Utilitarismo: uma perspectiva psicofísica

As doutrinas psicológicas do Empirismo, Associacionismo e Hedonismo serviram de fontes intelectuais para o desenvolvimento do Utilitarismo no século XVIII e da psicofísica no século XIX. O Utilitarismo, articulado primeiramente por Bentham em 1781, apresenta quatro pressupostos psicofísicos implícitos, embora importantes: 1) que utilidade, que reflete "benefício, vantagem, prazer, bem, ou felicidade", são conceitos quintessencialmente psicológicos; 2) que utilidades são quantitativas; 3) que utilidades são comensuráveis através de diferentes objetos; e 4) que utilidades são comensuráveis entre indivíduos. Embora as utilidades algumas vezes refletem a satisfação de necessidades biológicas, elas comumente representam valências ou valores psicológicos, cujas forças subjetivas podem elas mesmas derivar, dinamicamente, de processos de tomada de decisão.The psychological doctrines of empiricism, associationism, and hedonism served as intellectual sources for the development of utilitarianism in the 18th century and psychophysics in the 19th. Utilitarianism, first articulated by Bentham in 1781, makes four implicit but nevertheless important psychophysical assumptions: (1) that utilities, which reflect "benefit, advantage, pleasure, good or happiness," are quintessentially psychological concepts; (2) that utilities are quantitative; (3) that utilities are commensurable across different objects; and (4) that utilities are commensurable across individuals. Although utilities sometimes reflect the satisfaction of biological needs, they commonly represent psychological valences or values, whose subjective strengths may themselves derive, dynamically, from processes of decision-making

Perceptions of High School Principals and Senior Army Instructors Concerning the Impact of JROTC on Rates of Dropout and Transition to College.

The purpose of this study was to determine the perceptions of high school principals and their Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) senior Army instructors about the cost effectiveness and value of JROTC in impacting dropout and transition-to-college rates at their schools. The purposeful sample for this study included principals and senior Army instructors at three high schools, two in northwest North Carolina and one in northeast Tennessee. The research investigated the per-student costs for the operation of the JROTC programs; the dropout rates for JROTC and non-JROTC students; the transition-to-college rates for JROTC and non-JROTC students; and the perceptions of the administrators as to the value and cost effectiveness of JROTC in impacting dropout and transition rates. The study found that the average annual JROTC program cost was $731 per student; JROTC students had a dropout rate of 22.2% and the non-JROTC students had a dropout rate of 21.2%; and, 52.4% of JROTC students indicated that they would transition-to-college, and 84.6% of non-JROTC students indicated that they would transition-to-college. The administrators’ perceptions were evaluated in pretest posttest scenarios utilizing first a 30 question survey employing a Likert-type scale from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.” The administrators were then interviewed using a semi-structured format. Principals and senior Army instructors stated that their JROTC programs were cost-effective in reducing the dropout rates and increasing the college attendance transitioning rates at their schools. In general, principals perceived a higher value for their JROTC programs than did the JROTC senior Army instructors

Perceived effectiveness of problem-focused and emotion-focused coping : the role of appraisal of event controllability and personality traits

Two broad types of coping labeled problem-focused and emotion focused have been used to classify the many ways of coping with stressful events. The goodness of fit between individuals\u27 appraisals of control over a stressful event and their use of problem-focused and emotion-focused coping strategies has been shown to be related to psychological adjustment.However, there is an absence of studies that examine individuals\u27 perceived effectiveness of problem-focused coping and perceived effectiveness of emotion-focused coping in relation to appraisals of control. In addition, two of the five traits of the five-factor model of personality that have consistently been identified as being important in the coping process are neuroticism and extraversion. There has been less coping research conducted with the other three traits of conscientiousness, agreeableness, and op)enness, and with how many of the five traits influence perceived coping effectiveness.In this study, undergraduate students read a vignette that described either a mostly controllable or mostly uncontrollable academically related stressful event and then indicated their appraisal of control over the event and their perceived coping effectiveness when imagining using both problem focused and emotion-focused coping strategies to cope with the given stressful event. Participants also completed an assessment of the five-factors of personality and of socially desirable responding. Problem-focused coping was rated as more effective in coping with the controllable stressful event than with the uncontrollable event. Emotion-focused coping was rated as more effective for coping with the uncontrollable event than with the controllableevent. Across both events problem-focused coping was rated as more effective than emotion-focused coping. Supplementary analyses with gender revealed that women rated emotion-focused coping higher in effectiveness than men.Regression models including controllability, the five personality traits, and social desirability as predictors only accounted for 16% of the variance in perceived effectiveness of problem-focused coping and only 14% of the variance in perceived effectiveness of emotion-focused coping. The meaning of these findings are discussed along with limitations of the study and implications for practice and research

