Measuring Judgments of Professionals: Using Vignettes in a Social Survey About Patient Confusion

The use of a factorial survey to measure the clinical judgments of professionals is described. This design allows the researcher to partial out the effects of variables on clinical decision making while using probability sampling. Methods frequently used to study judgments are reviewed and a study of nurses' judgments about patients' confusional episodes are used to illustrate the application of the factorial survey. Acute confusion in patients is a common clinical problem for nurses working in medical-surgical units in acute care hospitals. Using the factorial survey to study a real-life problem such as confusion demonstrates how this design can be used to test judgments in complex clinical situations, to aid in concept development, and to identify consensus among professionals.     

The Relationship Among Major Depression, Depressive Symptoms, and Self-Preoccupation

The present study investigates whether highly self-preoccupied people (exhibiting a tendency to focus primarily on the self and to maintain self-focused attention) were more likely to experience major depressive episodes (MDEs) than those without such tendencies. One hundred nineteen young community residents, aged 18 to 21, took part in semistructured interviews, during which we investigated their past and present history of mental illness, including MDEs, as delineated by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed. rev.; DSM-III-R). Self-preoccupation was measured by the Self-Preoccupation Scale (SPS). Of the 119 participants interviewed, the lowest and highest quarters in the SPS scores formed the low- and high-self-preoccupation (SP) groups. The lifetime prevalence of the DSM-III-R MDE was significantly greater among those high in SP than in the low SP group. Moreover, the high-SP group had significantly more depressive symptoms than the low-SP group. The contributory role of self-preoccupation to suicide ideation and the interpersonal aspects of self-preoccupation were discussed.     

Overconfidence and underconfidence: When and why people underestimate (and overestimate) the competition

It is commonly held that people believe themselves to be better than others, especially for outcomes under their control. However, such overconfidence is not universal. This paper presents evidence showing that people believe that they are below average on skill-based tasks that are difficult. A simple Bayesian explanation can account for these effects and for their robustness: On skill-based tasks, people generally have better information about themselves than about others, so their beliefs about others’ performances tend to be more regressive (thus less extreme) than their beliefs about their own performances. This explanation is tested in two experiments that examine these effects’ robustness to experience, feedback, and market forces. The discussion explores the implications for strategic planning in general and entrepreneurial entry in particular.     

A Theoretical Framework for Analysing the Notion of Relative Importance of Criteria

Multiple-criteria decision aid almost always requires the use of weights, importance coefficients or even a hierarchy of criteria, veto thresholds, etc. These are importance parameters that are used to differentiate the role devoted to each criterion in the construction of comprehensive preferences. Many researchers have studied the problem of how to assign values to such parameters, but few of them have tried to analyse in detail what underlies the notion of importance of criteria and to give a clear formal definition of it. In this paper our purpose is to define a theoretical framework so as to analyse the notion of the importance of criteria under very general conditions. Within this framework it clearly appears that the importance of criteria is taken into account in very different ways in various aggregation procedures. This framework also allows us to shed new light on fundamental questions such as: Under what conditions is it possible to state that one criterion is more important than another? Are importance parameters of the various aggregation procedures dependent on or independent of the encoding of criteria? What are the links between the two concepts of the importance of criteria and the compensatoriness of preferences? This theoretical framework seems to us sufficiently general to ground further research in order to define theoretically valid elicitation methods for importance parameters.     

Metaethical Internalism: Another Neglected Distinction

‘Internalism’ is used in metaethics for a cluster of claims which bear a family resemblance. They tend to link, in some distinctive way—typically modal, mereological, or causal—different parts of the normative realm, or the normative and the psychological. The thesis of this paper is that much metaethical mischief has resulted from philosophers’ neglect of the distinction between two different features of such claims. The first is the modality of the entire claim. The second is the relation between the items specified in the claim. In part one I explain this distinction and the problems neglecting it may cause. In part two I show that it has been neglected, and has caused those problems, at least with respect to one version of internalism. That is judgment internalism, which claims that moral beliefs are necessarily related to pro- or con-attitudes; e.g., that if you believe you ought to x you must have some motivation to x. The considerations standardly adduced in favor of judgment internalism support only a version which lacks the metaethical implications typically attributed to it, at least so far as anyone has shown. Proponents and opponents of judgment internalism fail to realize this because of their neglect of the modality/relation distinction. I illustrate by considering discussions of judgment internalism by Russ Shafer-Landau, Simon Blackburn, James Dreier, David Brink, and others.

Moral signals, public outrage, and immaterial harms

Public outrage is often triggered by “immaterially” harmful acts (i.e., acts with relatively negligible consequences). A well-known example involves corporate salaries and perks: they generate public outrage yet their financial cost is relatively minor. The present research explains this paradox by appealing to a person-centered approach to moral judgment. Strong moral reactions can occur when relatively harmless acts provide highly diagnostic information about moral character. Studies 1a and 1b first demonstrate dissociation between moral evaluations of persons and their actions—although violence toward a human was viewed as a more blameworthy act than violence toward an animal, the latter was viewed as more revealing of bad moral character. Study 2 then shows that person-centered cues directly influence moral judgments—participants preferred to hire a more expensive CEO when the alternative candidate requested a frivolous perk as part of his compensation package, an effect mediated by the informativeness of his request.     

Resources versus respect: Social judgments based on targets' power and status positions

In two experiments, we investigate how individuals' levels of power and status interact to determine how they are perceived by others. We find that power and status have similar, positive, effects on judged dominance. We also find that power has a negative effect on perceived warmth, but status moderates this “power penalty”: high power without status is associated with low warmth, but power with status is judged warm. Consequently, we find high status individuals, regardless of power level, are perceived positively - dominant and warm - whereas high power-low status individuals are judged most negatively — dominant and cold (Experiments 1 and 2). As a result, perceivers expect positive interactions with high status individuals, but negative interactions with high power, low status individuals (Experiment 2). These findings provide insight into power and status social judgments, and further our understanding of similarities and differences between these distinct, yet related, constructs.     

情绪作为道德判断的“催化剂”：道德判断中的评价倾向与特异性效应

在不同领域的道德判断中,情绪可能起着“催化剂”的作用。一种特定情绪对应一种核心评价;一种情绪只影响某一道德领域的判断,不同情绪的影响是特异性的;进化心理学和具身认知对道德判断中存在的评价倾向和特异性效应进行了解释。未来研究需要探索评价倾向与特异性效应的内在心理机制。以及进一步探讨文化等第三变量对不同情绪与特定领域道德判断的影响。     

Combining Explicit Timing with an Interdependent Group Contingency Program to Decrease Transition Times

ABSTRACT

A sixth-grade teacher and consultant serving as a behavioral specialist developed, implemented, and evaluated the Timely Transitions Game (TTG), a procedure designed to reduce room-to-room transition times. The TTG combined several procedures that have been shown to alter student behavior including explicit timing procedures and an interdependent, group-oriented reward program with randomly selected criteria. Five transition times were measured and recorded each day. At the end of the school day, the teacher randomly selected a transition and a criterion (seconds taken to transition). If the class completed the randomly selected transition in less time than the randomly selected criterion, they earned a letter. When students earned enough letters (e.g., the five letters that spell M-U-S-I-C), they received access to the reward (e.g., listening to music during independent seat-work). Results indicated immediate and sustained decreases in transition times following the implementation of the intervention. Although methodological concerns prevent drawing cause-and-effect conclusions, the current study shows how educators can adapt and combine empirically validated strategies and procedures to remedy presenting problems.