People often choose intuitive rather than equally valid nonintuitive alternatives. The authors suggest that these intuitive biases arise because intuitions often spring to mind with subjective ease, and the subjective ease leads people to hold their intuitions with high confidence. An investigation of predictions against point spreads found that people predicted intuitive options (favorites) more often than equally valid (or even more valid) nonintuitive alternatives (underdogs). Critically, though, this effect was largely determined by people’s confidence in their intuitions (intuitive confidence). Across naturalistic, expert, and laboratory samples (Studies 1–3), against personally determined point spreads (Studies 4–11), and even when intuitive confidence was manipulated by altering irrelevant aspects of the decision context (e.g., font; Studies 12 and 13), the authors found that decreasing intuitive confidence reduced or eliminated intuitive biases. These findings indicate that intuitive biases are not inevitable but rather predictably determined by contextual variables that affect intuitive confidence.

We study the behavior of football (soccer) referees in the Germ an Bundesliga. Referees are requested to act as im partial agents. However, theym ay be tem pted to allocate benefits and rewards in a biased way. Agency theory has long neglected this form of m alfeasance of econom ic agents, but has rather concentrated on agents exerting suboptim al effort levels. Favoritism or biased behavior of referees can be investigated by exam ining their decisions on awarding penalties or extra tim e at the end of a footballm atch. We can confirm a system atichom e bias of referees. JE L classification: D21, D73 Keywords: agency theory, favoritism , social pressure, referee, Germ an Bundesliga We would like to thank Daniel Matt for excellent research assistance and Dieter Haas for valuable com m ents on this paper.

Purpose can be characterized as a central, self-organizing life aim. Central in that when present, purpose is a predominant theme of a person’s identity. Selforganizing in that it provides a framework for systematic behavior patterns in everyday life. As a life aim, a purpose generates continual goals and targets for efforts to be devoted. A purpose provides a bedrock foundation that allows a person to be more resilient to obstacles, stress, and strain. In this paper, we outline a theoretical model of purpose development. Besides outlining various essential ingredients to creating a purpose in life, we describe three broad pathways. The first process is proactive involving effort over time and only resulting in a purpose after gradual refinement and clarification. The second process is reactive involving a transformative life event where a purpose arises and adds clarity to the person's life. The third process is social learning- involving the formation of purpose through observation, imitation, and modeling. Our aim is to stimulate more research on this higher-level construct in the architecture of personality.

This paper highlights the not-so-obvious but compelling reasons why the same supportive audiences that can help performers attain their highest potential also may increase performers ’ risk of choking under pressure. Drawing primarily from social psychology research and theory, we conclude that audience support magnifies performance pressure and induces performers to avoid failure rather than seek success during the most critical moments of performance contests. Although supportive audiences can inspire performers to excel when motivation would otherwise be lacking, audiences may also lead performers towards maladaptive self-monitoring and overcautiousness when the stakes are highest. The increased self-focus that supportive audiences induce can disrupt the automatic execution of the skills performers possess. Dispositional and situational moderators of the relationship between audience support and performance are reviewed.