Ambiguous Behaviors Research Articles

Registered Replication Report on Srull and Wyer (1979)

Srull and Wyer (1979) demonstrated that exposing participants to more hostility-related stimuli caused them subsequently to interpret ambiguous behaviors as more hostile. In their Experiment 1, participants descrambled sets of words to form sentences. In one condition, 80% of the descrambled sentences described hostile behaviors, and in another condition, 20% described hostile behaviors. Following the descrambling task, all participants read a vignette about a man named Donald who behaved in an ambiguously hostile manner and then rated him on a set of personality traits. Next, participants rated the hostility of various ambiguously hostile behaviors (all ratings on scales from 0 to 10). Participants who descrambled mostly hostile sentences rated Donald and the ambiguous behaviors as approximately 3 scale points more hostile than did those who descrambled mostly neutral sentences. This Registered Replication Report describes the results of 26 independent replications ( N = 7,373 in the total sample; k = 22 labs and N = 5,610 in the primary analyses) of Srull and Wyer’s Experiment 1, each of which followed a preregistered and vetted protocol. A random-effects meta-analysis showed that the protagonist was seen as 0.08 scale points more hostile when participants were primed with 80% hostile sentences than when they were primed with 20% hostile sentences (95% confidence interval, CI = [0.004, 0.16]). The ambiguously hostile behaviors were seen as 0.08 points less hostile when participants were primed with 80% hostile sentences than when they were primed with 20% hostile sentences (95% CI = [−0.18, 0.01]). Although the confidence interval for one outcome excluded zero and the observed effect was in the predicted direction, these results suggest that the currently used methods do not produce an assimilative priming effect that is practically and routinely detectable.

Shaping service ecosystems: exploring the dark side of agency

PurposeThe extant service ecosystem literature rarely addresses the dark side of actors’ agency, which hinders further development of the service-dominant (S-D) logic, particularly with regard to understanding service ecosystem dynamics. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to delineate the dark-side facets of actors’ agency that adversely affect actor-to-actor relationships and resource integration, in the context of shaping service ecosystems.Design/methodology/approachWith abductive reasoning, this study seeks to reorient results from prior literature in accordance with empirical findings. The empirical data pertain to 21 firms in Finland, New Zealand, Singapore and Sweden, representing various industries, sizes, international reach, technologies, ownership forms and histories.FindingsThe dark side of agency emerges as an actor’s deliberate attempts to influence a service ecosystem to achieve self-interested benefits, despite understanding that these actions inhibit other actors from providing service and can be detrimental to other actors and the ecosystem. The findings also reveal three facets of the dark side: conflict, ambiguity and opportunism. The process of shaping service ecosystems is prone to systematic conflict, ambiguous and opportunistic behaviours occurring between the focal actors’ ecosystem and other ecosystems vying for the same set of resources.Research limitations/implicationsThis study advances the S-D logic by addressing the crucial role of agency in a dialectical relationship with institutions and structures. Service-for-service exchanges can take place in asymmetric, ambiguous, opportunistic situations driven by self-interested motives.Practical implicationsProcesses aimed at shaping service ecosystems can demonstrate the dark sides of actors’ agency, related to conflict, ambiguity or opportunism. Managers interested in shaping strategies should be prepared for this outcome.Social implicationsA service ecosystem perspective requires policy makers and regulators to reconsider their role in shaping processes. No “invisible hand” guides markets to equilibrium, so they should be more proactive in shaping ecosystems, rather than merely fixing market failures.Originality/valueThis research offers the first S-D logic-based investigation into the dark side of actors’ agency in shaping service ecosystems.

Discovering diverse human behavior from two-dimensional preferences

Among the many types of ambiguous and diverse human behaviors, preference ranking and preferred temporal relationships are two human subjective perceptions, and both can be expressed as sequences. For example, information management researchers prefer journal A over B, and this preference can be represented as the ranking sequence: (A > B). When the order of submission is first A and then B, it can be expressed as the temporal sequence: (A → B). In practice, these two preference sequences may be applicable to people with regard to the same items at the same time, which is called “two-dimensional preference” in this study. Based on these concepts, this study defines a novel model and an associated algorithm for mining two-dimensional patterns by combining preference ranking and temporal sequences. The discovered two-dimensional patterns can be categorized into eight types, including consensus, ranking-compromise, temporal-compromise, and conflict patterns. Two experiments in two application areas, namely journal submission and stock purchase, were designed to collect authentic datasets, and demonstrate their managerial meaning. The experimental results show that in most cases, the ordering of the temporal sequences follows the preference ranking sequence, except for several two-dimensional patterns involving high-risk items.

