Costs and Utilities Perspective of Consumers' Intentions to Engage in Online Music Sharing: Consumers' Knowledge Matters

Online music sharing, deemed illegal for invading intellectual property rights under current laws, has become a crucial issue for the music industry in the modern digital age, but few have investigated the potential costs and utilities for individuals involved in such online misbehavior. This study aimed to fill in this gap to predict consumers' intentions to engage in online music sharing and further consider consumers' online music sharing knowledge as a moderator in the research model. The results of repeated measures analysis of variance of costs and utilities of online music sharing not only give more detailed information to grasp empirical implications but also provide some suggestions to the music industry in Taiwan.     

Conscious thoughts from reflex-like processes: A new experimental paradigm for consciousness research

The contents of our conscious mind can seem unpredictable, whimsical, and free from external control. When instructed to attend to a stimulus in a work setting, for example, one might find oneself thinking about household chores. Conscious content thus appears different in nature from reflex action. Under the appropriate conditions, reflexes occur predictably, reliably, and via external control. Despite these intuitions, theorists have proposed that, under certain conditions, conscious content resembles reflexes and arises reliably via external control. We introduce the Reflexive Imagery Task, a paradigm in which, as a function of external control, conscious content is triggered reliably and unintentionally: When instructed to not subvocalize the name of a stimulus object, participants reliably failed to suppress the set-related imagery. This stimulus-elicited content is considered ‘high-level’ content and, in terms of stages of processing, occurs late in the processing stream. We discuss the implications of this paradigm for consciousness research.     

Challenging the By-Product Theory of Religion in the Cognitive Science of Religion

In this short article I argue that neurotheology should be conceived and practiced within a theological framework. Taking the case of Catholic theology as an example, five proposals are provided that offer a glimpse and, in my estimation, a realistic account of a (future) Catholic neurotheology. I identify two possible modes of how to practice Catholic neurotheology and conclude that any Catholic neurotheology that attempts to be practiced in accordance with these five proposals will be extremely challenging for Catholic theology.     

Future thinking instructions improve prospective memory performance in adolescents

Studies on prospective memory (PM) development in adolescents point to age-related increases through to adulthood. The goal of the present study was to examine whether instructing adolescents to engage in an episodic prospection of themselves executing future actions (i.e., future thinking) when forming an intention would improve their PM performance and reduce age-related differences. Further, we set out to explore whether future thinking instructions result in stronger memory traces and/or stronger cue–context associations by evaluating retrospective memory for the PM cues after task completion and monitoring costs during PM task processing. Adolescents and young adults were allocated to either the future thinking, repeated-encoding or standard condition. As expected, adolescents had fewer correct PM responses than young adults. Across age groups, PM performance in the standard condition was lower than in the other encoding conditions. Importantly, the results indicate a significant interaction of age by encoding condition. While adolescents benefited most from future thinking instructions, young adults performed best in the repeated-encoding condition. The results also indicate that the beneficial effects of future thinking may result from deeper intention-encoding through the simulation of future task performance.     

The role of delight in driving repurchase intentions

A channel differentiator for brick-and-mortar retail stores is the availability of salespeople to assist customers directly in their purchase decision. This research considers two aspects of customer interactions with retail salespeople that lead to perceptions of extraordinary service and enhance repurchase intentions: customer comfort and salesperson expertise. Retail customers desire value-added informational assistance from the salesperson to minimize ambiguity associated with the product and to reduce the risk associated with a purchase decision. A retail salesperson needs to make customers feel comfortable so that the customer will share specific needs during the interaction, and the salesperson can recommend appropriate products and services. Our findings reveal that while both customer comfort and salesperson expertise positively influence satisfaction with the salesperson and customer delight, only customer delight leads to repurchase intentions. While satisfaction is a commonly asserted goal for retailers; the present research suggests that in a transaction-based environment, elevated emotions such as customer delight represent a more powerful predictor of repurchase intentions. This research provides evidence of trainable salesperson behaviors that enhance customer perceptions of extraordinary service and offer firms an opportunity for significant performance gains.     