Cross-modal interaction between vision and hearing: A speed—accuracy analysis

Cross-modal facilitation of response time (RT) is said to occur in a selective attention task when the introduction of an irrelevant sound increases the speed at which visual stimuli are detected and identified. To investigate the source of the facilitation in RT, we asked participants to rapidly identify the color of lights in the quiet and when accompanied by a pulse of noise. The resulting measures of accuracy and RT were used to derive speed-accuracy trade-off functions (SATFs) separately for the noise and the no-noise conditions. The two resulting SATFs have similar slopes and intercepts and, thus, can be treated as overlapping segments of a single function. That speeded identification of color with and without the presence of noise can be described by one SATF suggests, in turn, that cross-modal facilitation of RT represents a change in decision criterion induced by the auditory stimulus. Analogous changes in decision criteria might also underlie other measures of cross-modal interactions, such as auditory enhancement of brightness judgments

Recalibrating the Auditory System: A Speed–Accuracy Analysis of Intensity Perception

Recalibration in loudness perception refers to an adaptation-like change in relative responsiveness to auditory signals of different sound frequencies. Listening to relatively weak tones at one frequency and stronger tones at another make the latter appear softer. The authors showed recalibration not only in magnitude estimates of loudness but also in simple response times (RTs) and choice RTs. RTs depend on the sound intensity and may serve as surrogates for loudness. Most important, the speeded classification paradigm also provided measures of errors. RTs and errors can serve jointly to distinguish changes in sensitivity from changes in response criterion. The changes in choice RT under different recalibrating conditions were not accompanied by changes in error rates predicted by the speed–accuracy trade-off. These results lend support to the hypothesis that loudness recalibration does not result from shifting decisional criteria but instead reflects a change in the underlying representation of auditory intensity

Cross-modal interaction between vision and hearing: A speed—accuracy analysis

Cross-modal facilitation of response time (RT) is said to occur in a selective attention task when the introduction of an irrelevant sound increases the speed at which visual stimuli are detected and identified. To investigate the source of the facilitation in RT, we asked participants to rapidly identify the color of lights in the quiet and when accompanied by a pulse of noise. The resulting measures of accuracy and RT were used to derive speed-accuracy trade-off functions (SATFs) separately for the noise and the no-noise conditions. The two resulting SATFs have similar slopes and intercepts and, thus, can be treated as overlapping segments of a single function. That speeded identification of color with and without the presence of noise can be described by one SATF suggests, in turn, that cross-modal facilitation of RT represents a change in decision criterion induced by the auditory stimulus. Analogous changes in decision criteria might also underlie other measures of cross-modal interactions, such as auditory enhancement of brightness judgments

Context effects in visual length perception: Role of ocular, retinal, and spatial location

In three experiments, we examined the transfer of orientation-contingent context effects between the eyes and across portions of the retina with or without variation in external spatial location. Previous research had shown that vertical lines are judged long, relative to horizontal lines, when the stimulus set comprises relatively long horizontals and short verticals (Contextual Condition B), as compared with the reverse when the stimulus set comprises relatively short horizontals and long verticals (Contextual Condition A). Consequently, the contextual set of stimuli influences the magnitude of the horizontal-vertical illusion (HVI), decreasing its size under Contextual Condition A and increasing its size under Contextual Condition B. Experiment 1 showed that exposing one eye to different stimulus contexts modulated the size of the HVI at the exposed eye but had little or no effect at the other eye. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that the effect of the contextual sets generalized poorly across adjacent portions of the retina but transferred almost perfectly across different locations in external space when the retinal location was constant. Thus, orientation-contingent context effects in visual length perception appear to be specific to the eye and to the region of the retina stimulated, suggesting that these effects reflect relatively early and local changes in sensitivity, rather than relatively late and general shifts in response criteria