Judgments of social justice: Compromises between equality and efficiency.

Political economists agree that a trade-off exists between equality and efficiency. Using a hypothetical society paradigm, the mean income (representing efficiency) and income variability (representing equality) of distributions of wealth and the correlation between wealth and effort within a society were manipulated. Ss made all pairwise comparisons of distributions within societies of differing meritocracy. A "maximin" principle best described trade-off resolution strategies when effort and outcome were weakly linked: People maximized the minimum standard of living within a society. A compromise principle best described preferences when income was tightly linked to effort: People rejected distributions in which some citizens fell below the "poverty line" but maximized efficiency above this constraint. Ideological polarization was pronounced under moderate meritocracy; here liberals could focus on the role of chance and conservatives on the role of effort and ability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Fair" allocations of salaries and taxes.

Undergraduate judges were asked to "fairly" allocate salaries to hypothetical faculty members on the basis of their merit ratings. Individual merit ratings, total budgets to be distributed, and distributions of merit ratings for the entire group were manipulated. In another set of studies, undergraduate judges were asked to "fairly" assign income taxes to hypothetical persons given their salaries, and individual salaries, amounts of revenue to generate, and distributions of salaries for the group were varied. Overall results are explained by a theory of relative equity that suggests that an equitable state is one in which the relative position of a stimulus (e.g., merit or salary) in the distribution of stimuli matches the relative position of the response (e.g., salary or tax) in the distribution of responses. The relative position of a stimulus or response is defined as its range-frequency value based on the range-frequency compromise. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Bayesian inference: Combining base rates with opinions of sources who vary in credibility.

65 undergraduates made judgments of the probability of an event given base-rate information and the opinion of a source. Base rate and the source's hit and false-alarm rates were manipulated in a within-Ss design. Hit and false-alarm rates were manipulated to produce sources of varied expertise and bias. The base rate, the source's opinion, and the source's expertise and bias all had large systematic effects. Although there was no evidence of a "base-rate fallacy," neither Bayes' theorem nor a subjective Bayesian model that allows for "conservatism" due to misperception or response bias could account for the data. Responses were consistent with a scale-adjustment averaging model developed by M. H. Birnbaum and R. S. Stegner (1979). In this model, the source's report corresponds to a scale value that is adjusted according to the source's bias. This adjusted value is weighted as a function of the source's expertise and averaged with the subjective value of the base rate. These results are consistent with a coherent body of experiments in which the same model could account for a variety of tasks involving the combination of information from different sources. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sleep Modulates Alcohol Toxicity in Drosophila

Alcohol abuse is a significant public health problem. While considerable research has shown that alcohol use affects sleep, little is known about the role of sleep deprivation in alcohol toxicity. We investigated sleep as a factor modulating alcohol toxicity using Drosophila melanogaster, a model for studies of sleep, alcohol, and aging. Following 24 h of sleep deprivation using a paradigm that similarly affects males and females and induces rebound sleep, flies were given binge-like alcohol exposures. Sleep deprivation increased mortality, with no sex-dependent differences. Sleep deprivation also abolished functional tolerance measured at 24 h after the initial alcohol exposure, although there was no effect on alcohol absorbance or clearance. We investigated the effect of chronic sleep deprivation using mutants with decreased sleep, insomniac and insulin-like peptide 2, finding increased alcohol mortality. Furthermore, we investigated whether pharmacologically inducing sleep prior to alcohol exposure using the GABA_A-receptor agonist 4,5,6,7-tetrahydroisoxazolo(5,4-c)pyridin-3-ol (THIP) mitigated the effects of alcohol toxicity on middle-aged flies, flies with environmentally disrupted circadian clocks, and flies with short sleep. Pharmacologically increasing sleep prior to alcohol exposure decreased alcohol-induced mortality. Thus, sleep prior to binge-like alcohol exposure affects alcohol-induced mortality, even in vulnerable groups such as aging flies and those with circadian dysfunction.     

