205 research outputs found
Egocentric bias in effort comparison tasks is driven by sensory asymmetries, not attribution bias
No full textWhen comparing themselves with others, people often perceive their own actions and behaviour favourably. This phenomenon is often categorised as a bias of attribution, with favourable self-evaluation resulting from differing explanations of one’s own behaviour and that of others. However, studies on availability biases offer an alternative explanation, ascribing egocentric biases to the inherent sensory asymmetries between performing an action and merely observing it. In this study, we used a paradigm that allowed us to directly compare these two distinct sources of bias. Participants perceived the tasks they performed to be harder than the tasks they observed, but demonstrated no bias driven by favourable self-evaluation. Furthermore, the degree of overestimation of the difficulty of performed tasks was magnified as overall task difficulty increased. These findings suggest that egocentric biases are in part derived from sensory asymmetries inherent to the first-person perspective
The contribution of sensory information asymmetry and bias of attribution to egocentric tendencies in effort comparison tasks
No full textWhen comparing themselves with others, people often evaluate their own behaviors more favorably. This egocentric tendency is often categorized as a bias of attribution, with favorable self-evaluation resulting from differing explanations of one's own behavior and that of others. However, studies on information availability in social contexts offer an alternative explanation, ascribing egocentric biases to the inherent informational asymmetries between performing an action and merely observing it. Since biases of attribution and availability often co-exist and interact with each other, it is not known whether they are both necessary for the egocentric biases to emerge. In this study, we used a design that allowed us to directly compare the contribution of these two distinct sources of bias to judgements about the difficulty of an effortful task. Participants exhibited no attribution bias as judgements made for themselves did not differ from those made for others. Importantly, however, participants perceived the tasks they actively performed to be harder than the tasks they observed, and this bias was magnified as the overall task difficulty increased. These findings suggest that information asymmetries inherent to the difference between actively performing a task and observing it can drive egocentric biases in effort evaluations on their own and without a contribution from biases of attribution
Oral history interview with Don Stinson
No full textDon Stinson, author and instructor, talks about his childhood, his college undergraduate years, and his path to becoming a poet and a teacher. He recalls moving between southern California and western Arkansas and loving to read as a child. He discusses earning a doctorate in Creative Writing from Oklahoma State University and his work at Northern Oklahoma College teaching and writing poetry. He talks about his book of poems, Flatline Horizon, and reads one of his poems.The Deep Roots: Oklahoma Authors Collection is a series of interviews with authors who discuss their lives, work, and creative processes
Judgments of effort exerted by others are influenced by received rewards
No full textEstimating invested effort is a core dimension for evaluating own and others’ actions, and views on the relationship between effort and rewards are deeply ingrained in various societal attitudes. Internal representations of effort, however, are inherently noisy, e.g. due to the variability of sensorimotor and visceral responses to physical exertion. The uncertainty in effort judgments is further aggravated when there is no direct access to the internal representations of exertion – such as when estimating the effort of another person. Bayesian cue integration suggests that this uncertainty can be resolved by incorporating additional cues that are predictive of effort, e.g. received rewards. We hypothesized that judgments about the effort spent on a task will be influenced by the magnitude of received rewards. Additionally, we surmised that such influence might further depend on individual beliefs regarding the relationship between hard work and prosperity, as exemplified by a conservative work ethic. To test these predictions, participants performed an effortful task interleaved with a partner and were informed about the obtained reward before rating either their own or the partner’s effort. We show that higher rewards led to higher estimations of exerted effort in self-judgments, and this effect was even more pronounced for other-judgments. In both types of judgment, computational modelling revealed that reward information and sensorimotor markers of exertion were combined in a Bayes-optimal manner in order to reduce uncertainty. Remarkably, the extent to which rewards influenced effort judgments was associated with conservative world-views, indicating links between this phenomenon and general beliefs about the relationship between effort and earnings in society
Thomas Stinson Jarvis, Canadian author.
No full textThe present study is intended to provide a general introduction to the life and works of the Toronto-born author and lawyer, Thomas Stinson Jarvis (1854-1926). As far as can be ascertained, this is the first such study ever undertaken. -- The justification for the study is provided in a brief general discussion in Chapter 1, in which some of the problems involved in the research are also mentioned. A review of Jarvis’s biography is afforded by the second chapter. The following three chapters deal with Jarvis’s ideas and philosophies in relation to the period in which he was writing. Finally, in Chapter 6 his fictional works are surveyed and criticized. -- Special notice should be made of the bibliography, which lists every known printed source of information on Jarvis, and for the first time provides a list of every one of his known books, articles, and reviews. -- It is hoped that this study will help to bring about renewed interest in this forgotten Canadian author. -- The first of Jarvis’s six books was published in Toronto when he was only twenty-one; the last, in Los Angeles, a few years before his death. But the great bulk of Jarvis’s writing was done in New York City between 1892 and 1903. His canon comprises a book of travel in the Middle East; a semi- or pseudo-scientific book which applies Darwin’s principles to the domain of “mind science”; a purported history of the Druid domination of the world; and three admirable novels; also a number of philosophical essays; a large amount of writing on the subject of yachting; and quite a few theatre reviews. -- The study is motivated by the idea that modern students of Canadian literature would find Jarvis a most interesting figure once introduced to his works; and with some familiarity with this life and times, their knowledge would be broad enough to allow them to undertake their own further investigations.Bibliography : leaves 200-210. Bibliographical notes: leaves 191-199
On Being a Hardliner on Issues of Race and Culture in Mathematics Education Research
No full textIn this editorial, the author provides a revised written version of his remarks delivered at the 35th annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, Chicago, IL, November 15, 2013; the remarks were in response to Professor Na’ilah Suad Nasir’s (2013) plenary address “Why Should Mathematics Educators Care about Race and Culture?”This article was originally published in the Journal of Urban Mathematics Education. Copyright © 2013 David Stinson.
The version of record is available here with the permission of the author.</p
V. S. Pritchett a study of the short fiction
No full textV.S. Pritchett (Sir Victor since 1975) is the century's consummate author: His six decades of crafting exquisite prose in so many literary venues have rendered him peerless. Ironically, however, his remarkable versatility--he's written five novels, numerous volumes of travel writing, two superb volumes of autobiography, several biographies, and nine collections of literary criticism--has tended to overshadow his achievement in a fiction genre he has helped to define and refine. To fellow writers Eudora Welty and William Trevor, and critics Frank Kermode and Walter Allen, V.S. Pritchett is the great English short-story writer of our time. In V.S. Pritchett: A Study of the Short Fiction, John J. Stinson suggests that the 1980s renewed interest in the short story will encourage a long-overdue comprehensive appraisal of Pritchett's contribution to this formStinson's thorough chronological survey of Pritchett's stories intertwines commentary about the writer's developing skill, his characteristic themes and techniques, and the pros and cons of his narrative styles with a discussion of the individual stories. Stinson's portrait of the artist shows a subtle humorist and a revealer of truth through ironies. "The short-story writer's duty is to destroy generalization," Pritchett has said, and Stinson finds this creed practiced throughout Pritchett's work, manifest in the writer's knack for uncovering buried or half-buried character traitsPritchett gives his readers characters who, according to Stinson, "are both remarkably individuated and clearly representative." Rarely in his 17 story collections--among them You Make Your Own Life (1938), The Sailor, Sense of Humor, and Other Stories (1956), The Saint and Other Stories (1966), Blind Love and Other Stories (1969), The Camberwell Beauty and Other Stories (1974), and the 82-tale Complete Collected Stories of 1991--has Pritchett's ear for the everyday speech of the English, high class and low (and particularly the low), failed hi
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