Preference reversals and the analysis of income distributions

It is known from the literature on uncertainty that in cases where individuals express a preference for a high win-probability bet over a bet with high winnings they nevertheless will bid more to obtain the bet with high winnings. We investigate whether a similar phenomenon applies in the parallel social-choice situation. Here decisions are to be made between a distribution with a large group of high-income people and a distribution with a small group of very high-income people. Results from a number of experimental designs are analysed. We are grateful for helpful comments from three referees of this journal, Peter Dolton, Graham Loomes, Dirk Van der gaer and seminar participants at the LSE and the University of Gent. We also thank Guillermo Cruces for computational assistance.     

Large-Scale Observational Evidence of Cross-Cultural Differences in Facial Behavior

Self-report studies have found evidence that cultures differ in the display rules they have for facial expressions (i.e., for what is appropriate for different people at different times). However, observational studies of actual patterns of facial behavior have been rare and typically limited to the analysis of dozens of participants from two or three regions. We present the first large-scale evidence of cultural differences in observed facial behavior, including 740,984 participants from 12 countries around the world. We used an Internet-based framework to collect video data of participants in two different settings: in their homes and in market research facilities. Using computer vision algorithms designed for this dataset, we measured smiling and brow furrowing expressions as participants watched television ads. Our results reveal novel findings and provide empirical evidence to support theories about cultural and gender differences in display rules. Participants from more individualist cultures displayed more brow furrowing overall, whereas smiling depended on both culture and setting. Specifically, participants from more individualist countries were more expressive in the facility setting, while participants from more collectivist countries were more expressive in the home setting. Female participants displayed more smiling and less brow furrowing than male participants overall, with the latter difference being more pronounced in more individualist countries. This is the first study to leverage advances in computer science to enable large-scale observational research that would not have been possible using traditional methods.     

Group Perspective Formation and Strategies of Identity in a Post-threat Situation

This paper is a microsociological study of a group of people who have undergone a threat experience. Within the combined theoretical frameworks of symbolic interactionism and phenomenology, the event is seen as a "reality shock" for its participants, involving cognitive crises in group and individual definitions of the situation. The after period is one in which procedures toward making the threat experience meaningful on both group and individual levels are instituted within group networks. These procedures on a group level involve the construction of a "real" event by the objectification of time and experience and through the emergence and attribution of post-hoc norms. Strategies toward the maintenance and continuity of identity include reconstruction of the threat situation, of other participants' behavior, of post-hoc norms, or of individual behavior, and the negotiation of identity on these various bases.     

The value of being precise

This study investigates how individuals assess imprecise information. We focus on two essential dimensions of decision under uncertainty, outcomes and probabilities, and their respective precision. We believe the precision of information is highly relevant in the investment setting, as reflected in the well-known “home (familiarity) bias”, and the outcome and probability dimensions, separately or jointly, may affect investors’ knowledge of uncertainty and perceived risk of the investment options, and subsequently affect investors’ choices. To test this conjecture, we conducted three experiments. Our results show that 1) participants demonstrate a pattern of preference for precision and aversion of extreme vagueness and associate vagueness with higher perceived risk and lower investment (experiments one and two); 2) participants prefer vague outcome information to vague probability information (experiment two); 3) familiarity indeed positively affects the precision of estimated values, but this association is stronger for the outcome dimension than for probabilities (experiment three). Our results confirm that precision in information, especially in the outcome dimension has an impact on investors’ resource allocation choices.     

Voluntary Membership and Well-Being of Nonprofit,Government, and Business Employees

While the benefits the volunteers offer nonprofit organizations are substantial, they can also cause problems for these groups. In an environment where people willingly donate their time and energy to a cause that they ostensibly support, why is disruptive behavior so common? This ethnographic study of volunteers at an animal shelter identifies the factors that lead to problematic behavior. The paper argues that disruptions occur when there is a mismatch between the needs of the volunteer and the needs of the organization and because of structural conditions that lead to uncertainty among volunteers. These findings shed light on volunteer behavior broadly and present the opportunity to address disruptive behavior. As a result, the benefits the volunteers provide for an organization can be maximized.     

Why Can’t You Just Follow the Rules? Volunteer Rule Breaking and Disruptive Behavior

While the benefits volunteers offer nonprofit organizations are substantial, they can also cause problems for these groups. In an environment where people willingly donate their time and energy to a cause that they ostensibly support, why is disruptive behavior so common? This ethnographic study of volunteers at an animal shelter identifies the factors that lead to problematic behavior. The paper argues that disruptions occur when there is a mismatch between the needs of the volunteer and the needs of the organization and because of structural conditions that lead to uncertainty among volunteers. These findings shed light on volunteer behavior broadly and present the opportunity to address disruptive behavior. As a result, the benefits volunteers provide for an organization can be maximized.     

