Bias Hypothesis Research Articles

Factors determining the forecast errors of market analysts for fiscal variables in Brazil

The objective of this study is to investigate determinant factors the forecast errors of market analysts for Brazilian fiscal variables. The data for conducting the research was obtained in the Prisma Fiscal, the Ministry of Economy's system of collecting and disclosure of market expectations for fiscal variables. The data collected refer to collection, net revenue and total expenditure, in the period from November 2015 to December 2018. The Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) and z were used to measure the quality of the market analysts' forecast. The use of the z value as a measure of the forecast error is one of the contributions of this research. Among the results obtained, the hypothesis that the temporal horizon interferes in the quality of the forecast was not rejected for horizons of one and two years; the dispersion of forecasts did not show a substantial change; and the optimistic bias hypothesis was not confirmed. It can be concluded that for this sample the temporality is a determinant factor of the forecast error of the market analysts for fiscal variables. The research contributes to the discussion about forecasting error in the areas of Public Financial Management and Public Accounting.

Sex Differences in Work-Stress Memory Bias and Stress Hormones.

Mental health problems related to chronic stress in workers appear to be sex-specific. Psychosocial factors related to work–life balance partly explain these sex differences. In addition, physiological markers of stress can provide critical information on the mechanisms explaining how chronic stress gets “under the skull” to increase vulnerability to mental health disorders in working men and women. Stress hormones access the brain and modulate attentional and memory process in favor of threatening information. In the present study, we tested whether male and female workers present a memory bias towards work-stress related information, and whether this bias is associated with concentrations of stress hormones in reactivity to a laboratory stressor (reactive levels) and samples taken in participants’ workday (diurnal levels). In total, 201 participants (144 women) aged between 18 and 72 years underwent immediate and delayed recall tasks with a 24-word list, split as a function of valence (work-stress, positive, neutral). Participants were exposed to a psychosocial stressor in between recalls. Reactivity to stress was measured with saliva samples before and after the stressor. Diurnal cortisol was also measured with five saliva samples a day, during 2 workdays. Our exploratory results showed that men presented greater cortisol reactivity to stress than women, while women recalled more positive and neutral words than men. No sex difference was detected on the recall of work-stress words, before or after exposure to stress. These results do not support the hypothesis of a sex-specific cognitive bias as an explanatory factor for sex differences in stress-related mental health disorders in healthy male and female workers. However, it is possible that such a work-stress bias is present in individuals who have developed a mental-health disorder related to workplace stress or who have had one in the recent past. Consequently, future studies could use our stress memory bias task to assess this and other hypotheses in diverse working populations.

Continent-wide Shifts in Song Dialects of White-Throated Sparrows

Hypotheses on regional song variation ("dialects") assume that dialects remain stable within regions, are distinct between regions, and persist within populations over extensive periods [1-3]. Theories to explain dialects focus on mechanisms that promote persistence of regional song variants despite gene flow between regions [4-6], such as juveniles settling in non-natal populations retaining only those songs from their repertoires that match neighbors [7, 8]. It would be considered atypical for a novel song variant to invade and replace the established regional variant. Yet some studies have reported song variants shifting rapidly over time within populations [9-11]. White-throated sparrows, Zonotrichia albicolis, for example, traditionally sing a whistled song terminating in a repeated triplet of notes [12], which was the ubiquitous variant in surveys across Canada in the 1960s [13]. However, doublet-ending songs emerged and replaced triplet-ending songs west of the Rocky Mountains sometime between 1960 and 2000 [11] and appeared just east of the Rockies in the 2000s [14]. From recordings collected over two decades across North America, we show that doublet-ending song has now spread at a continental scale. Using geolocator tracking, we confirm that birds from western Canada, where doublet-ending songs originated, overwinter with birds from central Canada, where the song initially spread. This suggests a potential mechanism for spread through song tutoring on wintering grounds. Where the new song variant has spread, it rose from a rare variant to the sole, regional song type, as predicted by the indirect biased transmission hypothesis [10]. VIDEO ABSTRACT.

Gender Issues in Nigerian Newspapers Coverage of Maternal and Child Healthcare Issues

This study examines emergent gender issues in the analysis of newspaper coverage of maternal and child healthcare (MCH) in Nigeria over a one-year period. MCH is a major challenge in Nigeria as the country is among the highest contributors to maternal and child mortalities globally. Even though this pattern has wider implication to society at large, it may be regarded as being more relevant to women. Premised on gender bias and journalistic norms hypotheses, the study combines content analysis and in-depth interviews (IDI) to determine the dominant gender leading in the newspaper coverage of such a womencentred issue, and underlying reasons for the dominance. The study thus examines the dominant gender of journalists, and other voices projected in the newspaper reports on the issues. It also compares views of male and female health journalists for possible differences of opinion regarding media coverage of MCH. The study finds male dominance amongst journalists and voices quoted in the coverage of MCH issues and related stories, though there was minimal influence of gender in the overall coverage of issues. The study thus deviates from the media gender studies attributing underrepresentation of women in the media to gender bias; noting that gender imbalance is often rooted in journalistic norms pervading media operations.

