Self-Pity: Exploring the Links to Personality, Control Beliefs, and Anger

Self-pity is a frequent response to stressful events. So far, however, empirical research has paid only scant attention to this subject. The present article aims at exploring personality characteristics associated with individual differences in feeling sorry for oneself. Two studies with N = 141 and N = 161 university students were conducted, employing multidimensional measures of personality, control beliefs, anger, loneliness, and adult attachment. With respect to personality, results showed strong associations of self-pity with neuroticism, particularly with the depression facet. With respect to control beliefs, individuals high in self-pity showed generalized externality beliefs, seeing themselves as controlled by both chance and powerful others. With respect to anger expression, self-pity was primarily related to anger-in. Strong connections with anger rumination were also found. Furthermore, individuals high in self-pity reported emotional loneliness and ambivalent-worrisome attachments. Finally, in both studies, a strong correlation with gender was found, with women reporting more self-pity reactions to stress than men. Findings are discussed with respect to how they support, extend, and qualify the previous literature on self-pity, and directions for future empirical research are pointed out

Thinking by analogy, systematic risk, and option prices

People tend to think by analogies and comparisons. Such way of thinking, termed coarse thinking by Mullainathan et al [Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 2008] is intuitively very appealing. We develop a new option pricing model based on the idea that the market consists of coarse thinkers as well as rational investors when limits to arbitrage (transaction costs) prevent rational investors from profiting at the expense of coarse thinkers. The new formula, which is a closed form solution to the model, is a generalization of the Black-Scholes formula. The new formula potentially provides a unified explanation for various implied volatility puzzles.Coarse Thinking, Option Pricing, Implied Volatility, Implied Volatility Skew, Systematic Risk, Investor Sentiment, Implied Volatility Term Structure

Data sets and data quality in software engineering

OBJECTIVE - to assess the extent and types of techniques used to manage quality within software engineering data sets. We consider this a particularly interesting question in the context of initiatives to promote sharing and secondary analysis of data sets. METHOD - we perform a systematic review of available empirical software engineering studies. RESULTS - only 23 out of the many hundreds of studies assessed, explicitly considered data quality. CONCLUSIONS - first, the community needs to consider the quality and appropriateness of the data set being utilised; not all data sets are equal. Second, we need more research into means of identifying, and ideally repairing, noisy cases. Third, it should become routine to use sensitivity analysis to assess conclusion stability with respect to the assumptions that must be made concerning noise levels

Drifting perceptual patterns suggest prediction errors fusion rather than hypothesis selection: replicating the rubber-hand illusion on a robot

Humans can experience fake body parts as theirs just by simple visuo-tactile synchronous stimulation. This body-illusion is accompanied by a drift in the perception of the real limb towards the fake limb, suggesting an update of body estimation resulting from stimulation. This work compares body limb drifting patterns of human participants, in a rubber hand illusion experiment, with the end-effector estimation displacement of a multisensory robotic arm enabled with predictive processing perception. Results show similar drifting patterns in both human and robot experiments, and they also suggest that the perceptual drift is due to prediction error fusion, rather than hypothesis selection. We present body inference through prediction error minimization as one single process that unites predictive coding and causal inference and that it is responsible for the effects in perception when we are subjected to intermodal sensory perturbations.Comment: Proceedings of the 2018 IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and Epigenetic Robotic

Cocaine Addiction as a Homeostatic Reinforcement Learning Disorder

Drug addiction implicates both reward learning and homeostatic regulation mechanisms of the brain. This has stimulated 2 partially successful theoretical perspectives on addiction. Many important aspects of addiction, however, remain to be explained within a single, unified framework that integrates the 2 mechanisms. Building upon a recently developed homeostatic reinforcement learning theory, the authors focus on a key transition stage of addiction that is well modeled in animals, escalation of drug use, and propose a computational theory of cocaine addiction where cocaine reinforces behavior due to its rapid homeostatic corrective effect, whereas its chronic use induces slow and long-lasting changes in homeostatic setpoint. Simulations show that our new theory accounts for key behavioral and neurobiological features of addiction, most notably, escalation of cocaine use, drug-primed craving and relapse, individual differences underlying dose-response curves, and dopamine D2-receptor downregulation in addicts. The theory also generates unique predictions about cocaine self-administration behavior in rats that are confirmed by new experimental results. Viewing addiction as a homeostatic reinforcement learning disorder coherently explains many behavioral and neurobiological aspects of the transition to cocaine addiction, and suggests a new perspective toward understanding addiction

Predicting occupational strain and job satisfaction: the role of stress, coping, personality, and affectivity variables

Four studies employed path analysis to examine how measures of occupational stressors, coping resources, and negative affectivity (NA) and positive affectivity (PA) interact to predict occupational strain. The Occupational Stress Inventory (Osipow & Spokane, 1987) was used to measure stress, strain, and coping. The Positive and Negative Affectivity Schedule (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) was used for the affectivity variables. The hypothesised model showed NA and PA as background dispositional variables that influenced relations among stress, strain, and coping while still allowing stress and coping to have a direct influence on strain. Goodness of fit indices were acceptable with the model predicting 15 per cent of the variance in stress, 24 per cent of coping, and 70 per cent of strain. Study 2 replicated these findings. Study 3 added a positive outcome variable, job satisfaction (JSI: Brayfield & Rothe, 1951) to the model. The expanded model again fit the data well. A fourth study added a global measure of personality (NEO-FFI: Costa & McCrae, 1991) to the model tested in Study 3. Results indicated that personality measures did not add anything to the prediction of job satisfaction and strain in a model that already included measures of stressors, coping resources, NA and PA. The series of four studies yielded a reliable structural model that highlights the influence of organizational and dispositional variables on occupational strain and job satisfaction

"The Way in which an Experiment is Conducted is Unbelievably Important": On the Experimentation Practices of Economists and Psychologists

To discuss experimental results without discussing how they came about makes sense when the results are robust to the way experiments are conducted. Experimental results, however, are – arguably more often than not – sensitive to numerous design and implementation characteristics such as the use of financial incentives, deception, and the way information is presented. To the extent that economists and psychologists have different experimental practices, this claim is of obvious practical and interpretative relevance. In light of the empirical results summarized below, it seems warranted to say that it does not make sense to report experimental results without reporting the design and implementation choices that were made.Duhem-Quine problem, experimental design, experimental implementation, financial incentives, deception

'The Way in Which an Experiment is Conducted is Unbelievably Important': On the Experimentation Practices of Economists and Psychologists

To discuss experimental results without discussing how they came about makes sense when the results are robust to the way experiments are conducted. Experimental results, however, are – arguably more often than not – sensitive to numerous design and implementation characteristics such as the use of financial incentives, deception, and the way information is presented. To the extent that economists and psychologists have different experimental practices, this claim is of obvious practical and interpretative relevance. In light of the empirical results summarized below, it seems warranted to say that it does not make sense to report experimental results without reporting the design and implementation choices that were made.Duhem-Quine problem; experimental design; experimental implementation; financial incentives; deception