Evaluation of the association between quantitative mammographic density and breast cancer occurred in different quadrants.

BACKGROUND: To investigate the relationship between mammographic density measured in four quadrants of a breast with the location of the occurred cancer. METHODS: One hundred and ten women diagnosed with unilateral breast cancer that could be determined in one specific breast quadrant were retrospectively studied. Women with previous cancer/breast surgery were excluded. The craniocaudal (CC) and mediolateral oblique (MLO) mammography of the contralateral normal breast were used to separate a breast into 4 quadrants: Upper-Outer (UO), Upper-Inner (UI), Lower-Outer (LO), and Lower-Inner (LI). The breast area (BA), dense area (DA), and percent density (PD) in each quadrant were measured by using the fuzzy-C-means segmentation. The BA, DA, and PD were compared between patients who had cancer occurring in different quadrants. RESULTS: The upper-outer quadrant had the highest BA (37 ± 15 cm2) and DA (7.1 ± 2.9 cm2), with PD = 20.0 ± 5.8%. The order of BA and DA in the 4 separated quadrants were: UO > UI > LO > LI, and almost all pair-wise comparisons showed significant differences. For tumor location, 67 women (60.9%) had tumor in UO, 16 (14.5%) in UI, 7 (6.4%) in LO, and 20 (18.2%) in LI quadrant, respectively. The estimated odds and the 95% confidence limits of tumor development in the UO, UI, LO and LI quadrants were 1.56 (1.06, 2.29), 0.17 (0.10, 0.29), 0.07 (0.03, 0.15), and 0.22 (0.14, 0.36), respectively. In these 4 groups of women, the order of quadrant BA and DA were all the same (UO > UI > LO > LI), and there was no significant difference in BA, DA or PD among them (all p > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Breast cancer was most likely to occur in the UO quadrant, which was also the quadrant with highest BA and DA; but for women with tumors in other quadrants, the density in that quadrant was not the highest. Therefore, there was no direct association between quadrant density and tumor occurrence.

The role of anticipated regret in escalation of commitment.

This research tests the general proposition that people are motivated to reduce future regret under escalation situations. This is supported by the findings that (a) escalation of commitment is stronger when the possibility of future regret about withdrawal is high than when this possibility is low (Studies 1a and 1b) and (b) escalation of commitment increases as the net anticipated regret about withdrawal increases (Studies 2a and 2b). Furthermore, the regret effects in the 4 studies were above and beyond the personal responsibility effects on escalation. This research indicates that people in escalation situations are simultaneously influenced by the emotions they expect to experience in the future (e.g., anticipated regret) and by events that have happened in the past (e.g., responsibility for the initiating previous decision).

Effects of rater goals on rating patterns: evidence from an experimental field study.

The goal-based perspective of performance appraisals suggests that raters who pursue different goals give different performance ratings. Yet previous studies have not provided strong empirical evidence that there are different impacts of different goals on mean rating and discriminability, nor have they provided evidence of a goal-rating causality. The authors extend the literature by manipulating rater goals in the context of peer evaluations of graded group projects with a sample of 104 undergraduate students. They find that (a) pursuing a harmony goal increased mean rating and decreased discriminability, and (b) pursuing a fairness goal increased mean rating and decreased discriminability when the group projects had not ended and increased mean rating but did not change discriminability when the group projects had ended.

Understanding the emotional aspects of escalation of commitment: the role of negative affect.

Despite the importance of understanding the emotional aspects of organizational decision making, prior research has paid scant attention to the role of emotion in escalation of commitment. This article attempts to fill this gap by examining the relationship between negative affect and escalation of commitment. Results showed that regardless of whether negative affect was measured as a dispositional trait (Neuroticism) in Studies 1 and 2 or as a transient mood state in Study 3, it was negatively correlated with escalation tendency when one was personally responsible for a prior decision. This pattern of results is consistent with the predictions derived from the coping perspective, suggesting that people seek to escape from the unpleasant emotions that are associated with escalation situations.

Between-individual comparisons in performance evaluation: a perspective from prospect theory.

This article examines how between-individual comparisons influence performance evaluations in rating tasks. The authors demonstrated a systematic change in the perceived difference across ratees as a result of changing the way performance information is expressed. Study 1 found that perceived performance difference between 2 individuals was greater when their objective performance levels were presented with small numbers (e.g., absence rates of 2% vs. 5%) than when they were presented with large numbers (e.g., attendance rates of 98% vs. 95%). Extending this finding to situations involving trade-offs between multiple performance attributes across ratees, Study 2 showed that the relative preference for 1 ratee over another actually reversed when the presentation format of the performance information changed. The authors draw upon prospect theory to offer a theoretical framework describing the between-individual comparison aspect of performance evaluation.

Clinical validation of the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory.

The clinical validity of the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI; F. M. Cheung, K. Leung, et al., 1996) was examined in 2 studies involving a group of 167 male prisoners in Hong Kong and a group of 339 psychiatric patients in China. Elevated scores on the clinical scales were obtained for the clinical samples. Logistic regression analyses confirmed that the CPAI scales were useful in differentiating between male prisoner and the Hong Kong male normative sample and between psychiatric patients and a random sample of normal adults in China. Multivariate analyses of variance results showed significant differences on the CPAI clinical scales and personality scales among subgroups of psychiatric patients with diagnoses of bipolar, schizophrenic, and neurotic disorders. The usefulness of an indigenous personality inventory is discussed.

Reducing and exaggerating escalation of commitment by option partitioning.

Options under escalation situations can be presented as a general class (e.g., investing in electronic products) or be partitioned into disjunctive suboptions within that class (e.g., investing in MP3 players, portable TV game consoles, and other electronic products). Drawing from the theoretical bases of partition priming and mental accounting, this research found support from 4 experiments that (a) a decision maker's commitment to a failing course of action is exaggerated when the escalation options are partitioned into multiple suboptions, whereas such commitment is reduced when the alternative options are portioned into suboptions, and (b) these partitioning effects are mediated by the subjective utility, including subjective values and probability, of the escalation option.

Comparing predicted and actual affective responses to process versus outcome: an emotion-as-feedback perspective.

One of the conjectures in affective forecasting literature is that people are advised to discount their anticipated emotions because their forecasts are often inaccurate. The present research distinguishes between emotional reactions to process versus those to outcome, and highlights an alternative view that affective misforecasts could indeed be adaptive to goal pursuit. Using an ultimatum game, Study 1 showed that people overpredicted how much they would regret and be disappointed by the amount of effort they exerted, should the outcomes turned out worse than expected; nonetheless, people could accurately predict their emotional responses to unfavorable outcomes per se. In a natural setting of a university examination, Study 2 demonstrated that actual regret and disappointment toward favorable outcomes were more intense than the level people expected, but this discrepancy was not observed in their emotional responses to efforts they had invested. These two distinct patterns of results substantiate the argument that the deviation between predicted and actual emotions is dependent on the referents of the emotional reactions.

The roles of rater goals and ratee performance levels in the distortion of performance ratings.

The goal-directed perspective of performance appraisal suggests that raters with different goals will give different ratings. Considering the performance level as an important contextual factor, we conducted 2 studies in a peer rating context and in a nonpeer rating context and found that raters do use different rating tactics to achieve specific goals. Raters inflated their peer ratings under the harmony, fairness, and motivating goal conditions (Study 1, N = 103). More important, raters inflated their ratings more for low performers than for high and medium performers. In a nonpeer rating context, raters deflated ratings for high performers to achieve the fairness goal, and they inflated ratings for low performers to motivate them (Study 2, N = 120).