Price elasticity in import demand equations considering product quality: Estimates for the Brazilian economy (1996–2013)

Abstract Recent empirical studies argue that traditional trade models ignore product quality, usually leading to bias in price elasticities, which prevents the correct evaluation of trade determinants and the development of trade policies. This article quantifies the effect of quality on Brazilian imports. For that, we estimate import demand equations, including a proxy for the quality of imported goods, according to pooled data panel. Results show that price affects the demand for Brazilian imports more than quality, unlike literature results in developed countries. Introducing the quality proxy increased the price coefficient. This occurred more significantly in estimates for the manufacturing sector, supporting the hypothesis of elasticities bias when estimation does not consider product differentiation.

Challenging the negative learning bias hypothesis of depression: reversal learning in a naturalistic psychiatric sample.

Classic theories posit that depression is driven by a negative learning bias. Most studies supporting this proposition used small and selected samples, excluding patients with comorbidities. However, comorbidity between psychiatric disorders occurs in up to 70% of the population. Therefore, the generalizability of the negative bias hypothesis to a naturalistic psychiatric sample as well as the specificity of the bias to depression, remain unclear. In the present study, we tested the negative learning bias hypothesis in a large naturalistic sample of psychiatric patients, including depression, anxiety, addiction, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and/or autism. First, we assessed whether the negative bias hypothesis of depression generalized to a heterogeneous (and hence more naturalistic) depression sample compared with controls. Second, we assessed whether negative bias extends to other psychiatric disorders. Third, we adopted a dimensional approach, by using symptom severity as a way to assess associations across the sample. We administered a probabilistic reversal learning task to 217 patients and 81 healthy controls. According to the negative bias hypothesis, participants with depression should exhibit enhanced learning and flexibility based on punishment v. reward. We combined analyses of traditional measures with more sensitive computational modeling. In contrast to previous findings, this sample of depressed patients with psychiatric comorbidities did not show a negative learning bias. These results speak against the generalizability of the negative learning bias hypothesis to depressed patients with comorbidities. This study highlights the importance of investigating unselected samples of psychiatric patients, which represent the vast majority of the psychiatric population.

An inductive learning bias toward phonetically driven tonal phonotactics

ABSTRACT In two artificial grammar learning experiments, we tested the learnability of tonal phonotactics forbidding non-domain-final rising tones (*NonFinalR) against the phonotactics banning non-domain-final high-level tones (*NonFinalH). We propose that a firm phonetic ground drives a presumably innate inductive bias favoring *NonFinalR and against *NonFinalH. In Exp. I, we trained two groups of participants with an artificial language conforming to either *NonFinalR or *NonFinalH and tested them with the same set of novel items violating either tonal constraint in an acceptability judgment task. In two separate test sessions, *NonFinalR learners demonstrated a significantly higher consistency in making correct judgments than *NonFinalH learners. In Exp. II, learners participated in the same acceptability judgment task without being exposed to inputs in an a priori training session; participants had to learn from the immediate explicit feedback given to their judgments on every test item. Results suggest that only *NonFinalR learners demonstrated signs of converging on the target tonal phonotactics. In addition, both experiments found that *NonFinalR learners, but not *NonFinalH learners, acquired the tonal phonotactics and a baseline segmental phonotactics prohibiting retroflex consonants similarly. Altogether, the experimental results support the hypothesis of an inductive learning bias toward *NonFinalR and against *NonFinalH.

Are avoidance biases in social anxiety due to biases in stimulus coding or in post-coding behavioral tendencies?

