Social Skills
Oxytocin modulates selection of allies in intergroup conflict
Carsten De Dreu et al.
Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 22 March 2012, Pages 1150-1154
Abstract:
In intergroup competition and conflict, humans benefit from coalitions with strong partners who help them to protect their in-group and prevail over competing out-groups. Here, we link oxytocin, a neuropeptide produced in the hypothalamus, to ally selection in intergroup competition. In a double-blind placebo-controlled experiment, males self-administered oxytocin or placebo, and made selection decisions about six high-threat and six low-threat targets as potential allies in intergroup competition. Males given oxytocin rather than placebo viewed high-threat targets as more useful allies and more frequently selected them into their team than low-threat targets.
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Christopher Wilson, Tom Robinson & Mark Callister
Mass Communication and Society, March/April 2012, Pages 261-283
Abstract:
The scope and nature of reality television has changed since researchers last conducted a content analysis of the antisocial behavior for this type of programming. This study examines the content of seven seasons of Survivor, one of America's longest running reality television programs, to determine the types, frequency, and context of antisocial behavior presented in the series as well as the possible effects of the program on longtime viewers using social learning and cultivation theories. In the 76.4 hours of programming analyzed for this study, 4,207 antisocial acts were documented in the coding database. Indirect aggression and verbal aggression were found to be the most frequently occurring types of antisocial behavior. The number (4,207) and the rate (45.7 acts per hour) of antisocial acts in the seven seasons of Survivor analyzed in this study is higher than the findings of a previous study of antisocial behavior in reality-based television conducted in 1997. This study clearly demonstrates that longtime viewers of Survivor get a higher dose of antisocial behavior than did regular viewers of news programming and other reality-based programs that aired slightly more than 10 years ago.
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Testosterone disrupts human collaboration by increasing egocentric choices
Nicholas Wright et al.
Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Collaboration can provide benefits to the individual and the group across a variety of contexts. Even in simple perceptual tasks, the aggregation of individuals' personal information can enable enhanced group decision-making. However, in certain circumstances such collaboration can worsen performance, or even expose an individual to exploitation in economic tasks, and therefore a balance needs to be struck between a collaborative and a more egocentric disposition. Neurohumoral agents such as oxytocin are known to promote collaborative behaviours in economic tasks, but whether there are opponent agents, and whether these might even affect information aggregation without an economic component, is unknown. Here, we show that an androgen hormone, testosterone, acts as such an agent. Testosterone causally disrupted collaborative decision-making in a perceptual decision task, markedly reducing performance benefit individuals accrued from collaboration while leaving individual decision-making ability unaffected. This effect emerged because testosterone engendered more egocentric choices, manifest in an overweighting of one's own relative to others' judgements during joint decision-making. Our findings show that the biological control of social behaviour is dynamically regulated not only by modulators promoting, but also by those diminishing a propensity to collaborate.
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Fieke Harinck & Gerben Van Kleef
British Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Emotions play an important role in conflict resolution. Past work has found that negotiators tend to concede when confronted with anger. We argue and show that this effect occurs in conflicts about interests, but not in conflicts about values. In value conflicts that are more closely tied to a person's values, norms, and identity, expressions of anger are likely to backfire. We demonstrate that people deem expressions of anger more unfair in value conflicts than in interest conflicts (Study 1) and that they are more likely to engage in retaliatory and escalatory behaviours when confronted with an angry reaction in the context of a value issue rather than an interest issue (Study 2).
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Evolving to Divide the Fruits of Cooperation
Elliott Wagner
Philosophy of Science, January 2012, Pages 81-94
Abstract:
Cooperation and the allocation of common resources are core features of social behavior. Games idealizing both interactions have been studied separately. But here, rather than examining the dynamics of the individual games, the interactions are combined so that players first choose whether to cooperate, and then, if they jointly cooperate, they bargain over the fruits of their cooperation. It is shown that the dynamics of the combined game cannot simply be reduced to the dynamics of the individual games and that both cooperation and fair division are more likely in the combined game than in the constituent games taken separately.
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Is Adolescent Bullying an Evolutionary Adaptation?
Anthony Volk et al.
