The impact of negotiated exchange on trust and trustworthiness

Negotiated exchanges and trust problems can be regarded as two different forms of exchange, the former representing exchanges with negotiation and binding contracts, the latter representing asymmetric transactions in which one actor has the opportunity to deceive the other. Both forms of exchange have been extensively studied, but the two respective research traditions exhibit very little overlap. In this paper, we investigate the effects of negotiated exchanges in different network structures on the development of mutual trust. We derive hypotheses from various theories and test them by means of an experiment in which subjects first undertake a series of negotiated exchanges under different power conditions, and then face a trust problem with one of the actors that have been involved in the previous exchanges. The trust problem is operationalized by means of the Investment Game which allows us to look separately at trust and trustworthiness. Our results demonstrate that negotiated exchanges increase mutual trust, but not trustworthiness

Implementing punishment and reward in the public goods game: the effect of individual and collective decision rules

Punishments and rewards are effective means for establishing cooperation in social dilemmas. We compare a setting where actors individually decide whom to sanction with a setting where sanctions are only implemented when actors collectively agree that a certain actor should be sanctioned. Collective sanctioning decisions are problematic due to the difficulty of reaching consensus. However, when a decision is made collectively, perverse sanctioning (e.g. punishing high contributors) by individual actors is ruled out. Therefore, collective sanctioning decisions are likely to be in the interest of the whole group. We employ a laboratory experiment where subjects play Public Goods Games with opportunities for punishment or reward that is implemented either by an individual, a majority, or unanimously. For both punishment and reward, contribution levels are higher in the individual than the majority condition, and higher under majority than unanimity. Often, majority agreement or unanimity was not reached on punishments or rewards

Do teachers know their students? Examining teacher attunement in secondary schools

Using survey data from 457 Italian sixth grade secondary school students (M age = 11.9, SD = 0.7, 46% girls) and 58 of their teachers (M age = 45.7, SD = 9.4, 92.8% female) this study examined the extent to which secondary school teachers were attuned to their students. More specifically, we investigated the extent to which teachers were aware of which students were highly liked, disliked, prosocial, aggressive, or engaged in risky behavior. For each of these five dimensions, teacher attunement was measured by comparing teacher’s nominations to the proportion of received peer nominations per student. Then, a general teacher attunement score was constructed by calculating the mean of these five scores. Descriptive analyses showed a moderate teacher attunement, which was highest for prosocial behavior and lowest for risk behavior. It was investigated whether certain teachers had a higher attunement than others. Our analyses showed that teacher attunement was positively associated with the amount of time teachers spent with their students and with their experience as a teacher. Furthermore, attunement was negatively associated with classroom size

Halo and association effects:Cognitive biases in teacher attunement to peer-nominated bullies, victims, and prosocial students

This study examined whether teachers’ perceptions of students’ behavior (referring to halo effects) and the behavior of teacher-perceived friends (referring to association effects) influenced teachers’ ability to recognize students identified as bullies, victims, and prosocial by their peers. Data came from 1,458 children (Mage = 10.5, 47.5% girls) and 56 teachers (Mage = 40.8, 66.1% females). Perceived likeability was associated with decreased odds and teachers’ perceptions of popularity and externalizing behavior were associated with increased odds for teacher attunement to bullying. Perceived likeability and affiliation were associated with decreased odds for teacher attunement to victimized students. Teachers’ perceptions of externalizing behavior were associated with decreased odds, whereas teachers’ perceptions of affiliation and academic competence were associated with increased odds for attunement to prosociality. Finally, a positive association was found between teacher attunement and the average behavior of teacher-perceived friends for bullying, victimization, and prosociality

Toward integrated analysis of human impacts on forest biodiversity: lessons from Latin America.

Although sustainable forest management (SFM) has been widely adopted as a policy and management goal, high rates of forest loss and degradation are still occurring in many areas. Human activities such as logging, livestock husbandry, crop cultivation, infrastructural development, and use of fire are causing widespread loss of biodiversity, restricting progress toward SFM. In such situations, there is an urgent need for tools that can provide an integrated assessment of human impacts on forest biodiversity and that can support decision making related to forest use. This paper summarizes the experience gained by an international collaborative research effort spanning more than a decade, focusing on the tropical montane forests of Mexico and the temperate rain forests of southern South America, both of which are global conservation priorities. The lessons learned from this research are identified, specifically in relation to developing an integrated modeling framework for achieving SFM. Experience has highlighted a number of challenges that need to be overcome in such areas, including the lack of information regarding ecological processes and species characteristics and a lack of forest inventory data, which hinders model parameterization. Quantitative models are poorly developed for some ecological phenomena, such as edge effects and genetic diversity, limiting model integration. Establishment of participatory approaches to forest management is difficult, as a supportive institutional and policy environment is often lacking. However, experience to date suggests that the modeling toolkit approach suggested by Sturvetant et al. (2008) could be of value in such areas. Suggestions are made regarding desirable elements of such a toolkit to support participatory-research approaches in domains characterized by high uncertainty, including Bayesian Belief Networks, spatial multi-criteria analysis, and scenario planning.Most of the research described here was undertaken in three projects supported by the European Commission (INCO programme), namely SUCRE (ERBIC18CT970146), BIOCORES (ICA4- CT-2001-10095), and ReForLan (INCO-DEV-3 N° 032132), and three Darwin Initiative (DEFRA, UK Government) grants to the senior author. Additional funding was provided by a variety of sources within the partner countries. All sources of financial support are gratefully acknowledged