Absence Of Preference Research Articles

Meta-Analytic Use of Balanced Identity Theory to Validate the Implicit Association Test.

This meta-analysis evaluated theoretical predictions from balanced identity theory (BIT) and evaluated the validity of zero points of Implicit Association Test (IAT) and self-report measures used to test these predictions. Twenty-one researchers contributed individual subject data from 36 experiments (total N = 12,773) that used both explicit and implicit measures of the social-cognitive constructs. The meta-analysis confirmed predictions of BIT's balance-congruity principle and simultaneously validated interpretation of the IAT's zero point as indicating absence of preference between two attitude objects. Statistical power afforded by the sample size enabled the first confirmations of balance-congruity predictions with self-report measures. Beyond these empirical results, the meta-analysis introduced a within-study statistical test of the balance-congruity principle, finding that it had greater efficiency than the previous best method. The meta-analysis's full data set has been publicly archived to enable further studies of interrelations among attitudes, stereotypes, and identities.

Could differences in implicit attitudes to sexual concurrency play a role in generalized HIV epidemics?

Background: Sexual partner concurrency has been implicated in the genesis of generalized HIV epidemic in South Africa. Most South Africans, however, disapprove of concurrency in surveys. These surveys test individuals' explicit attitudes which are susceptible to a number of important biases such as the social desirability bias. Assessment of implicit cognitions have been found to be better predictors of behaviour in socially sensitive domains. We hypothesized that South Africans may have implicit attitudes more tolerant of concurrency than lower concurrency prevalence populations. Methods: To test this hypothesis, we developed a concurrency-implicit association test (C-IAT) and compared the C-IATs of samples of South African and Belgian university students. Results: We found a large and statistically significant difference in the C-IAT between the South Africans (D600-score = -0.009, indicating absence of preference for concurrency or monogamy) and Belgians (D600-score = 0.783, indicating a strong preference for monogamy; t-test = 13.3; P < 0.0001). The effect size measure, Cohen's d, was found to be 0.88, which is considered a large effect size in this field. Conclusions: Our results are compatible with the thesis that differences in implicit attitudes to concurrency play a role in the genesis of generalised HIV epidemics.

State Religious Neutrality as a Common European Standard? Reappraising the European Court of Human Rights Approach

This article explores the development by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), of the notion that states have a duty to be neutral in religious matters. It is submitted that such a principle of neutrality, which echoes a classic tenet of liberal philosophy, can legitimately be derived from the rights and ideals enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). It can be considered as a corollary of religious freedom, non-discrimination, and pluralism. However, the way the Court has interpreted the concept of state religious neutrality throughout its case law gives rise to criticism. In dealing with cases raising the question of the place of religion in public institutions, the Court has failed to remain consistent in its approach to neutrality. In effect, it balances between three different understandings of the concept. They are characterized here as 'neutrality as absence of coercion', 'neutrality as absence of preference', and 'neutrality as exclusion of religion from the public sphere'. The present article argues that 'neutrality as absence of preference' provides the most adequate model for an ECHR-based concept of state religious neutrality.

State Religious Neutrality As a Common European Standard? Reappraising the European Court of Human Rights Approach

This article explores the development by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), of the notion that states have a duty to be neutral in religious matters. It is submitted that such a principle of neutrality, which echoes a classic tenet of liberal philosophy, can legitimately be derived from the rights and ideals enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). It can be considered as a corollary of religious freedom, non-discrimination, and pluralism. However, the way the Court has interpreted the concept of state religious neutrality throughout its case law gives rise to criticism. In dealing with cases raising the question of the place of religion in public institutions, the Court has failed to remain consistent in its approach to neutrality. In effect, it balances between three different understandings of the concept. They are characterized here as 'neutrality as absence of coercion', 'neutrality as absence of preference', and 'neutrality as exclusion of religion from the public sphere'. The present article argues that 'neutrality as absence of preference' provides the most adequate model for an ECHR-based concept of state religious neutrality.

