People's Ratings Research Articles

For better or for worse? Visualizing previous intensity levels improves emotion (dynamic) measurement in experience sampling.

It is a long known reality that humans have difficulty to accurately rate the absolute intensity of internal experiences, yet the predominant way experience sampling (ESM) researchers assess participants' momentary emotion levels is by means of absolute measurement scales. In a daily-life experiment (n = 178), we evaluate the efficacy of two alternative assessment methods that should solicit a simpler, relative emotional evaluation: (a) visualizing a relative anchor point on the absolute rating scale that depicts people's previous emotion rating and (b) phrasing emotion items in a relative way by asking for a comparison with earlier emotion levels, using a relative rating scale. Determining five quality criteria relevant for ESM, we conclude that a visual "Last" anchor significantly improves emotion measurement in daily life: (a) Theoretically, this method has the best perceived user experience, as people, for example, find it the easiest and most accurate way to rate their momentary emotions. Methodologically, this type of measurement generates ESM time series that (b) exhibit less measurement error, produce person-level emotion dynamic measures that are (c) often more stable, and in a few cases show stronger (d) univariate and (e) incremental relations with external criteria like neuroticism and borderline personality (e.g., emotional variability). In sum, we see value in the addition of a relative "Last" anchor to absolute measurement scales of future ESM studies on emotions, as it structures the ambiguous rating space and introduces more standardization within and between individuals. In contrast, using relatively phrased emotion items is not recommended. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Humans can identify reward-related call types of chickens.

Humans can decode emotional information from vocalizations of animals. However, little is known if these interpretations relate to the ability of humans to identify if calls were made in a rewarded or non-rewarded context. We tested whether humans could identify calls made by chickens (Gallus gallus) in these contexts, and whether demographic factors or experience with chickens affected their correct identification context and the ratings of perceived positive and negative emotions (valence) and excitement (arousal) of chickens. Participants (n = 194) listened to eight calls when chickens were anticipating a reward, and eight calls in non-rewarded contexts, and indicated whether the vocalizing chicken was experiencing pleasure/displeasure, and high/low excitement, using visual analogue scales. Sixty-nine per cent of participants correctly assigned reward and non-reward calls to their respective categories. Participants performed better at categorizing reward-related calls, with 71% of reward calls classified correctly, compared with 67% of non-reward calls. Older people were less accurate in context identification. Older people's ratings of the excitement or arousal levels of reward-related calls were higher than younger people's ratings, while older people rated non-reward calls as representing higher positive emotions or pleasure (higher valence) compared to ratings made by younger people. Our study strengthens evidence that humans perceive emotions across different taxa, and that specific acoustic cues may embody a homologous signalling system among vertebrates. Importantly, humans could identify reward-related calls, and this ability could enhance the management of farmed chickens to improve their welfare.

The effect of occupational status on health: Putting the social in socioeconomic status

High status occupations support positive health outcomes through providing access to both material and psychosocial resources. However, common measures of occupational status such as occupational prestige scores fail to capture cultural esteem that certain occupations can provide because they are primarily associated with the material dimensions of status, like income. Drawing on Weberian conceptions of status and a body of social psychological research on the measurement of cultural meaning, we argue that measuring people's ratings of their occupations on three dimensions—evaluation (good/bad), potency (powerful/weak), and activity (active/inactive)—provides an occupational status indicator that more fully captures psychosocial resources like esteem that are associated with health than more commonly used occupational prestige scores. Using a nationally representative longitudinal health and wellbeing survey of 940 American law enforcement officers collected between 2020 and 2022, we evaluate the predictive ability of evaluation, potency, and activity (EPA) ratings across thirteen measures of health and wellbeing. We find that EPA ratings were significant and positive predictors of eleven of thirteen outcomes with stronger effects for mental health outcomes compared to physical health outcomes. EPA ratings were more predictive than more commonly used occupational prestige scores. We conclude that EPA ratings are better predictors of health outcomes than occupational prestige scores and so may allow health researchers to better understand the relationship between occupational status and health.

