The Macroeconomic Role of Unemployment Compensation

The standard motivation for unemployment compensation is consumption smoothing and most papers in the literature have analyzed trade-offs involving consumption smoothing and moral hazard. This paper shows how such policy can increase output by enhancing the assignment of workers to jobs in the face of firm productivity heterogeneity and skill-biased technological change. It shows that in order to do so policy needs to be a function of the properties of the firm's productivity distribution. The paper undertakes an empiricallygrounded, normative analysis of this issue. The analysis also bears upon the wage distribution, showing how optimal unemployment compensation policy is affected by wages and affects them in turn. A key insight emerging from the analysis is that the degree of firm productivity heterogeneity, in terms of skewness and variance, matters for the design of the time path of unemployment compensation.Productivity, heterogeneity, unemployment compensation policy, technological change, assortative matching

The Impact of Flow in an EEG-based Brain Computer Interface

Major issues in Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) include low usability and poor user performance. This paper tackles them by ensuring the users to be in a state of immersion, control and motivation, called state of flow. Indeed, in various disciplines, being in the state of flow was shown to improve performances and learning. Hence, we intended to draw BCI users in a flow state to improve both their subjective experience and their performances. In a Motor Imagery BCI game, we manipulated flow in two ways: 1) by adapting the task difficulty and 2) by using background music. Results showed that the difficulty adaptation induced a higher flow state, however music had no effect. There was a positive correlation between subjective flow scores and offline performance, although the flow factors had no effect (adaptation) or negative effect (music) on online performance. Overall, favouring the flow state seems a promising approach for enhancing users' satisfaction, although its complexity requires more thorough investigations

Combined Effects of Knowledge About Others' Opinions and Anticipation of Group Discussion on Confirmatory Information Search

There is conclusive evidence that information search processes are typically biased in favor of the information seeker’s own opinion (confirmation bias). Less is known about how knowledge about others’ opinions affects this confirmatory information search. In the present study, the authors manipulated feedback about others’ opinions and anticipation of group interaction. As predicted, the effect of knowledge about others’ opinions on confirmatory information search depended on whether participants anticipated interacting with these others. Specifically, minority members anticipating a group discussion exhibited a particularly strong confirmation bias, whereas minority members who did not anticipate a discussion predominantly sought information opposing their opinion. For participants not anticipating group interaction, confidence about the correctness of one’s decision mediated the impact of knowledge about others’ opinions on confirmatory information search. Results are discussed with regard to the debiasing effect of preference heterogeneity on confirmatory information search in groups

Success Attributions and More: Multidimensional Extensions of the Sexual Attribution Bias to Failure Attributions, Social Emotions, and the Desire for Social Interaction

According to the recently discovered sexual attribution bias (SAB), young adults attribute the success of same-aged, same-sex attractive stimulus persons in a more derogative way than the success of less attractive same-sex persons, whereas this pattern is reversed for members of the opposite sex. Because this bias has so far only been investigated with respect to attributions in success scenarios, two studies examined its potential transferability to other psychological variables and settings: Study 1 (N = 419)demonstrated analogous biases for emotions and the desire for social interaction, and Study 2 (N = 509) revealed that the SAB can also be extended to failure scenarios

Sex ratio influences the motivational salience of facial attractiveness

The sex ratio of the local population influences mating-related behaviours in many species. Recent experiments show that male-biased sex ratios increase the amount of financial resources men will invest in potential mates, suggesting that sex ratios influence allocation of mating effort in humans. To investigate this issue further, we tested for effects of cues to the sex ratio of the local population on the motivational salience of attractiveness in own-sex and opposite-sex faces. We did this using an effort-based key-press task, in which the motivational salience of facial attractiveness was assessed in samples of faces in which the ratio of male to female images was manipulated. The motivational salience of attractive opposite-sex, but not own-sex, faces was greater in the own-sex-biased (high competition for mates) than in the opposite-sex-biased (low competition for mates) condition. Moreover, this effect was not modulated by participant sex. These results present new evidence that sex ratio influences human mating-related behaviours. They also present the first evidence that the perceived sex ratio of the local population may modulate allocation of mating effort in women, as well as men

The effects of grammatical structure and feelings of power on risk behavior prevention

The strategic use of questions and assertions within an interpersonal interaction can indicate and alter the relative power levels of each dyad member. The current research examined the effect of grammatical category (question vs. assertion) on the outcomes of an interaction in which one member is designated to help the other change a risky behavior. In two studies, participants were primed to feel powerful or powerless via a writing task and then matched by assigned power condition to act as the provider (powerful) or recipient (powerless) of help regarding binge drinking. Study 1 established that powerful subjects express stronger intentions to engage in risky behavior when they make statements, but powerless subjects intend to act riskiest when they ask questions. Study 2 tested the hypothesis that questions are particularly risky for powerless participants because they encourage biased recall, which simultaneously influences perceived subjective norms

Web document summarisation: a task-oriented evaluation

We present a query-biased summarisation interface for Web searching. The summarisation system has been specifically developed to act as a component in existing Web search interfaces. The summaries allow the user to more effectively assess the content of Web pages. We also present an experimental investigation of this approach. Our experimental results shows the system appears to be more useful and effective in helping users gauge document relevance than the traditional ranked titles/abstracts approach

Better Be Convincing or Better Be Stylish? a Theory Based Multi-Agent Simulation to Explain Minority Influence in Groups Via Arguments or Via Peripheral Cues

Very often in the history of mankind, social changes took place because a minority was successful in persuading the dominant majority of a new idea. Social psychology provides empirically well-founded theories of social influence that can explain the power of minorities at individual level. In this contribution, we present an agent-based computer simulation of one such theory, the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM). After introducing the theoretical background and our agent model, we present three simulation experiments that confirm past laboratory research but also go beyond its findings by adopting the method of computer simulation. First, we found that even a minority with low argument quality can be successful as long as it has positive peripheral cues. Second, our results suggest that a higher personal relevance of a topic for the majority led it to be more receptive to minority influence only when the minority showed neutral peripheral cues and very good arguments. Third, we found evidence that a neutral or only slightly biased majority is influenced more easily than a strongly biased one. To sum up, we consider these results to illustrate the notion that a well-presented, comprehensible and valid computer simulation provides a useful tool for theory development and application in an exploratory manner as long as it is well founded in terms of the model and theory.Social Influences, Persuasion Processes, Group Processes, Minority Influence, Computer Simulation, Modelling, Theory Verification, Simulation Experiments