Utility Judgments Research Articles

Evidence evaluation: Measure Z corresponds to human utility judgments better than measure L and optimal-experimental-design models.

Evidence evaluation is a crucial process in many human activities, spanning from medical diagnosis to impression formation. The present experiments investigated which, if any, normative model best conforms to people's intuition about the value of the obtained evidence. Psychologists, epistemologists, and philosophers of science have proposed several models to account for people's intuition about the utility of the obtained evidence with respect either to a focal hypothesis or to a constellation of hypotheses. We pitted against each other the so-called optimal-experimental-design models (i.e., Bayesian diagnosticity, log₁₀ diagnosticity, information gain, Kullback-Leibler distance, probability gain, and impact) and measures L and Z to compare their ability to describe humans' intuition about the value of the obtained evidence. Participants received words-and-numbers scenarios concerning 2 hypotheses and binary features. They were asked to evaluate the utility of "yes" and "no" answers to questions about some features possessed in different proportions (i.e., the likelihoods) by 2 types of extraterrestrial creatures (corresponding to 2 mutually exclusive and exhaustive hypotheses). Participants evaluated either how an answer was helpful or how an answer decreased/increased their beliefs with respect either to a single hypothesis or to both hypotheses. We fitted mixed-effects models and used the Akaike information criterion and the Bayesian information criterion values to compare the competing models of the value of the obtained evidence. Overall, the experiments showed that measure Z was the best fitting model of participants' judgments of the value of obtained answers. We discussed the implications for the human hypothesis-evaluation process.

No Dice The Resistance to Randomness

No Dice The Resistance to Randomness

Do social utility judgments influence attentional processing?

Research shows that social judgments influence decision-making in social environments. For example, judgments about an interaction partners’ trustworthiness affect a variety of social behaviors and decisions. One mechanism by which social judgments may influence social decisions is by biasing the automatic allocation of attention toward certain social partners, thereby shaping the information people acquire. Using an attentional blink paradigm, we investigate how trustworthiness judgments alter the allocation of attention to social stimuli in a set of two experiments. The first experiment investigates trustworthiness judgments based solely on a social partner’s facial appearance. The second experiment examines the effect of trustworthiness judgments based on experienced behavior. In the first, strong appearance-based judgments (positive and negative) enhanced stimulus recognizability but did not alter the size of the attentional blink, suggesting that appearance-based social judgments enhance face memory but do not affect pre-attentive processing. However, in the second experiment, in which judgments were based on behavioral experience rather than appearance, positive judgments enhanced pre-attentive processing of trustworthy faces. This suggests that a stimulus’s potential benefits, rather than its disadvantages, shape the automatic distribution of attentional resources. These results have implications for understanding how appearance- and behavior-based social cues shape attention distribution in social environments.

The Impact of Endorsing the Belief in a Just World on Social Judgments

The present research examines the social value attributed to endorsing the belief in a just world for self (BJW-S) and for others (BJW-O) in a Western society. We conducted four studies in which we asked participants to assess a target who endorsed BJW-S vs. BJW-O either strongly or weakly. Results showed that endorsement of BJW-S was socially valued and had a greater effect on social utility judgments than it did on social desirability judgments. In contrast, the main effect of endorsement of BJW-O was to reduce the target’s social desirability. The results also showed that the effect of BJW-S on social utility is mediated by the target’s perceived individualism, whereas the effect of BJW-S and BJW-O on social desirability is mediated by the target’s perceived collectivism.

A survey of clinical prediction tools in colorectal and lung cancers and melanoma.

1592 Background: Clinical prediction in cancer depends on a myriad of prognostic factors, and relies on sound methodology for model building and validation. Increased understanding of complex tumour biology allows for simultaneous consideration of biological markers and standard clinical and pathological factors for prediction. We evaluated published studies supporting existing prediction tools in three cancers. Methods: Scientific literature and online resources were searched for clinical prediction tools for survival in three cancers: colorectal, lung, and melanoma. A priori criteria determined by the Molecular Modellers Working Group of the AJCC were evaluated and included: defined patient population, consideration of standard prognostic variables, model development approaches, validation strategies, performance metrics, presentation form of prediction tool, and intended clinical use. Results: Seventy-eight tools intended for prediction of survival were identified for the three cancers: 41 in colorectal, 23 in lung, and 14 in melanoma. Clinical presentations varied within each: 23 of the colorectal cancer tools focused on advanced disease with liver metastases and the remaining varied by stage; 16 lung cancer tools focused on NSCLC and 7 on SCLC. Even in narrowly defined situations, there was no consensus on key variables; for example, no variables were common to all 8 prediction tools for metastatic lung cancer. Variable definitions were missing or vague and the form of the model was often not provided, hampering independent validation and usability. Only 32/78 tools were supported by appropriate internal validity statistics and 21/78 with external validation. Often the development of risk scores did not create groups for whom treatment decisions would be similar. Conclusions: The quality of the literature supporting clinical prediction tools is variable, and the accuracy and utility of many existing tools is undetermined. Methodological guidelines for prediction tool development and validation should be adopted and adhered to. Studies developing and validating clinical prediction tools in cancer must be reported in complete and transparent fashion to facilitate proper interpretation and judgment of utility.

