Psychological Preferences Research Articles

Quest-religious orientation among church leaders in Australia: A function of psychological predisposition or openness to mystical experience?

Quest religious orientation among church leaders signifies a style of leadership committed to religious explorations more than to religious certainties. This study sets out to explore the extent to which quest religious orientation among religious leaders is a function of psychological predisposition (conceptualized in terms of psychological type theory) or a function of distinctive forms of religious experience (conceptualized in terms of Happold’s model of mysticism) among a sample of 1,265 church leaders who participated in the 2011 Australian National Church Life Survey. The data demonstrated that higher levels of mystical orientation were associated with psychological predisposition, involving extraversion, intuition, feeling and perceiving. After controlling for sex, age, education, denominational groups and psychological type, higher levels of mystical orientation were also associated with higher levels of quest religious orientation. Mystical orientation partly mediated the effect of intuition on question orientation, but psychological preferences (for intuition and for perceiving) and mystical orientation seemed independently to promote quest religious orientation. Thus, church leaders committed to religious explorations rather than to religious certainties seemed to have been shaped both by psychological predisposition and by distinctive forms of religious experience.

Time Series Decision-making of Cascade Hydropower Station Development Based on Prospect Theory

To make a reasonable decision on the development timing of cascade hydropower stations, the optimal dispatching model and prospect theory are synthetically applied to establish a development timing decision model based on psychological preference. First, according to the characteristics of hydropower benefit development, the influence of generation capacity and minimum output on development benefit is analyzed, and the mechanism of the decision maker’s psychological change is clarified. Second, the double-objective dispatching benefit preference function is proposed and the variable weight theory is introduced to modify the probability decision weight. Finally, the optimal genetic algorithm used to solve the dispatching scheme and calculate the pre-synthesis weights. Scene value is used to analyze the effect of preference of different reference points on decision-making. The case study indicated that the A scheme should be selected when considering the overall balance and economy of the system, the C scheme should be chosen when the decision maker prefers maximum power generation, and the B scheme should be chosen when the decision maker prefers the output. Compared to the traditional decision-making evaluation, the influence of the decision maker's preference on the development sequence is further verified, which provides a theoretical basis for the study of cascade hydropower development decision-making under different preferences.

Exploring the Marcan account of the Baptism of Jesus through psychological type lenses: An empirical study within a Black-led Black-majority Pentecostal church

ABSTRACTThis study explores the effect of psychological type preferences on the interpretation of scripture among members of a Black-led Black-majority Pentecostal church in a multi-cultural city in the Midlands of England. The passage of scripture studied, the Marcan account of the baptism of Jesus, is rich in Pentecostal imagery. The data demonstrate that, while particular themes and nuances of the Pentecostal tradition are clearly voiced in the interpretation, the way in which sensing types and intuitive types approached the interpretation of Mark 1: 4-9 are distinctively different. The sensing types paid clear attention to the details of the text, while the intuitive types gave greater emphasis to the ideas and connections sparked by the narrative. These findings extend the validity of the psychologically-informed reader perspective approach to biblical hermeneutics pioneered by the SIFT method into the field of Pentecostal hermeneutics.

Goodman e o projeto de uma definição construtiva de “indução válida”

In Fact, Fiction and Forecast, Nelson Goodman claims that the problem of justifying induction is not something over and above the problem of describing valid induction. Such claim seems to open up the possibility that the new riddle of induction could be addressed empirically. Discoveries about psychological preferences for projecting certain classes of objects could function as a criterion for determining which predicates are after all projectible. In this paper, I argue that Goodman’s claim must be construed within his project for constructional definitions, which is methodologically oriented by reflective equilibrium. The description of inductive practice is committed to the articulation of the extension of the class selected by the predicate ‘valid induction’. The mutual adjustment between theoretical considerations and inductive practice involved in the proposal of a definition of ‘valid induction’ must preserve that practice as much as possible, there is no way to get rid of entrenchment. Empirical discoveries about the psychological mechanism that underlies projections may help that adjustment but they cannot substitute the role played by the entrenchment of predicates.

Impact of regulatory focus on express packaging waste recycling behavior: moderating role of psychological empowerment perception.

