Tendency For People Research Articles

Nicotine and symptoms of schizophrenia: the 2017 picture

The tendency of people who suffer with schizophrenia to consume large amounts of cigarettes and to extract more nicotine from these cigarettes is well-known. A sizeable body of work investigating this has concluded that smoking in people with schizophrenia improves the dysfunctional sensory gating intrinsic to this disease. This has been recognised at least since the late 1980s. Consequently, the pro-cognitive effect of nicotine is now well-recognised and has led to the investigation of nicotinic receptor modulators as potential treatments for schizophrenia. Particular interest has focused on the treatment of negative symptoms in this illness. While there is a solid theoretical basis for this line of drug development, in practice, later-stage drug trials of compounds such as TC-5619 (bradanicline) in Phase 2 and EVP-6124 (encenicline) in Phase 3 have been disappointing. Numerous intolerable side-effects have been important in limiting the clinical use of such compounds. It is conceivable that the reason for intolerable side-effects might be a consequence of the wide distribution of nicotinic cholinergic receptors: α7 nicotinic receptors are found in several cerebral areas, in the spleen and in lymphocytes at lymph nodes.Later-stage drug development trials which reveal insurmountable administration problems are perhaps indicative of the great practical distance between theoretical recognition of a potential therapeutic agent and its eventual translational appearance in the armory against an illness. Given that this is the case it may still be worthwhile to look at the simple administration of exogenous nicotine via e-cigarettes or chewing-gum as an adjunctive agent in the treatment of schizophrenia in the interim. More prosaically, the banning of smoking in many hospital premises in the UK has led to a difficulty in the practical management of acutely ill people with schizophrenia in the in-patient setting. In a group of people who are profoundly psychiatrically unwell, and often physically compromised to some degree because of their cigarette consumption, alternative management techniques for the latter must be explored. Use of exogenous nicotine replacement in a less harmful delivery manner than cigarettes in a group of people who have a clear physiological reason for smoking -i.e. to increase their deficient endogenous cerebral nicotine levels – is worthwhile to investigate. Very recent work in exactly this direction has been undertaken. Nursing management of such patients may be greatly improved as a result, as may their on-going engagement with the therapeutic team. Here is an illustration of how theoretical considerations eventually come to have a pragmatic consequence in the day-to-day management of people with severe and enduring mental illnesses like schizophrenia.

Reflections on Gullibility

The rising spread in popularity of the so-called pseudosciences, such as ufology or “healing with hands,” have led to discontent among scholars and researchers. This situation led me to question whether pseudoscience, as such, exists at all. If so, what distinguishes pseudoscience from science? Is pseudoscience essentially a kind of charlatanism? I question why pseudoscience is popular and, therefore, what needs it can fulfill. Finally, how could we interpret or define people's tendency toward a state of gullibility? What follows in this essay are only my reflections, which do not require strict scientific or scholarly lines of inquiry.

Institutionalized unpredictability and café routines: The case of young people in Bosnia and Herzegovina

When life is very unpredictable or uncertain, a routine set of practices may become a very significant element in a person’s daily life, as it may allow a sense of protection from the unknown (Ehn & Löfgren 2010) and encourage feelings of belonging (Rapport & Dawson 1998). In this article I explore how people relate to the immediate future when their presents are filled with unpredictability. More specifically, I explore the everyday practices around café routines of some young people living in Bihać, a town in northwestern Bosnia- Herzegovina (BiH). Popular discourses often link between young people's tendencies to spend time in cafés with apathy and letargy, or alternativley with bad economic conditions. However, these views, whether empathetic or critical, are neither adeqate nor very empowering. Instead, I suggest that we must view café routines within the context of what I call ‘institutionalized unpredictability’. This allows us to distance ourselves from thinking about young people’s practices through dominant paradigms of engagement and disengagement and opens up the possibility to view café routines as ‘radically unpolitical' acts (Farthing 2010). I argue that café routines are both young people’s response to ‘institutionalized unpredictability’, as well as their way to criticize and reproduce it. I further show how institutionalized unpredictability was shaping and shaped by both state and nonstate related practices, relationships, processes and aspirations, suggesting that this is precisely what made it so powerfully pervasive and debilitating.

