Behavioral Science

Some of Law and Economics’ basic claims have come to be criticized as a result of empirical findings that question their viability. Particularly, the premise that agents consistently act rationally and with their self-interest in mind seems problematic. What the consequences of the criticism mean for Law and Economics’ tenability depends largely on the questions whether (1) some elements are unassailable to the alternative’s objections and (2) the alternative is a systematic whole. It is argued that Law and Economics may be salvaged, if it is minimized and its ambitions are tempered. This means focusing on the stable, a priori, elements inherent to it.

This brochure presents a framework to view threats made by an insider that are targeted or intentional (as opposed to negligent or unintentional) and that involve some degree of deliberation (as opposed to those that may be considered impulsive). The framework was developed with the assumption that it must:

Social enterprises are non-profit organizations that seek to achieve social goals through commercial activity. Because they have both social and commercial objectives, social enterprises are confronted with high levels of complexity in their strategizing and operations; not only do they have to generate sufficient revenue to re-invest in their business operations, they also have to maintain investment in social projects in their community. Under conditions of resource scarcity, this poses severe challenges which can threaten the long-term sustainability of the enterprise. In this paper the tension between allocating resources to commercial activity and social action is explored. A simple causal-loop diagram is constructed which maps out the relationships between resource allocation and a number of other variables thought to influence the sustainability of social enterprises. By tracing through the diagram, a range of generic strategic alternatives available to social enterprises is evaluated and discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Perfectionists have shown increased negative affect after failure compared to nonperfectionists. However, little is known about how perfectionists react to repeated failure. This study investigated the effects of two forms of perfectionism—self-oriented perfectionism and socially prescribed perfectionism—on 100 university students’ reactions to repeated failure (versus repeated success) examining three negative emotions: anxiety, depression, and anger. Results showed that socially prescribed perfectionism predicted increased anxiety, depression, and anger after initial failure and further increased anger after repeated failure. In contrast, self-oriented perfectionism predicted increased anxiety, but only after repeated failure. The findings suggest that both self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism are vulnerability factors predisposing individuals to react with increased negative affect after repeated failure.

OF PROJECT Stories from the Creativity Garden: A series of interviews with Dr. Mary Murdock This project explores the curricular development of the Creativity Domain from the perspective of Dr. Mary Murdock in a series of informal discussions and video clips with me. We discuss some of the curriculum highlights and processes that she has worked with from her time as a graduate assistant in Georgia to her tenure at Buffalo State College. The recordings have been created in a documentary format as pod casts as Dr. Murdock discusses the domain of creativity, curriculum and methodology of the delivery of theory and the processes inherent. The intent has been to dig deeper into several key process areas (socio drama, Creative Problem Solving, Torrance Incubation Model, Thinking Skills Model) with the audio interview recordings reflecting the passion and highlights of Dr. Murdock’s pedagogical interests, pursuits and strengths. The final portion of the collection includes an audio intervi...

Perfectionism is a prevalent characteristic in athletes. Yet some researchers have argued that perfectionism in sports is maladaptive because it undermines athletes’ performance and stifles athletic development. This argument, however, neglects that perfectionism is a multidimensional characteristic and that only some dimensions of perfectionism are clearly maladaptive, whereas others are not. This review argues that perfectionism is comprised of two main dimensions―perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns (Stoeber & Otto, 2006)―that show different and unique pattern of relationships with athletes’ emotion, motivation, and performance. In support of this argument the review will present findings indicating that only perfectionistic concerns show unique positive relationships with competitive anxiety, fear of failure, and avoidance goal orientations. In contrast, perfectionistic strivings show unique positive relationships with self-confidence, hope of success, approach goal orientations, and performance in training and competitions. The findings suggest that only perfectionistic concerns are clearly maladaptive, whereas perfectionistic strivings may form part of a healthy striving for excellence. Implications for applied sport psychology are discussed as are open questions for future research.

