The development of reactions of the public to warning and emergency situations in France, Greece, and the Netherlands.

This article describes the different reactions to emergency warning messages among residents living within a 3-km radius of a hazardous chemical complex and by people living at least 10 km from an industrial site in France, Greece, and the Netherlands. Belief in warning, primary and secondary appraisal, emotional response, and adherence to normal routine were assessed by conducting face-to-face interviews in which a four-phase scenario simulating a credible industrial accident was presented. The results showed that respondents who did not reside in the neighborhood of the hazardous site were, in general, more inclined to trust the warning messages than respondents who resided in the neighborhood were. With the exception of primary appraisal, the warning phases evoked very distinct reactions in the respondents from all three countries with regard to warning belief, secondary appraisal, emotional response, and adherence to normal routine.     

Deprivation and satiation: The interrelations between food and wheel running

Two experiments were designed to assess whether depriving rats of food would increase the reinforcement effectiveness of wheel running (Experiment 1) and whether satiation for wheel running would decrease the reinforcement effectiveness of food (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, a progressive-ratio schedule was used to measure the reinforcement effectiveness of wheel running when rats were deprived or not deprived of food. Completion of a fixed number of lever presses released a brake on a running wheel for 60 s, and the response requirement was systematically increased until the rat stopped pressing or until 8 hr had elapsed. The ratio value reached (and the total number of lever presses) was an inverted-U function of food deprivation (percentage body weight). In Experiment 2, when wheel running preceded test sessions, fewer food-reinforced lever presses were maintained by the progressive-ratio schedule, and responding occurred at a lower rate on a variable-interval schedule. An interpretation of these results is that deprivation or satiation with respect to one event (such as food) alters the reinforcement effectiveness of a different event (such as access to wheel running).     

A family of chance-corrected association coefficients for metric scales

A chance-corrected version of the family of association coefficients for metric scales proposed by Zegers and ten Berge is presented. It is shown that a matrix with chance-corrected coefficients between a number of variables is Gramian. The members of the chance-corrected family are shown to be partially ordered. The author is obliged to Jos ten Berge for helpful comments.     

Early Retirement of Civil Servants in the Netherlands1

The Netherlands is aging, the labor force participation of older men and women is low, particularly seen in an international perspective. At the same time the massive departure of elderly from the labor force seems to be becoming more and more difficult to afford. In addition, the question arises whether sufficient financial support will be available in the future for maintaining the current level of old age facilities. Despite the popularity of early retirement schemes in the Netherlands, little attention has been paid to the factors underlying this phenomenon. This article takes an initial step towards a multivariate modelling of the older employees' decision to retire early. Compared with other countries, the situation in the Netherlands is special to the extent that there is relatively little variation in the situational context of rules and regulations on voluntary early retirement. This does not imply that the opportunity structure is the same for every older employee: There is variation in the household context, state of health, the organizational context, and the normative context. Furthermore, within a given opportunity structure, there is variation in the older employee's disposition towards early retirement. Using a method of decreasing abstraction, data have been analyzed from a survey conducted among civil servants eligible for early retirement. In the case of the Netherlands, we conclude that mainly the organizational context, the normative context, and the employee's disposition towards retirement play a major role in explaining the early retirement decision. In comparison to former studies in the U.S., we find surprisingly no effect of the financial-economic variables on the decision to retire.     

Sequential effects in two-choice reaction time: Subjective expectancy and automatic after- effect at short response-stimulus intervals

Between three serial two-choice reaction-time tasks, the response-stimulus interval (RSI), stimulus-response compatibility, and practice were varied in order to examine two determinants of sequential effects — subjective expectancy and automatic aftereffect. It appears that subjective expectancy is absent when the RSI is below a critical minimum. In an incompatible task, however, this minimum is greater. This is interpreted in support of the single-channel hypothesis: the subject only builds up expectancies when the “central processor” is unoccupied. The automatic aftereffect increases as the RSI decreases. The decay of the aftereffect seems to take place mainly during the RSI and only to a minor degree during the reaction process. Normally, a strong aftereffect operates in a general way, but after extensive practice it becomes stimulus specific. A model is presented, which assumes that only at the initial stages of practice is the unused “neural pathway” inhibited each time the stimulus is an alternation.     

