An exploration of attitudes toward the use of patient incentives to support diabetes self-management

Objective: To improve our understanding of the potential of incentives to enhance diabetes self-management (type 1 and type 2) and to integrate incentives into a conceptual model of diabetes self-management over time.

Design: A qualitative analysis of in-depth individual interviews with 12 patients and 9 providers.

Main outcome measures: Influence of time on patients’ needs for diabetes self-management technologies and on the use of incentives to drive behavioural changes.

Results: Ten of the 12 participants with diabetes (83%) were interested in using financial incentives to improve their diabetes self-management. We found that incentives can play two key roles in diabetes self-management: guide the learning phase during the creation of habits; and serve as an acknowledgement of efforts made in the stable phase, when providers typically only focus on the patients’ failures at self-management.

Conclusion: Patients seem receptive to the idea of financial incentives, which have the potential to support diabetes self-management through either small monetary amounts or tangible rewards. Incentives hold promise for supporting behaviour changes, especially in early stages of diabetes, but they require careful planning to avoid the undesired consequence of decreased intrinsic motivation.     

“Money Helps”: People who inject drugs and their perceptions of financial compensation and its ethical implications

This study documents how people who inject drugs (PWID) in rural Puerto Rico perceive payments for participating in HIV epidemiological studies. In-depth interviews were conducted among a subset (n = 40) of active PWID older than 18 years of age who had been previously enrolled in a much larger study (N = 360). Findings suggest that financial compensation was the main motivation for initially enrolling in the parent study. Then, as trust in the researchers developed, participants came to perceive compensation as part of a reciprocal exchange in which they assisted researchers by providing a trustful account of their experiences and researchers reciprocated with financial support.     

The Problem of the Condition of Arousal of the Pure Sensation of Cutaneous Pain

In order to develop scales representing curiosity-arousing components of pictures (slides) of either common objects or random shapes, a total of 56 college student Ss rated both sets of material on nine dimensions. Factor analyses indicated that the nine dimensions could be reduced to two factors. In order to test the ability of these factors to predict memorial performance and exploratory behavior, an additional 80 undergraduates were then tested for recognition or free looking time (FLT) of either object or random shape slides. Separate regression equations, using FLT and recognition performance as criterion measures, were computed. The present results not only indicate stability in visual exploratory scaling plus redundancy among various attributes of visual stimuli, but also suggest that behavior can be considered as elicited by two separate attributes of visual stimuli.     

Psychological biases of individual investors and financial satisfaction

Traditional finance theory is based on the principle of maximization of utility and explains how choices are made by rational people. Although the theory provides numerous insights, observation of actual behavior of people was seen to be different from what the theory predicted. The homo economicus is in reality a homo sapien who has emotions and beliefs that help to filter the content from his or her environment. These beliefs and preferences that arise due to cognitive limitations, presence of emotions, and various psychological motives guide or bias his or her decisions. Much literature states that the biases should be corrected as they negatively impact financial behaviour and individual's well‐being. However, evolutionary psychology considers biases as design features of human mind. Thus, biases are not always bad, as at times, these biases can help the individual investor to choose the best course of action from the multiple possibilities and enable committing the less costly mistakes, thereby helping the individual to achieve satisficing behaviour. This paper aims to explore the investor biases and see whether they are related to the financial satisfaction of the individuals. Financial satisfaction is the measure of satisfaction with one's financial situation. The results showed that overconfidence bias, reliance on expert bias, and self‐control bias have a positive and significant association with financial satisfaction levels. Association of a few other biases with financial satisfaction was also observed under certain control conditions. This study provides further insights on investor behavior and paves the way for various possibilities for future research.     

