The Oral History and Education Project of the International Society for Quality of Life Studies and the Gallup Institute for Global Well-Being: A Way to Honor Distinguished Researchers and to Preserve their Legacies—The Alex Michalos Interviews

The Oral History and Education Project of the International Society for Quality of Life Studies and the Gallup Institute for Global Well-Being is described along with specific, step-by-step procedures and guidelines for planning, conducting, and disseminating oral history and educational interviews with pre-eminent research scientists and exemplars of service to others. An illustrative “case” of interviews with the pre-eminent scholar, Alex Michalos, winner of Canada’s Gold Medal Award and president of Academy II of the Royal Society of Canada is presented. The Project’s goal is to produce oral histories and educational interviews with the top researchers in the fields of quality of life, well-being, social indicators, positive psychology and other sciences, in order to preserve their academic legacies, share their findings worldwide, and encourage a new generation of researchers, scientists, and oral historians. Those conducting these interviews may claim their interviews as publications in the fields of the history and teaching of psychology and sociology and oral history as long as these interviews remain available through a university, academic society, college textbook company, or university archivist. It is hoped that this article will inspire and guide others who may wish to emulate this work.     

Class Identification and Psychological Variables Related to Well-being and Social Mobility

It has been reported in the literature that the socioeconomic level of subjects often does not correspond to their class identification, and that the latter is a better predictor of physical and psychological health variables. The objectives of this study were to provide evidence that class identification is largely independent of the socioeconomic level of subjects, and to verify the extent to which class identification is related to psychological factors (self-esteem, social support networks, strategies for coping with stress, depression, locus of control, achievement motivation and subjective well-being), and to the probability of experiencing upward social mobility. Participating in the study were 918 subjects, of whom 346 were extremely poor, 260 moderately poor and 312 were not poor. City districts in Mexico City and the larger metropolitan area were selected randomly. The results indicated a weak relationship between objective indicators of socioeconomic level and the class identification of subjects and a relationship between class identification and some of the psychological factors measured, and between the upward social mobility.     

双性化对大学生主观幸福感的影响

采用性别角色量表和主观幸福感量表对四所不同类型院校大学生的性别角色取向及主观幸福感进行了测评,结果显示大部分的学生性别角色趋于双性化,但男女同学趋于双性化的程度有所不同,男女大学生不同的男性化和女性化程度对主观幸福感的影响也不同。     

Option fixation: A cognitive contributor to overconfidence

The ASC model of choice and confidence in general knowledge proposes that respondents first Assess the familiarity of presented options, and then use the high-familiarity option as a retrieval cue to Search memory for the purposes of Constructing an explanation about why that high-familiarity option is true. The ASC process implies that overconfidence results in part from a tendency to fixate on the high-familiarity option, to the neglect of the other option. If this implication is true, then judgment tasks requiring respondents to evaluate each option independently should result in reduced overconfidence as compared with standard judgment tasks. Two experiments tested this implication, and found that confidence and overconfidence were reduced when respondents evaluated options independently. The findings support the proposal that option fixation contributes to overconfidence, and also clarify the limitations of random error explanations of overconfidence.     

Simplicity and probability in causal explanation

What makes some explanations better than others? This paper explores the roles of simplicity and probability in evaluating competing causal explanations. Four experiments investigate the hypothesis that simpler explanations are judged both better and more likely to be true. In all experiments, simplicity is quantified as the number of causes invoked in an explanation, with fewer causes corresponding to a simpler explanation. Experiment 1 confirms that all else being equal, both simpler and more probable explanations are preferred. Experiments 2 and 3 examine how explanations are evaluated when simplicity and probability compete. The data suggest that simpler explanations are assigned a higher prior probability, with the consequence that disproportionate probabilistic evidence is required before a complex explanation will be favored over a simpler alternative. Moreover, committing to a simple but unlikely explanation can lead to systematic overestimation of the prevalence of the cause invoked in the simple explanation. Finally, Experiment 4 finds that the preference for simpler explanations can be overcome when probability information unambiguously supports a complex explanation over a simpler alternative. Collectively, these findings suggest that simplicity is used as a basis for evaluating explanations and for assigning prior probabilities when unambiguous probability information is absent. More broadly, evaluating explanations may operate as a mechanism for generating estimates of subjective probability.     

