Utility Judgments Research Articles

Legal actors' and laypersons' utility judgments of eyewitness lineup procedures and outcomes.

Recent attempts to model the relative performances of eyewitness lineup procedures necessarily include theoretical assumptions about the various costs/benefits, or utilities, of different identification outcomes. We collected data to incorporate empirically derived utilities into such modeling as well as data on various stakeholders' views of lineup procedures as tertiary objectives. This research was exploratory; therefore, we did not have a priori hypotheses. We surveyed judges' (n = 70), prosecutors' (n = 28), police officers' (n = 82), and laypersons' (n = 191) opinions about eyewitness identification procedures and the utilities of outcomes of eyewitness identification procedures. We incorporated the utility judgments into models comparing the desirability of various lineup reforms and compared policy preferences between our samples. All samples frequently mentioned estimator and system variables in open-ended evaluations of lineup procedures, but legal samples mentioned system variables more often than did laypersons. Reflector variables (e.g., confidence) were mentioned less often across the board, as was the scientific basis/standardization of identification policy (especially among laypersons). Utility judgments of various identification outcomes indicated that judges adopt values more closely aligned with normative legal ethics (i.e., the Blackstone ratio), whereas other stakeholders (especially laypersons) depart significantly from those standards. Utility models indicated general agreement among samples in lineup procedure preferences, which varied as a function of culprit-presence base rates. Although legal stakeholders vary in how they value eyewitness identification outcomes, their values imply relatively consistent policy preferences that sometimes depart from scientific recommendations. Nonetheless, all samples expressed support for using scientific research to inform legal policy regarding eyewitness evidence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Supplemental Material for Legal Actors’ and Laypersons’ Utility Judgments of Eyewitness Lineup Procedures and Outcomes

Supplemental Material for Legal Actors’ and Laypersons’ Utility Judgments of Eyewitness Lineup Procedures and Outcomes

Implementation of Complex Proportional Assessment and Rank Order Centroid Methods for Selecting Delivery Services

Choosing the right delivery service partner is an important thing for companies to consider. This is because the selection of the right delivery service partner can minimize the risks involved. Generally, choosing a delivery partner service is done by looking at the profile of the freight forwarder's partner. It takes time to determine the right delivery service partner. This study aims to apply the Complex Proportional Assessment (COPRAS) and Rank Order Centroid (ROC) methods in a decision support system for selecting delivery service partners to make it easier to make the right decisions and meet needs. The ROC weighting method is used to determine the value of the criteria based on priority. Meanwhile, the COPRAS approach is used to determine the best solution based on an analysis of the existing options through alternative assessments by providing interval-based utility judgments. In the case study conducted, the best alternative was obtained, namely J&T Express with a score of 100, followed by JNE Express with a value of 92.09, SiCepat with a value of 91.89, Ninja Express with a value of 91.42. The COPRAS calculation results on the system developed with the manual calculation results show the same value, this means that the calculations on the system are valid. The usability scores, on the other hand, have an average value of 88.33% and are considered good

Decision Support System for Choosing Online Learning Platforms Using the Complex Proportional Assessment Method

Online learning platforms can be an alternative to learning outside of school that can help improve student academic achievement. To determine the right online learning platform, decision makers must seek information one by one about the services provided by the platform as well as its weaknesses and strengths. This makes it difficult to make a choice and takes a long time. This research aims to build a Decision Support System (DSS) for choosing an online learning platform by applying the Complex Proportional Assessment (COPRAS) approach to get the right decision and not take long. The COPRAS approach can produce optimal alternatives based on alternative analysis using alternative assumptions by offering utility judgments so that the attributes of each alternative are sorted by interval. Based on the results of the case study, Zenius obtained the highest utility score with a score of 100, followed by Ruangguru with a score of 86.19, Pahamify with a score of 84.34, and Quipper with a score of 68.67. The calculation results obtained from a system built by calculating manually displays the same acquisition value, this means that the system has produced an accurate calculation. On the results of usability testing using aspects including understanding, learnability, operability and interesting, the average score is 91% and is in the good category. This demonstrates how user-friendly and implementable the created system is.

