scholarly journals Follow the leader? Orange-fronted conures eavesdrop on conspecific vocal performance and utilise it in social decisions

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. e0252374
Author(s):  
Heidi M. Thomsen ◽  
Thorsten J. S. Balsby ◽  
Torben Dabelsteen
Keyword(s):  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Vocal Performance ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Contact Call ◽  
Vocal Behaviour ◽  
Social Decisions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Parrot Species

Animals regularly use social information to make fitness-relevant decisions. Particularly in social interactions, social information can reduce uncertainty about the relative quality of conspecifics, thus optimising decisions on with whom and how to interact. One important resource for individuals living in social environments is the production of information by signalling conspecifics. Recent research has suggested that some species of parrots engage in affiliative contact call matching and that these interactions may be available to conspecific unintended receivers. However, it remains unclear what information third parties may gain from contact call matching and how it can be utilised during flock decisions. Here, using a combined choice and playback experiment, we investigated the flock fusion choices and vocal behaviour of a social parrot species, the orange-fronted conure (Eupsittula canicularis), to a contact call matching interaction between two individuals of different sexes and with different vocal roles. Our results revealed that orange-fronted conures chose to follow vocal leaders more often than vocal followers during fusions. Furthermore, flocks responded with higher call rates and matched the stimulus calls closer when subsequently choosing a vocal leader. Interestingly, orange-fronted conures also showed higher contact call rates and closer matches when choosing males over females. These results suggest that paying attention to conspecific contact call interactions can provide individuals with social information that can be utilised during fission and fusion events, significantly influencing the social dynamics of orange-fronted conures.

Psychometric Properties of the German Version of the Workplace Incivility Scale and the Instigated Workplace Incivility Scale

2018 ◽  
Vol 77 (4) ◽  
pp. 159-172
Author(s):  
Paul Jiménez ◽  
Anita Bregenzer ◽  
Michael Leiter ◽  
Vicki Magley
Keyword(s):  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Workplace Incivility ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Cultural Variations ◽  
Workplace Interactions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Uncivil Behavior ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Similar Range

Abstract. The quality of workplace social environments has been widely recognized as having an important role in employees’ experience of their workplace, which is confirmed by recent research. The greater frequency of incivility, in contrast to the more intense forms of negative workplace interactions, expands opportunities for understanding the social dynamics of workplaces. Important aspects of this research are potential cultural variations in workplace social behavior. Valid translations of measures for the core constructs are part of the essential infrastructure to support such research endeavors. To assess uncivil behavior at the workplace, we prepared a German translation of the Workplace Incivility Scale and the Instigated Workplace Incivility Scale. Our analysis of the responses from 2,168 Austrian workers indicated that the translation of both scales into German was successful, and that the concept of incivility can indeed be transferred to the German-speaking population. The factor solution was comparable to the original version of the scales. Criterion validity coefficients lay in a similar range as the coefficients found in previous studies with Canadian samples. The availability of the scales should stimulate research on incivility among the German-speaking population and can help in organization-diagnostic processes.

scholarly journals Se nos ha ido, como el rayo, Luz Marina.

2021 ◽  
pp. 353-358
Author(s):  
Antonio García García ◽  
Juan Francisco Ojeda Rivera ◽  
Francisco José Torres Gutiérrez
Keyword(s):  
Urban Geography ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
The Social ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
The University ◽  
The City

Luz Marina García Herrera, professor at the University of La Laguna, colleague, teacher and friend, passed away in June 2020. A reference in Spanish Urban Geography, her contribution to the debate on the shaping of the city and the social dynamics inherent to it has opened up timely and necessary lines of work. She anchors her background in the interpretation of urban social processes under capitalism, focusing on key issues such as marginal developments, gentrification mechanisms or different facets of urban segregation. In addition she also approaches other issues in which we have been able to share time and space with her. Among them the constant and changing conditioning between physical and social environments in the city and consequences, or the reading of public spaces, their use and appropriation keys, as an indicator of cohesion as well as an instrument for the transformation of specific realities. All of this, and even more his commitment and his profound humanity, which we are proud to have learned from, motivate these lines.

scholarly journals Strategies for integrating disparate social information

2020 ◽  
Vol 287 (1939) ◽  
pp. 20202413
Author(s):  
Lucas Molleman ◽  
Alan N. Tump ◽  
Andrea Gradassi ◽  
Stefan Herzog ◽  
Bertrand Jayles ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Animal Kingdom ◽  
Useful Knowledge ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Information Use ◽  
Filter Bubble ◽  
Information Combining ◽  
Simple Heuristics

