Wired to Connect: Evolutionary Psychology and Social Networks

2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 230-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin S. Crosier ◽  
Gregory D. Webster ◽  
Haley M. Dillon

Social networks dominate modern life. Social networks have always existed and have been around in nonelectronic forms throughout the entirety of our species' history. It is only recently that the Internet has provided a venue for their electronic explosion. From a nonexistent phenomenon to an incessantly repeated buzzword that permeates the media and is the topic of a major Hollywood film, electronic social networks experience such success because human social behavior has been naturally selected to interface in such a way. Genes and culture relentlessly encourage sociality, and network structure is the grand output of countless interactions in which we engage, from winks to weddings. With the advent of technology that promotes these connections, our innate propensity to connect at a large scale is changing the way we live. From mundane communication to meeting the love of one's life to inciting political revolutions, network ties are the conduits by which information and resources are spread. Understanding the patterns and more importantly the “whys” of human connectedness can greatly impact quality of life for the better. The present article reviews the extant literature of social networks and social network analysis proper, the evolutionary foundation of social networks, the proposed psychological antecedents of network composition, the transition from traditional to online networks and how the two modes differ, the impact of social networks on popular culture, and the future of social networks.

Author(s):  
Audrey L. Michal ◽  
Yiwen Zhong ◽  
Priti Shah

AbstractToday’s citizens are expected to use evidence, frequently presented in the media, to inform decisions about health, behavior, and public policy. However, science misinformation is ubiquitous in the media, making it difficult to apply research appropriately. Across two experiments, we addressed how anecdotes and prior beliefs impact readers’ ability to both identify flawed science and make appropriate decisions based on flawed science in media articles. Each article described the results of flawed research on one of four educational interventions to improve learning (Experiment 1 included articles about having a tidy classroom and exercising while learning; Experiment 2 included articles about using virtual/augmented reality and napping at school). Experiment 1 tested the impact of a single anecdote and found no significant effect on either participants’ evidence evaluations or decisions to implement the learning interventions. However, participants were more likely to adopt the more plausible intervention (tidy classroom) despite identifying that it was unsupported by the evidence, suggesting effects of prior beliefs. In Experiment 2, we tested whether this intervention effect was driven by differences in beliefs about intervention plausibility and included two additional interventions (virtual reality = high plausible, napping = low plausible). We again found that participants were more likely to implement high plausible than low plausible interventions, and that evidence quality was underweighed as a factor in these decisions. Together, these studies suggest that evidence-based decisions are more strongly determined by prior beliefs than beliefs about the quality of evidence itself.


Author(s):  
Rafael Barberá González ◽  
Victoria Cuesta

This work analyzes the impact of the outbreak of hemorrhagic fever caused by the Ebola virus in Spain in the field of communication. The communication of such a crisis entails an interaction of information between individuals and institutions. Accuracy in the messages that are disseminated is key to the good resolution of the crisis. In this case of the Ebola crisis the impact in the Spanish media was very remarkable not only of the evolution of the crisis but also of the public information that were being made known by the authorities. The errors committed in this public communication, especially in the first institutional appearance, will be analyzed and possible solutions will be provided for future crises. In addition, the information behavior that was given in social networks by the authorities will be analyzed. To perform this work, bibliographical sources, data analysis and the media have been used.


2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (7) ◽  
pp. 667-692
Author(s):  
Lamia Berkani ◽  
Lylia Betit ◽  
Louiza Belarif

Clustering-based approaches have been demonstrated to be efficient and scalable to large-scale data sets. However, clustering-based recommender systems suffer from relatively low accuracy and coverage. To address these issues, we propose in this article an optimized multiview clustering approach for the recommendation of items in social networks. First, the selection of the initial medoids is optimized using the Bees Swarm optimization algorithm (BSO) in order to generate better partitions (i.e. refining the quality of medoids according to the objective function). Then, the multiview clustering (MV) is applied, where users are iteratively clustered from the views of both rating patterns and social information (i.e. friendships and trust). Finally, a framework is proposed for testing the different alternatives, namely: (1) the standard recommendation algorithms; (2) the clustering-based and the optimized clustering-based recommendation algorithms using BSO; and (3) the MV and the optimized MV (BSO-MV) algorithms. Experimental results conducted on two real-world datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed BSO-MV algorithm in terms of improving accuracy, as it outperforms the existing related approaches and baselines.


