Winning a championship is the highest achievement in Formula 1, and multiple titles can earn one a place in the pantheon of the sport. In this article I explore whether the scoring method for selecting a champion can be considered defi nitive, and how unstable results might be when the method’s parameters are slightly changed. I have employed case studies of paradoxes and historical recreations of seasons using alternative scoring systems. Finally, I argue that the Borda count is desirable system for scoring in Formula 1,
and that building strategies by teams around particular scoring systems is a legitimate aspect of the sport.

In surveys, which are a commonly accepted research method in social sciences, we always observe a certain percentage of respondents giving no-opinion responses such as “no opinion” or “hard to say”. In this study, we treat no-opinion responses as a motivated decision to refuse to respond. The aim of the study was to determine what factors involved in the organisation of a study increase the percentage of respondents who opt for no-opinion responses. The factors on which we focused include in particular the significance of the difficulty of questions; the order of questionnaire questions; motivating respondents through rewards, and the research technique. In the first part of the study, 575 students were divided into 5 groups. Each group was surveyed about environmental consumer attitudes in different survey conditions. In addition, the respondents were asked to rank the difficulty of individual questions in the survey. Findings: The study showed that the percentage of no-opinion responses increases as the questions become more difficult. The respondents were more likely to avoid stating their opinion on those unecological behaviours that they exhibited more frequently. The change of the research technique from a questionnaire to a direct interview caused a decrease in the percentage of noopinion responses. The respondents opted for a “no opinion” response less frequently when the interview was conducted by a lecturer than when it was conducted by a student. Changing the order of questions also affected the percentage of no-opinion responses; however, that was only true for questions that the respondents recognised as easy. Conclusions: The study showed that the choice of a research technique intended to reduce the percentage of no-opinion responses depends on the quality of questions. If they are difficult and require the respondents to engage cognitive resources, a better solution is to employ the direct interview method. However, if the questions are sensitive and the respondent may feel pressure to give a response that conforms to social norms, a better solution is to ensure them anonymity, e.g. by employing the questionnaire technique.

When decisions are made sequentially in a group, Bayesian playersaiming to maximize individual payoffs often need to ignore their private information and imitate choices of earlier decision makers. This results in information cascades. Once formed, information cascades can be harmful to information aggregation and average payoffs in the group. Therefore, there is a potential dilemma facing players in such situations. They can reveal private information and risk lower immediate payoffs but benefit the group in the long run, or join an information cascade. It has been shown that reciprocity (i.e., paying a cost at one time while being compensated at another) can lead to optimal solutions in such dilemmas. We hypothesized that it would be so for the present one, as well. This hypothesis was tested in an experiment in which we manipulated two factors: the stability of players' positions in a sequence that determined whether reciprocity was possible, and the decision payoff structure that constrained to what extent revealing private information was beneficial to the group. The results show that both factors influenced the probabilities of private information revealing and the group payoffs in ways consistent with our predictions.

Social choice theory is essentially about the constraints upon effective mechanisms for implementing desirable states of a society or a group, given the preferences and utilities of its members. Social choice theory is also, and much more generally, a conceptual examination of normative theories of society – theories that characterize what it is for state of affairs to be better from the social point of view. Social choice methods have different aims, for example democratic decision-making, epistemic decision-making, respecting individual rights of persons and groups, just distribution of goods. They are justified by the sets of postulates, which represent different basic social values.

The way in which an electoral system influences the party system is a salient topic discussed in political science and social choice theory. Researches in post-communist countries have so far usually been analyses of the isolated cases of the elections. Here all free parliamentary elections in this region are examined. It allows measuring the total effect of the electoral system on the party system. It was found that the consequences of some electoral institutions are different than observed in old democracies: single-member districts with majority rule may cause considerable parliament fragmentation and the consequences of mixed systems are heterogeneous and depending on their inner mechanics. It was also found that the form of the party system depends to a greater degree on the properties of the political scene than on the electoral system.

This paper presents the new, interdisciplinary field of science called neuroeconomics. The first part of the paper shows relations between neuroeconomics, classical economics and behavioral economics. Next, the most popular measurement methods used in neuroeconomic experiments are described. Finally, the paper reviews results from neuroconomic research in four areas: 1) choices under risk and uncertainty, 2) moral decision making, 3) intertemporal decision making, 4) economic behavior in the social context.

The article presents an empirical research which aimed at verifying if participation in a cooperation or competition training determined future behaviors during an anonymous, two-person trust game. We applied two variants of training: active and passive. The main hypothesis claimed that participation in a cooperation training activates the social norm of cooperation and induces more cooperative choices in trust games, whereas participation in a competition training reduces the willingness for cooperative choices. We also predicted that an active training would be more effective in activating cooperation and competition norms than a passive one. Finally, it was expected that interrelation of a cooperative decision in a more risky game would reduce the influence of a training-activated norm on the final decision. The results of the experiment confirmed all three hypotheses.

Analysis of vulnerability of selected social choice methods to strategic voting is presented in the article. Selected methods are: plurality voting, the Borda count and approval voting. Applied procedure allowed strategic voting of unlimited number of voters. With each method voters knew the outcome of the sincere voting, consistent with their real preferences. 24 variants differed on voting parameters; for each variant 1000 random profiles of preferences have been analyzed. Results are different from expected.

The article presents an analysis of the effects of the list apparentment institution introduced in the electoral rule for the sejmik of voivodship (regional council) and of some other changes which also had significant consequences. The effect analysis of these institutional solutions required primarily a comparison of specific political parties’ election results with the results these parties would have got under the „old” electoral rule, assuming no change in voters’ preferences resulting from the change in law. The electoral rule amendment had a significant impact on the results of specific parties, as measured by the number of mandates gained. Then, the authors investigated a number of alternative coalition strategies available to political parties, elaborating on the issue of effectiveness in actions undertaken by collective actors such as political parties. The authors proved that the results of the elections concerned depended on coalition strategies, rather than on election rules. Some players in the electoral game failed to achieve effectiveness in the attainment of the ultimate objective, i.e. to maximise the number of mandates gained, but the assessment of effectiveness provides different results if we assume that an important objective (though not equally important) was to maximise the results of the relevant bloc formed by apparentment. A matter of concern in the new electoral rule is the violation in 26% of constituencies of the monotonny criterion in the distribution of mandates resulting from the distribution of votes. In their concluding remarks, the authors put forward a proposal for a change in the electoral rule that better reflects the profiles of individual preferences in the social choice, while maintaining the apparentment institution.

Allocation of a set of indivisible and heterogeneous goods almost inevitably causes inequality of shares assigned to individual participants of the allocation. Klemens Szaniawski proposed two probabilistic principles of equal division: the Principle of Equal Chances of Satisfaction and the Principle of Equal Chances of Choice. He proved that even in a very simplified situation different concepts of equality are possible. Those concepts can conflict with one another and with the other requirements imposing to social decision making. Such way of investigation and comparing the principles of distributive justice predominates the social choice theory nowadays.

Social choice theory contains a number of deductive theorems on voting Methods' properties, in particular "non-existence" theorems, stating that there is no voting method complying particular rationality condition (as insusceptibility to strategic voting). These theorems, though theoretically important, have limited practical implications. When no voting method guarantees rational choice, the question of risk level connected with particular methods is raised. Such a question can be partly answered by means of computer simulations. Although simulations' results have no deductive quality, often they could be treated as statistical hypotheses. Even if statistical interpretation is impossible, simulations' results could be helpful in resolving practical problems.