New conceptual work in the judgment and decision-making research arena has suggested a nonconsequentialist perspective to decision-making. From this perspective, an emphasis is placed on emotions during the decision-making process, specifically positing that concurrent emotions may lead to decisions that are nonconsequentialist in nature. In the current study I develop the Nonconsequentialist Decision-Making Model (NDMM) and include indecisiveness as a vital construct in the model. In tune with much new research on emotions during the decision-making process, I examine how being indecisive is a product of negative concurrent emotions, and how indecisiveness affects the decision-making process. Using a natural decision-making setting, the current study had participants discuss the "biggest" decision they are currently facing in their lives. Data was collected regarding indecisiveness, nonconsequentialist dysfunctional decisional coping behavior, and decision difficulty. The findings show strong support for the NDMM and the nonconsequentialist perspective. Furthermore, the indecisiveness construct was measured successfully and showed to be a critical part of the decision-making process when dealing with difficult decisions.

<p>Problem: Environmental awareness was rated as the most current trend in 2006 by the readers of Swedish newspaper DN (Olausson, 2007), and in 2005 97 per cent of the Swed-ish population thought that environmental issues will have or already have had an influence on Sweden (Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, 2005). Higher awareness about environmental issues leads to more environmental friendly products and new processes by companies for lower consumption of energy and harmful materials. However, the impor-tance of the contribution of households and electronics on the environment seems to be underestimated. Therefore, it is of importance to understand how consumers consider the environmental friendliness of electronic products, and computers in specific for this thesis.</p><p>Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to examine how consumers value environmental friendliness when buying computers and how this influences their purchase decision.</p><p>Method: In order to achieve the purpose stated, a conjoint analysis was first made through an experiment in order to see how the consumer make trade-offs between certain attributes of computers. After the experiment, respondents were asked to answer a questionnaire which has been used to connect computer purchasing and environmental values to con-sumer behaviour theories.</p><p>Conclusions: The assumption on environmental friendliness being the least valued attrib-ute by consumers has not been supported by the results of the conjoint analysis done; in fact it has instead portrayed environmental friendliness as the second most important, be-fore price and performance, only after accessories. The results have also shown that envi-ronmental friendliness was appreciated in a computer, and that its existence in a computer affects the purchase decision positively. The results of the post-experiment questionnaire have illustrated that environmental friendliness of computers has a strong effect on the purchase decision when combined with other attributes, although it may not be regarded of high value by itself. While a computer by it self are likely to satisfy needs as low as social need, the environmental friendliness of computers appears to satisfy esteem needs. It has also been demonstrated that social factors could have strong effects on purchasing of green computers if more and better information were available. Further, moral obligations and at-titude to behaviour factors concerning green computers seem to be strong, while perceived control and subjective norms appear to be low in today’s society.</p>

