Using detailed data of individual investors, this dissertation investigates whether and how individuals use financial disclosure and analysts’ signals. Chapter 1 shows that, on average, individuals invest more in firms with readable, concise, and transparent financial disclosures. The results indicate that these relations are less pronounced for overconfident investors, and that individual investors appear to place a greater weighting on such financial disclosure attributes relative to institutional investors. In supplementary analyses, I further examine cross-sectional variations among individuals in their use of disclosure, and find two main subgroups that do not display a preference for accessible and transparent disclosures. The first subgroup is speculative investors, whose investment strategies rely on conjecture rather than knowledge, and the second subgroup is financially literate investors, those with lower information processing costs. These findings support the notion that more accessible and transparent disclosures are used by those individuals who need them the most: i.e., the average American. Lastly, I examine whether individuals’ investment performance varies with financial disclosure attributes and show that individuals’ returns are, on average, increasing in firms with more accessible and transparent disclosures. Chapter 2 examines how individuals react to revisions in analysts’ recommendations and earnings forecasts. First, the analyses show that individuals’ abnormal trading activity increases by 30 percent in response to analysts’ recommendation revisions and by 15 percent in response to analysts’ earnings forecast revisions. Second, the analyses indicate that 47 percent of individuals trade consistently with analyst guidance and 53 percent trade contrarian to analysts’ guidance, which opposes the belief that individuals are a homogenous group of investors. The contrarian behavior is most common in response to analyst downgrades (i.e., purchasing after downgrades) and is most evident among individuals with better prior performance, individuals who trade infrequently, men, and older individuals. Lastly, the study provides evidence suggesting that trading contrarian to analysts is in general hazardous to individuals’ financial health. Taken together, the results indicate that individuals respond to analyst guidance and that individuals’ use of analyst guidance varies significantly with respect to their personal attributes.

Using detailed data of individual investors, this dissertation investigates whether and how individuals use financial disclosure and analysts’ signals. Chapter 1 shows that, on average, individuals invest more in firms with readable, concise, and transparent financial disclosures. The results indicate that these relations are less pronounced for overconfident investors, and that individual investors appear to place a greater weighting on such financial disclosure attributes relative to institutional investors. In supplementary analyses, I further examine cross-sectional variations among individuals in their use of disclosure, and find two main subgroups that do not display a preference for accessible and transparent disclosures. The first subgroup is speculative investors, whose investment strategies rely on conjecture rather than knowledge, and the second subgroup is financially literate investors, those with lower information processing costs. These findings support the notion that more accessible and transparent disclosures are used by those individuals who need them the most: i.e., the average American. Lastly, I examine whether individuals’ investment performance varies with financial disclosure attributes and show that individuals’ returns are, on average, increasing in firms with more accessible and transparent disclosures. Chapter 2 examines how individuals react to revisions in analysts’ recommendations and earnings forecasts. First, the analyses show that individuals’ abnormal trading activity increases by 30 percent in response to analysts’ recommendation revisions and by 15 percent in response to analysts’ earnings forecast revisions. Second, the analyses indicate that 47 percent of individuals trade consistently with analyst guidance and 53 percent trade contrarian to analysts’ guidance, which opposes the belief that individuals are a homogenous group of investors. The contrarian behavior is most common in response to analyst downgrades (i.e., purchasing after downgrades) and is most evident among individuals with better prior performance, individuals who trade infrequently, men, and older individuals. Lastly, the study provides evidence suggesting that trading contrarian to analysts is in general hazardous to individuals’ financial health. Taken together, the results indicate that individuals respond to analyst guidance and that individuals’ use of analyst guidance varies significantly with respect to their personal attributes.

