A problem in theory.

The replication crisis facing the psychological sciences is widely regarded as rooted in methodological or statistical shortcomings. We argue that a large part of the problem is the lack of a cumulative theoretical framework or frameworks. Without an overarching theoretical framework that generates hypotheses across diverse domains, empirical programs spawn and grow from personal intuitions and culturally biased folk theories. By providing ways to develop clear predictions, including through the use of formal modelling, theoretical frameworks set expectations that determine whether a new finding is confirmatory, nicely integrating with existing lines of research, or surprising, and therefore requiring further replication and scrutiny. Such frameworks also prioritize certain research foci, motivate the use diverse empirical approaches and, often, provide a natural means to integrate across the sciences. Thus, overarching theoretical frameworks pave the way toward a more general theory of human behaviour. We illustrate one such a theoretical framework: dual inheritance theory.

What can human personality psychology learn from behavioral ecology?

Personality research has a long and fruitful history in psychology. In the past 15 years, this topic emerged as an important subfield in behavioral ecology as well. A large amount of empirical data has been gathered, and promising theoretical models have been developed. Despite all of this, there is almost no communication between personality research in humans and the behavioral ecology of animal personality. The aim of this article is to present contemporary research on animal personality and thus, to facilitate its integration into human personality psychology. We describe three major topics in the behavioral ecology of personality: the attempts to explain (a) individual differences in personality, (b) temporal stability of personality traits, and (c) the emergence and stability of behavioral syndromes (correlations between personality traits). In all three topics, we suggest how behavioral ecological research and its conceptual apparatus could be implemented in human personality psychology. We also highlight the importance of the empirical measuring of fitness indicators and the adequate translation of concepts from behavioral ecology to human personality psychology and vice versa. Our analysis shows that behavioral ecology represents a fruitful explanatory and empirical framework with high heuristic potential in explaining key problems of personality. The majority of hypotheses developed in this discipline can be tested in human personality psychology; however, some of them demand complex research designs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Incentive Use for Improving Maternal Health: Perspective From Behavioral Science.

Incentive use to improve maternal health behavior has been controversial, and guidelines to effectively design and implement such an intervention have been published. This commentary briefly describes a perspective from behavioral science for the existing guideline on the development of an incentive-based intervention to change maternal health behaviors. It is recommended to emphasize the saliency of incentives as an important variable to maintain the intervention effect while addressing barriers to feasibility and sustainability.

The future of safety science is happening now: The modernization of the benefit-risk paradigm.

The future of safety science is happening now and has the potential to improve patient outcomes through an evolving approach to benefit-risk assessment. Three building blocks for the future of safety science, cognitive and behavioral systems, medical assessment, and data science, individually and collaboratively advance and modernize the benefit-risk paradigm. Incorporating the patient perspective and patient experiences will help identify tools that are useful in real-world practice. Medical assessment teams will bring together the study of toxicity and toxicogenomics, biomarkers, and special populations to personalize the benefit-risk profile. Personalized benefit-risk profiles for patients will help improve outcomes. Data science and related quantitative sciences such as safety statistics, database integration, technology, and epidemiology will provide new approaches and tools for analysis of safety data as well as more rapid access to insights that benefit patients.

A call to improve sampling methodology and reporting in young novice driver research.

Young drivers continue to be over-represented in road crash fatalities despite a multitude of research, communication and intervention. Evidence-based improvement depends to a great extent upon research methodology quality and its reporting, with known limitations in the peer-review process. The aim of the current research was to review the scope of research methodologies applied in 'young driver' and 'teen driver' research and their reporting in four peer-review journals in the field between January 2006 and December 2013. In total, 806 articles were identified and assessed. Reporting omissions included participant gender (11% of papers), response rates (49%), retention rates (39%) and information regarding incentives (44%). Greater breadth and specific improvements in study designs and reporting are thereby identified as a means to further advance the field.