Up and down regulation of a highly automatic process: Implementation intentions can both increase and decrease social projection

Two studies examined whether implementation intentions, self-regulatory “if-then” plans, can alter social projection – people's tendency to automatically assume that other people share their attitudes. In Study 1 (N=120), participants provided their attitudes on twenty items (e.g., “I like mechanics magazines”), and then formed either (1) a goal intention directed at reducing projection: “I will remember that other people are different!”, (2) the same goal intention followed by an implementation intention: “If I'm asked to estimate what percent of other people agree with me, then I will remember that other people are different!”, or (3) did not adopt any strategy (no-treatment control). Participants who formed an implementation intention were less likely to estimate that other people share their attitudes than did participants in the goal intention and control conditions. Study 2 (N=268) replicated these results and additionally demonstrated that if-then plans can also increase projection. Overall, these findings indicate that if-then plans can be used to both decrease and increase social projection. Importantly, the latter finding is the first demonstration that implementation intentions can be used to intensify an existing automatic process. Thus, by forming implementation intentions, individuals can exercise dynamic control over nonconscious processes, that is, they can down-regulate as well as up-regulate such processes.

Establishing an Information Avoidance Scale.

People differ in their openness to different types of information and some information may evoke greater avoidance than does other information. We developed an 8-item measure of people's tendency to avoid learning information. The flexible instrument can function as both a predictor and outcome measure. The results from 4 studies involving 7 samples and 4,393 participants reveal that scores on the measure are generally internally consistent, remain relatively stable across time, and correlate modestly with measures of similar constructs and with avoidance behavior. The measure is adaptable to a variety of types of information (e.g., health outcomes, attractiveness feedback) and is internally consistent in several distinct populations (e.g., high school students, college students, U.S. adults, low-socioeconomic-status adults). Discussion centers on potential uses for the scale and an online supplement discusses a 2-item version of the scale. (PsycINFO Database Record

Economic Failure and Change in Sudan

By the end of last August 2016, Banks clients in Sudan were facing difficulties in withdrawing their checks. The ATMs were out of cash, and the available cash reserves were low. In the 9-10, most of the banks could not deliver services with the excuse that they had no liquidity. It was before the Great Eid (feast) and there were heavy rush by the public to have cash funds required for their expenditures during a long holiday. There were reports that they withdrew 2 Trillion Sudanese pounds before the holiday from ATMs and banks. That figure can be exaggerated. However, the accelerating inflation rates can justify the great needs for people to use for buying needs during that time. Greater emphasis on the accuracy for that amounts of money should be compared with rumors about intentions of the financial authorities to limit money supply in markets and curb inflation in addition to restrict hard currencies dealings in the black market. Those facts should be correlated with the increasing devaluations in the Sudanese currency and the tendencies of people to save the value in dollars or other available hard currencies in expectation of new governmental policies. In the following we investigate the role of fiscal and monetary policies on inflation in Sudan. The study assessed the impact of money supply, exchange rate, gross domestic product (GDP), budget deficit and government expenditure on inflation. It has adopted a descriptive and analytical method to achieve the goal. In particular, it has relied on empirical investigation based on descriptive statistic and econometric modeling. The results shows that several monetary, fiscal and structural factors, namely, money supply, budget deficit and shrinking of gross domestic product are simultaneously influencing inflation in Sudan. While exchange rate and government expenditure are found to be with effect on inflation rate, these findings may explain the fact that inflation depends on the way government expenditure is financed rather than the magnitude of the expenditure itself. As a role, it is recommended that the government should depend on real sources in financing budget deficit rather than monetizing deficit by and borrowing from the central Bank, which have significant impact on increasing money supply. That can be a reason for the continuous inability of banks to deliver services to clients to the edge of announcing that there is No liquidity and that the Central Bank had to be committed to print new banknotes, even with the knowledge that can accelerate in inflation rates which are already rapidly increasing. That is also related to the decreasing rates of real resources or inability to collect more taxes and tariffs to ensure effective role in curbing budget deficit and controlling inflation. Moreover, it is related with cash inflows combined with an appropriate environment for investment and best 4 utilization of Sudan’s national resources that stimulate gross domestic product (GDP) and reduce inflation rates.

Disenfranchisement and Over-Incarceration

Disenfranchisement laws in many states prohibit convicted felons from voting. The removal of ex-convicts from the pool of eligible voters reduces the pressure politicians may otherwise face to protect the interests of this group. In particular, disenfranchisement laws may cause the political process to push the sentences for criminal offenses upwards. In this article, I construct a simple model with elected law enforcers who propose sentences to maximize their likelihood of election. I show, with the help of the median voter theorem, that even without disenfranchisement, elections typically generate over-incarceration, i.e. longer than optimal sentences. Disenfranchisement further widens the gap between the optimal sentence and the equilibrium sentence, and thereby exacerbates the problem of over-incarceration. Moreover, this result is valid even when voter turnout is negatively correlated with people's criminal tendencies, i.e. when criminals vote less frequently than non-criminals.

