Expression Of Preference Research Articles

Relation-propagation meta-learning on an explicit preference graph for cold-start recommendation

The cold-start problem has been of great concern in the recommendation domain. To address this problem, meta-learning frameworks have been widely adopted due to their fast adaptation to new tasks. However, existing meta-learning-based methods always use higher-order graph structures to obtain global user preferences but neglect to consider local preferences at different rating levels in a fine-grained manner. Since differences in user ratings on items truly reflect differences in users’ local preferences, we propose a relation-propagation meta-learning on explicit preference graph for cold-start recommendation (RPMLG-Rec) to improve the generalization performance of existing meta-learning-based methods. Specifically, we focus on capturing the relationships between local preferences. First, our RPMLG-Rec approach concatenates different local preferences to form the nodes of local user preference and further constructs an explicit preference graph. Second, the relationships between local preferences, including intraclass commonality and interclass uniqueness, are used to guide the propagation of relationships in the explicit preference graph with graph convolutional networks and produce more distinguishable local preference nodes. Third, the precise global user preference is obtained with an attention mechanism. Finally, prior knowledge is learned based on a set of training tasks and quickly adapted to make recommendations for new tasks, following the optimization-based meta-learning training strategy. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that the relationships between local user preference nodes have been explicitly considered in cold-start recommendation. In addition, we conducted extensive experiments on two real-world datasets, and the experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed framework.

What Motivates Social Security Claiming Age Intentions? Testing Behaviorally Informed Interventions Alongside Individual Differences

Choosing when to claim Social Security Administration (SSA) benefits is an important decision for older Americans’ financial health. While previous work has examined heterogeneity in claiming decisions, relatively little research has systematically tested the psychological factors that predict early or delayed SSA claiming or the effectiveness of theory-driven interventions meant to help with the claiming decision. A preregistered experiment and three replications examined the extent to which intended claiming age is a function of theory-driven interventions, individual difference measures, and relevant interactions between interventions and individual differences. The interventions that increased intended claiming age were those that suggest that delayed claiming may be the right choice (i.e., injunctive norm, information about the commonality of regret), those that highlight the financial benefits from delayed claiming (i.e., gains framing, focus on benefits to the future self), and those that guide preference construction through self-reflection (i.e., focus on right-tail longevity, reason generation). In addition, intertemporal discounting, subjective life expectancy, and perceived ownership of SSA benefits predicted intended claiming age. This research advances our understanding of which retirees will decide to claim earlier or later and offers practical insights for policy makers, financial planners, and consumer finance organizations.

New insights into the seepage behavior of heavy metal-contaminated loess and its underlying geochemical mechanism

Heavy metal contamination in soils can pose severe challenges to the safety of geotechnical engineering projects. Loess, which is widely distributed in Northwest China, is a preferred engineering construction material for anti-fouling barriers. Therefore, research on the influence of heavy metal ions on its seepage performance is urgently required. To obtain new insights into the seepage behavior of heavy metal-contaminated loess and its underlying geochemical mechanism, laboratory investigations were performed on the saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ksat), leaching, and microstructural characteristics of loess contaminated with Cu2+ and Zn2+. The results indicate that the hydrolysis of Zn2+ creates an acidic environment, which promotes the dissolution of carbonate minerals in loess, enhances the leaching capacity, and leads to the quantitative transformation of small pores (2–8 μm) to mesopores (8–32 μm). Meanwhile, the alternating adsorption of Zn2+ and its diffuse double-layer effect compresses the diffusion layer, increasing the abundance of free water channels. Thus, the Ksat of Zn-contaminated loess increases by 81.2% during the seepage period. As for Cu-contaminated loess, its seepage behavior is the opposite of that of Zn-contaminated loess, with a Ksat decrease of nearly 50%. The primary factor controlling this phenomenon is the formation and enrichment of Cu2O in the lower part of the soil, which inhibits the enlargement of pores and reduces the effective connectivity of pores. The findings of this work provide insight into the seepage behavior of saturated loess under erosion by heavy metals and the underlying geochemical mechanism thereof.

