Belief functions have recently been advocated as an alternative to probability functions for representing quantified belief. This new normative model has several merits, but these merits are not sufficient to justify its use. Some ‘axiomatic’ justification is also needed. Indeed the examination of the requirements that underlie the normative models of subjective behaviors provides usually the b...

Published research demonstrates an association between exposure to media sexual content and a variety of sex-related outcomes for adolescents. What is not known is the mechanism through which sexual content produces this "media effect" on adolescent beliefs, attitudes, and behavior. Using the Integrative Model of Behavioral Prediction, this article uses data from a longitudinal study of adolesc...

BACKGROUND This study uses the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) as a framework to investigate salient beliefs about chlamydia testing, amongst young people living in relatively deprived areas. These beliefs may form targets for intervention to increase testing in this high-risk population. METHODS Participants recruited from colleges in deprived areas of a UK city, completed open-ended quest...

National Institutes of Health principal investigators reported their perceptions of the ethical defensibility, prevalence in their field, and their personal willingness to engage in questionable research practices (QRPs). Using ethical defensibility ratings, an exploratory factor analysis yielded a two-factor solution: behaviors considered unambiguously ethically indefensible and behaviors whos...

New members on bone marrow registries worldwide are needed to allow sufficient diversity in the donor pool to meet patient needs. We used the theory of planned behaviour belief-basis and surveyed students who had not donated blood previously (i.e. non-donors) (N = 150) about the behavioural, normative, and control beliefs informing their intentions to join the Australian Bone Marrow Donor Regis...

In this paper the results of several agent-based simulations, aiming to test the role of normative beliefs in the emergence and innovation of social norms, are presented and discussed. Rather than mere behavioral regularities, norms are here seen as behaviors spreading to the extent that and because the corresponding commands and beliefs do spread as well. On the grounds of such a view, the pre...

The present research contrasted theoretical models depicting the nature of the relation among drinking beliefs, drinking tendencies, and behavioral consequences in 266 incoming freshman college students. It also examined the theoretical relations between mother-teen communications and drinking beliefs relevant to behavioral consequences. The findings revealed direct relations between binge-drin...

It is often said that ‘belief aims at truth’. This is presented sometimes as a truism, sometimes as capturing an essential and constitutive feature of belief and of inquiry. It is a truism that to believe something is to believe that it is true, and that in this sense beliefs are directed towards truth. It is also a truism that we aim at having true beliefs rather than false ones, and that in t...