Your ears don't change what your eyes like: People can independently report the pleasure of music and images.

Observers can make independent aesthetic judgments of at least two images presented briefly and simultaneously. However, it is unknown whether this is the case for two stimuli of different sensory modalities. Here, we investigated whether individuals can judge auditory and visual stimuli independently, and whether stimulus duration influences such judgments. Participants (N = 120, across two experiments and a replication) saw images of paintings and heard excerpts of music, presented simultaneously for 2 s (Experiment 1) or 5 s (Experiment 2). After the stimuli were presented, participants rated how much pleasure they felt from the stimulus (music, image, or combined pleasure of both, depending on which was cued) on a 9-point scale. Finally, participants completed a baseline rating block where they rated each stimulus in isolation. We used the baseline ratings to predict ratings of audiovisual presentations. Across both experiments, the root mean square errors (RMSEs) obtained from leave-one-out-cross-validation analyses showed that people's ratings of music and images were unbiased by the simultaneously presented other stimulus, and ratings of both were best described as the arithmetic mean of the ratings from the individual presentations at the end of the experiment. This pattern of results replicates previous findings on simultaneously presented images, indicating that participants can ignore the pleasure of an irrelevant stimulus regardless of the sensory modality and duration of stimulus presentation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

From past pain to future pain through the pain of others: Information about other people's pain ratings can alleviate our subsequent pain.

Previous studies have shown that pain memories have a profound impact on subsequent pain experiences. This study investigated whether pain ratings derived from other people can modify an individual's memory of past pain. This study also examined whether pain memory modified by others' pain ratings determines subsequent pain experiences. Participants were divided into two groups: an experimental group and a control group. Participants in both groups were exposed to pain stimulation; then, they recalled its intensity twice over a period of time; after a break, they were again exposed to pain stimulation of the same intensity. The final sample consisted of 53 participants. The only difference between the experimental group and the control group was that in the former the pain ratings of other alleged participants were presented between the two consecutive pain recalls. These ratings suggested that other people experienced the same pain as less intense. The pain ratings derived from other people did not alter the pain memory; nevertheless, they affected an individual's next pain experience even for a certain period of time after their presentation. This type of pain-related information shaped participants' subsequent pain experiences regardless of their empathy, conformity, and susceptibility to social influence. Information on pain derived from other people not only shapes the response to a novel stimulation but also substantially modifies the subsequent experience of that stimulation. The study demonstrates the importance of social information on pain and provides evidence that this type of information substantially modifies the subsequent experience of the same pain. These results suggest that social information on pain can be used to alleviate pain associated with recurring medical procedures and thus increase patients' willingness to continue treatment.

Assessing the reliability of single-item momentary affective measurements in experience sampling.

Emotion researchers that use experience sampling methods (ESM) study how emotions fluctuate in everyday life. To reach valid conclusions, confirming the reliability of momentary emotion measurements is essential. However, to minimize participant burden, ESM researchers often use single-item measures, preventing a reliability assessment of people's emotion ratings. Furthermore, because emotions constantly change, checking reliability via conventional test-retest procedures is impractical, for it is impossible to separate measurement error from meaningful emotional variability. Here, drawing from classical test theory (CTT), we propose two time-varying test-retest adaptations to evaluate the reliability of single-item (emotion) measures in ESM. Following Method 1, we randomly repeat one emotion item within the same momentary survey and evaluate the discrepancy between test and retest ratings to determine reliability. Following Method 2, we introduce a subsequent, shortly delayed retest survey and extrapolate the size of test-retest discrepancies to the hypothetical instance where no time between assessments would exist. First, in an analytical study, we establish the mathematical relation between observed test-retest discrepancies and measurement error variance for both methods, based on common assumptions in the CTT literature. Second, in two empirical studies, we apply both methods to real-life emotion time series and find that the size of error in people's emotion ratings corresponds with almost a 10th of the scale, comprising around 27% of the total variability in participants' affective responses. Consequently, disregarding measurement error in ESM is problematic, and we encourage researchers to include a test-retest procedure in their future studies when relying on single-item measures. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Judgement of sleep quality of the previous night changes as the day unfolds: A prospective experience sampling study.

