Linking cause and solution: Predicting support for poverty alleviation proposals

There are multiple alternative proposals for alleviating poverty, but unless these receive public support they are unlikely to be implemented. Drawing on Feagin's work, this research predicted support for different poverty alleviation proposals among Australians based on individual characteristics and attitudes, including explanations for poverty. Overall, participants (N = 526) favoured the minimum income proposal (traditional welfare) significantly more than the guaranteed jobs or equal income proposals. The results indicated differences in predictors of support for each proposal, but structural causes of poverty had the most consistent effect across all three. Other variables included gender, age, having received welfare, self‐reported social class, self‐reported financial situation, egalitarianism, conservatism, and support for individualistic explanations for poverty. The results suggested that Australians prefer traditional welfare‐style measures to alleviate poverty, compared to the other proposals examined here. Support for all proposals, however, was predicated on people's beliefs being consistent with those underlying the proposal. Those interested in implementing more radical solutions to address poverty need to emphasise the relations between the causes of poverty and the solutions to it in order to increase public support.     

大学生日常消费决策中认知信息与情绪信息的交互作用

采用自编日常消费决策材料,以决策依据和决策质量为指标,通过对120名男女大学生的研究,结果发现:⑴男女在决策依据和决策质量方面均无显著差异;⑵认知信息、认知信息与情绪信息的交互作用均对决策依据有显著影响,而情绪信息对决策依据无显著影响,认知信息、情绪信息以及二者的交互作用对决策质量均无显著影响;⑶不同的认知信息在负性情绪变化上存在显著差异,而在正性情绪变化上无显著差异。     

Bentham on animal welfare

Jeremy Bentham is often thought to have set the groundwork for the modern ‘animal liberation’ movement, but in fact he wrote little on the subject. A full examination of his work reveals a less radical position than that commonly attributed to him. Bentham was the first Western philosopher to grant animals equal consideration from within a comprehensive, non-religious moral theory, and he was a staunch defender of animal welfare laws. But he also approved of killing and using animals, as long as pointless cruelty could be avoided. The nuances of his position are best brought out by comparing it to that of Peter Singer, who draws considerably more radical practical conclusions. This is not primarily explained by competing formulations of utilitarianism, however, but by different empirical background assumptions about the lives of animals.     

Some Hedonic Consequences of Perspective‐Taking in Recommending

What do people enjoy about making recommendations? Although recommendation recipients can gain useful information, the value of these exchanges for the information provider is less clear in comparison. In this article we test whether a common recommendation heuristic—egocentric projection—also has hedonic consequences, by conducting experiments that compare recommendations (suggestions for another person) to reviews, in which people merely express their own preferences. Over five studies, people preferred reviewing over recommending. Recommenders enjoyed themselves less when they had to take their recipients' perspective, to the extent that the recipients' tastes were different from their own. These results suggest that self‐expression can be intrinsically rewarding for recommendation makers, and that recommendation seekers can elicit more information by asking for reviews instead.     

质量还是价格?折衷产品缺货情境下的消费者选择

基于情境效应和决策冲突理论, 通过三个实验探讨折衷产品选项的不可得如何影响消费者对余下可得产品的偏好。研究结果表明, 折衷商品不可得对余下商品的吸引力呈现非对称性的影响。以质量和价格产品属性的购买情境为例, 中等价格中等质量商品的不可得将显著提升低价格商品的吸引力(实验1), 其原因在于折衷方案不可得显著提高了消费者的决策冲突, 高水平的决策冲突导致决策者偏好具有确定性优势的选项, 规避优势存在模糊性的选项。随着质量属性模糊性的降低(提供专家评价, 实验2; 消费者专业知识较强, 实验3)或提高(质量存在波动范围, 实验2), 折衷商品不可得效应相应减弱或加强。     

Psychotropic Medication Practices for Youth in Systems of Care

Concerns have been raised about the quality and appropriateness of psychiatric medication treatment for youth treated in the child welfare or juvenile justice systems. Unfortunately there is a lack of empirical research to indicate whether there are indeed widespread problems related to psychopharmacologic treatment for youth served by public sector systems. This exploratory study utilized data from a national survey of social workers to examine differences in reports on medication type, processes, and perceived outcomes for adolescent clients in the juvenile justice and/or child welfare system (n = 90) versus non-systems clients (n = 305). Relevant clinical and demographic factors were controlled in hierarchical binary logistic and linear regression analyses. The results indicated that social workers referring to systems cases were more likely to report the use of highly potent medication (antipsychotics, mood-stabilizers, and poly-pharmacy), less likely to report that clients were receptive to or involved in the decision to utilize medication, and less likely to report beneficial medication outcomes. However, these reported differences, suggesting that medication treatment for systems youth tends to be less participatory and beneficial, were largely accounted for by differences in clients’ level of functional impairment and rate of disruptive behavior disorders. Implications for further research are discussed.     

The Opposite of Human Enhancement: Nanotechnology and the Blind Chicken Problem

Nanotechnologies that have been linked to the possibility of enhancing cognitive capabilities of human beings might also be deployed to reduce or eliminate such capabilities in non-human vertebrate animals. A surprisingly large literature on the ethics of such disenhancement has been developed in response to the suggestion that it would be an ethically defensible response to animal suffering both in medical experimentation and in industrial livestock production. However, review of this literature illustrates the difficulty of formulating a coherent ethical debate. Well structured arguments for disenhancement can be made on the basis of mainstream views on the basis of ethical obligations to animals, but these arguments have not been persuasive against the moral intuition that disenhancements are unethical. At the same time, attempts to ground these intuitions in a coherent philosophical doctrine have been plagued by logical fallacies and question begging assertions. As such, the debate over animal disenhancement forecasts an enduring conundrum with respect to the core question of transforming the nature of sentient beings, and this conundrum is logically independent of claims that relate either to the distinctive of human beings or to issues deriving from the emphasis on enhancement.     

A cross‐cultural assessment of attitudes regarding perceived breaches of ethical conduct by both parties in the business‐consumer dyad

Recent initiatives in business curricula have included emphases on global business and ethics. Using 28 scenarios which reflect potential concerns regarding the conduct of either business or a consumer, this research combines these issues by comparing the ethical predisposition of business students in Australia with their Canadian counterparts. A sample of 264 students indicated that students in both countries generally hold high expectations for the behaviour of business and consumers. Both groups exhibited quite similar views in relation to the 28 consumer and business‐related scenarios. When comparing Canadian students to Australian students, four significant differences were documented in the 14 scenarios which address the behaviour of business entities. The assessment of attitudes regarding questionable consumer actions provided even more homogeneity as only one statistically significant difference was identified. The study concludes by documenting a series of attitudinal differences on the part of groups defined not by nationality, but rather on the basis of gender or age. These demographic differences were more pronounced than were the differences across the two countries. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications.     

A Spanish translation of Mehrabian and Russell's emotionality scales for environmental consumer psychology

The development of a translation of Mehrabian and Russell's scales for the measurement of pleasure, arousal and dominance from the original English to a Spanish version for use in Venezuela is described. The translated scales were administered to two samples of middle‐class Venezuelan consumers (n = 127,n = 127) between the ages of 20 and 50, among whom males and females were represented approximately equally. Internal reliability (measured by Cronbach's alpha) and scale validity (measured by factor analysis) indicate that the translated scales are suitable for consumer and other social psychological research in Spanish. Copyright © 2002 Henry Stewart Publications Ltd.