The need to belong and the value of belongings: Does ostracism change the subjective value of personal possessions?

A growing body of research has demonstrated that feelings of possession influence the valuation of personal possessions. Psychological theories of ownership suggest that a special bond between a person and his/her possession arises in response to the innate motivation for effectance, self-identity and need for home. However, current empirical support is insufficient to make a causal link between these psychological needs and feelings of ownership. In four studies (total N > 800), we manipulated people’s basic needs by inducing feelings of ostracism, which threatens the needs for belonging, self-esteem, control, and belief in a meaningful existence. Despite the fact that these social needs are closely related to the putative antecedents of feelings of ownership, the ostracism manipulation did not significantly affect participants’ feelings of ownership, or their valuations of their possessions, whether measured by willingness to accept or willingness to pay. These results suggest that the special bond that people have with their belongings is not readily used to restore basic psychological needs following the experience of social exclusion.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214804315000725

Impact of the "when the fun stops, stop" gambling message on online gambling behaviour: a randomised, online experimental study

Background: Safer gambling messages are a common freedom-preserving method of protecting individuals from gambling-related harm. Yet, there is little independent and rigorous evidence assessing the effectiveness of safer gambling messages. In our study, we aimed to test the effect of the historically most commonly-used UK safer gambling message on concurrent gambling behaviour of people who gamble in the UK. / Methods: In this study, three preregistered, incentivised, and randomised online experiments, testing the UK's “when the fun stops, stop” message, were carried out via the crowdsourcing platform Prolific. Adults based in the UK who had previously participated in the gambling activities relevant to each experiment were eligible to participate. Experiments 1 and 3 involved bets on real soccer events, and experiment 2 used a commercially available online roulette game. Safer gambling message presence was varied between participants in each experiment. In experiment 2, exposed participants could be shown either a yellow or a black-and-white version of the safer gambling message. Participants were provided with a monetary endowment with which they were allowed to bet. Any of this money not bet was afterwards paid to participants as a bonus, in addition to the payouts from any winning bets. In experiment 2 participants had the opportunity to re-wager any winnings from the roulette game. The primary outcome in experiment 1 was participants’ decisions to accept (or reject) a series of football bets, which varied in their specificity (and payoffs), and the primary outcomes of experiments 2 and 3 were the proportion of available funds bet, which were defined as the total amount of money bet by a participant out of the total that could have been bet. / Findings: Participants for all three experiments were recruited between May 17, 2019, and Oct 17, 2020. Of the 506 participants in experiment 1, 41·3% of available bets were made by the 254 participants in the gambling message condition, which was not significantly different (p=0·15, odds ratio 1·22 [95% CI 0·93 to 1·61]) to the 37·8% of available bets made by the 252 participants in the control condition. In experiment 2, the only credible difference between conditions was that the 501 participants in the condition with the yellow version of the gambling message bet 3·64% (95% Bayesian credibility interval 0·00% to 7·27%) more of available funds left over than the 499 participants in the control condition. There were no credible differences between the bets made by the 500 participants in the black-and-white gambling message condition and the other conditions. In experiment 3, there were no credible differences between the 502 participants in the gambling message condition and the 501 participants in the control condition, with the largest effect being a 5·87% (95% Bayesian credibility interval –1·44% to 13·20%) increase in the probability of betting everything in the gambling message condition. / Interpretation: In our study, no evidence was found for a protective effect of the most common UK safer gambling message. Alternative interventions should be considered as part of an evidence-based public health approach to reducing gambling-related harm. / Funding: University of Warwick, British Academy and Leverhume, Swiss National Science Foundation

Classical transverse Ising spin glass with short- range interaction beyond the mean field approximation

The classical transverse field Ising spin- glass model with short-range interactions is investigated beyond the mean- field approximation for a real d- dimensional lattice. We use an appropriate nontrivial modification of the Bethe- Peierls method recently formulated for the Ising spin- glass. The zero- temperature critical value of the transverse field and the linear susceptibility in the paramagnetic phase are obtained analytically as functions of dimensionality d. The phase diagram is also calculated numerically for different values of d. In the limit d -> infinity, known mean- field results are consistently reproduced.Comment: LaTex, 11 pages, 2 figure

Associations between recalled use of legal UK youth gambling products and adult disordered gambling

