What do employers think about employing people with experience of mental illness in New Zealand workplaces?

The researchers investigated employers' experiences with individuals with a mental illness and in their workplaces. Seventy-two business owners or human resource managers were interviewed. Most knew the prospective employee's health background prior to deciding to employ them. The majority of the reported experiences with employed individuals were very positive. Key strategies the employers or managers reported using to support employees were: to create trustworthy relationships, to work through issues and to seek external support.     

Do people reason when they accept tricky offers? A case of approach and avoidance motivated reasoning

Tricky or deceptive sales offers are often accepted by people. But how do we explain the acceptance of such disadvantageous offers? We propose that buyers represent offers in terms of costs and benefits in a conditional goal-related mental rule along the lines of “if a cost is paid, a benefit is obtained”. This representation would be influenced by BAS (approach) and BIS (avoidance) motivational systems. Behavioural approach system (BAS) would trigger seeking evidence confirming the offer and would lead us to accept it. Behavioural inhibition system (BIS), on the contrary, seeks disconfirming evidence, leading to rejection of the offer. Activation of approach and avoidance motivation would be influenced by internal variables and the context. We carried out three experiments where participants were told to check if a deceptive conditional offer was a cheat in a thematic Wason Selection Task. Experiment 1 showed that participants preferred confirmatory selection when the benefit was linked to a human need. In Experiment 2, warning information indicating cheating was introduced, while in Experiment 3 information about product alternatives was added to the instructions. We found a weakening of confirmatory card selection in Experiment 2, and a clear preference towards falsifying selection in Experiment 3. These results support the role of approach and avoidance motivated reasoning in buying/selling exchanges. Implications of these results are discussed in comparison with cheater detection algorithm and conformation bias predictions.     

Do people have accurate beliefs about the behavioral consequences of incidental emotions? Evidence from trust games

The present study examined people’s expectations of how incidental emotions could shape others’ reciprocity in trusting situations, whether these expectations affect people’s own behavior, and how accurate these expectations are. Study 1 explored people’s beliefs about the effects of different incidental emotions on another person’s trustworthiness in general. In Studies 2 and 3, senders in trust games faced angry, guilty, grateful, or emotionally neutral responders. Participants who were told about their counterpart’s emotional state acted consistently with their beliefs about how these emotions would affect the other’s trustworthiness. These beliefs were not always correct, however. There were significant deviations between the expected behavior of angry responders and such responders’ actual behavior. These findings raise the possibility that one player’s knowledge of the other’s emotional state may lead to action choices that yield poor outcomes for both players.     

Risky discounts: Do people prefer them on a per-item or per-purchase basis and why?

Risky discounts differ from other discount formats in that the actual discount level is determined by chance (e.g., “scratch & save” cards). Four studies investigated whether consumers prefer to receive risky discounts on a per-purchase or per-item basis. Although these options do not differ with regard to expected value, they entail multiple differences (e.g., savings distribution, amount of individual gains, excitement, and effort involved) that may lead to differential consumer perceptions and experiences. Controlling for expected value of savings, participants preferred per-item over per-purchase discounts. As hypothesized, the main reasons for this preference were a partly incorrect perception of the properties of the savings distribution, the adoption of a narrow mindset focusing on the best outcome in a series of discount gambles, and the greater excitement provided by multiple discount gambles.     

Online ghettoes,perils or supernannies? Australian young people with chronic illness and disability challenge some moral panics about young people online

Current literature focusing on young people’s digital technology use often reflects concerns that they may live virtual lives and withdraw from locally geographically situated spaces. It assumes the existence of a split between offline and online ‘worlds’ corresponding to ‘real ‘and ‘non-real’ respectively. This article reports research findings on how young people locate new social media technologies in their daily lives with particular focus on the relationship between their online and offline experiences. The voices of the young people guided the research, which found that their social media use contradicts conventional narratives of moral panic about the alleged unreality and fearful dangers of online spaces for young people.     

Ratings of health and quality of life by young working people: are there occupational or education-based differences?

The study examines differences in self-rated health and perceived quality of life (QoL) among young working people according to occupation and education level. Subjects were extracted from a cross-sectional data set, covering questionnaire responses of people aged 20-74 years from the Swedish region of Osterg?tland, and addressing individual environmental and health conditions. The emphasis was on males and females in paid employment aged 20-34 (n = 863). Differences in self-rated health items and in perceived QoL were subjected to a series of t-tests. Two measures of individual socioeconomic position were considered - occupation and education. No education-based differences were found, and there were few differences based on occupation. Among males, manual workers reported significantly higher scores with regard to pain and physical function than did non-manual workers. Male and female manual workers scored significantly lower on current perceived QoL than non-manual workers. In the case of females, the differences between manual and non-manual workers also applied to former perceived QoL. Yet, after applying the Bonferroni correction, none of the differences observed remained significant. In line with some earlier studies, it appears that -- among young working adults -- the manners in which health status and QoL are perceived are not strongly conditional on socioeconomic position.