Social information use is widespread in the animal kingdom, helping individuals rapidly acquire useful knowledge and adjust to novel circumstances. In humans, the highly interconnected world provides ample opportunities to benefit from social information but also requires navigating complex social environments with people holding disparate or conflicting views. It is, however, still largely unclear how people integrate information from multiple social sources that (dis)agree with them, and among each other. We address this issue in three steps. First, we present a judgement task in which participants could adjust their judgements after observing the judgements of three peers. We experimentally varied the distribution of this social information, systematically manipulating its variance (extent of agreement among peers) and its skewness (peer judgements clustering either near or far from the participant's judgement). As expected, higher variance among peers reduced their impact on behaviour. Importantly, observing a single peer confirming a participant's own judgement markedly decreased the influence of other—more distant—peers. Second, we develop a framework for modelling the cognitive processes underlying the integration of disparate social information, combining Bayesian updating with simple heuristics. Our model accurately accounts for observed adjustment strategies and reveals that people particularly heed social information that confirms personal judgements. Moreover, the model exposes strong inter-individual differences in strategy use. Third, using simulations, we explore the possible implications of the observed strategies for belief updating. These simulations show how confirmation-based weighting can hamper the influence of disparate social information, exacerbate filter bubble effects and deepen group polarization. Overall, our results clarify what aspects of the social environment are, and are not, conducive to changing people's minds.

Inferring Community Structure in Healthcare Forums

2013 ◽  
Vol 52 (02) ◽  
pp. 160-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Årsand ◽  
L. Fernandez-Luque ◽  
J. Lauritzen ◽  
G. Hartvigsen ◽  
T. Chomutare
Keyword(s):  
Information Flow ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Peer Interactions ◽  
User Interaction ◽  
Community Structures ◽  
User Interests ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Right ◽  
Community Attachments

SummaryBackground: Detecting community structures in complex networks is a problem interesting to several domains. In healthcare, discovering communities may enhance the quality of web offerings for people with chronic diseases. Understanding the social dynamics and community attachments is key to predicting and influencing interaction and information flow to the right patients.Objectives: The goal of the study is to empirically assess the extent to which we can infer meaningful community structures from implicit networks of peer interaction in online healthcare forums.Methods: We used datasets from five online diabetes forums to design networks based on peer-interactions. A quality function based on user interaction similarity was used to assess the quality of the discovered communities to complement existing homophily measures.Results: Results show that we can infer meaningful communities by observing forum interactions. Closely similar users tended to co-appear in the top communities, suggesting the discovered communities are intuitive. The number of years since diagnosis was a significant factor for cohesiveness in some diabetes communities.Conclusion: Network analysis is a tool that can be useful in studying implicit networks that form in healthcare forums. Current analysis informs further work on predicting and influencing interaction, information flow and user interests that could be useful for personalizing medical social media.

scholarly journals Placing social types through prosodic variation: An investigation of spatial meanings in Mainland China

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 42
Author(s):  
Robert Xu
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Voice Quality ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Prosodic Features ◽  
Cluster Index ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Profiles

This study examines how prosodic features evoke the spacial aspects of interactional meanings of well-known social types in Mainland China. Prosodic features (duration, pitch, voice quality) of the scripted performances of 18 prominent social types in China were measured acoustically and grouped by cluster analysis. Commonalities among types within each group were identified through a detailed analysis of meta-linguistic commentary collected from the internet. This paper focuses on three meaningful clusters: powerful bureaucratic types, disembodied voices, and “in-your-face” types. Members of each cluster share prosodic combinations and social profiles. More importantly, character types within each cluster index a specific interactional locale. Appropriation of their associated features could reproduce the social dynamics that is typical in that locale. The results highlight the situated use of sociolinguistic variables, and show that the prosodic features pattern structurally in the performances while indexing the historical-spatial settings of social interactions. This paper also considers place as an interactional and relational product of meaning making by these prosodic features.

scholarly journals Immigration and Social Aspects of Sustainable Development. The Case of Germany

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-31
Author(s):  
Paweł Rydzewski ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
General Social Survey ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Social Aspect ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Foreign Countries ◽  
The Social ◽  
Development Data

The aim of the article is to show the relationship between immigration and the social aspect of sustainable development. Data from the German General Social Survey (ALLBUS) study conducted in 2016 on a sample of 3490 respondents (residents of Germany) was used. Research suggests that this relationship is negative: mass immigration from culturally foreign countries and social environments can significantly reduce the quality of life of residents in developed societies. This manifests in opinions about the need to limit or stop immigration. The case of Germany can probably be generalized to other developed countries, especially from the European Union.

scholarly journals Strategies for integrating disparate social information

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucas Molleman ◽  
Alan Novaes Tump ◽  
Andrea Gradassi ◽  
Stefan Michael Herzog ◽  
Bertrand Jayles ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Belief Updating ◽  
The Social ◽  
Adjustment Strategies ◽  
Filter Bubble ◽  
Information Combining ◽  
Simple Heuristics