On the Approach-Avoidance Task (AAT) high socially anxious (HSA) individuals exhibit increased behavioral avoidance of faces displaying emotional expressions. Two accounts could explain these findings: 1) HSA individuals have a heightened readiness to code faces in terms of emotionality, and all individuals behaviorally avoid faces coded as emotional (pre-behavior coding bias hypothesis), or 2) everyone is equally ready to code faces in terms of emotionality, but when faces are coded as emotional HSA have a heightened tendency to behaviorally avoid such stimuli (post coding behavioral bias hypothesis). To test these hypotheses, we created the Stimulus-Coding AAT. Participants categorized emotional and non-emotional faces in terms of either gender or emotional expression, before making a standard AAT response. Time to make each type of categorization, and to execute AAT responses following categorization, was assessed in 32 HSA and 32 LSA participants. Groups did not differ in their relative speed to categorize face stimuli on the two dimensions. When participants coded faces in terms of their emotionality, HSA relative to LSA participants demonstrated increased behavioral avoidance of emotional faces. We conclude that these findings are inconsistent with the pre-behavior coding bias hypothesis and support the post-coding behavioral bias hypothesis.

Productivity Bias Hypothesis: New Evidence from Parallel Market Exchange Rate

Abstract Aim/Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate Productivity Bias Hypothesis (PBH) in Nigeria using parallel (black) market exchange rate. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study focused on Naira-Dollar (N/$) parallel market exchange rate. Quarterly data from 1995 to 2018 were used. Data on domestic productivity and parallel market exchange rate were sourced from Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) statistical bulletin, 2018 edition. US productivity data was sourced from Federal Reserve Economic Data. Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) was used as the estimation technique. Findings: The result reveals that parallel (black) market exchange rate support the presence of productivity bias hypothesis in Nigeria. Furthermore, the purchasing power parity hypothesis was rejected using the conventional unit root test. This implies that using official exchange rate, the study rejects the productivity bias hypothesis. Research Implications/Limitations: The implication of the study is that exchange rate in Nigeria should be determined freely in the foreign exchange market. Originality/Value/Contribution: Previous studies have used official exchange rate to test the validity of the productivity bias hypothesis, and the results can be basically described as mixed. Hence, this study differs from extant studies as it examined productivity bias hypothesis using parallel market exchange rate.

Did Real Estate Professionals Anticipate the 2007-2008 Financial Crisis? Evidence from Insider Trading in the REITs

This research examines whether real estate professionals detected the property bubble and foresaw the consequent financial crisis of 2007-2008. By analysing the insider trading activities within REITs from 1996 to 2010, we find that REIT insiders reduced their holdings significantly during the real estate boom period as early as 2004, before the financial crisis. Difference-in-difference analysis reveals that REIT insiders cashed out their positions more aggressively than insiders in real estate and construction firms. The findings support the informed trader hypothesis that managers and employees in REITs anticipated the burst of the real estate bubble and the imminent financial crisis, and shifted their wealth away from the real estate market to avoid potential losses. We find no evidence to support the biased belief hypothesis (Cheng et al., 2014) that REIT insiders were over-optimistic during the real estate boom period or that their inside trading behaviour was affected by local market performance.

More Than Just Gender: Exploring Contextual Influences on Media Bias of Political Candidates

Gender bias in the media coverage of political elections has long been theorized as a major obstacle to women’s success in elections and their institutional representation. However, this view of persistent media bias against women politicians is increasingly subject to pressure by inconsistent evidence of size and patterns of gender bias. This paper argues that some of these inconsistencies derive from a lack of attention to contextual influences of electoral coverage. This study analyzes gender bias in the amount and content of media coverage in the run-up to Swiss federal elections in 2015 by means of a quantitative content analysis. Drawing on an extensive sample of print, online and audiovisual election coverage from the most important tabloid and broadsheet media of three different language regions, the results reveal mixed evidence of gender bias: On the one hand, women candidates remain underrepresented in Swiss media. On the other hand, however, once they are covered by the media, candidates are overwhelmingly presented in a gender-neutral way. Several differences emerge between language regions and media type. Extending the traditional gender bias hypothesis to account for contextual influences, the study illustrates that the geo-cultural and media-specific contextual influences of election coverage impinge on the gendered mediation of candidates together with known drivers of political communication, such as incumbency, the electoral system, and party ideology.

Auditory Contagious Yawning Is Highest Between Friends and Family Members: Support to the Emotional Bias Hypothesis.

Contagious yawning differs from spontaneous yawning because it occurs when an individual yawns in response to someone else’s yawn. In Homo sapiens and some non-human primates contagious yawning is higher between strongly than weakly bonded individuals. Up to date, it is still unclear whether this social asymmetry underlies emotional contagion (a basic form of empathy preferentially involving familiar individuals) as predicted by the Emotional Bias Hypothesis (EBH) or is linked to a top-down, selective visual attention bias (with selective attention being preferentially directed toward familiar faces) as predicted by the Attentional Bias Hypothesis (ABH). To verify whether the visual attentional bias explained the yawn contagion bias or not, in this study, we considered only yawns that could be heard but not seen by potential responders (auditory yawns). Around 294 of auditory yawning occurrences were extrapolated from over 2000 yawning bouts collected in free ranging humans for over nine years. Via GLMM, we tested the effect of intrinsic features (i.e., gender and age) and social bond (from strangers to family members) on yawn. The individual identity of the subjects (trigger and potential responder) was included as random factor. The social bond significantly predicted the occurrence of auditory yawn contagion, which was highest between friends and family members. A gender bias was also observed, with women responding most frequently to others’ yawns and men being responded to most frequently by others. These results confirm that social bond is per se one of the main drivers of the differences in yawn contagion rates between individuals in support of the EBH of yawn contagion.

