Rational Considerations Research Articles

Fertility and the Stability of Cohabiting Unions

An extensive body of research demonstrates that children increase the stability of marriage. However, it is not clear whether the theories explaining greater marital stability among parents can be applied to the increasing number of cohabiting couples who have children, as cohabitation plays more varied roles in the family system than marriage. Furthermore, theories about children and marital stability often assume that births are intended, which is less likely to be the case for cohabiting than for marital births. Using data from the 2002 cycle of the National Survey of Family Growth, we find that intended and disagreed-upon pregnancies (but not unintended pregnancies) reduce the risk of dissolution relative to women who have no pregnancy or birth. Relative to non-fertile couples, all pregnancies increase the risk of marriage over staying cohabiting, but couples with a birth show little difference in the odds of stability or transitions once the child is born. However, relative to an intended birth, having an unintended or disagreed-upon birth increases the risk of dissolution. These findings suggest that normative pressures influence the union behaviors of cohabitors during pregnancy, while selection processes and rational choice considerations play a greater role after a birth.

When the Environmental Displaces the Social: The Project for a New Airport in Mexico City During the Fox Administration

This article analyzes the project for a new international airport in Mexico City (NIAMC), promoted in 2001 and cancelled 1 year later after opposing groups mobilized against the infrastructure initiative. The work focuses on a policy perspective and offers three explanations that are not mutually exclusive. First, a compartmentalized division of bureaucratic tasks became a significant obstacle to designing an implementation strategy that included environmental and sociopolitical concerns. Second, there was a conflict between environmental considerations and other policy values, which contributed to the displacing of critical aspects of the project. Third, the concept of the environment that was taken into account as part of the project design, and appraisal was limited to rational administrative considerations that were insufficient to anticipate the full range of social and political implications. Based on these explanations, the article suggests that policy makers minimized the social implications of the project and underestimated the potential for mobilization that contentious groups could gather to oppose the NIAMC. The work is based on semistructured interviews with key actors. Further insight comes from the author's participation as a middle‐rank public servant in Mexico's Ministry of the Environment in 2001 and 2002.

Annalisa Coliva on Wittgenstein and Epistemic Relativism

Annalisa Coliva on Wittgenstein and Epistemic Relativism

Causes and contexts of tax morale: Rational considerations, community orientations, and communist rule

In political theory, the subject of tax morale is closely linked to issues of citizenship and civic duties. Research on tax morale, however, is still rather underdeveloped in political science. In this article, we systematically compare a rational considerations approach with an approach focusing on the influence of community orientations on an individual’s tax morale. We expect that contexts varying with the existence and duration of communist rule have caused systematic differences in terms of the motivation for tax morale. Multilevel analyses based on data taken from the fourth wave of the World Values/European Values Survey (1999/2000) confirm our expectations that socialization under communist rule strengthens the relevance of community orientations in explaining an individual’s tax morale and reduces the impact of rational considerations.

More pixels, less vision: Unraveling the politics of HDTV in the Netherlands

tThis article studies the policy of the Dutch government regarding the introduction of HDTV in the Netherlands. Utilizing a literature study and interviews with government officials, it shows that government choices are not always in line with the official neo-liberal policy, but are partly based on non-ideological,pragmatic or organizational factors. The findings of this case study challenge the presumption that policy choices made by government officials are based on rational and strategic considerations.

A phenomenological challenge to ‘enlightened secularism’

AbstractThis article challenges Philip Kitcher's recent proposals for an ‘enlightened secularism’. I use William James's theory of the emotions and his related discussion of ‘temperaments’ to argue that religious and naturalistic commitments are grounded in tacit, inarticulate ways that one finds oneself in a world. This indicates that, in many cases, religiosity and naturalism are grounded not in rational and evidential considerations, but in a tacit and implicit sense of reality which is disclosed through phenomenological enquiry. Once the foundational role of these temperaments is appreciated, it emerges that enlightened secularism relies upon a facile conception of the nature of religious belief – one that lessens its chances for success. The article ends with some positive proposals for incorporating phenomenological insights into debates about science, religion, and secularism.

