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This chapter addresses adaptation to dynamic, novel and uncertain military environments. These environments require a shift from a maneuver warfare paradigm to an asymmetric world where shifting alliances, questionable civilian loyalties, opaque cultures, and the requirement to maintain peace one day and combat the next makes for a particularly confusing situation. This new warfare paradigm requires adaptation to an uncertain, complex environment.

The initial section discusses a general cognitive model of visualization called RAVENS and its importance for adaptation developed specifically to address complex military environments. RAVENS posits that humans are inherently flexible decision makers and situation awareness depends on the ability of humans to create narrative visualizations that capture the overall context of complex military environments. Using the framework as a guideline, we will examine two important visualization research programs whose purpose is to allow military operators to rapidly adapt to volatile situations. The first program investigates cognitive effects such as the framing bias and their possible interactions with a variety of display concepts during a series of missile defense simulations. The experimenters presented risk as a spatial representation of uncertainty and target value that emphasized either expected population lost or expected population saved. The second program investigated the feasibility of using visualizations generated from Scheherazade (a coevolutionary algorithm) to aid MI analysts in predicting emergent tactics of terrorist groups during urban operations. Finally, we discuss the value of these approaches for providing coherent narrative understanding as called for in the RAVENS model.

This chapter traces the development of the pricing research program of Kent Monroe, beginning with his doctoral dissertation and continuing to the present time. Drawing on psychophysics and adaptation-level theory the early research efforts concentrated on validating two important concepts relative to behavioral pricing research: reference price and acceptable price range. Then the behavioral pricing research program expanded to explore how the context of a purchase situation, including the structure of the prices available for judgment, influences buyers' price perceptions and willingness to buy. In the early years his research included pricing models and research on patronage behavior. Subsequently, concentrating primarily on behavioral pricing research, he began to integrate findings from the research program into examining how various sellers pricing strategies and tactics influence buyers' judgments and purchase decisions. These efforts led to the first edition of his book Pricing – Making Profitable Decisions published in 1979. The book was subsequently revised and expanded in 1990 and again in 2003.

Activity-based costing (ABC) is presented in accounting textbooks as a costing system that can be used to make valuable managerial decisions. Little experimental or empirical evidence, however, has demonstrated the benefits of ABC under controlled conditions. Similarly, although case studies and business surveys often comment on business environments that appear to favor ABC methods, experimental studies of actual behavioral issues affecting ABCs usage are limited.

This study used an interactive computer simulation, under controlled, laboratory conditions, to test the decision usefulness of ABC information. The effects of presentation format (theory of cognitive fit and decision framing), decision commitment (cognitive dissonance), and their interactions were also examined. ABC information yielded better profitability decisions, requiring no additional decision time. Graphic presentations required less decision time, however, presentation formats did not significantly affect decision quality (simulation profits). Decision commitment beneficially affected profitability decisions, requiring no additional time. Decision commitment was especially influential (helpful) in non-ABC decision environments.

We review the experimental evidence on risk aversion in controlled laboratory settings. We review the strengths and weaknesses of alternative elicitation procedures, the strengths and weaknesses of alternative estimation procedures, and finally the effect of controlling for risk attitudes on inferences in experiments.

Given the growth in use of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) in reproductive medicine, most fertility clinics have developed websites describing the benefits of PGD. This chapter examines the media frames employed on 372 U.S. fertility clinic websites marketing PGD to consumers and how these frames promote biomedicalization.

Evaluation of website discourse was conducted with the use of frame analysis, a research methodology for examining the way media frames bind together claims, judgments, and value statements into a narrative that guides readers’ interpretation of an issue.

Findings show that website discourse frames PGD in terms of the attainment of reproductive normality, the management of reproductive risk, and the achievement of technological progress. These discursive frames contribute to the ongoing biomedicalization of reproduction by re-naturalizing conception as a choice rather than a natural fact, by promoting preoccupation with biomedical risk, and by affirming new forms of technological power and expertise.

Examination reveals the ways in which PGD has developed its own system of representations, notions of exchange, and epistemic forms, and highlights the important ethical issues leveraged on fertility clinic websites marketing PGD.