How we form judgements of sleep quality is poorly understood. Emerging literature suggests that people infer their sleep quality based on multiple sources of accessible information, raising the possibility that sleep quality judgement may evolve as new relevant information becomes available. This study investigated whether people's rating of sleep quality of the night before changes throughout the following day, and what post-sleep factors are associated with the changes. A prospective experience sampling study of 119 healthy young adults, who completed eight short online surveys interspaced 2hr apart from 08:00 hours to 22:00 hours. Each survey asked the participants to report total sleep time and sleep quality of the night before, and to provide ratings of current mood, physical and social activity, and pain/discomfort. A memory test was added to the final survey of the day to measure the participants' recall of their first survey responses to sleep quality, as well as total sleep time and mood. The absolute majority (91.1%) of the participants had one or more change in their sleep quality rating across the eight surveys. A similar percentage of change was found for mood rating (100%) but not total sleep time report (20.5%). Memory test in the final survey revealed that the within-person variations in sleep quality rating were not simply memory errors. Instead, positive physical activity post-sleep predicted increases in sleep quality rating. Therefore, judgement of sleep quality of the night before changes as the day unfolds, and post-sleep information can be used by people to infer their sleep quality.

A novel grid-based many-objective swarm intelligence approach for sentiment analysis in social media

Sentiment analysis is a field of study that analyses people's opinions, evaluations, feelings, ratings, sentiments, and attitudes towards entities such as products, organizations, individuals, services, topics, titles, events, and qualifications. Studies on sentiment analysis problems in social media have generally adopted intelligent classification methods. However, there are conflicting and contradictory objectives to simultaneously optimize, and active research continues into developing a more effective analysis model in terms of many metrics in order to achieve effective usage. This study considers sentiment analysis as a many-objective optimization problem for the first time. For this purpose, it first proposes a Grid-based Adaptive Many-Objective Grey Wolf Optimizer (GAM-GWO) based on the Grey Wolf Optimizer algorithm. Then, it adapts this proposed method for the sentiment analysis problem in order to obtain more successful results in terms of different metrics. The study tests the performance of the proposed approach with three different data sets. Experimental results show that GAM-GWO can achieve non-dominated and competitive results in all data set classes.

Species diversity enhances perceptions of urban coastlines at multiple scales

AbstractBiodiversity is increasingly understood as an important mediator of human aesthetic appreciation of scenes and landscapes, with implications for cultural services and well‐being. However, the generality of biodiversity effects across affective emotions, scales and habitats remains unclear.Urban coastal intertidal habitats on seawalls and other artificial structures are expanding worldwide. Despite growing calls to prioritise biodiversity in urban coastal planning and management, the potential co‐benefits determined by people's responses to biodiversity in these novel intertidal communities are unexplored.We investigated, using image‐based questionnaires, how several facets of biodiversity influence how people perceive urban coastal structures at both landscape and close‐up scales.Species richness strongly enhanced people's ratings of images for aesthetic appeal, interest and calming potential at both scales, but was more pronounced at the close‐up scale. Species evenness also increased ratings at the close‐up scale, while functional diversity (Rao'sQ) was associated with a decline in aesthetic appeal and interest at the close‐up scale, indicating that people can disfavour scenes dominated by species with contrasting traits.Analysis of free‐text assessments showed that people strongly and positively valued scenes that were perceived to be ‘diverse’, a response that was much more common when viewing scenes with high species richness. The underlying structure type also clearly affected appraisals, with more obviously engineered structures being perceived to be less natural and thus less desirable.Our results show that biodiversity's effects on aesthetic appreciation extend to multiple affective emotions and to unfamiliar urban intertidal habitats, suggesting that managing these environments for biodiversity may simultaneously support aesthetic, educational and well‐being benefits. Nevertheless, the sensitivity of responses to the facet of biodiversity and viewing scale in our results underlines the context dependency and complexity of people's perceptions of urban environments.Read the freePlain Language Summaryfor this article on the Journal blog.