Knowing When to Spend: Unintended Financial Consequences of Earmarking to Encourage Savings

Maintaining savings is an important financial goal. Yet there are times when savings should be spent, such as when people face unavoidable costs, and spending their savings allows them to avoid high interest rate debt. Existing behavioral research has focused on consumer decisions between savings and discretionary spending and has proposed interventions to promote savings in these contexts. However, when spending is not discretionary, such interventions could risk exacerbating a pattern found in economic research in which people borrow high interest rate debt while maintaining savings that earn low levels of interest. To examine how mental accounting interacts with considerations of personal responsibility and guilt to contribute to this pattern, this article explores whether people spend their savings when they need money most: during emergencies. Six studies reveal that people's tendency to preserve savings by borrowing from a high interest rate credit option varies as a function of the savings’ intended use. Paradoxically, people are most likely to turn to high interest rate credit with the belief that doing so is the responsible option.

The Significance Of Anchoring Bias In Estimating Financial And Economic Indicators: An Experimental Study In Indonesia Setting

Anchoring, in Behavioral Finance terminology, refers to people's tendency to rely too much on the initial piece of information offered (the "anchor"). Anchoring is widely found in decion making processes, where people make estimates about the likelihood of uncertain events or to predict or recall certain values or outcomes by considering the anchor value and adjusting it upwards or downwards to reach a final estimate. Such adjustments are often insufficient, leaving a cognitive bias in the direction of the initial anchor value (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). This experimental study was performed in order to detect the presence of anchoring bias in Indonesian setting. Following Kudryavtsev and Cohen (2010)’s procedure, we randomly devided participants into two groups, namely: “control group” (where participants did not receive any anchor value) and “anchoring group” (where participants received some anchoring values). Participants in both groups were instructed to provide their best estimations or answers to questions regarding financial and economic issues. Anchors and the questions were presented with the same order and were expressed in the same scale. Using students of Master of Management Program Universitas Gadjah Mada as respondents, this research was aimed to see whether the answers provided by participants in the anchoring group were affected by the anchor values. Further, we would like to test whether the degree of anchoring biases among female respondents were higher than the biases among male respondents; whether questions related to older topics created higher anchoring biases than the newer ones; and finally, whether anchoring bias among non-finance major students were higher than those among finance students. The results show that anchoring biases were identified among all participants. However, we could not identify higher degree of anchoring bias among female participants than those among male participants. Similarly, we did not identify higher biases in answering questions with older topics than the newer ones. Finally, higher degree of anchoring biases were found among non-finance major students than in finance major students, suggesting the type of knowledge might affect the degree of anchoring bias.

Evidence that photos promote rosiness for claims about the future.

When people rapidly judge the truth of claims about the present or the past, a related but nonprobative photo can produce "truthiness," an increase in the perceived truth of those claims (Newman, Garry, Bernstein, Kantner, & Lindsay, 2012). What we do not know is the extent to which nonprobative photos cause truthiness for the future. We addressed this issue in four experiments. In each experiment, people judged the truth of claims that the price of certain commodities (such as manganese) would increase (or decrease). Half of the time, subjects saw a photo of the commodity paired with the claim. Experiments 1A and 1B produced a "rosiness" bias: Photos led people to believe positive claims about the future but had very little effect on people's belief in negative claims. In Experiment 2, rosiness occurred for both close and distant future claims. In Experiments 3A and 3B, we tested whether rosiness was tied to the perceived positivity of a claim. Finally, in Experiments 4A and 4B, we tested the rosiness hypothesis and found that rosiness was unique to claims about the future: When people made the same judgments about the past, photos produced the usual truthiness pattern for both positive and negative claims. Considered all together, our data fit with the idea that photos may operate as hypothesis-confirming evidence for people's tendency to anticipate rosy future outcomes.

The influence of the DinEX service quality dimensions on casual-dining restaurant customers’ satisfaction and behavioral intentions

ABSTRACTThe following empirical study examines the effects of specific service quality dimensions from the DinEX model on customers’ satisfaction and behavioral intentions. The originality of DinEX over other restaurant service quality instruments is primarily its focus on dimensions such as social connectedness and homophily, which represent social constructs that portray an internal sense of belonging and the tendency for people to affiliate with similar others. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed in an independent casual-dining restaurant located in the southeastern United States and a sample of 209 respondents was obtained. Results show that food healthfulness and food quality have an influence on customers’ satisfaction, which in turn affects their behavioral intentions. The implications for practitioners are discussed in detail.