Priming the public to construct preferences for sustainable design: A discrete choice model for green infrastructure

Planners and engineers increasingly seek input from the public about improving infrastructure systems in their communities. Aiding how the public constructs preferences may help increase their willingness to support less traditional environmental ideas like green infrastructure (e.g., rain gardens and bioswales). Decision-makers with little prior knowledge or experience tend to construct preferences as they evaluate options. The research presented in this paper explored how interventions to this preference construction process for the public can help encourage them to adopt more green infrastructure design. A national survey with 946 people in the United States was conducted to measure their perceived risks and benefits of a more conventional stormwater option with pipes and pumps and another using natural systems to hold and move stormwater. Half of the participants were randomly primed to think about the benefits of sustainable environmental design before making any judgments or decisions about the options. The prompt was developed using questions from the Envision Rating System, a tool to evaluate engineering design currently used on over 120 infrastructure projects across North America. Participants believed the green infrastructure option presented more risks but offered more benefits. Participants primed to think about the benefits of sustainable design evaluated the green infrastructure option as significantly more beneficial. The primed group was also more likely to recommend the green infrastructure option. A discrete choice model found that age, education, and perceived benefits contributed to the public's preference for green infrastructure. The cost of constructing the infrastructure and perceived risks were negative factors. The results highlight that considering the benefits of sustainable design before making design decisions about infrastructure changed how the public constructed preferences and their willingness to recommend green infrastructure.

A Design Proposal for an Eco-Tunnel for Anurans Based on Behavioral Experiments and Species Characteristics

Infrastructure development has caused extensive habitat fragmentation, and increased traffic raises the number of wildlife roadkills. Wildlife crossing structures (WCSs) can prevent roadkills and protect wildlife. Amphibians commonly comprise the highest proportion of roadkills. Nevertheless, adequate WCSs suitable for amphibian crossing and migration are lacking. This study aimed to suggest a design proposal for a WCS for amphibians based on a behavioral experiment. First, we evaluated the home range, protection value, and roadkill trends of Bufo gargarizans, Bombina orientalis, and Rana uenoi. We selected six factors that can affect anuran migration preferences: noise level, tunnel width, light-shielding level, construction material, tunnel substrate, and tunnel shape. Each species selected a migration path, and mobility was confirmed in different structures. The animals’ preferences were evaluated by counting the number of migrating individuals in each migration experiment. Overall, the three species showed a preference for 60 dB of noise and a tunnel width of D700 (mm). Migration frequencies were higher at 35% light-shielding level and when the substrate was soil. PVC was the preferred construction material for tunnels, and mobility was the highest in circular tunnels. We proposed a design for WCSs that incorporated the preferences of these three target species.

Construction of nest mound and preference for it during relocation in an Indian ant Diacamma indicum

Abstract Ants living in subterranean nests face the challenge of nest flooding and require to combat this recurring issue. The tropical Ponerine ant species, Diacamma indicum, living in simple nests with a single chamber, was used in the current study to examine mound building in the lab. Upon stimulating rain ( colonies) they built significantly larger nest mounds as compared to controls. Nest mounds proved to be important to colonies that had experienced rain while relocating. Relocating colonies showed significantly higher preference for new nests with mounds (12/13) when choosing between two equidistant, similar quality potential new nests in contrast to control relocations. To the best of our knowledge this study for the first-time documents mound building behaviour in any Ponerine species in laboratory conditions and introduces nest mounds as another architectural feature of interest to relocating colonies.

