Human behavior: possibilities explain action

The first and decisive stage of human decision making is determined by constraints and knowledge about the alternatives available to an individual. Four types of constraints define the individual's possibility set: resources, the state of technique, standards, and self-imposed constraints. Knowledge may be objective and subjective, but for individual behaviour personal knowledge which tells the particular individual what applies to himself, is decisive. In the second stage the individual decides between the (few) alternatives in the possibility set. This perspective is contrasted with expected utility maximization and with Becker's theory of behaviour. It is illustrated with various applications.     

Prizes in an industrial union environment

This paper proposes a short-run cross-sectional theory of how employers in an industrial union work environment try to foster and reward greater efforts and more productivity by individual workers by offering a “prize” in the form of shift premiums, overtime pay, and accident risk premiums. The theory is evaluated empirically with a set of micro data from a large industrial establishment. We found that the effect of such prizes is to steepen the upward portion of the earnings profile, dampen the compression of earnings in a union environment, and increase earnings differentiation.     

Naturalistic observation of drivers' interactions while overtaking on an undivided road

Current models of driving behavior and designs of driver support systems are not taking adequately into account the interactions between drivers. Although a driver's intended maneuver may not be physically possible at a specific time point, it may still be safely executed if the driver's intention is successfully communicated to and interpreted by another driver, who alters the own future trajectory so as to enable the maneuver execution. This paper presents some empirical findings relevant to communicative and cooperative interactions between drivers along naturalistic overtaking maneuvers on an undivided road. The cues used by drivers to interpret other drivers' intention and the drivers' interactions were extracted through video observations of the maneuvers together with the frequency of such interactions per level of traffic risk. The findings show that drivers use formal and informal cues to anticipate other drivers' intention. A significant percentage of maneuvers were performed after facilitation by other drivers. Future studies should focus on this phenomenon while future models of driving behavior should incorporate communicative and cooperative interactions among drivers, so as to design adequate cooperative support systems to enhance road safety.     

Why China failed to create an endogenous industrial capitalism

Conclusion Weber almost anticipated the idea of the high-level equilibrium trap. Speaking about bureaucracy, he observed that as always in the area of'techniques' ... advance proceeded most slowly wherever older structural forms were in their own way technically highly developed and functionally particularly well-developed to the requirements at hand. It is a pity that he did not utilize this insight to analyze what he called the increasing stability of the economic situation under conditions of the economically self-sufficient and socially homogenously composed world-empire of China. Instead he pursued the idea that the absence of self-generated capitalism in China was due basically to the lack of a particular mentality. This inappropriate mentality had several aspects. One was the personalist principle. Others are listed in a catalog of alleged traits of personality taken largely from Arthur Smith's Chinese Characteristics. They include stolidity, patience, dislike of novelty, absence of curiosity, credulity, and a general distrust of and dishonesty towards all. Having acknowledged China's considerable technical endowments and inventions (Weber's own quotation marks), he argued that the magic stereotyping of technology and economics... completely precluded the advent of indigenous modern enterprises in communication and industry. The Chinese world, in a famous phrase, was a magic garden in which the ethical rationality of the miracle [was] out of the question. Certain points of detail may be disputed. Thus the miracles attributed to the piety of sons and the fidelity of widows were entirely ethically rational. But the crucial fact is that this conception of the problem led Weber in practice to place an excessive faith in the explanatory power of an analysis of ideas considered in relative isolation from their socioeconomic context. It probably also weakened his sense of the need to sort out more systematically the somewhat internally contradictory opinions that he held on the more specifically economic aspects of Chinese society.

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Human capital,time use,and other family behavior

Human capital theory is recommended as a fertile theory to explain many aspects of family time use behavior. Some examples are given of the potential usefulness of the concepts of general and specific human capital. Investment of parental time in children is urged as a fruitful area of time use research.The criticisms of this article by my colleagues Rosemary Avery, Dean Lillard, and Dan Mont improved it materially. The views expressed are mine and not theirs, as they so ably pointed out, and I retain responsibility for them.Dr. Bryant's research interests include the consumption, investment and time use behavior of families and family members.     

