Rachlin's extended self: Influences on a Brazilian research group.

We pay tribute to Rachlin's work stating that researching and writing for posterity is an act of self-control and altruism. We show how Rachlin's work influenced a series of seminars at the University of São Paulo (Brazil) based on his book from 1989, Judgment, Decision, and Choice. This influence is illustrated through two empirical exercises conducted during our seminars, where students were actively involved in data collection and analysis. The first exercise is about judgment of randomness involving coin tossing. The second is a replication of a procedure by Jones and Rachlin (2006) about social discounting of monetary quantities. We use these empirical examples to highlight some of Rachlin's major contributions to the science of behavior and their implications to our seminars and to ourselves as researchers.

Better to be in agreement than in bad company : A critical analysis of many kappa-like tests.

We assessed several agreement coefficients applied in 2x2 contingency tables, which are commonly applied in research due to dichotomization. Here, we not only studied some specific estimators but also developed a general method for the study of any estimator candidate to be an agreement measurement. This method was developed in open-source R codes and it is available to the researchers. We tested this method by verifying the performance of several traditional estimators over all possible configurations with sizes ranging from 1 to 68 (total of 1,028,789 tables). Cohen's kappa showed handicapped behavior similar to Pearson's r, Yule's Q, and Yule's Y. Scott's pi, and Shankar and Bangdiwala's B seem to better assess situations of disagreement than agreement between raters. Krippendorff's alpha emulates, without any advantage, Scott's pi in cases with nominal variables and two raters. Dice's F1 and McNemar's chi-squared incompletely assess the information of the contingency table, showing the poorest performance among all. We concluded that Cohen's kappa is a measurement of association and McNemar's chi-squared assess neither association nor agreement; the only two authentic agreement estimators are Holley and Guilford's G and Gwet's AC1. The latter two estimators also showed the best performance over the range of table sizes and should be considered as the first choices for agreement measurement in contingency 2x2 tables. All procedures and data were implemented in R and are available to download from Harvard Dataverse https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/HMYTCK.

Reciprocity With Unequal Payoffs: Cooperative and Uncooperative Interactions Affect Disadvantageous Inequity Aversion.

Cooperation among unrelated individuals can evolve through reciprocity. Reciprocal cooperation is the process in which lasting social interactions provide the opportunity to learn about others' behavior, and to further predict the outcome of future encounters. Lasting social interactions may also decrease aversion to unequal distribution of gains - when individuals accept inequity payoffs knowing about the possibility of future encounters. Thus, reciprocal cooperation and aversion to inequity can be complementary phenomena. The present study investigated the effects of cooperative and uncooperative interactions on participants' aversion to disadvantageous inequity. Participants played an experimental task in the presence of a confederate who acted as a second participant. In reality, the participant interacted with a computer programed to make cooperative and uncooperative choices. After interacting with a cooperative or uncooperative computer, participants chose between blue cards to produce larger gains to the computer and smaller for him/her or green cards to produce equal and smaller gains for both. Results confirmed our first hypothesis that uncooperative interactions would produce aversion to disadvantageous inequity. Lastly, half of the participants were informed that points received during the experiment could be later exchanged for money, and half were not. Results indicated that information about monetary outcomes did not affect aversion to inequity, contradicting our second hypothesis. We discuss these results in the light of theories of reciprocal cooperation, inequity aversion, and conformity.

Triggering risk factors of the burnout syndrome in OB/GYN physicians from a reference public university of Brazil.

Objective. To identify the risk factors to the development of Burnout Syndrome in Ob/Gyn Brazilian physicians in four dimensions: emotional exhaustion (EE), professional repression (PR), dehumanization (De), and emotional distancing (EmD). Methods. A prospective cross-sectional study was realized with 48 Ob/Gyn physicians (12 lecturers, 12 attending physicians, 12 medical residents, and 12 graduate students) from Department of Obstetrics, São Paulo Federal University (UNIFESP). We used a sociodemographic questionnaire focusing on the activities (administrative, educational, healthcare, and research). We applied a Burnout Syndrome Inventory (BSI) composed of two parts: triggering factors (ISB1) and the Burnout Syndrome (ISB2). The ISB1 is composed of two scales: positive organizational conditions (POC) and negative organizational conditions (NOC). The ISB2 is composed of four scales: EE, PR, De, and EmD. Results. We observed a rate below and above average to POC and NOC, respectively. The dimensions recorded a level above average to EE, an index at the upper limit of the average to De, a median index to EmD, and a median index to PR. Conclusions. The Ob/Gyn physicians are in an area of vulnerability for the development of Burnout Syndrome due to the high level of EE and De, associated with a median index of PR. The high rate of NOC contributes to the triggering of this scenery.

Cheating on college examinations.

The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of contexts on cheating attitudes and behavior among Brazilian undergraduates. Participants were 77 Previous Choice Engineering and 70 Late Choice Engineering students. Previous Choice students enter the desired field chosen by examination, whereas Late Choice students' grades during the two first college years give them preference to choose the field. Their self-reported attitudes and behaviors were compared with those of 82 chemistry undergraduates from two universities (UNI-C and USP-C). The Late Choice students reported significant negative opinion about cheating, whereas Previous Choice students, especially women, reported significant favorable opinion. Furthermore, Previous Choice students reported colleagues more frequently gave them answers on examinations than Late Choice students. The two university groups in chemistry had intermediate scores. Deterrents of cheating strongly embedded in the student culture were found among Late Choice engineering undergraduates which may be explained by social learning theory.

Antioxidant type, heating method and sausage lipid quality and preference

The purpose of this study was to compare the influence of two heating methods on the lipid quality of hot dogs. Four different sausage formulations were manufactured using three different types of antioxidants and one control. Each antioxidant was evaluated for storage during 1, 7, 15, 21, 30, 45, and 60 days at-20°C. Each formulation was boiled for 5 minutes or heatd in a 700-Watt microwave oven for 1 minute at half power and then submitted to an untrained panel of 30 tasters. The paired preference and acceptance tests were used to compare sensory preferences between the two heating methods. A 9 point hedonic scale was employed to evaluate the acceptability of the hot dogs that presented the highest scores in the previous test...