Relationships between perceptions of organizational size and the organizational choice process

Expectancy theory concepts were used to predict (a) the attractiveness of, (b) the amount of effort directed toward entering, and (c) the eventual choice of a job in relatively big and small work organizations. It was found, among a group of graduating seniors from a technical college, that antecedent perceptions regarding organizational size (expectancy, valence, instrumentality) were significantly related to the relative attractiveness of different-sized organizations and the number of job interviews taken with relatively big and small companies. In addition, economically tied extrinsic outcomes were seen as more readily attainable in big organizations, whereas certain intrinsic outcomes were perceived to be more easily obtained in small organizations.     

Psychosocial maturity and interpersonal attraction

Psychosocial maturity (PSM), assessed by scores on the Inventory of Psychosocial Development, was related to interpersonal behavior. In Experiment I PSM and proportion of attitude similarity was varied using Byrne's attraction paradigm in a between-subjects design. The personality variable failed to affect attraction. In Experiment II PSM and proportion of attitude similarity were manipulated in a within-subjects design. High PSM subjects rated the stranger significantly higher in attraction at high levels of similarity and significantly lower in attraction at low levels of similarity when compared to Low PSM individuals. The results were discussed in terms of design differences in personality research and potential mechanisms by which PSM affects attraction (self-esteem and/or competence).     

Situation-specific variables as determinants of perceived environmental aesthetic quality and perceived crowdedness

It was hypothesized that relevant situation-specific variables may act along with objective physical conditions to determine environmental perception, and that the exclusive use of the physical level of an environmental stimulus to predict behavior may, therefore, be inadequate. A 2 × 4 between-subjects design was employed in which an attitudinally similar or dissimilar confederate interacted with a subject at one of four distances. As hypothesized, subjects who interacted with a similar confederate judged the environment to be of higher aesthetic quality, perceived themselves to be less crowded, and felt affectively more positive than subjects who interacted with a dissimilar other. The results were also interpreted as supporting the utility of the Byrne-Clore (1970) reinforcementaffect model of evaluative responses as a means of predicting environmental perception and the behavioral response to environmental stimuli.     

Are Newcomb problems really decisions?

Richard Jeffrey long held that decision theory should be formulated without recourse to explicitly causal notions. Newcomb problems stand out as putative counterexamples to this ‘evidential’ decision theory. Jeffrey initially sought to defuse Newcomb problems via recourse to the doctrine of ratificationism, but later came to see this as problematic. We will see that Jeffrey’s worries about ratificationism were not compelling, but that valid ratificationist arguments implicitly presuppose causal decision theory. In later work, Jeffrey argued that Newcomb problems are not decisions at all because agents who face them possess so much evidence about correlations between their actions and states of the world that they are unable to regard their deliberate choices as causes of outcomes, and so cannot see themselves as making free choices. Jeffrey’s reasoning goes wrong because it fails to recognize that an agent’s beliefs about her immediately available acts are so closely tied to the immediate causes of these actions that she can create evidence that outweighs any antecedent correlations between acts and states. Once we recognize that deliberating agents are free to believe what they want about their own actions, it will be clear that Newcomb problems are indeed counterexamples to evidential decision theory.     

The development of anticipatory hand orientation during infancy

The development of infants' prehensile adjustments regarding the orientation of objects was investigated. Five- and nine-month-olds (N = 16 per group) were presented with horizontally and vertically oriented dowels to determine at what point during the reach, hand orientation approximated that of the dowel. Nine-month-olds rotated their hands appropriately, early in the course of the reach, i.e., before tactual contact of the dowel, whereas five-month-olds did so mostly after tactual contact. Analyses of the effects of trials within the experimental session indicated that this age difference was not associated with practice or fatigue effects. The results are discussed in relation to the development of visual control of prehensile behavior.