This study investigated the relationship of dysfunctional career thoughts, optimism, and spirituality on Bahamian women (n=212) diagnosed with breast cancer. Also, it examined how optimism mediates the relationship between spirituality and dysfunctional career thoughts. The diagnosis of breast cancer impacts women physically, psychologically, socially, spiritually, financially, and in their career development. Career developmental plans and decisions are continuously being made. However, plans may become altered and decisions more difficult to make when a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer as she considers returning to work. The high survival rate of breast cancer patients indicates women may continue to work after their treatment. Limited information is known about possible changes in their dysfunctional career thoughts. This research investigated the degree to which optimism mediates the relationship between spirituality and dysfunctional career thoughts among a sample of Bahamian women diagnosed with breast cancer. Negative thoughts formed in career content are called dysfunctional career thoughts (Lenz, Sampson, Peterson, & Reardon, 2012). Career thoughts are "...outcomes of one's thinking about assumptions, attitudes, behaviors, beliefs, feelings, plan and/or strategies related to career problem solving and decision making" (Sampson, Peterson, Lenz, Reardon, & Saunders, 1996, p. 2). The dysfunctional thinking causes one to block informing processing, reduces options, and distorts perception of options. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship among career thoughts, optimism, and spirituality. The goal is to identify low or high dysfunctional career thoughts. In addition, studies suggest that being optimistic (Matthew & Cook, 2009) and spiritual (Hackney & Sanders, 2003) are two positive coping strategies for women diagnosed with breast cancer. This study seeks to explore these two potential mediating factors on dysfunctional career thoughts of women with this diagnosis. This study is important because of the high incidence rate of breast cancer in the Bahamas. Bahamian women have the highest recorded percentage of the recorded BRCA1 gene (BReast CAncer 1; a primary genetic marker for breast cancer) in the world (Donenberg et al., 2011). Breast cancer remains a public health issue that may affect the life and productivity of Bahamian women. The relationship of dysfunctional career thoughts, optimism and spirituality of Bahamian women diagnosed with breast cancer was explored. Younger Bahamian women were noted to have experienced higher levels of dysfunctional career thoughts. While, marital status was statistically related with dysfunctional career thoughts, no pair wise differences were noted among the variables after a Tukey test. This means the level of dysfunctional career thoughts was not affected by women's marital status (married, not married, & divorced). Ethnicity and education did not play a role in their dysfunctional career thoughts but with employment pre-diagnosed of breast cancer. Results revealed women who were not employed pre diagnosis experienced higher dysfunctional career thoughts than women who were employed pre diagnosis. Other pre-diagnosis variables such as salary and occupation pre diagnosis show no statistically significant difference in terms of dysfunctional career thoughts. These variables did not affect the Bahamian women's dysfunctional career thoughts. In addition to pre-diagnosis variables being examined in this study post diagnosis variables such as employment, occupation, and salary were also explored. Final analyses indicate post diagnosis employment, occupation, and salary show no statistically significant difference in terms of dysfunctional career thoughts. These post diagnosis variables did not affect the Bahamian women's dysfunctional career thoughts. Although, post diagnosis employment was not statistical significant to dysfunctional career thoughts, some significance was noted. Women diagnosed with breast cancer 2007 or earlier accounted for 58% of the participants in this present study. We need to highlight that there was an 11% decrease in post-diagnosis employment which was higher than the unemployment rate (7.9%) in the Bahamas at that time (Central Intelligence Agency, 2013). Therefore, this present study shows a significant effect rather than a statistical significant effect with Bahamian women's employment plans post diagnosis that indirectly affect their dysfunctional career thoughts. The stages of breast cancer show no statistically significant difference in terms of the subscales of dysfunctional career thoughts such as Decision Making Confusion (DMC), Commitment Anxiety (CA), and External Conflict (EC). This means the stages of breast cancer did not influence the different subscales of dysfunctional career thoughts. Spirituality had a positive moderate relationship with the level of optimism. As women's spirituality level increases their optimism level also increased. Although optimism did not show a statistical difference with dysfunctional career thoughts, spirituality demonstrated a negative weak relationship with dysfunctional career thoughts. This inverse relationship indicates as their spirituality level decreases their dysfunctional career thoughts increases. Path analysis results explored the mediation among optimism, spirituality and dysfunctional career thoughts. Optimism was not noted to be a mediating variable that works together to positively affect spirituality and dysfunctional career thoughts. The impact of these results may be significant not only to the Bahamian population because of the first time study, but also in helping breast cancer survivors examine further career decisions even after being diagnosed with breast cancer.

In a distributed system many underlying nodes or processes work in tandem to come up with a solution to a given problem. In this report, we are concerned with distributed systems where each node is given the same problem, and the system uses the solutions provided by the nodes to formulate the answer. In our case, the problem is a simple question with two possible answers, and only one answer is correct. The system is asked the question at the beginning of a round. Once the system answers the question, the round is over, and the system is given the correct answer, then another round is started. To answer the question, the system uses the answers from each node, and based on the weight of the individual nodes, it decides on its answer. In this report, we experiment with multiple ways to update the weights of the underlying nodes, and aim to study the impact of certain limitations and parameters imposed on the system; such as the maximum accuracy of the underlying nodes and the number of underlying nodes. / text