Investigating the Neural Correlates of the Affect Heuristic Using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

This study investigated the neural correlates of the so-called affect heuristic, which refers to the phenomenon whereby individuals tend to rely on affective states rather than rational deliberation of utility and probabilities during judgments of risk and utility of a given event or scenario. The study sought to explore whether there are shared regional activations during both judgments of relative risk and relative benefit of various scenarios, thus being a potential candidate of the affect heuristic. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we developed a novel risk perception task, based on a preexisting behavioral task assessing the affect heuristic. A whole-brain voxel-wise analysis of a sample of participants (n = 42) during the risk and benefit conditions revealed overlapping clusters in the left insula, left inferior frontal gyrus, and left medial frontal gyrus across conditions. Extraction of parameter estimates of these clusters revealed that activity of these regions during both tasks was inversely correlated with a behavioral measure assessing the inclination to use the affect heuristic. More activity in these areas during risk judgments reflect individuals' ability to disregard momentary affective impulses. The insula may be involved in integrating viscero-somatosensory information and forming a representation of the current emotional state of the body, whereas activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus and medial frontal gyrus indicates that executive processes may be involved in inhibiting the impulse of making judgments in favor of deliberate risk evaluations.

Evaluation of Family-Centered Participation-Based Assessments: Practitioners’ Judgment of Content Validity and Clinical Utility

Abstract Date Presented Accepted for AOTA INSPIRE 2021 but unable to be presented due to online event limitations. Assessing families' needs is essential for providing effective family-centered care. In this study, seven standardized measures were evaluated for their content validity and clinical utility by 71 practicing health care practitioners. Although all the measures were perceived as valid and useful, wide variability among practitioners' ratings was found. Guidelines for incorporating clinical reasoning regarding conceptual and practical aspects of measures to assess family needs will be presented. Primary Author and Speaker: Liat Gafni-Lachter Additional Authors and Speakers: Ayelet Ben-Sasson

Defining Creativity: A View from the Arts

ABSTRACT Over several decades, novel-and-appropriate has become established as the standard definition of creativity; while allowing for variations in the exact wording, the requirement that creativity requires external validation of value, utility, etc. is largely unchallenged. This functions well in high consensus fields in which value can be empirically verified. However, in low consensus fields such as the arts, value judgments are subjective, controversies abound, and it can take a long time to reach agreement. As a result, novel-and-appropriate needs to be revisited as a generalized definition. In its place, a successful definition should take into account that bringing something novel to life often requires taking the initiative long before there is external judgment of value or utility and, in low consensus fields, those external judgments can be a poor barometer. Synthesizing arguments by Simonton and Weisberg, the solution is to conduct separate analyses for personal production and public reception, and to remove utility from the definition of creativity. Advantages, risks, and implications of the recommended framework are discussed.

Quantum decision corrections for the neuroeconomics of irrational movement control and goal attainment.

Quantum decision theory corrects categorical and propositional logic pathologies common to classic statistical goal-oriented reasoning, such as rational neuroeconomics-based optimal foraging. Within this ecosalient framework, motivation, perception, learning, deliberation, brain computation, and conjunctive risk-order errors may be understood for subjective utility judgments underlying either rational or irrational canonical decisions-actions used to choose, procure, and consume rewarding nutrition with variable fitness.

Exclusion Criteria as Measurements II: Effects on Utility Functions.

Background. Researchers often justify excluding some responses in studies eliciting valuations of health states as not representing respondents' true preferences. Here, we examine the effects of applying 8 common exclusion criteria on societal utility estimates. Setting. An online survey of a US nationally representative sample (N = 1164) used the standard gamble method to elicit preferences for health states defined by 7 health domains from the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS®). Methods. We estimate the impacts of applying 8 commonly used exclusion criteria on mean utility values for each domain, using beta regression, a form of analysis suited to double-bounded scales, such as utility. Results. Exclusion criteria have varied effects on the utility functions for the different PROMIS health domains. As a result, applying those criteria would have varied effects on the value of treatments (and side effects) that change health status on those domains. Limitations. Although our method could be applied to any health utility judgments, the present estimates reflect the features of the study that produced them. Those features include the selected health domains, standard gamble method, and an online format that excluded some groups (e.g., visually impaired and illiterate individuals). We also examined only a subset of all possible exclusion criteria, selected to represent the space of possibilities, as characterized in a companion article. Conclusions. Exclusion criteria can affect estimates of the societal utility of health states. We use those effects, in conjunction with the results of the companion article, to make suggestions for selecting exclusion criteria in future studies.