To effectively solve environmental pollution and resource waste problems caused by the rapid growth of express packaging waste, government intervention is needed in the separation and recycling of household waste at the source. Considering the correlation between behavior and individual psychological preference and concerns, this study administered a questionnaire survey (N = 847) and used factor analysis, hierarchical regression, and sensitivity analysis to evaluate the responses and determine the influence of individual focus tendency and empowerment perception on waste recycling behavior. The results showed that individuals with a high prevention focus or a high promotion focus were more likely to have good waste recycling behaviors. Furthermore, the higher the psychological perception of waste recycling empowerment (reflected in the meaning, competence, choice, and impact), the more inclined an individual to participate in recycling and waste reduction activities. In terms of interaction effect, psychological empowerment perception and its dimensions can positively moderate the effect of promotion focus on waste recycling behaviors. In other words, psychological empowerment perception acts as an "amplifier," and its dimension of meaning was the most important moderating variable. The study results supported policy suggestions to promote individuals' active participation in waste source separation and recycling activities.

ASSESMENT OF THE CLOTHING COMFORT

The main objective of the study is to develop a method to assess the clothing comfort with taking into account physical parameters such as temperature and humidity. In order to gather information about the physical parameters of human body in the certain garment a universal device was developed. The device consists of following elements: a controller, a data logger, a power source, and seven sensors. The parameters under consideration were as follows: temperature and humidity of the space between the fabric of garment and the human body. The garment under study is a summer dress. The sensors were placed at the positions that are selected due to the location of the human body perspiration areas. Temperature and humidity were recorded to the data logger. The experimental assessment was conducted in three different states: static (sitting position), moderate physical activity (strolling) and high physical activity (running). The parameters were measured near the human skin and compared to the similar environmental parameters. As a result of the research authors aim to develop the indices to select the garment, which would be advisable to wear in some environmental conditions by certain person, who is described by his psychological preferences and certain body type.

Psychological origins of the Industrial Revolution: More work is needed!

I am grateful to have received so many stimulating commentaries from interested colleagues regarding the psychological origins of the Industrial Revolution and the role of evolutionary theory in understanding historical phenomena. Commentators criticized, extended, and explored the implications of the perspective I presented, and I wholeheartedly agree with many commentaries that more work is needed. In this response, I thus focus on what is needed to further test the psychological origins of the Industrial Revolution. Specifically, I argue, in agreement with many commentators, that we need: (1) better data about standards of living, psychological preferences, and innovation rates (sect. R1); (2) better models to understand the role of resources (and not just mortality) in driving cultural evolution and the multiple aspects of the behavioral constellation of affluence (sect. R2); and (3) better predictions and better statistical instruments to disentangle the possible mechanisms behind the rise of innovativeness (genetic selection, rational choice, and phenotypic plasticity) (sect. R3).

A Human-Computer Interface Design for Quantitative Measure of Regret Theory

Regret theory is a theory that describes human decision-making under risk. The key of obtaining a quantitative model of regret theory is to measure the preference in humans' mind when they choose among a set of options. Unlike physical quantities, measuring psychological preference is not procedure invariant, i.e. the readings alter when the methods change. In this work, we alleviate this influence by choosing the procedure compatible with the way that an individual makes a choice. We believe the resulting model is closer to the nature of human decision-making. The preference elicitation process is decomposed into a series of short surveys to reduce cognitive workload and increase response accuracy. To make the questions natural and familiar to the subjects, we follow the insight that humans generate, quantify and communicate preference in natural language. The fuzzy-set theory is hence utilized to model responses from subjects. Based on these ideas, a graphical human-computer interface (HCI) is designed to articulate the information as well as to efficiently collect human responses. The design also accounts for human heuristics and biases, e.g. range effect and anchoring effect, to enhance its reliability. The overall performance of the survey is satisfactory because the measured model shows prediction accuracy equivalent to the revisit-performance of the subjects.

Sexual conflict and the Trivers-Willard hypothesis: Females prefer daughters and males prefer sons

Because parental care is expected to depend on the fitness returns generated by each unit of investment, it should be sensitive to both offspring condition and parental ability to invest. The Trivers-Willard Hypothesis (TWH) predicts that parents who are in good condition will bias investment towards sons, while parents who are in poor condition will bias investment towards daughters because high-quality sons are expected to out-reproduce high quality daughters, while low-quality daughters are expected to out-reproduce low quality sons. We report results from an online experiment testing the Trivers-Willard effect by measuring implicit and explicit psychological preferences and behaviorally implied preferences for sons or daughters both as a function of their social and economic status and in the aftermath of a priming task designed to make participants feel wealthy or poor. We find only limited support for predictions derived from the TWH and instead find that women have strong preferences for girls and men have preferences for boys.