The effects of individual moral inclinations on group moral conformity

• Individuals tend to conform to the group's moral judgments even without the presence of the group's members. • Individual's moral inclination affects their conformity tendency. • people with utilitarian inclinations conform to a greater extent and more frequently than people with deontological inclinations. Conformity has been shown to affect behaviors ranging from attitudes to moral decisions. The current research examined how individual moral inclination (i.e., utilitarian vs. deontological) affects moral conformity in online settings. To this end we designed a trolley-like moral dilemma paradigm in which participants rated moral decisions both individually and after being exposed to other people's ratings. We validated the task with 363 participants, demonstrating that in online settings individuals tend to conform to the group's moral judgments. Using an additional 346 participants, we showed that individual differences influence the conformity tendency, such that people with utilitarian inclinations conform to a greater extent and more frequently than people with deontological inclinations. We conclude that people with prior utilitarian inclinations are more disposed to moral conformity.

Equivalent sound level as a predictor for road traffic noise annoyance assessment

Noise annoyance can be rated either in situ or in laboratory conditions. Regarding the , many papers indicate that only 30% of the variance in people's answers can be explained by sound level values. This value increases when a single type of noise is presented to participants in lab. However, the relationship between time structure of the noise stimulus and annoyance rating is still ambiguous. In this study road traffic noise stimuli with different time structure at three different sound levels were created. Moreover, the psychoacoustical characteristics of them were also computed. The calculated data was compared with results of the listening test in which participants rated each stimulus on the numerical ICBEN scale. Analysis showed that loudness and sound level are the dominant factors, they correlate quite well (~70%) with people's ratings. However, the different time structure of the road traffic noise at the same sound level did not evoke significantly different noise annoyance ratings. Since there are no standards available for loudness measurement, the sound level for the same type of noise remains the simplest factor to reliably predict its impact on people regarding noise annoyance.

Аналіз стану ринку банківських послуг України в умовах пандемії

Introduction. In the current global crisis, the spread of globalization, unstable economy in the country, the emergence of threats related to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and the introduction of quarantine in the country, it is necessary to analyze their impact on banking institutions in Ukraine and accordingly to the national security of Ukraine. Purpose. The main purpose of the study is to analyze the current state of the banking services market of Ukraine during a pandemic and to develop practical recommendations for its further development. Results. The state of the Ukrainian market of banking services in the conditions of a pandemic is analyzed. The dynamics of operating banks in Ukraine is studied. The TOP-10 banking institutions according to the stability rating and the leaders of the people's rating of banking institutions are presented. It is noted that in modern conditions, the activities of banking institutions are extremely strongly influenced by external factors. The dynamics of gross domestic product volumes is considered. The dynamics of the discount rate of the National Bank of Ukraine is studied. The analysis of indicators of return on assets and capital of the banking system in Ukraine as a whole is carried out. Examples of adaptive solutions of banking institutions in Ukraine during a pandemic are given. It is noted that due to the introduction of quarantine in Ukraine, citizens began to actively and effectively use Internet technology to address their own issues and meet needs, thus accelerating the transition to the digital age. Conclusions. We are convinced that the introduction of adaptive measures of banking institutions in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic for other banks will help to minimize the negative consequences and possible risks associated with such exposure. Thanks to timely decisions on the functioning of banking institutions, re-planning, changing approaches to customer service, banking institutions were able to adapt to the conditions caused by the pandemic, and reduce possible risks, losses and threats to their activities and generally positively affect the economy.

Clarifying Self-Report Measures of Social Anxiety and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder to Improve Reporting for Autistic Adults.

