Manual flying skills under the influence of performance shaping factors

This paper describes an experimental study investigating pilots' manual flying skills. In today's line oriented flight training, basic flying skills are neglected frequently. So, the study examines the manual flying skills of commercial airline pilots under the influence of several performance shaping factors like training, practice or fatigue in a landing scenario. The landing phase shows a disproportionate high percentage of aircraft accidents and it is typically flown by hand. The study is to be undertaken with randomly selected pilots in a full motion flight simulator to ensure a high validity of the results.     

Emotional Climate in a European Problem Area: East Berlin and West Berlin Three Years After Reunification

In autumn of 1992, three years after the unification of Germany, during a period of violent attacks against foreigners, 120 students from East Berlin and West Berlin and 20 foreign students living in West Berlin answered the Emotional Climate Questionnaire developed by de Rivera and Fernandez-Dols. Foreign respondents expressed a positive attitude toward their government/state and believed in prosocial behavior to a greater extent than respondents from East Berlin and West Berlin. Whereas East Berlin students disagreed only somewhat with statements in favor of selfishness and egoism, West Berlin students strongly disagreed with them. We attribute the differences that were found in the answers of the foreign students to their national values. In addition, we regard the differences between the emotional climates of East Berlin and West Berlin as reflecting a climate of instability among East Berliners. We interpreted selfishness as a kind of polarized behavior indicating a climate of instability. A factor analysis revealed 5 factors of an emotional climate: Nation's Future, Just World, Reactive Egoism, Scepticism, and Basic Egoism. The concept of emotional climate is discussed on the basis of the current data.     

Zur Wirkung von Neukunden-Promotions auf Bestandskunden

Service providers frequently offer better deals to prospective customers than they offer to customers who prolong their contracts. The present paper examines the effectiveness of incentives on new customers and, perhaps even more significantly, assesses negative effects on existing customers. To test the hypothesized effects, a series of two experiments was conducted. Results indicate that promotions that are offered exclusively to prospective customers have a negative effect on existing customers, and that this negative effect is stronger for customers with a short relationship age and for those at the end of their contract life-cycle. The unfairness and inequity perceived by existing customers can be substantially reduced if these customers are offered the opportunity to receive a part of the promotion value, while the promotion??s effectiveness to attract new customers remains unaffected.     

Health and Well–Being in the Young Old and Oldest Old

Most individuals experience a decline in health status during old age. Paradoxically, there are proposals that older adults nevertheless maintain a positive sense of well–being, an indicator of successful aging. Data from the Berlin Aging Study (BASE: Baltes & Mayer, 1999), a locally representative sample of men and women aged 70 to 100+ ( N = 516, M = 85 years), suggest that cumulative health–related chronic life strains set a constraint on the potential of oldest old individuals to experience the positive side of life. The young old in BASE reported significantly higher positive SWB than did the oldest old. Chronic illness and functional impairments (e.g., vision, hearing, mobility, strength) limit well–being especially in very old age.