The affect system has been shaped by the hammer and chisel of adaptation and natural selection such that form follows function. The characteristics of the system thus differ across the nervous system as a function of the unique constraints existent at each level. For instance, although physical limitations constrain behavioral expressions and incline behavioral predispositions toward a bipolar (good—bad, approach—withdraw) organization, these limiting conditions lose their power at the level of underlying mechanisms. According to the authors ' model of evaluative space ( J. T. Cacioppo & G. G. Berntson, 1994; J. T. Cacioppo, W. L. Gardner, & G. G. Berntson, 1997), the common metric governing approach—withdrawal is generally a single dimension at response stages that itself is the consequence of multiple operations, such as the activation function for positivity (appetition) and the activation function for negativity (aversion), at earlier affective processing stages.

Research suggests that causal judgment is influenced primarily by counterfactual or covariational reasoning. In contrast, the author of this article develops judgment dissociation theory (JDT), which predicts that these types of reasoning differ in function and can lead to divergent judgments. The actuality principle proposes that causal selections focus on antecedents that are sufficient to generate the actual outcome. The substitution principle proposes that ad hoc categorization plays a key role in counterfactual and covariational reasoning such that counterfactual selections focus on antecedents that would have been sufficient to prevent the outcome or something like it and covariational selections focus on antecedents that yield the largest increase in the probability of the outcome or something like it. The findings of 4 experiments support JDT but not the competing counterfactual and covariational accounts. If causation is the cement of the universe, as the philosopher David Hume (1740/1938) put it, then it is fair to say that causal knowledge is the cement that binds together each person’s representational universe. Causal reasoning—the process that generates this glue—confers many functional advantages. In virtually every sphere of human interest, our abilities to learn and categorize

We explore the role of negative relationships in the context of social networks in work organizations. Though network researchers have emphasized the benefits and opportunities derived from positive interpersonal relationships, we examine the social liabilities that can result from negative relationships in order to flesh out the entire “social ledger. ” We define a negative relationship as an enduring, recurring set of negative judgments, feelings, and behavioral intentions towards another person – one person dislikes another. We identify the factors that lead to negative relationships in the workplace as well as factors that may moderate the relationship between negative relationships and individuals ’ task and socioemotional outcomes. We argue that these negative relationships may have greater power than positive relationships to explain workplace outcomes. We derive our argument from theory and research on negative asymmetry. Negative Relationships in Networks 3 “A man’s stature is determined by his enemies, not his friends. ”-- Al Pacino, City Hall Employees in organizations are embedded in social networks that can provide opportunities and benefits such as job attainment, job satisfaction, performance, salary, power, and promotions

To increase their revenue from electronic commerce, more and more Internet businesses are soliciting personal information from consumers so as to target products and services at the right consumers. But when deciding whether to disclose their personal information to Internet businesses, consumers may weigh the concerns of giving up information privacy against the benefits of information disclosure. This paper examines how Internet businesses can motivate consumers to disclose their personal information. Based on a synthesis of the literature, it identifies seven types of extrinsic or intrinsic benefits that Internet businesses can provide when soliciting personal information from consumers. Through comprehensive conceptual and empirical validation processes, it develops an instrument that allows Internet businesses to gauge the preference of consumers for the various types of benefits. By testing a set of nomological networks, it offers some ideas to Internet businesses about what types of benefits may be more effective given the personality traits of consumer populations. Besides providing a foundation for efforts at developing theories on information privacy and information disclosure, the results of this research provide useful suggestions to Internet businesses on how best to solicit personal information from consumers. Implications for research and practice are discussed. Key words: privacy, Internet business, information disclosure, extrinsic benefit, intrinsic benefit, personality, confirmatory factor analysis. We gratefully thank all participants in the 2002 NUS summer research workshop and the 2002 International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS). We also thank Ee-Cheah Tam for her contributions to a previous version of this manuscript, and Juan-Juan Han for her research

The Nash equilibrium solution concept for games is based on the assumption of expected utility maximization. Reference dependent utility functions (in which utility is determined not only by an outcome, but also by the relationship of the outcome to a reference point) are a better predictor of behavior than expected utility. In particular, loss aversion is an important element of such utility functions. We extend games to include loss aversion characteristics of the players. We define two types of loss-aversion equilibrium, a solution concept endogenizing reference points. The two types reflect different types of updating of reference points during the game. In equilibrium, reference points emerge as expressions of anticipation which are fulfilled. We show existence of myopic loss-aversion equilibrium for any extended game, and compare it to Nash equilibrium. Comparative statics show that an increase in loss aversion of one player can affect her and other players ’ payoffs in different directions.

