How does one decide on the perfect gift? We look at an important tradeoff between desirability and feasibility in gift giving using construal level theory as a framework. We propose that givers construe gifts abstractly, and therefore choose gifts high on desirability attributes over gifts high on feasibility attributes. Support for these propositions emerges in studies examining giver and rece...

Many optimization problems can be expressed using some form of soft constraints, where different measures of desirability are associated with different combinations of domain values for specified subsets of variables. In this paper we identify a class of soft binary constraints for which the problem of finding the optimal solution is tractable. In other words, we show that for any given set of ...

This multi-country study used role models to boost perceptions of entrepreneurial feasibility and desirability. The results of a structural equation model based on a sample comprising 426 individuals who were primarily from Austria, Finland and Greece revealed a significant positive influence on perceived entrepreneurial desirability and feasibility. These findings support the argument for embe...

This study investigates the relative contributions of social desirability attitudes, previous number of multicultural counseling courses taken, and racism and White racial identity attitudes together in predicting marital and family therapists' self-reported multicultural counseling competence. Results revealed that, when controlling for social desirability attitudes and the number of multicult...

We study the locally-defined social capital metric of Palasek (2013) for determining individuals’ prestige within an online social network. From it we derive an equivalent global measure by considering random walks over the network itself. This result inspires a novel expression quantifying the strategic desirability of a potential social connection. We show in silico that ideal social neighbor...

This paper studies how income inequality affects the probability of signing free trade agreements (FTAs) in a political economy framework. The median voter approach to FTA formation within a Heckscher-Ohlin framework predicts that an increase in inequality lowers the desirability of an FTA if the partner country is relatively labor abundant, ceteris paribus, and raises the desirability of such ...

The COVID-19 pandemic and protests have marked an unprecedented increase in U.S. gun sales. But America has long been outlier; the stockpile of private guns climbed to almost 300 million 2017. Scholars use multiple theories explain why sales tripled since early 2000s, disruptions like might cause However, scholars difficulty evaluating these with existing retrospective estimates other measures,...

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People are often presumed to be vulnerable to a desirability bias, namely, a tendency to be overoptimistic about a future outcome as a result of their preferences or desires for that outcome. In this article, this form of wishful thinking is distinguished from the more general concepts of motivated reasoning and overoptimism, and the evidence for this bias is reviewed. The authors argue that de...