Fair social orderings when agents have unequal production skills

We develop an approach which escapes Arrows impossibility by relying on information about agents indifference curves instead of utilities. In a model where agents have unequal production skills and different preferences, we characterize social ordering functions which rely only on ordinal non-comparable information about individual preferences. These social welfare functions are required to satisfy properties of compensation for inequalities in skills, and equal access to resources for all preferences.We thank participants of the SCW conference in Vancouver (July 1998), of workshops at Cergy and Osnabrück, and of seminars at Tokyo (Hitotsubashi U.) and Caen. We are also grateful to an Associate Editor and two referees for their very helpful comments. Financial Support from European TMR Network FMRX-CT96-0055 is gratefully acknowledged.     

Validation of the subtle and overt psychological abuse scale: an examination of construct validity

The Subtle and Overt Scale of Psychological Abuse (Marshall, 1999a) is a measure designed to examine previously unevaluated forms of psychological abuse. The scale was originally divided into seven subscales (overt: dominance, indifference, monitoring and discrediting; subtle: undermining, discounting, isolating). A sample of 172 women was used to evaluate the construct validity of this measure. In other words, the internal structure of the measure, its relation to other measures of physical and psychological abuse, and its relationship to other psychological outcomes. Empirical and theoretical approaches were used to replicate and examine the dimensions of this scale. Results revealed that this scale represents a unidimensional construct that is highly correlated to other measures of psychological abuse. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.     

Advancing Treatment Strategies for Pathological Gambling

Experiences from treatment trials are described. The use of structured instruments for subject characterization and symptom change assessment is discussed and the challenges of treating specific groups (e.g., those with co-occurring alcohol use disorders) explored. Treatment for pathological gambling might be advanced most rapidly through collaborative multi-center efforts.     

Trust in Risky Messages: The Role of Prior Attitudes

Risk perception researchers have observed a "negativity bias" for hazard-related information. Messages indicating the presence of risk seem to be trusted more than messages indicating the absence of risk, and risk perceptions seem more affected by negative than positive information. Two experiments were conducted to examine alternative explanations of this finding within the area of food additives. Study 1 (N = 235) extended earlier work by (a) unconfounding message valence (positive or negative) from message extremity (definite or null finding) and (b) exploring the role of prior attitudes. Results suggested that negative/risky messages were indeed trusted more even when extremity was taken into account. However, prior attitudes significantly moderated the effect of message valence on trust. Positive messages were distrusted only by those with negative prior attitudes. Study 2 (N = 252), further explored the role of prior attitudes and extended the work by examining reactions to risky messages about a positively viewed additive--a vitamin. The results again found a moderating effect of prior attitudes on message valence. Participants had greater confidence in messages that were more congruent with their prior attitudes, irrespective of valence. Furthermore, positive messages had a greater impact on risk perception than negative messages. These findings suggest that greater trust in negative messages about hazards may be a product of a "confirmatory" rather than a "negativity" bias.     

On fair compensation

This paper analyses the problems arising in the pure exchange fair division model, when some dimensions of the resources are personal, fixed, and cannot be redistributed. The remaining resources must then be allocated in a compensatory way. A set of desirable normative properties is defined. No-envy satisfies these properties, but is not generally non-empty in this setting and other criteria are examined, for which existence results are given. General impossibility results obtain. In particular, it is generally impossible to compensate fully and only for differential personal resources, when preferences differ.