Normative Principles for Decision-Making in Natural Environments

The decisions we make are shaped by a lifetime of learning. Past experience guides the way that we encode information in neural systems for perception and valuation, and determines the information we retrieve when making decisions. Distinct literatures have discussed how lifelong learning and local context shape decisions made about sensory signals, propositional information, or economic prospects. Here, we build bridges between these literatures, arguing for common principles of adaptive rationality in perception, cognition, and economic choice. We discuss how a single common framework, based on normative principles of efficient coding and Bayesian inference, can help us understand a myriad of human decision biases, including sensory illusions, adaptive aftereffects, choice history biases, central tendency effects, anchoring effects, contrast effects, framing effects, congruency effects, reference-dependent valuation, nonlinear utility functions, and discretization heuristics. We describe a simple computational framework for explaining these phenomena. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Psychology, Volume 73 is January 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Candidates rather than context shape campaign sentiment in French Presidential Elections (1965–2017)

The manuscript explores whether and how the strategic context of elections and candidate attributes affect campaign sentiment. Studying five decades of French presidential elections, it provides the first longitudinal test of campaign tone outside the USA. Thereby, the paper examines concerns of an increase in negativity due to changes in electoral competition. It takes leverage from the electoral system, to study whether the strategic environment of elections (first vs. second rounds of elections) or candidate characteristics (ideology and outsider status) determine the use of positive and negative tone. To this end, the paper applies sentiment analysis to personal manifestos (professions de foi) issued by all candidates running in presidential elections (1965–2017) and validates the French Lexicoder Sentiment Dictionary for longitudinal studies of campaign tone. Results reject worries about an increase in negativity in French elections over time. Moreover, while context matters to some extent, candidate attributes are by far more important for explaining campaign sentiment in presidential races. The findings contribute to research on the role of sentiment in electoral competition and tackle broader issues related to the impact of positive and negative political communication for elections and democracies.

Cultural Elements of Knowledge Management

Organisational culture is, perhaps not surprisingly, by far the most researched topic in relation to knowledge management to date. It is widely argued that an open, collaborative culture enhances knowledge processes, activities and practices, and that this open culture will help organisations be successful in the long-run (see for example, Du Plessis, 2006; Kathiravelu et al., 2014; Intezari et al., 2017). Organisational values, assumptions, and the cultural context shape what employees believe in, their shared understanding of how things are done in the organisation, as well as their shared language. The process of meaning-making through different knowledge practices is therefore largely shaped by organisational culture and embedded in it (Hislop et al., 2018).

First Impressions Matter: Warm-up Play Impacts Children’s Cooperative Ability with an Unfamiliar Same-aged Peer

Interaction quality during cooperative exchanges impacts children’s ability to successfully coordinate their actions with a same-aged peer to attain a shared goal. However, it is unclear how first impressions formed in one context shape children’s ability to cooperate in a subsequent task. In the present research, we examine whether the interaction quality (e.g., affiliation, antagonism, joint coordinated engagement, and joint contribution) of a warm-up period between two-year-old unfamiliar dyads (N = 144 dyads) predicts the dyad’s performance and interaction quality in a following cooperative task. Children who participated more effectively during a toy clean-up activity at the end of the warm-up interaction were more likely to respond to their partner’s efforts to cooperate in the novel cooperative task. Initial displays of affiliation during the warm-up period appeared to enhance cooperative ability by facilitating cooperative motivation. The present research demonstrates that first impressions influence toddlers’ cooperative performance and thus, highlights the importance of considering task order and children’s social behaviours when designing studies on cooperative competence.

Between social footprint and compliance, or “what IBAMA wants”

This article analyzes an “Environmental Education Project” run by the Norwegian state oil company Equinor targeting poor women in the seafood processing industry along the coastline adjacent to Equinor’s off shore Peregrino field in Brazil. The project is a prerequisite for Equinor’s operating license, as required by Brazilian federal environmental authorities. I analyze the broader sociopolitical territory within which the project is implemented, how it is discursively framed and institutionally implemented within Equinor Brazil, and how this conjoins with the Brazilian state’s regulatory framework. I argue that Brazilian legislation and the hands-on approach of authorities uphold Equinor’s commitment to the project and bolster Equinor’s CSR practitioners’ capacity to defend it within the corporate organization. The analysis demonstrates how national legislation and political context shape international oil and gas companies’ approaches to CSR.

Explaining variation in evidence-based policy making in the American states

Background: Though evidence-based policy (EBP) has attracted considerable attention from the public, academics, and governments, prior studies have revealed little about how political parties, institutions, and policy context shape the adoption and implementation of these policies in the American states.Aims and objectives: Develop objective criteria for measuring these policies, as well as a hierarchy which describes the features that make some policies more advanced. This paper presents the first comprehensive study on EBP in the American states.Methods: Using assessments by the Pew and MacArthur foundations to measure EBP in the states for four topics: criminal justice, juvenile justice, behavioural health, and child welfare. Assess the relationship between EBP use and state political and institutional factors.Results: Democratic governors, Republican legislatures, state innovativeness are significant predictors of EBP engagement.Discussion and conclusions: This research makes a substantial contribution to the study of EBP and opens new avenues for future research on the political, cultural, and institutional factors that influence EBP adoption and implementation. In an era of extreme partisanship, our study finds that EBP is a policy niche where actors and institutions across political parties use research evidence to inform effective and efficient policies in ways that maximise the electoral incentives that such policies can offer.

The role of school in shaping gender differences in adolescent life satisfaction: a cross-national study

In childhood and adolescence, boys tend to report higher life satisfaction (LS) than girls but satisfaction in different life domains is higher among boys in some cases -self, time-use- and higher among girls in others -family and, especially, school, which is the domain where greater gender differences are observed. However, little research has been conducted on how schools and different factors in the school context shape gender differences in adolescents’ LS and how this varies across countries. I investigate this question by conducting a series of statistical analyses using PISA 2015 data on 15-year-old students in 33 countries. Results indicate that girls report lower LS than boys on average in all the countries studied. Moreover, although school is a life domain where experiences which relate to LS tend to be more negative among boys than among girls (mainly via bullying and relationships with teachers), the opposite is observed for a few school-related factors (notably school anxiety). Furthermore, in some countries, the gender gap in LS varies across schools, which suggests that schools may play an important role in influencing students’ LS in different ways for girls and boys. Finally, for all the above, differences across countries are significant.