Extreme Outcomes Sway Risky Decisions from Experience

Whether buying stocks or playing the slots, people making real‐world risky decisions often rely on their experiences with the risks and rewards. These decisions, however, do not occur in isolation but are embedded in a rich context of other decisions, outcomes, and experiences. In this paper, we systematically evaluate how the local context of other rewarding outcomes alters risk preferences. Through a series of four experiments on decisions from experience, we provide evidence for an extreme‐outcome rule, whereby people overweight the most extreme outcomes (highest and lowest) in a given context. As a result, people should be more risk seeking for gains than losses, even with equally likely outcomes. Across the experiments, the decision context was varied so that the same outcomes served as the high extreme, low extreme, or neither. As predicted, people were more risk seeking for relative gains, but only when the risky option potentially led to the high‐extreme outcome. Similarly, people were more risk averse for relative losses, but only when the risky option potentially led to the low‐extreme outcome. We conclude that in risky decisions from experience, the biggest wins and the biggest losses seem to matter more than they should. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Exploring diversity effects: nationality composition and nationality context in workgroups

The types of conflict that emerge in nationally diverse teams may depend on the number and types of nationalities present in the team. We investigate the possibility that when teams have individuals from multiple different nationalities (i.e., Dutch, Swiss and Indonesian), rather than just two different nationalities (Dutch and Indonesian), performance and task conflict will be higher while process and relationship conflicts will be comparatively lower. A scenario-based study was conducted in two countries in which we examined how nationality composition (size of national diversity or number of nationalities) and context (nature of national diversity or types of nationalities) affected perceived conflict and expected performance. We hypothesized and found that task conflict and performance are higher in nationally diverse workgroups that included multiple dissimilar nationalities compared to workgroups with just two nationalities. Results also showed that relationship and process conflicts are lower in groups that are diverse in size and nature of national diversity. We observed that social distances among nationalities varied in such a way that a distant nationality became more distanced and a close nationality became even closer in a nationally diverse group. Social distance, in that way, moderated the effect of national diversity. We discuss implications for diversity and conflict management.     

Spirituality as a coping mechanism for family caregivers of persons with aphasia

This study sought to describe spirituality resourcing of family caregivers for people with aphasia (PWA). A purposive sample of 14 female family caregivers of PWA from a historically disadvantaged South African community were participants (married = 42%; age range 21 to 65 years). They completed interviews regarding the spiritual support that they received when caring for their family member with aphasia. Thematic analysis of the data yielded findings to suggest spiritual interpretation of their experiences, importance of prayer as a source of hope and healing, and significance of social support from church fellowship. Spirituality is a resource for coping with the carer-role among community women with responsibility over family members with aphasia.     

On the malleability of the meaning of contexts: the influence of another person’s emotion expressions on situation perception

Research on the relationship between context and facial expressions generally assumes a unidirectional effect of context on expressions. However, according to the model of the meaning of emotion expressions in context (MEEC) the effect should be bidirectional. The present research tested the effect of emotion expression on the interpretation of scenes. A total of 380 participants either (a) rated facial expressions with regard to the likely appraisal of the eliciting situation by the emoter, (b) appraised the scenes alone or (c) appraised scenes shown together with the expressions they supposedly elicited. The findings strongly supported the MEEC. When a scene was combined with an expression signalling a situation that is undesirable, or high in locus of control or sudden, the participants appraised the scene correspondingly. Thus, the meaning of scenes is malleable and affected by the way that people are seen to react to them.     

交流语境对学习双方语言准确性的影响

研究安排了交流任务和个人迁移任务,创设了三种交流语境,比较不同语境下交流学习双方的语言准确性。结果显示：（1）三种语境中仅语言交流时语言准确性水平最高,交流语境中的对象可视性阻碍了语言准确性提高的速率,表情可视性降低了语言准确性水平;交流语言相似性水平高的被试,语言准确性水平提高的效率和效果均高于低的一方;（2）交流任务中仅语言交流时语言准确性最高,个人任务中对象可视语境下准确性最低;和交流任务相比,高相似被试个人任务中的准确性更高。表明：语言认知不完全代表交流认知,对象可视性阻碍语言认知和交流认知水平,表情可视性辅助语言共同提高交流认知水平。     

Factors that encourage generalization from extinction to test reduce resurgence of an extinguished operant response

Two experiments investigated methods that reduce the resurgence of an extinguished behavior (R1) that occurs when reinforcement for an alternative behavior (R2) is discontinued. In Experiment 1, R1 was first trained and then extinguished while R2 was reinforced during a 5‐ or 25‐session treatment phase. For half the rats, sessions in which R2 was reinforced alternated with sessions in which R2 was extinguished. Controls received the same number of treatment sessions, but R2 was never extinguished. When reinforcement for R2 was discontinued, R1 resurged in the controls. However, the alternating groups showed reduced resurgence, and the magnitude of the resurgences observed during their R2 extinction sessions decreased systematically over Phase 2. In Experiment 2, R1 was first reinforced with one outcome (O1). The rats then had two types of double‐alternating treatment sessions. In one type, R1 was extinguished and R2 produced O2. In the other, R1 was unavailable and R2 produced O3. R1 resurgence was weakened when O2, but not O3, was delivered freely during testing. Together, the results suggest that methods that encourage generalization between R1 extinction and resurgence testing weaken the resurgence effect. They are not consistent with an account of resurgence proposed by Shahan and Craig (2017).     

情绪背景和社会预期对社会经济决策行为的影响

采用最后通牒博弈范式,探讨不同情绪背景对社会经济决策中社会预期效应的影响。以90名大学生为被试,利用不同效价的电影片段(正性、负性和中性)诱发相应的目标情绪。通过操作社会规范性信息启动被试对分配方案公平性的不同预期。结果发现:在负性和中性情绪背景下,高预期组更倾向于拒绝接受不公平分配。在正性情绪背景下,高预期组和低预期组面对不公平提议时的接受率没有显著差异。结果表明正性情绪背景使社会预期效应发生改变,回应者对分配方案的高预期不再对决策结果产生显著影响。     

Ideology,inquiry, and antiquity: a critical notice of Lloyd's The Ideals of Inquiry: An Ancient History

A discussion of Lloyd's Tarner Lectures at Trinity College. The importance of Lloyd's previous scholarship is characterized and these sweeping, erudite lectures are placed in the context of that scholarship. In the broadest terms, the lectures are a call to culturally and historically comparative study of human reasoning. At their heart is a comparative history of scientific theorizing from the ancients through to modern science. Lloyd rejects the positivist picture, and the view of modern and ancient science as discontinuous; he urges scholars to undertake comparative work on the ancient sciences in different traditions. This critical notice evaluates Lloyd's view and raises several questions for further reflection.     

Context Matters for Social-Emotional Learning: Examining Variation in Program Impact by Dimensions of School Climate

This paper examines whether three dimensions of school climate—leadership, accountability, and safety/respect—moderated the impacts of the INSIGHTS program on students’ social‐emotional, behavioral, and academic outcomes. Twenty‐two urban schools and N = 435 low‐income racial/ethnic minority students were enrolled in the study and received intervention services across the course of 2 years, in both kindergarten and first grade. Intervention effects on math and reading achievement were larger for students enrolled in schools with lower overall levels of leadership, accountability, and safety/respect at baseline. Program impacts on disruptive behaviors were greater in schools with lower levels of accountability at baseline; impacts on sustained attention were greater in schools with lower levels of safety/respect at baseline. Implications for Social‐Emotional Learning program implementation, replication, and scale‐up are discussed.