A reconsideration of two-person inequity judgments: A reply to Anderson.

Replies to N. H. Anderson's (see record 1984-22881-001) argument that "two-operation logic," which was applied to N. H. Anderson and A. J. Farkas's (1975) experiment, supported the ratio model, established the linearity of the response scale, and refuted the subtractive model proposed by the present author (see record 1982-29568-001). A reanalysis shows that the data of Anderson and Farkas are more consistent with subtractive models than ratio models and illustrates problems with the two-operation logic that led Anderson to his conclusions. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Fair selection decisions.

Judges were asked to fairly assign priority ratings to hypothetical candidates applying to medical school, given information about their Medical College Aptitude Test scores, grade-point averages, and group memberships (majority or minority). The affirmative action goal and the qualifications of minorities relative to majorities in the applicant pool were also manipulated. When there is no specified affirmative action goal nor differences between groups in the applicant pool, minorities and majorities are treated similarly. When either group differences in the applicant pool occur or affirmative action goals are introduced, decision makers assign higher priority ratings to minorities than to equally qualified majority applicants. When both factors are operating, minorities receive an even bigger boost. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that decision makers evaluate minority and majority candidates in the same way; differences between groups occur in the response function. Equally qualified majority and minority candidates are assigned to different categories, depending on the size of the affirmative action goal and the extent to which the two groups differ in the applicant pool. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Utility measurement: Configural-weight theory and the judge's point of view.

Ss judged the values of lotteries from 3 points of view: the highest price that a buyer should pay, the lowest price that a seller should accept, and the "fair" price. The rank order of judgments changed as a function of point of view. Data also showed violations of branch independence and monotonicity (dominance). These findings pose difficulties for nonconfigural theories of decision making, such as subjective expected utility theory, but can be described by configural-weight theory. Configural weighting is similar to rank-dependent utility theory, except that the weight of the lowest outcome in a gamble depends on the viewpoint, and 0-valued outcomes receive differential weighting. Configural-weight theory predicted the effect of viewpoint, the violations of branch independence, and the violations of monotonicity, using a single scale of utility that is independent of the lottery and the point of view. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Transparency should trump trust: Rejoinder to McConnell and Leibold (2009) and Ziegert and Hanges (2009).

The rebuttals offered by the authors whose data we reanalyzed (see record 2009-06703-001)—A. R. McConnell & J. M. Leibold (see record 2001-11532-008); J. C. Ziegert & P. J. Hanges (see record 2005-05102-011)—address secondary issues that do not alter our primary message: The evidence for the predictive validity of the race Implicit Association Test is too fragile to support the strong claims that have been made about the pervasiveness of prejudice and the linkages between Implicit Association Test scores and discriminatory behavior. Greater caution in both the legal and scientific communities is warranted. Most importantly, scientific research on implicit bias needs greater transparency and willingness to open raw data to critical scrutiny, not greater trust and deference among researchers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Auditory hallucinations inhibit exogenous activation of auditory association cortex

Percepts unaccompanied by a veridical stimulus, such as hallucinations, provide an opportunity for mapping the neural correlates of conscious perception. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can reveal localized changes in blood oxygenation in response to actual as well as imagined sensory stimulation. The safe repeatability of fMRI enabled us to study a patient with schizophrenia while he was experiencing auditory hallucinations and when hallucination-free (with supporting data from a second case). Cortical activation was measured in response to periodic exogenous auditory and visual stimulations using time series regression analysis. Functional brain images were obtained in each hallucination condition both while the patient was on and off antipsychotic drugs. The response of the temporal cortex to exogenous auditory stimulation (speech) was markedly reduced when the patient was experiencing hallucinating voices addressing him, regardless of medication. Visual cortical activation (to flashing lights) remained normal over four scans. From the results of this study and previous work on visual hallucinations we conclude that hallucinations coincide with maximal activation of the sensory and association cortex, specific to the modality of the experience.