect of social norms on drivers’ yielding behaviour when turning corners

Drivers who do not give way to pedestrians are among the main causes of traffic crashes of motor vehicles and pedestrians in China. There is an urgent need to explore effective methods for improving drivers' yielding behaviour. This study used eight kinds of social norm slogans to nudge drivers’ yielding behaviour and explored the influence of pedestrian characteristics and situational factors on drivers’ decision-making regarding giving way when turning right. By analysing 254 valid questionnaires, it was found that compared with static norms, injunctive norms and dynamic + static norms, positively worded dynamic norms have a better nudging effect on drivers' yielding behaviour. The results of the conjoint analysis showed that social norms have the greatest impact on drivers' decisions to yield (32.28%), followed by whether pedestrians comply with traffic rules (23.33%) and the age of pedestrians (18.40%). This study expands the application of social norms and provides a new perspective to promote positive behaviour among drivers.