Psychologists have long appreciated that many real-world decisions require a balance of expediency and accuracy in gathering evidence. Often the best decisions are made when there is some lingering uncertainty. But how much? Depending on the situation, choosing the right amount of evidence can often be a fine line between making a rash decision and being indecisive. Psychologists have been reluctant to pursue studying peoples' abilities to judge the correct "threshold" for probabilistic decisions. There are two reasons for this: First, the question of a decision threshold, or "when should I stop gathering evidence?" is confounded by the larger issue of how subjects choose and integrate that evidence. Subjects may have a decision threshold that is consistently sub-optimal with respect to a model that does not consider cognitive constraints. However, subjects may actually be choosing the right amount of information given their own cognitive limitations. Second, it has been shown that people often use specific heuristics in making probabilistic decisions. In this case, defining a decision threshold would be largely dependent on the heuristic and task, thus preventing a study of decision thresholds that is widely applicable. The research presented here addresses both of these concerns. I defined a task where the ideal decision threshold is clearly defined, requiring some evidence, but not an exhaustive search. Furthermore, this threshold can be precisely manipulated by changes in the reward structure. Although it is possible to use a "sufficing" or sub-optimal heuristic, subjects are given a significant financial incentive to fully integrate as much evidence as possible. Lastly, and most importantly, a general model of people's cognitive limitations is applied to the traditional normative model. This enhancement allows a more refined study of humans' ability to place their decision threshold according to environmental conditions. / text

What keeps long term cohabitating couples together? I began to ask this question as I noticed more and more heterosexual people living together in long term committed relationships outside of marriage. Social commentators have decried cohabitating couples as less committed than married couples, and some research has agreed with this view, yet I personally had not seen this to be the case. As a response to this contradiction, I engage with the overall research question by exploring cohabitation and marriage decisions among ten long term heterosexual cohabitating couples as well as how the construct of commitment operates in their daily lives through a series of individual in-depth interviews. Through their stories, I situate long term heterosexual cohabitation as an outcome of a complex web of motivations, reasons, and rationales that share much in common with all cohabitating couples. I find commitment to be highly valued by these couples and produced through daily processes that bring couples closer together and heighten the cost of ending the relationship, thereby elucidating the socio-cultural factors that make long term cohabitating couples feel like they’re “already married.” By asking couples about their household division of labor and their attitudes towards marriage, I also engage with research that points to long term cohabitating couples as sites of gender egalitarianism. While these couples were more egalitarian in their housework, this was not necessarily a product of a particular affinity for gender equality. Furthermore, the ways in which they spoke about housework as well as the ways they valued marriage and weddings demonstrate that traditional gender roles still play an influential role in intercouple interactions. In the final chapter, I offer a theoretical way forward for future research on heterosexual cohabitation and identify gaps in the research that this study helps to identify. / text

The goal of this dissertation is to advance our understanding of perceptual decisions. A perceptual decision is a decision that is based on sensory evidence. For example, a monkey must choose whether to eat a food item based on sensory information such as its color, texture or odor. Previous research has identified regions of the brain involved in the encoding of sensory information as well as areas involved in transforming encoded representations of stimuli into signals useful for forming decisions about those stimuli. Researchers carried out much of this work by painstakingly observing the firing of single neurons or small groups of neurons while a subject performs a task, and used this information to propose and evaluate models of the decision process. However, previous studies have also shown that sensory stimuli are encoded in a distributed fashion across populations of neurons rather than in individual or small groups of neurons. Thus it is likely that populations of neurons, rather than individual neurons, are responsible for the formation of a decision. Here I directly address the question of how decisions are formed through the collective activity of populations of cortical neurons. I used voltage-sensitive dye imaging, a technique that allowed me to simultaneously monitor millions of neurons in sensory cortex, while primates performed a simple yet challenging binary decision task. I also used psychophysical techniques and computational modeling to address fundamental questions about the nature of perceptual decisions. Here I provide new evidence that choice-related neural activity is distributed across a broad population of neurons, and that most of the decision-related neural activity occurs as early as primary sensory cortex. I propose a physiological and computational mechanism for the subject’s decision process in our task, and demonstrate that this process is likely sub-optimal due to intrinsic uncertainty about sensory stimuli. Overall, I conclude that in our task, perceptual decisions are likely to be limited primarily by the quality of evidence that resides in populations of neurons in sensory cortex, secondarily by sub-optimal decoding of these sensory signals, and to a much lesser extent by additional downstream neural variability. / text

Most firms are using optimal combination of equity and debt so as to maximize firms value and the wealth of the shareholders. To achieve all these, firms should be aware of the factors that influence the capital structure decisions. Previous empirical studies attempted to explain what determines the choice of capital structure in firms. The focus was on firms in general without categorizing family firms and non-family firms. The primary objective of this study is to examine what determines the capital structure of family firms in OECD countries. Amadeus database was used to obtain the data needed for the statistical analysis. Measures for firm-specific characteristics were calculated based on the previous stud-ies. The study was conducted over a period of 9 years from 2005-2013. Dataset com-prised of 95 family firms resulting in 850 observations. The results from the study indicate that the capital structure for family firms in OECD countries is influenced by profitability, asset tangibility, growth, size, debt tax shield , non-debt tax shield and liquidity. Both pecking-order theory and trade-off theory explain the capital structure of family firms.

