scholarly journals Institutions and their strength

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Frank Hindriks

Abstract Institutions can be strong or weak. But what does this mean? Equilibrium theories equate institutions with behavioural regularities. In contrast, rule theories explicate them in terms of a standard that people are supposed to meet. I propose that, when an institution is weak, a discrepancy exists between the regularity and the standard or rule. To capture this discrepancy, I present a hybrid theory, the Rules-and-Equilibria Theory. According to this theory, institutions are rule-governed behavioural regularities. The Rules-and-Equilibria Theory provides the basis for two measures of institutional strength. First, institutions that pertain to coordination games solve problems of information. Their strength is primarily a matter of the expected degree of compliance. Second, institutions that concern mixed-motive games solve problems of motivation. Their strength can be measured in terms of the weight people attribute to its rule.

Author(s):  
M. Unser ◽  
B.L. Trus ◽  
A.C. Steven

Since the resolution-limiting factor in electron microscopy of biological macromolecules is not instrumental, but is rather the preservation of structure, operational definitions of resolution have to be based on the mutual consistency of a set of like images. The traditional measure of resolution for crystalline specimens in terms of the extent of periodic reflections in their diffraction patterns is such a criterion. With the advent of correlation averaging techniques for lattice rectification and the analysis of non-crystalline specimens, a more general - and desirably, closely compatible - resolution criterion is needed. Two measures of resolution for correlation-averaged images have been described, namely the differential phase residual (DPR) and the Fourier ring correlation (FRC). However, the values that they give for resolution often differ substantially. Furthermore, neither method relates in a straightforward way to the long-standing resolution criterion for crystalline specimens.


1983 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent J. Samar ◽  
Donald G. Sims

The relationship between the latency of the negative peak occurring at approximately 130 msec in the visual evoked-response (VER) and speechreading scores was investigated. A significant product-moment correlation of -.58 was obtained between the two measures, which confirmed the fundamental effect but was significantly weaker than that previously reported in the literature (-.90). Principal components analysis of the visual evoked-response waveforms revealed a previously undiscovered early VER component, statistically independent of the latency measure, which in combination with two other components predicted speechreading with a multiple correlation coefficient of S4. The potential significance of this new component for the study of individual differences in speechreading ability is discussed.


2010 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oscar H. Hernández ◽  
Muriel Vogel-Sprott

A missing stimulus task requires an immediate response to the omission of a regular recurrent stimulus. The task evokes a subclass of event-related potential known as omitted stimulus potential (OSP), which reflects some cognitive processes such as expectancy. The behavioral response to a missing stimulus is referred to as omitted stimulus reaction time (RT). This total RT measure is known to include cognitive and motor components. The cognitive component (premotor RT) is measured by the time from the missing stimulus until the onset of motor action. The motor RT component is measured by the time from the onset of muscle action until the completion of the response. Previous research showed that RT is faster to auditory than to visual stimuli, and that the premotor of RT to a missing auditory stimulus is correlated with the duration of an OSP. Although this observation suggests that similar cognitive processes might underlie these two measures, no research has tested this possibility. If similar cognitive processes are involved in the premotor RT and OSP duration, these two measures should be correlated in visual and somatosensory modalities, and the premotor RT to missing auditory stimuli should be fastest. This hypothesis was tested in 17 young male volunteers who performed a missing stimulus task, who were presented with trains of auditory, visual, and somatosensory stimuli and the OSP and RT measures were recorded. The results showed that premotor RT and OSP duration were consistently related, and that both measures were shorter with respect to auditory stimuli than to visual or somatosensory stimuli. This provides the first evidence that the premotor RT is related to an attribute of the OSP in all three sensory modalities.