Has Rural-Urban Migration Promoted the Health of Chinese Migrant Workers？.

The relationship between health and migration has always been an important theme in immigration research. This research develops a new approach to test the healthy migrant hypothesis and the salmon bias hypothesis in China by examining an interaction term combining agricultural hukou and migrant status, non-agricultural employment history, and subsequent area of residence. Based on two Chinese micro-databases, CGSS 2015 and Harmonized CHARLS, we conducted an empirical test on the relationship between migration and health. Our empirical evidence suggests that the initial health advantage among Chinese rural migrant workers was largely due to self-selection rather than migration effects. After controlling for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, this advantage disappeared. After their health deteriorated, migrant workers returned to their original location. This could exacerbate the contradiction between the allocation of medical resources and the demand in rural and urban China, further intensifying the already widening health status gap between rural and urban residents.

Testing the productivity bias hypothesis for Brazil

Purpose- Productivity Bias Hypothesis (Balassa-Samuelson hypothesis) implies that currency appreciates in a relatively more productive country. The focus of this study is to test productivity bias hypothesis for Brazil by employing time series data over the period 1980-2018. Methodology- Time series data is analyzed by Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) method of cointegration. Findings-Stationarity of the variables are supported by Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) and Phillips Perron (PP) tests. F bounds test and error correction model suggest that variables are cointegrated. Conclusion- Empirical analysis does not support the evidence in favor of productivity bias hypothesis for Brazil over the selected period.

Biased competition in semantic representation during natural visual search

Humans divide their attention among multiple visual targets in daily life, and visual search can get more difficult as the number of targets increases. The biased competition hypothesis (BC) has been put forth as an explanation for this phenomenon. BC suggests that brain responses during divided attention are a weighted linear combination of the responses during search for each target individually. This combination is assumed to be biased by the intrinsic selectivity of cortical regions. Yet, it is unknown whether attentional modulation of semantic representations are consistent with this hypothesis when viewing cluttered, dynamic natural scenes. Here, we investigated whether BC accounts for semantic representation during natural category-based visual search. Subjects viewed natural movies, and their whole-brain BOLD responses were recorded while they attended to “humans”, “vehicles” (i.e. single-target attention tasks), or “both humans and vehicles” (i.e. divided attention) in separate runs. We computed a voxelwise linearity index to assess whether semantic representation during divided attention can be modeled as a weighted combination of representations during the two single-target attention tasks. We then examined the bias in weights of this linear combination across cortical ROIs. We find that semantic representations of both target and nontarget categories during divided attention are linear to a substantial degree, and that they are biased toward the preferred target in category-selective areas across ventral temporal cortex. Taken together, these results suggest that the biased competition hypothesis is a compelling account for attentional modulation of semantic representations.

Gender Differences in Cognitive Function among Older Mexican Immigrants.

This paper uses data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS) to study the cognitive function of Mexican-born older adults residing in the United States (Mexican immigrants). We find that, once differences in socioeconomic factors are accounted for, the cognitive function of male Mexican immigrants is statistically indistinguishable from that of male non-Hispanic (NH) whites, but the cognitive scores of female Mexican immigrants remain significantly below those of their NH white counterparts. We explore four potential hypotheses that may explain the cognition gap for female Mexican immigrants. Namely, we investigate whether the relative incidence of risk factors for dementia, when compared to NH whites, is higher for female than for male Mexican immigrants (the "risk factor hypothesis"); whether the mortality rate of male Mexican immigrants with low cognition is higher, relative to their white counterparts, than that of female Mexican immigrants (the "survival bias hypothesis"); whether female Mexican immigrants are less positively selected than their male counterparts in terms of predisposition to cognitive decline when compared with either the non-migrant Mexican population or the population of return migrants (the "differential selection hypothesis"); and whether male immigrants are better acculturated to life in the United States than female immigrants (the "acculturation hypothesis). We find no support for the risk-factor, survival, or acculturation hypotheses but we find evidence suggesting that the differential selection hypothesis may explain part of the female cognitive gap. Our results imply that older Mexican females currently residing in the U.S. may be at elevated risk for dementia and should be targeted by campaigns aimed at preventing or diagnosing the condition.