The Scholarly Impact of Books Acquired via Approval Plan Selection, Librarian Orders, and Patron-Driven Acquisitions as Measured by Citation Counts

Patron-driven acquisition has been an important, if contentious, topic for decades, with numerous programs having been piloted, adopted, and reported on, largely favorably, in the library literature. Still, questions and doubts persist for academic libraries, especially where the composition of vendor plans and packages and the judgment of patrons are concerned. Past literature has approached the assessment of patron-driven acquisition by analyzing circulation/usage, comparing peer-library holdings, seeking patrons’ or librarians’ judgments of utility and suitability, looking for evidence of collection imbalances, and testing for overlap in patrons’ and librarians’ purchases. To contribute to this literature, this study addresses scholarly impact and examines whose selections—approval plans’, librarians’, or patrons’—have been most heavily cited. For the social sciences, the sciences, and the humanities, the authors gathered topic-matched random samples of books acquired via approval plans and librarian orders during the first five years of operation of their institutions’ interlibrary loan purchase-on-demand patron-driven acquisition program and compared their citation counts to the counts of books acquired via the program. Google Scholar was employed to tally citations.

Physiological and Psychological Foundation of Virtues: Thomas Aquinas and Modern Challenges of Neurobiology

This article regards the field of neuroscience and indicates on the proper or erroneous functioning of the human brain. Intellectual virtues, especially practical wisdom (prudence/ prudentia) play a significant role in capturing the truth and implementing it in life. The agile formation of the cognitive function of man encompasses both his reason as well as the sensual judgment of utility with all the bodily backup (vis cogitativa). The brain possesses great plasticity in the production of neuronal connections. Habit as a permanent wont utilizes the reactions being developed to the construction of often inappropriate mechanisms, that in turn are not easy or completely impossible to eliminate. When practical reason is introduced into a false ethos, the brain responds by forming “ruts” of neuronal connections which seem difficult to consider as something appropriate. The reparation of the existing situation and the removal of the wrong habit require relevant virtues so as to unblock the psychological resistance that is deeply rooted within the physiological neuronal substrate. The learning about the virtues of St. Thomas Aquinas is the best warranty not only for theoretical explanations, but also for the practical application of virtues in dealing with the arised situation. Only well-formed virtues give the opportunity to correct the false instinctive cognition and liberate from erroneous actions.

Caveat Usor: Assessing Differences between Major Chemistry Databases.

The three databases of PubChem, ChemSpider, and UniChem capture the majority of open chemical structure records with February 2018 totals of 95, 63, and 154 million, respectively. Collectively, they constitute a massively enabling resource for cheminformatics, chemical biology, and drug discovery. As meta‐portals, they subsume and link out to the major proportion of public bioactivity data extracted from the literature and screening center assay results. Therefore, they not only present three different entry points, but the many subsumed independent resources present a fourth entry point in the form of standalone databases. Because this creates a complex picture it is important for users to have at least some appreciation of differential content to enable utility judgments for the tasks at hand. This turns out to be challenging. By comparing the three resources in detail, this review assesses their differences, some of which are not obvious. This includes the fact that coverage is significantly different between the 587, 282, and 38 contributing sources, respectively. This not only presents the “who‐has‐what” question, but also the reason “why” any particular inclusion is considered valuable is rarely made explicit. Also confusing is that sources nominally in common (i.e., having the same submitter name) can have significantly different structure counts, not only in each of the three but also from their standalone instantiations. Assessing a series of examples indicates that differences in loading dates and structural standardization are the main causes of this inter‐portal discordance.

Evaluative Thinking in Practice: Implications for Evaluation from Paulo Freire's Work in Guinea-Bissau


 
 
 
 Background: Evaluative thinking is rigorous analysis of evidence and reasoning to inform judgments of merit, worth, value, significance, and utility. Although formal concepts and definitions for evaluative thinking have only emerged recently, its practice has been around for many years. In-depth historical case studies of international evaluations using evaluative thinking principles are rare, especially the ones reported by those who were involved a half-century ago.
 Purpose: This article describes little-known but historically significant educational reform initiative in Guinea Bissau (West-Africa) in the 1970s supported by a group led by Paulo Freire, examining what occurred through the lens of evaluative thinking.
 Setting: In 1975, Freire and the Idac team were invited to develop a national adult literacy campaign in Guinea Bissau. Freire was already well known for his revolutionary ideas in “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.”
 Intervention: Idac team supported the government to adopt Freire’s education and action approach comprising three core strategies: (i) critically understand reality, (ii) conduct scientific studies and (iii) application of the new knowledge. While Freire and four senior members of Idac’s team visited the country every three months, two other members lived there for four years. The decision was to invest in experimental pilot projects while reforming what was possible within the existing traditional school curricula.
 
