Rivals without a cause? Relative performance feedback creates destructive competition despite aligned incentives

Whether people compete or cooperate with each other has consequences for their own performance and that of organizations. To explain why people compete or cooperate, previous research has focused on two main factors: situational outcome structures and personality types. Here, we propose that—above and beyond these two factors—situational cues, such as the format in which people receive feedback, strongly affect whether they act competitively, cooperatively, or individualistically. Results of a laboratory experiment support our theorizing: After receiving ranking feedback, both students and experienced managers treated group situations with cooperative outcome structures as competitive and were in consequence willing to forgo guaranteed financial gains to pursue a—financially irrelevant—better rank. Conversely, in dilemma situations, feedback based on the joint group outcome led to more cooperation than ranking feedback. Our study contributes to research on competition, cooperation, interdependence theory, forced ranking, and the design of information environments.     

Provision of step-level public goods with continuous contribution

Twelve groups of five subjects each participated in a nonco-operative game in which each member of a group receives the same endowment and must then decide independently and anonymously how much of it to contribute to the group benefit. Regardless of the size of his or her contribution, each member receives the same reward if, and only if, the sum of contributions is equal to or larger than a prespecified provision threshold. The results show that the level of contribution depends on the provision threshold, and that it increases when contributions are not restricted to be all-or-none. We present, discuss, and competitively test two models for this class of social dilemmas, one postulating maximization of expected utility and the other yielding an equitable solution.     

Intrinsic enjoyment and boredom coping scales: Validation with personality,evoked potential and attention measures

This paper reports the validation of brief, self-report measures of intrinsic enjoyment and boredom coping. Intrinsic enjoyment is characterized by intense involvement, interest and absorbed concentration; boredom coping is designed to reflect the disposition to restructure one's perceptions and participation in potentially boring activities so as to decrease boredom. Both traits are hypothesized to reflect the capacity for good attentional control across a variety of situations. Reliability was established by test-retest correlation and by an inter-item consistency measurement. Construct validity was established by comparison with previously-validated personality tests, real-life measures (such as Random Activities Experiential Sampling, which involves repeated self-report measures in daily life), as well as with laboratory measures of attention (including the averaged visual evoked potential (EP) and the Continuous Performance Test). Intrinsic enjoyment is significantly correlated with an independent measure of intrinsic involvement (low wish to be elsewhere in one's daily life), the affective experience of potency, self-reports of concentrating well with ease, high ego development, an internal locus of control, lack of boredom susceptibility and certain EP indices of attentional change and ‘cortical’ augmenting. Boredom coping is associated with a higher percent of time actually spent alone, high continuous performance task measures of attentional capacity, and low MMPI and Research Diagnostic Criteria indices of psychopathology.     

Visual context processing and its development in gamers and non-gamers

Visual context processing was investigated in both action video game players and nonplayers using the Ebbinghaus illusion task (N = 312, 39.4% female) in a cross-sectional study design. When presented in context, players showed markedly poorer target size discrimination accuracy compared with nonplayers in the 6-, 7-, 8-, and 9-years old age groups, but this difference was reduced in 10-years old group and diminished in adults. When presented in isolation (no-context), the two groups displayed similar performance in all age groups. Furthermore, nonplayers (linear) and players (bell curve) showed profoundly different age-related differences in context processing. These findings provide evidence that players might have enhanced perceptual bias to process visual context in the transition from early childhood to early adolescence, and the differences between the two groups start at early ages and continue with distinct developmental profiles.     

Video playback,affective witnessing,and the mobility of trauma: Video evidence of violent crime in the criminal justice system

In today's technologically mediated society, video is increasingly relied upon as an objective and reliable source of evidence in the investigation and prosecution of violent crimes. The now pervasive presence of violent video in the criminal justice system, however, presents new challenges for understanding repeated work-related exposure to and witnessing of potentially traumatic material and its impacts. Thus, this project seeks to qualitatively examine the relational affective processes that occur among criminal justice professionals when violent crimes are captured on video. We present four key categories organized around the circumstances of exposure and its impacts: 1) playback in the investigative and pre-trial process; 2) sharing videos among colleagues; 3) playing videos for victims, witnesses, and families and; 4) transmission in the broader public. Findings suggest this work involves deeply embodied processes where video evidence of violent crime enables a virtual presence at scenes and an emotional proximity to events through new forms of witnessing. These affective experiences are one relational dynamic that keeps witnessing active, thus expanding the mobility of trauma, its reach and potential impacts.     

