When do peers influence adolescent males' risk taking? Examining decision making under conditions of risk and ambiguity

Risk taking is highly prevalent among adolescent males, and a range of studies have shown that decisions become riskier if a peer is present. However, previous studies have typically provided participants with explicit probabilities of risk in each situation. This does not accurately reflect adolescents' real‐world risk taking, where decisions are made in ambiguous situations alongside their peers. Aiming for a more ecologically valid design, the present experiment manipulated situational ambiguity and examined its interplay with group decision making and developmental factors. Adolescent males (N = 202) aged 12–15 completed a “Wheel of Fortune” task and then self‐reported their score, presenting an opportunity to cheat as a measure of antisocial risk taking. As predicted, adolescents were more likely to take risks when probabilities were ambiguous rather than explicit. Further, higher levels of gambling choices were made by groups in ambiguous, but not risk situations. Age significantly predicted gambling in ambiguous conditions, whereas developmental dispositions (risk perception, reward sensitivity, and inhibitory control) did not play a role. Findings provide an insight into the social and situational conditions under which adolescent males engage in reckless behavior.     

从归因视角探讨组织公正感产生机制

目前组织公正感研究的重点是组织公正与后续行为之间的关系,但某一特定事件的公平/不公平感产生的过程却未得到实验检验.本研究旨在将归因理论的观点和方法纳入到公正判断之中,从归因的视角探讨组织公正感的产生机制.研究结果表明,归因过程是公平判断的认知前提,对公平判断有显著的预测作用.     

The role of competition and knowledge in the Ellsberg task

Ambiguity avoidance denotes people's preference for gambling situations with known over unknown, or ambiguous, probability distributions. In four experiments we provide evidence for the interaction between competitiveness and knowledge in Ellsberg's task, in which people have a choice between a risky box (distribution of balls known) and an ambiguous box (distribution of balls not known). If the situation is perceived as competitive (the experimenter or an opponent is responsible for composing the boxes) people avoid ambiguity by betting on the box with the known probability distribution. If the task is perceived as cooperative (a partner or friend is composing the boxes) people are indifferent toward ambiguity or even ambiguity seeking. In addition, we find that people expect their winning odds to be less than even in the ambiguous box. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

角色压力源对教师生理健康与心理健康的影响

首先,对角色压力源量表在中国文化背景下的适用性进行了检验,6所学校586份调查问卷的探索性因素分析和内部一致性分析表明,角色压力源问卷具有较好的效度和信度;7所学校612份调查问卷的验证性因素分析进一步验证了角色压力源问卷的效度和信度。然后,利用7所学校612份有效数据,采用层次回归分析考察了角色压力源与教师生理健康、心理健康的关系,结果表明:角色压力源对教师的生理健康与心理健康有显著的负向影响。     

不同模糊程度下模糊决策的决策偏好

该研究采用艾尔斯伯格悖论的变式,选取二择一的迫选任务,旨在探讨不同球数和不同模糊程度下模糊决策的决策偏好。结果发现,球数的不同对决策的偏好基本上没有影响;而模糊程度的不同,对决策的偏好有影响。具体表现为：模糊程度较高时,被试倾向于模糊厌恶,模糊程度较低时倾向于模糊寻求。     

群际归因偏好研究综述

群际归因偏好是一种在归因中偏袒内群、贬低外群的现象,是群际偏好在归因中的一种表现.本文首先探讨了其表现形式及产生原因,随后讨论了内群认同强度和群体显著性等的影响因素,最后对未来的研究进行了展望.     

The impact of role stress on workers' behaviour through job satisfaction and organizational commitment

Dysfunctions in role performance have been associated with a large number of consequences, almost always negative, which affect the well-being of workers and the functioning of organizations. An individual's experience of receiving incompatible or conflicting requests (role conflict) and/or the lack of enough information to carry out his/her job (role ambiguity) are causes of role stress. According to previous theory, role ambiguity and conflict decrease workers' performance and are positively related to the probability of workers leaving the organization. Job satisfaction refers to a positive evaluation of a job, while organizational commitment refers to an employee's attachment to the organization. The affective dimensions of organizational commitment and job satisfaction are considered to be important predictors of turnover intention, absenteeism, and job performance. In the literature, role conflict and ambiguity have been proposed as determining factors of workers' job satisfaction and their commitment towards the organization. The role of job satisfaction and organizational commitment were analysed as variables that should mediate between role ambiguity and conflict and employees' behaviour. The hypotheses were confirmed by means of path analysis carried out with data obtained from a sample of Spanish blue-collar workers employed by a bus company and a water supply company. Role stressors were negatively related to affective commitment mediated through job satisfaction. Affective commitment to the organization exerted a positive influence on performance and reduces the withdrawal behaviour analysed— intention to leave and absenteeism—although the strongest predictor of intention to leave was, in this study, job satisfaction.     

Argument Status and PP-Attachment

Prepositional phrase attachment was investigated in temporarily ambiguous sentences. Both attachment site (noun phrase or verb phrase) and argument status (argument or adjunct) were manipulated to test the hypothesis that arguments are processed differently than adjuncts. Contrary to this hypothesis, some previous research suggested that arguments and adjuncts are initially processed in the same manner, following a general bias to attach prepositional phrases to the verb phrase whenever possible [Clifton, Speer, & Abney (1991) Journal of Memory and Language, 30, 251–271]. The current study supports the hypothesis for differential processing, even during the initial stages of syntactic analysis. In an eye movement experiment, readers spent less first-pass time on argument prepositional phrases (PPs) than adjunct PPs. The results support a view in which a noun’s or verb’s argument structure can facilitate the analysis of its arguments.This research was supported by NSF grants SBR-9729056 and SBR-9720473 to the first author. We gratefully thank Gerry Altmann, Rick Lewis, Brian McElree, Don Mitchell, Neal Pearlmutter, Shari Speer, and Suzanne Stevenson for useful discussions and helpful comments. We would also like to acknowledge the Rutgers University Center for Cognitive Science, where the eye movement data were collected and an initial draft of the paper was written.     

Plausibility and Verb Subcategorization in Temporarily Ambiguous Sentences: Evidence from Self-Paced Reading

A self-paced reading experiment investigated processing of sentences containing a noun-phrase that could temporarily be mistaken as the direct-object argument of a verb in a subordinate clause but actually constituted the syntactic subject of the main clause (often referred to as an early vs. late closure ambiguity). Subcategorization preference of the subordinate verb and plausibility of the syntactic misanalysis were manipulated. Elevated reading times occurred during processing of the temporarily ambiguous noun-phrase for those sentences where the noun-phrase was an implausible direct-object of the preceding verb, regardless of the verbs subcategorization preferences. Elevated reading times were observed for all sentence types following syntactic disambiguation. Subsequent correlational analyses showed that the verbs individual subcategorization preferences affected processing time on the critical noun-phrase and the syntactically disambiguating main verb.