Tilburg University

About: Tilburg University is a education organization based out in Tilburg, Noord-Brabant, Netherlands. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 5550 authors who have published 22330 publications receiving 791335 citations.

Measuring Inequity Aversion in a Heterogeneous Population Using Experimental Decisions and Subjective Probabilities

Abstract: We combine choice data in the ultimatum game with the expectations of proposers elicited by subjective probability questions to estimate a structural model of decision making under uncertainty. The model, estimated using a large representative sample of subjects from the Dutch population, allows both nonlinear preferences for equity and expectations to vary across socioeconomic groups. Our results indicate that inequity aversion to one's own disadvantage is an increasing and concave function of the payoff difference. We also find considerable heterogeneity in the population. Young and highly educated subjects have lower aversion for inequity than other groups. Moreover, the model that uses subjective data on expectations generates much better in- and out-of-sample predictions than a model which assumes that players have rational expectations.

Measuring exposure to bullying at work: The validity and advantages of the latent class cluster approach

Abstract: This paper addresses the construct and predictive validity of two methods for classifying respondents as victims of workplace bullying. Although bullying is conceived as a complex phenomenon, the dominant method used in bullying surveys, the operational classification method, only distinguishes two groups: victims versus non-victims. Hence, the complex nature of workplace bullying may not be accounted for. Therefore a latent class cluster approach is suggested to model the data, which was obtained by using the Negative Acts Questionnaire (NAQ) administered to employees in Belgium (n=6,175). Latent class modelling is a method of analysis that does not appear to have been used in occupational health psychology before. In this study, six latent classes emerged: “not bullied,” “limited work criticism,” “limited negative encounters,” “sometimes bullied,” “work related bullied,” and “victims.” The results show that compared to the traditional operational classification method, the latent class cluster ...

Uncertainty Avoidance and the Rate of Business Ownership Across 21 OECD Countries, 1976-2004

Abstract: Persistent differences in the level of business ownership across countries have attracted the attention of scientific as well as political debate. Cultural as well as economic influences are assumed to play a role. This paper deals with the influence of cultural attitudes towards uncertainty on the rate of business ownership across 21 OECD countries. First, the concepts of uncertainty and risk are elaborated, as well as their relevance for entrepreneurship. An occupational choice model is introduced to underpin our reasoning at the macro-level. Second, regression analysis using pooled macro data for 1976, 1990 and 2004 and controlling for several economic variables, yields evidence that uncertainty avoidance is positively correlated with the prevalence of business ownership. According to our model, a restrictive climate of large organizations in high uncertainty avoidance countries pushes individuals striving for autonomy towards self-employment. Regressions for these three years separately show that in 2004, this positive correlation is no longer found, indicating that a compensating pull of entrepreneurship in countries with low uncertainty avoidance may have gained momentum in recent years. Third, an interaction term between uncertainty avoidance and GDP per capita in the pooled panel regressions shows that the historical negative relationship between GDP per capita and the level of business ownership is substantially weaker for countries with lower uncertainty avoidance. This suggests that rising opportunity costs of self-employment play a less important role in this cultural environment, or are being compensated by increasing entrepreneurial opportunities.

The effects of trust in authority and procedural fairness on cooperation.

Abstract: The present research examined the effect of procedural fairness and trust in an authority on people's willingness to cooperate with the authority across a wide range of social situations. Prior research has shown that the presence of information about whether an authority can be trusted moderates the effect of procedural fairness. If no trust information is available, procedural fairness influences people's reactions. This is not the case when information about the trustworthiness of the authority is present. In the present article, it is argued that information about whether the authority can or cannot be trusted may also moderate the effect of procedural fairness in predicting levels of cooperation. Assuming that the use of fair procedures by authorities that cannot be trusted is less influential than is the enactment of procedures by trustworthy authorities, it is predicted that trust in authority moderates the influence of procedural fairness on cooperation in such a way that procedural fairness has a positive effect on cooperation primarily when trust in authority is high. Results from 4 studies (2 experimental studies and 2 field studies) provide supportive evidence for this interaction.

Automatic visual bias of perceived auditory location

Abstract: Studies of reactions to audiovisual spatial conflict (alias “ventriloquism”) are generally presented as informing on the processes of intermodal coordination. However, most of the literature has failed to isolate genuine perceptual effects from voluntary postperceptual adjustments. A new approach, based on psychophysical staircases, is applied to the case of the immediate visual bias of auditory localization. Subjects have to judge the apparent origin of stereophonically controlled sound bursts as left or right of a median reference line. Successive trials belong to one of two staircases, starting respectively at extreme left and right locations, and are moved progressively toward the median on the basis of the subjects’ responses. Response reversals occur for locations farther away from center when a central lamp is flashed in synchrony with the bursts than without flashes (Experiment 1), revealing an attraction of the sounds toward the flashes. The effect cannot originate in voluntary postperceptual decision, since the occurrence of response reversal implies that the subject is uncertain concerning the direction of the target sound. The attraction is contingent on sound-flash synchronization, for early response reversals did no longer occur when the inputs from the two modalities were desynchronized (Experiment 2). Taken together, the results show that the visual bias of auditory localization observed repeatedly in less controlled conditions is due partly at least to an automatic attraction of the apparent location of sound by spatially discordant but temporally correlated visual inputs.