Background and aims: The UK allows a number of gambling products to be legally used by people under the age of 18. The aim of this study was to explore associations between recalled legal usage of five youth gambling products and adult disordered gambling. Methods: A retrospective cross-sectional study of 1,057 adult UK gamblers, aged 18–40. Recalled legal use of five youth gambling products (category D fruit machines, coin push machines, crane grab machines, the National Lottery, and National Lottery scratchcards) was correlated with adult disordered gambling symptoms as measured by the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI). Results: Recalled rates of legal engagement with each product ranged from 50.9% for Category D fruit machines to 96.6% for coin push machines. For category D fruit machines, the National Lottery, and National Lottery scratchcards, merely having legally engaged with these products as a child was associated with adult disordered gambling. Furthermore, higher levels of recalled legal youth usage with each of the five products was also associated with adult disordered gambling. Discussion and conclusions: These results relate to recent government proposals to increase the National Lottery scratchcard legal age to 18, and add to a wider literature on youth gambling and subsequent gambling-related harm

A speed-of-play limit reduces gambling expenditure in an online roulette game: Results of an online experiment

UK online casino games are presently not subject to any limitations on speed-of-play or stakes. One recent policy proposal is to ensure that no online casino game can be played faster than its in-person equivalent. Another policy proposal is to limit the maximum stakes on online casino games to £2, to match the current stake limit on electronic gambling machines. This research experimentally investigated the speed-of-play proposal subject to a £2 stake limit, in an online experiment using incentivized payouts based on £4 endowments and a commercial online roulette game, which was slowed-down in one condition to enforce a speed-of-play limit of one spin every 60 seconds. UK residents, aged 18 years and over and with experience in playing online roulette (N = 1,002), were recruited from an online crowdsourcing panel. In the slowed-down condition there was a credible reduction in the amount gambled. This effect occurred via a credible reduction in the mean number of spins which outweighed any potential increases in bet sizes. Speed-of-play limits may be effective in reducing gambling expenditure for online roulette

Acceptance of mixed gambles is sensitive to the range of gains and losses experienced, and estimates of lambda (λ) are not a reliable measure of loss aversion : reply to André and De Langhe

Walasek and Stewart (2015) demonstrated that loss aversion estimated from fitting accept–reject choice data from a set of 50–50 gambles can be made to disappear or even reverse by manipulating the range of gains and losses experienced in different conditions. André and de Langhe (2021) critique this conclusion because in estimating loss aversion on different choice sets, Walasek and Stewart (2015) have violated measurement invariance. They show, and we agree, that when loss aversion is estimated on the choices common to all conditions, there is no difference in prospect theory’s λ parameter. But there are two problems here. First, while there are no differences in λs across conditions, there are very large differences in the proportion of the common gambles that are accepted, which André and de Langhe chose not to report. These choice proportion differences are consistent with decision by sampling (but are inconsistent with prospect theory or any of the alternative mechanisms proposed by André & de Langhe, 2021). Second, we demonstrate a much more general problem related to the issue of measurement invariance: that λ estimated from the accept–reject choices is extremely unreliable and does not generalize even across random splits within large, balanced choice sets. It is therefore not possible to determine whether differences in choice proportions are due to loss aversion or to a bias in accepting or rejecting mixed gambles. We conclude that context has large effects on the acceptance of mixed gambles and that it is futile to estimate λ from accept–reject choices

History Dependent Phenomena in the Transverse Ising Ferroglass: the Free Energy Landscape

In this paper we investigate the relationship between glassy and ferromagnetic phases in disordered Ising ferromagnets in the presence of transverse magnetic fields, $\Gamma$. Iterative mean field simulations probe the free energy landscape and suggest the existence of a glass transition as a function of $\Gamma$ which is distinct from the Curie temperature. New experimental field-cooled and zero-field-cooled data on LiHo$_x$Y$_{1-x}$F$_4$ provide support for our theoretical picture.Comment: 4 pages RevTex; 5 figure

Replica analysis of the generalized p-spin interaction glass model

We investigate stability of replica symmetry breaking solutions in generalized $p$-spin models. It is shown that the kind of the transition to the one-step replica symmetry breaking state depends not only on the presence or absence of the reflection symmetry of the generalized "spin"-operators $\hat{U}$ but on the number of interacting operators and their individual characteristics.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figur

Political attitudes and disease threat : regional pathogen stress is associated with conservative ideology only for older individuals

What environmental factors are associated with individual differences in political ideology, and do such associations change over time? We examine whether reductions in pathogen prevalence in US states over the past 60 years are associated with reduced associations between parasite stress and conservatism. We report a positive association between infection levels and conservative ideology in the USA during the 1960s and 1970s. However, this correlation reduces from the 1980s onwards. These results suggest that the ecological influence of infectious diseases may be larger for older people who grew up (or whose parents grew up) during earlier time periods. We test this hypothesis by analyzing the political affiliation of 45,000 Facebook users, and find a positive association between self-reported political affiliation and regional pathogen stress for older (> 40 years) but not younger individuals. It is concluded that the influence of environmental pathogen stress on ideology may have reduced over time