Phenotypic similarities exist between autism-related experiences and anxiety (especially social anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder [OCD]), making it difficult for autistic people to self-report their experiences using existing measures developed for nonautistic adults. We examined whether clarifications aiming to tease out autism-related experiences from social anxiety or OCD in self-report questionnaires would influence autistic and nonautistic participants' ratings. Two autistic consultants and two experienced clinicians were consulted to develop item clarifications aiming to disentangle autistic from anxiety experiences for two questionnaires: the Social Anxiety Questionnaire (SAQ) and the Padua Inventory (PI) for OCD. Autistic adults (n = 50) and nonautistic university students with higher (n = 81) and lower autistic traits (ATs; n = 104) completed the original questionnaire followed by the clarified questionnaire items online. For social anxiety, there were few significant differences between the original and clarified item and total SAQ scores. For OCD, participants reported significantly lower scores for the OCD-clarified PI items than for the original items and the autism-clarified items. Larger original-clarified PI mean item differences were noted in items describing repetitive behaviors, "obsessional" thoughts, and contamination fears. Similar patterns of differences were found in autistic and nonautistic participants with higher and lower ATs, but differences were often larger in the autistic group. The SAQ in its original form appears to be an appropriate measure for autistic people to self-report social anxiety. However, autistic people appeared to complete the original PI items to reflect, to some extent, their autism-related experiences, rather than the originally intended OCD symptoms. Thus, the original OCD self-report ratings were inflated using the PI. Professionals should therefore clarify the intended meanings of different items of the PI to ensure more accurate and relevant ratings of OCD symptoms in autistic people. Why was this study done?: Autistic people and people with higher autistic traits (ATs) often experience higher rates of anxiety. Anxiety measures developed for the general population may not be appropriate or accurate for measuring anxiety in autistic people. We investigated whether clarifying items in existing self-report questionnaires to tease out anxiety from autistic experiences would influence the way autistic adults self-report their social anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms, and if so in what ways. We also wanted to know whether providing these item clarifications would affect the ratings of nonautistic individuals with varying rates of ATs to the same extent.What did the researchers do?: We initially consulted two autistic adults and two clinicians with experience working with autistic adults and co-occurring mental health difficulties. We selected two measures: the Social Anxiety Questionnaire (SAQ) for social anxiety symptoms and the Padua Inventory for OCD symptoms. The consultants identified social anxiety and OCD items that could be interpreted or experienced differently by autistic people and proposed ways to clarify them to make their meaning clearer.Next, 50 autistic people and 185 nonautistic university students participated in our online study. The nonautistic participants were grouped into those with higher or lower ATs. Participants completed the original social anxiety and OCD questionnaires first, followed by the clarified versions of the two questionnaires.What were the results of the study?: For social anxiety, we only found small differences in ratings when participants used measures with or without clarifications. This was true in both autistic and nonautistic participants. For OCD symptoms, autistic people's OCD ratings were significantly lower for many items after we provided clarifications, especially for items describing repetitive behaviors, "obsessional" thoughts, and contamination fears. This finding suggests that in the original questionnaire, autistic people may have also been rating their autism-related experiences, not just the OCD experiences or symptoms the questionnaire was trying to measure. We found similar differences between the original and clarified item ratings in nonautistic participants with higher and lower ATs. However, the differences were more common and pronounced with the autistic participants.What do these findings add to what was already known?: These findings suggest that original self-report measures of anxiety may need to be clarified so that autistic adults can better capture and rate their anxiety, rather than their autism-related experiences.What are potential weaknesses in the study?: We used only two anxiety questionnaires, so these findings may or may not be applicable to other OCD or social anxiety questionnaires available. Also, the clarifications we provided may not be representative of all autistic people's experiences, and it is possible that there are other and better ways to clarify the items. We also conducted many item comparisons in this study, so there is a possibility that some findings were due to chance.How will these findings help autistic adults now or in the future?: Our findings can help improve clinical interviews and use of anxiety questionnaires by making them more accurate. They can also help clinicians appreciate the importance of asking clarifying questions to ensure they better capture autistic adults' anxiety experiences.

Enhancing Program Quality in a National Sample of After-school Settings: The Role of Youth-Staff Interactions and Staff/Organizational Functioning.

