Beliefs about Human-Nature Relationships and Implications for Investment and Stewardship Surrounding Land-Water System Conservation

When engaging stakeholders in environmental conservation, it is critical to understand not only their group-level needs, but also the individually held beliefs that contribute to each person’s decisions to endorse or reject policies. To this end, we examined the extent to which people conceptualize the interconnected relationship between humans and nature in the context of a hypothetical urban waterway, and the implications thereof for environmental investment and stewardship. We also explored how these beliefs varied based on describing the waterway as having either local or global impacts, and as originating either naturally or through artificial processes. Three hundred and seventy-nine adults from the United States read vignettes about a polluted urban waterway and thereafter reported their investment in river clean-up, their stewardship of the river, and their beliefs surrounding human-nature relationships. Results revealed a common belief pattern whereby humans were believed to impact the urban river disproportionately more than the river impacts humans, suggesting that lay adults often weigh the impacts of humans on the natural world disproportionally. Critically, this disproportionate pattern of thinking inversely predicted investment of time and money in river clean-up. Results also revealed a potential solution to this psychological bias: highlighting local benefits of the waterway decreased the asymmetry of the human-nature relationship. We discuss the psychological factors contributing to this cognitive bias, and the implications of these findings on stakeholder engagement.

A STUDY OF IMPACT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL BIASES ON INVESTOR’S INVESTMENT DECISION

The paper examines the impact of psychological biases on investor decisions Investors always make rational decision. He or she collect information about investment and while analyzing investment decision various psychological factors effect on investor’s investment decision. However, investor also influenced by various psychological bias and investor personalities that effect on investment decision. Behavioural finance studies that investor spend time on investment decision while that time he or she influenced by biases. The aim of this paper is to evaluate impact of behavioural factors on investment decision made by investors in Aurangabad city. KEYWORDS: Behavioural Finance, Behavioural Investor types, Psychological Bias.

Awareness of the Psychological Bias of Naïve Realism Can Increase Acceptance of Cultural Differences

Acceptance of cultural differences can contribute to diversity. However, naïve realism—the conviction that one’s views are objective whereas others’ are biased—might hinder intercultural coexistence. We tested, in three experimental studies, whether a cognitive strategy based on raising awareness of the naïve realism, without any reference to culture and free of emotional involvement, can have a beneficial effect on cultural acceptance. Results revealed that participants showed more acceptance of cultural differences once they were aware of this bias (Study 1). The intervention had an indirect effect on acceptance via openness, especially for participants higher in prejudice (Study 2). Participants aware of this bias could not maintain an enhanced self-view, which mediated the effect of the manipulation on acceptance (Study 3). These findings suggest that strategies based on “cold” cognition, without an explicit emphasis on culture, might be beneficial for increasing the acceptance of cultural differences in an era of xenophobia.

Social finance as cultural evolution, transmission bias, and market dynamics

The thoughts and behaviors of financial market participants depend upon adopted cultural traits, including information signals, beliefs, strategies, and folk economic models. Financial traits compete to survive in the human population and are modified in the process of being transmitted from one agent to another. These cultural evolutionary processes shape market outcomes, which in turn feed back into the success of competing traits. This evolutionary system is studied in an emerging paradigm, social finance. In this paradigm, social transmission biases determine the evolution of financial traits in the investor population. It considers an enriched set of cultural traits, both selection on traits and mutation pressure, and market equilibrium at different frequencies. Other key ingredients of the paradigm include psychological bias, social network structure, information asymmetries, and institutional environment.

