Through earnings announcements, conference calls, and other press releases, corporate executives have an opportunity to frame the narrative of financial disclosures. Numerous studies have shown that textual tone significantly influences stock returns, suggesting that through word choice, upper management may impact market reaction. In this study, we examine the influence of CEO personality traits on corporate disclosures by analyzing the tone of earnings announcements for a sample of Fortune 500 CEOs over nearly two decades. Our hypotheses are twofold: that qualitative (...) disclosures in firms with narcissistic leaders will be biased upward and the bias will moderate as CEOs becomes older. Our empirical results support these hypotheses and suggest that more narcissistic CEOs tend to reinforce their grandiose self-image by issuing more positive earnings announcements but this desire wanes with CEO age. We also find that the stock market response to the tone of the earnings announcement is less pronounced for more narcissistic CEOs, suggesting the market takes into account the bias in narcissistic CEO announcements. (shrink)

Previous studies of the relationship between hope and life satisfaction left the underlying mechanism of how hope predicts life satisfaction unexplored to scholars. This study thus investigates the two potential mediators in the relationship between hope and life satisfaction among a sample of Chinese shadow education institution tutors who may be under immense professional development pressure from a cross-sectional approach. The main body of the study consists of an online survey in which 221 SEI tutors reported their hope, positive coping, (...) perceived social support, and life satisfaction. The survey results were analyzed using mediation and moderation analysis via SPSS 23.0. The results indicated that positive coping improved the relationship between hope and life satisfaction, supporting the hypothesis regarding the serial mediating effect of positive coping and perceived social support. In other words, tutors with a high level of hope tend to adopt positive coping strategies, thus will receive more social support and improve life satisfaction. Our findings revealed the independent and accumulative mediating effects of positive coping and perceived social support on the relationship between hope and life satisfaction, and had implications for the psychological intervention of SEI tutors who are currently facing enormous industry pressure. (shrink)

This paper studies the problems of tip position regulation and vibration suppression of flexible manipulators without using the model. Because of the two-timescale characteristics of flexible manipulators, applying the existing model-free control methods may lead to ill-conditioned numerical problems. In this paper, the dynamics of a flexible manipulator is decomposed into two subsystems which are linear and controllable at different timescales by singular perturbation theory and a model-free composite controller is designed to alleviate the ill-conditioned numerical problems. To do this, (...) a model-free composite control strategy is constructed which facilitates in designing the controller in slow and fast timescales. In the slow timescale, the slow subsystem controller is designed by adaptive dynamic programming based on the measurements of the slow inputs and the position, while the vibration in the slow timescale is estimated by the least square method. In the fast timescale, the vibration is reconstructed based on the measurements of vibration and its estimate in the slow timescale, by which the fast controller is designed using ADP. Stability of the closed-loop system is proved by SP theory. Finally, simulations are given to show the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed methods. (shrink)

Objective: The objective of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the decision regret scale. Methods: The data of 704 patients who completed the DRSc were used for the analyses. We evaluated the construct, convergent/discriminant, and known-group validity; internal consistency and test–retest reliability; and the item invariance of the DRSc. A receiver operating characteristic curve was employed to confirm the optimal cutoff point of the scale. Results: A confirmatory factor analysis indicated that a one-factor (...) model fits the data. The internal consistency and test–retest reliability [intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.71] of the DRSc were acceptable. The DRSc demonstrated unidimensionality and invariance for use across the sexes. It was confirmed that an optimal cutoff point of 25 could discriminate between patients with high and low decisional regret during clinical practice. Conclusion: The DRSc is a parsimonious instrument that can be used to measure the uncertainty inherent in medical decisions. It can be employed to provide knowledge, offer support, and elicit patient preferences in an attempt to promote shared decision-making. (shrink)

Migraine is a chronic and idiopathic disorder leading to cognitive and affective problems. However, the neural basis of migraine without aura is still unclear. In this study, dynamic amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations analyses were performed in 21 patients with migraine without aura and 21 gender- and age-matched healthy controls to identify the voxel-level abnormal functional dynamics. Significantly decreased dALFF in the bilateral anterior insula, bilateral lateral orbitofrontal cortex, bilateral medial prefrontal cortex, bilateral anterior cingulate cortex, and left middle frontal cortex (...) were found in patients with migraine without aura. The dALFF values in the anterior cingulate cortex were negatively correlated with pain intensity, i.e., visual analog scale. Finally, support vector machine was used to classify patients with migraine without aura from healthy controls and achieved an accuracy of 83.33%, sensitivity of 90.48%, and specificity of 76.19%. Our findings provide the evidence that migraine influences the brain functional activity dynamics and reveal the neural basis for migraine, which could facilitate understanding the neuropathology of migraine and future treatment. (shrink)

As the main sales force of life insurance companies, salespeople have accounted for more than 50% of life insurance sales channels over the years, playing a pivotal role in the development of the industry. Since the adoption of the model of employment at an agency, the commission income of life insurance salespeople has largely relied on their sales volume, which requires employee proactivity under a great number of stressors. However, because previous studies have analyzed stressors in a single dimension, our (...) understanding of the relationship between work stressors and proactive behaviors remains limited. Applying self-determination theory, we investigated differential relationships between challenge/hindrance stressors and proactive behaviors, which were expected to be mediated by passion and moderated by servant leadership. In the sample of 332 insurance salespeople, there was a positive relationship between challenge stressors and proactive behaviors. In addition, passion mediated the relationship between stressors and proactive behaviors, and servant leadership moderated the relationship between stressors and passion. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the debate between Jonathan Dancy and Brad Hooker regarding the validity of moral particularism and investigates whether both philosophers have overlooked any important factors in their discussions. According to Jonathan Dancy’s ideas of particularism, morality which encompasses our moral thought, judgment, and the possibility of moral distinctions, is independent of the codification of moral principles. He appeals to holism in the theory of reasons to defend his belief that the same property or feature that is a (...) reason in one case can count morally for or against action in different circumstances. Hooker, on the other hand, takes issue with Dancy’s account by suggesting that moral particularism is socially impractical, and Dancy’s provision of premises ought to be overwhelmingly plausible. Hooker argues that moral particularism fails to provide the moral assurance that is required of a shared commitment to morality that brings about mutually beneficial practices that we can generalize in consideration of the features of contexts in which they take place within the specification of reason(s) for belief and action. By comparing Hooker’s example involving theoretical particularist Patty and the Rossian generalist Gerry with Dancy’s rebuttal, this paper propounds that Dancy and Hooker both insufficiently address the conceptual relation between moral obligation and accountability within the moral domain. Morality as accountability does not exclusively relate to the valuable consequences of creating and following rules and principles. Rather, it entails our obligations conceptually to hold ourselves mutually accountable if and only if there are existing general rules and principles that are also accessible to all members within the community bounded by such common moral knowledge. (shrink)