Conflicting evidence and decisions by agency professionals: an experimental test in the context of merger regulation

Many important regulatory decisions are taken by professionals employing limited and conflicting evidence. We conduct an experiment in a merger regulation setting, identifying the role of different standards of proof, volumes of evidence, cost of error and professional or lay decision making. The experiment was conducted on current practitioners from 11 different jurisdictions, in addition to student subjects. Legal standards of proof significantly affect decisions. There are specific differences because of professional judgment, including in how error costs and volume of evidence are taken into account. We narrow the range of explanations for why professional decision making matters.     

Adoption and Antisocial Personality: Genetic and Environmental Factors Associated with Antisocial Outcomes

The present review critically evaluates evidence from adoption studies on the heritability of antisocial personality, interactions between genetic predispositions and the characteristics of adoptive mothers and fathers, and both the methodological and diagnostic shortcomings of existing studies. The article concludes with directions and suggestions for future research and practice.     

Parental choice and the rural primary school: Lifestyle,locality and loyalty

This paper discusses the geography of parental choice in a rural locale and shows how a group of parents negotiated their way through the process of primary school choice. Using ethnographic data collected through interviews and observations with parents and staff from three rural primary schools in England, the research utilises Bourdieu's concepts of capital, habitus and field to show how the resources and values the parents held affected the school choices they made. The paper demonstrates that the longer-term resident local parents were influenced not only by their cultural capital but also by familial ties and an emotional commitment to the rural locale and these parents were therefore more inclined to support their local school. In contrast, the more recent newcomer parents used their cultural capital and spatial power to shop around to find what they believed to be the ‘right’ school. The paper argues that the newcomer parents had less allegiance to place and hence to the symbolic position that the school holds within the rural community within which they lived.     

Peer modeling and college men's sexually impositional behavior in the laboratory

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of peer modeling on sexually impositional behavior in the laboratory. Male participants with and without a self‐reported history of sexually aggressive behavior viewed video clips depicting nonaggressive and sexually aggressive behavior and then chose one of the clips to show to a female confederate. Half of the participants were first exposed to a male confederate who showed the sexually aggressive video clip to a female confederate. The other half of the participants were exposed to a male confederate who showed a nonaggressive video clip to a female confederate. Exposure to a male confederate who showed a sexually aggressive video clip to a female was associated with participants' choosing to engage in this same behavior. A self‐reported history of sexually aggressive behavior was also associated with participants' showing the sexually aggressive video clip in spite of believing the effect on the female viewer would be negative.