The relative contribution of subjective office referrals to racial disproportionality in school discipline.

To improve our understanding of where to target interventions, the study examined the extent to which school discipline disproportionality between African American and White students was attributable to racial disparities in teachers' discretionary versus nondiscretionary decisions. The sample consisted of office discipline referral (ODR) records for 1,154,686 students enrolled in 1,824 U.S. schools. Analyses compared the relative contributions of disproportionality in ODRs for subjectively and objectively defined behaviors to overall disproportionality, controlling for relevant school characteristics. Results showed that disproportionality in subjective ODRs explained the vast majority of variance in total disproportionality. These findings suggest that providing educators with strategies to neutralize the effects of implicit bias, which is known to influence discretionary decisions and interpretations of ambiguous behaviors, may be a promising avenue for achieving equity in school discipline. (PsycINFO Database Record

Reducing Child-Related Negative Attitudes, Attributions of Hostile Intent, Anger, Harsh Parenting Behaviors, and Punishment Through Evaluative Conditioning

Six studies explored the extent to which evaluative conditioning (EC) can change adults’ child-related attitudes and expectations. A subset of studies also investigated the extent to which EC can change child-related attributions of hostile intent, anger, use of harsh discipline, and use of punishment. An initial study demonstrated that a brief EC procedure increased positive attitudes, decreased negative attitudes, and decreased expected need for future child discipline; findings that were replicated in five additional studies. A randomized controlled trial demonstrated these findings were present in the EC condition, but not in a control condition. Increases in positive child attitudes and decreases in the expected need for future child discipline (but not decreases in negative child attitudes) were maintained at a follow-up assessment. EC increases in positive attitudes generalized to child stimuli similar to those used in the EC procedure (exemplars), but no other EC-induced changes were found for exemplars. EC reduced child-related attributions of hostile intent, anger, use of harsh verbal discipline, use of harsh physical discipline, and use of punishment for ambiguous child behaviors. There was no evidence that EC effects were due to demand characteristics and little evidence that EC effects were moderated by demographic characteristics. It is yet to be determined whether the observed EC changes can be produced when a parent’s own child is used in the EC procedure and whether EC can produce changes in negative parenting behaviors that are maintained across time. The possible use of EC as an adjunct to existing parenting programs is discussed.

Ambiguous Organizational Orientations and Salesperson Opportunistic Behaviors

As boundary spanners, salespeople are known to engage in opportunistic behaviors including fudging-“adjusting” sales numbers/orders to make them align with targets, and faking -“appearing” to follo...

Anthropomorphizing Dogs: Projecting One's Own Personality and Consequences for Supporting Animal Rights

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this paper was twofold: First, to test if people project their own personality traits onto dogs, and second, to examine if considering the psychological state of dogs increases support for animal rights more broadly. In studies 1 and 2, participants read descriptions of dog behaviors and were asked whether the behaviors indicated the presence of certain traits (guilt, loneliness, anxiety) in those dogs. Participants also completed measures that assessed the presence of those traits in themselves. In both studies, participants who were prone to feeling guilt in their own lives were more likely to believe that dogs who show submission after a misdeed are feeling guilt and that dogs who show activity are feeling anxious. In study 2, we manipulated whether participants were asked to consider the psychological state of dogs by having only some participants read and rate the ambiguous dog behaviors from study 1. We found that doing so increased participants' support for animal rights relative to a control condition. Lastly, we observed correlations between participant personality and support for animal rights, such that greater anthropomorphism (measured both broadly and in the form of seeing guilt and anxiety in dogs) and greater general empathy predicted more support for animal rights. This research shows that people project some, but not all, of their own personality traits onto dogs when dogs behave ambiguously. In addition, it shows that simply being asked to consider whether dogs have human-like traits can temporarily increase support for animal rights more broadly.