The question that this volume poses—What can social psychology tell us about the Holocaust?—is a difficult and complex one to answer. Perhaps it is fair to begin by saying that the Holocaust has influenced our understanding of social psychology more than the other way around. Early work in the field was directly motivated by the devastation and tragedies that took place between 1933-1945 (e.g., on the Holocaust, see Hilberg, 1973; on Jewish persecution from 1933-39, see Friedländer, 1997; on the Third Reich, see Shirer, 1998). Central topics in social psychology such as attribution, social influence, and intergroup processes all have their roots in the works of thinkers who had the events of the 1930s and 40s seared in their minds, many of whom had to flee their homelands to escape the specter of Nazism. In the 1960s and early 70s, seminal work in the field, such as Milgram's (1974) research on obedience to authority and the Stanford Prison experiment by Zimbardo and his colleagues (Zimbardo, Banks, Haney, & Jaffe, 1973), continued to be motivated by a need to understand the perpetrators of the Holocaust and other acts of collective violence. To this day, these studies represent social psychology's most salient demonstrations of situationism—a core tenet of the field that emphasizes the power of the situational forces over human behavior (see Ross &

Participants recalled either a negative academic or interpersonal experience, and the relations among counterfactual thinking, negative emotions, and attributions of blame and control were examined. Situational context effects on attribution, counterfactual thinking, and emotion were observed, indicating a greater tendency toward self-focused cognition and emotion in the academic context than in the interpersonal context. Consistent with recent theorising, upward counterfactual thinking was associated with negative emotions of guilt, shame, regret, disappointment, and sadness. However, there was no indication that downward counterfactual thinking regulated emotion as previous literature suggests. Implications for functional and process theories of counterfactual thinking are discussed.

This article reexamines the assumptions underlying the disease problem used by Tversky and Kahneman (1981) to illustrate gain– loss formulation effects. It is argued that their reported effect may have been due to asymmetries in the ambiguity of the sure and risky prospects and to the entanglement of two distinct types of formulation manipulations: one having to do with the expected outcomes that are made explicit (positive vs negative) and the other having to do with the descriptors used to convey the relevant expected outcomes (lives saved/not saved vs lives lost/not lost). Two experiments using a formally equivalent problem in which these confounds were eliminated revealed no significant predictive effect of either descriptor or outcomes frames on choice, although a marginally significant framing effect was obtained in Experiment 1 when the signs of the two framing manipulations were congruent. Implications for prospect theory are discussed. � 2001 Academic Press Key Words: framing effects; formulation effects; choice; gains and losses. Pessimists see the wine glass half empty, optimists see it half full. As this adage of lay personology suggests, the same event may be viewed in different ways by different people. Moreover, sometimes each of these alternative perspectives are objectively correct. A wine glass half empty is a wine glass half

The purpose of this study is to examine the asymmetrical effects of negative and positive website attribute performance on satisfaction. An online survey on satisfaction with an e-portal was conducted, and a total of 515 usable questionnaires were collected. Psychometric properties of the measures were examined, and ordinary least squares were used to estimate the regression model. Results show that the importance of asymmetrical effect is different for different attributes, where the negative performance on information reliability, system access and usability had a stronger impact than their positive performance. On the other hand, the positive performance on information understandability and usefulness, and system navigation had a stronger impact than their negative performance. This difference of asymmetrical effect is an important area calling for future investigation.

Two studies examined age differences in recall and recognition memory for positive, negative, and neutral stimuli. In Study 1, younger, middle-aged, and older adults were shown images on a computer screen and, after a distraction task, were asked first to recall as many as they could and then to identify previously shown images from a set of old and new ones. The relative number of negative images compared with positive and neutral images recalled decreased with each successively older age group. Recognition memory showed a similar decrease with age in the relative memory advantage for negative pictures. In Study 2, the largest age differences in recall and recognition accuracy were also for the negative images. Findings are consistent with socioemotional selectivity theory, which posits greater investment in emotion regulation with age. The past decade witnessed a major shift in the way theorists view emotional functioning in old age. Early theories portrayed later life as a time of blunted affect and emotional dysregulation. Because emotions were conceptualized primarily as physiological processes, they were presumed to follow the same downward trajectory observed in other biological arenas (Banham, 1951;