Engagement in adolescent career preparation: Social support, personality, and the development of choice decidedness and congruence

This longitudinal panel study investigated predictors and outcomes of active engagement in career preparation among 349 Swiss adolescents from the beginning to the end of eighth grade. Latent variable structural equation modeling was applied. The results showed that engagement in terms of self- and environmental-exploration and active career planning related positively to interindividual increases in career decidedness and choice congruence. More perceived social support, early goal decidedness, and particular personality traits predicted more engagement. Support and personality impacted outcomes only mediated through engagement. Early decidedness and congruence were significant predictors of their respective later levels. Implications for practice are presented.

A common mechanism underlying food choice and social decisions

People make numerous decisions every day including perceptual decisions such as walking through a crowd, decisions over primary rewards such as what to eat, and social decisions that require balancing own and others’ benefits. The unifying principles behind choices in various domains are, however, still not well understood. Mathematical models that describe choice behavior in specific contexts have provided important insights into the computations that may underlie decision making in the brain. However, a critical and largely unanswered question is whether these models generalize from one choice context to another. Here we show that a model adapted from the perceptual decision-making domain and estimated on choices over food rewards accurately predicts choices and reaction times in four independent sets of subjects making social decisions. The robustness of the model across domains provides behavioral evidence for a common decision-making process in perceptual, primary reward, and social decision making.

Nest choice in laying hens: Effects of nest partitions and social status.

Nest choice in loose-housed laying hens is influenced by nest characteristics, position and social factors. We examined the relative preference of laying hens for two group-nests differing in the presence or absence of a partition in the middle of the nest and whether this was influenced by social status. We hypothesized that hens would prefer the partitioned nest as it provides more enclosure, and that social status would affect nest choice. Relative preference for the nests was assessed in a free choice preference test conducted in two consecutive trials each with eight groups of 20 hens from 18 to 31 weeks of age. The hens were individually marked and had access to two commercial group-nests (49 × 114 cm), one of which contained an internal wooden partition (30 × 10 cm) which divided the nest in two halves. At 28 weeks of age, the position of the nests was switched. The number of eggs laid was recorded daily. On one day each at 24 and 28 weeks of age (after the nest switch) video recordings were made of the first 5 h of daylight. From these videos we recorded the number of nest visits per egg per nest and the number of nest visits for individual hens. On one day each at 24 and 27 weeks of age we also recorded videos from within the nests to assess individual nest choice for egg-laying. In addition, we recorded aggressive interactions between individual hens during the first hour of light on one day each at 18, 24 and 27 weeks of age to establish social status. We found a relative preference for the partition nest with a greater proportion of eggs laid in these nests as well as fewer nest visits per egg. The hens were also consistent in their egg-laying location over the two days of observation. After the nest switch, however, the hens did not switch egg laying location and the number of visits per egg no longer differed between nests suggesting that the preference for the partitioned nest was only important at the beginning of lay. In addition, although social rank had no impact on preference of nest type, lower ranking hens performed more nest visits and laid their eggs slightly later on the second observation day (week 27 of age) compared with higher ranking hens. Therefore, the use of partitions could improve the attractiveness of group-nests.

Variation in habitat choice and delayed reproduction: Adaptive queuing strategies or individual quality differences?

In most species, some individuals delay reproduction or occupy inferior breeding positions. The queue hypothesis tries to explain both patterns by proposing that individuals strategically delay breeding (queue) to acquire better breeding or social positions. In 1995, Ens, Weissing, and Drent addressed evolutionarily stable queuing strategies in situations with habitat heterogeneity. However, their model did not consider the non - mutually exclusive individual quality hypothesis, which suggests that some individuals delay breeding or occupy inferior breeding positions because they are poor competitors. Here we extend their model with individual differences in competitive abilities, which are probably plentiful in nature. We show that including even the smallest competitive asymmetries will result in individuals using queuing strategies completely different from those in models that assume equal competitors. Subsequently, we investigate how well our models can explain settlement patterns in the wild, using a long-term study on oystercatchers. This long-lived shorebird exhibits strong variation in age of first reproduction and territory quality. We show that only models that include competitive asymmetries can explain why oystercatchers' settlement patterns depend on natal origin. We conclude that predictions from queuing models are very sensitive to assumptions about competitive asymmetries, while detecting such differences in the wild is often problematic.

Who Is Afraid of School Choice?

This study uses survey data to investigate attitudes among Swiss voters to different models offering more freedom of choice in the educational system. There is a clear opposition to the use of taxpayer money to fund private schools, while free choice between public schools seems to appeal to a majority. The opinions appear to be based on a rational calculation of personal utility. For both types of choice, approval rates are lower for middle to high-income groups and individuals with a teaching qualification. Furthermore, residents of small to medium-sized towns are opposed to more school choice. On the support side, approval rates for private school choice are higher among parents of school-age children and residents in urban areas. The results also indicate differences between the country's language regions, attributable to intercultural differences in what people consider the role of the state.