Analysis of factors influencing surface settlement during shield construction of a double-line tunnel in a mudstone area

Urban rail transit is widely used in major cities worldwide due to its high efficiency, safety, and environmental friendliness. Shield construction has a fast excavation speed and a negligible impact on ground transportation; thus, it is the preferred construction method for urban rail transit tunnels. Mudstone is a widely distributed soft rock characterized by large deformation, low strength, and significant rheological differences in different areas. Mudstone causes problems in the design and construction of subways. This paper uses finite element analysis to establish a three-dimensional numerical model of a double-line tunnel in a weathered mudstone area and analyze the influence of the stratum, design, and construction parameters on surface settlement and deformation during asynchronous and simultaneous shield construction. The research results show that the lateral surface settlement curve obtained from the simulation is consistent with the measured data, demonstrating the reliability and feasibility of the three-dimensional numerical model. The surface settlement is affected by the deformation modulus, cohesion, and the angle of internal friction, and the deformation modulus has the most significant impact. The surface settlement decreases as the buried depth of the tunnel or the distance between the two center lines of the two tunnels increases. As the buried depth of the double-lane tunnel decreases or the distance between the two center lines of the two tunnels increases to a certain value, the lateral surface settlement curve exhibits two peaks. The surface settlement shows a decreasing trend with an increase in the thrust of the shield machine and an improvement in the grouting quality. However, excess grouting pressure causes surface uplift and a subsequent increase in surface subsidence.

The construction of peer punishment preference: how central power shapes prosocial and antisocial punishment behaviors

Peer punishment is a crucial determinant in the formation of cooperation between individuals. Previous studies show that prosocial and antisocial punishment behaviors coexist in societies as the two sides of peer punishment. Surprisingly, people show saliently different antisocial punishment behaviors across regions, while prosocial punishment behaviors remain consistent. This raises a crucial question: why do prosocial and antisocial punishments exhibit completely different characteristics across regions? We answer this question by presenting a two-stage evolutionary model of people’s peer punishment preference. We show that different central powers lead to discrepancies between people’s antisocial and prosocial punishment behaviors. Moreover, we find that central power determines evolutionary outcomes by influencing the proportion between three basic individual types of a population. Our model provides a possible explanation for cross-regional variations in antisocial punishment behavior and a new interpretation of social norms. More generally, it sheds light on a potential theory to unify the evolution of people’s coexisting prosocial and antisocial interactions.

Expertise-Structure and Risk-Appetite-Integrated Two-Tiered Collective Opinion Generation Framework for Large-Scale Group Decision Making

The generation of collective preference assessments occupies a critical position in deriving accurate and reliable alternative rankings in the context of large-scale group decision making (LSGDM). In general, the collective opinion generation framework entails the following three phases, which are clustering analysis, weighting clusters, and preference aggregation. However, the clustering of experts has been frequently based on preference similarities among them without taking into account individual opinions in which knowledge elicitation plays a crucial role. The traditional collective opinion generation framework suffering from this drawback may result in unreliable decision outcomes. To this end, we propose an expertise-structure and risk-appetite-integrated two-tiered collective opinion generation framework to address this concern. The first tier of the two-tiered collective opinion generation framework divides the entire expert group into several subgroups based on individual expertise structures, which are extracted from hesitant fuzzy linguistic term set (HFLTS)-based preference assessments, and it then weighs the resulting clusters in accordance with the overall expertise levels. The second-tier clusters the first-tier subgroups conditioned on the indicator of individual assessment similarities and gathers the generated subgroup preference constructs in the use of the risk appetite-oriented power average operator. In addition, the notion of proportional HFLTSs was introduced to manifest collective evaluations in second-tier subgroups to eliminate information loss and distortion. The effectiveness and flexibility of the proposed collective opinion generation algorithm are eventually illustrated by a case study and a comparison analysis.

Fisting intimacy: The sexual scripting of intimacy in gay men’s anal fisting

ABSTRACT Anal fisting has often been caricatured as an aggressive, if not violent, mode of sexual and erotic practice between gay men, circumscribed by discourses of risk, danger, and even death. In this study, I explore how a sample of 28 South African gay men who regularly incorporate anal fisting into their preferred sexual practices construct and understand the experience of intimacy in the practices and relations of their fist-fucking. Through sexual scripting theory and a Thematic Analysis of unstructured individual interviews conducted with participants, the results highlight a scripting of intimacy with/in anal fisting that is grounded on three recurrent and interrelated themes: trust and vulnerability; connection and communication; as well as pleasure and skill. The results of this study draw attention to the ways in which anal fisting is not only experienced as a deeply intimate form of pleasure and lovemaking for its participants, but, moreover, how the construction and understanding of intimacy in fist-fucking is framed as a queer/er mode of anal sex/uality and erotics that defines and constitutes itself in contradistinction to both hetero- and homo-normative scripts.

