Does Slack Buffer? Market Performance after Environmental Shock

Slack is a resource held by a firm but exceeds its needs. It is crucial for a firm to raise more attention on slack when facing environmental shocks, which are one of the causes of unsustainability. Based on agency theory and behavioral theory, this paper analyzes the buffer effect of slack on market performance under different periods and degrees of environmental shocks. Taking two major earthquakes that occurred in China as the natural experimental background and the listed firms in hit areas as the sample, we find that environmental shock is exposed to acts as a positive contingency for the impact of unabsorbed slack on market performance, and as a negative contingency for absorbed slack’s effect. The severity of environmental shock promotes the unabsorbed slack to act as a buffer in the immediate post-shock period and absorbed slack in the during-shock period. These findings contribute to answering the question of how to configure slack to protect firms and even achieve sustainable development when facing environmental shock.

The Negative Contingency Illusion: A Cognitive Bias Leading to Misjudgement of Protection

Humans possess a highly adaptive ability to draw inferences about the world by recognizing meaningful links between stimuli and events: making contingency judgements. We describe a systematic bias in contingency judgements that we label the negative contingency illusion in which individuals falsely judge a cue to be protective against an outcome. We demonstrate that the illusion arises when outcome probability is low and occurs when there is no actual relationship between cue and outcome and even when there is a modest positive relationship between cue and outcome. Such misjudgements may lead individuals to superstitious beliefs and could have major public health implications if they lead to the belief in and promotion of treatments that are ineffective or deleterious to the prevention and treatment of illness.

Effects of predictive and incentive value manipulation on sign- and goal-tracking behavior

When a neutral stimulus is repeatedly paired with an appetitive reward, two different types of conditioned approach responses may develop: a sign-tracking response directed toward the neutral cue, or a goal-tracking response directed toward the location of impending reward delivery. Sign-tracking responses have been postulated to result from attribution of incentive value to conditioned cues, while goal-tracking reflects the assignment of only predictive value to the cue. We therefore hypothesized that sign-tracking would be more sensitive to manipulations of incentive value, while goal-tracking would be more responsive to changes in the predictive value of the cue. We tested sign- and goal-tracking before and after devaluation of a food reward using lithium chloride, and tested whether either response could be learned under negative contingency conditions that precluded any serendipitous reinforcement of the behavior that might support instrumental learning. We also tested the effects on sign- and goal-tracking of blocking the predictive value of a cue using simultaneous presentation of a pre-conditioned cue. We found that sign-tracking was sensitive to outcome devaluation, while goal-tracking was not. We also confirmed that both responses are Pavlovian because they can be learned under negative contingency conditions. Goal-tracking was completely blocked by a pre-conditioned cue, while sign-tracking was only partially reduced. These results indicate that sign- and goal-tracking follow different rules of reinforcement learning and suggest a need to revise current models of associative learning to account for these differences.

MANAGEMENT OF TIME AND COST CONTINGENCIES IN CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS: A CONTRACTOR PERSPECTIVE

The management of threats and opportunities plays a key-role in enhancing project performance. However, there is a gap in literature concerning how general contractors manage threats and opportunities in construction projects, in particular in the use of time and cost contingencies. This research partially addresses this gap through a case study of two large Spanish construction companies. The research presented two key factors determining how the contractors analyzed manage time and cost contingencies: project objectives and existing mistrust among the contractor’s team members. The research also found that managers use time and cost contingencies not only to manage threats, but also as tools for managing opportunities, thereby providing insight into a previously undescribed form of contingency: the negative contingency. The research results enable a better understanding of the actual behavior of general contractors, which contributes to paving the way for developing enhanced methods for contingencies management.

