Salient Volunteering Behavior Increases Monetary Risk‐taking

Research finds that engaging in prosocial behavior has many positive psychological outcomes (e.g., enhanced well‐being, optimism, perceived control, and a boost in self‐concept), and research on monetary risk‐taking reveals these psychological outcomes are associated with increased risk‐taking. Merging these findings, we propose that when people's volunteering behavior is made salient in their minds, they take more monetary risks. Making research participants’ volunteering behavior salient by having them recall an act of prior volunteering (studies 1 and 3), choosing whether to volunteer (study 2), or choosing one of two volunteering activities (study 4), four experiments (and a fifth reported in the Appendix S2) reveal increased risk‐taking across several monetary‐risk outcomes (incentive‐compatible gambles, allocation of a windfall gain, and a behavioral risk‐taking measure involving escalating risk). Lastly, when the decision maker attributes a decision to volunteer to an external source, the effect of salient volunteering on monetary risk‐taking attenuates.     

The effect of the emotional state on driving performance in a simulated car-following task

Emotion is an important factor that influences driving behavior, but the mechanism is unclear. This research explored the effect of the emotional state on simulated driving behavior. Thirty-five licensed drivers participated in this study and completed a car-following task. The angry, happy and neutral states were manipulated during the task. The participants’ driving performance and risk perception were recorded under each emotional state. Trait anger and driving experience were also measured to explore the possible mediating effect. The results showed that the drivers in an angry or happy emotional state tended to maintain less time to collision and take a longer time to brake while following a lead vehicle than the drivers under the neutral condition, suggesting that drivers in emotional states are more dangerous those in neutral states. Moreover, the happy state rendered the drivers more dangerous, which manifested as a lower perceived accident risk than that among the drivers in the angry and neutral states. More specifically, experienced drivers in happy states performed worse with respect to vehicle lateral position control. Recommendations and implications for safety education and further research are discussed.     

Factors related to the use of pedestrian bridges in university students of Honduras

Considering that deaths and injuries due to run overs near pedestrian bridges (PB) are preventable events, this research aims to analyze the factors related to the use of pedestrian bridges in students of a public university of Honduras. This was made through a quantitative methodology; 330 questionnaires were applied to a sample of university students. Results suggest that 17.27% of the respondents don’t use the bridge. Most respondents (62.42%) believe it’s faster to cross the street and that using the bridge is tiresome (79.90%). Pedestrian bridges are also considered to be unsafe places, prone to robberies. Pearson’s r coefficient determined that this belief is significantly associated with the perception of cleanliness, quality of the infrastructure and illumination. There is a correlation between stress and considering the use of the bridge as a tiresome activity. A logistic regression model determined that significant variables explained the use of the PB included: being in a hurry, believing it’s faster to cross the street, thinking that PBs have a bad infrastructure, laziness and thinking that using the PB is tiresome, all of them reducing the chance that someone will use the bridge. On the other hand, non-significant variables in the model included: age, considering that using the PB is stressful, thinking that crossing the street is stressful, thinking PBs have good illumination. Safety related variables were not able to discriminate between users and non-users. These results are discussed in the light of previous research and their implication for public policy and future research.     

A perception-based cognitive map of the pedestrian perceived quality of service on urban sidewalks

A better understanding of what walking entails is important in sustainable transportation planning. Recent research has shown that perceptions have a higher power to explain the quality of service (QoS) than objective measures have; the latter being typically used in the pedestrian level of service methodologies. Despite the existing research on perceptions and QoS in other transportation fields, very little information has been found in the literature that can explain a clear cognitive structure that defines the pedestrian QoS. In this research, we propose a cognitive map to make it possible to understand and explain pedestrian sidewalk QoS of a given infrastructure when walking, based on perceptions. We gathered the perceptions of 1056 pedestrians on-site, regarding the attributes (indicators) identified in the literature review in 30 locations in Bogotá, Colombia. Based on an Exploratory Factor Analysis, we developed a conceptual model through Structural Equation Modeling. We found that seven latent variables (LVs) (i.e., Sidewalk characteristics, Externalities, Surrounding, Discomfort, Bike hassles, Protection, and Amenities) interrelate to each other, forming a pedestrian cognitive map. QoS is directly explained by how pedestrians perceive the LVs sidewalk characteristics and surrounding and indirectly by the rest of LVs. The cognitive map shows three LVs related to the interaction between pedestrians and other transportation modes (i.e., externalities, discomfort, and bike hassles) that impact the perceived QoS negatively, and four LVs related to the interaction between pedestrians and different elements of the sidewalk (i.e., sidewalk characteristics, surrounding, amenities, and protection) that impact the perceived QoS positively. To understand pedestrian perceptions when walking and the path that these perceptions follow to develop a QoS perception provides an accurate tool by which to improve the QoS from the useŕs perspective, generating a new opportunity to provide better pedestrian facilities.     