Aggressive Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Bullying appears to be ubiquitous across cultures, involving hundreds of millions of adolescents worldwide, and has potentially serious negative consequences for its participants (particularly victims). We challenge the traditionally held belief that bullying results from maladaptive development by reviewing evidence that bullying may be, in part, an evolved, facultative, adaptive strategy that offers some benefits to its practitioners. In support of this view, we draw from research that suggests bullying serves to promote adolescent bullies' evolutionarily-relevant somatic, sexual, and dominance goals, has a genetic basis, and is widespread among nonhuman animals. We identify and explain differences in the bullying behavior of the two sexes, as well as when and why bullying is adaptive and when it may not be. We offer commentary on both the failures and successes of current anti-bullying interventions from an evolutionary perspective and suggest future directions for both research and anti-bullying interventions.
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Bullying among adolescent football players: Role of masculinity and moral atmosphere
Jesse Steinfeldt et al.
Psychology of Men & Masculinity, forthcoming
Abstract:
Identifying practices of masculinity socialization that contribute to the establishment of gender privilege can help address violence and bullying in schools (Connell, 1996). Because the sport of football is considered an important contributor to masculinity construction, establishing peer networks, and creating hierarchies of student status, this study examined the influence of social norms (i.e., moral atmosphere, meanings of adolescent masculinity) on bullying beliefs and behaviors of 206 high school football players. Results demonstrated that moral atmosphere (Peer Influence, Influential Male Figure) and adherence to male role norms significantly predicted bullying, but the strongest predictor was the perception of whether the most influential male in a player's life would approve of the bullying behavior. In addition to prevention interventions highlighting the role of influential men and masculinity norms in this process, implications for practice suggest that football players can use their peer influence and status as center sport participants to create a school culture that does not tolerate bullying.
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Amygdala and hippocampus fail to habituate to faces in individuals with an inhibited temperament
Jennifer Urbano Blackford et al.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
Habituation is a basic form of learning that reflects the adaptive reduction in responses to a stimulus that is neither threatening nor rewarding. Extremely shy, or inhibited individuals, are typically slow to acclimate to new people, a behavioral pattern that may reflect slower habituation to novelty. To test this hypothesis, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine habituation to neutral faces in 39 young adults with either an extreme inhibited or extreme uninhibited temperament. Our investigation focused on two key brain regions involved in response to novelty - the amygdala and the hippocampus. Habituation to neutral faces in the amygdala and hippocampus differed significantly by temperament group. Individuals with an uninhibited temperament demonstrated habituation in both the amygdala and hippocampus, as expected. In contrast, in individuals with an inhibited temperament, the amygdala and hippocampus failed to habituate across repeated presentations of faces. The failure of the amygdala and hippocampus to habituate to faces represents a novel neural substrate mediating the behavioral differences seen in individuals with an inhibited temperament. We propose that this failure to habituate reflects a social learning deficit in individuals with an inhibited temperament and provides a possible mechanism for increased risk for social anxiety.
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The virtues of gossip: Reputational information sharing as prosocial behavior
Matthew Feinberg et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Reputation systems promote cooperation and deter antisocial behavior in groups. Little is known, however, about how and why people share reputational information. Here, we seek to establish the existence and dynamics of prosocial gossip, the sharing of negative evaluative information about a target in a way that protects others from antisocial or exploitative behavior. We present a model of prosocial gossip and the results of 4 studies testing the model's claims. Results of Studies 1 through 3 demonstrate that (a) individuals who observe an antisocial act experience negative affect and are compelled to share information about the antisocial actor with a potentially vulnerable person, (b) sharing such information reduces negative affect created by observing the antisocial behavior, and (c) individuals possessing more prosocial orientations are the most motivated to engage in such gossip, even at a personal cost, and exhibit the greatest reduction in negative affect as a result. Study 4 demonstrates that prosocial gossip can effectively deter selfishness and promote cooperation. Taken together these results highlight the roles of prosocial motivations and negative affective reactions to injustice in maintaining reputational information sharing in groups. We conclude by discussing implications for reputational theories of the maintenance of cooperation in human groups.
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The Impact of High School Leadership on Subsequent Educational Attainment
Kathryn Rouse
Social Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Objectives: Universities increasingly emphasize the importance of leadership skills, but budget shortfalls in public high schools threaten the availability of leadership opportunities for many youths. Few studies, however, have examined the impact of high school leadership experience on key economic outcomes. This study narrows this gap by estimating the causal impact of leadership in high school on educational attainment measured several years later.
