Everyday Choices Research Articles

Peep into Behaviourial Science of Choice

Everyday life is full of choices and preferences. An important question for many researchers is how people make (management) choices. Specifically, researchers are interested in the assumptions, beliefs, habits, and tactics that people use to make everyday choices. Research suggests that brain considers various sources of information before making a choice. Traditional approach is to compare judgment or a choice to a standard or 'benchmark.' The comparison enables evaluation of whether a particular judgment is 'good' or 'bad' relative to the standard. Normative models which offer standards are important because clear sets of rules or axioms, such as those derived from behaviour economics (expected utility theory) can be used to test predictions about human behaviour. When behaviour deviates from the predictions of normative models attempts can be made to ascertain why and, often, techniques for overcoming such biases. This approach with its focus on deviations from normative models contrasts the ideal of a homo behaviour economics with the apparent reality of a cognitive miser (or even loser) and has been enormously influential and useful. However, how does it do this? In addition, why does the process sometimes go awry, causing impulsive, indecisive, and confused choices; that lead to perilous and potentially dangerous behaviours? Human behaviour is not the product of a single process, but rather reflects interaction of different specialized subsystems. These systems usually interact seamlessly to determine behaviour, but at times, they compete. Result is that brain sometimes argues with itself, as these distinct systems come to different conclusions about what we should do. Human behaviour is not under constant and detailed control of careful and accurate hedonic calculations. It is product of an unstable and irrational complex of reflex actions, impulses, instincts and habits. The bottom question is; How to model the decision-making process?

Everyday Choice Making: Outcomes of Young People with Acquired Brain Injury After Moving from Residential Aged Care to Community-Based Supported Accommodation

Objectives: (1) Examine the opportunities young people with acquired brain injury (ABI) have to make everyday choices after moving out of residential aged care (RAC) into community-based shared supported accommodation (SSA); (2) Compare everyday choice making of this group with a group of people with ABI living in RAC.Research design: Mixed methods comparing two independent groups.Method and procedures: Responses on eleven relevant items of the Resident Choice Scale (RCS) were compared between two groups; 45 people with ABI living in RAC and 20 people with ABI who had moved from RAC to live in SSA. In addition, the choice making experiences of the SSA group were investigated through semi-structured interviews with the individual and/or their family member. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and thematically analysed.Results: Greater opportunities for everyday choice making were demonstrated on 10 out of the 11 RCS items for people living in SSA, compared to RAC. These included improved choice regarding meals, bedtime and leisure activities. Qualitative data also illustrated new choice opportunities afforded to the SSA group. Five key themes relating to choice were identified: rules and routines, communication, things to do, food and home-like environment.Conclusions: Community-based, age-appropriate and small-scale supported accommodation provides people with ABI more opportunities for everyday choice making than RAC.

‘it’s not written on parchment but it’s the way to survive’: Official and unofficial use of languages in MNCs

Abstract The globalization of economic activity and the escalating economic crisis impact on the expansion and shrinking of businesses along with their management of human resources and language management strategies. Struggling to remain competitive and survive, businesses resort to a range of language policies when employees make their own everyday language choices, a divergence that is worth investigating. Against this backdrop, this paper takes a mixed method approach and reports on the official and unofficial uses of English as a lingua franca and Greek as the local language in multinational corporations in Greece. According to the analysis, language choice is negotiated locally and strategically to the fallout of the economic crisis according to the employees’ post duties, the complexity of issues communicated, socialization with other employees, acting as unofficial default communication channels and safeguarding the privacy of email communication. Implications are discussed in relation to the teaching of foreign languages to meet the multivariate demands of workplace communication.

Should you Sleep on it? The Effects of Overnight Sleep on Subjective Preference‐based Choice

AbstractConventional wisdom and studies of unconscious processing suggest that sleeping on a choice may improve decision making. Although sleep has been shown to benefit several cognitive tasks, including problem solving, its impact on everyday choices remains unclear. Here we explore the effects of ‘sleeping on it’ on preference‐based decisions among multiple options. In two studies, individuals viewed several attributes describing a set of items and were asked to select their preferred item after a 12‐hour interval that either contained sleep or was spent fully awake. After an overnight period including sleep, individuals showed increases in positive perceptions of the choice set. This finding contrasts with previous research showing that sleep selectively enhances recall for negative information. In addition, this increase in positive recall did not translate into a greater desire to purchase their preferred item or into an overall benefit for choice satisfaction. Time‐of‐day controls were used to confirm that the observed effects could not be explained by circadian influences. Thus, we show that people may feel more positive about the choice options but not more confident about the choice after ‘sleeping on’ a subjective decision. We discuss how the valence of recalled choice set information may be important in understanding the effects of sleep on multi‐attribute decision making and suggest several avenues for future research. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journalism and the culture of othering