Social value and asymmetry of gender and sex categories in physical education

IntroductionSports are traditionally considered to be masculine activities, but recent studies have shown that femininity and women may be more highly valued in this domain than previously thought. ObjectiveThis study sought to elucidate the apparent ambivalence about women in sports and specifically examined the social value of gender and sex in physical education classes. MethodFrench physical education teachers from primary and middle schools and students in the fifth and ninth grades participated in two studies using the judge's paradigm and the self-presentation paradigm, respectively. ResultsThe first study indicated that both masculinity and femininity were valued by teachers but were differently anchored in the components of social value. While masculinity was associated with the likelihood of success (social utility), femininity was associated with likeableness (social desirability). The stereotype of “male superiority in sport” also modulated social utility judgments. The second study revealed that ninth graders presented themselves as highly feminine and masculine when they strove to gain approval. Fifth graders only used femininity as a self-presentation strategy, suggesting that at this age children do not yet attempt to conform to teachers’ expectations. ConclusionThese studies suggest that future research on stereotypes in sports would benefit from theoretical approaches that take ambivalence in personal judgments into account, as this would avoid misinterpreting null or counter-stereotypical effects as apparently positive.

Down the Tube: Symbolic Form and the Failure of Reason in the Marketplace of Ideas

The growth of an American television culture has been slowly poisoning free-market capitalism by eroding the very logic on which capitalism depends. Consumerism is creeping into place as the primary American economic system. The transition from a typographic era to a televised one, and the subsequent reduction in propositionally structured information, has capitalism in its death throes. The presentationally structured symbolic form of television's message is self-perpetuating, recruiting and retaining consumers unable to make rational judgments of value or utility. The universally beneficial survival of the fittest effect is adversely affected by television's dumbing-down effect. Techniques of television advertising, offensive to the rational mind, are emotionally soothing and reassuring. Consumers from a young age are gently cajoled, using presentationally structured techniques, to consume. Television has effectively replaced capitalism with a similar-looking but fundamentally different phenomenon, irrational consumerism driven by emotion. The promise of the mutually beneficial transaction may soon be mere artifacts of a typographic golden age.

Commentary on “Lessons Learned From Leading an Anger Management Group Using the ‘Seeing Red’ Curriculum in an Elementary School”

This commentary responds to “Lessons Learned From Leading an Anger Management Group Using the ‘Seeing Red’ Curriculum in an Elementary School,” E. L. Sportsman, J. S. Carlson, and K. M. Guthrie's (2010/this issue) account of an anger control intervention's implementation and effectiveness in an elementary school setting. The accompanying article is discussed in order to provide readers with points of consideration regarding the featured intervention, particularly judgments of utility, barriers to implementation, and school psychologists’ roles throughout the intervention process.

Device preview: Touch-user interface books for overcoming reading difficulty

Purpose. To provide a rationale for the newly developed paper-to-digital book product, touch-user-interface (TUI) technology for improving reading comprehension for students with disabilities and developmental constraints.Method. TUI technology, enabling students to touch portions of the pages to actualise corresponding digital files, was theoretically and practically analysed by the author, a content-area expert in (a) reading fluency and comprehension and (b) learning disabilities, for judgment of product utility. Product function was juxtaposed with current reading research depicting learner challenges to fluency and comprehension.Results. TUI technology provides design solutions in-line with meeting student challenges with reading difficulty, namely that traditional paper book pages with ‘too much’ text block reading comprehension due to low fluency (reading rate is too slow for the brain to make sense of text causing a ‘bottleneck’ effect) inhibiting understanding. It is proposed that with a TUI book, with media-rich paper, less text can be used and informational equivalence achieved with the digital material activated via touch points on paper pages tethered to a computer. The audio, video and graphics meaning-based symbols systems can replace some text.Conclusions. TUI technology function needs to be evaluated in applied research in classroom settings across exceptionality and development.