Behavioral ordered weighted averaging operator and the application in multiattribute decision making

This paper introduces a new type of behavioral ordered weighted averaging (BOWA) operator, to incorporate decision maker’s gains and losses behavior tendency into the information aggregation process. The main characteristic of this BOWA operator is that it considers behavioral weights and ordered weights in the same formulation. We further provide a calculation method of the behavioral weights, in which various psychological preferences of different attribute types of the decision maker can be expressed intuitively. In addition, we discuss some particular cases of BOWA operator and its main properties. Finally, a numerical example is used to illustrate the use of the proposed method.

Three-way group decisions based on prospect theory

The three-way decision method is a new developing uncertain decision theory. The method divides a set of decision alternatives into three regions, called the acceptance, rejection, and uncertainty regions constructed from a pair of thresholds. However, seldom researches about three-way decisions take psychological attitudes and preferences of the decision-makers into consideration. In this paper, we propose a novel three-way group decision method, which considers the psychological attitudes from the decision-maker. Firstly, we provide the concept of three-way group decisions. The three-way approximation is constructed by many decision-makers with respect to a single critical value. The objects are still divided into acceptance, rejection, and uncertainty regions, respectively. Then, for the proper region (uncertain region, in general), we propose a decision method, which considers the psychological preferences through fusing prospect theory into three-way group decision methods. The alternatives in the proper region are ranked in accordance with their weighted prospect values. Finally, the optimal choices are made. The decision steps are presented in detail, and the practicality of the proposed methods is illustrated through an example.

Leadership and motivation for public goods contributions

AbstractResults from a leader–follower public goods game are presented. An individual, when randomly selected to make a contribution knowing others will observe the selection, gives more than in the simultaneous‐move public goods game. Followers adopt a quasi‐matching strategy where they systematically donate less than the leader, but contribute more when the leader does and contribute less when the leader free rides. The net result is increased provision of a public good when contributions are sequential. The results highlight that psychological preferences, rather than solely social preferences, can explain behavior.

The missionary journey of Mark 6 and the experience of ministry in today’s world: An empirical study in biblical hermeneutics among Anglican clergy

This study explores the connection between dominant psychological type preferences and reader interpretations of biblical texts. Working in type-alike groups (dominant sensing, dominant intuition, dominant feeling and dominant thinking), a group of 40 Anglican clergy (20 curates and 20 training incumbents) were invited to employ their strongest function to engage conversation between Mark’s account of Jesus sending out the disciples (Mk 6: 6b–16) and the experience of ministry in today’s world. The data supported the hermeneutical theory proposed by the SIFT approach to biblical interpretation and liturgical preaching by demonstrating the four clear and distinctive voices of sensing, intuition, feeling and thinking.

An empirical study of personality and blood group type in Indian context

It has been established by Myers and Briggs that there exist 16 different types of personalities and every individual belongs to one such category. The personality types proposed by these behavioral scientists enlist the characteristics associated with each of them. It is also known that each individual has his own blood group type. This research was carried out to determine that whether there exists any relationship between blood group type of individuals and their personality type among people of diverse age groups and backgrounds. A sample of 133 people belonging to different age groups and backgrounds was selected using stratified random sampling technique and Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), an introspective self-report standard questionnaire designed to indicate psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions, was used to identify the personality type of the people under study. The relationship among the personality type and blood group level of individuals was studied using Pearson's chi-square formula. The results showed that there are no significant correlations between the blood and self-reported personality, in terms of personality aspects of blood types A, B and O.

Knowledge About The PCPNDTAct Amongst Uninitiated Medical Students And Their Personal Psychological Preferences Regarding Related Issues – A Cross Sectional Study From A Rural Medical College

Knowledge About The PCPNDTAct Amongst Uninitiated Medical Students And Their Personal Psychological Preferences Regarding Related Issues – A Cross Sectional Study From A Rural Medical College

Biblical Conservatism and Psychological Type

The Village Bible Scale, a measure of biblical conservatism, was completed by 3,243 Church of England readers of the Church Times in 2013 alongside a measure of psychological type. Overall, biblical conservatism was higher for men than women, for those under 60 than those over 60, for those with school-level than those with university-level qualifications, for laity than clergy, and higher among evangelicals and charismatics than among those in Anglo-catholic or broad-church traditions. For the sample as a whole, the perceiving process was the only dimension of psychological type to predict biblical conservatism, which was positively correlated with sensing and negatively correlated with intuition. Within church traditions, sensing scores predicted biblical conservatism in Anglo-catholic and broad-church traditions, but not for evangelicals. Thinking function scores were positively correlated with biblical conservatism among evangelicals, but negatively correlated among Anglo-catholics. The findings point to the possible roles of psychological preferences in influencing predispositions for retaining or changing theological convictions.