O papel da função reforçadora das relações verbais de tato e textual, em contexto de equivalência de estímulos, em universitários

A aprendizagem das relações verbais de tato podem apresentar características de emergência e manutenção diferentes das relações textuais. Essas diferenças despertam particular interesse quando os estímulos que controlam tais operantes verbais pertencem à mesma classe de equivalência e a topografia da resposta é semelhante. O objetivo deste trabalho foi investigar o papel da função reforçadora de cada uma dessas relações na emergência de novas relações. Inicialmente, seis universitários participaram do estudo. Primeiro, foram ensinadas, através de tarefas de matching-to-sample, relações de ouvinte entre palavras ditadas e figuras, e entre palavras ditadas e palavras impressas. Após ensino, foram testadas as relações de equivalência, e a emergência de relações de tato e textual - consideradas relações de falante. Em seguida, os participantes foram submetidos a esquemas concorrentes com encadeamento para verificar a preferência por tarefas. Os resultados indicaram indiferença na preferência por tarefas, o que é consistente com o estabelecimento das relações de equivalência e com o fato dos participantes demonstrarem desempenho similar nos testes de tato e leitura. A ausência de preferência pode ter sido observada em função da indiferença da função reforçadora desses operantes, mas também pelo fato dos participantes terem um vasto e sofisticado repertório verbal.

The Impact of Veterans' Preference on the Composition and Quality of the Federal Civil Service

The Impact of Veterans' Preference on the Composition and Quality of the Federal Civil Service

Misery Does Not Love Company

Conventional wisdom holds that friends protect against depression through the social support they provide; however, depression likely has a role in structuring friendship networks. In particular, we investigate friend selection mechanisms responsible for similarity in depression among friends (i.e., homophily). Preference is one explanation, yet several correlates of depression make homophilous selection among depressed individuals unlikely. We propose two alternative mechanisms—avoidance and withdrawal—that can produce depression homophily in the absence of preference. These alternative mechanisms create homophily indirectly by limiting friendship partners available to depressed individuals. We test the preference, avoidance, and withdrawal mechanisms using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and a dynamic network model. Results provide support for the withdrawal mechanism. These findings help explain how depression affects friend selection and have broader implications for understanding selection mechanisms responsible for network patterns such as homophily.

Randomization vs. Selection: How to Choose in the Absence of Preference?

Decision makers sometimes have to choose between alternative options about which they have no preference: either they judge the options equally valuable (indifference) or they have no judgment about their relative value (noncomparability). Choosing randomly is generally considered a natural way to deal with such situations. This paper shows, however, that systematic randomization between noncomparable options may lead to a chain of decisions resulting in monetary losses (a money pump). Furthermore, these losses can be avoided by deliberately selecting one of the noncomparable options instead of randomizing. Thus, randomization among noncomparable options is costly relative to deliberate selection. On the other hand, randomization among indifferent options is costless relative to deliberate selection.

Support for a role of colour vision in mate choice in the nocturnal European treefrog (Hyla arborea)

Summary Although nocturnal anurans use vision for reproductive communication, it remains unknown whether they see colours at night. Here, we explored this question in the European treefrog (Hyla arborea), by conducting two mate choice experiments under controlled light conditions. Experiments involved static male models with identical calls but different vocal sac colouration combining chromatic (red/orange) and brightness (dark/light) information. We found that females preferred dark red over light orange, evidencing for the first time a visually-guided mate choice in nocturnal diffuse light conditions. Conversely, females did not discriminate between dark orange and light red. The preference for dark over light in the first but not in the second experiment suggested that females had not only access to brightness cues but also to chromatic cues. The absence of preference may originate from females choosing at random in a situation where colour and brightness cues may convey contradictory information about male quality or from individual heterogeneity in the type of cues used for mate choice. Overall, these experiments provide the first support for the use of colour vision in a nocturnal amphibian.

Are the preference and selection patterns of hermit crabs for gastropod shells species- or site-specific?