The use of participant-observation protocol in an industrial engineering research

Based on literature, this article aims to present the "participant-observation' research protocol, and its practical application in the industrial engineering field, more specifically within the area of design development, and in the case shown by this article, of interiors' design. The main target is to identify the concept of the method, i.e., from its characteristics to structure a general sense about the subject, so that the protocol can be used in different areas of knowledge, especially those ones which are committed with the scientific research involving the expertise from researchers, and subjective feelings and opinions of the users of an engineering product, and how this knowledge can be benefic for product design, contributing since the earliest stage of design.     

The violence of materialism in advanced industrial society: an eco-sociological approach

The main argument to be developed in this article is that such phenomena as war, vandalism and urban ‘terrorism’are not isolated events, but reflect the values and beliefs embedded in the deep institutional structure of advanced industrial societies. It will be argued that in such societies, however politically patterned, there is a universal, and virtually unequivocal, acceptance of economic growth and expansion as the prime objective to be pursued. As such economic expansion depends on advances in scientific and technological knowledge the control and manipulation of nature is given full legitimacy. This attitude towards nature is seen as a central feature of the industrial culture as a whole and reflects the dominance of material over other human values. And it is the asymmetry between these value systems which predisposes the industrial culture to violence and instability: in short it gives ideological support to the use of violence in the resolution of problems, whether these be of a political, social or economic nature. It will be contended that there is a clear need to go beyond the traditional marxist analysis of capitalism in order to show how the institutional structure of advanced industrial societies plays a part both in stimulating and reproducing the ideology of violence notwithstanding considerable differences in the political arrangements in such societies. It follows from this that what is required is a broad theory of industrialization, rather than specifically of capitalism. As Illich argues     

The effect of the presence of an audience on risk-taking while gambling: the social shield

Being in a social context influences risk-taking behavior. This study aims to identify the effect of an audience’s presence on risk-taking while gambling. One hundred and thirty-two university students played a computer roulette game. They were randomly allocated to one of our three conditions: (i) either they played alone; or (ii) in the presence of the experimenter; or (iii) in the presence of the experimenter, while being videotaped. Results revealed a significant effect on risk-taking in the participants with the presence of an audience, with more risk-averse behaviors in the two types of audience conditions than in the alone condition. No differences were found between the two audience conditions. Thus, an audience may prevent risk-taking and provide a social shield.     

Comparing topography-based verbal behavior with stimulus selection-based verbal behavior

Michael (1985) distinguished between two types of verbal behavior: topography-based and stimulus selection-based verbal behavior. The current research was designed to empirically examine these two types of verbal behavior while addressing the frequently debated question, Which augmentative communication system should be used with the nonverbal developmentally disabled person? Four mentally retarded adults served as subjects. Each subject was taught to tact an object by either pointing to its corresponding symbol (selection-based verbal behavior), or making the corresponding sign (topography-based verbal behavior). They were then taught an intraverbal relation, and were tested for the emergence of stimulus equivalence relations. The results showed that signed responses were acquired more readily than pointing responses as measured by the acquisition of tacts and intraverbals, and the formation of equivalence classes. These results support Michael’s (1985) analysis, and have important implications for the design of language intervention programs for the developmentally disabled.

     

Media art and the resurrection of an image: motion and sculpturing

The last decades' increase in the visual methods in social science has not been reflected in the study of religion. There is a rather perplexing absence of such methods in the study of religion, given the importance of visual symbolism in many religious traditions. This article is about photo-elicitation among young Christians, Muslims and non-religious people in the multicultural Grønland area in inner-city Oslo, Norway. We focus on two images of holy books: a Bible with a pair of aged hands folded on top, and a Qur'an with a prayer bead. Four narratives that these two images elicited form the basis of the article: (1) ‘Everyday life sociologists of religion’; (2) ‘Cousin Religion's holy book: tool for everyday cosmopolitanism’; (3) ‘Translating holy books’; and (4) ‘The image becomes sacred’. From these narratives, we discuss how photo-elicitation can work in the study of religion. We outline which participants provided which narratives. We discuss the potential of images for tapping silent knowledge about different religious life-worlds, and for bridging different social and cultural worlds.     