The Conceptual Separation of Food and Animals in Childhood

Nonhuman animals are primarily defined according to their form of relation with human beings, which broadly depends on the perceived utility of those animals to humans. These relations may be analyzed to generate typologies, membership of which circumscribes the probable fate of nonhuman animals when they enter into contact with humans. However, these judgments of utility and category membership are contingent and socially constructed, as demonstrated by cultural and historical variability in the species and individual animals assigned to particular types. This paper explores how the combination of childhood literary and film traditions relating to animals and associated promotional food tie-ins aimed at children contribute to a food socialization process whereby children learn to conceptually distance the animals they eat from those with whom they have an emotional bond or for whom they feel ethically responsible. In so doing, we develop a theoretical scheme for the differentiated positioning of animals.

Technology, trainees, metacognitive activity and e‐learning effectiveness

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to integrate previous research findings on the factors which affect e‐learning effectiveness. To do this, a model is developed which proposes that the effects of individual learner characteristics and technology characteristics on e‐learning outcomes are partially mediated by the metacognitive learning processes in which the learner engages.Design/methodology/approachA survey of 914 individuals in an online introductory information systems course examines the relations between general computer self‐efficacy (GCSE), locus of control, age, peer interaction, technology reliability, social presence, media synchronicity, and metacognitive activity and the e‐learning outcomes of course, performance, course utility, and course satisfaction.FindingsThe results indicate that GCSE, age, social presence, reliability, media synchronicity, and metacognitive activity are related to course satisfaction and utility judgments. In addition, age, metacognitive activity, and reliability are related to course performance and interaction is related to satisfaction. Finally, metacognitive activity partially mediates the relationship between social presence, media synchronicity and satisfaction, and utility judgments.Originality/valueThis paper represents one of the first to investigate a model of e‐learning effectiveness which integrates research on metacognitive activity as well as the role of technology and trainee characteristics.

Clinicians' Judgments of Clinical Utility: A Comparison of the DSM-IV With Dimensional Models of General Personality

Clinical utility, or the usefulness of a diagnostic system in clinical practice, has been identified as a potential limitation of alternative dimensional models of personality disorder, such as the five-factor model (FFM; McCrae & Costa, 1990), the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI; Cloninger, 2000), the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ; Tellegen & Waller, 1987), and the Shedler & Westen Assessment Procedure-200 (SWAP-200; Shedler & Westen, 1998). Both proponents of and opponents to dimensional models of personality disorder have suggested that their clinical utility be assessed in preparation for DSM-V (e.g., Rounsaville et al., 2002; First et al., 2002; Verheul, 2005; First, 2005). Samuel & Widiger (2006) found the FFM to have significantly greater clinical utility than the existing diagnostic categories. In the current study, 1,572 practicing psychologists were asked to describe one of three cases using the DSM-IV and the constructs of one of four alternative dimensional models (FFM, TCI, MPQ, SWAP). Clinicians then rated each model on six aspects of clinical utility. Results indicate that clinicians find dimensional models to be higher in clinical utility than the DSM-IV on five of the six aspects of clinical utility, but not significantly different from each other. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Achievement goal promotion at university: Social desirability and social utility of mastery and performance goals.

The present research examines the ambivalence of achievement goal promotion at university, and more specifically in the psychology curriculum. On the one hand, psychology teachers explicitly encourage mastery but not performance (neither approach nor avoidance) goals. On the other hand, the selection process encourages the endorsement of not only mastery but also performance-approach goals. In fact, it would seem that both performance-approach and mastery goals are valued in a university context. Two pilot studies verified the above assumptions. Subsequently, Experiments 1, 2, and 3 showed that each of these goals corresponds to different aspects of social value. Indeed, high endorsement of mastery goals was associated with being judged as both likable (social desirability) and likely to succeed (social utility). High endorsement of performance-approach goals enhanced social utility judgments but reduced perceived likability. Performance-avoidance goals only enhanced perceived likability. The discussion focuses on the 2 functions of university, namely education (apparent in the official discourse of teachers) and selection (apparent in the university structure), and on the perceived value of achievement goals.

The Dissociation Between Monetary Assessment and Predicted Utility

We study the dissociation between two common measures of value—monetary assessment of purchase options versus the predicted utility associated with owning or consuming those options, a disparity that is reflected in well-known judgment anomalies and that is important for interpreting market research data. We propose that a significant cause of this dissociation is the difference in how these two types of evaluations are formed—each is informed by different types of information. Thus, dissociation between these two types of measures should not be interpreted as failure to map utility onto money, as such mapping is not really attempted. We suggest that monetary assessment tends to focus on the transaction in which the purchase alternative would be acquired or forgone (e.g., how fair the transaction seems), failing to adequately reflect the purchase alternative itself (e.g., the expected pleasure of owning or consuming it), which is what informs predicted utility judgments. We illustrate the value of this idea by deriving and testing empirical predictions of disparities in the impact of different types of information and manipulations on the two types of value assessment.

