Search results for "behavioral science"
showing 10 items of 306 documents
Resolving the Puzzle of Conspiracy Worldview and Political Activism: Belief in Secret Plots Decreases Normative but Increases Nonnormative Political …
2019
It is a hitherto open and debated question whether the belief in conspiracies increases or attenuates the willingness to engage in political action. In the present article, we tested the notion, whether (a) the relation between belief in conspiracies and general political engagement is curvilinear (inverted U-shaped) and (b) there may be opposing relations to normative versus nonnormative forms of political engagement. Two preregistered experiments ( N = 194, N = 402) support both propositions and show that the hypothetical adoption of a worldview that sees the world as governed by secret plots attenuates reported intentions to participate in normative, legal forms of political participati…
How Will We React to the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life?
2018
How will humanity react to the discovery of extraterrestrial life? Speculation on this topic abounds, but empirical research is practically non-existent. We report the results of three empirical studies assessing psychological reactions to the discovery of extraterrestrial life using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) text analysis software. We examined language use in media coverage of past discovery announcements of this nature, with a focus on extraterrestrial microbial life (Pilot Study). A large online sample (N = 501) was asked to write about their own and humanity’s reaction to a hypothetical announcement of such a discovery (Study 1), and an independent, large online sampl…
Interindividual Differences in Treatment Effects based on Structural Equation Models with Latent Variables: An EffectLiteR Tutorial
2019
The investigation of interindividual differences in the effects of a treatment is challenging, because many constructs-of-interest in psychological research such as depression or anxiety are latent variables and modeling heterogeneity in treatment effects requires interactions and potentially nonlinear relationships. In this paper, we present a tutorial of the EffectLiteR approach (Mayer, Dietzfelbinger, Rosseel, & Steyer, 2016) that allows for estimating individual treatment effects based on latent variable models. We describe step by step how to apply the approach using the EffectLiteR software package with data from the multicenter randomized controlled trial of the Social Phobia…
El protagonismo de las fundaciones americanas en la institucionalización de la sociología (1945-1960)
2001
Este artículo expone el protagonismo que desempeñaron las fundaciones Rockefeller, Carnegie y Ford en la institucionalización de la sociología después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Estas instituciones han tenido grandes cantidades de dinero a su disposición y la mayor parte del trabajo empírico en ciencias sociales sólo se puede llevar a cabo si hay dinero disponible para cubrir sus gastos. Pero, ¿quiénes se beneficiaron de estas ayudas en Europa y Estados Unidos? El dinero público y privado ha desempeñado un papel significativo y cada vez mayor en el desarrollo de la sociología, pero cabe también preguntarse cómo ha afectado a la investigación el origen de este dinero. La Ford, por ejemplo…
A Neurocomputational Approach to Trained and Transitive Relations in Equivalence Classes
2017
A stimulus class can be composed of perceptually different but functionally equivalent stimuli. The relations between the stimuli that are grouped in a class can be learned or derived from other stimulus relations. If stimulus A is equivalent to B, and B is equivalent to C, then the equivalence between A and C can be derived without explicit training. In this work we propose, with a neurocomputational model, a basic learning mechanism for the formation of equivalence. We also describe how the relatedness between the members of an equivalence class is developed for both trained and derived stimulus relations. Three classic studies on stimulus equivalence are simulated covering typical and at…
Evaluating the microscopic effect of brushing stone tools as a cleaning procedure
2020
Cleaning stone tool surfaces is a common procedure in lithic studies. The first step widely applied at any archeological site (and/or at field laboratories) is the gross removal of sediment from the surfaces of artifacts. Lithic surface alterations due to mechanical action applied in wet or dry cleaning regimes have never been examined at a microscopic scale. This could have important implications in traceology, as any modern surface modifications inflicted on archeological artifacts might compromise their functional interpretations. The current trend toward quantification of use-wear traces makes the testing even more important, as even slight, apparently invisible surface alterations migh…
Children's acceptance of new foods at weaning. Role of practices of weaning and of food sensory properties
2011
International audience; Weaning (i.e. introduction of complementary foods) is a transitional process between the consumption of a unique food, milk, and family foods. This review of existing literature regarding factors favouring the development of food acceptance at the beginning of weaning underlines in particular the roles of repeated exposure, of introduction of a variety of foods, of timing of introduction of weaning foods, and of food sensory properties (texture, taste and flavours). All factors appear to play a role in the acceptance of weaning foods. The efficiency, most favourable windows and long-term impact of each of these factors is not known accurately.
What Do Secondary Students Really Learn during Investigations with Living Animals? Parameters for Effective Learning with Social Insects
2016
ABSTRACTExemplary for social insects, Temnothorax ants allow for various hands-on investigations in biology classes. The aim of this study was to provide a quantitative and qualitative analysis of secondary school students’ learning achievement after teaching units with ants lasting between one and six weeks. The questionnaires included transfer and factual knowledge tasks divided into eight fields of knowledge. Students (N = 459) from 22 classes participated in the study and received different treatments: The experimental group (n = 366) started their investigations by initial observation using stereo microscopes, while the control group (n = 93) conducted ant research without this i…
Statistically validated networks in bipartite complex systems.
2011
Many complex systems present an intrinsic bipartite nature and are often described and modeled in terms of networks [1-5]. Examples include movies and actors [1, 2, 4], authors and scientific papers [6-9], email accounts and emails [10], plants and animals that pollinate them [11, 12]. Bipartite networks are often very heterogeneous in the number of relationships that the elements of one set establish with the elements of the other set. When one constructs a projected network with nodes from only one set, the system heterogeneity makes it very difficult to identify preferential links between the elements. Here we introduce an unsupervised method to statistically validate each link of the pr…
Subtle Increases in Interletter Spacing Facilitate the Encoding of Words during Normal Reading
2012
BackgroundSeveral recent studies have revealed that words presented with a small increase in interletter spacing are identified faster than words presented with the default interletter spacing (i.e., w a t e r faster than water). Modeling work has shown that this advantage occurs at an early encoding level. Given the implications of this finding for the ease of reading in the new digital era, here we examined whether the beneficial effect of small increases in interletter spacing can be generalized to a normal reading situation.MethodologyWe conducted an experiment in which the participant's eyes were monitored when reading sentences varying in interletter spacing: i) sentences were present…