2018 ◽  
Vol 64 (247) ◽  
pp. 811-821 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEFAN LIPPL ◽  
SAURABH VIJAY ◽  
MATTHIAS BRAUN

ABSTRACTDespite their importance for mass-balance estimates and the progress in techniques based on optical and thermal satellite imagery, the mapping of debris-covered glacier boundaries remains a challenging task. Manual corrections hamper regular updates. In this study, we present an automatic approach to delineate glacier outlines using interferometrically derived synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) coherence, slope and morphological operations. InSAR coherence detects the temporally decorrelated surface (e.g. glacial extent) irrespective of its surface type and separates it from the highly coherent surrounding areas. We tested the impact of different processing settings, for example resolution, coherence window size and topographic phase removal, on the quality of the generated outlines. We found minor influence of the topographic phase, but a combination of strong multi-looking during interferogram generation and additional averaging during coherence estimation strongly deteriorated the coherence at the glacier edges. We analysed the performance of X-, C- and L- band radar data. The C-band Sentinel-1 data outlined the glacier boundary with the least misclassifications and a type II error of 0.47% compared with Global Land Ice Measurements from Space inventory data. Our study shows the potential of the Sentinel-1 mission together with our automatic processing chain to provide regular updates for land-terminating glaciers on a large scale.


2019 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 03010
Author(s):  
Imrich Sánka ◽  
Dušan Petráš

This article investigates the impact of energy renovation on the indoor environmental quality of apartment building during heating season. The study was performed in one residential building before and after its renovation. Energy auditing and classification of the selected building into energy classes were carried out. Additionally, evaluation of indoor air quality was performed using objective measurements and subjective survey. Thermal environment and concentration of CO2 was measured in bedrooms. Higher concentrations of CO2 was observed in the residential building after its renovation. The concentrations of CO2, in some cases exceeded the recommended maximum limits, especially after implementing of energy saving measures on the building. The average air exchange rate was visible higher before renovation of the building. The current study indicates that large-scale of renovations may reduce the quality of the indoor environment in many apartments, especially in the winter season.


2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (S1) ◽  
pp. 1-1 ◽  
Author(s):  
X.-L. Wang

Depression cases have been reported among workers in the financial industries. Occupations in this industry are considered among the most stressful ones. This study aimed to examine the impact of depressive symptoms of financial workers in China on their productivity and well-being. A survey was conducted using a convenient sample of 1024 financial workers recruited from three large-scale financial organizations located in the north and south of China. The result of Hierarchical Regression Analyses shows that depressive symptoms of workers significantly impaired their work-life quality. Severity of depressive symptoms had significant positive relationships with three behavioral manifestations at works. These are, in order of decreasing effect size, turnover intention, presenteeism, and absenteeism. Specifically, depressive symptoms had a larger effect on presenteeism compared to absenteeism, which implies the unawareness or insufficient recognition of Chinese workers towards depression as an illness in comparison with other physical illnesses. Moreover, a Univariate Analysis was conducted to study the moderating effect of emotional labor on the relationship between the severity of depressive symptoms and presenteeism. An aggravating effect was found, displaying a greater damage of depressive symptoms to psychosocial functions of workers. Besides, depressive symptoms of workers also impaired their quality of life in aspects such as interpersonal relationships, life situation, and so on. This study provides evidence of impairments of depression in the workplace, urging the management to pay more attention to its employees' mental health no matter whether it is for the sake of the company's benefit or the employees' well-being.