Integrality over different paradigms: Card sorting and two-stimulus matching

Orthogonal interference—indicating the cohesiveness between geometrical dimensions—was examined using two separate tasks: (1) card sorting and (2) two-stimulus matching requiring same/different responses. The card-sorting results of the present experiment were contrasted with the results of our previous research (1977, 1979) which used the two-stimulus matching task. Results were generally similar in that the orthogonal interference and, consequently, the degree of integrality/separability were the same for both tasks. Evidence was found for the emergence of a new nominal dimension. This and other results are only compatible with a weaker form of the global-to-local hypothesis of perceptual processing.     

Storage mode of geometrical dimensions in a two-stimulus matching paradigm

In a two-stimulus matching paradigm requiring “same” and “different” responses to simple geometric dimensions, the successive stimulus presentation mode with several retention intervals was compared to a simultaneous stimulus presentation mode. For the simultaneous condition, the data suggested a wholistic template matching process, but in none of the successive conditions was template matching indicated. The retention interval of the successive condition allows the subject to analyze out the target dimension from the first two-dimensional stimulus. The ability to anticipate the value of the target dimension in the second stimulus could also influence the representation of the first stimulus. The findings shed some light upon the perceptual interactions between dimensions that constitute the stimulus. In particular, an outside-to-inside order of iconic scanning appeared to be supported by the data.     

Quality of life before and after lung transplantation in patients with emphysema versus other indications

Whether lung transplantation improves Health-related Quality of Life in patients with emphysema and other end-stage lung diseases before and after lung transplantation was examined. Between 1992 and 1999, 23 patients with emphysema and 19 patients with other indications completed self-administered questionnaires before lung transplantation, and at 4, 7, 13, and 25 mo. after transplantation. The questionnaire included the Nottingham Health Profile, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, the Self-rating Depression Scale, the Index of Well-being, the self-report Karnofsky Index, and four respiratory-specific questions. Neither before nor after transplantation were significant differences found on most dimensions of Health-related Quality of Life between patients with emphysema and other indications. Before transplantation, both groups report major restrictions on the dimensions Energy and Mobility of the Nottingham Health Profile, low experienced well-being, depressive symptoms, and high dyspnea. About 4 mo. after transplantation, most Health-related Quality of Life measures improved significantly in both groups. These improvements were maintained in the following 21 mo.     

Childhood Characteristics of Adolescent Inpatients with Early-Onset and Adolescent-Onset Disruptive Behavior

Childhood characteristics are associated with life-course-persistent antisocial behavior in epidemiological studies in general population samples. The present study examines this association in an inpatient sample. The purpose is to identify easily measurable childhood characteristics that may guide choice of treatment for adolescent psychiatric inpatients with severe disruptive behavior. Patients (N?=?203) were divided into two groups with either early-onset (EO) or adolescent-onset (AO) disruptive behavior, based on ages at which professional care was used for disruptive behavior, referral to special education, and criminal offences. Both groups differed on several childhood characteristics. No gender differences in these characteristics were found. Logistic regression analysis indicated that individuals with grade retention in primary school, childhood impulsive behavior, and a history of physical abuse, had the highest probability of being member of the EO group. These characteristics are reasonably easy to identify, likely apply to other clinical samples as well, and may help clinicians to target their treatment.     

What is more important for national well-being: money or autonomy? A meta-analysis of well-being, burnout, and anxiety across 63 societies

What is more important: to provide citizens with more money or with more autonomy for their subjective well-being? In the current meta-analysis, the authors examined national levels of well-being on the basis of lack of psychological health, anxiety, and stress measures. Data are available for 63 countries, with a total sample of 420,599 individuals. Using a 3-level variance-known model, the authors found that individualism was a consistently better predictor than wealth, after controlling for measurement, sample, and temporal variations. Despite some emerging nonlinear trends and interactions between wealth and individualism, the overall pattern strongly suggests that greater individualism is consistently associated with more well-being. Wealth may influence well-being only via its effect on individualism. Implications of the findings for well-being research and applications are outlined.