Social utility, social desirability and scholastic judgments: Toward a personological model of academic evaluation

The aim of this article is to gain further insight into the determinants of scholastic judgments. On the basis of a previous study (Dompnier, Pansu, & Bressoux, 2006), we propose a model of the processes underlying teachers’ judgments. In addition to taking into account some of these determinants, the proposed model grants to pupils’ social utility, as perceived by their teacher, the status of central mediator between scholastic judgments and their determinants (pupils’ actual academic achievement, pupils’ scholastic history, classroom context, and internality perceived by teachers). The initial model was tested on a first sample of 250 pupils (3rd grade) and their teachers, and then improved. Next, the modified model was validated on a second sample of 249 pupils (3rd grade) and their teachers. The results obtained on this sample indicated that the modified model fit the data to a satisfactory extent, and that it is more parsimonious that alternative nonhierachical models.

The Dissociation between Monetary Assessments and Predicted Utility

We study the dissociation between two common measures of value - monetary assessment of purchase options versus the predicted utility associated with owning or consuming those options, a disparity that is reflected in well-known judgment anomalies and is important for interpreting market research data. We propose that a significant cause of this dissociation is the difference in how these two types of evaluations are formed - each is informed by different types of information. Thus, dissociation between these two types of measures is not caused by failure to map utility onto money, since such mapping is not really attempted. Specifically, we suggest that monetary assessment tends to focus on the transaction in which the purchase alternative would be acquired or forgone (e.g., how fair the transaction seems), failing to adequately reflect the purchase alternative itself (e.g., the pleasure of consuming it), which is what informs predicted utility judgments. We illustrate the value of this idea by deriving and testing empirical predictions of disparities in impact of different types of information and manipulations on the two types of assessment.

Clinicians' judgments of clinical utility: A comparison of the DSM-IV and five-factor models.

Clinical utility, or the usefulness of a diagnostic system in clinical practice, has been identified as an important construct in proposed revisions to the diagnostic nomenclature and a significant limitation of dimensional models of personality disorder, such as the 5-factor model (FFM). Only 1 study to date has addressed explicitly the clinical utility of the FFM, and the findings suggested significant limitations. In the current study, 245 practicing psychologists described 3 historic cases using both the FFM and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 2000) and then rated each model on 6 aspects of clinical utility. In contrast to prior research, the psychologists in this study considered the FFM to have greater clinical utility than the existing diagnostic categories.

Examining the utility judgments of public and business administration instructors and understanding their professional identity

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to determine if business and public administration have distinct identities based on perception of curriculum areas.Design/methodology/approachPROSCAL, and algorithm for multidimensional scaling was used.FindingsBusiness and public administration faculties have different identities based on their perceptions of curriculum areas.Research limitations/implicationsRelied on a maximum likelihood probability approach. The study should be replicated using other psychometric techniques, or be extended to other disciplines.Practical implicationsPublic administration is empirically validated as distinct from business administration and political science. Care must be taken when borrowing ideas from either field, though results indicate that communicating with business administration would be easier due to the shared space.Originality/valueIt is one of the few (if not the only) papers using PROSCAL. It is one of the first to mathematically determine if groups were understanding and processing stimuli similarly enough to be compared.

The Role of Affective Experience in Work Motivation

Based on psychological and neurobiological theories of core affective experience, we identify a set of direct and indirect paths through which affective feelings at work affect three dimensions of behavioral outcomes: direction, intensity, and persistence. First, affective experience may influence these behavioral outcomes indirectly by affecting goal level and goal commitment, as well as three key judgment components of work motivation: expectancy judgments, utility judgments, and progress judgments. Second, affective experience may also affect these behavioral outcomes directly. We discuss implications of our model.

Types of inconsistency in health-state utility judgments

In making judgments of health-related quality of life, respondents often compare the relative magnitude of two intervals between health states, such as the interval between normal health and blindness compared to that between normal health and death. We examined two ways of comparing such intervals: person-trade-off (PTO)—in which the judgment concerns matching numbers of people so that two changes are equivalent—and direct judgment of the ratio. Both measures showed ratio inconsistency (a ratio that should be the product of two other ratios is too high) and superadditivity (two ratios that should add to 1 are too high). Some responses in both methods implied that two intervals which should have been different (because they shared a top or bottom point, but differed on the other point) were nevertheless viewed by subjects as being of equal size. These equality responses were more common when death was the bottom (worse end) of both intervals being compared (e.g., the interval between death and blindness is perceived as being the same size as the interval between death and normal health) than when any other condition was at the bottom or when the condition common to the two intervals was at the top. A second experiment indicated that subjects really do consider the intervals to be equal. Our findings argue for giving subjects a chance to reflect on such apparent inconsistencies in practical utility elicitation.