Encouraging further research on the dimensional assessment of personality disorders (PDs), Section III of the DSM-5 introduced a hybrid model for the assessment of six PDs employing self-reports on 25 maladaptive personality traits (“DSM-5 personality traits”). Following suggestions that multidimensional perfectionism is an important characteristic across various personality disorders (Ayearst, Flett, & Hewitt, 2012), the present study investigated how personal (self-oriented) and interpersonal (other-oriented and socially prescribed) aspects of perfectionism predicted the DSM-5 personality traits in a sample of 311 university students. Multiple regressions (controlling for the overlap between the different forms of perfectionism) showed that socially prescribed perfectionism positively predicted the traits defining schizotypal, borderline, avoidant, and obsessive-compulsive PD; other-oriented perfectionism positively predicted the traits defining narcissistic PD; and both socially prescribed and other-oriented perfectionism positively predicted the traits defining antisocial PD. In contrast, self-oriented perfectionism positively predicted only one of the four traits defining obsessive-compulsive PD (rigid perfectionism). Showing that multidimensional perfectionism predicted all DSM-5 traits defining the personality disorders of Section III, the findings suggest that future DSM-5 updates may profit from including interpersonal aspects of perfectionism as a diagnostic criterion.

Research on sleep and proposed functional explanations of sleep were primarily developed from mammalian studies (ALLISON & CICCHETTI, 1976; MEDDIS, 1975, 1977, 1979; ZEPELIN & RECHTSCHAFFEN, 1974). Mammals are known to exhibit both active and quiet sleep phases in varying proportions depending on species, age, psychological physiological states, etc., but little is known about these factors or ecological aspects of sleep in birds.
Birds spend approximately one-third of a 24 hour cycle in some form of loafing and/or roosting behaviour. However, this time varies considerably between species of birds. For example, HOFFMAN (1959) reported an average sleep duration of 0.8 hours in common starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) and NILSSON (1974) reported 13.4 hours of sleep for smew (Mergus albellus) per day. Avian sleep variability appears related to additional factors such as (1) light-dark cycles varying with season and latitude from almost 24 hour dark periods to almost 24 hours of light per day; (2) behavioural demands on time, e.g. breeding and migration. these are not mutually exclusive factors, they mitigate an integrative approach to the behavioural ecology of sleep

Research on worry during the past 15 years has revealed a remarkable amount of knowledge about this pervasive human phenomenon. Worry involves a predominance of verbal thought activity, functions as a type of cognitive avoidance, and inhibits emotional processing. Worry also produces not only anxious experience but depressive affect as well. Recent evidence suggests that the very private experience of worry is developmentally connected to enmeshed childhood relationships with the primary caregiver and is currently associated with significant interpersonal problems, especially those involving tendency to be overly nurturing to others. At the physiological level, worry is characterized peripherally by parasympathetic deficiency and autonomic rigidity and centrally by left-frontal activation.

[AMAZON LINK BELOW TO BOOK ITSELF -- TOC and book intro in downloadable .pdf] 

"It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it." --John Steinbeck Scientific research confirms what people have always known: answers, ideas, and inspiration do come to us in dreams. Harvard psychologist and world-renowned dream specialist Deirdre Barrett, Ph.D., offers this rich collection of examples of how the world's most creative practitioners in art, music, film, science, literature and other fields have used the revelations of their dream life to inform their work. Dr. Barrett offers insights showing us how to encourage lucid, meaningful dreaming, and how to apply the meanings of our dreams to solving problems--from the everyday to the extraordinary. This is the stuff dreams are made of. In the visual arts, Jasper Johns couldn't find his unique artistic vision until he dreamed it in the form of a large American flag. Salvador Dali and his colleagues built the startling new genre of surrealism out of dreams. Kubla Kahn dreamed the design for his stately pleasure dome; thousands of years later, Lucy Davis, chief architect at a major firm, continues the tradition of dreaming designs into life in her extraordinary buildings. Film is a fertile avenue for dreams: "Twice I have transferred dreams to film exactly as I had dreamed them," confides director Ingmar Bergman, as have Federico Fellini, Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Robert Altman, and John Sayles. From Mary Shelley's terrible nightmare, which became Frankenstein, to Stephen King's haunting dream as a little boy, which led to his first bestseller, countless writers have consulted the Committee. Musicians from Beethoven to Billy Joel and Paul McCartney have whistled the Committee's tunes. In science, physiologist Otto Loewi dreamed the medical experiment that earned him the Nobel Prize. In sports, Marion Jones dreamed she'd broken a world record, then brought the dream to life. Gandhi translated his dream of resistance into a movement that changed the world. Since Freud, we take it for granted that our dreams reflect our past. In The Committee of Sleep, Barrett reveals how dreams can also tell us about our future potential--and how to reach it.