In seeking to render problematic traditional conceptions of journalistic identity, this article critiques the seemingly natural, even ‘common sensical’ structures of social exclusion recurrently underpinning its formulation. More specifically, it explores, firstly, a series of insights provided by feminist and gender-sensitive critiques of journal­ism. In assessing the typically subtle imperatives of sexism in news reporting, it consid­ers the extent to which journalistic identity continues to be defined within the day-to-day ‘macho culture’ of the newsroom, where female journalists’ perceptions of sexual dis­crimination typically vary sharply from those held by their male colleagues. Secondly, at­tention turns to the issue of ethnic diversity, where the need to deconstruct the racialised projection of ‘us and them’ dichotomies precisely as they are taken-up and re-inflected in news reporting is shown to be of pressing concern. In bringing together these respec­tive set of debates, primarily from British and US contexts, this article aims to contribute to conceptual efforts to further unravel the ways in which journalists’ routine, everyday choices about what to report – how best to do it, and why –involves them in a politics of mediation, one where all too often a culture of othering proves significant.

Young children learning about well-being and environmental education in the early years: a funds of knowledge approach

Early childhood educators currently provide content focused learning opportunities for children in the areas of well-being and environmental education. However, these are usually seen as discrete content areas and educators are challenged with responding to children’s interests in popular-culture inspired food products given these influence their consumption of energy-dense, nutrient-poor and highly packaged food in the early childhood setting. This paper reports preliminary findings from a pilot randomised trial examining the interconnectedness of sustainability, well-being and popular-culture in early childhood education. Planning, assessment documentation and summaries from twenty-four learning experiences implemented by six educators over a six-week period were analysed using a deductive approach. Twenty well-being and environmental education topics were identified and shown to be generated by the educators when considering the children’s ‘funds of knowledge’ on popular-culture inspired food products. We argue that topics derived from children’s engagement with popular-culture may help educators to create an integrated approach to curriculum provision. This may impact child weight and facilitate obesity prevention and environmental sustainability as children create stronger connections between these content areas and their everyday choices and practices.

Impact of adulthood stage and social-environmental context on body mass index and physical activity of individuals with intellectual disability.

Individuals with intellectual disability (ID) are at risk for obesity and physical inactivity. We analyzed a subset of 2009-2010 National Core Indicators (NCI) database to examine (1) the impact of three adulthood stages- younger (20-39 years), middle (40-59 years), and older (60 years and older) on Body Mass Index (BMI) and physical activity (PA); and (2) the relationship between social-environmental context (i.e., residence type, everyday choices, and community participation) and BMI and PA, with adjustment for individual characteristics of the adults with ID. Findings highlight the need to pay more attention to obesity by providing health education and emphasizing healthy choices. Results also suggest the importance of community participation as a way of promoting more physical activity.

Ethical challenges in neonatal intensive care nursing.

Neonatal nurses report a great deal of ethical challenges in their everyday work. Seemingly trivial everyday choices nurses make are no more value-neutral than life-and-death choices. Everyday ethical challenges should also be recognized as ethical dilemmas in clinical practice. The purpose of this study is to investigate which types of ethical challenges neonatal nurses experience in their day-to-day care for critically ill newborns. Data were collected through semi-structured qualitative in-depth interviews. Phenomenological-hermeneutic analysis was applied to interpret the data. Six nurses from neonatal intensive care units at two Norwegian hospitals were interviewed on-site. The study is designed to comply with Ethical Guidelines for Nursing Research in the Nordic Countries and the Helsinki declaration. Findings suggest that nurses experience a diverse range of everyday ethical challenges related to challenging interactions with parents and colleagues, emotional strain, protecting the vulnerable infant, finding the balance between sensitivity and authority, ensuring continuity of treatment, and miscommunication and professional disagreement. A major finding in this study is how different agents involved in caring for the newborn experience their realities differently. When these realities collide, ethical challenges arise. Findings suggest that acting in the best interests of the child becomes more difficult in situations involving many agents with different perceptions of reality. The study presents new aspects which increases knowledge and understanding of the reality of nursing in a neonatal intensive care unit, while also demanding increased research in this field of care.

EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP: THE AUDIENCE CREATES THE TEXT

Alternative conceptions of educational leadership that challenge the performativity culture do not appear substantively to alter the trajectory of practitioner’s everyday choices. This article uses as data the responses from three different audiences to a presentation on such alternative conceptions. The three groups were academics attending an educational leadership conference, circuit managers as part of a post-project workshop, and a group of aspirant school rectors in a training diploma programme. The first two groups were South African and the third a Mauritian audience. The audience responses show how they subverted, re-interpreted and jettisoned the message of the presentation. Three vignettes constitute the analysis of the audiences’ foregrounding of the lived complexities of making alternative leadership choices. The article suggests we need to be aware of how and why practitioners will choose or not to become alternative proponents of the dominant discourses around ‘educational quality’.

Monastic Practices Countering a Culture of Consumption

Monastic Practices Countering a Culture of Consumption

Reproducing racism: how everyday choices lock in white advantage

The preceding chapter does not purport to provide a handbook for policy makers to prescribe ways to dismantle feedback loops or to unlock lock-in. Rather, it points to some very practical implications from the lock-in model that policy makers will have to take into account. First, time matters. The lock-in process is a dynamic one, and in the case of racial disparity, time makes the problem worse. Where many policy makers assume that the racial gap will eventually narrow, given Becker’s arguments about the costliness of discrimination, the lock-in model assumes that time will actually make things worse, as advantage and disadvantage become further entrenched. Second, the end of discrimination on the basis of race necessarily requires more than the end of intentional discrimination. In the Court’s recent decision in Parents Involved vs. Seattle School District No. 1 (2007), Justice Roberts famously declared that the way to stop discriminating on the basis of race was to stop discriminating on the basis of race. The lock-in model demonstrates why Roberts is wrong—facially race-neutral processes like property taxes and job referral networks reproduce the discrimination of the Jim Crow and slavery eras. Moreover, this book suggests that persistent racial gaps in education, jobs, housing, and wealth are at present as significant or more significant a problem than intentional discrimination. Third and finally, the concept of critical mass complicates our predictions about what might remedy persistent inequality. Recall from the discussion about tipping points and Polya urns that the dynamics of self-reinforcement frequently involve some dramatic phase transition when the dynamic system hits a critical tipping point. In the urn example, at some key tipping point the variation in the number of colored balls settled down and became locked in. This concept of tipping point and critical mass has significant implications for remedy as well as cause. For example, a children’s trust fund might be completely ineffective until the amount in the fund is large enough to make college a real possibility, or to put a down payment on a house. Short of that number, the children’s trust fund isn’t really likely to do much work. Once the trust fund hits that critical number—whether it be $80,000 or some other amount—change might begin. In many conversations about public education, conservative commentators and politicians have argued that money won’t solve the problem. These commentators usually cite to the fact that some school districts are enjoying a much higher per capita spending level than other districts, with no appreciable difference in performance. But if the system exhibits increasing returns or network effects, policy makers might in fact have to throw a lot more money at the problem before the money triggers real change. We understand this intuitively when it comes to physical systems. When heating water, adding more heat might make no appreciable difference for a long period of time until the water hits a critical temperature and then begins to boil. In the same way, critical thresholds might affect the points of change when it comes to persistent racial gaps. Calculating those critical points constitutes an important agenda for scholars of racial inequality to carry forward from here.

Revisiting 'The clinic': ethical and policy challenges in U.S. community health centers.

Where do poor people in the United States (US) go when they get sick? Often, they go to Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) and hospital emergency departments. Even after the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), these safety-net health care organizations will continue to play a crucial role in the US health care system. FQHCs have long grappled with some of the biggest questions facing the US health care system and their leaders and clinicians face ethical challenges in everyday practice. Ethical and policy challenges in the US health care safety-net are not usually 'tragic choices' involving the allocation of transplantable organs, or ventilators during a pandemic. They are everyday choices with a tragic dimension because, even with the adoption of the ACA, the US has not yet decided whether poor people deserve a 'home' or a 'net' when they are sick, and whether even a net should be in good repair.

The utopias of political consumerism: The search of alternatives to mass consumption

This article focuses on political consumerism understood as a social movement in which a network of individual and collective actors criticize and try to differentiate themselves from traditional consumerism by politicizing the act of buying in order to search and promote other types of consumption. In this respect, they adopt a series of actions that have a collective goal but that can be either individual or collective (boycott, buycott). This article is based on a comparison of four cases in France and in the United Kingdom: two convivia of Slow Food and two more radical groups – de-growth promoters and people living in an eco-village. The angle used in this research is utopia understood both as a discourse and a set of practices. The utopian discourse includes, first, a rejection of the existing society, and, second, if not a clear conception of what another world might look like, at least the idea that another society is possible and desirable. The utopian practices need to be an attempt to create here and now at least some of the features of this utopian discourse in the hope of a spread in the rest of society. Viewing political consumerism through the lenses of utopia can help understand how actors view consumption and how they relate their acts of (non-)consuming to ideals and dreams of a better world. Utopia helps show that the particular choices of consumption, of lifestyle or the choices collectively made, are only really understandable if one looks at the logics behind them and their articulation to the ideals and hopes actors have. It can also help us see how actors articulate the individual and collective level of action since it shows that for the actors, their everyday choices of living are also done in order to achieve some necessary changes within society.