Economic Uncertainty and Fertility

Sociologists and demographers have long been interested in the role of economic uncertainty in family behavior. Despite the prevailing “bourgeois conviction” that economic uncertainty discourages people from having children, the empirical evidence on this issue is mixed. In this paper, I summarize the recent empirical evidence, and discuss the potential limitations of previous investigations. Among the possible shortcomings of these studies is that many relied exclusively on unemployment as an operational definition of labor market uncertainty. Subjective indicators of economic uncertainty, which measure the individual’s perception of his or her economic situation more directly, often were not available to researchers. Moreover, few of these studies explored group-specific differences in behavior. In this paper, we seek to overcome some of the limitations of these earlier analyses. Based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), we study the role of perceived economic uncertainty in transitions to first and higher order births for the period 1990–2013. In addition, we examine how different population subgroups (stratified by education, parity, and age) respond to economic uncertainty.     

Personal assistance from family members as an unwanted situation,an optimal solution or an additional good? The Swedish example

The aim of this article was to explore how users experienced and managed personal assistance from family members who are employed as personal assistants. Seventeen users of personal assistance provided by one or several family members, often in combination with external personal assistants, participated. Thematic qualitative interviews were conducted. The participants were between 19 and 58 years old, and were living with various impairments: mobility, sensory and/or learning disabilities. The results showed that personal assistance from family members could both promote and be a barrier to disabled people’s control over their own lives and participation in society. It became evident that the situation could have both advantages and disadvantages for both parties, which puts the focus on the interdependency between the participants and their family assistants. However, the results also points to a potential risk that the welfare state (re)passes its responsibilities back on to disabled people and their families.     

Strategic uncertainty aversion in bargaining — Experimental evidence

In a series of four experiments I demonstrate the existence of significant aversion to basically non-existent strategic uncertainty in very simple bargaining games. This aversion goes far beyond ordinary risk or ambiguity aversion. Specifically, although almost nobody expects or chooses the rejection of an offered equal split in a bargaining game, participants behave as if there would be a considerably large rejection rate for equal splits. This behavior is robust across experimental designs and subject pools, can lead to inefficiencies in markets, and is incompatible with consistency of strategies and rational beliefs.     

Self-rated quality of life among the young unemployed and the young in work in northern Sweden

This study analysed self-assessed quality of life (QoL), using a QoL questionnaire (H?rnquist's QLcs) covering life spheres, somatic health, mental well-being, cognitive ability, social and family life, activity, financial situation, meaning in life and a global score "entire life", for young people aged 18-24 in a population-based cross-sectional study in northern Sweden. Of these, 651 were unemployed and 2802 were in work (employed, students and in military service). Results showed that the young unemployed exhibited poorer QoL than the young in work and the greatest difference was found regarding their financial situation. Young men rated somatic health and mental well-being higher than young women. However, QoL in other essential domains was rated higher by young women in work. Close friends and money reserve were important for all participants, no matter whether they were employed or not. The risk of being young and unemployed was greater if the person had a worse financial situation, shorter education, and fewer leisure activities with other people. Finally, it was concluded that while QoL is poorer when in unemployment - both for the young and those who are older (aged 25-64) - psychological well-being, in contrast to several previous studies, is even poorer for young people than for those who are older. This is worrying in a public health perspective and could have implications for unemployment policies for younger and less well-educated age groups.     

Trust in the face of uncertainty: a qualitative study of intersubjective trust and risk

Contemporary trust research regards trust as a way of dealing with uncertainty and risk. Predominantly, it suggests that trust reduces uncertainty by means of risk assessment and rational calculation. However, phenomenological research proposes that trust is an alternative way of relating to uncertainty rather than a way to reduced uncertainty. This paper investigates these propositions in an interview study on intersubjective trust. The study focuses on the modes of uncertainty management employed in trust and risk, and particularly on how knowledge, experience, familiarity, and decision-making are combined in the act of trusting. The main finding is that trust and risk are better characterised as different ways of perceiving the social and managing uncertainty, than as different elements of the same decision process. The concept of ‘risk compartmentalisation’ is developed to describe the different ways people work to contain risk and maintain trust by combining adaptation and familiarity.     

