Cultural patterns in Dutch and Surinam nonverbal behavior: An analysis of simulated police/citizen encounters

Differences in nonverbal behavioral patterns in a simulated police interview setting were examined. One group of subjects was asked to tell the truth to a police officer whereas the other group was asked to deceive the officer. Major differences between our study and other deception studies include the distinction between nonverbal behavior displayed while listening and while speaking, and the inclusion of black subjects. Results show that there are differences in nonverbal behavior between deceivers and those who tell the truth, and generally support the finding that deception is associated with changes in vocal characteristics and hand and arm movements. However, differences in hand and arm movements occurred only while the deceiver was listening. Furthermore, findings showed that blacks looked less frequently at their discussion partner, smiled and laughed more, made more speech disturbances, spoke slower, and with more pitch raises, and were livelier in the sense that they made more trunk movements and gestures than whites.We wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on an earlier draft. This project was in part supported by the PSYCHON Foundation, which is subsidized by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research.     

Knowledge Accession and Knowledge Acquisition in Strategic Alliances: The Impact of Supplementary and Complementary Dimensions

This paper advances the concepts of knowledge accession and knowledge acquisition in strategic alliances by identifying supplementary and complementary dimensions to these knowledge transfer modes. Complementary knowledge transfer reflects the similarity of knowledge that the partners have and is conducted in pursuit of higher efficiency and productivity to enhance partner firms' existing competitiveness. Supplementary knowledge transfer occurs when partners each possess distinctive core competences and the information that is acquired or accessed increases the business scope of partners. As knowledge accession entails knowledge amalgamation that does not involve organizational learning, costs associated with the transfer process are lower and trust is easier to establish than in the case of knowledge acquisition. The paper reviews the implications of these transfer modes on trust building in alliances and their costs implications and presents a number of propositions for further exploration.     

Marital Fertility Decline in the Netherlands: Child Mortality, Real Wages, and Unemployment, 1860–1939

Previous studies of the fertility decline in Europe are often limited to an earlier stage of the marital fertility decline, when the decline tended to be slower and before the large increase in earnings in the 1920s. Starting in 1860 (before the onset of the decline), this study follows marital fertility trends until 1939, when fertility reached lower levels than ever before. Using data from the Historical Sample of the Netherlands (HSN), this study shows that mortality decline, a rise in real income, and unemployment account for the decline in the Netherlands. This finding suggests that marital fertility decline was an adjustment to social and economic change, leaving little room for attitudinal change that is independent of social and economic change.     

Robust designs for linear mixed effects models

Summary.  In health sciences, medicine and social sciences linear mixed effects models are often used to analyse time-structured data. The search for optimal designs for these models is often hampered by two problems. The first problem is that these designs are only locally optimal. The second problem is that an optimal design for one model may not be optimal for other models. In this paper the maximin principle is adopted to handle both problems, simultaneously. The maximin criterion is formulated by means of a relative efficiency measure, which gives an indication of how much efficiency is lost when the uncertainty about the models over a prior domain of parameters is taken into account. The procedure is illustrated by means of three growth studies. Results are presented for a vocabulary growth study from education, a bone gain study from medical research and an epidemiological decline in height study. It is shown that, for the mixed effects polynomial models that are applied to these studies, the maximin designs remain highly efficient for different sets of models and combinations of parameter values.     

Decision-Making in Agent-Based Models of Migration: State of the Art and Challenges

We review agent-based models (ABM) of human migration with respect to their decision-making rules. The most prominent behavioural theories used as decision rules are the random utility theory, as implemented in the discrete choice model, and the theory of planned behaviour. We identify the critical choices that must be made in developing an ABM, namely the modelling of decision processes and social networks. We also discuss two challenges that hamper the widespread use of ABM in the study of migration and, more broadly, demography and the social sciences: (a) the choice and the operationalisation of a behavioural theory (decision-making and social interaction) and (b) the selection of empirical evidence to validate the model. We offer advice on how these challenges might be overcome.     

On the exhaustiveness of truncation and dropping strategies in many-to-many matching markets

We consider two-sided many-to-many matching markets in which each worker may work for multiple firms and each firm may hire multiple workers. We study individual and group manipulations in centralized markets that employ (pairwise) stable mechanisms and that require participants to submit rank order lists of agents on the other side of the market. We are interested in simple preference manipulations that have been reported and studied in empirical and theoretical work: truncation strategies, which are the lists obtained by removing a tail of least preferred partners from a preference list, and the more general dropping strategies, which are the lists obtained by only removing partners from a preference list (i.e., no reshuffling). We study when truncation/dropping strategies are exhaustive for a group of agents on the same side of the market, i.e., when each match resulting from preference manipulations can be replicated or improved upon by some truncation/dropping strategies. We prove that for each stable mechanism, dropping strategies are exhaustive for each group of agents on the same side of the market (Theorem 1), i.e., independently of the quotas. Then, we show that for each stable mechanism, truncation strategies are exhaustive for each agent with quota 1 (Theorem 2). Finally, we show that this result cannot be extended neither to individual manipulations when the agent’s quota is larger than 1 (even when all other agents’ quotas equal 1—Example 1), nor to group manipulations (even when all quotas equal 1—Example 2).     

Comparing Group and Individual Level Assessments of Job Characteristics in Testing the Job Demand-Control Model: A Multilevel Approach

This article describes a test of Karasek's JobDemand-Control (JD-C) Model using both group andindividual level assessments of job characteristics. Bygroup assessments, we mean aggregated individual data. A random sample from general hospitals andnursing homes included 16 institutions, 64 units, and1489 health care workers (82% response). Because of thehierarchically nested data structure (i.e.,institutions, units, and individuals) the research questionsand hypothesis were tested in multilevel regressionanalyses (VARCL). The results revealed both group leveland individual level effects with regard topsychological outcomes, and stressed the usefulness ofmultilevel techniques. Karasek's JD-C Model was partlyconfirmed by finding two interaction effects at grouplevel and at individual level with regard to jobsatisfaction and work motivation, respectively. Thediscussion focuses on theoretical, methodological, andpractical implications of multilevel modeling withrespect to the JD-C Model.