Creating shared reality about ambiguous sexual harassment: The role of stimulus ambiguity in audience-tuning effects on memory

By tuning messages about ambiguous information to their audience's attitude, communicators can reduce uncertainty and form audience-congruent memories. This effect has been conceptualized as the creation of shared reality with the audience. We applied this approach to representations of ambiguous antecedents of sexual harassment and examined whether the effect depends on the event's perceived ambiguity. Participants read a testimony about a supervisor's ambiguous behaviors toward a female employee and described the behaviors to an audience who had previously evaluated him positively or negatively. We manipulated perceived ambiguity of the testimony by including or omitting information about eventual, clear-cut harassment (known vs. unknown outcome). As predicted, participants aligned their messages and memory with their audience's evaluation only in the unknown-outcome condition, where epistemic uncertainty was higher. The findings highlight the role of epistemic needs in the communicative creation of a shared reality about a ubiquitous social situation with potentially harmful outcomes.

Korean First Phase Syntax as Non-Voice-bundling

This paper investigates the question of whether Korean possesses two distinct syntactic heads for v and Voice (i.e., non-Voice-bundling) or they are bundled into a single syntactic head (i.e., Voice-bundling). The diagnostic provided by Pylkka?nen (2002; 2008) favors the former, while that offered in Tubino Blanco (2011) and Harley (2013) suggests the latter. In this study, I argue that in Korean the verbalizing layer (i.e., vP) is separated from the external-argument-introducing layer (i.e., VoiceP), based on the ambiguous syntactic behaviors exhibited by the HI construction as an inchoative and as a passive. That the derivation of the verb structure involving the HI suffix can either represent a structure at the vP level or project an additional VoiceP motivates a classification of Korean as a non-Voice-bundling language. The inchoative/passive ambiguity of the HI construction is ascribed to the interplay of the teleological capabilities of the participating arguments. The predictability of the previous diagnostics for non-Voice-budling is evaluated and their relationship with the newly proposed diagnostics is considered.

Quando uma acção permite diferentes interpretações: Pré-teste de comportamentos ambíguos

O presente trabalho teve como objectivo construir normas de descrições comportamentais ambíguas. Para tal, elaboraram-se 163 descrições de comportamentos, com vista a que cada uma dessas descrições ilustrasse simultaneamente dois traços de personalidade. Os comportamentos foram apresentados a 80 participantes, de forma a verificar em que medida eles seriam considerados igualmente representativos dos dois traços de personalidade. Os resultados respondem ao objectivo, permitindo extrair alguns comportamentos que podem ser considerados ambíguos. O estudo fornece ainda algumas reflexões metodológicas, a ter em consideração quando se pretende utilizar estímulos ambíguos na investigação.

Child physical abuse risk moderates spontaneously inferred traits from ambiguous child behaviors

The present study examined whether parents at high-risk for child physical abuse (CPA) differed from low-risk parents in their tendency to infer positive traits and negative traits from children's behaviors. The final sample consisted of 58 (25 low CPA risk and 33 high CPA risk) parents. Parents completed a false-recognition task, which involved viewing behavior descriptions paired with child photographs. Half of the behavior descriptions vaguely/strongly implied a trait and half of the implied traits were positive/negative. The contributions of automatic processes and controlled processes to task performance were examined using process dissociation procedures. Low CPA risk parents were significantly less likely to indicate negative traits were present in behavioral descriptions of children when negative traits were vaguely (compared to strongly) implied. In contrast, high CPA risk parents were equally likely to indicate negative traits were present regardless of whether the traits were vaguely or strongly implied. For low (but not high) CPA risk parents, automatic processes contributed significantly less to task performance when negative traits were vaguely implied compared to when the same traits were strongly implied. Given that parenting involves negotiating a seemingly endless series of ambiguous behaviors as children grow and develop, the capacity to refrain from automatically attributing negative traits to children when they exhibit vaguely negative behaviors may serve an important function in reducing risk of aggressive parenting behavior.

A method to reduce ambiguities of qualitative reasoning for conceptual design applications

AbstractQualitative reasoning can generate ambiguous behaviors due to the lack of quantitative information. Despite many different research results focusing on ambiguities reduction, fundamentally it is impossible to totally remove ambiguities with only qualitative methods and to guarantee the consistency of results. This prevents the wide use of qualitative reasoning techniques in practical situations, particularly in conceptual design, where qualitative reasoning is considered intrinsically useful. To improve this situation, this paper initially investigates the origin of ambiguities in qualitative reasoning. Then it proposes a method based on intelligent interventions of the user who is able to detect ambiguities, to prioritize interventions on these ambiguities, and to reduce ambiguities based on the least commitment strategy. This interaction method breaks through the limit of qualitative reasoning in practical applications to conceptual design. The method was implemented as a new feature in a software tool called the Knowledge Intensive Engineering Framework in order to be tested and used for a printer design.

