Influence of professional drivers’ personality traits on road traffic safety: case study

The purpose of this paper is to present basic elements of the research directed at identifying and determining the personality traits of professional drivers that affect safe, secure and enjoyable ride on public roads. A quantitative method has been used here, whereas data were acquired from a questionnaire based on a sample of 59 professional drivers. Determining personality traits of professional drivers that are in correlation with a safe and pleasant ride on the roads has been enabled by applying the five-factor model of personality (‘Big Five’) and the Personality Inventory NEO-PI. From these results it was concluded that safe operation of the vehicle in traffic involves the successful ‘conduct’ of oneself, which recognises the importance of certain personality traits of professional drivers for traffic safety and the need for appropriate professional selection in the case of employment of professional drivers. Research results implicate development of educational programmes aimed at achieving harmony of psychological, physical and sensory health, that is, programmes for permanent informing, educating and training professional drivers for defensive driving. The research opens the way for new research tasks that should help in creating a specific structure of curricula that can be used in a variety of transportation companies and enterprises to improve general and public safety.     

浅谈高职院校学生人格特征与适应能力

高职院校学生社会适应情况与高职院校学生人格和社会适应之间的关系密切相关。主要体现在大学生在学习适应和择业适应上存在显著的性别差异;不同生源地学生的社会适应能力无显著差异;不同专业学生的适应能力总分存在显著差异,且在校园适应、情绪适应和满意度三个维度上差异显著。     

CEO／CFO特质与财务报告质量文献综述

管理者特质是影响公司财务报告质量的一个重要因素，特别是作为核心高管的CEO／CFO个人特质作用尤为明显。通过回顾西方现有研究CEO／CFO特质与财务报告质量关系的文献，发现可以将其区分为两个分支：一支围绕着显性特质如性别、年龄、资格和资历等，另一支围绕隐性特质如过度自信、自恋情结等展开。监管层为提高财务报告的可靠性而设计治理结构和制定相关政策时，不能忽略CEO／CFO的特质属性。     

Experimental evidence on personality traits and preferences

Using an experiment, we test the relation between personality traits and revealed risk and ambiguity preferences, and we consider the effects of personality traits prevalence in a group on the decision making of each group member. In the experiment, subjects reveal their risk and ambiguity preferences through lottery choices. They then participate in an unstructured group chat. Afterwards, they are given the chance to revise their initial lottery choices. Results show that personality traits affect ambiguity but not risk preferences before the chat. Specifically, agreeableness is negatively related to ambiguity aversion. We also show that the probability of changing decisions after the chat is affected by the individual's personality traits but not by the traits of the other group members. The latter only affects the direction and the degree of the change.     

Employee recognition,meaningfulness and behavioural involvement: test of a moderated mediation model

Abstract

This study examines how and under what conditions recognition practices are related to employee behavioural involvement at work. Combining social cognitive theory, social information processing theory and self-concordance theory, we develop and test a moderated mediation model in which (a) manager recognition promotes behavioural involvement both directly and indirectly through the intervening role of meaningfulness and (b) coworker recognition strengthens the benefits of manager recognition to meaningfulness and subsequent behavioural involvement. The results of a study of 130 employees provided empirical support for our model. These findings help clarify how different sources of recognition can shape the effective behavioural involvement in the workplace; they also emphasize the role of meaningfulness as an important psychological mechanism that explains the recognition–behaviour relation. The implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

The impact of personality traits on attitude to financial risk

While the effects of emotions on attitudes to investment risk are now well documented, the influence of personality factors has been less researched. This paper examines the role of personality traits in determining financial risk tolerance. Using an extensive survey of UK-based retail investors, we show that personality traits and characteristics are more important than emotions in determining attitude to risk. We also observe that the widely adopted ‘Big Five’ framework is insufficient to characterise this relationship adequately, with significant roles for financial self-efficacy, resilience, and trait anger. Since some of these characteristics can be modified, our findings are suggestive that appropriate training and support for those making financial decisions could lead to better outcomes over the longer term.     

Patterns of self-drive tourists: The case of Nanning City, China

Based on 340 valid questionnaires, the spatial behavioural characteristics of self-drive tourists from Nanning City are discussed in the paper. Survey results show that the majority of respondents took five self-drive tourist trips per annum. These were primarily during holiday periods and at weekends, with a common duration of 2-3 days on each trip. Their overall spatial behavioural characteristics are congruent with the concept of General Distance Attenuation Patterns. Scenic spots are strong attraction nodes but are discontinuously and disproportionally distributed, so consequently the spatial behavioural characteristics irregularly change with distance.     

Behavioural Economics: A Virginia Political Economy Perspective

Behavioural economics offers a critique of modern neoclassical economics by providing empirical evidence that the model of rational choice does not accurately describe human decision‐making processes. The existence of cognitive biases, what we might term ‘agent failure’, becomes reason to doubt the efficacy of unhampered markets, and is seen by some as a sufficient condition for government intervention. This article offers a critique of this argument from an Austrian and public choice theory comparative institutions perspective. Agent failure arguments are analogous to market failure arguments of the mid‐twentieth century and the same kinds of responses made against the latter are applied to the former. Behavioural economics arguments for intervention ignore the cognitive biases of political actors, neglect the comparative perspective that results from such biases, and do not examine the ways in which markets are superior to politics in providing the information and incentives actors need to become aware of their errors and correct them. The existence of imperfectly rational agents, like the existence of imperfect markets, is therefore not a sufficient condition for government intervention into the market.