Understanding preservice teachers’ thinking styles and dispositions and how these are related to positive changes in their teacher behaviors provide valuable information for teacher preparation. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between preservice teachers’ critical-thinking dispositions and three thinking styles (judicial, legislative, and executive) and their behavior change in...

An outstanding puzzle in the social sciences remains about the forms of perceived trustworthiness sufficient to produce trust. Survey experiments adjudicated between four models of the trustworthiness-trust link—social constraints, encapsulated interests, goodwill, and virtuous dispositions—and tested novel hypotheses about other-praising emotions (admiration and gratitude) as mediating effects...

OBJECTIVES Drawing on past studies of age identity, this article examined whether feeling older was associated with more pessimistic views about cognitive aging. METHODS Using respondents aged 55 years and older in the Midlife Development in the United States study, we estimated a series of linear regression models to predict people's dispositions toward their cognitive aging. The main compar...

Insofar as empirical inquiry involves the coevolution of descriptive language and theoretical commitments, a satisfactory model of empirical knowledge should describe the coordinated evolution of both language and theory. But since we do not know what conceptual resources we might need to express our future theories or to provide our best future faithful descriptions of the world, we do not now...

Scientific journal publications, and their contributions to knowledge, can be described by their depth (specialized, domain-specific knowledge extensions) and breadth (topical scope, including spanning multiple knowledge domains). Toward generating hypotheses about how scientists' personal dispositions would uniquely predict deeper vs. broader contributions to the literature, we assumed that co...

A theoretical model is proposed that specifies lay causal theories of behavior; and supporting experimental evidence is presented. The model's basic assumption is that different types of behavior trigger different hypotheses concerning the types of causes that may have brought about the behavior. Seven categories are distinguished that are assumed to serve as both behavior types and explanation...

The paper defends a naturalistic version of modal actualism according to which what is metaphysically possible is determined by dispositions found in the actual world. We argue that there is just one world – this one – and that all genuine possibilities are grounded in the dispositions exemplified in it. This is the case whether or not those dispositions are manifested. As long as the possibili...

This study was undertaken to assess the critical thinking dispositions of undergraduate college students in a comprehensive university mainland China and examine roles gender major subjects’ dispositions. An adapted Chinese version California Critical Thinking Dispositions Inventory (CCTDI) used survey 534 students. Statistics revealed that over 3/4 subjects were negative their think critically...

Privacy issues are major concerns in disclosing sensitive personal information such as health-related information. This study investigates the impact of personal dispositions on forming privacy concern and trust in context of disclosing personal health information online, based on utility theory and prospect theory. The study is among the first to provide a comprehensive list of constructs rela...