Experimental analyses of hermit crabs and their preferences for shells are essential to understand the intrinsic relationship of the crabs' dependence on shells, and may be useful to explain their shell use pattern in nature. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of crab species and site on the pattern of shell use, selection, and preference in the south-western Atlantic hermit crabs Pagurus brevidactylus and Pagurus criniticornis, comparing sympatric and allopatric populations. Differently from the traditional approach to evaluate shell preference by simply determining the shell selection pattern ( i.e., the number of shells of each type selected), preference was defined (according to [Liszka, D., Underwood, A.J., 1990. An experimental design to determine preferences for gastropod shells by a hermit-crab. J. Exp. Mar. Biol. Ecol., 137(1), 47–62]) by the comparison of the number of crabs changing for a particular shell type when three options were given ( Cerithium atratum, Morula nodulosa, and Tegula viridula) with the number of crabs changing for this same type when only this type was offered. The effect of crab species was tested at Cabelo Gordo Beach, where P. brevidactylus was found occupying shells of C. atratum, M. nodulosa, and T. viridula in similar frequencies, whereas P. criniticornis occupied predominantly shells of C. atratum. In laboratory experiments the selection patterns of the two hermit-crab species for these three gastropods were different, with P. criniticornis selecting mainly shells of C. atratum, and P. brevidactylus selecting more shells of M. nodulosa. The shell preference was also dependent on crab species, with P. criniticornis showing a clear preference for shells of C. atratum, whereas P. brevidactylus did not show a preference for any of the tested shells. The effect of site was tested for the two species comparing data from Cabelo Gordo to Preta ( P. brevidactylus) and Araçá beaches ( P. criniticornis). The pattern of shell use, selection, and preference was demonstrated to be dependent on site only for P. brevidactylus. The results also showed that the shell use pattern of P. criniticornis can be explained by its preference at both sites, whereas for P. brevidactylus it occurred only at Cabelo Gordo, where the absence of preference was correlated with the similar use of the three gastropod species studied. Finally, the results showed that the shell selection pattern cannot be considered as a measure of shell preference, since it overestimates crab selectivity.

The rhetoric of liberty

For a long time now, of course, intellectuals have been trying to avoid rhetoric in defense of liberty. They might as well avoid mere reasoning or mere speaking. The defenses are commonly set in the axiom-and-proof rhetoric of the line Eucid-Aquinas-Hobbes-Russell. Formality is trumps and the meaning of formality is an imitation of Euclid's certitude. Consider Alan Peacock's twopage article on Economic Freedom in The New Paigrave: A Dictionary of Economics (which with Alan Ryan's other two on Liberty in the Dictionary brings the total of modem economic reflection on liberty to four pages out of some 4000). Peacock begins by setting the question of economic freedom into the standard Samuelsonian framework of modem economics-maximization of utility under a budget constraint-with careful delineation of the subscripts, as though relevant. After two opening paragraphs of such mathpride, however, he rejects his own formal construct, pointing out that mere liberty to move within a budget constraint is not what people mean by liberty.Anything-the KGB's rules of conduct in pre-democratic Lithuania, for example-can be included in the budget constraint, making slaves by definition into men, to choose within the constraints of their shackles. Peacock argues plausibly that more than liberty to move about within a budget constraint must be required: Economic freedom requires that the various terms in the budget constraint reflect the absence of 'preference or restraint' (Adam Smith) on the (Vol. 2,33). As Herbert Spencer said, when he is under the impersonal coercion of Nature, we say that he is free (493, italics added). Peacock then tries to connect the absence of or to the market: Therefore (the prices must) ... result from the operation of competitive market forces with the individual being to choose between alternatives (italics added). The therefore fails in strict logic, though demanded by the axiom-and-proof rhetoric of his piece. The problem is that it is not obvious that an absence of preference or restraint requires competition. Peacock does