情绪与决策的关系

该文对情绪与决策关系的研究进行了较为全面的阐述：早期的决策理论完全排斥情绪的影响作用,研究者们热衷于建立理性决策的数学模型;自Kahneman和Tversky提出前景理论后,产生了以预期情绪为主的后悔和失望理论,以及主观预期愉悦理论;20世纪90年代后,随着神经科学和社会心理学家们对情绪与认知关系研究的深入,一些学者意识到决策过程中不仅存在作为效用的预期情绪,还存在“即时”情绪,它们可以在没有认知评估参与的情况下产生,可以反过来影响认知评估,可以直接影响决策行为。     

It felt fluent but I did not like it: fluency effects in faces versus patterns

Whether you like a person or not is often appraised in a glance. However, under such short presentation durations stimuli are harder to perceive and, according to hedonic fluency theory-which holds that higher fluency is linked to higher liking-thus, are liked less. Given that liking considerably influences person perception, we tested how shorter and longer presentation durations affect liking for faces and compared this with abstract patterns. To capture facets of fluency of processing we assessed felt fluency, liking, and certainty ratings. Following predictions of fluency theory, longer presentation durations led to higher felt fluency, certainty, and positively affected liking judgments in the abstract patterns. In faces, felt fluency and certainty also increased with longer durations. However, with longer durations, faces were liked less, and liking was not related to felt fluency. In other words, in contrast to hedonic fluency theory, faces are more attractive when only seen for a short amount of time. Thus, fluency does not inevitably lead to more positive evaluations—it rather depends on the stimulus category. We discuss these findings in terms of the special status that faces have with regard to human perception and evaluation.     

Chinese adolescents with higher social dominance orientation are less prosocial and less happy: A value‐environment fit analysis

This study aims to investigate the relationship between social dominance orientation (SDO) and subjective well‐being among Chinese adolescents (N = 4246), and to examine the mediating role of prosocial behaviour in this relationship. The structural equation model's results showed that SDO was negatively associated with prosocial behaviour and subjective well‐being, that prosocial behaviour was positively associated with subjective well‐being, and also that (low) prosocial behaviour partially mediated the negative relationship between SDO and subjective well‐being. Multi‐group analyses showed that the mediation model was generally similar between boys and girls, but that the negative relationship between SDO and prosocial behaviour was somewhat stronger among girls than boys. This study sheds light on how SDO is associated with positive outcomes among Chinese adolescents and highlights the mediating role of prosocial behaviour as an underlying mechanism between SDO and subjective well‐being. Future studies are needed to further discover the role of culture values in the association between SDO and subjective well‐being.     

Supersize My Chances: Promotional Lotteries Impact Product Size Choices

Promotional lotteries offer consumers a chance to win one of many prizes along with their purchase. Critically, as is often the case, these campaigns not only include an assortment of prizes but also an assortment of offerings that one can buy to enter the lottery—such as a small or an extra‐large coffee. While companies regularly advertise that the objective odds of winning do not vary by the size of their product offerings, recent anecdotal evidence suggest that consumers behave as if it does. The net result is that consumers seem to be supersizing during promotional lotteries, and thus purchasing larger sized items. Eight studies (four core and four supplementary in Supporting information ) and a single‐paper meta‐analysis confirm that the supersizing phenomenon is indeed real and provides evidence that this behavior is the manifestation of consumers elevating their sense of control. Specifically, supersizing serves to gain psychological control over the pursuit of a desirable, but seemingly unobtainable, outcome.     

父母和班主任自主支持对青少年幸福感和孤独感的影响：个体为中心的视角

为探讨不同来源自主支持对青少年幸福感和孤独感的影响,采用问卷调查的方法,测量了2941名青少年感知到的父母和班主任自主支持、生活满意度、积极情感、消极情感和孤独感。结果发现：（1）存在四个自主支持潜在剖面：父母低-班主任较高自主支持组（5.88%）、父母中等-班主任低自主支持组（5.00%）、较高自主支持组（56.21%）以及高自主支持组（32.91%）。（2）男生、年龄大的青少年更可能归为父母中等-班主任低自主支持组。（3）高自主支持组幸福感较高、孤独感较低,较高自主支持组其次,父母低-班主任较高自主支持组幸福感最低、孤独感最高。（4）对青少年幸福感和孤独感而言,父母自主支持更重要。