Opioids, pain and addiction - practical strategies.

1. Addiction can occur with the repeated exposure of a biogenetically predisposed person to an addictive substance or behaviour. 2. In the patient with pain on opioid therapy, use the '4 Cs' to diagnose addiction. 3. Screening and risk stratification of all patients considered for opioid therapy is a key element of 'universal precautions' in pain management. 4. There are a number of established and new screening tools including the CAGE, Opioid Risk Tool and Screener and Opioid Assessment for Patients with Pain, which can be utilized in the office setting. 5. There are a number of potential ambiguous drug-related behaviours that should trigger a re-evaluation by the clinician. 6. Treating the higher-risk patient with opioids requires more assessment, more structure and more monitoring. Written opioid prescribing agreements and urine drug testing can be helpful strategies. 7. Essential documentation includes the '6As': Analgesia, Activity, Adverse effects, Ambiguous drug behaviours, Affect and Adequate prescription information.

Intention Reading from a Fuzzy-Based Human Engagement Model and Behavioural Features

This paper presents a novel approach for a quantitative appraisal model to identify human intent so as to interact with a robot and determine an engagement level. To efficiently select an attention target for communication in multi-person interactions, we propose a fuzzy-based classification algorithm which is developed by an incremental learning procedure and which facilitates a multi-dimensional pattern analysis for ambiguous human behaviours. From acquired participants' non-verbal behaviour patterns, we extract the dominant feature data, analyse the generality of the model and verify the effectiveness for proper and prompt gaze behaviour. The proposed model works successfully in multiple people interactions.

Practicing What You Preach: Infidelity Attitudes as a Predictor of Fidelity

The current studies used the Perceptions of Dating Infidelity Scale (PDIS), which identifies attitudes toward three types of behaviors indicative of cheating: Ambiguous, Deceptive, and Explicit behaviors, to predict actual infidelity behaviors. Participants reported their attitude toward these behaviors and then reported their willingness to engage in these behaviors with a hypothetical target (Study 1) and reported actually engaging in these behaviors over the course of one month (Study 2). Study 1 showed that attitudes for Ambiguous and Deceptive behaviors significantly predict a willingness to engage in these behaviors with a hypothetical target. Study 2 showed that attitudes toward Ambiguous behaviors significantly predict actual engagement in Ambiguous behaviors during the course of one month.

Pain descriptors for critically ill patients unable to self‐report

To examine descriptors used by nurses in two Canadian intensive care units to document pain presence for critically ill patients unable to self-report. Systematic documentation of pain assessment is essential for communication and continuity of pain management, thereby enabling better pain control, maximizing recovery and reducing physical and psychological sequelae. A retrospective, mixed method, having observational design in two Level-III intensive care units of a quaternary academic centre in Toronto, Canada. During 2008-2009, data were abstracted via chart review guided by a reference compendium of potential behavioural descriptors compiled from existing behavioural pain assessment tools. A total of 679 narrative descriptions were extracted. Behavioural descriptors (232, 34%), physiological descriptors (93, 14%), and descriptors indicating the patient was pain free (117, 17%) were used to describe pain presence or absence. Narratives also described analgesia administered without descriptors of pain assessment (117, 17%) and assessment and analgesic administration prior to a known painful procedure (30, 4%). Emerging themes included life-threatening treatment interference, decisional uncertainty and a wakefulness continuum. Inconsistent or ambiguous documentation was problematic in this sample. This may reflect confounding behaviours and concomitant safety priorities. Developing a lexicon of pain assessment descriptors of critically ill patients unable to self-report for use in combination with valid and reliable measures may improve documentation facilitating appropriate analgesic management. Protocols or unit guidelines that prioritize a trial of analgesia before administration of sedatives may decrease decisional uncertainty when patients exhibit ambiguous behaviours such as agitation or restlessness.

