Exploring cooperation and competition in the Centipede game through verbal protocol analysis

The Centipede game is an abstract model of reciprocal relationships in which two individuals alternate in helping each other at relatively small personal cost. Whereas mutual cooperation can benefit both individuals in the long run, a paradoxical but logically compelling backward induction argument suggests that cooperation is irrational. Empirical studies have reported reliable deviations from the non‐cooperative backward induction solution, but their exclusively quantitative methods allow only a limited range of predefined motives to be explored. Our study uses verbal (‘think aloud’) protocols and qualitative data analysis to identify motives for cooperation in the Centipede game. The results provide little evidence for sophisticated backward induction reasoning. Instead, a wide range of motives emerged, their relative saliences varying according to the stage of the game. Activity bias affected decisions mainly at the beginning of the game, whereas cooperative and altruistic social value orientations most frequently accounted for cooperation towards its natural end.     

Information Medicine: An Application of the New Paradigm in Medicine

Information medicine is a new application and development of an age-old method of healing. It re-creates and re-discovers a method that has proved its merits for thousands of years through a synthesis with new developments in new-paradigm physics and biology. The basic premise of information medicine is the use of information to correct faulty or blocked information-flows in the organism. As the latest discoveries, among others by Dr. Biava, show, even cancerous cells can be reprogrammed through the introduction of substances that provide the correct information. Also, electromagnetic information can produce corrective re-programming, introducing an era of soft, information-based healing not as a substitute for, but as a complement to, the current biochemical substance and physical intervention-based methods. The information-based method I have developed is the one created by the Austrian scientist Erich Koerbler, called New Homeopathy. It harmonizes the electromagnetic field in the body through the use of specific geometrical forms. This article outlines the basic elements of this application of the new paradigm in medicine, with more detailed information provided in the references.     

Tragedy or tragicomedy: Mixed feelings induced by positive and negative emotional events

Based on the theory of appraisal, we predicted that positive and negative events happening to the same people or things in a specific chronological order (i.e., a negative event following a positive event) would induce different mixed feelings than the same events happening to different people or things. Pairs of emotional pictures with different captions were used to create two event groups. In the “tragic event” group, the positive and negative events happened to the same person or things, and in the “tragicomic event” group, the positive and negative events happened to different people or things. We designed two experiments to explore and compare the generation of mixed feelings in those two groups. In Experiment 1, the negative event was shown first, and in Experiment 2, the negative event was shown second (although the chronological order of the depicted events was the same). The participants were 381 undergraduates: 195 in Experiment 1 and 186 in Experiment 2. In both experiments, we found that tragic events introduced less intense mixed feelings than did tragicomic events due to fewer pleasurable feelings induced by the tragic events. There was no significant difference in the report of negative emotions between the groups. Appraisal theory and negative bias effects may explain these results.     

Social values priorities and orientation towards individualism and collectivism of Greek university students

The study aimed to explore the value priorities of Greek young adults and their orientation towards individualism and collectivism and to investigate for possible relationships between value types and individualism and collectivism. Greek undergraduate students (n = 484) completed the Social Values Survey, the Auckland’s Individualism and Collectivism Scale and a form of demographic information. Benevolence, self-direction and hedonism were found to be the most highly rated value types for both males and females. In the case of individualism and collectivism participants scored higher on collectivism. Males and science and technology students scored higher on value types regarding openness to change and self-enhancement. Females and social and humanities students scored higher on conservation and self-transcendence value types. Religiosity was associated to collectivism and to value types regarding conservation and self-transcendence. Regression analysis revealed a direct association between individualism and openness to change and self-enhancement. Collectivism was found to be associated with conservation and self-transcendence.     

异性拒绝对大学生择偶行为的长期影响:基于社会计量器理论的探讨

运用问卷调查法以339名大学生为研究对象,基于社会计量器理论探讨异性拒绝经历和择偶价值感对大学生择偶行为的长期影响。研究发现:(1)女大学生的择偶标准显著高于男大学生,男大学生的择偶行为倾向略高于女大学生;(2)异性拒绝经历与择偶价值感、择偶标准、择偶行为倾向呈负相关,择偶价值感与择偶标准、择偶行为倾向呈显著正相关;(3)异性拒绝经历可以显著负向预测大学生的择偶行为,择偶价值感在异性拒绝经历对大学生择偶行为影响中起部分中介作用,但其发挥作用的方式存在性别差异。这一结果表明,择偶价值感是一种重要的缓冲因素,可以在一定程度上缓解异性拒绝给大学生择偶行为带来的负面影响。     

Entropy in multiattribute problems

Concepts involving entropy have intermittently been used in consideration of multiattribute problems. This paper discusses the main approaches that have been proposed. It is argued that the analogies drawn with information theory and between weights and probabilities are to some degree unsatisfactory and a reconsideration is given. The result is a new suggestion in the spirit of Jaynes’ maximum entropy methodology, but now in two parts: ask those questions that are likely to be most discriminating (minimize entropy) but process the answers obtained conservatively (maximize entropy). In contrast to many previous methods, it is the distribution of the utilities of alternatives rather than of the weights given to attributes that is the focus of attention. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Conservative speech

In this paper, I argue that an utterance can function to conserve or maintain the truth of its asserted content, what I call conservative speech. Conservative utterances can work to preserve the truth of their asserted content in two ways. In the first, directive conservatives, the utterance serves as an indirect directive for interlocutors to act in ways that serve to maintain the asserted content. In the second, constitutive conservatives, serve to partly constitute the truth conditions of the asserted content directly. Constitutive conservatives, I argue, are particularly important because they are a central tool for how social groups enforce and thereby maintain facts about group norms and values in the face of deviation. They thus have a central role to play in understanding the role of language in the abilities of social groups to create and maintain their norms and values.     

How do employees react to leaders’ unethical behavior? The role of moral disengagement

Concerns over unethical leader behavior persist in today's workplace. Although some employees continue to support their leaders after learning of their unethical actions, others do not. In this paper, we integrate social cognitive theory with social information processing theory to propose that the support employees give to leaders who act unethically hinges on their propensity to morally disengage. Specifically, we develop a conditional indirect effects model, wherein moral disengagement propensity mitigates the negative impact of unethical leader behavior on leader-directed support via employees’ perceptions of value congruence with and trust in the leader. The sum result is an improved understanding of when and why employees offer support to versus withhold support from leaders who act in ethically questionable ways.     

Applications of the MACBETH Approach in the Framework of an Additive Aggregation Model

In measurement theory terminology, MACBETH is an interactive approach for mapping into a real scale the various degrees to which the elements of a finite set possess a property P. The originality of MACBETH's questioning procedure is the possibility of establishing a constructive path towards cardinal measurement in both quantitative and substantive meaningful terms, avoiding the operational problems recognized as a weakness of other procedures. The use of the notion of semantic absolute judgements plays a key role here and the simplicity, interactivity and constructiveness of our approach insert it in the modern paradigms of decision aid. This article illustrates the usefulness of MACBETH as a tool to facilitate decision support, by describing its application in two real public decision situations where we acted as facilitators. Although the cases correspond to quite different decision contexts and problematics and our interventions have addressed diverse issues, they have in common the fact that we conducted both evaluation processes in the framework of an additive multicriteria aggregation procedure. In the first case MACBETH has been used to support the construction of (local) cardinal value functions, while the second illustrates how our approach can serve as a weighting procedure to determine the scaling constants of an additive aggregation model. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.