Functional hoarseness in children: short-term play therapy with family dynamic counseling as therapy of choice

Children with nonorganic voice disorders (NVDs) are treated mainly using direct voice therapy techniques such as the accent method or glottal attack changes and indirect methods such as vocal hygiene and voice education. However, both approaches tackle only the symptoms and not etiological factors in the family dynamics and therefore often enjoy little success. The aim of the "Bernese Brief Dynamic Intervention" (BBDI) for children with NVD was to extend the effectiveness of pediatric voice therapies with a psychosomatic concept combining short-term play therapy with the child and family dynamic counseling of the parents. This study compares the therapeutic changes in three groups where different procedures were used, before intervention and 1 year afterward: counseling of parents (one to two consultations; n = 24), Brief Dynamic Intervention on the lines of the BBDI (three to five play therapy sessions with the child plus two to four sessions with the parents; n = 20), and traditional voice therapy (n = 22). A Voice Questionnaire for Parents developed by us with 59 questions to be answered on a four-point Likert scale was used to measure the change. According to the parents' assessment, a significant improvement in voice quality was achieved in all three methods. Counseling of parents (A) appears to have led parents to give their child more latitude, for example, they stopped nagging the child or demanding that he/she should behave strictly by the rules. After BBDI (B), the mothers were more responsive to their children's wishes and the children were more relaxed and their speech became livelier. At home, they called out to them less often at a distance, which probably improved parent-child dialog. Traditional voice therapy (C) seems to have had a positive effect on the children's social competence. BBDI seems to have the deepest, widest, and therefore probably the most enduring therapeutic effect on children with NVD.

Soziale Schichtung und Delinquenz. Eine empirische Anwendung eines Rational Choice-Ansatzes mit Hilfe von Querschnittsdaten des ALLBUS 1990 und 2000

Der oft postulierte Zusammenhang zwischen sozialer Schichtung und Kriminalität ist weder theoretisch abgesichert noch empirisch eindeutig belegt. Ausgehend von der ökonomischen Theorie Gary S. Beckers wird ein erweitertes Modell kriminellen Handelns entwickelt, welches den Einfluss der Schichtzugehörigkeit auf die subjektive Wahrnehmung von Kosten, Nutzen und Entdeckungs-bzw. Erfolgswahrscheinlichkeit krimineller Handlungsalternativen einbezieht. Ferner werden die ebenfalls über die Klassenlage determinierten Anreize (Gelegenheitsstrukturen) und die Internalisierung von Normen („framing“) in das ökonomische Modell integriert. Das Modell wird anhand von Daten aus dem ALLBUS 1990 und 2000 für die Delikte Ladendiebstahl und Steuerbetrug überprüft. Entsprechend den theoretischen Erwartungen kann kein genereller negativer Zusammenhang zwischen Schichtzugehörigkeit und kriminellem Handeln festgestellt werden, wohl aber ein Zusammenhang zwischen Klassenlage und Delikttyp. Sozialstrukturell divergierende Erwartungen hinsichtlich Erfolg einer kriminellen Handlung und Gelegenheitsstrukturen sind bedeutsamer für die Wahl illegaler Handlungsalternativen als Abschreckung durch Strafe oder erwarteter Nutzen aus der Tat. Internalisierte Normvorstellungen machen kriminelle Handlungsalternativen unwahrscheinlich.

Investigating the value of privacy on online social networks: conjoint analysis

Popularity of Online Social Networks has been recently overshadowed by the privacy problems they pose. Users are getting increasingly vigilant concerning information they disclose and are strongly opposing the use of their information for commercial purposes. Nevertheless, as long as the network is offered to users for free, providers have little choice but to generate revenue through personalized advertising to remain financially viable. Our study empirically investigates the ways out of this deadlock. Using conjoint analysis we find that privacy is indeed important for users. We identify three groups of users with different utility patterns: Unconcerned Socializers, Control-conscious Socializers and Privacy-concerned. Our results provide relevant insights into how network providers can capitalize on different user preferences by specifically addressing the needs of distinct groups in the form of various premium accounts. Overall, our study is the first attempt to assess the value of privacy in monetary terms in this context.

Dorsolateral and ventromedial prefrontal cortex orchestrate normative choice.

Humans are noted for their capacity to over-ride self-interest in favor of normatively valued goals. We examined the neural circuitry that is causally involved in normative, fairness-related decisions by generating a temporarily diminished capacity for costly normative behavior, a 'deviant' case, through non-invasive brain stimulation (repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation) and compared normal subjects' functional magnetic resonance imaging signals with those of the deviant subjects. When fairness and economic self-interest were in conflict, normal subjects (who make costly normative decisions at a much higher frequency) displayed significantly higher activity in, and connectivity between, the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and the posterior ventromedial prefrontal cortex (pVMPFC). In contrast, when there was no conflict between fairness and economic self-interest, both types of subjects displayed identical neural patterns and behaved identically. These findings suggest that a parsimonious prefrontal network, the activation of right DLPFC and pVMPFC, and the connectivity between them, facilitates subjects' willingness to incur the cost of normative decisions.

Interactions between dorsolateral and ventromedial prefrontal cortex underlie context-dependent stimulus valuation in goal-directed choice.

External circumstances and internal bodily states often change and require organisms to flexibly adapt valuation processes to select the optimal action in a given context. Here, we investigate the neurobiology of context-dependent valuation in 22 human subjects using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Subjects made binary choices between visual stimuli with three attributes (shape, color, and pattern) that were associated with monetary values. Context changes required subjects to deviate from the default shape valuation and to integrate a second attribute in order to comply with the goal to maximize rewards. Critically, this binary choice task did not involve any conflict between opposing monetary, temporal, or social preferences. We tested the hypothesis that interactions between regions of dorsolateral and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (dlPFC; vmPFC) implicated in self-control choices would also underlie the more general function of context-dependent valuation. Consistent with this idea, we found that the degree to which stimulus attributes were reflected in vmPFC activity varied as a function of context. In addition, activity in dlPFC increased when context changes required a reweighting of stimulus attribute values. Moreover, the strength of the functional connectivity between dlPFC and vmPFC was associated with the degree of context-specific attribute valuation in vmPFC at the time of choice. Our findings suggest that functional interactions between dlPFC and vmPFC are a key aspect of context-dependent valuation and that the role of this network during choices that require self-control to adjudicate between competing outcome preferences is a specific application of this more general neural mechanism.