Methods: The article uses data from the National Education Longitudinal Study. To address selection bias, the effect of high school leadership is estimated using ordinary least squares, propensity score matching, and instrumental variables models.
Results: Every estimation method and model specification examined implies that high school leadership has a large, positive impact on postsecondary educational attainment.
Conclusions: This article indicates the impact of high school leadership is, at a minimum, nontrivial. This result implies decisions regarding financial cutbacks for extracurricular activities should not be taken lightly.
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Status Differences in the Cognitive Activation of Social Networks
Edward Bishop Smith, Tanya Menon & Leigh Thompson
Organization Science, January/February 2012, Pages 67-82
Abstract:
We develop a dynamic cognitive model of network activation and show that people at different status levels spontaneously activate, or call to mind, different subsections of their networks when faced with job threat. Using a multimethod approach (General Social Survey data and a laboratory experiment), we find that, under conditions of job threat, people with low status exhibit a winnowing response (i.e., activating smaller and tighter subsections of their networks), whereas people with high status exhibit a widening response (i.e., activating larger and less constrained subsections of their networks). We integrate traditional network theories with cognitive psychology, suggesting that cognitively activating social networks is a precondition to mobilizing them. One implication is that narrowing the network in response to threat might reduce low-status group members' access to new information, harming their chances of finding subsequent employment and exacerbating social inequality.
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DRD4 Polymorphism Moderates the Effect of Alcohol Consumption on Social Bonding
Kasey Creswell et al.
PLoS ONE, February 2012, e28914
Abstract:
Development of interpersonal relationships is a fundamental human motivation, and behaviors facilitating social bonding are prized. Some individuals experience enhanced reward from alcohol in social contexts and may be at heightened risk for developing and maintaining problematic drinking. We employed a 3 (group beverage condition) ×2 (genotype) design (N = 422) to test the moderating influence of the dopamine D4 receptor gene (DRD4 VNTR) polymorphism on the effects of alcohol on social bonding. A significant gene x environment interaction showed that carriers of at least one copy of the 7-repeat allele reported higher social bonding in the alcohol, relative to placebo or control conditions, whereas alcohol did not affect ratings of 7-absent allele carriers. Carriers of the 7-repeat allele were especially sensitive to alcohol's effects on social bonding. These data converge with other recent gene-environment interaction findings implicating the DRD4 polymorphism in the development of alcohol use disorders, and results suggest a specific pathway by which social factors may increase risk for problematic drinking among 7-repeat carriers. More generally, our findings highlight the potential utility of employing transdisciplinary methods that integrate genetic methodologies, social psychology, and addiction theory to improve theories of alcohol use and abuse.
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Friendship and Conformity in Group Opinions: Juror Verdict Change in Mock Juries
Clayton Peoples et al.
Sociological Spectrum, March/April 2012, Pages 178-193
Abstract:
Social psychological research on group processes has consistently shown that group members adjust their views to conform to dominant and/or socially desirable stances. Studies are less clear, though, on how friendships within groups impact this tendency. Some studies suggest greater group cohesion leads to more conformity; other studies suggest friendship lessens the pressure to agree on certain issues. In this study, we use mock juries to test the impact of varying levels of friendship on jurors' propensities to change their verdicts to the dominant position (in this case acquittal, or a "not guilty" verdict). Our findings show that distant friendships among jurors increase the odds of conforming to acquittal; but close friendships decrease the odds of conformity. We discuss the implications of our findings for understanding group processes and conformity as well as for jury research.