Products are priced in order to sell them and make a profit. Every firm, therefore, needs a pricing strategy. Such a strategy should be simple. It should ensure simplicity in tactics and decisions and minimize complications. It is difficult to set a price with the help of only one pricing model. The price of a product may vary due to factors like geographical area, different clients and time difference. Prices must always be cost-compatible. An essential step in deciding on a pricing strategy involves looking at the characteristics of pricing decisions. The classic economic theory is based upon demand and supply and attempts to balance these two concepts. In most cases it works on the basis of cost plus profit. This way of thinking about prices does not guarantee a profit, because costs and profit depend upon volume and volume is dependent on the correct price. Prices can be cut at first. In this way only a small profit will be ensured. If the price is too low it will not automatically ensure a profit. Usually little attention is paid to the market itself in deciding on a price. It is not an easy task to arrive at the 'envelope of acceptable prices". Not to fall into the standard trap of adding profit to cost, one has to have a broad overview of pricing strategies. Multiple approaches are followed in determining prices. Firstly, one can look at cost and its characteristics. By adding a profit margin to cost, one can determine a new price. It may be too low or it may be too high, resulting in the risk that customers will buy the competition's product. It is there for essential to look at strategic concepts like the competition's price as well. The way a buyer looks at certain prices and then decides whether to buy or not, also plays a very important role. All of these factors have to be taken into consideration and all aspects have to be balanced to arrive at a price. A framework for pricing decisions includes the recognition of the need for a pricing decision, determining a price, developing a model, identifying and anticipating pricing problems, developing feasible courses of action, forecasting the outcomes of each alternative and monitoring and reviewing the outcome of each action. Management's pricing decision is taken after studying all this information. Information can be given as a single answer or in detail. Costs can be divided into direct costs and absorption costs. Although prices can be determined in more ways than one, the ideal is to take more than one factor into consideration. Every aspect must carry a weight and these weights can be changed. That is why the multiple criteria decision method is so effective. With this method a few factors are taken into account. Each of these factors adds to the price definition in a certain manner with regard to each product. By changing the profit margin, the price can be adjusted until one is satisfied with the new price. A company's structure, location and nature will play a role in determining which technique is used to determine a price. The best technique is one that can be adjusted and where multiple criteria can be set. The choice of a technique is a personal choice. The multi-criteria method is flexible and prices can be determined uniformly for all products or for a single product. / Thesis (M.Sc. (Computer Science))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2004.

Participation in decision-making and inclusion in the important matters of one’s life are upheld as measures of equality and indicators of the moral status of individuals in liberal democratic societies. To some extent, the status of children in western societies is a contested question, and hence, the nature of children’s contributions to decisions is a matter of debate. Evidence suggests that in spite of an apparent societal commitment to children’s participation in the important matters of their lives, children tend to be excluded from decisions in which they might reasonably be involved. This project investigated the participation of one group of children—chronically ill school-age children— in decisions related to their health care. Adopting interpretive description as methodology, data were collected and analyzed through interviews and participant observation with 31 chronically ill children (ages 7 to 12 years) and their parents, as well as through interviews with health care providers. In this study, children’s participation in health care decisions emerged as a complex activity, deeply embedded in relationship and history. Participation varied within two key domains: children’s opportunities and abilities to formulate and make known their intentions and desires in decisional contexts (the resonance of children’s voices); and the standing achieved by children’s views within decisional processes (the relevance of children’s voices). The interplay of adult authority and children’s agency at the nexus of the resonance and relevance of children’s voices created certain participatory spaces, depicted as moral and social realms variously characterized by children’s silence, children’s tangible expression, adult imposed authority, or adult assumed responsibility. The findings of this study demonstrate a need to re-think our concept of children’s participation, and point to the importance of developing a more relational and contextual understanding of how chronically ill children may contribute to important matters in their lives. The findings also support a view that nurses and other health care providers hold certain responsibilities to critically question the relationships and structures that comprise children’s health care encounters, toward a goal of creating conditions where possibilities for children’s participation are optimized.