Differential Effects of Time Constraints on Athletic Behavior and Survey Reports of Athletic Behavior

Time constraints—having more to do than time to do it—can prevent us from doing everything we need and want to do. When lack of time constrains our behavior, the behavior linked to voluntary role identities (like being a member of a softball team or bowling league) may be the first to be cut. Although, as many of these role identities are socially desirable, survey respondents may still claim to have performed them. Thus, this study examines role behavior and its measurement in the face of time constraints. The athlete identity is examined as a potential casualty of the time crunch, used because it is a common, typically voluntary identity that has a relatively standard set of role behaviors (e.g., participating in sporting events, like games or matches, as an athlete). Situational constraints, namely, a lack of time, are brought into a model based on the structure posited in identity theory (Stryker [1980] 2003 Stryker, Sheldon. [1980] 2003. Symbolic Interactionism: A Social Structural Version. Caldwell, NJ: The Blackburn Press. [Google Scholar]) to help explain variation between self-reported and actual role behavior. Thus, the current study examines the extent to which feeling pressed for time reduces actual athletic activity but fails to result in a concomitant reduction in self-reported athletic activity.     

The Effects of Progressively Thinning High-Preference Item Delivery on Responding in Employees

The use of mixed-preference reinforcer delivery (i.e., the random delivery of a set of items with varying degrees of preference for each individual) with employees has been found to produce moderate levels of responding in an analog setting; however, mixed reinforcer delivery may not conform to the recommendations made by some popular writers in organizational behavior management. The current investigation used a progressively thinning high-preference stimulus delivery procedure to investigate the use of mixed reinforcer delivery with 5 employees. Results indicated that most participants did not reliably complete work when the percent chance of earning a high-preference item dropped below 100%. These results do not support the use of varied reinforcers in applied settings.     

Ethical guidelines and codes in operations research

We review past endeavors by ORSs to establish ethical guidelines or codes to which their members must subscribe to. We contrast such activities with those of the international community of related professional societies. It is clear that ORSs world-wide do not exhibit the important basic characteristic of a profession, that is, the adoption of and adherence to ethical guidelines and codes. Such adoptions by OR professional organizations are rare.     

"In My Opinion . . .": Justices' Opinion Writing in the U.S. Supreme Court, 1946–1997

Objectives . We develop hypotheses to explain the opinion writing by justices on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1946–1997. Methods . We use data from the U.S. Supreme Court Database, Phases I and II, to examine the proportion of cases in which a justice writes an opinion each term as well as the differences between writing majority, dissenting, and concurring opinions. OLS regression with robust standard errors is the estimation procedure. Results . We find that a justice's position as Chief Justice, professional and education background, reputation ranking, and tenure on the Court can explain a justice's opinion writing. At the same time, we discover that particular variables have different affects on writing majority, dissenting, or concurring opinions. Conclusions . This study demonstrates the importance of both structural and personal background variables in explaining judicial behavior. It also shows the importance of analyzing different kinds of judicial opinions when explaining the justices' opinion writing.     

Why do people gamble? Further Canadian evidence

In previous studies attempts have been made to examine predictions derived from Brenner (1983) on the characteristics of lottery tickets buyers. The present study complements the previous ones: additional, more detailed data were found both on 93 winners of big lottery prizes and on various groups of buyers of lottery tickets. The image of the lottery ticket buyer that emerges from them is of a person who finding all other avenues of success closed because of one form or other of sudden adversity turns to lotteries as a recourse.This project was made possible through a grant (#410-82-0696) from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada and a grant from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales. I thank Professor H. Roy Kaplan and Victor Tremblay who have made their Canadian data set available to me, Richard Guay and Pascal Duquette for their outstanding research assistance, and Reuven Brenner, H. Roy Kaplan, and two anonymous referees for their comments.