Possibility of Spontaneous Drug Abuse Tested in Rat

Given that a number of the techniques used to test drug abuse liability are not free from criticism, a series of oral free-choice experimental procedures was adopted. When simultaneously offered as alternatives to glucose using the classical polydipsic procedure, no preference for buprenorpbine (0.025 mg/ml), morphine (0.5 mg/ml) or fentanyl (0.005 mg/ml) solutions was shown by premedicated rats. The same result was obtained when the two-bottle procedure was used for at least one month to offer etonitazene (10 μg/ml), buprenorphine (60 μg/ml), cocaine (300 μg/ml) and haloperidol (25 μg/ml) solutions as simultaneous alternatives to aspartame. This absence of preference was maintained even when the rats showed evident pharmacological effects and, in the case of the opiates, tolerance and withdrawal syndrome. However, when a gustatory marker (quinine) was introduced into one of the two solutions, preference was always shown for the other. Finally, in a conditioned taste aversion (CTA) test, etonitazene (5 or 40 μg/kg, i.p.) and haloperidol (0.5 or 2 mg/kg, i.p.) did not induce any reduction in saccharin consumption, while morphine (40 mg/kg) did. Pretreatment with naloxone (120 μg/kg, i.c.v.) did not antagonize morphine-induced CTA, while it did antagonize morphine-induced analgesia.

β-cyclodextrin inclusion complex with adamantane Intermolecular 1H{ 1H} NOE determinations and molecular mechanics calculations

NOE experiments on the β-cyclodextrin (CD) /adamantane complex unequivocally demonstrate that the guest is inside the host cavity. Molecular mechanics calculations indicate the absence of preference by the guest for one single orientation. The host/guest supermolecule has been fully optimized and results show that adamantane is in the narrower half of the β-CD torus.

Olfactory bulb removal: Effects on sexual behavior and partner-preference in male rats

Control and bilaterally bulbectomized male rats were tested in an arena where the male could choose to spend time with (and mate with) a sexually receptive female, a nonreceptive female, or be in a neutral compartment. Control males mated with, and showed a strong preference for, sexually receptive females. Bulbectomy virtually eliminated mating. In addition, bulbectomized males showed no preference for a receptive female over a nonreceptive female, and spent their time equally between the receptive female, the nonreceptive female, and the neutral compartment. Effects of bulbectomy on preference and copulation could be consequences of a severely impaired ability to smell—the perception of odors may be essential for sexual arousal, or the absence of preference and copulation after bulbectomy might reflect a deficit in the male's ability to make odor-dependent classification of conspecifics as appropriate sexual partners. Or the behavioral effects of bulbectomy might reflect a disruption of tonic input to the forebrain that has little or nothing to do with the sensory impairment that follows bulb removal. But whatever the reason, in partner-preference tests bulbectomized males show a striking indifference to the sexual status of females, and it seems likely that the failure to mate is causally linked to this effect of surgery.

Preferred hand use in the japanese macaque troop, arashiyama-R, during visually guided reaching for food pellets

A troop of Japanese macaques, which consisted of about 45 monkeys and was raised at the Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, was observed during the period from April to June 1988, to evaluate the preferred choice of hand when reaching for food pellets. Nineteen monkeys showed a consistent left-hand preference, 5 monkeys showed a consistent right-hand preference, and the remaining 20 monkeys did not reveal a preference for either hand. Monkeys of more than 8 years of age tended to exhibit a greater left-hand preference with a lower incidence of absence of preference. A tendency to use either left or right hand increased with increasing age: the correlation ratio between age in years and the index to use either hand, designated as the laterality index, was significant (t-test,p<0.001,N=42). Children of mothers with a left-hand preference tended to show a left-hand preference.

The effect of arousal level on visual preferences in preterm infants

The influence of arousal level on visual preferences was investigated in preterm infants (X PCA = 37.9 weeks) in different feeding and swaddling conditions. Infants (N = 16 each of two studies) viewed cubes varying in size and number or viewed light panels varying in frequency of illumination. They showed preferences for more cubes or faster frequencies when least aroused (postfeeding swaddled); decreased preferences as arousal increased; and no preferences when most aroused (prefeeding unswaddled). To determine whether this absence of preference was due to a truncated stimulus range or disruption, 12 additional infants viewed an extended range of cube stimuli when in the most and least aroused conditions. In both conditions, significant inverted U-shaped preference functions were found. In addition, these functions differed from each other due to a shift in their maxima toward more cubes when infants were less aroused and less cubes when more aroused. The findings support the view that looking preferences are determined by the effective intensity of stimulation which, as defined by Schneirla (1965) , varies with both stimulus intensity and organismic characteristics.