Talking about visually perceived events: Communication effects on eyewitness memory

AbstractCommunicators' tuning of a message about a social target to their audience's evaluation can shape their representation of the target. This audience‐tuning effect has been demonstrated with ambiguous text passages as input material. We examined whether the effect also occurs when communicators learn about the target's behaviours from visual (nonverbal) input material. In Experiment 1, participants watched a soundless video depicting ambiguous behaviours of a target, described the video to an audience who liked (vs. disliked) the target, and subsequently recalled the video. Both message and recall were biased towards the audience's judgement. In Experiment 2, the video depicted a forensically relevant event, specifically ambiguous behaviours of two persons involved in a bar brawl. Participants tuned their event retellings to their audience's responsibility judgement and remembered the event accordingly. In both experiments, the effect of the audience's judgement on recall was statistically mediated by the extent to which the message was tuned to the audience. The more participants experienced a shared reality with their audience the stronger was the message‐recall correlation (Experiment 2). We conclude that the audience‐tuning effect for visually perceived information depends on the communicators' creation of a shared reality with their audience. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Religion and Gambling Among Young Adults in the United States: Moral Communities and the Deterrence Hypothesis

Despite voluminous research examining religion as an integrative force and a mechanism of social control, relatively few studies have examined the association between religion and proscribed or morally ambiguous behaviors beyond crime and drug use. The present exploratory study examines the role of religion, at both the individual and county levels, in predicting self-reported gambling problems. Hierarchical linear models are employed to examine religion and self-reported gambling problems using the restricted use data of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. A negative association between religious attendance and problem gambling (at the individual level) is strongest when church adherents per capita is relatively high (measured at the county level). However, when the number of conservative Protestants per capita is relatively high, religious attendance (measured at the individual level) is associated with an increased risk of gambling problems. These countervailing findings are interpreted as supportive of the bonding and bridging capital thesis.

The Gray Area: Exploring Attitudes Toward Infidelity and the Development of the Perceptions of Dating Infidelity Scale

ABSTRACT Prior research has distinguished between emotional versus sexual infidelity. Two studies examined the development of the Perceptions of Dating Infidelity Scale (PDIS) to assess attitudes toward specific behaviors that constitute these types of infidelity in romantic relationships. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses indicated three factors to the scale: Ambiguous, Deceptive, and Explicit behaviors. In both studies, there were gender differences on ratings of the behaviors. The construct validity of the scale was assessed with measures of sociosexual orientation, guilt, and coping with unwanted sexual situations. It was found that the Ambiguous behaviors were positively correlated with avoidance of unwanted sexual situations, while the Deceptive and Explicit scales were positively correlated with guilt and avoidance and negatively associated with an unrestricted sociosexual orientation and acting on attractions toward friends.

Pupil and staff perceptions of bullying in secondary schools: comparing behavioural definitions and their perceived seriousness

Background: How bullying is understood by members of the school community is important because differences in definitions could result in an inconsistent approach and affect the success of intervention work. Research evidence suggests that pupils and teachers may have different interpretations of what constitutes bullying. This evidence has, however, been largely obtained from investigations in which the two groups have been questioned in different ways. This means that some of the differences obtained could be functions of methodology, rather than functions of differing perceptions. In addition, the perceptions of support staff have been largely neglected in the literature to date. Purpose: This study examines the perceptions of bullying of pupils held by pupils, teachers and school support staff in English secondary schools by the use of identical questionnaires for each group. Sample: A total of 1302 individuals participated in the research from four urban secondary schools. These four schools came from the same Local Education Authority in North West England. The sample consisted of 685 Year 8 pupils aged 12–13 years (341 males, 324 females, 20 unspecified), 415 Year 11 pupils aged 15–16 years (212 males, 187 females, 16 unspecified), 144 teachers (59 males, 81 females, 4 unspecified) and 58 support staff (14 males, 37 females, 7 unspecified). Design and methods: The study utilised a survey design whereby written responses to scenario-based questionnaires were scored. The scenarios described a range of direct bullying, indirect bullying and ambiguous behaviours. Respondents were asked whether they thought the behaviour described was bullying and how serious it was if experienced by a male or a female pupil. Questionnaires were completed by pupils during supervised class time. Staff questionnaires were distributed to staff members individually and completed independently. Results: Indirect bullying behaviours were less likely to be defined as bullying and were regarded as less serious than direct bullying behaviours. Scenarios with a female victim were rated more seriously than those with a male victim, and female respondents rated the behaviours more seriously than males. Teachers and support staff considered a wider range of scenarios to constitute bullying compared to pupils and also rated these to be more serious. Differences between schools indicated that perceptions could be affected by school factors. Conclusions: The differences in perceptions of bullying between pupils and staff indicate that teachers need to invest more time in talking with pupils about the nature of bullying. Indirect behaviours in particular need more attention to ensure they are included in definitions of bullying, and taken seriously. Further research is needed to investigate how school factors may influence perceptions of bullying.