Systems Approach to Civil Engineering Decisions

While contemporary civil engineering projects are increasingly complex, the cognitive abilities of the decision maker remain limited. There is a conflict between the complexity that is required to describe a scenario with all its relevant properties and the limited number of ideas that can be included in rational considerations and decisions. A resolution requires the decision maker to construct a limited model that includes the most significant features. In this paper, a systems approach provides a general decisionmaking scheme that makes involvement in broadly based decisions accessible. This scheme is valid at all scales and in all classes of problems. This paper establishes a practical method for generating systems that contain all features relevant to a professional decision. The criterion of decision invariance is offered as a guide for establishing the size of the system model considered by the decision maker. It is argued that surprises cannot be avoided and must form an integral part of the decision.

Religious Aspects of Psychedelic Drugs

ONE ASPECT of the very controversial hallucinogenic or drugs is whether they generate religious experience, and if so, whether this experience is genuinely religious. This Article examines the available evidence that psychedelic drugs do induce religious experience in hopes that its conclusions might promote rational consideration of legal issues surrounding drugs. Before considering the religious potential of psychedelic drugs, however, one must supply a working definition of religion. Further, to identify the characteristics of a profoundly religious experience we shall study several historical figures to indicate how a person undergoing such an experience may be expected to feel and act.

Editorial Statement: Judgment and Decision Making

Free AccessAboutSectionsView PDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail Go to SectionFree Access HomeManagement ScienceVol. 58, No. 4 Editorial Statement: Judgment and Decision MakingYuval RottenstreichYuval RottenstreichPublished Online:1 Apr 2012https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.1120.1554"Editorial Statement: Judgment and Decision Making." Management Science, 58(4), p. iv Back to Top Next FiguresReferencesRelatedInformation Volume 58, Issue 4April 2012Pages iv-842 Article Information Metrics Downloaded 52 times in the past 12 months Information Published Online:April 01, 2012 Copyright © 2012, INFORMSCite asYuval Rottenstreich, (2012) Editorial Statement: Judgment and Decision Making. Management Science 58(4):iv-iv. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.1120.1554 PDF download

Screening for disease in the newborn: the evidence base for blood-spot screening

This paper reviews the evidence of benefit resulting from newborn screening in Australia as well as for some of those disorders not yet included in the Australian panels, and discusses briefly disorders under active consideration for inclusion in the screening panels.There is solid evidence of benefit from newborn screening for phenylketonuria, congenital hypothyroidism, cystic fibrosis, and overall for the disorders included in tandem mass spectrometry screening. There is also some evidence of benefit for several disorders not screened for in Australia, including congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Harms resulting from screening include anxiety related to false positive results; adverse effects of unwarranted treatment for mild variants; unwanted genetic information; and the costs (opportunity costs) of screening. For well-run programs these harms are relatively small.Screening could become more effective with the development of good systems for rational consideration of disorders to be included, with the extended use of second tier testing to reduce the false positive rate, and with research on the most effective way to deal with mild variants. The most important aspect of increasing effectiveness is the full integration of the screening program, diagnostic laboratories, and the clinical service. This is already in place in Australasia.

Establishing a Threshold for Surgery in Recurrent Acute Rhinosinusitis

Treatment of recurrent acute rhinosinusitis (RARS) has 2 effective modalities: medical therapy with exacerbations or surgery to reduce the frequency and severity of infections. However, it is unclear when one therapy should be recommended over the other. This study seeks to identify a threshold number of infections where the morbidity of surgery is offset by the morbidity of RARS. Health economic breakeven threshold analysis. Clinical otolaryngology practice. None. A model of productivity was constructed to simulate the first 1 to 3 years after surgery using literature reported rates of medical and surgical response rates, quality of life, and productivity. Based on lost productivity, the lost time for the postoperative period balances out when patients suffer from 4 episodes per year (range, 1.8-12.8). Because of possible confusion with upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs), the authors have adopted an approach similar to that adopted by the Rhinosinusitis Task Force (RTF). Given the average number of URTIs suffered by adults annually is 1.4 to 2.3, they suggest adding 2 to the threshold number of episodes similar to the RTF guideline for RARS. From a productivity perspective, surgical intervention may be a viable consideration if patients have suffered from 6 episodes per year. However, the effects of surgery are expected to last longer than the 19 months observed in the literature, implying that the breakeven threshold is likely lower than projected. Discussion with the patient must include a rational consideration of the burden of disease, overall patient quality of life, and risks of surgery.