Condition Bias of Decoy‐Harvested Light Geese During the Conservation Order

ABSTRACTEvidence that decoy harvest techniques primarily remove individuals of poorer body condition is well established in short‐lived duck species; however, there is limited support for condition bias in longer‐lived waterfowl species, such as geese, where decoy harvest is considered primarily additive because of their high natural survival rates. We evaluated support for the harvest condition bias hypothesis of 2 long‐lived waterfowl species, the lesser snow goose (Anser caerulescens caerulescens) and Ross's goose (Anser rossii). We used proximate analysis to quantify lipid and protein content of lesser snow and Ross's geese collected during the Light Goose Conservation Order (LGCO) in 2015 and 2016 during spring migration in Arkansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Dakota, USA. In each state, LGCO participants collected birds using traditional decoy techniques and we collected birds from the general population using jump‐shooting tactics. Total body lipid content in both lesser snow and Ross's geese varied with age, region of harvest, and harvest type (decoy or jump‐shooting). On average, adult lesser snow and Ross's geese harvested over decoys had 60 g and 41 g, respectively, fewer lipids than conspecifics collected using jump‐shooting. We observed lower lipid reserves in decoy‐shot geese in all 4 states sampled despite general gains in lipid reserves as migration chronology progressed. Our data support that the harvest condition bias extends to longer‐lived waterfowl species and during a life‐history event (spring migration) in which harvest is not normally observed. In the case of overabundant light geese, the disproportionate harvest of poorer‐conditioned lesser snow and Ross's geese may serve as an additional challenge against any realized effects of harvest to reduce the population, in addition to extremely low harvest rates. © 2019 The Wildlife Society.

Observers' reactions to workplace incivility in the masculine domain: How does role congruency explain gender bias in future workers?

Based on Role Congruity Theory, we tested the hypothesis of gender bias by examining gender differences in observers' evaluations of the awareness and acceptability of workplace incivility gender-dyad interaction. Three hundred and ninety-six Spanish high school students (55.3% female) read one scenario of overt incivility (publicly humiliates and openly doubts the employee's judgment) or covert (omits and pays little attention) from a leader (female vs. male) toward a subordinate (female vs. male) in engineering. Results indicated gender differences among observers. From the leader actor of incivility, males were more aware and accepted less the incivility when performed by a female leader in a male domain; whereas females were more aware and accepted less incivility than males in all cases. Regarding the subordinate target of incivility, only females were more aware and accepted less incivility, and both males and females were more aware and accepted less covert incivility. Our results reveal practical implications for interventions from a gender perspective.

Effects of biased hypothesis generation on self-directed category learning.

Psychologists and educators have long pointed to myriad benefits of self-directed learning. Yet evidence of its efficacy in real-world domains is mixed and it remains unclear how it is constrained by basic perceptual and cognitive processes. Previous work suggests that, in particular, self-directed learning is affected by the way that people generate hypotheses as they learn. This study examines how biased hypothesis generation affects the learning of categorical rules, a basic building block of concept learning, through self-directed selection of training data. In both perceptual and abstract category learning tasks, participants' hypotheses regarding an unknown classification boundary were influenced by how features were represented. This bias had persistent effects on their ability to learn the underlying categorical relationship despite their opportunity to control the selection of training items. The results demonstrate that self-directed control can be beneficial for both perceptual and abstract category learning, but that the ability to discover rules of a particular form depends on how the learning environment guides the generation of new hypotheses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Plant Biodiversity Knowledge Varies by Gender in Sustainable Amazonian Agricultural Systems Called Chacras

Chacras, which are Amazonian agricultural systems, are examples of traditional agricultural management that are sustainable. They are also characteristic of the identities of different ethnographic groups in tropical America. However, information regarding the botanical characterization of chacras is scant. In tropical rural communities, there is a gender bias hypothesis that makes women potential reservoirs of traditional chacras plant knowledge. We present an experimental study in order to demonstrate if this knowledge difference really exists and to plan accordingly. We performed workshops in an isolated Kichwa community from Amazonian Ecuador. We calculated the cultural signififcance index (CSI) for 97 local flora plants. Our results revealed statistically significant differences. They were coherent with the Kichwa worldview and the structure of their society. We concluded that gender perspective must be taken into account in biodiversity conservation programs, such as, for example, those to implement the resilient agricultural practices of tropical contexts promoted by The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SGD2).