Impact of Economic Hardship and Financial Threat on Suicide Ideation and Confusion

The present study tested the extent to which perceived economic hardship is associated with psychological distress (suicide ideation and confusion) after controlling for personal characteristics. It also explored whether perceived financial threat (i.e., fearful anxious-uncertainty about the stability and security of one's personal financial situation) mediates the relationship between economic hardship and psychological distress outcomes. The theoretical model was tested in a sample of Canadian students (n = 211) and was validated in a community sample of employed Portuguese adults (n = 161). In both samples, the fit of the model was good. Parameter estimates indicated that greater experience of economic hardship increased with financial threat, which in turn increased with levels of suicide ideation and confusion. We discuss the practical implications of these results, such as for programs aimed at alleviating the burden of financial hardship, in our concluding remarks.     

儿童自我延迟满足的视觉认知

采用眼动研究方法,以儿童的延迟等待时间及眼动特征为指标,通过两个实验考察儿童在自我延迟满足情境中的注意分配策略及自我延迟满足能力发展的年龄特点。实验结果表明：偏爱策略能促进学前儿童的自我延迟满足;小学1、2年级儿童的自我延迟满足能力显著高于学前儿童;延迟奖励物的彩色照片比黑白照片更有利于儿童的延迟等待;眼动方法是延迟满足研究的有效方法     

个性心理因素与非理性金融行为研究

采用问卷法对个性心理因素中的人格、决策模式与非理性金融行为的关系进行了研究。研究结果表明：人格、决策模式对非理性金融行为有显著影响,不同人格类型、不同决策模式的个体的非理性金融行为差异显著。研究发现,人格、决策模式对各类非理性金融行为以及各类非理性金融行为总和的预测力皆达显著,并且对不同的非理性金融行为有不同预测力;理智型、即时型、依赖型的决策模式与感觉-直觉人格维度对非理性金融行为总和的预测力显著。     

Social influence on predictions of simulated stock prices

Herding in financial markets refers to that investors are influenced by others. This study addresses the importance of consistency for herding. It is suggested that, in financial markets perceptions of consistency are based on repeated observations over time. Consistency may then be perceived as the agreement across time between investors' predictions. In addition, consistency may be related to variance over time in each investor's predictions. In an experiment using a Multiple Cue Probability Learning paradigm, 96 undergraduates made multi‐trial predictions of future stock prices given information about the current price and the predictions made by five fictitious others. Consistency was varied between the others' predictions (correlation) and within the others' predictions (variance). The results showed that the predictions were significantly influenced by the others' predictions when these were correlated. No effect of variance was observed. Hence, participants were influenced by the others when they were in agreement, regardless of whether they varied their predictions over trials or not. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

组织职业生涯管理对职业承诺和工作满意度的影响 ——职业延迟满足的中介作用分析

以321名企业员工为被试,通过自编的职业延迟满足问卷,考察了企业员工的职业延迟满足在组织职业生涯管理对职业承诺、工作满意度影响过程中的中介作用。结果表明：职业延迟满足与组织职业生涯管理、职业承诺、工作满意度存在显著正相关;工作年限等人口统计学变量对职业延迟满足没有显著的预测作用;公平晋升、注重培训对职业延迟满足有显著的预测作用;职业延迟满足在组织职业生涯管理对职业承诺、工作满意度影响过程中存在中介作用;在结构方程模型中,职业延迟满足在公平晋升、注重培训与职业承诺、工作满意度之间存在中介作用;而职业延迟满足在职业发展与职业承诺、工作满意度之间不存在中介作用     

中学生消费价值观在家庭理财教育方式与消费决策风格之间的中介作用

目的：考察中学生消费价值观在家庭理财教育方式与消费决策风格之间的中介作用。方法：377名中学生完成了中学生消费价值观问卷、家庭理财教育方式问卷和中学生消费决策风格问卷。结果：父母积极的教育方式可通过树立合理的消费价值观来促进中学生形成理性的决策风格;父母消极的教育方式一方面通过树立不合理的消费价值观助长中学生非理性的决策风格,另一方面通过减弱合理的消费价值观来减弱其合理的决策风格。结论：中学生消费价值观在家庭理财教育方式与消费决策风格之间起中介作用。