 
 Research Design: The authors conducted a retrospective developmental evaluation exemplifying what can be learned by examining past events through contemporary concepts.
 Data Collection and Analysis: In-depth interviews were conducted with key informants, especially Claudius Ceccon (one of the authors) who was a senior member of the Idac team working with Paulo Freire in Guinea Bissau. Also, several project original documents and relevant publications were reviewed. Thick description and content analysis were used to revisit that educational reform and examine its implications for evaluative thinking.
 Findings: Even though Freire’s most prominent ideas were developed before evaluation was considered as an established field, his approach of dialectic inquiry, critical reflection and taking action has influenced and still influences many leading scholars and practitioners within our (trans)discipline. While Freire did not use the phrase “evaluative thinking,” his process of critical engagement with local people to analyze and understand their situation and take action based on their reflections manifests core elements of what today would be considered embedded evaluative thinking. In political reforms around the world, the retrospective evaluation of what happened in Guinea Bissau reminds us of the importance of evaluative thinking and reflective dialogue – and the fragility of both in the face of political polarization and changes in leadership.
 
 
 
 
 Keywords: Paulo Freire; evaluative thinking; developmental evaluation; retrospective studies; Guinea Bissau.
 
 
 

Is It a Dangerous World Out There? The Motivational Bases of American Gun Ownership.

Americans are the world's best armed citizens and public polling suggests protection/self-defense is their main reason for gun ownership. However, there is virtually no psychological research on gun ownership. The present article develops the first psychological process model of defensive gun ownership-specifically, a two-component model that considers both the antecedents and consequences of owning a gun for protection/self-defense. We demonstrate that different levels of threat construal-the specific perceived threat of assault and a diffuse threat of a dangerous world-independently predict handgun ownership; we also show how utility judgments can explain the motivated reasoning that drives beliefs about gun rights. We tested our model in two independent samples of gun owners (total N = 899), from just before and after the Orlando mass shooting. This study illustrates how social-cognitive theories can help explain what motivates Americans to own handguns and advocate for broad rights to carry and use them.

Clinicians' Judgments of the Clinical Utility of Personality Disorder Trait Descriptions.

Proposed for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM-5) was a five-domain, 25-dimensional trait model that would have constituted a significant part of the diagnostic criteria for each personality disorder. A primary concern with respect to the proposal was that clinicians might find such an approach to be unacceptable. This study provides results from three independent data collections that compared clinicians' clinical utility ratings for each iteration of the DSM-5 dimensional trait assignments, along with an alternative list of traits derived from the Five Factor Form (FFF). The clinicians considered the final trait assignments that were posted for the avoidant, narcissistic, obsessive-compulsive, and schizoid personality disorders to be significantly less acceptable than the original assignments. They also considered the FFF trait assignments to be preferable to the DSM-5 final postings with respect to the avoidant, narcissistic, obsessive-compulsive, dependent, and histrionic personality disorders. The implications of these results for future editions of the diagnostic manual are discussed.

Surrogate utility estimation by long-term partners and unfamiliar dyads

To what extent are people able to make predictions about other people's preferences and values?We report two experiments that present a novel method assessing some of the basic processes in surrogate decision-making, namely surrogate-utility estimation. In each experiment participants formed dyads who were asked to assign utilities to health related items and commodity items, and to predict their partner's utility judgments for the same items. In experiment one we showed that older adults in long-term relationships were able to accurately predict their partner's wishes. In experiment two we showed that younger adults who were relatively unfamiliar with one another were also able to predict other people's wishes. Crucially we demonstrated that these judgments were accurate even after partialling out each participant's own preferences indicating that in order to make surrogate utility estimations people engage in perspective-taking rather than simple anchoring and adjustment, suggesting that utility estimation is not the cause of inaccuracy in surrogate decision-making. The data and implications are discussed with respect to theories of surrogate decision-making.