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Nancy Welsh
Negotiation Journal, January 2012, Pages 117-145
Abstract:
Lawyers should care about their reputations. But exactly what sort of reputation should lawyers seek to establish and maintain in the largely nontransparent context of legal negotiation? And even if a lawyer has developed a reputation as a negotiator, how will he/she know what it is and how it came to be? I force my students to grapple with these questions by incorporating the issues of reputation and reputation development into my negotiation/mediation course. I introduced this innovation at the same time that I decided to increase my focus on developing students' skills in distributive (or value-claiming) negotiation. Although legal negotiation certainly offers frequent opportunities for the creation of integrative joint and individual gains, the process will almost inevitably involve distribution. The pie, once baked, must be cut. As a result, I now base a portion of my students' final grade on the objective results they achieve in two negotiation simulations. Two dangers of this assessment choice are that it can encourage students to focus only on the numbers and, even worse, engage in "sharp practice"- an extreme form of hard bargaining that tests ethical boundaries - in order to achieve the best short-term distributive outcomes. Of course, neither a quantitative focus nor sharp practice is synonymous with a distributive approach to negotiation. Nonetheless, to counterbalance the temptations posed by the focus on, and ranking of, objective results, I also base part of students' final grades on their scores on a "Reputation Index." These scores are based on students' nominations of their peers, accompanied by explanatory comments. This article describes the Reputation Index and how I use it. It also explores the empirical support for the validity of the Reputation Index as a tool for simulating the development and assessment of lawyers' reputations in the "real world." To that end, the article considers research regarding the bases for lawyers' perceptions of effectiveness in legal negotiation, the sometimes counterintuitive distinction between negotiation "approach" and negotiation "style," and the relationships among perceptions of negotiation style, procedural justice, trustworthiness, and reputation.
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Enhanced amygdala reactivity to emotional faces in adults reporting childhood emotional maltreatment
Anne-Laura van Harmelen et al.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the context of chronic childhood emotional maltreatment (CEM; emotional abuse and/or neglect), adequately responding to facial expressions is an important skill. Over time, however, this adaptive response may lead to a persistent vigilance for emotional facial expressions. The amygdala and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) are key regions in face processing. However, the neurobiological correlates of face processing in adults reporting CEM are yet unknown. We examined amydala and mPFC reactivity to emotional faces (Angry, Fearful, Sad, Happy, Neutral) versus scrambled faces in healthy controls and unmedicated patients with depression and/or anxiety disorders reporting CEM before the age of 16 (n=60), and controls and patients who report no childhood abuse (n=75). We found that CEM is associated with enhanced bilateral amygdala reactivity to emotional facial expressions in general, independent of psychiatric status. Furthermore, we found no support for differential mPFC functioning, suggesting that amygdala hyperresponsivity to emotional facial perception in adults reporting CEM may be independent from top-down influences of the mPFC. These findings may be key in understanding the increased emotional sensitivity, and interpersonal difficulties, that has been reported in individuals with a history of CEM.
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Preschoolers' social dominance, moral cognition, and moral behavior: An evolutionary perspective
Patricia Hawley & John Geldhof
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Various aspects of moral functioning, aggression, and positive peer regard were assessed in 153 preschool children. Our hypotheses were inspired by an evolutionary approach to morality that construes moral norms as tools of the social elite. Accordingly, children were also rated for social dominance and strategies for its attainment. We predicted that aspects of moral functioning would be only loosely related to each other and that moral cognitions about rules (unlike emotion attributions and moral internalization) would demonstrate patterns suggestive of instrumentality. Results showed that cognitions about moral rules and internalized conscience were unrelated and that sociomoral behavior was more strongly related to the latter than to the former. In addition, promoting group norms (Selective Moral Engagement) positively predicted social dominance, whereas internalized conscience negatively predicted social dominance. Children who controlled resources via both prosocial and coercive means (i.e., bistrategic) showed enhanced moral cognitions about rules (despite high levels of aggression) but had deficits in emotional aspects of moral functioning in the eyes of teachers. Patterns of Selective Moral Engagement invite comparisons to tattling and impression management. The findings are contrasted with alternative hypotheses that are advanced from traditional yet prevailing approaches.
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Evidence for social working memory from a parametric functional MRI study
Meghan Meyer et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 7 February 2012, Pages 1883-1888
Abstract:
Keeping track of various amounts of social cognitive information, including people's mental states, traits, and relationships, is fundamental to navigating social interactions. However, to date, no research has examined which brain regions support variable amounts of social information processing ("social load"). We developed a social working memory paradigm to examine the brain networks sensitive to social load. Two networks showed linear increases in activation as a function of increasing social load: the medial frontoparietal regions implicated in social cognition and the lateral frontoparietal system implicated in nonsocial forms of working memory. Of these networks, only load-dependent medial frontoparietal activity was associated with individual differences in social cognitive ability (trait perspective-taking). Although past studies of nonsocial load have uniformly found medial frontoparietal activity decreases with increasing task demands, the current study demonstrates these regions do support increasing mental effort when such effort engages social cognition. Implications for the etiology of clinical disorders that implicate social functioning and potential interventions are discussed.
