The Appeal of the Green Deal: Empirical Evidence for the Influence of Energy Efficiency Policy on Renovating Homeowners

The Green Deal is a major new energy policy designed to support the diffusion of energy efficiency measures in UK homes. This paper provides one of the first empirical examinations of the Green Deal’s success in influencing homeowners’ renovation decisions. Using a repeated measures design in which households were questioned before and after the Green Deal’s launch in January 2013, we assess the policy’s success in raising awareness of energy efficiency. In particular, we test the effectiveness of the Green Deal’s positioning to overcome barriers to renovation among homeowners already interested in or considering energy efficiency measures. Using the innovation decision process (Rogers 2003) as a conceptual framing of the renovation decision process, we examine whether new information on energy efficiency provided by the Green Deal strengthened intentions and its antecedents. We find that (1) energy efficiency is of potential appeal to all renovators regardless of their attitudes about energy efficiency, (2) energy efficiency opportunities need to be identified in the early stages of renovation when homeowners are thinking about ways to improve their home, and (3) homeowners’ intentions towards energy efficiency are weakened by uncertainty about financial benefits, helping to explain the relatively slow uptake of the Green Deal to-date

Effects of Anxiety and Depression on Functional Counterfactual Thinking

Anxiety and depression are mental disorders that are common in the United States that share one common symptom: rumination. While one may traditionally associate rumination with negative affect, some forms of rumination can have positive benefits. For example, counterfactual thinking is one type of rumination that can strengthen behavioral intentions and improve performance on subsequent tasks. In particular, functional counterfactuals enhance self-regulatory success by eliciting thoughts about better alternatives to past events and transforming these thoughts into plans for future action (Epstude & Roese, 2008). However, there is insufficient research on how anxiety and depression affects functional counterfactual thinking. The current research examines the effect of anxiety and depression on functional counterfactual thinking by examining how different judgment tasks influence participants’ activation of behavioral intentions. Participants completed both anxiety and depression measures to determine whether these conditions hinder facilitation of intentions following counterfactual thinking. We found a pattern of facilitation by counterfactual relative to control judgments that varied as a function of the type of action. When the action focused on a behavior, counterfactuals produced faster behavioral intention judgments relative to control. However, when the action was focused on a trait, counterfactuals did not facilitate behavioral intentions relative to control. Neither depression nor anxiety scores influenced this facilitation pattern

Assigning Intentions when Actions are Unobservable: the Impact of Trembling in the Trust Game

This paper reports laboratory experiments investigating behavior when players may make inferences about the intentions behind others' prior actions based on higher- or lower-accuracy information about those actions. We investigate a trust game with first mover trembling, a game in which nature determines whether the first mover's decision is implemented or reversed. The results indicate that second movers give first movers the benefit of the doubt. However, first movers do not anticipate this response. Ultimately, it appears that subjects are thinking on at least three levels when making decisions: they are concerned with their own material well being, the trustworthiness of their counterpart, and how their own actions will be perceived.

There’s A Nice Knockdown Argument For You: Donald Davidson And Modest Intentionalism

It might come as a surprise for someone who has only a superficial knowledge of Donald Davidson’s philosophy that he has claimed literary language to be ‘a prime test of the adequacy of any view on the nature of language’.1 The claim, however, captures well the transformation that has happened in Davidson’s thinking on language since he began in the 1960’s to develop a truth-conditional semantic theory for natural languages in the lines of Alfred Tarski’s semantic conception of truth. About twenty years afterwards, this project was replaced with a view that highlights the flexible nature of language and, in consequence, the importance of the speaker’s intentions for a theory of meaning, culminating in Davidson’s staggering claim that ‘there is no such thing as a language’

Writing (gay and lesbian) wills

This article presents some of the findings of an empirical research project that explored writing wills for gay men and lesbians. The research aimed to examine the extent to which wills might contribute to sociological debates about alternative kinships and intimate citizenship. While the overarching aim of the project was an interest in the contents of the wills (which is to say the intentions of the testators), it also revealed the influence of the lawyers on the contents of the wills and the extent to which changes in legal practice in England have impacted on the place of will-drafting within the legal profession. Exploring this throws light on the extent to which wills express the authentic voice of a testator and raises questions about access to qualified will writers. Turning to the content of the wills, the place of ‘god children’ or children of friends’ is examined. While a very particular type of beneficiary, the focus provides a space for thinking more widely about the construction of the ‘inheritance families’ of gay men and lesbians

Intention, Expectation, and Promissory Obligation

Accepting a promise is normatively significant in that it helps to secure promissory obligation. But what is it for B to accept A’s promise to φ? It is in part for B to intend A’s φ-ing. Thinking of acceptance in this way allows us to appeal to the distinctive role of intentions in practical reasoning and action to better understand the agency exercised by the promisee. The proposal also accounts for rational constraints on acceptance, and the so-called directedness of promissory obligation. Finally, the proposal, conjoined with Cognitivism about intentions, addresses recent criticism of Scanlon’s expectation-based view of promissory obligation

Will You Train Harder for the Next Marathon? The Effect of Counterfactual and Prefactual Thinking on Marathon Runners’ Intentions.