Pseudocontingencies

In research on causal inference and in related paradigms (conditioning, cue learning, attribution), it has been traditionally taken for granted that the statistical contingency between cause and effect drives the cognitive inference process. However, while a contingency model implies a cognitive algorithm based on joint frequencies (i.e., the cell frequencies of a 2 x 2 contingency table), recent research on pseudocontingencies (PCs) suggests a different mental algorithm that is driven by base rates (i.e., the marginal frequencies of a 2 x 2 table). When the base rates of two variables are skewed in the same way, a positive contingency is inferred. In contrast, a negative contingency is inferred when base rates are skewed in opposite directions. The chapter describes PCs as a resilient cognitive illusion, as a proxy for inferring contingencies in the absence of solid information, and as a smart heuristic that affords valid inferences most of the time.

Responses of Amygdala Neurons to Positive Reward-Predicting Stimuli Depend on Background Reward (Contingency) Rather Than Stimulus-Reward Pairing (Contiguity)

Prediction about outcomes constitutes a basic mechanism underlying informed economic decision making. A stimulus constitutes a reward predictor when it provides more information about the reward than the environmental background. Reward prediction can be manipulated in two ways, by varying the reward paired with the stimulus, as done traditionally in neurophysiological studies, and by varying the background reward while holding stimulus-reward pairing constant. Neuronal mechanisms involved in reward prediction should also be sensitive to changes in background reward independently of stimulus-reward pairing. We tested this assumption on a major brain structure involved in reward processing, the central and basolateral amygdala. In a 2 × 2 design, we examined the influence of rewarded and unrewarded backgrounds on neuronal responses to rewarded and unrewarded visual stimuli. Indeed, responses to the unchanged rewarded stimulus depended crucially on background reward in a population of amygdala neurons. Elevating background reward to the level of the rewarded stimulus extinguished these responses, and lowering background reward again reinstated the responses without changes in stimulus-reward pairing. None of these neurons responded specifically to an inhibitory stimulus predicting less reward compared with background (negative contingency). A smaller group of amygdala neurons maintained stimulus responses irrespective of background reward, possibly reflecting stimulus-reward pairing or visual sensory processes without reward prediction. Thus in being sensitive to background reward, the responses of a population of amygdala neurons to phasic stimuli appeared to follow the full criteria for excitatory reward prediction (positive contingency) rather than reflecting simple stimulus-reward pairing (contiguity).

Normative and Descriptive Accounts of the Influence of Power and Contingency on Causal Judgement

The power PC theory (Cheng, 1997) is a normative account of causal inference, which predicts that causal judgements are based on the power p of a potential cause, where p is the cause-effect contingency normalized by the base rate of the effect. In three experiments we demonstrate that both cause-effect contingency and effect base-rate independently affect estimates in causal learning tasks. In Experiment 1, causal strength judgements were directly related to power p in a task in which the effect base-rate was manipulated across two positive and two negative contingency conditions. In Experiments 2 and 3 contingency manipulations affected causal estimates in several situations in which power p was held constant, contrary to the power PC theory's predic- tions. This latter effect cannot be explained by participants’ conflation of reliability and causal strength, as Experiment 3 demonstrated independence of causal judgements and confidence. From a descriptive point of view, the data are compatible with Pearce's (1987) model, as well as with several other judgement rules, but not with the Rescorla-Wagner (Rescorla & Wagner, 1972) or power PC models.

Conditionals and directionality: On the meaning of if vs. only if

The aim of this study was to test the predictions of the current theories of reasoning about the comprehension of conditional statements. We used two types of conditional statement that are logically equivalent: if p then q and p only if q. The model theory of reasoning considers that these conditional forms differ in their initial meaning, because the negative contingency is considered only in the p only if q form. Mental-rule theories maintain that the interpretation of p only if q depends on a rephrasing of the statement as: if not q then not p. Alternatively, a directional bias may explain the differences between if p then q and p only if q. We report three experiments that demonstrate the existence of a directional bias in the comprehension of the conditionals. The results were not predicted by either the mental-rules theories or the model theory; they could, however, be easily assimilated by the model theory.

Panel-Touch Behavior of Horses Established by an Autoshaping Procedure

Panel-touch behavior of 3 geldings was successfully established by a response-termination type of autoshaping procedure. An omission or negative contingency introduced after the training of an animal, however, decreased the response rate to a near-zero level.