This thesis will examine the individual and the community. The question will be, what effect does the community have on the individual, and whether or not this limits individuals’ development and personal freedom. I will contend that while individuals have limits placed on their freedoms by the community, they are also indebted to it, finding within it a necessary place. As such, I will examine various communal models, questioning the benefits and vices of each, hoping to draw a clearer picture of a community that allows the individual the most personal freedom, while not diminishing from the strength of the community. I will focus first on the model of Hegel and his speculative idealism, examining his method, and overarching goal, as a means to question what an idealistic society would look like, and how it would function, in order to inquire whether such a community is both plausible and preferable. And as this question was taken up by John Dewey, the thesis will also argue from his standpoint that a community such as Hegel’s was not possible. I will examine why John Dewey drew this conclusion, as it did not take into account individuals, and how they have experience, as personal and ever changing. And finally the thesis will question, was Dewey firm enough in his stance, or was his just a softer version of idealism, leading us to the present state of affairs where the community is still dominated by idealistic sentiments, favoring the community over the individual, and diminishing personal freedom. The conclusion will be drawn that a move should be made to return to individuals choice in their personal lives, as originally proposed by Dewey, both giving, and making them take responsibility for those lives. Consequently, the thesis will show that a community that allows for the most personal development of individual freedoms will also be one that thrives as a community, drawing from those individual developments a richer source of potentials, capable of changing in a more varied and expansive way that is more aptly able to accommodate both the individual and the community.

The theories of existentialism and postmodernism seem like very different ideas at first glance. Existentialism is a philosophy of individuals, while postmodernism is a theory focused more on society and less on individual existence. In this thesis, I will show that both of these ideas can be merged together to be seen as an individual philosophy. Using theories from each philosophical camp, I will describe both the existential and postmodern being. I will explain characteristics of these individuals and explain how they function in society. I will use several philosophers to explain this such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Michel Foucault, and finally, I will discuss The Stranger by Albert Camus. In The Stranger, the main character, Monsieur Meursault, exhibits the qualities of both types of individuals. I will use him as an example of the type of person that emerges from the philosophical ideas of existentialism and postmodernism. I analyze Meursault through the eyes of both the existentialist and the postmodernist, and conclude that Meursault personifies the traits and characteristics that are specific to these philosophies.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University OF MICHIGAN.

After multiple pairings of a cue and a rewarding event, animals will begin to attend to both the reward and the cue. Reports from Brown and Jenkins (1968) first described pigeons that began to track key lights predictive of food reward. Subsequently the phenomenon of conditioned cue approach has been reported across a variety of species including pigeons, quail, rats, monkeys, and stickleback fish (Brown and Jenkins, 1968; Cetinkaya and Domjan, 2006; Holland, 1977; Jenkins and Rowland, 1996; Sidman and Fletcher, 1968). More recently, investigations of individual differences in the expression of these behaviors have begun, as well as exploration into how these differences relate to other cognitive and neurological variations (Lesaint et al., 2014; Lovic et al., 2011; Meyer et al., 2012; Paolone et al., 2013). The objective of this dissertation was to characterize individual differences in rats’ propensity for orienting towards a light-cue predictive of reward. I also aimed to describe how these differences related to the behavior’s vulnerability to memory updating, extinction learning, a variety of cognitive functions, and behavioral and neurological responses to drug challenge. I report that all rats showed conditioned approach toward the site of food-reward delivery, but only a subset also showed robust rearing and/or orienting toward a light predictive of food (Orienters). Those rats that showed only conditioned reward approach were termed Nonorienters. Following memory update procedures, Orienters were more likely than Nonorienters to attenuate conditioned food approach, though conditioned rearing remains unaffected. Orienters were also more likely to make impulsive and risky decisions, enter a novel and risky environment, and be distracted during an attention assay. They also emitted more ultrasonic vocalizations than Nonorienters when exposed to amphetamine. Moreover, while both Orienters and Nonorienters preferred a context previously paired with drug to a context paired with saline, Orienters emitted more ultrasonic vocalizations during the preference test. Finally, while Orienters and Nonorienters showed behavioral differences after amphetamine injection, these differences were not reflected in the activity of the brain regions responsible for the conditioned orienting response. Overall, these findings suggest that Orienters are more apt to memory update, make more impulsive and risky decisions, are more vulnerable to distraction, and that amphetamine has more impact upon the behavior of Orienters. / text

<p> Research indicates children with disabilities benefit from therapeutic horseback riding (TR). This study examined the impact TR had on attention behaviors of five children with various developmental disabilities in a preschool classroom. Children were observed in the classroom setting twice weekly for 10 weeks on a day they participated in TR services and on a day they did not participate in TR. Single case experiments suggested there was not a significant difference in all but one child&rsquo;s sustained attention in the classroom on days children received TR services. An independent samples t-test suggested there was no significant difference in scores between riding day (<i>M</i> = 1.78, <i>SD</i> =.247) and non-riding days (<i>M</i> = 1.76, <i>SD</i> = .262); <i>t</i>(87) = -.481, <i>p</i> = .632 for the group as a whole. Further research should be conducted to determine TR&rsquo;s effect on behaviors in the classroom. </p>