Informed desire and the ambitions of libertarian paternalism

Sunstein and Thaler’s ‘libertarian paternalism’ (LP) is inspired by the findings of behavioural economics. Its ambitious policy agenda promotes interference which does not block free choice when agents fall short of fully informed and rational choice. Their implicit version of the informed desire view of welfare either provides no, or potentially erroneous, guidance to planners. LP thus faces significant implementation problems. To address these LP might adopt a weaker version of the information requirement on desires or an alternative view of welfare. Nonetheless, informational and bounded rationality considerations suggest that LP should be rethought and its level of ambition reduced.

Justifying Morality, Part II: Beyond Justification as Clarification

Bernard Gert offers a justification of morality that is successful on its own terms but is, as he acknowledges, limited in what it may be used to accomplish. However, the deliberative structure he has set up in advancing the justification is fruitful. With some modifications, it can be used to generate a significantly more powerful justification of morality. Gert’s justification proceeds from a recognition that considerations of rationality alone cannot generate a requirement to act morally. On Gert’s account, a rational action is, roughly, any action the agent performs that does not cause him or others he cares for harm, unless any such harms have compensating benefits. A person may thus act rationally while systematically violating the moral rules, for example, if the person egocentrically pursues his own interests without caring about harm to individuals who stand in the way of the pursuit and if the person either takes reasonable care not to appear to harm the other individuals or has sufficient power over them that they cannot retaliate. Gert nevertheless successfully argues for a more limited link between rationality and morality: deliberators who operate under certain belief limitations will have no rational option but to publicly endorse the moral system in preference to any nonmoral systems. This satisfies Gert’s concern to show that there is a conceptual connection between rationality and morality, and constitutes what he believes is the strongest possible justification of morality.

Expression of vascular endothelial growth factor receptor‐1 and ‐2 in normal and diseased canine eyes

To immunohistochemically evaluate expression of vascular endothelial growth factor receptor-1 (VEGFR1) and -2 (VEGFR2) in ocular tissue of healthy dogs and dogs affected with primary glaucoma, uveitic glaucoma, and intraocular neoplasia. Enucleated globes from five dogs with primary glaucoma, five dogs with uveitic glaucoma, six dogs with intraocular neoplasms and three ophthalmically normal control dogs. Ocular tissues were obtained from enucleated globes of clinical cases or immediately following euthanasia for control dogs. Tissue sections were stained immunohistochemically for VEGFR1 and VEGFR2 via standard techniques and vascular tissue was qualitatively evaluated. Vascular endothelial VEGFR1 and VEGFR2 expression patterns are reported for normal and diseased ocular tissues. In addition, VEGFR1 and VEGFR2 expression patterns are reported for all normal ocular tissues. A constitutive expression pattern was detected for VEGFR1 by ocular vascular endothelial cells as well as nonvascular cells in the cornea, uvea, lens, and retina. VEGFR2 demonstrated limited expression in normal ocular tissue, but was widely expressed in vascular endothelium of diseased eyes, particularly in pre-iridal fibrovascular membranes. The results of this study suggest a role for VEGF receptors in both physiologic and pathologic angiogenesis in canine ocular tissue. Manipulation of this pathway may be a rational consideration for therapeutic intervention in canine ocular disease exhibiting pathologic neovascularization.

Uncertainty and Equipoise: At Interplay Between Epistemology, Decision Making and Ethics

In recent years, various authors have proposed that the concept of equipoise be abandoned because it conflates the practice of clinical care with clinical research. At the same time, the equipoise opponents acknowledge the necessity of clinical research if there are unresolved uncertainties about the effects of proposed healthcare interventions. As equipoise represents just 1 measure of uncertainty, proposals to abandon equipoise while maintaining a requirement for addressing uncertainties are contradictory and ultimately not valid. As acknowledgment and articulation of uncertainties represent key scientific and moral requirements for human experimentation, the concept of equipoise remains the most useful framework to link the theory of human experimentation with the theory of rational choice. In this article, I show how uncertainty (equipoise) is at the intersection between epistemology, decision making and ethics of clinical research. In particular, I show how our formulation of responses to uncertainties of hoped-for benefits and unknown harms of testing is a function of the way humans cognitively process information. This approach is based on the view that considerations of ethics and rationality cannot be separated. I analyze the response to uncertainties as it relates to the dual-processing theory, which postulates that rational approach to (clinical research) decision making depends both on analytical, deliberative processes embodied in scientific method (system II), and good human intuition (system I). Ultimately, our choices can only become wiser if we understand a close and intertwined relationship between irreducible uncertainty, inevitable errors and unavoidable injustice.