The Cultural Meaning of Disaster: Remarks on Gregory Button's Work

After the two major nuclear disasters I have witnessed in my life, Chernobyl and Fukushima, I experienced uncertainty that seemed stronger than fear, anger or panic. In George Button's excellent work I found my personal experience of uncertainty explained as a cultural phenomenon that indeed prevails after all natural and manmade disasters. He has been studying disasters for over 30 years as an academic and a reporter. He covered and reported on, for example, the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster, the Exxon Valdes oil spill, and Hurricane Katrina. His book tells a powerful story about US disasters and their cultural aspects. However, I think that Button's research methodology and his findings can be applied to the Japanese situation as well. On the one hand, his book can serve as a warning on how not to act in the face of calamity if we want our culture to survive the suffering, and, on the other, it can serve as inspiration for domestic research on the most recent Japanese calamity. Button is interested in the way a disaster becomes a cultural, social and political phenomenon where uncertainty prevails and his focus on uncertainty as a main category seems to be a pioneering attempt that his book extends from previous studies. He focuses on uncertainty as an experience of affected people as well as the politics of uncertainty inflected in a time of calamity and finds that the two aspects are correlative.     

The role of beliefs,trust, and risk in contributions to a public good

This paper experimentally investigates if and how beliefs, trust, and risk attitudes are associated with cooperative behavior. By applying incentivized elicitation methods to measure these concepts, we find that beliefs about others’ cooperation and trust are positively correlated with cooperation in a public goods game. However, even though contributing to a public good resembles a situation of making decisions under strategic uncertainty, elicited risk preferences do not seem to explain cooperation in a systematic way.     

“It's Just a Likelihood”: Uncertainty as Topic and Resource in Conveying “Positive” Results in an Antenatal Screening Clinic

The recognition of uncertainty as a pivotal issue for the sociology of medicine is longstanding. More recently, the widespread integration of new medical technologies into healthcare has led to a renewed analytic focus on uncertainty. However, there remains little work on the interactional manifestations of uncertainty. This article uses conversation analysis to examine how uncertainty is introduced and used in one specific setting: an antenatal screening clinic in Hong Kong. We focus on women who have received “screen positive” or higher risk results, and reflect on the ways in which uncertainty is an “essential tension” (Mazeland and ten Have 1996) in the activity of conveying these results to them. We conclude that as well as posing potential difficulties for interaction, the uncertainty of test results is also used here as an interactional resource in managing the institutionally defined category of “high risk.”     

Sex,Drugs, and Situation

Abstract

Although the general populace has stereotyped bathhouses that cater to men seeking sex with other men as facilitators of HIV transmission, little research has been conducted that examines such claims. The authors conducted structured, in-depth topical interviews with 41 men who frequent bathhouses in Houston, Texas. Qualitative data were collected. The qualitative data were analyzed using an inductive and deductive analytical process. The study finds that bathhouses are a setting in which sex occurs, but bathhouses per se do not determine the nature of sexual activities. Instead, the meanings patrons attach to the commercial public sex environment bath-houses and to the activities they perform there account for men's sexual risk behaviors. Many participants reported accurate knowledge regarding HIV and safer sex practices and also reported either avoiding penetrative sex or using condoms in this setting. Data are presented that elucidate the relationships between perceptions, drug use, and sexual risk behaviors. Findings are discussed in regard to intervention and future research.     

Terrorism threat in Belgium: The resilience of Belgian citizens and the protection of governmental reputation by means of communication

In November 2015, the terrorism threat in Belgium confronted both citizens and the government with a situation characterized by high uncertainty. In this context, a national survey was conducted among 805 respondents, with three purposes. First, this case study aimed to explore how Belgians deal with the threat by examining if they change their behavior in public places and seek information about the threat. Second, we investigated why people seek and process information about the terrorism threat based on three determinants, namely their level of involvement with the threat, the expert efficacy of the government, and attitudes towards mass media communication. Finally, this study elaborated on perceived governmental efficacy, researching how governmental reputation is affected through institutional trust and governmental responsibility. The results show that the terrorism threat leads citizens to be more alert in public places and participate less in mass events. Moreover, one fifth stopped traveling by public transport. It was found that Belgian citizens also searched for information several times a day, mostly via traditional media such as television and radio. Furthermore, based on structural equation modelling, we found that information seeking and processing behavior is determined by the cognitive assessment of the risk. This cognitive risk assessment is in turn positively influenced by risk involvement and perceived governmental expert efficacy. However, if the mass media are seen to focus too much on drama and sensationalism then the perception of risk decreases, and this in turn reduces information seeking behavior. In addition, results show that a perception of governmental expert efficacy is able to increase trust and decrease the level of governmental responsibility, which is in turn beneficial for governmental reputation. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Factors associated with the motivation to use psychoactive substances and the motivation to change in adolescents in an authoritarian context

