Search results for "Choice"

The decisional process for a family tourist experience: some evidence from a Sicilian sample

2014

The tourist sector and above all the hotel one nowadays is more and more specialized in satisfying particular needs. To identify typical tourist needs of Sicilian families, and get a valuable product definition, we investigate the consumer behaviour, and before, the features of the persons that in a family take the decision to go on holiday and their motivations. But, who does decide inside the family? Which target the tourist operators should consider in defining family tourist services? We start our discussion by considering three hypotheses: H1) children influence the type (destination, accommodation, duration, etc.) of family vacation; H2) the way of influencing in connected to their ag…

Design and analysis of discrete choice experiments for models with response time

2013

Sex roles and sex ratios in animals

2022

In species with separate sexes, females and males often differ in their morphology, physiology and behaviour. Such sex-specific traits are functionally linked to variation in reproductive competition, mate choice and parental care, which have all been linked to sex roles. At the 150th anniversary of Darwin's theory on sexual selection, the question of why patterns of sex roles vary within and across species remains a key topic in behavioural and evolutionary ecology. New theoretical, experimental and comparative evidence suggests that variation in the adult sex ratio (ASR) is a key driver of variation in sex roles. Here, we first define and discuss the historical emergence of the sex role c…

Sperm competition and small size advantage for males of the golden orb-web spider Nephila edulis

2000

Sexual selection, through female choice and/or male‐male competition, has influenced the nature and direction of sexual size dimorphism in numerous species. However, few studies have examined the influence of sperm competition on size dimorphism. The orb-web spider Nephila edulis has a polygamous mating system and extreme size dimorphism. Additionally, the frequency distribution of male body size is extremely skewed with most males being small and few large. The duration of copulation, male size and sexual cannibalism have been identified as the significant factors determining patterns of sperm precedence in spiders. In double mating trials, females were assigned to three treatments: either…

Honesty of agonistic signalling and effects of size and motivation asymmetry in contests

1999

Game theoretical models predict that the main function of fighting behaviour is to assess the relative fighting ability of opponents. The sequential assessment game has often been used to investigate contests, while honest signalling theory has received much less attention. With the wolf spider Hygrolycosa rubrofasciata we investigated whether male agonistic signalling can reveal honest information about fighting ability, and how size and motivation asymmetries affect male fighting behaviour. We also determined whether male–male competition affects the courtship behaviour of the males. We found that agonistic drumming activity is an honest indicator of male fighting ability, and that relati…

Perception of illusory surfaces and contours in goldfish

2007

Goldfish(Carassius auratus)were trained to discriminate triangles and squares using a two choice procedure. In the first experiment, three goldfish were trained with food reward on a black outline triangle on a white background, while a black outline square was shown for comparison. In transfer tests, a Kanizsa triangle and a Kanizsa square were presented, perceived by humans as an illusory triangle- or square-shaped surface of slightly higher brightness than the background. The choice behavior in this situation indicates that goldfish are able to discriminate between both figures in almost the same way as in the training situation. In control experiments goldfish did not discriminate betwe…

Selecting a small run-of-river hydropower plan by the analytic hierarchy process (AHP): A case study of Miño-Sil river basin, Spain

2015

Hydroelectric power is obtained by harnessing the potential energy of a mass of water flowing along a river bed to convert it first into mechanical and then into electrical energy. The system is therefore both clean and autonomous and has a high potential for development. A small hydropower plant has an installed power capacity of below 10 MW and is considered run-of-river when it diverts part of a river flow to generate its electricity. The use of multicriteria techniques in environmental decision making, including selecting between various alternatives, is important when it involves complex decisions in a number of disciplinary fields. The most widely used of these techniques is the analy…

The role and theoretical relevance of study choices in explaining social inequalities of educational outcomes

2005

05094http://www.equalsoc.org/paper_fetcher.aspx?id=27; The theoretical model mobilized for explaining the importance of socially diversified choices is most often the rational one. However, research has mainly concerned "vertical" choices, between clearly unequal paths. The presentation investigates whether some "horizontal choices" seem to exist in France today. We will show 1) that horizontal choices are mostly vertical ones : they matter mainly because they warrant access to some specific educational resources, leading to a better place in the file for the best subsequent tracks and so to the best jobs; 2) that some horizontal choices exist, as the differences in choices between boys and…

Do Individual Reactions Predict Group Reactions?

1987

Summary.-Group reactions of three-man groups included in 71 junior ice hockey players were measured using a homeostat. Individual reaction times (simple reaction time, choice reaction time) did not predict group performance. In social psychology many studies have compared the effectiveness of an individual and a group (Kelley & Thibaut. 1969). Less research has been done to predict group performance by individuals' performance. In this study group performance was measured by a homeostat developed in the USSR (Medvedev, 1967). Ic consists of three microammeters connected in the same electric network. When the Examiner rotates the electric resistance, the subjects ought to restore the equilib…

Opinion Dynamics and Collective Decisions

2021

We expect that democracy enables us to utilize collective intelligence such that our collective decisions build and enhance social welfare, and such that we accept their distributive and normative consequences. Collective decisions are produced by voting procedures which aggregate individual preferences and judgments. Before and after, individual preferences and judgments change as their underlying attitudes, values, and opinions change through discussion and deliberation. In large groups, these dynamics naturally go beyond the scope of the individual and consequently might show unexpected self-driven macroscopic systems dynamics following socio-physical laws. On the other hand, aggregated …