“Lost Our Lease”

This article advances a bounded rationality approach to account for a fundamental challenge in the study of voting behavior; finding a model that allows voters to be driven by both affective partisan attachments and rational issue considerations. Voters choose candidates they feel will perform best on the issues, but on the issues about which they care most, and on the issues as they see them. Party identification acts as the crucial bound on individual rationality, canalizing attention to issues either owned by or successfully leased by their own party and biasing expectations of issue handling. My empirical analysis of the 2008 presidential election shows the recession was a powerful predictor of defection, but rather than valence—was the economy better or worse—what mattered was the level of importance an individual placed on the economy.

Identifying a Surgical Threshold for Recurrent Rhinosinusitis: A Productivity Based Health Economics Model

Objective: The management of recurrent acute bacterial rhinosinusitis (RARS) remains a controversial subject. Distinguishing RARS from viral upper respiratory infection (URI) is difficult, and when to consider surgery is unclear. This study seeks to identify a threshold number of infections where the benefit of surgery balances the lost productivity from RARS. Method: An economic model was constructed using literature-reported medical and surgical response rates, as well as measures of quality of life and productivity. This data was utilized to estimate event frequency thresholds for which surgery would be beneficial. Results: Time lost for the perioperative period balances out lost productivity from RARS exacerbations when patients suffer from 6 episodes/year (range, 2.9-16.8) or 3 episodes/year (range, 1.5-8.4) over 2 years, or 2 episodes per year (range, 1-5.6) over 3 years. Because of possible confusion with URIs, we propose an approach similar to that adopted by the Rhinosinusitis Task Force. The average number of viral URIs suffered by adults annually is approximately 2 (1.4-2.3). Thus, we suggest adding 2 to the above calculated thresholds, prior to considering surgery. Conclusion: In terms of lost productivity, surgery should be considered when patients suffer from 8, 5, or 4 RARS episodes per year for the past 1, 2, or 3 years, respectively. Discussion with the patient must include a rational consideration of the burden of disease and overall patient quality of life.

Pinning down the theoretical commitments of Bayesian cognitive models

AbstractMathematical developments in probabilistic inference have led to optimism over the prospects for Bayesian models of cognition. Our target article calls for better differentiation of these technical developments from theoretical contributions. It distinguishes between Bayesian Fundamentalism, which is theoretically limited because of its neglect of psychological mechanism, and Bayesian Enlightenment, which integrates rational and mechanistic considerations and is thus better positioned to advance psychological theory. The commentaries almost uniformly agree that mechanistic grounding is critical to the success of the Bayesian program. Some commentaries raise additional challenges, which we address here. Other commentaries claim that all Bayesian models are mechanistically grounded, while at the same time holding that they should be evaluated only on a computational level. We argue this contradictory stance makes it difficult to evaluate a model's scientific contribution, and that the psychological commitments of Bayesian models need to be made more explicit.

A Rational Approach to the Clinical Use of Cumulative Effective Dose Estimates

This article will address ongoing efforts to track cumulative dose estimates of patient radiation exposure that have the potential to transform radiation protection research. There is no clear consensus on how to use this information clinically. A rational consideration of this question reveals that until the linear no-threshold model is supplanted, cumulative dose estimates are of little clinical relevance and never constitute a logical reason to avoid an imaging evaluation that is otherwise medically indicated.

When Rationality and Fairness Conflict: The Role of Cognitive-Control in the Ultimatum Game

The ultimatum game models social exchange in situations in which the rational motive to maximize gains conflicts with fairness considerations. Using two independent behavioral measurements, the authors tested two contradicting predictions: that the preference for fairness is a deliberative cognitive-controlled act or that it is an automatic act. In Experiment 1, participants whose cognitive-control resources were depleted rejected more unfair offers compared to control participants. In Experiment 2, it took longer to accept than to reject unfair offers. These results suggest that fairness considerations operate more automatically than rational considerations, and that the latter depend on the availability of limited cognitive control resources.