Perceptions of injustice in intercultural relations

Perceptions of injustice are likely to occur in intercultural relations because cultures often define justice and its implementation differently. This article reviews factors and processes that are unique to intercultural relations and that may give rise to feelings of injustice during intercultural interactions. Antecedents that can trigger a sense of injustice with regard to distributive, procedural, and retributive justice are reviewed. The consequences of perceived injustice are also analyzed. The implications of our analysis for research and practice are discussed.     

Cross-cultural effects on detecting multiple sources of driving hazard: Evidence from the deceleration detection flicker test

Collision rates in Malaysia are much higher than the UK; do these reflect poorer hazard perception skill or does exposure to hazardous events improve hazard detection ability? The deceleration detection flicker test (DDFT) was used to investigate the effect of experience and cross-cultural differences between Malaysian and UK drivers in their ability to detect the deceleration of a lead vehicle while simultaneously identifying any secondary hazards in side roads. Matched groups of participants with lower or higher levels of experience were recruited from the University of Nottingham in the UK and Malaysia. Malaysian drivers were significantly less accurate than UK drivers in detecting the deceleration of lead vehicles on urban roads, and significantly less accurate in detecting the presence of secondary hazards across all road types. Experienced drivers were significantly faster than novices in detecting decelerations of the lead vehicle, and were significantly more accurate in detecting the presence of secondary hazards. The study concludes that high exposure to hazardous events on the road in Malaysia does not yield expertise in this hazard perception task, although the DDFT does differentiate experience cross-culturally.     

Compassionate Politics: Support for Old-Age Programs Among the Non Elderly

This study examines the existence of compassionate support for old-age programs such as Social Security and Medicare among the non-elderly. Past research has focused on merit and equality as a basis for support of social welfare programs by examining views of recipients' deservingness; in contrast, this study considers the extent of program support based on recipients' perceived need. Analysis of data from the 1984 National Election Study and from a local survey (Suffolk County, New York, 1989) shows that non-elderly individuals who view older people as financially impoverished are more likely to support government benefits for the aged. Moreover, compassionate support for old-age programs is distinct from liberal ideology; indeed, political conservatives, not liberals, are most likely to support such programs out of compassion for older people, a finding at odds with Sniderman's (Sniderman & Carmines, 1997) notion of principled conservatism. The analysis also revealed that response to elderly need does not convey the effects of long-term and family-based interests; this result substantiates that support of old-age programs can be considered as other-regarding (i.e., reflecting a concern for individuals that is unrelated to one's personal circumstances). Short-term and long-term interests tend to eclipse rather than promote compassionate support of old-age programs, consistent with the findings of traditional research on self-interest.     

仿真场景下类别空间关系判断中的注意分配

研究采用“提示-目标”的范式,并结合单、双任务的方法探讨仿真场景下类别空间关系判断中的空间注意分配。结果发现：提示影响类别空间关系判断效率,不同类型提示对类别空间关系判断的影响不同;类别空间关系判断还受到任务类型和判断类型的影响。由此得出以下结论：提示有助于注意资源的集中,提示越有效注意资源分配效率越高;注意分配受到第二任务要求的影响;决定注意分配策略的认知判断过程可能是持续存在的     

The spatial distribution of behavior under varying frequencies of temporally scheduled water delivery

Two studies evaluated the effects of response-independent water deliveries on the location (on the floor of the experimental chamber) and position (height) of rats' behavior. In both experiments, fixed-time schedules delivered water in two dispensers that were located at opposite ends of the chamber. In Experiment 1, the two schedules provided complementary frequencies of water deliveries while the overall number of deliveries stayed constant. In Experiment 2, one of the schedules delivered water twice as frequently as the other; this proportion was kept constant while the overall density of water deliveries changed systematically. In both experiments, a single position (height) of behavior was dominant. Also, the percentage of time allocated to each dispenser was roughly proportional to the percentage of water deliveries associated with the dispensers. These data and additional considerations support the importance of examining the spatial properties and patterning of behavior.     

Effects of response-allocation constraints on multiple-schedule performance

Four pigeons were trained on multiple variable-interval schedules in which components alternated after a fixed number of responses had been emitted. In Part 1, each component change occurred after 20 responses; in Part 2, the number was 40; and in Part 3, the number of responses before change was 10. Component reinforcer rates were varied over five experimental conditions in each of Parts 1 to 3. Component response rates decreased as the specified number of responses per component was increased. However, the relation between component response-rate ratios and component reinforcer-rate ratios was independent of the specified number of responses per component, and was similar to that found when components alternate after fixed time periods. In the fourth part of the experiment, the results from Parts 1 to 3 were systematically replicated by keeping the component reinforcer rates constant, but different, while the number of responses that produced component alternation was varied from 5 to 60 responses. The results showed that multiple-schedule performance under component-response-number constraint is similar to that under conventional component-duration constraint. They further suggest that multiple-schedule response rates are controlled by component reinforcer rates and not by principles of maximizing overall reinforcer rates or meliorating component reinforcer rates.     

The maximization of overall reinforcement rate on concurrent chains

We model behavioral allocation on concurrent chains in which the initial links are independent variable-interval schedules. We also quantify the relationship between behavior during the initial links and the probability of entering a terminal link. The behavior that maximizes overall reinforcement rate is then considered and compared with published experimental data. Although all the trends in the data are predicted by rate maximization, there are considerable deviations from the predictions of rate maximization when reward magnitudes are unequal. We argue from our results that optimal allocation on concurrent chains, and prey choice as used in the theory of optimal diets, are distinct concepts. We show that the maximization of overall rate can lead to apparent violations of stochastic transitivity.     

Time allocation in concurrent schedules: the effect of signalled reinforcement

The responses of five pigeons were reinforced on concurrent variable-interval variable-interval reinforcement schedules in which changeover key responses changed the stimulus and reinforcement schedules associated with the food key. While the reinforcement availability in one component remained unchanged throughout the experiment, the reinforcement availability in the other component was, during several conditions, signalled by the onset of an additional discriminative stimulus. During unsignalled conditions, both the relative frequency of responding and the relative time spent in each component approximated the obtained relative reinforcement frequency in each component. The effect of signalling reinforcer availability in one component was to (1) reduce responding in the signalled component to near-zero levels, and (2) increase the relative time in the unsignalled component, without a corresponding increase in the obtained relative reinforcement frequency. The magnitude of the increase in relative time in the unsignalled component decreased as the overall frequency of reinforcement increased. This deviation in the matching relation between relative time and the obtained relative reinforcement frequency was eliminated if the overall reinforcement frequency was increased before the signal was introduced and then, without removing the signal, gradually reduced.     

Response and time allocation in concurrent second-order schedules

Six pigeons were trained on two-key concurrent variable-interval schedules in which the required response was the completion of a fixed number of key pecks. When the required number of pecks was equal on the two keys, response- and time-allocation ratios under-matched obtained reinforcement rate ratios. A similar result was found when the required number of pecks was unequal, except that performance, measured in response terms, was biased to the shorter required number of pecks and was less sensitive to reinforcement-rate changes. No such differences were found in the data on time spent responding. When the variable-interval schedules were kept constant and the required numbers of pecks were systematically varied, response ratios changed inversely with the ratio of the required number of pecks, but time-allocation ratios varied directly with the same independent variable. Thus, on response measures, pigeons “prefer” the schedule with the smaller peck requirement, but on time measures they “prefer” the schedule with the larger peck requirement. This finding is inconsistent with a commonsense notion of choice, which sees response and time-allocation measures as equivalent.