Family-centered intensive case management: A step toward understanding individualized care

New York State's initial attempt at individualizing services occurred within the context of an experiment. We randomly assigned children 5–12 years old who were referred for out-of-home placement in treatment foster care to either treatment foster care, Family-Based Treatment (n=15), or to Family-Centered Intensive Case Management (FCICM) (n=27). FCICM used teams of case managers and parent advocates to provide in-home services. Flexible service dollars, respite care, and behavior management skills training were available to assist teams in individualizing care. Preliminary outcomes indicate that children in FCICM are doing as well or better than children assigned to FBT in their functioning and symptom reduction. Parents of children in FCICM have made gains, although not at a statistically significant level, in behavior management skills and family strengths that allow them to provide care for their children at home.     

RELATIVE EFFECTIVENESS OF TEACHER ATTENTION AND THE “GOOD BEHAVIOR GAME” IN MODIFYING DISRUPTIVE CLASSROOM BEHAVIOR1

A variety of behavioral procedures have been employed in recent years to modify disruptive classroom behavior. Such methods have been developed with the belief that curtailing disruptive behavior would strengthen positive classroom performance. In this study, two procedures, the good behavior game and the teacher-attention method, were compared to determine short-run effectiveness. Four teachers (two fourth-grade and two fifth-grade) implemented both methods in their classrooms over a five-week period. Presentation of methods was alternated in a counterbalanced design to control for order effects. Each of the four classrooms consisted of 25 students. A time-sampling procedure was used to record the presence or absence of disruptive behavior within 15-second intervals. Disruptive behavior was defined as any talking-out or out-of-seat behavior without permission. The results indicated that both procedures were effective in modifying disruptive classroom behavior, but that the good behavior game reduced disruptive behavior significantly better than the teacher-attention method. In addition, all teachers preferred the game to the teacher-attention procedure. This reaction seemed related to the effort involved in initiating the two activities. The good behavior game required less effort on the teacher's part. However, use of the game alone raises certain ethical considerations. One such issue involves abuse of peer pressure. Also, there is a possibility that negative rules may tend to promote resentment. Positively stated rules would ameliorate that problem. Another relates to the possibility that some teachers might be carried away by the ease of the game's implementation to the extent that behavior control becomes the primary objective in the classroom. As a result, one might consider use of the game to maximize short-term change, but then phase out this procedure in favor of another method (e.g., teacher attention) for long-run effects.     

Masked emotional priming beyond global valence activations

An immense body of research demonstrates that emotional facial expressions can be processed unconsciously. However, it has been assumed that such processing takes place solely on a global valence-based level, allowing individuals to disentangle positive from negative emotions but not the specific emotion. In three studies, we investigated the specificity of emotion processing under conditions of limited awareness using a modified variant of an affective priming task. Faces with happy, angry, sad, fearful, and neutral expressions were presented as masked primes for 33 ms (Study 1) or 14 ms (Studies 2 and 3) followed by emotional target faces (Studies 1 and 2) or emotional adjectives (Study 3). Participants’ task was to categorise the target emotion. In all three studies, discrimination of targets was significantly affected by the emotional primes beyond a simple positive versus negative distinction. Results indicate that specific aspects of emotions might be automatically disentangled in addition to valence, even under conditions of subjective unawareness.     

Treating Childhood Social Anxiety Disorder With Virtual Environments and Serious Games: A Randomized Trial

Disseminating efficacious psychological treatments remains a challenge for researchers and clinicians. In the case of social anxiety disorder (SAD), Social Effectiveness Therapy for Children (SET-C) has been demonstrated as an efficacious intervention, but elements of the protocol, such as peer generalization sessions, remain challenging to conduct in typical clinical settings. To address this need, we developed an artificially intelligent, web-based application, Pegasys-VR™, designed to replace peer generalization sessions and enhance homework compliance. The feasibility of Pegasys-VR™ was tested in a randomized controlled trial in comparison to SET-C. The results indicated that both programs were equally efficacious in decreasing anxiety and improving social skill in social encounters. Sixty-three percent (63%) of children treated with SET-C and 60% treated with Pegasys-VR™ did not meet diagnostic criteria for SAD at posttreatment. Pegasys-VR™ is a feasible, efficacious, and dissemination-friendly element of a comprehensive treatment program for social anxiety disorder in children.