Data blinding for the nEDM experiment at PSI

Psychological bias towards, or away from, prior measurements or theory predictions is an intrinsic threat to any data analysis. While various methods can be used to try to avoid such a bias, e.g. actively avoiding looking at the result, only data blinding is a traceable and trustworthy method that can circumvent the bias and convince a public audience that there is not even an accidental psychological bias. Data blinding is nowadays a standard practice in particle physics, but it is particularly difficult for experiments searching for the neutron electric dipole moment (nEDM), as several cross measurements, in particular of the magnetic field, create a self-consistent network into which it is hard to inject a false signal. We present an algorithm that modifies the data without influencing the experiment. Results of an automated analysis of the data are used to change the recorded spin state of a few neutrons within each measurement cycle. The flexible algorithm may be applied twice (or more) to the data, thus providing the option of sequentially applying various blinding offsets for separate analysis steps with independent teams. The subtle manner in which the data are modified allows one subsequently to adjust the algorithm and to produce a re-blinded data set without revealing the initial blinding offset. The method was designed for the 2015/2016 measurement campaign of the nEDM experiment at the Paul Scherrer Institute. However, it can be re-used with minor modification for the follow-up experiment n2EDM, and may be suitable for comparable projects elsewhere.

THE EFFECT OF REPRESENTATIVENESS, AVAILABILITY, ANCHORING, RISK PERCEPTION, AND HERDING ON INVESTMENT DECISIONS SYARIAH INVESTORS

Investors do not always think rationally but sometimes think irrational. Decision-making based on irrational thinking is influenced by a psychological bias which often leads to wrong decisions. This study aims to find empirical evidence of the influence of representativeness, availability, anchoring, risk perception, and herding on the investment decisions of sharia investors who open stock accounts at Phintraco Sekuritas Semarang. The population in this study were investors who have opened Islamic stock accounts at Phintraco Sekuritas Semarang. The sample is respondents who have opened Islamic stock accounts at Phintraco Sekuritas Semarang. The sampling technique used was simple random sampling and data collection techniques used a questionnaire. The data were analyzed using descriptive analysis and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The results showed that representativeness, anchoring, risk perception, and herding have a significant positive effect on the investment decisions of Islamic investors. Meanwhile, the availability variable does not affect investment decisions in Islamic investors.

Book review: Sofia Nagornaya, Shamil Khaziev, The duty of a lawyer and the ethics of a psychologist: mental (psychological) torture in the legal system of Russia, Executive Editor A.S. Kovalets, Introductory speech by Academician of RAS A.A. Huseynov. Moscow, LUM Publ., 2020, 172 p. (In Russian).

The book by psychologist Sofia Nagornaya and lawyer Shamil Khaziev entitled “The duty of a lawyer and the ethics of a psychologist: mental (psychological) torture in the legal system of Russia” is devoted to the actual theme of psychological torture. This work is the first interdisciplinary development of this theme in Russia. The book consists of two parts. In the first part, entitled “The duty of a lawyer”, the authors draw attention to the relevance and current dynamics of the development of the general theme of the prohibition of torture, including psychological torture. The second part, entitled “Ethics of the psychologist (international experience)”, continues the development of the theme of psychological torture with the greatest interdisciplinary psychological bias. Special attention in this part is paid to the analysis of international experience in the fight against mental (psychological) torture.

Equal Representation is Inequality, and Other Fallacies: A Commentary on Roberts et al. (2020)

In an article in Perspectives on Psychological Science, Roberts et al. (2020) claimed there is significant racial inequality in the publication process within psychology. Roberts et al. raise important questions, but some of their conclusions are inadequately supported. Among other things, they claim to have demonstrated that there is racial inequality in psychological research but do not define a threshold to separate inequality from equality. In addition, Roberts et al. fail to account for population base rates in U.S. demographics when drawing inferences. Specifically, they interpret their bibliometric analysis as indicating an over-representation of White authors in social and developmental psychology with no consideration of base rates. I demonstrate that when base rates are considered, the data actually show equal representation in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, and White under-representation in the 2010s in both subfields. They also report a correlation between non-White editorship, non-White authorship, and non-White participant recruitment, and then suggest that editorship causes an increase in authorship and participant recruitment. They do not consider that demographic change—an overall increase in the proportion of non-Whites in the U.S.—is a better explanation than psychological bias for this association. They claim that race is an unpopular topic but a comparative PsycInfo analysis shows race may be one of the most popular topics in psychology. Their method for assessing a focus on race is also downward biased.