Interpersonal Distances in Group Walking

The spatial organization of 1,020 groups comprised of adolescents and young adults, observed in an ecological setting while walking, was analyzed. Observations were made in an urban environment where walking speed could be considered. The results showed that male dyads and triads tended to walk abreast less often than female dyads. Mixed dyads walked abreast more often than same-sex dyads; and the males preceded the females in two-thirds of the cases. The male groups walked at a higher rate of speed than the female groups. Walking speed was correlated to misalignment between group members when walking. The most frequent spatial arrangement in triads was a “<” formation (as seen from above, while the walking direction was from left to right), with the middle individual positioned slightly behind in comparison to the lateral individuals. Groups comprised of more than three individuals tended to split themselves into single individuals, dyads, and triads.     

Internal slackening scoring methods

We deal with the ranking problem of the nodes in a directed graph. The bilateral relationships specified by a directed graph may reflect the outcomes of a sport competition, the mutual reference structure between websites, or a group preference structure over alternatives. We introduce a class of scoring methods for directed graphs, indexed by a single nonnegative parameter α. This parameter reflects the internal slackening of a node within an underlying iterative process. The class of so-called internal slackening scoring methods, denoted by λ ^α , consists of the limits of these processes. It is seen that λ⁰ extends the invariant scoring method, while λ ^∞ extends the fair bets scoring method. Method λ¹ corresponds with the existing λ-scoring method of Borm et al. (Ann Oper Res 109(1):61–75, 2002) and can be seen as a compromise between λ⁰ and λ ^∞ . In particular, an explicit proportionality relation between λ ^α and λ¹ is derived. Moreover, the internal slackening scoring methods are applied to the setting of social choice situations where they give rise to a class of social choice correspondences that refine both the Top cycle correspondence and the Uncovered set correspondence.     

Some results for maximum likelihood estimation of adjusted relative risks

Maximum likelihood (ML) estimation of relative risks via log-binomial regression requires a restricted parameter space. Computation via non linear programming is simple to implement and has high convergence rate. We show that the optimization problem is well posed (convex domain and convex objective) and provide a variance formula along with a methodology for obtaining standard errors and prediction intervals which account for estimates on the boundary of the parameter space. We performed simulations under several scenarios already used in the literature in order to assess the performance of ML and of two other common estimation methods.     

Confidence biases and learning among intuitive Bayesians

We design a double-or-quits game to compare the speed of learning one’s specific ability with the speed of rising confidence as the task gets increasingly difficult. We find that people on average learn to be overconfident faster than they learn their true ability and we present an intuitive-Bayesian model of confidence which integrates confidence biases and learning. Uncertainty about one’s true ability to perform a task in isolation can be responsible for large and stable confidence biases, namely limited discrimination, the hard–easy effect, the Dunning–Kruger effect, conservative learning from experience and the overprecision phenomenon (without underprecision) if subjects act as Bayesian learners who rely only on sequentially perceived performance cues and contrarian illusory signals induced by doubt. Moreover, these biases are likely to persist since the Bayesian aggregation of past information consolidates the accumulation of errors and the perception of contrarian illusory signals generates conservatism and under-reaction to events. Taken together, these two features may explain why intuitive Bayesians make systematically wrong predictions of their own performance.     

Coming out strategies of lesbians and gays at work / Estrategias de coming out de personas lesbianas y gays en el trabajo

Abstract

In recent years there has been a great deal of social and legislative progress in the struggle against discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation. However, the coming out process in the workplace is still a crucial aspect in the lives of many lesbians and gays (LG). This study sets out to analyse the different strategies that Spanish LG adopt when revealing their sexual orientation at work by identifying the factors that facilitate or hinder this process. It also analyses the personal and organizational consequences of the strategies used in the coming out process. The study was carried out through in-depth interviews with 15 LG. Results show that the coming out strategies vary and are affected by different factors (e.g., characteristics of the colleagues, sector, etc.). Moreover, it confirmed that the coming out process (or its absence) can have consequences at different levels (e.g., relationships with colleagues, perception of organizational injustice, etc.).     

The State,the Market and Cultural Diversity

This essay compares the logic of states and the logic of markets in the management of cultural diversity. On the one hand, the economic logic of markets leads to an encouragement of a ‘soft’ cultural diversity associated with the marketing of exoticism in music, the arts and cuisine, for example. On the other hand, the liberal states are trapped between their willingness to recognize some form of diversity and their fear of seeing social cohesion harmed by this recognition. In other words, the essay applies Hollified's hypothesis about the liberal paradox in immigration policy to the sphere of cultural diversity in post-immigration situations.     

Changing Industrial Metabolism: Methods for Analysis

Research in the field of industrial metabolism traditionally has been focused on measuring and describing physical flows of economic systems. The metabolism of economic systems, however, changes over time, and measuring material flows is insufficient to understand this process. Understanding the relation between economic activities and material flows can help to unravel the socio-economic causes of these physical flows. Three issues are addressed: The importance of spatial scales and trade flows, empirical analysis of relations between economic development and material flows, and treatment of behaviour of and interactions between stakeholders. For each of these issues, methods for analysis are suggested.     

Stochastic Choice and Consideration Sets

We model a boundedly rational agent who suffers from limited attention. The agent considers each feasible alternative with a given (unobservable) probability, the attention parameter, and then chooses the alternative that maximizes a preference relation within the set of considered alternatives. We show that this random choice rule is the only one for which the impact of removing an alternative on the choice probability of any other alternative is asymmetric and menu independent. Both the preference relation and the attention parameters are identified uniquely by stochastic choice data.