Brands as a Mean of Consumer Self-expression and Desired Personal Lifestyle

Lifestyle has a great impact on consumer behaviour and brand preferences. Very often, consumers tend to choose brands that are considered “appropriate” for their self-image. Accordingly, companies will try to position their brands in order to fit into consumers’ lifestyle. In addition to expressing their identity through the everyday choices they make, consumers will often seek new ways in which they can express their personal identity. As a result, consumers can use brands as a relevant mean of self- expression and also as a lifestyle “beacon”. The purpose of this article is to examine the role of brands in this circumstances and to highlight the possible implications. Using two different experiments, the authors provide strong evidence that customers rely on brands with a desirable brand identity to express their own identity and they tend to prefer brands that are convergent with their identity as the primary mean of expressing an unique image about their personal lifestyle. This article also provides solid evidence that brands can be used as valid tools for status signalling in everyday circumstances.

Explaining Addiction: How Far Does the Reward Account of Motivation Take Us?

ABSTRACT Choice theorists such as George Ainslie and Gene Heyman argue that the drug-seeking behaviour of addicts is best understood in the same terms that explain everyday choices. Everyday choices, they claim, aim to maximise the reward from available incentives. Continuing drug-use is, therefore, what addicts most want given the incentives they are aware of but they will change their behaviour if and when better incentives become available. This model might explain many typical cases of addiction, but there are hard cases that pose a problem. In these hard cases the addicted individual does not cease using drugs in the face of consequences that are so adverse it is implausible that they are unaware of more rewarding paths of action. These cases force the choice theorist into a dilemma: either these addicts’ drug use does not count as action and so is best described by a neurobiological model, or reference to ‘reward’ in these cases means merely ‘motivated’ and so provides no explanatory power. We propose a different model of motivation that takes self-conception into account. We show how that can better explain the hard cases of addiction and also inform our understanding of recovery and self-control.

A Need for Processes that Future Proof the Fiber Optic Installation

The tenets of IEC 61300-3-35 have influenced and contributed to numerous standards. These include: a.) the importance of cleaning the fiber optic connection, b.) the concept of diameter of debris or contamination, and, c.) the area of the end face to be cleaned, d.) methods of cleaning. As capacity and bandwidth expand, deployments updated, and new technicians trained, a clear understanding of several other tenets of precision cleaning the connection may also be considered.There are many types of debris and contamination. Some are dry Figure-1 and others are fluidic Figure-2. Debris on an end face may also be present in combination Figure-3. The cleaning procedure should strive to be a first time event. A best practice procedure can be identified that does not require multiple techniques and numerous attempts.Dry, fluidic, or combinations of contaminants also have height Figure-4.(12) Commonly used cleaning techniques can create fluidic contamination outside the field of view of most video inspection and software analysis Figure-5. Another technique can create a static field that attracts additional debris Figure-1.(8)There are well established tenets, present in everyday life, that point the direction to properly cleaning the fiber optic connection. Dry wipers, use of solvents and surfactants, and identification of debris or contamination are every-day choices. These are relevant to precision clean a fiber optic connection.Ineffective cleaning fiber optic cleaning procedures may result in debris being mis-characterized as an artifact. Currently, IEC 61300-3-35 is relative to both production line applications (OEM) and field service (OSP) applications. Various standards are based on IEC. In this work the term OEM refers to Original Equipment Manufacturer or a production line environment. The term OSP refers to Outside Plant/Field Service, or the installation and the post production line maintenance environment.This paper is an effort to define and update inspection and cleaning procedures to facilitate existing operations and anticipate future needs.

Company and meal choices considered by Nordic adolescents

AbstractThis article examines the meal choices considered by Nordic adolescents in two social situations: for themselves and for the family. In addition, the frequency of family meals is compared between the countries studied. The survey data (n = 1539) were collected during 2006–2007 from 9th grade students (aged 14–17 years) in Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway. Analysis was based on both quantitative variables and open‐ended data. Family meals were found to be less common among Finnish respondents than in the remaining data. In all countries but Denmark, the number of parents in the family had an effect on the frequency of family meals. Meals echoing or fully meeting the structural definition of a ‘proper meal’ were most common when describing meals for the family. The difference between the two social situations was most apparent for those who mentioned ‘Fast food dishes’ for themselves. Gender differences in open‐ended questions were smallest in Denmark and most apparent in Norway. Future studies should focus not only on how many of adolescents eat in what is termed an unhealthy way but also on how they themselves perceive and conceptualize eating, and what kinds of justifications they give to their everyday choices in different social contexts.