When alternative hypotheses shape your beliefs: Context effects in probability judgments

When people are asked to estimate the probability of an event occurring, they sometimes make different subjective probability judgments for different descriptions of the same event. This implies the evidence or support recruited to make these judgments is based on the descriptions of the events (hypotheses) instead of the events themselves, as captured by Tversky and Koehler’s (1994) support theory. Support theory, however, assumes each hypothesis elicits a fixed level of support (support invariance). Here, across three studies, we tested this support invariance assumption by asking participants to estimate the probability that an event would occur given a set of relevant statistics. We show that the support recruited about a target hypothesis can depend on the other hypotheses under consideration. Results reveal that for a pair of competing hypotheses, one hypothesis (the target hypothesis) appears more competitive relative to the other when a dud–a hypothesis dominated by the target hypothesis–is present. We also find that the target hypothesis can appear less competitive relative to the other when a resembler–a hypothesis that is similar to the target hypothesis–is present. These context effects invalidate the support invariance assumption in support theory and suggest that a similar process that drives preference construction may also underlie belief construction.

Linguistic acculturation preferences of Catalan local students toward their peers of Moroccan descent. The determining factors of linguistic assimilationism

ABSTRACT As a response to the migratory movements initiated at the end of the past century in Catalonia (Spain), its educational system aims to promote interculturality and multilingualism as a way to achieve social cohesion. For this purpose, it is important to improve our understanding of the linguistic acculturation preferences endorsed by local students toward students of immigrant origin – a scarcely studied factor. One of the main factors for achieving these objectives, that has been scarcely studied, is the linguistic acculturation preferences endorsed by local students toward students of immigrant origin. The present study applied 349 questionnaires to analyze the determining factors and linguistic acculturation preferences of local high-school students regarding the linguistic acculturation profiles of their peers of Moroccan descent in Lleida (Catalonia, Spain). The main results showed that, in order of frequency, assimilation to Catalan, assimilation to Spanish-Catalan and multilingualism were the three linguistic preferences endorsed by local students. The multinomial logistic regression model found the following determining factors: attitudes toward minority languages, attitudes toward multilingualism, Spanish self-identification, Spanish use with teachers and Catalan use with classmates. These results highlight the importance and need to further promote the use and embracement of minority languages in school settings as a possible way to increase the construction of multilingual preferences, and deconstruct prejudices and stereotypes to ultimately achieve social cohesion.

Deliberation does not make the attraction effect disappear: The role of induced cognitive reflection

The human brain is known to process information using fast and intuitive processing (System I) and deliberative or reflective processing (System II). Both these systems work simultaneously and complementarily to aid decision-making and preference construction. The attraction effect is a choice anomaly that occurs when consumer preference between two alternatives polarizes toward one of the alternatives upon the inclusion of a third (asymmetrically dominated) option. Past studies have shown that suppression of System II magnifies the attraction effect and, thereby, concluded that the attraction effect is a result of System I. In our experimental studies, contrary to these past studies, we find a robust attraction effect when the reflective processing (System II) is induced using a priming procedure. We rule out several possible alternative explanations of our findings and discuss potential research implications.

Evaluation of critical risk factors in the implementation of modular construction.