Author(s):  
А.Г. Атаева ◽  
А.В. Дунаева

В статье анализируется опыт регионов Российской Федерации по оценке информационной открытости органов государственной власти и органов местного самоуправления. Предлагается комплексный показатель информационной открытости органа местного самоуправления, который включает в себя сводные показатели работы органа власти с населением, качества и посещаемости официального сайта, активности работы органа власти в социальных сетях, качества организации работы со средствами массовой информации, удовлетворенности населения информационной открытостью. The article analyzes the experience of Russian regions in assessing the informational openness of state authorities and local governments. A comprehensive indicator of the information openness of the local government is proposed, which includes summary indicators of the work of the government with the population, the quality and attendance of the official website, the activity of the government on social networks, the quality of the organization of work with the media, and public satisfaction with information openness.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 343
Author(s):  
Huda AbdlAziz Aldegheiry

The present research paper aims to identify the impact of sport activity on the quality of life of Saudi women (i.e., fitness and health, social aspects, psychological aspects, moral aspects, and mental aspects). It also aims to develop mechanisms to activate the sport activity to improve the quality of life of Saudi women. The sample consisted of (N= 384) Saudi women in Riyadh. The author applied a questionnaire to collect data. The results showed that sport activity has a high impact on fitness and the psychological and moral aspects and a high to moderate impact on the social and mental aspects of the Saudi woman. The study recommends activating the media role in disseminating sport culture and awareness among (children- teenager- elderly) women by publishing a sport activity supervised-bulletin to cover the sport activities, objectives, programs, as well as time and place of practice. In turn, this could promote positive aspects towards the practice of sport activities.   Received: 29 March 2021 / Accepted: 26 May 2021 / Published: 8 July 2021


Author(s):  
О. Baranovskyi ◽  
I. Boiarko ◽  
T. Zlunitsyna

The existing methods of separate central banks, regulators of financial markets, international financial and credit institutions, rating agencies and consulting companies, which can be used partially to assess the quality of transformational processes taking place in the financial sector, are analyzed. An adequate methodical toolkit is proposed, which will allow to assess the potential of the domestic financial sector, to identify the patterns of transformation processes, and also to assess the impact of their quality on the functioning of financial intermediaries and to propose appropriate mechanisms for ensuring their further development. The structural-logical scheme of formation of criteria and system of indicators of the quality of transformational processes in the financial sector of the country’s economy is developed. Investigated general approaches are considered to be useful for developing a methodology for the integral assessment of the quality of transformation processes in the financial sector of the economy by specifying the content of the main stages and methodological approaches to the goals and object of the research. Assessment of the quality of transformation processes in the financial sector of the national economy is an ambiguous process. This is due to the fact that, firstly, in this regard it can be considered as the impact of transformations on the quality of objects, and as the quality of the transformations in particular. Secondly, transformation processes in the financial sector of the national economy can be positive and negative; general and specific; large-scale and minor; systematic and dotted; intensive and extensive; priority and non-priority; stimulating and moderating; divergent; resource, technological, institutional, organizational, quality, behavioral; timely and spatial; painful, conflict and non-conflict; and also they are made with different expenses. Thirdly, both expected and actual results of transformation processes in the financial sector should be assessed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (34) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jelena Jevtić ◽  
Milan S. Dajić

Social networks are a way of creating a virtual identity and entering into relationships with strangers in a series of interactions that were not known to a man before the existence of the Internet. Mobile phones and the virtual world often create a personality of a person that is not the same in the real world. It can be said that technology has changed the course of humanity and human consciousness and contributed to many changes in the mentality of society, especially among the youth. Children are often overwhelmed by materialism and jealousy, which further encourages them to become an unconscious, immoral and unambitious population. One of the negative effects of social networks is the abuse of privacy, which is also becoming a growing problem everywhere in the world and should not be ignored. However, a positive attitude should be maintained when it comes to social networks, because they facilitate communication, access to information and learning, greater availability of services and free advertising of some products or services. High school students use the Internet intensively every day, and the work raises the question of whether they use it constructively or destructively. The research was conducted in 2019, the population of high school students was observed and 100 students were included on the territory of Belgrade, Niš and Vitina.


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