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Thomas Schultze, Andreas Mojzisch & Stefan Schulz-Hardt
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, forthcoming
Abstract:
One prominent finding in research on group judgment is that groups often outperform the average of their members' individual judgments. Previous research attributed this finding to groups weighting their more competent members more strongly (differential weighting explanation). We postulate an alternative explanation, namely that groups outperform individuals due to group-to-individual (G-I) transfer, which denotes group members becoming more accurate individually during group interaction. In Experiment 1, we demonstrate that individual accuracy in an estimation task strongly increases due to interaction, leading to high accuracy at the group level. Experiment 2 replicates this finding and shows that G-I transfer can be enhanced by expertise feedback. In both experiments, when controlling for G-I transfer during group interaction, group judgments were not better than the average model. The findings imply that previously observed superior performance by groups compared to individuals may have been due to G-I transfer and not necessarily due to differential weighting.
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Friends with Benefits: The Evolved Psychology of Same- and Opposite-Sex Friendship
David Lewis et al.
Evolutionary Psychology, December 2011, Pages 543-563
Abstract:
During human evolution, men and women faced distinct adaptive problems, including pregnancy, hunting, childcare, and warfare. Due to these sex-linked adaptive problems, natural selection would have favored psychological mechanisms that oriented men and women toward forming friendships with individuals possessing characteristics valuable for solving these problems. The current study explored sex-differentiated friend preferences and the psychological design features of same- and opposite-sex friendship in two tasks. In Task 1, participants (N = 121) categorized their same-sex friends (SSFs) and opposite-sex friends (OSFs) according to the functions these friends serve in their lives. In Task 2, participants designed their ideal SSFs and OSFs using limited budgets that forced them to make trade-offs between the characteristics they desire in their friends. In Task 1, men, more than women, reported maintaining SSFs for functions related to athleticism and status enhancement and OSFs for mating opportunities. In Task 2, both sexes prioritized agreeableness and dependability in their ideal SSFs, but men prioritized physical attractiveness in their OSFs, whereas women prioritized economic resources and physical prowess. These findings suggest that friend preferences may have evolved to solve ancestrally sex-linked adaptive problems, and that opposite-sex friendship may directly or indirectly serve mating functions.
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Forgiveness Results From Integrating Information About Relationship Value and Exploitation Risk
Jeni Burnette et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Exploitation is a fact of life for social organisms, and natural selection gives rise to revenge mechanisms that are designed to deter such exploitations. However, humans may also possess cognitive forgiveness mechanisms designed to promote the restoration of valuable social relationships following exploitation. In the current article, the authors test the hypothesis that decisions about forgiveness result from a computational system that combines information about relationship value and exploitation risk to produce decisions about whom to forgive following interpersonal offenses. The authors examined the independent and interactive effects of relationship value and exploitation risk across two studies. In Study 1, controlling for other constructs related to forgiveness, the authors assessed relationship value and exploitation risk. In Study 2, participants experienced experimental manipulations of relationship value and exploitation risk. Across studies, using hypothetical and actual offenses and varied forgiveness measures, the combination of low exploitation risk and high relationship value predicted the greatest forgiveness.
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The Power of Words: A Model of Honesty and Fairness
Raúl López-Pérez
Journal of Economic Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
We develop a game-theoretical model of honesty and fairness to study cooperation in social dilemma games with communication. It is based on two key intuitions. First, players suffer a utility cost if they break norms of honesty and fairness, and this cost is highest if most others comply with the norm. Second, people are heterogeneous with regard to their concern for norms. We show that a model based on honesty norms alone cannot explain why pre-play communication fosters cooperation in simultaneous social dilemmas. In contrast, the model based on norms of honesty and fairness can. We also illustrate other predictions of the model, offering experimental evidence in line with them - e.g., the effect of communication on cooperation depends on how many players communicate, and whether the social dilemma is played simultaneously or sequentially. In addition, ideas for new experiments are suggested.
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Jan McAllister, Jacqueline Collier & Lee Shepstone
Journal of Fluency Disorders, forthcoming
Purpose: In interview and survey studies, people who stutter report the belief that stuttering has had a negative impact on their own education and employment. This population study sought objective evidence of such disadvantage for people who stutter as a group, compared with people who do not stutter.