Stefnumörkun í heilbrigðismálum: Leiðin til lýðheilsu

Chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are currently the main cause of premature death and disability in the world. Most of these NCDs are due to unhealthy lifestyle choices i.e. tobacco, unhealthy diet, lack of physical exercise and alcohol consumption. Studies have shown that health policy interventions aiming at improving diet and physical activity and reducing tobacco consumption are inexpensive, effective and cost saving. In this paper we address the political health policy interventions that have been shown to improve public health. We discuss some of the theories of behavioral economics which explain the processes involved in our every-day choices regarding lifestyle and diet.

Public engagement with climate change: What do we know and where do we go from here?

Abstract Climate change is an issue with fundamental implications for societies and individuals. These implications range from our everyday choices about resource use and lifestyles, through how we adjust to an unprecedented rate of environmental change, to our role in debating and enacting accompanying social transitions. This article outlines the various ways in which members of society (‘publics’) may be engaged in efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and then provides a synthesis of lessons about public engagement which span both theoretical and practical insights. These include the diverse drivers of, and barriers to, engagement; the importance of multiple forms of engagement and messages; and a critical need to evaluate and identify successful examples of engagement. We conclude by outlining priorities for future research, policy and practice.

The Capitalist Gaze

Image of NeutralityIn Usual Suspects (directed by Bryan Singer, 1995), Roger Verbal Kint (played by Kevin Spacey) describes the mysterious villain Keyser Soze by comparing him to the devil and quoting, without citation, Baudelaire. Kint declares that The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.1 By hiding his existence, the Devil can operate stealthily through seemingly selfmotivated human actions. Although many on the Left equate capitalism with the Devil, capitalism operates in exacdy the opposite fashion. Its basic trick consists not in hiding its existence but rather in proclaiming it. This trick proves so effective that it blinds not just the true believers but even some of the system's most thoughtful detractors. Of course, capitalism really exists in the sense that it functions as today's controlling economic system, but it does not exist as the substantial ground of our being and is not the default economic system that results from the failure to decide politically on some alternative. Capitalism is political through and through. Its existence depends on the collective decision that brought it into being and that continues to sustain its development. But this decision is difficult to see. Whereas a link can easily be made between the existence of communism and a revolutionary decision that creates its rule, no such decision inaugurates capitalism. No one would mistake the communist system that arose in Russia in 1917 with the natural order of things. But capitalism appears as a neutral background that emerges out of being itself, as an economic system that simply develops on its own and continues unabated unless it encounters political interference.Capitalism owes much of its strength as an economic system to its guise of neutrality, to its illusion of belonging to the order of existence. If it isn't a system at all or even a way of life but just the way of life, then the idea of contesting it is nonsensical and doomed to failure. According to this way of thinking, the communist revolutions of the twentieth century ran aground not because of their own internal contradictions but because they attempted to violate the economic laws of nature. idea of capitalism's natural status or its correlation with human nature provides the fundamental obstacle to any attempt to contest capitalism's dominance. Before capitalist relations of production can be challenged, people must believe that capitalism doesn't exist, that it results from a break within the structure of being itself rather than simply deriving from that structure. key to taking this step lies in an investigation of how the existence of capitalism becomes evident. It does so only at moments of crisis, which is what gives crisis its fecundity.Although subjects within the capitalist universe experience themselves as free (free to make money, free to consume what they want, and so on), the system spares them the weight of the decision. We make numerous decisions every day concerning what to do, where to go, and what to buy, but none of these decisions occur outside the confines of the narrow limits of our given possibilities. political decision, the decision concerning our way of life itself, disappears within the capitalist horizon. None of our everyday choices involve the risk of a radical transformation; instead, all offer the security of a well-known terrain. This security is the direct result of the belief in the substantial existence of capitalism, a belief that the system itself requires and sustains.Belief in the existence of capitalism has become especially pronounced in the absence of any economic alternative. Political theorists today often lament the absence of political engagement among subjects within the capitalist economy. problem is not just that few actively engage in political struggle but that it is difficult to conceptualize the world in political terms. Rather than seeing themselves as incessandy confronted by political questions, subjects today accept the given order as the natural state of things. …