Modular construction is considered as a preferred construction method over conventional construction due to a number of benefits including reduction in project completion time, improved environmental performance, better quality, enhanced workers’ safety and flexibility. However, successful implementation of modular construction is hindered by various risk factors and uncertainties. Therefore, it is imperative to perform a comprehensive risk assessment of critical risk factors that pose a negative impact on the implementation of modular construction. Moreover, there is also a relatively less rate of modular construction adoption in developing countries, highlighting the need to focus more on underdeveloped regions. This study aims to propose a risk assessment framework for identification, evaluation and prioritization of critical risk factors affecting the implementation of modular construction in Pakistan. 20 risk factors were identified from previous literature which were then evaluated to shortlist the most significant risks using Fuzzy Delphi. The most significant risk factors were then prioritized using a novel Full-Consistency Method (FUCOM). The results specified ‘Inadequate skills and experience in modular construction’, ‘Inadequate capacity of modular manufacturers’ and ‘Inability to make changes in design during the construction stage’ as top three critical risks in the implementation of modular construction. This is the first study to propose a risk assessment framework for modular construction in Pakistan. The results of the study are useful to provide insights to construction industry practitioners in highlighting and eliminating risks involved in modular construction planning and execution.

User Dynamic Preference Construction Method Based on Behavior Sequence

People’s needs are constantly changing, and the performance of traditional recommendation algorithms is no longer enough to meet the demand. Considering that users’ preferences change with time, the users’ behavior sequence hides the evolution and change law of users’ preferences, so mining the dependence of the users’ behavior sequence is extremely important to predict users’ dynamic preferences. From the perspective of constructing users’ dynamic preferences, this paper proposes a users’ dynamic preference model based on users’ behavior sequences. Firstly, the user’s interest model is divided into short-term and long-term interest models. The short-term interest reflects the user’s current preference, and the long-term interest refers to the user’s interest from all his historical behaviors, representing the user’s consistent and stable preference. Users’ dynamic preference is obtained by integrating short-term interest and long-term interest, which solves the problem that the user’s preference cannot reflect the change in the user’s interest in real-time. We use the public Amazon review dataset to test the model we propose in the paper. Our model achieves the best performance, with a maximum performance improvement of 15.21% compared with the basic model (BPR, NCF) and 2.04% compared with the sequence model (GRU4REC, Caser, etc.), which proves that the user’s dynamic preference model can effectively predict the user’s dynamic preference. Users’ dynamic preferences are helpful in predicting users’ real-time preferences, especially in the field of recommendation.

Factors influencing faculty’s online teaching decisions

The purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate the contributing factors that influence online instructors’ decisions on course design and delivery strategies in higher education institutions. We conducted a principal component analysis with 81 online instructors across the United States of America to validate a conceptual framework that could potentially help instructional design departments to prepare faculty for teaching online. The finalized online teaching preference construct consists of three dimensions: general teaching beliefs, knowledge of online pedagogy, and institutional support. The online instructors’ teaching fields, preferred instructional modality, and online teaching experiences influenced their preferences in these three dimensions. In addition, the instructors with only remote teaching experience in response to the COVID-19 crisis did not like teaching online. The implications of our findings are discussed in this paper.

Vaccine Hesitancy and Betrayal Aversion.

The determinants of vaccine hesitancy remain complex and context specific. Betrayal aversion occurs when an individual is hesitant to risk being betrayed in an environment involving trust. In this pre-registered vignette experiment, we show that betrayal aversion is not captured by current vaccine hesitancy measures despite representing a significant source of unwillingness to be vaccinated. Our survey instrument was administered to 888 United States residents via Amazon Mechanical Turk in March 2021. We find that over a third of participants have betrayal averse preferences, resulting in an 8–26% decline in vaccine acceptance, depending on the betrayal source. Interestingly, attributing betrayal risk to scientists or government results in the greatest declines in vaccine acceptance. We explore an exogenous message intervention and show that an otherwise effective message acts narrowly and fails to reduce betrayal aversion. Our results demonstrate the importance of betrayal aversion as a preference construct in the decision to vaccinate.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10439-022-02975-4.

