How Should What Economists Call “Social Values” Be Measured?

Most economists and some philosophers distinguish individual utilities from interpersonal social values. Even if challenges to that conceptual distinction can be met, further philosophically interesting questions arise. I pursue three in this paper, using, as context for the discussion, health economics and its attempt to discern empirically a social welfare function to help guide rationing decisions. (1) To discern these utilities and values in a manner that is morally appropriate if they are to influence rationing decisions, who should be queried? To discern individual health state utilities, persons in precisely those states should be asked (generically, “patients”), but for social values, representatives of the general public should be. (2) To discern social values, what should representatives of the public be asked? They should be asked “person trade-off” (PTO) questions that encompass their own self-interest, not PTO questions that focus only on others. (3) What must public representatives understand before they respond to such questions? Despite the philosophically complex problem of patient adaptation, they should understand (among other things) the health state utilities elicited from actual patients with the conditions at issue.     

Diversity of Life Experiences: The Development and Validation of a Biographical Measure of Receptiveness to Dissimilar Others

In light of changing demographics one of the biggest future challenges for selection and promotion will be identifying individuals who are able to effectively work with dissimilar others and are receptive to differences in others. Since a reliable and valid measure of individuals’ receptiveness to dissimilar others does not currently exist, a biodata-based measure of this construct was developed using traditional scale development techniques. Evidence of the new measure’s reliability and validity are provided. Implications for theory-building and future research are presented, as well as potential applications for selection and assessment.     

Biodata: Meeting Clients’ Needs for a Better Way of Recruiting Entry-level Staff

Biodata as a selection technique is gaining greater acceptance in Australia and interest in the technique appears to be growing. There are a number of reasons for its rise in popularity, including particular advantages afforded by the technique such as enhanced validity and decreased adverse impact. This paper presents an overview of the development of a biodata instrument for large-scale recruitment and focuses specifically on how clients' needs were met by incorporating biodata in a revised recruitment system. The reader is also referred to another article in this issue by Karas and West that reports on this project, but covers technical aspects of the rational-empirical approach taken to instrument development. The biodata technique was chosen to meet specific requirements of a new selection system for entry level clerical and graduate staff of the Australian Public Service. Broadly, the system sought to assess a range of job-related skills encompassing both cognitive and noncognitive abilities and to maximize the validity and fairness of the recruitment process. The addition of a biodata questionnaire, as an integral part of the selection system, assisted in meeting these aims and providing clients with a more comprehensive process which offered greater flexibility and the reliable assessment of noncognitive attributes that are critical to success in today’s workplace.     

Accuracy and confidence in detecting truths andlies in elaborations and denials:Truth bias, lie bias and individual differences

Accuracy in the ability to detect truths and lies isimportant in a legal setting. It might be used as atool in police investigations to eliminate potentialsuspects, to check the truthfulness of informants orto examine contradictory statements of witnesses andsuspects in the same case. A consistent finding in thedetection of deception literature is the truthbias: People's accuracy at detecting truths isusually higher than their accuracy at detecting lies.The present article examines whether the existence ofa truth bias depends on the type of lie. It is arguedthat a truth bias may occur when people judgeextensive statements (e.g. elaborations), but that alie bias may occur when people judge statements whichdo not provide much verbal information (e.g. denials).Fifty participants (college students) were exposed to20 video fragments of 20 people telling elaborations(10) or denials (10). Half of the elaborations anddenials were truthful, the other half were deceptive.After each fragment, the participants were asked toindicate whether the person was lying or telling thetruth and how confident they were in their decisionmaking. As predicted, with regard to elaborations atruth bias was found and with regard to denials a liebias was found. In other words, people have difficultyin accurately judging deceptive elaborations andtruthful denials. The study further revealedindividual differences in participants' confidence atdetecting deceit. The more socially anxious/shy theparticipants reported themselves to be, the lessconfident they were in their ability to detect deceit.Also, the more extraverted they themselves reported tobe, the more confident they were in their ability todetect deceit. The importance of confidence onimproving people's ability to detect deceit will bediscussed.     

