Insensitivity to the Value of Human Life: A Study of Psychophysical Numbing

A fundamental principle of psychophysics is that people's ability to discriminate change in a physical stimulus diminishes as the magnitude of the stimulus increases. We find that people also exhibit diminished sensitivity in valuing lifesaving interventions against a background of increasing numbers of lives at risk. We call this psychophysical numbing. Studies 1 and 2 found that an intervention saving a fixed number of lives was judged significantly more beneficial when fewer lives were at risk overall. Study 3 found that respondents wanted the minimum number of lives a medical treatment would have to save to merit a fixed amount of funding to be much greater for a disease with a larger number of potential victims than for a disease with a smaller number. The need to better understand the dynamics of psychophysical numbing and to determine its effects on decision making is discussed.     

CONTRACTING, CONTINGENCIES AND SINGLE-FAMILY HOUSE PRICES

This paper investigates the relationship between single-family house prices and contingent terms in contracts. Since contingencies create uncertainty, the market should exact a price premium. The results indicate that the contracting for property rights affects house prices in the predicted ways.     

Self-assessment in the early educational attainment process*

Ce travail réexamine la nature psycho-sociologique du modèle d'acquisition de situation dans le Wisconsin dont une analyse récente de Wilson et Portes tend à prouver qu'elle est en grande partie erronnée. Elle met particulièrement en question l'hypothèse formulée, et non prouvée, de Sewell et Compagnie que l'auto-évaluation intervient dans les effets des résultats scolaires concernant les aspirations à une situation et les variables de l'acquisition. Basé sur un large échantillonnage d'élèves de 12e année de l'Ontario tiré d'une récente étude en profondeur, nos résultats vont à l'encontre de ceux de Wilson et Portes, réaffirmant dans leur ensemble la nature psycho-sociologique du processus d'aqcuisition de situation et en particulier le rôle critique joué par des processus réflexifs tels que l'auto-évaluation dans ce cadre. This paper reexamines the social-psychological nature of the Wisconsin status attainment model which a recent analysis by Wilson and Portes purports to have largely disconfirmed. In particular, it puts to test the hypothesis formulated, but not tested, by Sewell and associates that self assessment mediates the effects of academic performance on status aspirations and attainment variables. Based on a large sample of Ontario grade 12 students drawn from a recent longitudinal study, our results contradict those of Wilson and Portes, reaffirming in general the social-psychological nature of the status attainment process and in particular the critical role played by such reflexive processes as self-assessment in it.     

Estimating the Basic Reproductive Number in the General Epidemic Model with an Unknown Initial Number of Susceptible Individuals

Abstract. In any epidemic, there may exist an unidentified subpopulation which might be naturally immune or isolated and who will not be involved in the transmission of the disease. Estimation of key parameters, for example, the basic reproductive number, without accounting for this possibility would underestimate the severity of the epidemics. Here, we propose a procedure to estimate the basic reproductive number ( R ₀ ) in an epidemic model with an unknown initial number of susceptibles. The infection process is usually not completely observed, but is reconstructed by a kernel‐smoothing method under a counting process framework. Simulation is used to evaluate the performance of the estimators for major epidemics. We illustrate the procedure using the Abakaliki smallpox data.