The Relation of Perceived Neighborhood Danger to Childhood Aggression: A Test of Mediating Mechanisms

In the current study, two mediational mechanisms, parenting practices and children's beliefs about aggression, were hypothesized to account for the relationship between perceived neighborhood danger and childhood aggression. Using structural equation modeling, data were analyzed from an inner-city school-based sample of 732 predominantly African American 5th graders. Results suggested that perceived neighborhood danger was associated with strong positive beliefs about aggression, which in turn was associated with high levels of aggression. The hypothesized mediating role of parenting practices (restrictive discipline, parental monitoring, and parental involvement) on the relation between perceived neighborhood danger and child aggression was not supported. However, the current findings suggest that children's positive beliefs about aggression mediated the relationship between restrictive discipline and aggression. Directions for future research are discussed.     

Perception of genetic risk among genetic counselors

A mailed survey of female prenatal genetic counselors, obstetric nurses, and high school biology teachers was conducted to determine if these groups hold different attitudes toward genetic risk and to investigate the extent to which any differences result from the effect of different professional experiences. In this study, the participants were 166 genetic counselors, 116 obstetric nurses, and 78 biology teachers (n = 360). Survey participants completed a written questionnaire designed to assess their numeric estimate of the empiric risk for birth defects/genetic problems, their subjective perception of this risk, and their personal use of prenatal diagnosis. Genetic counselors were found to be less likely than the other groups to consider the frequency of birth defects/genetic problems as rare and were 10 times more likely than nurses and 8 times more likely than teachers to have had prenatal diagnosis. Furthermore, more than half of the prenatal diagnosis procedures had by genetic counselors were not medically indicated. These results suggest that genetic counselors have an increased perception of genetic risks relative to nurses or teachers. Possible explanations for this finding are discussed, and the potential role of discordant risk perception in creating biases in the genetic counseling process is explored.     

Representation of subjective preferences under ambiguity

The objective of this paper is to show how potentially incomplete preferences of a decision maker (DM) on acts can be modelled formally in a subjective ambiguity perspective. We identify acts as functions from a state space Ω to bounded support (finitely additive) probabilities over a set X of prizes. Then, we characterize preferences over equibounded acts a which have a numerical representation by the family of functionals , where u is a cardinal utility on X (representing the risk attitude of the DM) and Π is a unique pointwise closed convex set of probabilities on all events in Ω (representing the ambiguity perceived by the DM). To this end, in addition to the usual independence and continuity assumptions, we add completeness and dominance for preferences restricted to constant acts; moreover, we consider two other properties (subjective monotonicity and coherence) related with the preferences of a DM who is not able, owing to his partial knowledge, to evaluate any event in Ω.     

Societal Risk Perception Among Children, Adolescents, Adults, and Elderly People

This study reported on mean risk magnitude judgments expressed by French participants aged 8 to 75 years, on a set of 91 hazardous activities, substances, and technologies. It then systematically analyzed the effects of the age factor on the judgments. Between elderly people and young and mature adults, few notable differences were detected. The most important result was that a considerable proportion of the children were able to estimate the risk associated with most items of the present study, and that the linear association between children's ratings and adults' ratings was very high. This finding supports the view that the learning of the risk associated with various technologies, common in society, is a fast process, depending probably much more on exposure to media information and family discussions (socialization) than on exposure to everyday reality.     

Avoiding negative vs. achieving positive outcomes in hard and prosperous economic times

Three studies suggest that business cycle fluctuations trigger distinct motivational orientations that selectively affect economic judgment and decision making. Economic contractions induce avoidance motivation and affect negative economic sentiment, but leave approach motivation and positive economic sentiment unaffected. In contrast, economic expansions induce approach motivation and positive economic sentiment, but do not affect avoidance motivation or negative economic sentiment (study 1). Moreover, economic contractions induce risk aversion for negative outcomes, but not for positive outcomes, while economic expansions instigate risk seeking for positive outcomes, but not for negative outcomes (study 2). A time-series study based on consumer spending over eight decades mirrors the findings of the experimental studies: The consumption of products associated with avoiding negative outcomes increases during economic contractions, but not during expansions. In contrast, the consumption of products associated with achieving positive outcomes increases in expansions, but is unaffected by contractions (study 3).