How Do Teens and Adults Learn About Other People?

Imagine that you meet someone new. You may wonder what they like, for example how much do they like baseball? You then get their feedback, which helps you to predict how much they like something similar, like basketball. We tested how teens and adults decide what others like and dislike and how they learn about others through feedback. This learning process can be described with mathematical models that calculate prediction errors—the difference between how much you think someone likes baseball and their actual preference for it. Teens and adults differed in how quickly they learned about others using this measure. Teens also tended to use a different brain region than adults when learning about the preferences of other people. This study helps us to understand how social learning develops over teenage years.

Transworld Egoism, Empathy, and the Golden Rule

According to preferentism, the ‘desire theory’ of well-being, one is made better off to the extent that her preferences, or desires, are satisfied. According to narrow preferentism, preferentism as it has traditionally been understood, the preferences that matter in this regard are just actual preferences; preferences we might ‘easily have had’, do not matter. On this account also, only actual preference satisfaction contributes to well-being. Merely possible preference satisfaction, including the ‘real possibility’ of attaining desired states of affairs, does not contribute to well-being. Broad preferentism makes sense of the intuition that feasibility as such contributes to well-being. On this account, we are made better off not only by the actual satisfaction of our actual preferences but also by the mere feasibility of satisfying preferences that we ‘might easily have had’. In addition to making sense of our intuition that feasibility as such, contributes to our well-being, broad preferentism provides a rationale for altruistic behavior. On this account support policies that benefit worldmates whose actual circumstances are different from our own because their circumstances are the our circumstances at nearby possible worlds, and our circumstances at other possible worlds, affect our own actual well-being.

Food preferences of oribi Ourebia ourebi in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park

During a two-year study on the ecology of oribi Ourebia ourebi (Zimmermann, 1783) in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park, plant species fed on by oribi were noted. The oribi fed on a total of 22 plant species. Feeding preference categories were assigned according to the degree of use of different plant species, based on direct observation and on a preference rating. The oribi in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park showed a seasonal variation in feeding preferences, utilising several species of forbs primarily during the summer and a marked dif-ference between per cent frequency utilisation of plant species and actual preference rating according to availability of species and for certain plant parts, e.g. for Sporobolus centrifugus.

Freudian Sexual Symbolism: Theoretical Considerations and an Empirical Test in Advertising

Freudian sexual symbolism theory and research are discussed and an empirical test of that theory is presented. Following up the 1985 findings of Ruth and Mosatche, an experimental investigation measured the effects of sexual symbolism in advertising on self-reported purchasing tendencies. A within-subjects design exposed 42 male and 57 female undergraduates to liquor advertisements containing genital symbolism and to liquor advertisements lacking such symbolism. Liquors presented in advertisements were matched on purchasing desirability prior to the experimental manipulation with a separate undergraduate sample to balance for actual preference for liquor. Dependent t tests consistently indicated stronger purchasing tendencies for symbolic than for nonsymbolic advertisements. Data from these undergraduates supported the psychoanalytic postulate that sexual symbolism unconsciously motivates an observer toward goal-directed behavior. Specifically, psychoanalytic theory would suggest that genital symbolism motivates consumers' behavior via the sexual arousal based on an unconscious recognition of the male and female genitalia and the act of sexual intercourse.