The use of psychoactive substances (alcohol and drugs) by young people placed in rehabilitation centers in Quebec is well documented, but their motivation to use and to change substance use behavior remains unknown. There has been very little research on the details of the change process in adolescents, and even less in adolescents under supervision in rehabilitation centers.The present study aimed to identify the factors that youth associate with their motivation to use psychoactive substances and the factors that they associate with their motivation to change. Twenty-seven young males (age 14–18 years) were interviewed in the Centre jeunesse de Montreal. The majority of the participants were able to identify motivations to use and to change their substance use behavior. The motivations to use differed depending on the type of substance and the surrounding context in which drug use occurs. The motivations to change were associated with substance-related problems and with the perceived effect of external factors (e.g. constraints) on substance use. Finally, neither the motivations to use nor the motivations to change were strongly associated with the closely supervised setting in which the youth found themselves. Thus the controlled environment of the Centre jeunesse appears to have facilitated the change process for some participants and had no impact on others. The implications of these results for substance-abuse interventions involving troubled youth are discussed.     

Young urban adults' heterosexual risk encounters and perceived risk and safety: a structured diary study

Using diary methods, the current study explored characteristics of young adults' sexual risk interactions over a two-week period and the associations between perceived risk and safety with regard to these sexual risk behaviors. We screened all participants to ensure a moderate to high scores on an HIV knowledge measure. Men (n = 44) and women ( n = 48) enrolled at an inner-city college collected diary data, generating reports of 440 sexual occasions over a 2-week period (1,278 person-days). Despite participation in sexual risk activities, including highly inconsistent condom use during intercourse, participants uniformly reported high safety and little to no risk. Only women's perceptions of safety (not risk) were associated with condom use, men's perceptions of both safety and risk were unrelated. Ratings of safety and risk appeared to operate independently for the most part. Sex with new partners and new sexual activity were associated with both judgments of greater risk and lower safety were associated for men only. These results add to the growing evidence that young people fail to integrate fully their general knowledge regarding HIV risk into their personal interactions. This study has implications for the development of cognitive models around sexual decision-making for young adults at risk for HIV and may provide insight into the contextual features of sexual interactions associated with young people's perceptions of risk and safety.     

Certainty Broadcasts Risk Preferences: Verbal and Nonverbal Cues to Risk-Taking

People often attempt to ascertain how risky another person is willing to be. Even when this information is not purposely divulged, people may unwittingly broadcast their willingness to take risks by displaying cues to their level of certainty. Because subjective reports of feeling certain predict risk behavior, we examined whether targets’ certainty could be discerned unobtrusively and be used to predict their risky decision-making. In small groups, participants discussed two risk problems, made risk decisions, and then wrote an essay about their decision-making process. Participants’ nonverbal behavior and speech content during the group interaction, and their subsequent essay content were assessed by naïve coders and objective word-count software for cues to certainty. Subjective assessments of nonverbal behavior and objective assessments of language content revealed that certainty cues predicted greater risk propensity. Therefore, across the three communication modalities of nonverbal behavior, speech, and text, more certainty cues revealed risky behavior.     

Mix and match: planning to keep looked after children safe

The risks which children run from other children in substitute care have received little attention. However, if children's safety in care is to be maximized, then placement planning will need to focus on the risks and vulnerability of both the child to be placed and others already in the setting. It should also ensure that full information is given to the caregivers. In an interview sample of 40 looked after sexually abused and/or abusing young people aged 10 or over, most of the young abusers were placed in foster care and the majority of the sexually abused young people went into children's homes. However, in fewer than a third of these placements was consideration given to how the young person would fit in with others in that setting. This meant that the potential risks which that child posed to others or vice versa were not addressed. More worrying still, in just under half of the sample, no information about the young person's history of sexual abuse or abusing behaviour was given to the caregivers. This meant that caregivers were unable to plan to provide the level of supervision which might have averted a number of instances of abuse. When the whole histories of the sexually abused young people in the study were examined, it was found that half of them had abused another child at some stage, generally another child in care. This evidence suggests that the experience of sexual abuse should be regarded as an important risk factor in the later development of sexually abusing behavior and that local authorities need to fashion policies which emphasize the prime importance of social workers providing full information about children's backgrounds when placements are made. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.