**Note that the paper has been published on https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.2413.** Our increasingly interconnected world provides virtually unlimited opportunities to observe the behavior of others. This affords abundant useful information but also requires navigating complex social environments with people holding disparate or conflicting views. It is, however, still largely unclear how people integrate information from multiple social sources that (dis)agree with them, and among each other. We address this issue in three steps. First, we present a judgment task in which participants could adjust their judgments after observing the judgments of three peers. We experimentally varied the distribution of this social information, systematically manipulating its variance (extent of agreement among peers) and its skewness (peer judgments clustering either near or far from the participant’s). As expected, higher variance among peers reduced their impact on behavior. Importantly, observing a single peer confirming an individual’s judgment markedly decreased the influence of other—more distant—peers. Second, we develop a framework for modelling the cognitive processes underlying the integration of disparate social information, combining Bayesian updating with simple heuristics. Our model accurately accounts for observed adjustment strategies and reveals that people particularly heed social information that confirms personal judgments. Moreover, the model exposes strong inter-individual differences in strategy use. Third, using simulations, we explore the possible implications of identified strategies for belief updating more broadly. They show how confirmation effects can hamper the influence of disparate social information, exacerbate filter bubble effects and worsen group polarization. Overall, our results clarify what aspects of the social environment are, and are not, conducive to changing people’s minds.

scholarly journals Lessons from the Implementation of Pilot Practices to Tackle the Burden of Noncommunicable Diseases in Europe

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (13) ◽  
pp. 4661
Author(s):  
Antonio Sarría-Santamera ◽  
Lorena Pinilla-Navas ◽  
Patricia González-Soriano ◽  
Iñaki Imaz-Iglesia ◽  
Teresa Moreno-Casbas ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Joint Action ◽  
Implementation Strategy ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Noncommunicable Diseases ◽  
Routine Practice ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Health Programme

(1) Background: The gap between research findings and their application in routine practice implies that patients and populations are not benefiting from the investment in scientific research. The objective of this work is to describe the process and main lessons obtained from the pilot practices and recommendation that have been implemented by CHRODIS-PLUS partner organizations; (2) Methods: CHRODIS-PLUS is a Joint Action funded by the European Union Health Programme that continues the work of Joint Action CHRODIS-JA. CHRODIS-PLUS has developed an Implementation Strategy that is being tested to implement innovative practices and recommendations in four main areas of action: health promotion and disease prevention, multimorbidity, fostering quality of care of patients with chronic diseases, and employment and chronic conditions; (3) Results: The Three-Stages CHRODIS-PLUS Implementation Strategy, based on a Local Implementation Working Group, has demonstrated that it can be applied for interventions and in situations and contexts of great diversity, reflecting both its validity and generalizability; (4) Conclusions: Implementation has to recognize the social dynamics associated with implementation, ensuring sympathy toward the culture and values that underpin these processes, which is a key differentiation from more linear improvement approaches.

Dialogue as a Way of Being

2019 ◽  
pp. 50-78
Author(s):  
Tzofnat Peleg-Baker
Keyword(s):  
Conflict Transformation ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Relational Dynamics ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
The Social ◽  
Destructive Conflict ◽  
The Individual

The rapidly changing world we live in is fraught with increasing divisions and destructive conflict. Consequently, a resilient social fabric becomes crucial for people to feel included and benefit from their differences. The quality of relationships and the social environments, within which they are constantly being formed, are critical for successfully addressing divisive challenges and the destructive conflicts they might spawn. This chapter proposes a framework of three considerations for transforming conflict: 1. The mode of relationship- how the Self relates to the Other, 2. The understanding of conflict, and 3. The social environment and the role of leadership. Revisiting assumptions pertaining to these considerations can support a shift from the unit of the individual (typically characterizes Western cultural and scientific traditions) to the relational unit. This shift is viewed as a premise for long-term conflict transformation from adversarial interactions into dialogic relation. The latter is suggested as a constructive mode of relationship: a way of being with one another that diminishes destructive relationship while generating the conditions for benefiting and learning from conflict. The chapter concluded with an example of relational transformation as a combination of both micro efforts- consciousness raising to relational dynamics, and macro work—restructuring social context and advancing systemic changes in education.

The Social Function of Citizen Science

2017 ◽  
pp. 89-116
Author(s):  
Luis Arnoldo Ordóñez Vela ◽  
Enrico Bocciolesi ◽  
Giovanna Lombardi ◽  
Robin M. Urquhart
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Science ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Right ◽  
Instrumental Approaches

This chapter focuses on the risk that, when citizen science is introduced in social environments different from those in the Global North where it originated, it may be subject to the error of providing the right answer to the wrong question. To avoid this type of errors, it is necessary to train those who participate in citizen-science studies: citizens as well as researchers. Otherwise, we may encounter new forms of scientific dependence that benefit knowledge accumulation and policy decision-making in the Global North, without contributing to the quality of life of those who carry out the studies. This chapter analyzes the relationship between civic development, citizen science and ways of implementing research conclusions through public policies, given the characteristics of political and citizen participation in the Global South. Here, the introduction of citizen science is seen as an opportunity to construct a more inclusive and participatory society, and to reduce the risk of returning to paternalistic, passivity-inducing and purely instrumental approaches to development.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document