Luck Feelings, Luck Beliefs, and Decision Making

Luck feelings have long been thought to influence decision making involving risk. Previous research has established the importance of prior outcomes, luck beliefs, and counterfactual thinking in the generation of luck feelings, but there has been no comprehensive demonstration of this system of variables that impinge on luck feelings. Moreover, the actual relationship of luck feelings and risky choice has not been directly tested. Addressing these gaps, results from five studies are presented in this thesis. Empirical work begins with an extensive validation exercise of an existing 22-item luck beliefs scale. Those 22 items are refined to a 16-item scale, comprising four luck belief dimensions that inter-relate in a compelling structural arrangement. Insights from this exercise, and a subset of the items are used throughout the remainder of the thesis. Results from two studies contradicted the counterfactual closeness hypothesis, the most prominent theory in the psychology of luck, which holds that counterfactual thinking is essential for generating lucky feelings. However, one study found that affect and luck feelings are not unitary, as evidenced by a weak form of double dissociation of affect and lucky feelings from overestimation and overplacement. Another study found lucky and unlucky feelings to be distinct. The effects of lucky feelings and unlucky feelings on risky choice differ by the nature of a prior outcome. For negative outcomes, unlucky feelings are likely to influence risky choices. For positive outcomes, lucky feelings are likely to influence risky choices. The type of risky choice most affected by lucky feelings—for positive experiences—is ambiguity tolerance in the probability distributions of prospective outcomes. The Activation Theory of Luck Feelings (ActLF) is proposed, which reconciles previous findings to those reported herein

A comparison of the CAR and DAGAR spatial random effects models with an application to diabetics rate estimation in Belgium

When hierarchically modelling an epidemiological phenomenon on a finite collection of sites in space, one must always take a latent spatial effect into account in order to capture the correlation structure that links the phenomenon to the territory. In this work, we compare two autoregressive spatial models that can be used for this purpose: the classical CAR model and the more recent DAGAR model. Differently from the former, the latter has a desirable property: its ρ parameter can be naturally interpreted as the average neighbor pair correlation and, in addition, this parameter can be directly estimated when the effect is modelled using a DAGAR rather than a CAR structure. As an application, we model the diabetics rate in Belgium in 2014 and show the adequacy of these models in predicting the response variable when no covariates are available

A Statistical Approach to the Alignment of fMRI Data

Multi-subject functional Magnetic Resonance Image studies are critical. The anatomical and functional structure varies across subjects, so the image alignment is necessary. We define a probabilistic model to describe functional alignment. Imposing a prior distribution, as the matrix Fisher Von Mises distribution, of the orthogonal transformation parameter, the anatomical information is embedded in the estimation of the parameters, i.e., penalizing the combination of spatially distant voxels. Real applications show an improvement in the classification and interpretability of the results compared to various functional alignment methods

Quod Erat Demonstrandum: From Herodotus’ ethnographic journeys to cross-cultural research

A peer-reviewed book based on presentations at the XVIII Congress of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, 2006, Isle of Spetses, Greece. (c) 2009, International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychologyhttps://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/iaccp_proceedings/1004/thumbnail.jp

Coopetition as an emerging organisational strategy for supply chain resilience: an exploratory study of the UKCS oil and gas sector.

Coopetition, a form of inter-organisational relationship that combines competitive and collaborative theories, has gained the interests of academics and practitioners of inter-organisational studies. However, despite numerous extensive coopetition reviews, several questions remain unanswered - especially with regards to the formation of the strategy. Although studies have acknowledged that coopetition can occur unintentionally, particularly among organisations in pre-existing collaborative relationships, it remains unclear how or if the nature of formation affects the performance or outcome of the coopetitive relationship. It is therefore necesssary for continued research efforts into the study of coopetition as an emergent strategy. This research addresses issues in coopetition studies with the specific aim of uncovering the relationship between the formation of coopetition alliances and its performance. The study argues that antecedents for successful intentional coopetition may not apply in coopetition that emerges unintentionally. Using the UK Oil and Gas Industry as a case study, this research investigates some of the factors that can improve the performance of emergent coopetition, such as its management, form of governance and the role of dedicated alliance functions. The study compares the antecedents for successful deliberate coopetition with the performance of unintentional coopetition. Drawing upon research from inter-organisational studies and interviews of oil and gas industry experts, this study proposes some hypotheses and a conceptual model relating to the interactions of the governance structure, control mechanisms, and management on the performance of both intentional and unintentional coopetition. Additionally, it investigates the role of supply chain flexibility on coopetition performance. The structural equation model is tested using empirical data obtained through web-based questionnaires from 380 supply chain professionals in the oil and gas industry. The results of this study confirm that the management technique and control mechanisms have a significant effect on the outcome of both intentional and unintentional coopetition. In contrast, the flexibility of the supply chain has little impact on the performance of the alliance. The study contributes to inter-organisational studies by demonstrating that the presence of a dedicated alliance function and contractual agreements are critical antecedents in the formation of a coopetitive alliance, including emergent coopetition. The study also highlights its limitations and recommends areas for further research

Personal construct similarity and friendship

Two sets of literature are reviewed: firstly, a detailed review isgiven of ideas and indices derived from Kelly's Personal Construct Theory and of their use in research on interpersonal relationships and secondly, a more selective review of the interpersonal attraction literature is presented. Duck's (1973;1977) filter model of friendship, which forms the focus of this research, is then discussed. Five studies are reported. All were concerned with the relationship between friendship and similarity of personal construct content. The positions, within the proposed filter sequence, of similarity of personal construct organisation and structure, were also of primary interest. Other concerns were to investigate the relative importance in friendship of construct similarity, attitude and value similarity, and the meaning-fulness of others' constructs; to compare superordinate and subordinate construct similarity; to assess the effects of using different measures of content similarity; and to investigate sex and age differences. Friends were generally found to he relatively similar in terms of construct content, organisation and structure hut their constructs were not more meaningful and nor was there any evidence of friends having similar attitudes or values. It is suggested, on the basis of the findings relating construct content similarity to friendship, that the strength and nature of this relationship depends on the nature of the group e.g. on its homogeneity and centrality in the lives of its members. Superordinate similarity was found to he more strongly associated with established friendship than subordinate similarity. Some sex differences were found e.g. in the type of content similarity associated with friendship. The last chapter discusses the problems of specifying the filter sequence, the filter model from a Kellian perspective, and the importance of the social context of relationships. Suggestions for future research are made which emphasise the need to tap people's constructs of relationships.<p