The Role of Expertise and Preference behind Individuals’ Tendency to Use Intuitive Decision Style

Pachur and Spaar (2015) provide an important addition to the literature of decision style, suggesting that its traditional domain-general approach should be enriched with a domain-specific perspective. While I also emphasize the importance of the domain-specific approach, I discuss that it is crucial to disentangle the influence of preference for intuitive decision style and domain-specific expertise on individuals' tendency to use intuitive decision mode whenever decision mode is discussed in a domain-specific way. Additionally, I argue that the domain-specific decision style measures are assessing people's tendency and not (just) their preference to use intuitive decision mode. Finally, I discuss some practical consequences of this refinement.

Pemeriksaan Kimia Darah (Glukosa Darah, Kolesterol dan Asam Urat) Menggunakan Metode Stick Test dan Metode Spektrofotometri dari Sampel Darah Masyarakat RW 22 Kelurahan Nusukan Kecamatan Banjarsari Kota Surakarta

Nusukan is one village with a tendency for people who prefer to consume fast food and lack of attention to a healthy lifestyle. This causes a lot of society are affected by diabetes mellitus, hyperlipidemia and uric acid. Nusukan society RW 22 who are not aware that they have the disease. For it is necessary to check blood glucose levels, cholesterol and uric acid that can be detected early. The purpose of this program is to provide education on the dangers and prevention of diabetes mellitus, hyperlipidemia, and uric acid. It is also to help people to detect diabetes mellitus, hyperlipidemia and uric acid using stick test and spektropothometry method. Of the 30 people there were seven people who are abnormal blood glucose levels or diabetes mellitus, according stated test stick method, whereas in spectrophotometric methods there are 2 people. Uric acid test of RW 22, there are 7 people who exceed the normal limits, whereas cholesterol levels there are 22 people who exceed normal cholesterol levels (hyperlipidemia) with a test stick method, whereas in sprektropothometry there are 18 people who hyperlipidemia. Methods stick test results show higher levels compared to the spectrophotometric method.

The Kano model: identification of handbook attributes to learn in practice

Purpose Statistics shows terrifying tendencies in people’ unwillingness to develop themselves by reading books. The situation is even more serious if we look at companies and their employees. People want to be specialists, but in fact reading culture in companies is rare. Many actions which are undertaken to reverse this trend may lead to sales increase of books by collecting them instead of reading them, if the quality of handbooks will not be improved. To enhance people to read, it is essential to offer them a product that would really satisfy their needs. The study presented in the paper contributes to the knowledge about some general practitioners requirements for handbooks on methods, in particular these used in quality and management. It shows also the usefulness of Kano’s model application in the new area. A case study was conducted with the application of Kano’s model to identify potential readers’ expectations of a handbook for practitioners in problem-solving methods. The research was based on sample size equal to 376 different people: managers, specialists, operators, directors, students and professors in Poland. As a result, a book on problem solving method called “5 why” was created to verify if the model really works. Design/methodology/approach It shows the usefulness of Kano’s model application in the new area of education. Findings Potential readers’ expectations of a handbook for practitioners in problem solving methods were identified. The research was based on sample size equal to 376 different people: managers, specialists, operators, directors, students and professors in Poland. Social implications By taking into consideration expectations from customers, authors of books and educational services may improve their works. Both sides would make profits form this: customers – better product, authors – bigger and satisfied audience. Originality/value From many previous researches, it is known that the Kano’s model is a useful, practical tool for industries; however, studies show that it is also well applicable in providing education service. As a result of the research, a book on problem-solving method called “5 why” was created to prove if the model really works in practice.

Segregation in Civic Life

To what extent do voluntary organizations like sports, leisure, and neighborhood associations provide a platform where ethnic groups mingle and ethnic boundaries are overcome? This study uses unique panel data from the Netherlands Longitudinal Life Course Study (NELLS) to shed light on the integrative power of voluntary associations. I investigate decisions to join and leave associations of different ethnic composition, as a member or a volunteer, among individuals of Turkish, Moroccan, and native Dutch origin. In general, all ethnic groups are equally likely to join voluntary organizations, but ethnic minorities are more likely to leave than are Dutch natives, even after accounting for relevant sociodemographic characteristics. This alone explains ethnic minorities’ lower involvement rates. Moreover, joining decisions are characterized by strong ethnic sorting across organizations of different ethnic composition: people are much more likely to join associations containing fewer ethnic out-group members. This limits the potential of voluntary associations as pathways to social integration. In contrast, once the initial hurdle of getting involved has been taken, people are no more likely to disengage from organizations with more ethnic out-group members. Inter-ethnic neighborhood contact and the local supply of involvement opportunities are most influential in explaining the strong sorting tendencies in people’s joining decisions.