Developing Objectives for an Undergraduate Human Sexuality Course

Summary

The process of developing comprehensive course objectives for an undergraduate course in human sexuality is summarized. The contextual nature of learning, the integrity and coherence of course content” and the role of the educator are discussed. Examples of course content, interactive exercises, communication techniques, and other pedagogical procedures are integrated into the discussion of the rationale for each objective.     

Nonverbal behavior correlated with the shaped verbal behavior of children

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - Children under 6 years old pressed on response windows behind which stimuli appeared (star or tree). Presses occasionally lit lamps arranged in a column; a present...     

Australian industrial relations policy and workers with family responsibilities

Australian workers have been experiencing growing levels of work-to-family conflict for decades now. In recognition of this problem, the Australian Commonwealth Government ratified ILO Convention 156 concerning workers with family responsibilities in 1990. Despite this, industrial relations reforms introduced under Australia's Industrial Relations Reform Act 1993 and extended under the Workplace Relations Act 1996 have actually increased the pressure on workers with family responsibilities by enabling changes to rostering arrangements, decreases in overtime and penalty rates, and increases in the span of ordinary working hours. Depuis plusieurs décenies déjà, les travailleurs australiens sont victimes de conflits résultant de l'interaction entre leur vie professionnelle et leur vie familiale. En reconnaissance de ces problèmes, le Gouvernement du Commonwealth Australien a ratifié en 1990 la ILO Convention 156 relative aux travailleurs ayant des responsabilités familiales. En dépit de ceci, les réformes mises en place conformément au Workplace Relations Act de 1990, puis conformément au Workplace Relations Act de 1993 n'ont fait qu'augmenter les tensions auxquelles sont soumis les travailleurs ayant des responsabilités familiales. En effet, en autorisant une plus grande flexibilité du travail posté ainsi qu'une réduction des possibilités d'effectuer des heures supplémentaires, entraînant ainsi une diminution des charges salariales associées à celles-ci, ces mesures n'ont fait qu'allonger le temps de travail normalement payé.     

Implementing an Information System in a Human Service Organization

No abstract available for this article.     

Contributions of participatory ergonomics to the improvement of safety culture in an industrial context

This paper presents the results of an ergonomic intervention conducted within a blast furnace plant. As part of its risk prevention program, the company decided to set up an action plan, in a participatory manner, by setting up working groups to solve health & safety issues. This field mission involved 230 employees, 80 of whom participated actively by being incorporated into working groups. After four months of intervention, a questionnaire survey has been conducted among employees to study the effects of participation on the safety climate. The results seem promising and show that the benefits of participation are numerous: a more positive safety climate associated to safer attitudes and behaviors. However, rather than just participation, it seems to be the employee involvement in the working groups and the satisfaction they derive from their participation that guarantee these positive results. Hence, participatory ergonomics seems to be an effective way to decrease the number of unsafe behaviors at work, provided that the type of participation has been previously well defined and organized according to the specific context of each organization.     

Changes in human cervical and lumbar spine curves while bicycling with different handlebar heights

Cycling is a daily activity that needs a high demand of human-bicycle fitness. However, studies into the fitness or ergonomic aspects are very little. In this study, the simulated 20 min bicycling test were performed by 26 male participants under 5 handle height conditions. Body joint angles and external cervical/lumbar spine lordosis were measured at the initial and cycling after 20 min. Results show that different handle heights did cause various trunk inclinations. Trunk inclination was negatively and positively correlated with lumbosacral angle (r = -0.620, p < 0.001) and cervical angle (r = 0.510, p < 0.001), respectively. In this study, regression models were also developed to predict the internal cervical and lumbar spine movements by external trunk inclination and head extension, respectively. The explanatory abilities for the variance of the models were 67.2% for LSA and 82.8% for CE prediction. This can be used to understand the cyclist's spine movements while field study of bicycling.