Method: A secondary analysis of a British birth cohort dataset was used in the study. At age 16, there were 217 cohort members who were reported by their parents to stutter, and 15,694 cohort members with no known history of stuttering or other speech problems. Data were analysed concerning factors associated with report of stuttering at 16, school leaving age, highest qualification, unemployment early in working life, pay at age 23 and 50, and social class of job at age 23 and 50.
Results: Those who stuttered at 16 were statistically more likely than those who did not stutter to be male, to have poorer cognitive and reading test scores, and to have been bullied. There were no significant effects of stuttering on educational outcomes. For employment outcomes, the only significant association with stuttering concerned socioeconomic status of occupation at 50, with those who had been reported to stutter having lower-status jobs.
Discussion: These findings fail to support the belief that stuttering has a negative impact on education and employment. The higher likelihood of those who stutter working in lower-status positions may reflect their preference for avoiding occupations perceived to require good spoken communication abilities. Therapeutic implications are discussed.
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Benjamin DiCicco-Bloom & Daniel Romer
Youth & Society, March 2012, Pages 141-170
Abstract:
The authors argue that the recent increase in poker play among adolescent males in the United States was primarily attributable to high-status male youth who are more able to organize informal gambling games (e.g., poker and sports betting) than are low-status male youth who are left to gamble on formal games (e.g., lotteries and slot machines). Using participation in sports as a proxy for status, the authors test the prediction that male athletes were more likely to engage in informal gambling and were largely responsible for the recent and much-discussed poker craze among adolescents. These and related predictions are supported using data from consecutive cross-sectional surveys of American youth from 2002 to 2008. Despite their social status, however, male youth engaging in informal gambling are more at risk for gambling problems than are those engaging in formal gambling. The authors discuss the dilemmas that their findings present for the prevention of problem gambling in young people.
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Social learning spreads knowledge about dangerous humans among American crows
Heather Cornell, John Marzluff & Shannon Pecoraro
Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 7 February 2012, Pages 499-508
Abstract:
Individuals face evolutionary trade-offs between the acquisition of costly but accurate information gained firsthand and the use of inexpensive but possibly less reliable social information. American crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) use both sources of information to learn the facial features of a dangerous person. We exposed wild crows to a novel ‘dangerous face' by wearing a unique mask as we trapped, banded and released 7-15 birds at five study sites near Seattle, WA, USA. An immediate scolding response to the dangerous mask after trapping by previously captured crows demonstrates individual learning, while an immediate response by crows that were not captured probably represents conditioning to the trapping scene by the mob of birds that assembled during the capture. Later recognition of dangerous masks by lone crows that were never captured is consistent with horizontal social learning. Independent scolding by young crows, whose parents had conditioned them to scold the dangerous mask, demonstrates vertical social learning. Crows that directly experienced trapping later discriminated among dangerous and neutral masks more precisely than did crows that learned through social means. Learning enabled scolding to double in frequency and spread at least 1.2 km from the place of origin over a 5 year period at one site.
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Dealing With Task Interruptions in Complex Dynamic Environments: Are Two Heads Better Than One?
Sébastien Tremblay et al.
Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, February 2012, Pages 70-83
Objective: This study examined whether teaming up mitigates individual vulnerability to task interruptions in complex dynamic situations.
Background: Omnipresent in everyday multitasking environments, task interruptions are usually detrimental to individual performance. This is particularly crucial in dynamic command and control (C2) safety-critical contexts because of the additional challenge imposed by the continually evolving situation during the interruption.
Method: We employed a firefighting microworld to simulate C2 in the context of supervisory control to examine the relative impact of interruptions on participants working in a functional dyad versus operators working alone.
Results: Although task interruption was detrimental to participants' efficacy of monitoring resources, the negative impact of interruption was reduced for those working in teams. Teaming up translated into faster resumption time, but only if both teammates were interrupted simultaneously. Interrupting only one team member was associated with increased postinterruption communications and slower resumption time.
Conclusion: These findings suggest that in complex dynamic situations working in a small team confers more resistance to task interruption than working alone by virtue of the reduced individual workload typical of teamwork. The benefit of collaborative work seems nevertheless mediated by the coordination and communication overhead associated with teamwork.