Epistemic Contextualism: An Idle Hypothesis

ABSTRACTEpistemic contextualism is one of the most hotly debated topics in contemporary epistemology. Contextualists claim that ‘know’ is a context-sensitive verb associated with different evidential standards in different contexts. Contextualists motivate their view based on a set of behavioural claims. In this paper, I show that several of these behavioural claims are false. I also show that contextualist test cases suffer from a critical confound, which derives from people's tendency to defer to speakers’ statements about their own mental states. My evidence consists in results from several behavioural experiments. I conclude that contextualism is an idle hypothesis and I propose some general methodological lessons.

Community detection in social networks

The expansion of the web and emergence of a large number of social networking sites (SNS) have empowered users to easily interconnect on a shared platform. A social network can be represented by a graph consisting of a set of nodes and edges connecting these nodes. The nodes represent the individuals/entities, and the edges correspond to the interactions among them. The tendency of people with similar tastes, choices, and preferences to get associated in a social network leads to the formation of virtual clusters or communities. Detection of these communities can be beneficial for numerous applications such as finding a common research area in collaboration networks, finding a set of likeminded users for marketing and recommendations, and finding protein interaction networks in biological networks. A large number of community‐detection algorithms have been proposed and applied to several domains in the literature. This paper presents a survey of the existing algorithms and approaches for the detection of communities in social networks. We also discuss some of the applications of community detection. WIREs Data Mining Knowl Discov 2016, 6:115–135. doi: 10.1002/widm.1178This article is categorized under: Algorithmic Development > Structure Discovery

Competitiveness and Stress

This study explores the relationship between competitiveness and stress. In Experiment 1, we examine the response of cortisol, the primary stress hormone, during both piece-rate and tournament tasks. We find that the more competitive tournament task induces a higher cortisol response than the less competitive piece-rate task. Moreover, more competitively inclined subjects exhibit higher stress responses induced by the tasks. In Experiment 2, we manipulate stress using the Trier Social Stress Test and find that induced stress does not significantly affect competitiveness. Taken together, our findings suggest a tendency for people who are competitively disposed to have high stress response.

Skeletal muscle mitochondrial capacity in people with multiple sclerosis.

BackgroundPeople with multiple sclerosis (MS) have functional disability and may have reduced muscle mitochondrial capacity.ObjectiveThe objective of this paper is to measure muscle mitochondrial capacity of leg muscles using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and compare to functional status.Materials and methodsPeople with MS (n = 16) and a control (CON) group (n = 9) were evaluated for 25-ft walk time. Mitochondrial capacity of both gastrocnemius muscles were measured with NIRS as the rate of recovery of oxygen consumption in after exercise.ResultsMitochondrial capacity was lower in the MS group compared to the CON group (rate constants: 1.13 ± 0.29 vs. 1.68 ± 0.37 min−1, p < 0.05). There was a tendency for people with MS who used assistive devices to have lower mitochondrial capacity in the weaker leg (p = 0.07).ConclusionNIRS measurements of mitochondrial capacity suggest a 40% deficit in people with MS compared to CONs and this may contribute to walking disability.

Determining the prevalence of dietary supplement consumption among Ardabil University students and related factors, 2014

Background: Dietary supplements (DS) are commercially available products that are consumed as an addition to the usual diet. But little data are available on their use by sub-populations such as college students. Since college students share a variety of characteristics and similar lifestyles, their DS use may differ from the general population. In this study, we aimed to investigate the prevalence of food supplements usage, factors associated with DS usage and reasons for DS usage among a group of university students in Ardebil-Iran . Methods: 250 College students from Ardabil universities were selected by random sampling in year 2014. The Survey questionnaire used in this study included Part I: demographic characteristic, Part II: types and frequency of dietary supplements used. Supplements were classified using standard criteria. Logistic regression and X2 test analyses examined relationships between demographic, lifestyle factors and dietary supplements use. Results: The frequency of food supplements usage between students was 66.8% and there was a significant relationship between age, gender, marital status, BMI, income and DS usage, while there was no significant relationship between educational level and DS usage. The frequency of food supplements usage in students with 19 to 35 years and married females was high. After controlling the confounding factors, marital status variable was the factor that influenced the usage of dietary supplements so that, despite the high level of food supplements usage in males, married people's tendency to supplements usage in married people was 1.5 times more than the singles . Conclusions: Results showed that the use of dietary supplements is considerably high among students. Doing further study on the general population can be necessary.