When does a referent problem affect willingness to pay for a public good?

In two studies we examined the willingness to support action to remedy a public problem. In Study 1 people were asked whether they would financially contribute to solution of a public problem. In Study 2, people were asked whether they would sign a petition to support a public action. The aim was to test whether the willingness to support solution of a public problem is affected by the type of problem that is used as the referent. We hypothesized that the willingness to support a public action is lower when evaluated in the context of a high - as opposed to a low - importance referent problem (importance contrast effect). We also hypothesized that the importance contrast effect is tied to the perceived relatedness between the target and referent problems. The importance contrast effect should be found only when the two problems relate to different category domains. The findings bear out this prediction.Willingness to support, joint evaluation, referent problem, category-bound thinking.

The role of the psychiatric social worker at the Children's Unit of the Metropolitan State Hospital as seen through a study of fifty-four cases

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston Universit

N\u27Awlins Po Boy

Abstract N’Awlins Po Boy draws heavily on the author’s memories and recollections of growing up in the New Orleans of the 1940s and 1950s, but it is a work of fiction. Although the settings and scenes are rendered as accurately as memory allows, the circumstances, situations and people are entirely fictional. During the immediate post-WWII decade, the city went through a rapid series of changes, some calm and nearly unnoticed, others turbulent and upsetting to the natural order that had prevailed for more than two centuries. This is an account of those changes as they might have been seen through the eyes of a pre-teen boy

Growth and integrability of some birational maps in dimension three

Motivated by the study of the Kahan--Hirota--Kimura discretisation of the Euler top, we characterise the growth and integrability properties of a collection of elements in the Cremona group of a complex projective 3-space using techniques from algebraic geometry. This collection consists of maps obtained by composing the standard Cremona transformation $\mathrm{c}_3\in\mathrm{Bir}(\mathbb{P}^3)$ with projectivities that permute the fixed points of $\mathrm{c}_3$ and the points over which $\mathrm{c}_3$ performs a divisorial contraction. More specifically, we show that three behaviour are possible: (A) integrable with quadratic degree growth and two invariants, (B) periodic with two-periodic degree sequences and more than two invariants, and (C) non-integrable with submaximal degree growth and one invariant.Comment: 46 pages, 6 figures, 7 tables, comments are welcom

Trust and attitude in consumer food choices under risk

In this paper, attitude and trust are studied in the context of a food scare (dioxin) with the aim of identifying the components of attitude and trust that significantly affect how purchases are determined. A revised version of the model by MAYER et al. (1995) was tested for two types of food: salmon and chicken. The final model for salmon shows that trust is significantly determined by perceived competence, perceived shared values, truthfulness of information and the experiential attitude (the feeling that consuming salmon is positive), but trust has no impact on behavioural intentions. Consumer preferences seem to be determined by a positive experiential attitude and the perception that breeders, sellers and institutions have values similar to those of the consumer. The model for chicken gave very similar results.trust, trust antecedents, attitude, food scare, purchase intention, Consumer/Household Economics, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Risk and Uncertainty,

Individual differences in competent consumer choice: the role of cognitive reflection and numeracy skills

In this paper, we investigate whether cognitive reflection and numeracy skills affect the quality of the consumers’ decision-making process in a purchase decision context. In a first (field) experiment, an identical product was on sale in two shops with different initial prices and discounts. One of the two deals was better than the other and the consumers were asked to choose the best one and to describe which arithmetic operations they used to solve the problem; then they were asked to complete the numeracy scale (Lipkus et al., 2001). The choice procedures used by the consumers were classified as complete decision approach when all the arithmetic operations needed to solve the problem were computed, and as partial decision approach when only some operations were computed. A mediation model shows that higher numeracy is associated with use of the complete decision approach. In turn, this approach is positively associated with the quality of the purchase decision. Given that these findings highlight the importance of the decision processes, in a second (laboratory) experiment we used a supplementary method to study the type of information search used by the participants: eye-tracking. In this experiment the participants were presented with decision problems similar to those used in experiment 1 and they completed the Lipkus numeracy scale and the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), (Frederick, 2005). Participants with a high CRT score chose the best deal more frequently, and showed a more profound and detailed information search pattern compared to participants with a low CRT score. Overall, results indicate that higher levels of cognitive reflection and numeracy skills predict the use of a more thorough decision process (measured with two different techniques: retrospective verbal reports and eye movements). In both experiments the decision process is a crucial factor which greatly affects the quality of the purchase decision

Improving Diagnostic Accuracy of Anaphylaxis in the Acute Care Setting

The identification and appropriate management of those at highest risk for life-threatening anaphylaxis remains a clinical enigma. The most widely used criteria for such patients were developed in a symposium convened by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease/Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network. In this paper we review the current literature on the diagnosis of acute allergic reactions as well as atypical presentations that clinicians should recognize. Review of case series reveals significant variability in definition and approach to this common and potentially life-threatening condition. Series on fatal cases of anaphylaxis indicate that mucocutaneous signs and symptoms occur less frequently than in milder cases. Of biomarkers studied to aid in the work-up of possible anaphylaxis, drawing blood during the initial six hours of an acute reaction for analysis of serum tryptase has been recommended in atypical cases. This can provide valuable information when a definitive diagnosis cannot be made by history and physical exam

A counterexample to the parity conjecture

Let $[Z]\in\text{Hilb}^d \mathbb A^3$ be a zero-dimensional subscheme of the affine three-dimensional complex space of length $d>0$. Okounkov and Pandharipande have conjectured that the dimension of the tangent space of $\text{Hilb}^d \mathbb A^3$ at $[Z]$ and $d$ have have the same parity. The conjecture was proven by Maulik, Nekrasov, Okounkov and Pandharipande for points $[Z]$ defined by monomial ideals and very recently by Ramkumar and Sammartano for homogeneous ideals. In this paper we exhibit a family of zero-dimensional schemes in $\text{Hilb}^{12} \mathbb A^3$, which disproves the conjecture in the general non-homogeneous case.Comment: 11 pages. Comments are welcom