Pseudo-centroid clustering

Pseudo-centroid clustering replaces the traditional concept of a centroid expressed as a center of gravity with the notion of a pseudo-centroid (or a coordinate free centroid) which has the advantage of applying to clustering problems where points do not have numerical coordinates (or categorical coordinates that are translated into numerical form). Such problems, for which classical centroids do not exist, are particularly important in social sciences, marketing, psychology and economics, where distances are not computed from vector coordinates but rather are expressed in terms of characteristics such as affinity relationships, psychological preferences, advertising responses, polling data and market interactions, where distances, broadly conceived, measure the similarity (or dissimilarity) of characteristics, functions or structures. We formulate a K-PC algorithm analogous to a K-Means algorithm and focus on two key types of pseudo-centroids, MinMax-centroids and (weighted) MinSum-centroids, and describe how they, respectively, give rise to a K-MinMax algorithm and a K-MinSum algorithm which are analogous to a K-Means algorithm. The K-PC algorithms are able to take advantage of problem structure to identify special diversity-based and intensity-based starting methods to generate initial pseudo-centroids and associated clusters, accompanied by theorems for the intensity-based methods that establish their ability to obtain best clusters of a selected size from the points available at each stage of construction. We also introduce a regret-threshold PC algorithm that modifies the K-PC algorithm together with an associated diversification method and a new criterion for evaluating the quality of a collection of clusters.

Natural Beauty or Artificial Beauty? The effects of different garden styles on viewer physiological and psychological responses

This study purpose is investigated whether people prefer artificially pruned gardens or natural gardens. English and French-styled gardens were viewed as natural and geometric gardens, respectively. Each garden group contained 60 participants for a total of 120 participants. Each participant was asked to view garden photos, and measure their physiological (attention and relaxation) and psychological (state anxiety and preference) responses. The results showed that concerning physiology, both styled gardens significantly changed the participants’ attention; however, no significant changes in relaxation. In psychology, both styled gardens significantly reduced the participants’ stress. In preference, no significant differences for the two gardens.© 2016. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies, Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.Keywords: Natural gardens; geometric gardens; brainwave; attention recovery

A social recommender system by combining social network and sentiment similarity: A case study of healthcare

Social recommender systems aim to support user preferences and help users make better decisions in social media. The social network and the social context are two vital elements in social recommender systems. In this contribution, we propose a new framework for a social recommender system based on both network structure analysis and social context mining. Exponential random graph models (ERGMs) are able to capture and simulate the complex structure of a micro-blog network. We derive the prediction formula from ERGMs for recommending micro-blog users. Then, a primary recommendation list is created by analysing the micro-blog network structure. In the next step, we calculate the sentiment similarities of micro-blog users based on a sentiment feature set which is extracted from users’ tweets. Sentiment similarities are used to filter the primary recommendation list and find users who have similar attitudes on the same topic. The goal of those two steps is to make the social recommender system much more precise and to satisfy users’ psychological preferences. At the end, we use this new framework deal with big real-world data. The recommendation results of diabetes accounts of Weibo show that our method outperforms other social recommender systems.

Design preferences and experience of older people's choice in fashion in Hong Kong

ABSTRACTIn recent decades, the contemporary generations of older people have exhibited a strong requirement for improved fashion products. The design preferences of older people on fashion clothing change with their physical and sociopsychological characteristics. Studies on fashion aiming to understand the needs and preferences of older people in the fashion market in relation to gender characteristics in Hong Kong are limited. This study generated invaluable data for understanding older people, aged 60–80 years, in Hong Kong in terms of their psychological factors, design preferences, and fashion experience regarding gender differences. Thus, design practitioners can apply the findings to create modern fashion for older people to meet the ever-changing needs of the market.