Price as a Proxy of Quality: Achieving Something Out of Nothing through the Placebo Effect

AbstractThe purpose of the present paper is to critique the concept ‘placebo effect’ as applied in marketing. Most of the researches explain this concept largely by drawing on the expectancy and classical conditioning theories, which theories, together with the consideration of extrinsic and intrinsic product attributes, have largely shaped the price-quality relationship, hence the concept of placebo effect. A variety of literature, albeit not most recent, is reviewed from both the medical and marketing perspectives in order to create a rich expose. It is concluded that despite the ubiquity of price and consumers’ substantial experience with this attribute, a strong convergent support for the prediction that utility judgments are more precise and preferences are more stable, when price is considered as a proxy of quality. Future researches should transgress from expectations, beliefs and theories of conditioning to assessing how demand-related factors such as income, influence this phenomenon within the m...

Social utility versus social desirability of students’ attributional self-presentation strategies

Research on impression management has shown that students can manage their social images by providing attributional self-presentation strategies (ASPSs). Based on the distinction between social desirability judgments and social utility judgments, two studies were conducted to examine the students’ understanding of the impact of ASPSs both on teachers’ and peers’ approval and on future success. In Study 1, ninety-one undergraduate students were presented with five bogus profiles of students who based their ASPS on (a) effort, (b) ability, or (c) external attributions, (d) modesty principle, or (e) self-serving bias. They were asked to rank the profiles according to their expectations of the future academic success of each profile, and of the perceived effectiveness of the profiles in order to obtain teachers’ and peers’ approval. Study 2 explored how 100 high-school students and their teachers judge the same five bogus profiles of students used in the previous study. The findings reveal that the strategy based on effort attributions—rooted in the social utility dimension—is the most valued ones to pursue one’s achievements goal. In conclusion, the study provides further evidence about the contribution of self-presentation concerns to individuals’ causal attribution patterns for success and failure, and contribute to the theoretical debate on the dimensions underlying the social judgments.

Fear or Greed? Duty or Solidarity? Motivations and Stages of Moral Reasoning

As institutional economists recognize the limits of the canonical self-interest assumption, the lack of a theory of human valuation specifying the determinants of individuals’ utility judgments renders the prediction of behavior in collective action dilemmas virtually impossible. This problem hinders our ability to devise institutions to help cope with a variety of pressing social dilemmas that persist. We suggest that scholars can overcome this difficulty by integrating models of sociocognitive and moral development into the framework of institutional analysis and that such integration aligns with a new revolutionary shift in the social sciences. This shift is evidenced by the “rehabilitation” of key notions once downplayed due to the dominance of positivism. We present results from hypothesis testing linked to a cognitivist-developmental theory of human valuations. These results demonstrate that cooperative motivations and choices in public goods provision dilemmas are associated with further stages of interior development of the participants. We conclude that institutions addressing choices in morally relevant conflicts of action should be designed to promote swifter movement of individuals along the path of interior growth.

Clinician judgments of clinical utility: A comparison of DSM-IV-TR personality disorders and the alternative model for DSM-5 personality disorders.

This study compared the perceived clinical utility of DSM-IV-TR personality disorder diagnoses (retained in DSM-5) with the alternative model presented in DSM-5 Section III, using a national sample of clinicians applying both systems to their own patients. A sample of 337 mental health clinicians (26% psychiatrists, 63% psychologists, and 11% other professional disciplines) provided a complete assessment of all personality disorder features listed in DSM-IV-TR and DSM-5 Section III. After applying each diagnostic model, clinicians evaluated the clinical utility of that model with respect to communication with patients and with other professionals, comprehensiveness, descriptiveness, ease of use, and utility for treatment planning. These perceptions were compared across DSM-IV-TR and the 3 components of the DSM-5 Section III model, and between psychiatrists and nonpsychiatrists. Although DSM-IV-TR was seen as easy to use and useful for professional communication, in every other respect the DSM-5 Section III model was viewed as being equally or more clinically useful than DSM-IV-TR. In particular, the DSM-5 dimensional trait model was seen as more useful than DSM-IV-TR in 5 of 6 comparisons-by psychiatrists as well as other professionals. Although concerns were expressed about the clinical utility of the DSM-5 personality disorder system during its development, these criticisms were offered without data on the proposed system. The results of this study demonstrate that aside from the current familiarity of the DSM-IV-TR approach, it offers little advantage in perceived clinical utility over the DSM-5 Section III system, whereas the latter is viewed as being more useful in several respects.