As one of the first attempts to systematically analyze media frames that depict PGD on fertility clinic websites, this study contributes to medical sociology by advancing theoretical and empirical understanding of the media processes shaping accounts of reproductive technologies. Findings also provide a foundation for further analysis of the social norms and bioethical standards arising from consumer marketing of reproductive technologies.

The study explores how economic factors influenced the coverage of COVID-19 in a privately owned commercial radio, Central Broadcasting Service (CBS), in Uganda. The station was selected mainly because it is one of the biggest radio stations in Uganda in terms of influence and audience reach. In addition, CBS is one of the few radio stations which carry elaborate news bulletins in the country. Most of the other stations put more emphasis on entertainment and only carry news as briefs. Since the liberalisation of airwaves in Uganda in 1993, a lot of research has been conducted on the performance and influence of commercial radio. However, there is little scholarship on the influence of economic factors on the coverage of health crises by commercial radio. The study employs the Critical Political Economy and Framing theories to understand how stories about COVID-19 were framed and the motivations for the identified frames. Quantitative content analysis was used for this study. The study found that the economic imperative influenced the frames chosen by reporters and editors at CBS during the coverage of COVID-19.

Purpose – To investigate the potential future role of information delivery in terms of reducing transport-related emissions. The assumed response of travellers to information and the notions of content and context are provided, together with factors that can determine an individual's propensity to seek and engage with travel information.

Methodology/approach – A review of information use, the behavioural stages of change and context design is undertaken, incorporating a research case study in the use of framing.

Findings – Recent theoretical and empirical insights into behavioural change provide new insights into the role of information in reducing transport-related emissions. Traveller information offers many benefits to the user and could be influential in affecting travel behaviour change, although there are socio-psychological factors outside the control of information service designers that also need to be considered, such as the ‘stage of change’ people are at in relation to a change in behaviour.

Originality/value – The chapter examines how travel information could go beyond the provision of trip choice data and incorporate contextual elements to make it more effective. Concepts related to the Transtheoretical Model (stages of change) and the latest thinking in behavioural economics are discussed in relation to an increase in the likelihood of environmental travel alternatives being considered and chosen.

The potential benefits of structuring first-year general chemistry courses around an expert decision model (EDM) to help students develop conceptual understanding and sustainable problem-solving strategies are discussed, as is the creation of the EDM and the challenges faced in doing so. The usefulness of categorizing the course material as either process knowledge, conditional knowledge, or conceptual knowledge is also outlined. The EDM created for the course consists of four fundamental content domains branching out with a series of hierarchal questions and actions designed to guide students toward characterizing a question or solving a problem. The key characteristics of each of these domains are described along with aspects of this EDM structure that have been implemented over the past couple of years in the author’s classes and the impact this has had on the students and the author’s teaching.

It is not surprising that the dominant cognitive frame through which most audiences view climate change is that of an environmental problem. However, this messaging strategy has proven susceptible to counter-attacks, defensing processing, and other cognitive biases. As such, many environmental advocates are switching gears. From Barack Obama to Pope Francis, the environment-as-public-health-concern narrative is increasingly found in climate change messages. This strategy involves making the abstract issue of climate change more concrete by tying it to negative health impacts, like asthma, heat-related illness, and the spread of disease. Understanding why and for whom this strategy is persuasive, particularly in a social media context where users often encounter persuasive climate change messages, can help advance theory and practice.

The purpose of this chapter is two-fold: 1.) Test the effects of climate message frame (damage to nature or damage to public health), message source (liberal or conservative organization), and the use of visual human exemplars (present or absent) in social media messages; and, 2.) Assess the predictive utility of different conceptual frameworks (personification, construal level theory, and moral foundations theory) as explanatory mechanisms for persuasive social media climate message effects. The results of a nation-wide experiment reveal that the use of visual exemplars matters when climate change is framed as an environmental problem, but otherwise message frame, source, and visual exemplar use have little impact on policy attitudes. Further analyses demonstrated that multiple conceptual mechanisms related to the aforementioned theories help explain social media effects on climate change attitudes.