According to the literature, imagining how things would have been better in the past (counterfactual thinking) serves to prepare for future, highlighting prescriptions that can be converted in future intentions and in a more appropriate behavior. This view implicitly assumes that people think about controllable elements in their counterfactual thoughts and that the content of imaginary thoughts about the past and the future is the same. However, some studies (Ferrante, Girotto, Stragà, & Walsh, 2013) found a temporal asymmetry between past and future hypothetical thinking: thinking about how a failure could be a success in the future (prefactual thinking) elicit more controllable elements than thinking about how the same failure could have been a success in the past. In the present study, we replicated and extended previous findings in a more ecological setting. Athletes who have just run a marathon were asked to generate counterfactual or prefactual thoughts. The results showed the same temporal asymmetry found in Ferrante et al. (2013). In addition, we found that focusing on training, instead of focusing on other elements, resulted in a greater intention to train harder for the next marathon in the prefactual condition, but not in the counterfactual condition. Taken together, these findings question the postulated preparatory function of counterfactual thinking

An exploratory randomised trial of a simple, brief psychological intervention to reduce subsequent suicidal ideation and behaviour in patients admitted to hospital for self-harm.

Background Implementation intentions link triggers for self-harm with coping skills and appear to create an automatic tendency to invoke coping responses when faced with a triggering situation. Aims To test the effectiveness of implementation intentions in reducing suicidal ideation and behaviour in a high-risk group. Method Two hundred and twenty-six patients who had self-harmed were randomised to: (a) forming implementation intentions with a ‘volitional help sheet’; (b) self-generating implementation intentions without help; or (c) thinking about triggers and coping, but not forming implementation intentions. We measured self-reported suicidal ideation and behaviour, threats of suicide and likelihood of future suicide attempt at baseline and then again at the 3-month follow-up. Results All suicide-related outcome measures were significantly lower at follow-up among patients forming implementation intentions compared with those in the control condition (ds>0.35). The volitional help sheet resulted in fewer suicide threats (d = 0.59) and lowered the likelihood of future suicide attempts (d = 0.29) compared with patients who self-generated implementation intentions. Conclusions Implementation intention-based interventions, particularly when supported by a volitional help sheet, show promise in reducing future suicidal ideation and behaviour

Involving students in sharing and clarifying learning intentions related to 21st century skills in primary design and technology education

Design and Technology Education is an excellent vehicle for the development of the so-called 21st-Century skills, such as creativity, critical thinking and cooperation. However, the development of these skills through design projects does not yet reach its full potential.  Formative assessment is able to support the learning of 21st-Century skills. In a case study a teacher shares and clarifies the goal of divergent thinking with her class of 11- and 12-year old’s using a newly developed interactive approach. Small drawings were made collectively to visualize the skill. Half-way during the brainstorm session, students were asked to assess their brainstorm results and divergent thinking skills in a collective reflection.  The results show that the interactive visual approach led students to understand how to be successful in divergent thinking. They collectively developed expressions to talk about how sound divergent thinking looks and this enabled them to diagnose strengths and weaknesses in divergent thinking. All interviewed students reported an improvement in divergent thinking after the collective reflection. This indicates that active involvement of students in clarifying learning intentions enables the development of relevant feedback. Although this result was only achieved in one class with one particular teacher, it underlines the value of the interactive visualization tool. Furthermore, it shows that the formative assessment strategy of sharing, clarifying and understanding learning intentions and success criteria related to 21st century skills in the context of real-life design projects supports self-evaluation and feedback uptake

Cigarette smoking and the desire to quit among individuals living with HIV

Among individuals living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), studies have found that smokers are at greater risk than nonsmokers to develop bacterial pneumonia, oral lesions and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) dementia complex. Information is lacking regarding the prevalence of cigarette smoking among people living with HIV or about their intentions to quit smoking. A survey was conducted with a sample of patients attending an HIV outpatient clinic at San Francisco General Hospital to assess the prevalence of cigarette smoking and the level of interest in quitting. In total, 228 assessments were completed. Study results revealed a high percentage of smokers among our sample of individuals living with HIV compared to the percentage of smokers found in the general adult population. A total of 123 individuals (54%) reported that they smoked cigarettes. Men were more than twice as likely to have made previous attempts at smoking cessation than were woman. The majority of cigarette smokers (63%) reported that they were currently thinking about quitting. Respondents\u27 preferences for types of smoking cessation methods are discussed, and recommendations are proposed for identifying and treating tobacco dependence in this population