Context and Age Differences in Same‐ and Other‐gender Peer Preferences

Age and gender differences in preferences for same‐ and other‐gender peers as partners for working on a school project and casual interactions at home were investigated. Participants were 82 students (19 sixth‐grade preadolescents; 29 eighth‐grade adolescents; 34 tenth‐ and eleventh‐grade older adolescents). Same‐gender preferences were assessed via peer nominations and ratings of expected enjoyment of interacting with same‐ and other‐gender peers. Preferences varied by context: individuals expected to enjoy same‐gender peers more than other‐gender peers when working on a project at school but not when interacting casually at home. Greater expected enjoyment of same‐gender peers over other‐gender peers was most pronounced for preadolescent boys and girls, and least pronounced for older adolescent males. Nominations of same‐gender peers for home and school activities decreased with age. Results are interpreted in light of a social‐contextual approach to gender segregation.     

Preferences and Expectations for Delivering Bad News Among Korean Older Adults

ABSTRACT

 The purpose of this study was to explore Korean older adults’ perspectives toward physicians’ disclosure of serious illness to patients. Seventy Korean older adults residing in the community were interviewed in person using a semistructured interview guide. Major themes included conflicting desires among participants to: 1) inform the patient directly, 2) inform the patient indirectly, and 3) inform only the family. Subthemes under the first theme included: a) decision making about treatment, b) planning and preparation for the future, c) need for use of an ethical standard, d) consideration of patient coping responses, and e) disclosure of serious illness as a relational process. Disclosure of bad news is more than revealing or concealing information. Needs and preferences regarding to what extent and how information is delivered differ by culture. Thus, understanding preferred communication pathways for advanced care planning in specific cultural frameworks is important. Future studies using clear concepts and measures about serious illness disclosure can better prepare health care professionals in interacting with those from minority cultures. In addition, studies of those with poor health status from diverse cultural groups may further assist social workers to tailor interventions to accommodate cultural needs and expectations in end-of-life settings.     

Willingness-to-pay and willingness-to-accept for risky and ambiguous lotteries

Former studies have shown that people tend to give buying prices that are lower than selling prices. In our study, we investigate if this willingness-to-accept and willingness-to-pay disparity is affected by ambiguity. Using a Becker, DeGroot, and Marschak procedure, we elicit buying, selling, short-selling, and short-buying prices. The results indicate that subjects clearly distinguish between risky and ambiguous lotteries and the different ways in which lotteries are framed. However, the average WTA/WTP ratios are remarkably close for all lotteries considered, as well as for negative and positive framing.     

An empirical investigation into the effect of psychological perceptions on the willingness-to-pay to reduce risk

A large sample of the residents of metropolitan Chicago were interviewed to investigate whether psychometric attributes by which people view hazards are related to their willingness-to-pay to reduce the hazard. One of the hazards, stomach cancer, is found to engender fear and a high willingness-to-pay. Among the other hazards, willingness-to-pay increases with the dread of the hazard but declines with degree of knowledge people have about the risk they are exposed to. When adjustment is made for perceived probability of occurrence, one can conclude that the implied valuation of life varies across hazards according to psychometric risk perceptions. This result has practical implication for policy makers when making decisions regarding spending to reduce hazards.     

A No-Trade Theorem under Knightian Uncertainty with General Preferences

This paper derives a no-trade theorem under Knightian uncertainty, which generalizes the theorem of Milgrom and Stokey (1982, Journal of Economic Theory 26, 17) by allowing general preference relations. It is shown that the no-trade theorem holds true as long as agents' preferences are dynamically consistent in the sense of Machina and Schmeidler (1991, Econometrica 60, 745), and satisfies the so-called piece-wise monotonicity axiom. A preference satisfying the piece-wise monotonicity axiom does not necessarily imply the additive utility representation, nor is necessarily based on beliefs. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Consulting an Expert with Potentially Conflicting Preferences

We study a situation where a decision maker relies on the report of a self-interested and informed expert prior to decide whether to undertake a certain project. An important feature in this interaction is that, depending on the collected information, the two agents have potentially conflicting preferences. Information contained in the report is partially verifiable in the sense that the expert can suppress favorable information sustaining the project but he cannot exaggerate it. Our results show that this setting favors the agent which is the less eager to undertake the project in that he always succeeds to induce his most preferred action.      

On the Contingent Valuation of Safety and the Safety of Contingent Valuation: Part 1-Caveat Investigator

This article reports the results of two studies aimed at testing and refining a procedure for estimating willingness-to-pay based monetary values of safety using the contingent valuation method. In spite of the fact that respondents were given the opportunity to discuss various safety issues and key concepts in focus group meetings held in advance of individual interviews, and were also given ample opportunity to revise their responses in the light of the overall pattern of these responses, the results show clear evidence of extensive and persistent insensitivity to the scale and scope of the safety improvements that were specified in the contingent valuation questions, as well as vulnerability to framing effects. This clearly casts serious doubt on the reliability and validity of willingness-to-pay based monetary values of safety estimated using conventional contingent valuation procedures.     

Preferences for information on probabilities versus prizes: The role of risk-taking attitudes

Many real-world decisions entail choices between information on either probabilities or payoffs (i.e., prizes). Simplified versions of such decisions are examined to gain insight into preferences for different types of information as a function of risk-attitudes. General and simple decision rules are derived for cases where the utility function is concave (or convex) over the relevant payoff interval.The article further describes several experiments to test business students' intuitions concerning these optimal decision rules. In general, risk-taking attitudes did not correlate significantly with subjects' preferences for information, in violation of theorems regarding mean-preserving spreads of risk. Other tests, e.g., narrowing certain probability ranges, also resulted in preferences contrary to expected utility (EU) theory.