More than Face Value: Context and Age Differences in Negative Emotion Discrimination

Journal of Nonverbal Behavior - Age-related deficits are often observed in emotion categorization tasks that include negative emotional expressions like anger, fear, and sadness. Stimulus...     

Can Children Recognize Bodily Expressions of Emotion?

Journal of Nonverbal Behavior - Past research has demonstrated that children understand distinct emotion concepts and can accurately recognize facial expressions of distinct emotions by a young...     

Developing a Broadly Applicable Measure of Risk Perception

Decades of research identify risk perception as a largely intuitive and affective construct, in contrast to the more deliberative assessments of probability and consequences that form the foundation of risk assessment. However, a review of the literature reveals that many of the risk perception measures employed in survey research with human subjects are either generic in nature, not capturing any particular affective, probabilistic, or consequential dimension of risk; or focused solely on judgments of probability. The goal of this research was to assess a multidimensional measure of risk perception across multiple hazards to identify a measure that will be broadly useful for assessing perceived risk moving forward. Our results support the idea of risk perception being multidimensional, but largely a function of individual affective reactions to the hazard. We also find that our measure of risk perception holds across multiple types of hazards, ranging from those that are behavioral in nature (e.g., health and safety behaviors), to those that are technological (e.g., pollution), or natural (e.g., extreme weather). We suggest that a general, unidimensional measure of risk may accurately capture one's perception of the severity of the consequences, and the discrete emotions that are felt in response to those potential consequences. However, such a measure is not likely to capture the perceived probability of experiencing the outcomes, nor will it be as useful at understanding one's motivation to take mitigation action.     

The Effect of Mergers and Acquisitions on Employees: Wealth Transfer,Gain‐Sharing or Pain‐Sharing?

This paper considers whether gains made by shareholders from corporate takeovers are achieved at the expense of employees, as proposed by the ‘wealth transfer’ perspective. It analyses the contribution of employee lay‐offs, along with employment and wage changes, to the takeover premium and abnormal share price movements. The analysis draws on a unique dataset of British takeovers, combining documentary, share price and accounting data. The results show that lay‐offs planned at the takeover have either no effect or adverse effects on shareholder returns. Wages growth is positively, not inversely, related to shareholder returns from the second year after the takeover, whilst positive employment changes have a similar effect in the following year. Closer scrutiny indicates that labour and shareholders share gains when the firm does well, but share pain when it does not. There is evidence, therefore, that labour and shareholder interests can be complementary, rather than antagonistic, after takeovers.     

Social Antecedents of Medical Fraud and Over-Servicing: What Makes A Doctor Criminal?

Medical fraud and overservicing are estimated to cost the Australian community between $130 and $200 million per annum, a figure far greater than the national cost of burglary and almost the same as the total property loss from all conventional crime. An examination of the social antecedents of medical fraud and overservicing suggests that the predisposition of some doctors to engage in these practices occurs because of the following: (1) medical training and professional socialization that orientate student doctors away from altruistic health issues towards narrower self-interested professional concerns; (2) career expectations of a high pattern of material consumption that are often frustrated by an increasingly competitive medical market place; and (3) professional medical organizations that lobby for national health policies which reflect the mercenary self-interest of doctors rather than the health interest of the nation.     

Activities of People with Moderate to Severe Learning Difficulties: living with purpose or just killing time?

In this study, intensive observational methods were used to examine the daily flow of activity of 12 people with moderate to severe learning difficulties living in long-stay hospital, and 12 people living in community based hostels. This covered the participants' full waking day and included weekend observations. The qualitative findings demonstrated how the participants played an active part in determining their own lifestyles. A number of more active hospital participants dealt with the unstimulating functional regime by attempting to create a social niche for themselves. A number of less active participants coped with the hospital environment by withdrawing into themselves and engaging in stereotypical behaviour to mark the passing of time. While the hostels provided a more homely and supportive environment, the participants tended to occupy a peripheral status as the least able people in the hostels and day centres. Consequently, they often had to seek staff support for activity or turned inwards. The quantitative findings followed a similar pattern of results to previous research in this area.