The effect of construal level on unethical behavior

Construal level theory predicts that people will judge immoral events more harshly when these are presented in a way that elicits a higher construal level, relative to a lower construal level. Previous research supported this prediction using an Israeli sample but not a U.S. sample. This article compared Israeli and U.S. samples with respect to the interactive effect of utility and construal level on unethical behavioral intentions. We found that construal level did not affect unethical behavioral intentions in either the U.S. samples for low-utility level or the Israeli samples for low- and high-utility levels. In contrast, construal level affected unethical behavioral intentions in the U.S. sample for high-utility level: unethical behavioral intentions were higher in the low-construal level compared to the high-construal level. We discuss these findings and suggest additional factors that challenge arguments concerning the direct effect of construal level on unethical behavior.     

Les travailleurs handicapés sont-ils perçus comme des travailleurs compétents ?

Building on recent research in the area of social judgment, this paper examines how persons with disability are evaluated in a professional context. In three studies, participants without disability had to rate persons with or without disability, with or without a job, on traits reflecting the fundamental dimensions of social judgment (social desirability and social utility). Our results showed that persons with disability were systematically judged more negatively on social utility, but more positively on social desirability than persons without disability. Focusing on social utility, persons with disability were perceived as less competent, but more courageous than persons without disability. These results are discussed with regard to chances of persons with disability to succeed in the workplace.     

Analysis of Variance Models with Stochastic Group Weights

The analysis of variance (ANOVA) is still one of the most widely used statistical methods in the social sciences. This article is about stochastic group weights in ANOVA models – a neglected aspect in the literature. Stochastic group weights are present whenever the experimenter does not determine the exact group sizes before conducting the experiment. We show that classic ANOVA tests based on estimated marginal means can have an inflated type I error rate when stochastic group weights are not taken into account, even in randomized experiments. We propose two new ways to incorporate stochastic group weights in the tests of average effects – one based on the general linear model and one based on multigroup structural equation models (SEMs). We show in simulation studies that our methods have nominal type I error rates in experiments with stochastic group weights while classic approaches show an inflated type I error rate. The SEM approach can additionally deal with heteroscedastic residual variances and latent variables. An easy-to-use software package with graphical user interface is provided.     

Managers' Reactions to Utility Analysis and Perceptions of What Influences Their Decisions

Recent research on providing utility analysis (UA) information has shown small positive effects on acceptance of selection tests by human resource decision-makers (Carson, Becker, & Henderson, Journal of Applied Psychology, 83 84–96 (1998). In the present study, 218 managers provided reactions to UA information. Not only do our findings replicate the positive effects of UA, we found managers also responded favorably to UA information when asked independently of the decision making process. Specifically, when asked to rank order information in terms of what they perceived to be most influential in helping them make their final decisions, those who received UA information ranked it among the highest.     

Trichotomous preferences for gambles

Let G_X be the set of all gambles on a set X of decision outcomes. Trichotomous preferences divide G_X into three disjoint subsets, viz., the set P⁺ of preferable gambles, the set P⁰ of indifferent gambles, and the set P^- of unpreferable gambles. Those preference comparisons are made against the status quo, i.e., the do-nothing alternative. This paper presents and discusses dyadic representations of such trichotomous preferences and identifies necessary and sufficient axioms for the existence of those representations.     

Utility,Informativity and Protocols

Recently, natural language pragmatics started to make use of decision-, game-, and information theoretical tools to determine the usefulness of questions and assertions in a quantitative way. In the first part of this paper several of these notions are related with each other. It is shown that under particular natural assumptions the utility of questions and answers reduces to their informativity, and that the ordering relation induced by utility sometimes even reduces to the logical relation of entailment. The second part of the paper shows how different proposals (using either protocols or likelihood functions) to measure the relevance/utility of non-partitional questions come down to the same thing.     

Is Reported Happiness Five Years Ago Comparable to Present Happiness? A Cautionary Note

In the United States reported happiness five years ago is not comparable to present happiness. The improvement in happiness over the last five years obtained by differencing current reports of happiness today and happiness five years ago is not significantly related to the actual improvement in happiness over the same period. The currently reported five-year change in happiness is highly sensitive to current economic conditions, varying inversely with both the inflation and unemployment rates.Ordinarily, happiness five years ago as currently reported is less than present happiness, but the worse the current economic conditions are, the better the past looks relative to the present. If current economic conditions get bad enough, past happiness will be rated higher than present. Reports of happiness five years ago are not telling us about the utility respondents actually experienced at that time; they are telling us, instead, about respondents' current decision utility–which situation, today's or that five years ago, they would opt for if given the choice today.     

Verisimilitude and the Dynamicsof Scientific Research Programmes

Some peculiarities of the evaluation of theories within scientific research programmes (SRPs) and of the assessing of rival SRPs are described assuming that scientists try to maximise an ‘epistemic utility function’ under economic and institutional constraints. Special attention is given to Lakatos' concepts of ‘empirical progress’ and ‘theoretical progress’. A notion of ‘empirical verisimilitude’ is defended as an appropriate utility function. The neologism ‘methodonomics’ is applied to this kind of studies. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Regular Minimality and Thurstonian-type modeling

A Thurstonian-type model for pairwise comparisons is any model in which the response (e.g., “they are the same” or “they are different”) to two stimuli being compared depends, deterministically or probabilistically, on the realizations of two randomly varying representations (perceptual images) of these stimuli. The two perceptual images in such a model may be stochastically interdependent but each has to be selectively dependent on its stimulus. It has been previously shown that all possible discrimination probability functions for same–different comparisons can be generated by Thurstonian-type models of the simplest variety, with independent percepts and deterministic decision rules. It has also been shown, however, that a broad class of Thurstonian-type models, called “well-behaved” (and including, e.g., models with multivariate normal perceptual representations whose parameters are smooth functions of stimuli) cannot simultaneously account for two empirically plausible properties of same–different comparisons, Regular Minimality (which essentially says that “being least discriminable from” is a symmetric relation) and nonconstancy of the minima of discrimination probabilities (the fact that different pairs of least discriminable stimuli are discriminated with different probabilities). These results have been obtained for stimulus spaces represented by regions of Euclidean spaces. In this paper, the impossibility for well-behaved Thurstonian-type models to simultaneously account for Regular Minimality and nonconstancy of minima is established for a much broader notion of well-behavedness applied to a much broader class of stimulus spaces (any Hausdorff arc-connected ones). The universality of Thurstonian-type models with independent perceptual images and deterministic decision rules is shown (by a simpler proof than before) to hold for arbitrary stimulus spaces.     

DUTIES OF JUSTICE TO CITIZENS WITH COGNITIVE DISABILITIES

Abstract: Many social practices treat citizens with cognitive disabilities differently from their nondisabled peers. Does John Rawls's theory of justice imply that we have different duties of justice to citizens whenever they are labeled with cognitive disabilities? Some theorists have claimed that the needs of the cognitively disabled do not raise issues of justice for Rawls. I claim that it is premature to reject Rawlsian contractualism. Rawlsians should regard all citizens as moral persons provided they have the potential for developing the two moral powers. I claim that every citizen requires specific Enabling Conditions to develop and exercise the two moral powers. Structuring basic social institutions to deny some citizens the Enabling Conditions is unjust because it blocks their developmental pathways toward becoming fully cooperating members of society. Hence, we have a duty of justice to provide citizens labeled with cognitive disabilities with the Enabling Conditions they require until they become fully cooperating members of society.