In this article, we examine the degree of urban primacy and understand what explains urban primacy in the Indian states.
We estimated Zipf’s law for Indian states for 2001 and 2011. We then regressed ...the urban population in the largest city in each state as dependent on various factors.
We find Kerala had the least primacy as of 2011, whereby its biggest city contained only 5% of its urban population. Based on the second-stage regression, we find that the state per capita income, population and length of railways have a significantly negative effect on primacy, while MSME employment increases it. We examine the highway network in selected states characterized by severe primacy and find a major problem with national transport priorities.
The policy implications are for improving the national highway network and rail routes in the states to increase MSME employment and increase state income to reduce primacy.
People tend to judge more recent events, relative to earlier ones, as the cause of some particular outcome. For instance, people are more inclined to judge that the last basket, rather than the ...first, caused the team to win the basketball game. This recency effect, however, reverses in cases of overdetermination: people judge that earlier events, rather than more recent ones, caused the outcome when the event is individually sufficient but not individually necessary for the outcome. In five experiments (N = 5507), we find evidence for the recency effect and the primacy effect for causal judgment. Traditionally, these effects have been a problem for counterfactual views of causal judgment. However, we argue that an extension of a recent counterfactual model of causal judgment explains both the recency and the primacy effect. In line with the predictions of our extended counterfactual model, we also find that, regardless of causal structure, people tend to imagine the counterfactual alternative to the more recent event rather than to the earlier one. Moreover, manipulating this tendency affects causal judgments in the ways predicted by this extended model: asking participants to imagine the counterfactual alternative to the earlier event weakens the interaction between recency and causal structure, and asking participants to imagine the counterfactual alternative to the more recent event strengthens the interaction between recency and causal structure. We discuss these results in relation to work on counterfactual thinking, causal modeling, and late-preemption.
Impression formation is a basic module of fundamental research in social cognition, with broad implications for applied research on interpersonal relations, social attitudes, employee selection, and ...person judgments in legal and political context. Drawing on a pool of 28 predominantly positive traits used in Solomon Asch's (1946) seminal impression studies, two research teams have investigated the impact of the number of person traits sampled randomly from the pool on the evaluative impression of the target person. Whereas Norton, Frost, and Ariely (2007) found a "less-is-more" effect, reflecting less positive impressions with increasing sample size n, Ullrich, Krueger, Brod, and Groschupf (2013) concluded that an n-independent averaging rule can account for the data patterns obtained in both labs. We address this issue by disentangling different influences of n on resulting impressions, namely varying baserates of positive and negative traits, different sampling procedures, and trait diagnosticity. Depending on specific task conditions, which can be derived on theoretical grounds, the strength of resulting impressions (in the direction of the more prevalent valence) (a) increases with increasing n for diagnostic traits, (b) is independent of n for nondiagnostic traits, or (c) decreases with n when self-truncated sampling produces a distinct primacy effect. This refined pattern, which holds for the great majority of individual participants, illustrates the importance of strong theorizing in cumulative science (Fiedler, 2017) built on established empirical laws and logically sound theorizing.
Drawing on the influence of primacy and recency effects in processing information about corporate social responsibility (CSR), the authors examine how internal (customer experience) and external (CSR ...reputation) factors impact the consumer-firm relationship in the presence of contradictory CSR information. Evaluating these factors provides a more comprehensive understanding of how consumers react to unethical and socially irresponsible actions. Contrary to recent research that suggests a reactive CSR communication strategy to be best due to recency effects, the present findings show that past customer experiences with the firm facilitate a ‘primacy effect’. Thus, when corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) occurs, a customer’s prior experiences mitigate negative consequences. Conversely, a firm’s positive CSR reputation may provide goodwill, although it does not guarantee that consumers will process CSR information differently. Therefore, firms cannot build a strong CSR reputation and expect to be immune from the consequences of CSI. Given these new findings of how consumers process contradictory CSR information, firms should implement a strategic and deliberate communication plan that delivers different messages to different stakeholders. Specifically, these findings suggest that firms benefit most from a proactive communication strategy with their current customers and a reactive communication strategy with the general public.
In a series of studies, the effect of evidence order with strongly and weakly probative evidence was examined. In studies 1a, 1b, and 2, participants read a homicide trial containing four pieces of ...evidence (two strongly probative, two weakly) presented in differing orders and reported their verdicts. In Study 1a and 1b, fingerprint evidence and a video confession were strongly probative, while DNA evidence and eyewitness testimony were not. In Study 2, DNA and video confession evidence were strongly probative, but fingerprint evidence and eyewitness testimony were not. Across studies, results indicated recency effects when the last piece of evidence was strongly probative, with more guilty verdicts compared to when the last piece of evidence was weakly probative. Study 3 utilized a different trial scenario and six pieces of evidence to further test for a primacy effect. Results again indicated support for a recency effect, with no primacy effects found.
What are the parameters that define a posthuman knowing subject, her scientific credibility and ethical accountability? Taking the posthumanities as an emergent field of enquiry based on the ...convergence of posthumanism and post-anthropocentrism, I argue that posthuman knowledge claims go beyond the critiques of the universalist image of ‘Man’ and of human exceptionalism. The conceptual foundation I envisage for the critical posthumanities is a neo-Spinozist monistic ontology that assumes radical immanence, i.e. the primacy of intelligent and self-organizing matter. This implies that the posthuman knowing subject has to be understood as a relational embodied and embedded, affective and accountable entity and not only as a transcendental consciousness. Two related notions emerge from this claim: firstly, the mind-body continuum – i.e. the embrainment of the body and embodiment of the mind – and secondly, the nature-culture continuum – i.e. ‘naturecultural’ and ‘humanimal’ transversal bonding. The article explores these key conceptual and methodological perspectives and discusses the implications of the critical posthumanities for practices in the contemporary ‘research’ university.
Individuals described as “fun, witty, and vicious” are typically rated more favorably than those described as “vicious, witty, and fun” despite the semantic equivalence of these statements. This is ...known as the primacy effect in impression formation. We tested whether these effects emerge from pragmatic inferences about communicative intentions (e.g., that communicators should relay the most important information first). Participants heard a list of descriptors, with the most positive adjective listed either first or last; they also learned either that (a) the list was compiled by a human (licensing the inference that the most important information should be conveyed first) or (b) randomly ordered by a computer (thus blocking such an inference). Across five experiments (total N = 2,882), we found support for a small primacy effect in impression formation, but found no evidence of a pragmatic explanation for primacy effects.
In The Making of Christian Moravia Maddalena Betti examines the creation of the Moravian archdiocese, of which St Methodius was the first incumbent, in the context of ninth-century papal policy in ...central and south-eastern Europe.
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