Thinking About the Future as a Way to Succeed in the Present: A Longitudinal Study of Future Orientation and Violent Behaviors Among African American Youth

Previous research has linked higher levels of hopelessness about one's future to violent behavior during adolescence; however, little is known about this relationship over time for adolescents. Using growth curve modeling, we tested the association between future orientation and violent behavior across the high school years of adolescence in a sample of African American youth (n = 681). Variation based on demographic characteristics (i.e., sex, SES, previous violence) was explored. At baseline, differences in violent behavior varied by demographic characteristics. Overall, violent behavior decreased with age. Higher levels of future orientation were associated with greater decreases in violent behavior over time. Demographic characteristics were not associated with change in violent behavior overtime. Our findings suggest that future orientation can act as a promotive factor for at risk African American youth. Interventions that help support the development of future goals and aspirations could play a vital role in violence prevention efforts.     

Planning in young children: A review and synthesis

Research on the development of planning is reviewed in the context of a framework that considers the role of three types of cognitive flexibility in planning development: event-independent temporal representation, executive function, and self-projection. It is argued that the emergence of planning abilities in the preschool period is dependent upon the development of event-independent temporal representation. Research on the development of executive function suggests that its sub-components, in particular inhibitory control, may be linked to developmental improvements on planning tasks. Recently, new paradigms have established that self-projection to the future appears to develop over the preschool period. We consider how these different forms of cognitive flexibility may themselves be related in development.     

Developmental changes in children's understanding of future likelihood and uncertainty

Two measures assessed 4-10-year-olds’ and adults’ (N = 201) understanding of future likelihood and uncertainty. In one task, participants sequenced sets of event pictures varying by one physical dimension according to increasing future likelihood. In a separate task, participants rated characters’ thoughts about the likelihood of future events, their emotions, and their decisions in indeterminate social situations. Results showed significant development between ages 4 and 10 in seriating events according to future likelihood and in selecting thought and emotion ratings indicative of future uncertainty. Higher performance on the future likelihood ordering task correlated with greater understanding of future uncertainty in thought, emotion, and decision judgments. Females judged future events to be more uncertain than males.     

Staying on track: Planned goal striving is protected from disruptive internal states

Past implementation intention research focused on shielding goal striving from disruptive internal states (e.g., being anxious) by forming if-then plans that link these very states to instrumental coping responses. In the present line of research, we investigated whether planning out goal striving by means of if-then plans specifying opportunities to initiate goal-directed responses also protects goal striving from the negative impact of disruptive internal states. Indeed, in the face of disruptive internal states, participants who had been asked to form implementation intentions that targeted opportunities for initiating goal-directed responses outperformed participants with a mere goal intention to do well on a focal task goal. Actually, implementation intention participants performed as well as control participants who were not burdened by disruptive internal states such as being in a certain mood (Study 1), ego-depleted (Study 2), or self-definitionally incomplete (Study 3). Results are discussed by pointing to the importance of hypo-egoic self-regulation.     

Breaking and creating habits on the working floor: A field-experiment on the power of implementation intentions

Previous research has shown that implementation intentions are effective tools to promote new behavior. The present study aimed to provide the first evidence that conscious planning is an effective tool in replacing well-learned habits with new habits. This was tested in a field-experiment on repetitive behavior in the domain of recycling, using 109 employees of a tele-company as participants. Recycling behavior of the participants was observed by the actual amount of paper and the number of plastic cups in their personal wastebaskets. Following a pre-measure, participants were assigned to either implementation intention conditions, conditions in which an eye-catching facility was placed to promote recycling behavior, or control conditions. Recycling behavior was substantially improved in the facility as well as the implementation intention conditions in week 1 and week 2 and still 2 months after the manipulation. These data supported our hypothesis that planning breaks down unwanted habits and creates new ones.