Risky Business: Measuring the Impact of Introversion, Extraversion, and Risk Aversion on Individual and Joint Decision Making

Decision making is a rich field of study explored across multiple disciplines in a variety of settings. One specific area that has received a great deal of attention is financial decision making, most notably Kahneman and Tversky’s (1979) work on psychological patterns affecting risk aversion in individuals. There are, however, areas yet unexplored, including the role of personality, group composition, as well as emotion regulation. This study seeks to explore these concepts. To accomplish this, an experimental approach was utilized to test risk aversion levels of individuals and partners in their financial decision making. Introversion, extraversion, emotion regulation, anger, and stress, were also accounted for. Overall, results were mixed but did demonstrate promise that emotion regulation, anger, introversion and extraversion were factors in financial decision making

An Egocentric Network Contact Tracing Experiment: Testing Different Procedures to Elicit Contacts and Places

Contact tracing is one of the oldest social network health interventions used to reduce the diffusion of various infectious diseases. However, some infectious diseases like COVID-19 amass at such a great scope that traditional methods of conducting contact tracing (e.g., face-to-face interviews) remain difficult to implement, pointing to the need to develop reliable and valid survey approaches. The purpose of this research is to test the effectiveness of three different egocentric survey methods for extracting contact tracing data: (1) a baseline approach, (2) a retrieval cue approach, and (3) a context-based approach. A sample of 397 college students were randomized into one condition each. They were prompted to anonymously provide contacts and populated places visited from the past four days depending on what condition they were given. After controlling for various demographic, social identity, psychological, and physiological variables, participants in the context-based condition were significantly more likely to recall more contacts (medium effect size) and places (large effect size) than the other two conditions. Theoretically, the research supports suggestions by field theory that assume network recall can be significantly improved by activating relevant activity foci. Practically, the research contributes to the development of innovative social network data collection methods for contract tracing survey instruments

Calibration of Instruments for Measuring Wind Velocity and Direction

Signal Corps wind equipment AN/GMQ-1 consisting of a 3-cup anemometer and wind vane was calibrated for wind velocities from 1 to 200 miles per hour. Cup-shaft failure prevented calibration at higher wind velocities. The action of the wind vane was checked and found to have very poor directional accuracy below a velocity of 8 miles per hour. After shaft failure was reported to the Signal Corps, the cup rotors were redesigned by strengthening the shafts for better operation at high velocities. The anemometer with the redesigned cup rotors was recalibrated, but cup-shaft failure occurred again at a wind velocity of approximately 220 miles per hour. In the course of this calibration two standard generators were checked for signal output variation, and a wind-speed meter was calibrated for use with each of the redesigned cup rotors. The variation of pressure coefficient with air-flow direction at four orifices on a disk-shaped pitot head was obtained for wind velocities of 37.79 53.6, and 98.9 miles per hour. A pitot-static tube mounted in the nose of a vane was calibrated up to a dynamic pressure of 155 pounds per square foot, or approximately 256 miles per hour

Dermot Healy and memory

The essay focuses on Irish author Dermot Healy’s involvement with memories of old people within two collaborative projects: the making of a film based on the documentary novel I Could Read the Sky by Timothy O’Grady and Steve Pyke (1997), and the development of a documentary drama with the clients of a day care centre in Co. Monaghan, entitled Men to the Right, Women to the Left (2001). It examines the methods used to record the material and its subsequent creative use, particularly in comparison with the technique of British verbatim theatre, and in the context of the imperfections of individual memory that are deftly explored in Healy’s memoir The Bend for Home (1996). The essay ultimately argues that notwithstanding problems concerning authenticity, Healy’s play, alongside O’Grady and Pyke’s book and Nichola Bruce’s film version of it, should be regarded as vital contributions to the formation of Ireland’s cultural memory, particularly as they powerfully reconstruct “the mundane everyday” that is so often lost