Sustained attentional and disattentional abilities and arousability: Factor analysis and relationships to hypnotic susceptibility

The neurophysiologically separate dimensions of deeply focused, sustained attention and arousability are shown to be differentially related to hypnotic susceptibility. University undergraduates, 98 men and 112 women, were administered the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility; the Group Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale, Form C (SHSS:C); and questionnaires that assessed attentional abilities (Differential Attentional Processes Inventory (DAPI), Tellegen Absorption Scale (TAS)), Extraversion (Eysenck Personality Questionnaire), strength of the nervous system (Strelau Temperament Scale (STS)), augmenting-reducing (Vando Reducer-Augmenter Scale (RAS)), and emotionality (Affect Intensity Measure (AIM)). Women were significantly higher on TAS, DAPI dual attention physical-cognitive scale, and AIM; men were significantly higher on TAS and STI Strength of Excitation Scale. Separate factor analyses for men and women separately yielded fairly similar four-factor solutions. The first major factor, defined by DAPI Moderately Focused Attention and Dual Attention scales, represented moderately sustained attention in a complex environment with limited interference from competing stimuli. The extremely involved and focused attention factor, defined by the TAS and DAPI Extremely Focused Attention Scale, had hypnotic susceptibility loaded more strongly for men than women. The arousability factor was defined by EPQ Extraversion, STI Mobility of Nervous System (MNS) scale, and RAS. The neo-Pavlovian nervous system processes factor was defined by the STI Strength of Excitation and Strength of Inhibition scales; the STI MNS scale also loaded on this factor for men. Only for women were introverts more hypnotizable than extraverts. Results support H. J. Crawford and J. H. Gruzelier's (1992) in E. Fromm and M. Nash (Eds.) Contemporary Perspectives in Hypnosis Research (pp. 227–266) New York: Guildford Press) neurophysiological model of hypnosis that proposes that highly hypnotizable persons have a more efficient fronto-limbic sustained attentional and disattentional system.     

Distractor selection ratios

A latent variable representation for multiple-choice item and option characteristic curves is presented. Under standard assumptions of conditional independence of item responses and monotonicity of item characteristic curves, a criterion for distractors is proposed based on distractor selection ratios. A connection is made between the proposed criterion and the theory of individual choice behavior, providing new insight. The main results allow for the testing of the criterion from observable data without first specifying a parametric form for the characteristic curves. A series of examples apply the method.     

不同认知作业年老化特点的比较研究

本工作应用自行设计的软件程序和微机人机对话方式,完成六项认知作业的年老化特点的比较研究,被试506人,46—75岁。研究结果表明:1)“心算”和“符号数字”两项作业完成速度随年老迅速减慢,但测验成绩随年老缓慢降低,速度变化是该两项作业年老化过程的主要特点;2)“数字鉴别”和“计数”两项作业完成速度随年老减慢较缓;3)“双位数字顺序回忆”和“无意义图形再认”两项作业测验成绩随年老下降迅速,但前者更为明显;4)速度和成绩两项指标的个体差异均随年老有增大趋向。     

A CRITIQUE OF BOROWITZ'S POSTMODERN JEWISH THEOLOGY

Abstract. Borowitz's book is primarily a systematic response by a liberal Jewish theologian to his perceived challenges from rationalism on one hand and postmodernism on the other. It is within this context that Borowitz discusses issues of the relationship between modern science and Judaism. The first part of this essay is a summary of Borowitz's book. Here I locate Borowitz's place in the general discipline of Jewish philosophy and theology. The second part of the paper is a critique of Borowitz's discussion of postmodernism and liberalism. It is in this concluding section that the issues raised by contemporary science for Jewish religious thought are discussed.     

Latent curve analysis

As a method for representing development, latent trait theory is presented in terms of a statistical model containing individual parameters and a structure on both the first and second moments of the random variables reflecting growth. Maximum likelihood parameter estimates and associated asymptotic tests follow directly. These procedures may be viewed as an alternative to standard repeated measures ANOVA and to first-order auto-regressive methods. As formulated, the model encompasses cohort sequential designs and allow for period or practice effects. A numerical illustration using data initially collected by Nesselroade and Baltes is presented.The authors wish to thank John Nesselroade for providing us the data for our illustration and Karen Paul and Connie Tilse for assisting in the data analysis. This research was supported by a grant (No. AG03164) from the National Institute on Aging to the senior author.