Aesthetic appeal influences visual search performance.

Aesthetic appeal of a visual image can influence performance in time-critical tasks, even if it is irrelevant to the task. This series of experiments examined whether aesthetic appeal can act as an object attribute that guides visual search. If appeal enhances the salience of the targets pre-attentively, then appealing icons would lead to more efficient searches than unappealing targets and, conversely, appeal of distractors would reduce search efficiency. Three experiments (N = 112) examined how aesthetic appeal influences performance in a classic visual search task. In each experiment, participants completed 320 visual search trials, with icons varying in rated aesthetic appeal and either visual complexity (Experiments 1 and 2) of concreteness (Experiment 3) among two, four, eight, or 11 distractor icons. While target appeal did not influence search efficiency it sped up search times in all three experiments: appealing targets led to faster response time (RT) than unappealing targets across all experiments, and compared to neutral distractors, appealing distractors slowed search RT down. These findings are the first to show that an object's aesthetic appeal influences visual search performance

Association of resilience and psychological flexibility with surgeons' mental wellbeing.

BACKGROUND: Existing research highlights the link between certain personality traits and mental health in surgeons. However, little research has explored the important role of psychological skills and qualities in potentially explaining this link. A cross-sectional survey of UK-based surgeons was used to examine whether two such skills (psychological flexibility and resilience) helped to explain why certain personality traits might be linked to mental health in surgeons. METHOD: An online survey comprising measures of personality (neuroticism, extraversion and conscientiousness), psychological skills/qualities (psychological flexibility and resilience) and mental health (depression, anxiety, stress and burnout) was sent to surgeons practising in the UK. Mediation analyses were used to examine the potential mediating role of psychological flexibility and resilience in explaining the relationship between personality factors and mental health. RESULTS: A total of 348 surgeons completed the survey. In all 12 mediation models, psychological flexibility and/or resilience played a significant role in explaining the relationship between personality traits (neuroticism, extraversion and conscientiousness) and mental health (depression, anxiety and burnout). CONCLUSION: Findings suggest that it is not only a surgeon's personality that is associated with their mental health, but the extent to which a surgeon demonstrates specific psychological qualities and skills (psychological flexibility and resilience). This has important implications for improving surgeons' mental wellbeing, because psychological flexibility and resilience are malleable, and can be successfully targeted with interventions in a way that personality traits cannot

New Venture Internationalization: The Role of Venture Capital Types and Reputation

This study examines how different types of venture capital relate to new venture internationalization. Using a sample of 646 U.S. new ventures that executed IPOs between 1995 and 2010, we find that ventures with foreign or corporate venture capital have higher levels of international intensity. We also investigate the moderating role of VC reputation on the relationship between foreign venture capital and international intensity and corporate venture capital and international intensity. Our results suggest that VC reputation weakens the positive relationship between corporate VC and international intensity

nudge_and_bias_in_subjective_ratings.xlsx

   Subjective ratings have been central to the evaluation of icon characteristics. This study sought to examine the extent to which ratings may become biased when participants are presented with novel icons which have a limited range of variability in the icon characteristics being rated. Six key icon characteristics were rated which were visual (visual complexity, appeal), affective (valence, feelings) and semantic (concreteness, semantic distance). The range of icon values presented for rating was systematically manipulated in the expectation that limited variation in the to-be-rated stimulus characteristic may change the participants’ choice architecture, creating systematic biases in the ratings obtained. </p

Nudge and bias in subjective ratings? The role of icon sets in determining ratings of icon characteristics.

Subjective ratings have been central to the evaluation of icon characteristics. The current study examined biases in ratings in relation to the context in which icons are presented. Context was manipulated between-participants, with some groups rating icon sets with limited variability, and others rating icon sets with wide variability. It was predicted that the context created by the icon set would influence participants’ ratings; when the range of icons was limited this would create bias given participants’ expectation that a full range of icon values was being presented. Six key icon characteristics were rated which were visual (visual complexity, appeal), affective (valence, feelings) and semantic (concreteness, semantic distance). Some icon characteristics were susceptible to rating bias while others were not. Where subjective judgements were being made of visual icon characteristics (appeal/complexity) and highly concrete icons which were very pictorial, there was clear evidence of substantial bias in ratings. The same susceptibility to bias was not evident when ratings relied solely on learned semantic associations or were associated with the emotional attributions made to icons. The dynamic nature of the ratings bias was demonstrated when the rating context was changed without participants’ knowledge. When participants rated further blocks of icons providing a different range of the to-be-rated characteristic, this resulted in rapid and dramatic changes in rating behaviour. These findings demonstrate the need for representative sampling of icon characteristics to avoid ratings bias. Practically, this is important when determining the usability of newly-designed icons sets in order to avoid over-valuing or under-valuing of key characteristics

Beyond emoticons : combining affect and cognition in icon design

Recently there has been a shift in emphasis from interface usability to interface appeal. Very few studies, however, have examined the link and evidence regarding the direction of the relationship between the two remains equivocal. This paper examines the nature of the relationships between the usability and aesthetic appeal of icons. The findings from three studies presented here show evidence, not only for the symbiotic relationship between aesthetic preference and performance, but also for the possible causal links between the two. The implications of these findings for interface design and theoretical explanations of usability are discussed

Assessing user perceptions of trust and security in manipulated versions of low trust and high trust tourism websites

The aim of this study was to investigate how perceptions of security and trust are involved in user evaluations of tourism websites and whether manipulations to heighten or lessen trust features could predict trust perceptions. Seven websites were manipulated to produce low and high trust versions, with the original used as a control version. Four trust manipulations were used based on the literature: level of currency, credibility, craftsmanship and trust logos. Fifty-six participants viewed one version of each website for 6 seconds and submitted an immediate rating of trust for each site. Following this, an 11-item self-report measure was completed for each website, to collect more considered perceptions of trust, appeal, security and usability. Self-perception measures of trust disposition and concern for information privacy were also collected. The analyses showed that the presence or absence of trust features reliably led to higher and lower perceptions of trust respectively. Also, those scoring higher on trust disposition gave higher trust ratings. We conclude that websites can be reliably designed to engender more or less perceived trust, however individual differences need to be considered. This preliminary research is limited but studying just four factors and further research is needed to manipulate other website features.</p