The roles of constraint-based and dedication-based influences on user’s continued online shopping behavior

The objective of this study was to determine empirically the role of constraint-based and dedicationbased influences as drivers of the intention to continue using online shopping websites. Constraintbased influences consist of two variables: trust and perceived switching costs. Dedication-based influences consist of three variables: satisfaction, perceived usefulness, and trust. The current results indicate that both constraint-based and dedication-based influences are important drivers of the intention to continue using online shopping websites. The data also shows that trust has the strongest total effect on online shoppers’ intention to continue using online shopping websites. In addition, the results indicate that the antecedents of constraint-based influences, technical bonds (e.g., perceived operational competence and perceived website interactivity) and social bonds (e.g., perceived relationship investment, community building, and intimacy) have indirect positive effects on the intention to continue using online shopping websites. Based on these findings, this research suggests that online shopping websites should build constraint-based and dedication-based influences to enhance user's continued online shopping behaviors simultaneously (AU)

El objetivo de este trabajo fue comprobar experimentalmente el papel que juegan las técnicas basadas en la coacción o en la dedicación como impulsoras del uso de páginas web de compra on-line. Las influencias basadas en la coacción presentan dos variables: confianza y cambio de coste percibido. Las influencias basadas en la dedicación muestran tres variables: satisfacción, utilidad percibida y confianza. Los resultados indicaron que ambas influencias son importantes impulsores de la intención de continuar usando páginas web de compra on-line. Los datos mostraron que la confianza era la variable más influyente en la intención del uso de estas páginas web. Adicionalmente, los resultados indicaron que los antecedentes de las influencias basadas en la restricción, en cadenas técnicas (v.gr., competencia operacional percibida e interactividad percibida del sitio web) y las redes sociales (v.gr., inversión en relaciones percibida, comunidad e intimidad) tuvieron efectos indirectos positivos en la intención de continuar usando páginas web de compra on-line. De acuerdo con estos resultados, se sugiere que dichas páginas web deberían usar tanto influencias basadas en la restricción como en la dedicación para incrementar el uso continuado de la conducta de compra on-line (AU)

Defining behavior-environment interactions: translating and developing an experimental and applied behavior-analytic vocabulary in and to the national language.

Verbal behavior, as in the use of terms, is an important part of scientific activity in general and behavior analysis in particular. Many glossaries and dictionaries of behavior analysis have been published in English, but few in any other language. Here we review the area of behavior analytic terminology, its translations, and development in languages other than English. As an example, we use our own mother tongue, Finnish, which provides a suitable example of the process of translation and development of behavior analytic terminology, because it differs from Indo-European languages and entails specific advantages and challenges in the translation process. We have published three editions of a general dictionary of behavior analysis including 801 terms relevant to the experimental analysis of behavior and applied behavior analysis and one edition of a dictionary of applied and clinical behavior analysis containing 280 terms. Because this work has been important to us, we hope this review will encourage similar work by behavior analysts in other countries whose native language is not English. Behavior analysis as an advanced science deserves widespread international dissemination and proper translations are essential to that goal.

Recent reliability reporting practices in Psychological Assessment: recognizing the people behind the data.

Helms, Henze, Sass, and Mifsud (2006) defined good practices for internal consistency reporting, interpretation, and analysis consistent with an alpha-as-data perspective. Their viewpoint (a) expands on previous arguments that reliability coefficients are group-level summary statistics of samples' responses rather than stable properties of scales or measures and (b) encourages researchers to investigate characteristics of reliability data for their own samples and subgroups within their samples. In Study 1, we reviewed past and current reliability reporting practices in a sample of Psychological Assessment articles published across 3 decades (i.e., from the years 1989, 1996, and 2006). Results suggested that contemporary and past researchers' reliability reporting practices have not improved over time and generally were not consistent with good practices. In Study 2, we analyzed an archival data set to illustrate the real-life repercussions of researchers' ongoing misconstrual and misuse of reliability data. Our analyses suggested that researchers should conduct preliminary analyses of their data to determine whether their data fit the assumptions of their reliability analyses. Also, the results indicated that reliability coefficients varied across racial or ethnic and gender subgroups, and these variations had implications for whether the same depression measure should be used across groups. We concluded that the alpha-as-data perspective has implications for one's choice of psychological measures and interpretation of results, which subsequently affect conclusions and recommendations. We encourage researchers to recognize the people behind their data by adopting better practices in internal consistency reporting, analysis, and interpretation.