Acculturation preferences, conflict and cultural enrichment on secondary education in Western Catalonia

PurposeLocated in Western Catalonia (Spain), the article’s aim is to analyse the acculturation preferences of majority group high-school students towards their peers of Moroccan and Romanian descent. Furthermore, it aims to delve deeper into the influence on the perception of conflict with these groups mediated by cultural enrichment.Design/methodology/approachThe data are the result of conducting a questionnaire among 349 autochthonous students enrolled in Compulsory Secondary Education in Catalonia. The data have been analyzed using cluster analysis, ANOVA and mediation analysis.FindingsThe findings show that a small number of high-school students construct integration acculturation preferences towards Moroccans and Romanians, while the majority of the preferences are of assimilation or segregation. In addition, the perceived conflict is higher for Moroccans than Romanians, and the cultural enrichment is higher for Romanians than for Moroccans. Finally, there is a low mediating effect of cultural enrichment on the relationship between acculturation preferences and degree of conflict.Originality/valueThe relevance and originality of this article stems from the application of acculturation theory on the construction of acculturation preferences in the educational domain. Additionally, it is a context characterized by an exceptional cultural and linguistic diversity. Furthermore, acculturation preferences, perceived degree of conflict and perceived cultural enrichment are analyzed comparatively regarding descendants of Moroccans and Romanians. This approach has scarcely been used at an international level, and practically never at the Spanish and Catalan level.

Numerical Study on the Effect of Different Steel Reinforcement Arrangement in Reinforced Concrete Wall Subjected to Blast Load

Reinforced concrete (RC) is the most preferred construction material for the civilian structural construction such as building and bridge because it is economical to build and possesses high strength. There have been several verified numerical studies on RC, but most have all been limited to the scope of a small rectangular or small square RC panel clamped at the edges. As a result, there is still a need for a complete RC structure for example RC wall with its foundation to represent as a single stand structure. With available validated complete RC structure experimentally and numerical data on blast pressure profile, detail numerical study is possible to investigate in depth. In AUTODYN commercial software, arbitrary Lagrange Euler (ALE) solvers are used to analyse the interaction between air and RC wall structure. The RC walls were built with the same moment resistance but a different hooked direction on vertical flexural steel reinforcement into the foundation. The numerical result indicated that in the hooked-in direction, the average strain at the back side of the wall peaked at 1.0625×10-3 at first 5 msec after impact, which is half of what it was in the hooked- out direction. Furthermore, the numerical simulation coincided with the experimental findings, where the proper steel arrangement for the RC wall subjected to blast was hooked-in.

МОЯ КІБЕР-ОСОБИСТІСТЬ: ПРЕЗЕНТАЦІЯ ІДЕНТИЧНОСТІ В МЕРЕЖІ TIK TOK

TikTok is a social network that has provided its users with a unique combination of communicative tools and, as a result, has laid the foundation for a new communication context for self-expression and identity presentation. The article examines how TikTokers' discourse, with the help of the app's technology, uses language means and other semiotic systems to present their self, to construct their online identities and to attract like-minded audiences. The study is based on 45 TikTok videos uploaded by different bloggers who were selected with the help of continuous sampling. The videos are analyzed by applying Critical Discourse Analysis and, in particular, Multimodal Discourse Analysis as frameworks for critical examination of verbal and nonverbal (images, soundtracks, clothes, etc.) means as well as contextual and intertextual structures of the TikTokers' texts aimed at online self-expression and identify-presentation. The research reveals that the TikTokers avail themselves with syntactic patterns typical of self-presentation in order to assert their preferred selves and construct their identities by purposefully breaking away from conventional master identities, e.g., they claim either to be sex-neutral, or to be able to combine stereotypically incompatible identities, or to deny having any identity at all. To reflect on their selves and convey their message to the audience, the TikTokers use texts that feature intertextuality and multimodality. The merge of multimodal semiotic means helps the bloggers to create a complex of techno-semio-linguistic materiality typical of social media. The bloggers succeed in combining these diverse means so as to develop the intended meaning, to mediate their identities to their audience and, finally, to create their own communities rallied around the constructed identities.