Using multilevel data from the national evaluation of Boys and Girls Clubs of America (BGCA), this study examined associations among programmatic structures, workplace and workforce characteristics, and relational practices of program staff as they relate to young people's ratings of their experience attending local clubs. The sample included 57,710 members and 5,231 staff members at 740 BGCA sites throughout the United States. Staff relational practices-including establishing caring relationships, setting high expectations, positive behavior management, encouraging youth input and agency, and cultural sensitivity-explained associations between staffing and organizational functioning and youths' perceptions of the quality of their clubs. Findings suggest a central role of staff relational practices in establishing conditions that youth experience positively, and that staffing and organizational processes, including community engagement and teamwork and efficiency can be viewed as foundations for establishing a culture of positive adult-youth interaction, which in turn can contribute to the promotion of positive youth development. Further, identification with the experiences of youth had a direct association with youths' perceptions of club quality. These results underscore the importance of staff workforce development initiatives as key to improving youth experiences in after-school programs.

The rise and fall of scary numbers: The effect of perceived trends on future estimates, severity ratings, and help‐allocations in a cancer context

AbstractStatistical information such as death risk estimates is frequently used for illustrating the magnitude of a problem. Such mortality statistics are however easier to evaluate if presented next to an earlier estimate, as the two data points together will illustrate an upward or downward change. How are people influenced by such changes? In seven experiments, participants read mortality statistics (e.g., number of yearly deaths or expert‐estimated death risks) made at two points of time about various cancer types. Each cancer type was manipulated to have either a downward trajectory (e.g., the estimated death risk was 37% in 2012, and was adjusted downward to 22% in 2014), an upward trajectory (e.g., 7% → 22%), or a flat trajectory (e.g., 22% → 22%). For each cancer type, participants estimated future mortality statistics and rated the perceived severity. They also allocated real money between projects aimed at preventing the different cancer types. Participants’ responses indicated that they thought that a trend made out of two data points would continue in the future. People also perceived cancer types with similar present mortality statistics as more severe and allocated more money to them when they had an upward trajectory compared to a flat or downward trajectory. Although there are boundary conditions, we conclude that people's severity ratings and helping behavior can be influenced by trend information even when such information is based on only two data points.

In the real world, people prefer their last whisky when tasting options in a long sequence.

When people in laboratory studies sample products in a sequence, they tend to prefer options presented first and last. To what extent do these primacy and recency effects carry over to real-world settings where numerous sources of information determine preferences? To investigate this question, we coded archival data from 136 actual whisky tastings each featuring seven whiskies. We analyzed people’s ratings of whiskies featured at different serial positions in the tastings. We found a recency effect: people gave their highest rating to whiskies in the last position, and voted the last whisky as their favorite more frequently. This recency effect persisted when we controlled for the counter explanation that whiskies with higher alcohol content tended to occupy later serial positions. The recency effect also persisted when we controlled for the age of the whiskies. Taken together, our findings suggest that the order of presentation matters in real-world settings, closely resembling what happens in laboratory settings with longer sequences of options.

Does the visual composition of a dish influence the perception of portion size and hedonic preference?

We report two experiments designed to assess how the plating (i.e., visual composition) of a dish influences people's hedonic preferences and their perception of portion size. In Experiment 1 (conducted online; N = 122), we examined whether varying the orientation of the food on the plate (either vertically stacked or horizontally arrayed) would affect people's ratings of liking (of the visual arrangement), willingness-to-pay for the dish, artistic value (how artistic the dish looks), and perceived portion size. Experiment 2 (N = 124) extended this research to a naturalistic dining context, demonstrating the influence of both plating arrangement (horizontal vs. vertical) and centrality (centred vs. offset plating) on the same ratings. In both experiments, the plate of food was rated as constituting a larger portion when the elements were arrayed-horizontally rather than stacked vertically. Additionally, the centrally-plated dessert was rated as a larger portion than the offset version of exactly the same dish. The food was also liked more and the participants/diners were willing to pay more for it when horizontally and/or centrally arranged. These results provide important guidelines for enhancing the visual arrangement of a dish, in order to increase enjoyment, and possibly also nudge consumers toward better food choices.