Crisis ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
D.P. Doessel ◽  
Ruth F.G. Williams ◽  
Harvey Whiteford

Background. Concern with suicide measurement is a positive, albeit relatively recent, development. A concern with “the social loss from suicide” requires careful attention to appropriately measuring the phenomenon. This paper applies two different methods of measuring suicide data: the conventional age-standardized suicide (count) rate; and the alternative rate, the potential years of life lost (PYLL) rate. Aims. The purpose of applying these two measures is to place suicide in Queensland in a historical and comparative (relative to other causes of death) perspective. Methods. Both measures are applied to suicide data for Queensland since 1920. These measures are applied also to two “largish” causes of death and two “smaller” causes of death, i.e., circulatory diseases, cancers, motor vehicle accidents, suicide. Results. The two measures generate quite different pictures of suicide in Queensland: Using the PYLL measure, suicide is a quantitatively larger issue than is indicated by the count measure. Conclusions. The PYLL measure is the more appropriate measure for evaluation exercise of public health prevention strategies. This is because the PYLL measure is weighted by years of life lost and, thus, it incorporates more information than the count measure which implicitly weights each death with a somewhat partial value, viz. unity.


2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (6) ◽  
pp. 409-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne B. Janssen ◽  
Martin Schultze ◽  
Adrian Grötsch

Abstract. Employees’ innovative work is a facet of proactive work behavior that is of increasing interest to industrial and organizational psychologists. As proactive personality and supervisor support are key predictors of innovative work behavior, reliable, and valid employee ratings of these two constructs are crucial for organizations’ planning of personnel development measures. However, the time for assessments is often limited. The present study therefore aimed at constructing reliable short scales of two measures of proactive personality and supervisor support. For this purpose, we compared an innovative approach of item selection, namely Ant Colony Optimization (ACO; Leite, Huang, & Marcoulides, 2008 ) and classical item selection procedures. For proactive personality, the two item selection approaches provided similar results. Both five-item short forms showed a satisfactory reliability and a small, however negligible loss of criterion validity. For a two-dimensional supervisor support scale, ACO found a reliable and valid short form. Psychometric properties of the short version were in accordance with those of the parent form. A manual supervisor support short form revealed a rather poor model fit and a serious loss of validity. We discuss benefits and shortcomings of ACO compared to classical item selection approaches and recommendations for the application of ACO.


2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 239-249
Author(s):  
Xuezhu Ren ◽  
Tengfei Wang ◽  
Karl Schweizer ◽  
Jing Guo

Abstract. Although attention control accounts for a unique portion of the variance in working memory capacity (WMC), the way in which attention control contributes to WMC has not been thoroughly specified. The current work focused on fractionating attention control into distinctly different executive processes and examined to what extent key processes of attention control including updating, shifting, and prepotent response inhibition were related to WMC and whether these relations were different. A number of 216 university students completed experimental tasks of attention control and two measures of WMC. Latent variable analyses were employed for separating and modeling each process and their effects on WMC. The results showed that both the accuracy of updating and shifting were substantially related to WMC while the link from the accuracy of inhibition to WMC was insignificant; on the other hand, only the speed of shifting had a moderate effect on WMC while neither the speed of updating nor the speed of inhibition showed significant effect on WMC. The results suggest that these key processes of attention control exhibit differential effects on individual differences in WMC. The approach that combined experimental manipulations and statistical modeling constitutes a promising way of investigating cognitive processes.


2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 122-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jayson L. Dibble ◽  
Sarah F. Rosaen

This study supports the refinement of the concept of parasocial interaction (PSI) to apply to mediated personae that viewers might dislike. By contrast, traditional approaches have treated PSI as a sort of friendship with the mediated persona. Participants (N = 249) were randomly assigned to self-select a liked or disliked television persona. Various viewer reactions to that character were measured using two different measures of PSI. The data revealed that participants did experience PSI with disliked characters as well as liked characters, and that the two measures of PSI did not appear to assess the same construct. Implications for future research are discussed.


2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan E. Knauss ◽  
Katherine W. Byington ◽  
Rex A. Wright ◽  
David C. Schwebel

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