The purpose of the present study was twofold; it examined midlife parents' exposure to daily child-related events as well as the daily emotional reactivity that parents experience in association with these events. The premise of the study is that children can influence the well-being of their parents and that both daily exposure and reactivity to child-related experiences differ with the age of child as well as parental gender. Two conceptual frameworks, generativity and stress theory are used to explain how children influence parents' development and well-being. The study variables included daily child-related stressful events of high and low severity, daily emotional support parents provided their children, and parents' negative mood. Data for these analyses are from the National Study of Daily Experiences. The sample for the present study consisted of parents of minor children, ages 1 to 21 (n = 214; 107 mothers, 107 fathers), and parents of adult children, ages 22 and above (n = 287; 107 mothers, 180 fathers). The findings indicated that there were no significant parent gender or child age differences in exposure to high severity stressors, but there were parent gender and child age differences in low severity stressors and emotional support. Mothers of children of all ages experience more frequent low severity daily stressors and provide more emotional support than do fathers. Parents of minor children also experience more frequent daily low severity stressors and provide more emotional support than do parents of adult children. However, parents of minor children do not experience more severe events than parents of adult children. For parents of adult children, the proportion of severe stressors to all stressors was much greater than for parents of minor children. In other words, when a parent of an adult child experiences a child-related stressor, it is more likely to be very serious than when a parent of a minor child experiences a child-related stressor. Last, in relation to parental well-being, this daily stressor study showed that low severity stressors are associated with parents' negative mood. Parent gender nor child age moderated the effects of stressors on negative mood. What this might indicate is that it is truly the persistent, mundane child-related stressors that wear a parent down. Implications of this study show that child-related stressors can also enhance parental development and well-being through opportunity for generativity.

According to feminist researchers cultural norms that dictate what females' sexual desires should look like serve to obscure the variations that actually exist within the lived experiences of women. Data from a sample of 81 females in heterosexual dating relationships were examined to investigate the links between females' sexual desires and sexual behaviors over a period of 14 days. A method of using quantitative data to produce qualitative narratives was used on a subsample of these women to identify three distinct pathways to frequent correspondence between young women's desires to engage in sexual touching and intercourse, and their reported sexual behavior on a daily basis. These pathways differed in the amount of variation in both positive and negative dyadic states exhibited by group members and the necessary conditions of inclusion for each group. In addition HLM analyses indicate that correspondence between females' sexual desires and both less intimate (hugging/cuddling and kissing) and more intimate (sexual touching and intercourse) sexual behaviors tended to predict higher levels of closeness, higher levels of positive affect and lower levels of negative affect towards one's partner on a daily basis. Furthermore, on days when females desired but did not engage in both less intimate and more intimate sexual behaviors, they reported significantly lower levels of closeness. The impact of discordance between desire and behavior differed on positive affect towards their partner, depending upon whether the behaviors were less intimate behaviors, or more intimate behaviors. Interestingly, the discrepancy between their desires and behaviors did not impact negative affect towards partner significantly. Females' daily perceptions of equality with their partner moderated several of the above relationships.

This study examined evolutionary and peer context theories of sexual coercion. Using a longitudinal design it followed university men across the 1997-98 academic year, collecting data from subjects in both the Fall and Spring semesters. Data collected during the Fall data collection addressed two competing evolutionary explanations of sexual coercion: mate deprivation and short-term mating effort. Data collected during the Spring addressed the role of peer contexts in influencing sexual coercion. Evolutionary findings were not consistent with the mate deprivation explanation of sexual coercion. Instead, findings supported the short-term mating strategy explanation of sexual coercion. Longitudinal analysis found that university men's level of short-term mating strategy as measured in the Fall predicted both pro-coercion peer contexts and partner coercion as measured in the Spring. Structural equations models of the interrelationships between time 1 short-term mating strategy, time 2 peer contexts, and time 2 partner coercion were fit to the data. The fit of these models underscored the importance of controlling for selection into peer contexts when examining the relationships between peer contexts and individuals' sexually coercive behavior. The discussion focuses on (1) considering trait-based explanations of sexual coercion and (2) the relevance of short-term mating strategy to the formation of young male peer groups.