Framing effects and output interference in a concurring partner review context: Theory and exploratory analysis

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A Universal Model of Global Civil Unrest

Civil unrest is a powerful form of collective human dynamics, which has led to major transitions of societies in modern history. The study of collective human dynamics, including collective aggression, has been the focus of much discussion in the context of modeling and identification of universal patterns of behavior. In contrast, the possibility that civil unrest activities, across countries and over long time periods, are governed by universal mechanisms has not been explored. Here, we analyze records of civil unrest of 170 countries during the period 1919-2008. We demonstrate that the distributions of the number of unrest events per year are robustly reproduced by a nonlinear, spatially extended dynamical model, which reflects the spread of civil disorder between geographic regions connected through social and communication networks. The results also expose the similarity between global social instability and the dynamics of natural hazards and epidemics.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

The repulsive lattice gas, the independent-set polynomial, and the Lov\'asz local lemma

We elucidate the close connection between the repulsive lattice gas in equilibrium statistical mechanics and the Lovasz local lemma in probabilistic combinatorics. We show that the conclusion of the Lovasz local lemma holds for dependency graph G and probabilities {p_x} if and only if the independent-set polynomial for G is nonvanishing in the polydisc of radii {p_x}. Furthermore, we show that the usual proof of the Lovasz local lemma -- which provides a sufficient condition for this to occur -- corresponds to a simple inductive argument for the nonvanishing of the independent-set polynomial in a polydisc, which was discovered implicitly by Shearer and explicitly by Dobrushin. We also present some refinements and extensions of both arguments, including a generalization of the Lovasz local lemma that allows for "soft" dependencies. In addition, we prove some general properties of the partition function of a repulsive lattice gas, most of which are consequences of the alternating-sign property for the Mayer coefficients. We conclude with a brief discussion of the repulsive lattice gas on countably infinite graphs.Comment: LaTex2e, 97 pages. Version 2 makes slight changes to improve clarity. To be published in J. Stat. Phy

Affective lability and difficulties with regulation are differentially associated with amygdala and prefrontal response in women with Borderline Personality Disorder

The present neuroimaging study investigated two aspects of difficulties with emotion associated with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD()): affective lability and difficulty regulating emotion. While these two characteristics have been previously linked to BPD symptomology, it remains unknown whether individual differences in affective lability and emotion regulation difficulties are subserved by distinct neural substrates within a BPD sample. To address this issue, sixty women diagnosed with BPD were scanned while completing a task that assessed baseline emotional reactivity as well as top-down emotion regulation. More affective instability, as measured by the Affective Lability Scale (ALS()), positively correlated with greater amygdala responses on trials assessing emotional reactivity. Greater difficulties with regulating emotion, as measured by the Difficulties with Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS()), was negatively correlated with left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG()) recruitment on trials assessing regulatory ability. These findings suggest that, within a sample of individuals with BPD, greater bottom-up amygdala activity is associated with heightened affective lability. By contrast, difficulties with emotion regulation are related to reduced IFG recruitment during emotion regulation. These results point to distinct neural mechanisms for different aspects of BPD symptomology

Priming/Reaction-Time Evidence of the Structure of Auditors’ Knowledge of Financial Statement Errors

Audit research has generally concluded that auditors primarily organize their memory of financial statement errors by audit objective rather than transaction cycle. Although this stream of research has typically used the cue sorting method, the concept of primary organizing dimension is believed to be sufficiently general to obtain consistent results with other experimental methods (e.g., Nelson et al. 1995). The purpose of this study is to determine if the finding that auditor knowledge of financial statement errors is organized primarily around audit objectives can be replicated with a priming/reaction time method. The priming/reaction time method is widely used in knowledge structure research and appears consistent with the concept of primary organizing dimension discussed in the audit literature. We conducted a study with sorting and priming/reaction time phases. Consistent with prior research, the sorting phase found that audit objective was the primary organizing dimension for both managers and staff. However, the priming/reaction time phase found that managers’ knowledge was primarily structured around transaction cycle, while staff demonstrated no primary organizing structure

The effect of stage of development and financial health on auditor decision behavior in the going-concern task

The effect of different task settings within an industry on auditor behavior is examined for the going-concern task. Using an interactive computer process-tracing method, experienced auditors from four Big 6 accounting firms examined cases based on real data that differed on two dimensions of task settings: stage of organizational development (start-up and mature) and financial health (bankrupt and nonbankrupt). Auditors made judgments about each entity\u27s ability to continue as a going concern and, if they had substantial doubt about continued existence, they listed evidence they would seek as mitigating factors. There are seven principal results. First, information acquisition and by inference, problem representations were sensitive to differences in task settings. Second financial mitigating factors dominated nonfinancial mitigating factors in both start-up and mature settings. Third, auditors\u27 behavior reflected configural processing. Fourth, categorizing information into financial and nonfinancial dimensions was critical to understanding how auditors\u27 information acquisition and, by inference, problem representations differed across settings. Fifth, Type I errors (determining that a healthy company is a going-concern problem) differed from correct judgments in terms of information acquisition, although Type II errors (determining that a problem company is viable) did not. This may indicate that Type II errors are primarily due to deficiencies in other stages of processing, such as evaluation. Sixth, auditors who were more accurate tended to follow flexible strategies for financial information acquisition. Finally, accurate performance in the going-concern task was found to be related to acquiring (1) fewer information cues, (2) proportionately more liquidity information and (3) nonfinancial information earlier in the process

The Effects of Task Size and Similarity on the Decision Behavior of Bank Loan Officers

Research on decision-making behavior has shown that decision strategies used by individuals are contingent upon the characteristics of the task. For example, as the task size (i.e., the number of alternatives and/or the number of dimensions describing each alternative) increases, individuals tend to quickly eliminate alternatives that do not meet a criterion level for any dimension (i.e., they adopt a noncompensatory decision strategy, in which a high value on one dimension cannot offset or compensate for a low value on another dimension). Most of this research has involved consumers making buying decisions. The purpose of the research reported here was to determine if contingent decision behavior extends to experts (experienced bank loan officers) making business decisions (loan decisions). In this study two task characteristics (task size, and similarity of loan profiles describing alternatives) were varied in a bank loan decision context. Two process tracing methods (information boards and think-aloud verbal protocol analysis) were used to obtain evidence of how eleven bank loan officers made choices among alternative loan candidates. Of particular interest was the effect that changes in task characteristics had on loan officers' decision strategies. The results indicated that when faced with tasks of increasing size, loan officers adapted their behavior in a manner consistent with an increased use of noncompensatory decision strategies. In contrast, when the loan profiles of candidate companies were similar loan officers exhibited an increased use of compensatory strategies. It was also found that when both the task size and similarity of alternatives were varied loan officers adapted their behavior as if they processed these characteristics serially. These results indicate that contingent behavior associated with the two types of task characteristics may be quite different. A priori, there was reason to believe that expert loan officers would not exhibit contingent decision behavior. The fact that their decision strategies were contingent upon task characteristics has important implications for managerial practice and research. First, the results have design implications for information and decision support systems for lending institutions. Second, future research should investigate the consequences of serial processing of task characteristics.expert decision making, contingent behavior, process tracing