The Influence of Heuristics on Psychological Science: A Case Study of Research on Creativity

Research heuristics—implicit rules used to guide work on a scientific problem—are explored for their role in guiding psychological research. Work on the psychology of creativity is used to illustrate how heuristics have guided research. We examine the influence of three heuristics: the trilogy-of-mind heuristic, the emotions-as-moods heuristic, and the analysis-of-variance heuristic. This analysis of multiple heuristics provides a new way to understand the state of research on creativity. In the discussion, the analysis is extended to other heuristics and to how heuristics may help as well as hinder innovative research.     

Welfare generosity, pregnancies and abortions among unmarried AFDC recipients

Even before the 1996 overhaul of the U.S. welfare system, a number of states had ended the practice of paying extra benefits to families who have additional children while receiving welfare. Proponents believe that this reform can reduce births to recipients, however many worry that it may encourage women to obtain abortions. Using a sample of unmarried AFDC recipients from the NLSY, we estimate a bivariate probit model of pregnancy and, conditional on becoming pregnant, the probability of abortion. Our results lend some support for the proposition that reducing incremental AFDC benefits will decrease pregnancies without increasing abortions. Received: 16 April 1998/Accepted: 11 March 1999     

A comparison of classification models to identify the Fragile X Syndrome

The main models of machine learning are briefly reviewed and considered for building a classifier to identify the Fragile X Syndrome (FXS). We have analyzed 172 patients potentially affected by FXS in Andalusia (Spain) and, by means of a DNA test, each member of the data set is known to belong to one of two classes: affected, not affected. The whole predictor set, formed by 40 variables, and a reduced set with only nine predictors significantly associated with the response are considered. Four alternative base classification models have been investigated: logistic regression, classification trees, multilayer perceptron and support vector machines. For both predictor sets, the best accuracy, considering both the mean and the standard deviation of the test error rate, is achieved by the support vector machines, confirming the increasing importance of this learning algorithm. Three ensemble methods - bagging, random forests and boosting - were also considered, amongst which the bagged versions of support vector machines stand out, especially when they are constructed with the reduced set of predictor variables. The analysis of the sensitivity, the specificity and the area under the ROC curve agrees with the main conclusions extracted from the accuracy results. All of these models can be fitted by free R programs.     

Psychology in the Arab World: Past, Present, and Future

In this article, we present a broad-based view of psychology in the Arab countries. We begin by casting light on the relevant contributions by ancient Arab scholars in the Middle Ages. Given that systematic scientific investigation of this legacy has been minuscule, we argue that in the future, scholars seeking to provide a more balanced and comprehensive history of Arab psychology should reanalyze these works. We point out that in the early decades of the modern twentieth century, Western psychology was introduced in the Arab countries, especially in Egypt—the gateway through which such psychology was introduced and practiced. By the early 1960s, a number of universities had been established in some Arab countries, and Egyptian academicians, including psychologists, were invited to perform teaching, research, and administration tasks. Their legacy was a discipline bearing most of the strengths and weaknesses of Egyptian psychology, although in spite of such commonalties, there exist also some interesting differences characterizing psychology in the various Arab countries. The final section of the article summarizes some key aspects endemic to psychology in the Arab countries.     

Manipulating an aggregation rule under ordinally fuzzy preferences

It is well known that many aggregation rules are manipulable through strategic behaviour. Typically, the aggregation rules considered in the literature are social choice correspondences. In this paper the aggregation rules of interest are social welfare functions (SWFs). We investigate the problem of constructing a SWF that is non-manipulable. In this context, individuals attempt to manipulate a social ordering as opposed to a social choice. Using techniques from an ordinal version of fuzzy set theory, we introduce a class of ordinally fuzzy binary relations of which exact binary relations are a special case. Operating within this family enables us to prove an impossibility theorem. This theorem states that all non-manipulable SWFs are dictatorial, provided that they are not constant. This theorem uses a weaker transitivity condition than the one in Perote-Peña and Piggins (J Math Econ 43:564–580, 2007), and the ordinal framework we employ is more general than the cardinal setting used there. We conclude by considering several ways of circumventing this impossibility theorem.     

The Impact of Educational Homogamy on Isolated Illiteracy Levels

In this article, we explore the impacts that education expansion and increased levels in educational homogamy have had on couples’ isolated illiteracy rates, defined as the proportion of illiterates in union that are married to an illiterate partner. First, we develop the methodology to decompose isolated illiteracy rates into two main components: one related to level of homogamy among illiterates, and the other related to the educational distribution of the spouses. Second, we use harmonized international census microdata from IPUMS and DHS data for 73 countries and 217 samples to investigate which of the two components is more important in shaping the level of isolated illiteracy. Our results indicate that the expansion of literacy has been more powerful than the increases in the tendency toward homogamy in its impact on isolated illiteracy rates. As the percentage of illiterates decreases over time, an increasingly large proportion of them marry literate individuals, showing that opportunities for intermarriage among illiterates expand despite the strengthening of homogamy.     

蒙古语多方言语音识别及共享识别模型探索

通过语音输入方式准确识别蒙古语主要方言 ,并为其建立共享识别模型 ,对实现方言间的信息自动交换及语音识别技术的实用化具有实际意义。针对蒙古语多方言的语音特点 ,可以采取独立的或者共享识别模型进行识别。本文介绍的抽出初步模型和建立共享模型的方法 ,简便易行 ,但识别精度有待提高。文中探索了通过借用数据量和质较完备的语言的语音数据提高识别率的可能性。     

Job turnover, wage rates, and marital stability: How are they related?

This study examines the interplay between job stability, wage rates, and marital stability. We use a Dynamic Selection Control model in which young men make sequential choices about work and family and estimate the model using an approach that takes account of self-selection, simultaneity and unobserved heterogeneity. The results quantify how job stability affects wage rates, how both affect marital status, and how marital status affects earnings and job stability. The study reveals robust evidence that job changes lower wages and the likelihood of getting married and remaining married. At the same time, marriage raises wage rates and job stability. To project the sequential effects linking job change, marital status, and earnings, we simulate the impacts of shocks that raise preferences for marriage and that increase education. Feedback effects cause the simulated wage gains from marriage to cumulate over time, indicating that long-run marriage wage premiums exceed conventional short-run estimates.     

Robust Methods of Building Regression Models—An Application to thè Housing Sector

This article studies robustification strategies for the linear model in the presence of outliers. The advantages of an internal analysis of the robustness of least squares for a given sample are pointed out. The application of this methodology is illustrated by building an explicit model of the determinants of rental housing values in the Madrid Metropolitan Area.