Exploring the determinants of confidence in the bat-and-ball problem

People often fail to solve deceptively simple mathematical problems, a tendency popularly demonstrated by the bat-and-ball problem. The most prominent explanation of this finding is that, to spare cognitive effort, people substitute the difficult task with an easier one, without being aware of the substitution. Despite this latter assumption, recent studies have found decreased levels of post-decision confidence ratings when people gave the answer of an easier calculation, suggesting that people are sensitive to their errors. In the current study, we investigated a mechanism that might be responsible for such a decrease in people's confidence ratings when they make errors: their attempts to make certain that their answer is correct (verification) and the perceived level of task difficulty (verifiability). We found that these two factors predicted people's confidence, suggesting that people's self-assessment of the perceived task difficulty and of their attempt to verify their response might determine their confidence. Implication for current models of post-decision confidence on reasoning problems is discussed.

To Err Is Robot: How Humans Assess and Act toward an Erroneous Social Robot

We conducted a user study for which we purposefully programmed faulty behavior into a robot's routine. It was our aim to explore if participants rate the faulty robot different from an error-free robot and which reactions people show in interaction with a faulty robot. The study was based on our previous research on robot errors where we detected typical error situations and the resulting social signals of our participants during social human-robot interaction. In contrast to our previous work, where we studied video material in which robot errors occurred unintentionally, in the herein reported user study, we purposefully elicited robot errors to further explore the human interaction partners' social signals following a robot error. Our participants interacted with a human-like NAO, and the robot either performed faulty or free from error. First, the robot asked the participants a set of predefined questions and then it asked them to complete a couple of LEGO building tasks. After the interaction, we asked the participants to rate the robot's anthropomorphism, likability, and perceived intelligence. We also interviewed the participants on their opinion about the interaction. Additionally, we video-coded the social signals participants showed during their interaction with the robot as well as the answers they provided the robot with. Our results show that participants liked the faulty robot significantly better than the robot that interacted flawlessly. We did not find significant differences in people's rating of the robot's anthropomorphism and perceived intelligence. The qualitative data confirmed the questionnaire results in showing that although the participants recognized the robot's mistakes, they did not necessarily reject the erroneous robot. The annotations of the video data further showed that gaze shifts (e.g., from and object to the robot or vice versa) and laughter are typical reactions to unexpected robot behavior. In contrast to existing research, we assess dimensions of user experience that have not been considered so far and we analyze the reactions users express when a robot makes a mistake. Our results show that decoding a human's social signals can help the robot understand that there is an error and subsequently react accordingly.

Social Perception of Public Water Supply Network and Groundwater Quality in an Urban Setting Facing Saltwater Intrusion and Water Shortages.

Perceptions developed by consumers regarding the quality of water reaching their household can affect the ultimate use of the water. This study identified key factors influencing consumers' perception of water quality in a highly urbanized coastal city, experiencing chronic water shortages, overexploitation of groundwater, and accelerated saltwater intrusion. Household surveys were administered to residents to capture views and perceptions of consumed water. Concomitantly, groundwater and tap water samples were collected and analyzed at each residence for comparison with perceptions. People's rating of groundwater quality was found to correlate to the measured water quality both in the dry and wet seasons. In contrast, perceptions regarding the water quality of the public water supply network did not show any correlation with the measured tap water quality indicators. Logistic regression models developed to predict perception based on salient variables indicated that age, apartment ownership, and levels of total dissolved solids play a significant role in shaping perceptions regarding groundwater quality. Perceptions concerning the water quality of the public water supply network appeared to be independent of the measured total dissolved solids levels at the tap but correlated to those measured in the wells. The study highlights misconceptions that can arise as a result of uncontrolled cross-connections of groundwater to the public supply network water and the development of misaligned perceptions based on prior consumption patterns, water shortages, and a rapidly salinizing groundwater aquifer.