Alteridade e diferença sexual: considerações sobre o debate psicanalítico contemporâneo / Otherness and sexual difference: considerations about the contemporary psychoanalict debate

A partir da interface entre psicanálise e cultura, este trabalho tem como objetivo analisar o debate contemporâneo acerca das noções psicanalíticas de alteridade e diferença sexual, instaurado pelos deslocamentos ocorridos no campo da sexualidade e pelos desafios que estes impõem à psicanálise. Para isso, propõe-se, em um primeiro momento, examinar a teoria freudiana sobre a diferença sexual, o que é realizado principalmente a partir das formulações acerca da sexualidade feminina. Como a construção do complexo de Édipo apresenta-se como uma tentativa de dar conta da constituição da identidade sexual e da diferença no processo de subjetivação, traça-se o trajeto do autor desde as primeiras menções ao Édipo até o encontro com o impasse do feminino, passando pela teoria das identificações como mecanismo privilegiado de assunção sexual. Em seguida, investiga-se o pensamento de Lacan em relação ao tema da diferença sexual, desde o seu retorno ao complexo de Édipo e a sua estruturação em termos de linguagem até as propostas apresentadas em seu último ensino, em que sublinha o aspecto real da sexuação assim como se valoriza a diferença sexual em termos de gozo. Finalmente, tendo como pano de fundo a nova cartografia das sexualidades, e como fio condutor, o diálogo travado entre Judith Butler e Slavoj Žižek, considera-se em que medida a psicanálise baseia a constituição da alteridade no modelo binário e hierárquico da divisão sexual, contribuindo para a manutenção normativa do sistema sexo-gênero ou em que medida a teoria psicanalítica proporciona um deslocamento da alteridade do modelo de diferença sexual, contribuindo para a sua compreensão enquanto indeterminação e contingência...

Situación del Servicio Médico del Consejo Nacional de Tránsito (CNTT) de Quito, como base para el diseño e implementación progresiva de un Sistema de Gestión por Procesos / Situation of the Medical Service of the National Council of Traffic (CNTT) of Quito, like base for the design and progressive implementation of a System of Administration for Processes

La presente investigación partió de la pregunta ¿cuáles son los factores internos y externos que influyen o limitan la calidad de respuesta del servicio médico del Consejo Nacional de Tránsito (CNTTT) de la ciudad de Quito a las necesidades y demandas de sus usuarios/as?. Se estudió por tanto el comportamiento organizacional (CO) del Consejo en sus tres componenetes: indiviudos , grupos y estructura y cómo repercute este contexto institucional en la gestión y modelo de atención del servicio médico, así también la influencia de la calidad de sus prestaciones.La metodología utilizada para esta investigación consistió en la revisión documental, aplicación de encuestas y entrevistas a informantes claves, así como observaciones directas a los procesos de trabajo durante el periodo de enero 2006 a enero 2007. Una vez aplicados los instrumentos de la investigación se pudo llegar la siguiente resultado

A framework for the unification of the behavioral sciences.

The various behavioral disciplines model human behavior in distinct and incompatible ways. Yet, recent theoretical and empirical developments have created the conditions for rendering coherent the areas of overlap of the various behavioral disciplines. The analytical tools deployed in this task incorporate core principles from several behavioral disciplines. The proposed framework recognizes evolutionary theory, covering both genetic and cultural evolution, as the integrating principle of behavioral science. Moreover, if decision theory and game theory are broadened to encompass other-regarding preferences, they become capable of modeling all aspects of decision making, including those normally considered "psychological," "sociological," or "anthropological." The mind as a decision-making organ then becomes the organizing principle of psychology.

Replicating empirical research in behavioral ecology: how and why it should be done but rarely ever is.

That empirical evidence is replicable is the foundation of science. Ronald Fisher a founding father of biostatistics, recommended that a null hypothesis be rejected more than once because "no isolated experiment, however significant in itself can suffice for the experimental demonstration of any natural phenomenon" (Fisher 1974:14). Despite this demand, animal behaviorists and behavioral ecologists seldom replicate studies. This practice is not part of our scientific culture, as it is in chemistry or physics, due to a number of factors, including a general disdain by journal editors and thesis committees for unoriginal work. I outline why and how we should replicate empirical studies, which studies should be given priority, and then elaborate on why we do not engage in this necessary endeavor. I also explain how to employ various statistics to test the replicability of a series of studies and illustrate these using published studies from the literature.