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The relationship of managerial experience to gender and attractiveness biases was examined in decisions involving suitability for hire and probable organizational progression within a typical financial institution. Each of 112 managers evaluated 4 equivalent resume-data sheets, to which different candidate photographs were attached. The photographs were varied using a 2 X 2 (Gender X Attractiveness) design wherein each photograph depicted a woman or a man who was either highly attractive or slightly below average in attractiveness. For both ratings and rankings of candidates, clear evidence of attractiveness and gender biases were present. The extent of the bias was generally smaller for the most experienced managers, although less attractive female applicants were routinely at a disadvantage regardless of managerial experience.

Conventional economic theory assumes that people are uniformly risk averse. Psychological studies, however, have shown that people are sometimes risk averse for gains but risk seeking for losses, a phenomenon termed the reflection effect. The robustness of the reflection effect was examined both within subjects and across subjects differing in risk style for a set of multi-outcome lotteries. Reflection was found to be weak and irregular for all choice pairs except those that included a lottery with a riskless component. The latter were generally preferred for gains but not for losses by both riskaverse and risk-seeking subjects. In all other choices, risk-averse and risk-seeking subjects differed systematically from one another, but in ways that are more complex than pure risk aversion or risk seeking would predict. The findings suggest a general inability of weighted value theories such as prospect theory (Kahneman ATverskv, 1979) to adequately describe the pattern of risk preferences over individuals and over the full range of lottery types. Such inadequacy suggests the need for an alternative approach to risk with emphasis on the goals and strategies that individuals bring to the risky choice process.

Is it better to be realistic or optimistic? A realistic outlook improves chances to negotiate the environment successfully, whereas an optimistic outlook places priority on feeling good. But are realistic and optimistic outlooks necessarily in conflict? The author suggests that the fuzzy nature of accuracy typically places only loose boundaries on what it means to be realistic. As a result, there are many forms of optimism that do not, in principle, yield unrealistic assessments. Nevertheless, there remain numerous "optimistic biases" that do involve self-deception, or convincing oneself of desired beliefs without appropriate reality checks. The author describes several ways that realistic and unrealistic optimism can be differentiated and explores the impact of this distinction for current views of optimism. This critique reveals how positive psychology may benefit from a focus on personal meaning and knowledge as they relate to making the most of life.

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One of the cardinal symptoms of major depressive disorder (MDD) is persistent sadness. Do people with MDD actually prefer sad stimuli, potentially perpetuating their depression? Millgram, Joormann, Huppert, and Tamir (2015) observed such preferences and interpreted them as reflecting a maladaptive emotion regulatory goal to upregulate sad feelings. We assessed emotional music choice among both those with MDD and healthy controls (HC), and assessed the reasons for music preferences in these two groups. Seventy-six female participants (38 per group) completed two tasks: (1) Millgram et al.’s (2015) music task wherein participants listened to happy, neutral, and sad music excerpts and chose the one they wanted to listen to most, and (2) a novel Emotional Music Selection Task (EMST) wherein participants chose preferred music clips, varying in emotion and energy level, in paired-choice trials. In the replication music task, MDD people were more likely to choose sad music. However, inconsistent with any motivation to upregulate sadness, people with MDD reported that they chose sad music because it was low in energy levels (e.g., relaxing). EMST results revealed that MDD people had a stronger preference for both low energy and sad music, relative to HC. The strong appeal of sad music to people with MDD may be related to its calming effects rather than any desire to increase or maintain sad feelings.

Group delays of 2 f1-f2 distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs) were determined using both f1- and f2-sweep paradigms in 24 normal-hearing subjects. These DPOAE group delays were studied in comparison with cochlear delays estimated from derived band VIIIth nerve compound action potentials (CAPs) and auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) in the same subjects. The center frequencies of the derived bands in the electrophysiological experiment were matched with the f2-frequencies in the DPOAE recording to ensure that DPOAEs and derived CAPs and ABRs were generated at the same places along the cochlear partition, thus allowing for a direct comparison. The degree to which DPOAE group delays are larger in the f2- than in the f1-sweep paradigm is consistent with a theoretical analysis of the so-called wave-fixed model. Both DPOAE group delays are highly correlated with CAP- and ABR-derived measures of cochlear delay. The principal result of this study is that "roundtrip" DPOAE group delay in the f1-sweep paradigm is exactly twice as large as the neural estimate of the "forward" cochlear delay. The interpretation of this notion in the context of cochlear wave propagation properties and DPOAE-generating mechanisms is discussed.