Gender Differences in Facial Reactions to Fear-Relevant Stimuli

The aim of the present study was to explore whether females are specifically more facially reactive than males, or whether females are more emotionally reactive in general, as reflected even by non-facial reactions such as autonomic responding and emotional experience. Forty-eight females and 48 males were exposed to pictures of fear-relevant and fear-irrelevant stimuli while EMG activity was detected from the Corrugator supercilii muscle region. Skin conductance responses (SCRs) were measured, and the participants were also required to rate how unpleasant they experienced the stimuli to be. Fear-relevant stimuli evoked a larger corrugator response than fear-irrelevant stimuli, but only for females. Fear-relevant stimuli also elicited larger SCRs and higher ratings of unpleasantness, but these measures were almost identical for females and males. The present results are consistent with the hypothesis that females are more facially reactive than males, but not more reactive in other respects.     

Besser entscheiden im Team — aber wie?

Investment committees of banks, pension funds or investment clubs meet regularly. The members decide together about the allocation and the timing of their own assets or their customers assets. This article will point out some pitfalls and chances that are typical in this decision making process. Especial focus is set on financial psychological aspects with regards to information processing and decision making processes. At the end of the article the author will indicate a sustainable way to improve the quality of team decisions.     

Effects of Race and Sex on Work Group Cooperation Vs. Competition

This study examines whether differences in individualism-collectivism by race and sex result in differences in cooperation vs. competition. Expanding upon the earlier work of Cox et al., individual and group-level comparisons are made by race and sex. Exclusively examining race-based effects, Cox et al. had suggested that blacks display greater cooperation than do whites. Our findings concur; however, we are able to demonstrate this using a more complete group-level comparison. Given literature suggesting sex to be as relevant as race when administering work force diversity, we further expanded upon the earlier study by testing for such effects. While some previous research has suggested a tendency for women to behave more cooperatively than do men, our findings show that this is not necessarily the case. Specifically, this study demonstrates that sex decreases in importance, when controlling for race. Applications and suggestions for future research are presented.     

Accounting for State Intervention: The Social Histories of “Beneficiaries”

How does the state imagine the people? In what ways does it come to know the targets of its policies? This paper examines the transformation of the state through a focus on the visions implied in tools and practices of results-based management in state bureaucracies. When scholars have discussed the state’s vision or imagination they have often critically examined how the state constructs aggregates of the population as a whole. But an emphasis on or critique of aggregation can only be the beginning of understanding the multiple and sometimes contradictory ways in which people are imagined in governance today. Results-based management has created a new way in which the state imagines people. In some policy arenas citizens have been turned into “beneficiaries” through the practices of state managers. Beneficiaries differ from citizen in a number of ways: Citizens are thought to benefit from policies with broad goals; beneficiaries are shown to benefit from specific interventions. Citizens are owed service; beneficiaries are selected for intervention if it suits specific funding priorities. Citizens are the origins of politics and the end of policies; beneficiaries are a means to an organization’s success.     

A Big Brother: New Findings on How Low-Income Fathers Define Responsible Fatherhood

I interviewed 57 low-income fathers about how they define responsible fatherhood. Unlike findings from previous research, their definition did not include financial provision or daily caregiving. Instead, their definition included six dimensions, some of which resemble a “Big Brother”: spending time in non-caregiving activities; avoiding harm by voluntarily distancing from the child when it is in the child’s best interest; acknowledging paternity in non-legal forums; spending money on gifts, joint activities, and special needs; monitoring the child’s home for trouble; and minimizing absences in the child’s life. Because these fathers do not emphasize traditional breadwinning or primary caregiving, their responsible fathering beliefs and behavior may be unappreciated by academics, practitioners, and policy makers.     

TRUSTING THE TAX OFFICE: DOES PUTNAM'S THESIS RELATE TO TAX?

Data from the Community Participation and Citizenship Survey are used to explore the factors that influence people to place trust in strangers and impersonal others. We use Putnam's social capital thesis to explore whether civic engagement and associational membership are major factors in the development of generalised or social trust, and whether this kind of trust is generalisable to trust in government institutions, specifically the Tax Office. There is partial support for Putnam's thesis that civic engagement develops social trust. More important is affective trust developed in the family and through familiar others. We find that trust is generalisable, being extended to strangers and to the impersonal others in government institutions. It is trust that builds trust — and government institutions like the Tax Office begin their task with benefits accrued through generalised trust.     

Sample Size Calculation and Blinded Sample Size Recalculation in Clinical Trials Where the Treatment Effect is Measured by the Relative Risk

In clinical trials with binary endpoints, the required sample size does not depend only on the specified type I error rate, the desired power and the treatment effect but also on the overall event rate which, however, is usually uncertain. The internal pilot study design has been proposed to overcome this difficulty. Here, nuisance parameters required for sample size calculation are re-estimated during the ongoing trial and the sample size is recalculated accordingly. We performed extensive simulation studies to investigate the characteristics of the internal pilot study design for two-group superiority trials where the treatment effect is captured by the relative risk. As the performance of the sample size recalculation procedure crucially depends on the accuracy of the applied sample size formula, we firstly explored the precision of three approximate sample size formulae proposed in the literature for this situation. It turned out that the unequal variance asymptotic normal formula outperforms the other two, especially in case of unbalanced sample size allocation. Using this formula for sample size recalculation in the internal pilot study design assures that the desired power is achieved even if the overall rate is mis-specified in the planning phase. The maximum inflation of the type I error rate observed for the internal pilot study design is small and lies below the maximum excess that occurred for the fixed sample size design.     

FINANCIAL CONSTRAINTS AND INNOVATION: WHY POOR COUNTRIES DON'T CATCH UP

This paper examines micro‐level channels through which financial development can affect such macroeconomic outcomes as level of income. Specifically, we investigate theoretically and empirically how financial constraints affect a firm's innovation activities. Theoretical predictions are tested using unique firm survey data, which provide direct measures for innovations and firm‐specific financial constraints, as well as information on shocks to firms' internal funds that serve as firm‐level instruments for financial constraints. We find unambiguous evidence that financial constraints restrain the ability of domestically owned firms to innovate and hence to catch up to the technological frontier.