scholarly journals Time to leave: Computations of when to end a social interaction depend on opportunity costs, depression, and loneliness

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Gabay ◽  
M. Andrea Pisauro ◽  
Kathryn O'Nell ◽  
Rosie Lynch ◽  
Matthew A J Apps
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Opportunity Cost ◽  
Opportunity Costs ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Dynamic Allocation ◽  
Evidence Accumulation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Decisions To Leave ◽  
High Opportunity Cost ◽  
Computational Processes

Positive social relationships are vital for mental health. There is an ever-increasing understanding of the cognitive and computational mechanisms that underlie how we process others’ behaviours during social interactions. Yet fundamentally many conversations, partnerships and relationships have to end. However, little is known about how people decide when to leave. Theories of decision-making posit that people stop a behaviour in favour of another based on evidence accumulation processes, shaped by the value of alternative behaviours (opportunity costs). Do people compute evidence to leave social interactions based on the opportunity costs of connecting to others? Here, in a novel economic game, participants made decisions of when to leave partners in social environments with different opportunity costs for moving on. Across four studies we find that people leave partners more quickly when the opportunity costs are high, both in terms of the average generosity in the environment and the effort required to connect to the next partner. People’s leaving times could be accounted for by a fairness-adapted evidence accumulation model, with a lower threshold for leaving in high opportunity cost social environments. Moreover, decisions to leave were modulated by depression and loneliness scores, which were linked to an interaction between the fairness of a partner and the opportunity cost of the social environment. These findings demonstrate the cognitive and computational processes underlying decisions to leave social interactions, and highlight that loneliness and depression may be linked to an atypical dynamic allocation of time to social interactions.

scholarly journals Genetic variation in social influence on mate preferences

2013 ◽  
Vol 280 (1763) ◽  
pp. 20130803 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darren Rebar ◽  
Rafael L. Rodríguez
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Variation ◽  
Social Influence ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Species Complex ◽  
Natural Populations ◽  
Mate Preferences ◽  
Social Effects ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Full Sibling ◽  
The Social

Patterns of phenotypic variation arise in part from plasticity owing to social interactions, and these patterns contribute, in turn, to the form of selection that shapes the variation we observe in natural populations. This proximate–ultimate dynamic brings genetic variation in social environments to the forefront of evolutionary theory. However, the extent of this variation remains largely unknown. Here, we use a member of the Enchenopa binotata species complex of treehoppers (Hemiptera: Membracidae) to assess how mate preferences are influenced by genetic variation in the social environment. We used full-sibling split-families as ‘treatment’ social environments, and reared focal females alongside each treatment family, describing the mate preferences of the focal females. With this method, we detected substantial genetic variation in social influence on mate preferences. The mate preferences of focal females varied according to the treatment families along with which they grew up. We discuss the evolutionary implications of the presence of such genetic variation in social influence on mate preferences, including potential contributions to the maintenance of genetic variation, the promotion of divergence, and the adaptive evolution of social effects on fitness-related traits.

scholarly journals The carnival is not over: Cultural resistance in dementia care

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Capstick ◽  
John Chatwin
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Residential Care ◽  
Medical Discourse ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Cultural Resistance ◽  
Social Challenges ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
People With Dementia ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face

Within the still-dominant medical discourse on dementia, disorders of language feature prominently among diagnostic criteria. In this view, changes in ability to produce or understand coherent speech are considered to be an inevitable result of neuropathology. Alternative psychosocial accounts of communicative challenges in dementia exists, but to date, little emphasis has been placed on people with dementia as social actors who create meaning and context from their social interactions. In this article we draw on Bakhtin’s concepts of the carnivalesque, heteroglossia, polyphony and dialogism to analyse a series of interactions involving people with dementia in day and residential care environments. We argue that many of the communicative challenges faced by people with dementia arise from the social environments in which they find themselves, and that the utterances of people with dementia in the face of these social challenges show many of the hallmarks of cultural resistance identified by Bakhtin.

scholarly journals Social interactions within the family enhance the capacity for evolutionary change

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
BJM Jarrett ◽  
M Schrader ◽  
D Rebar ◽  
TM Houslay ◽  
RM Kilner
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
Selection Experiments ◽  
Nicrophorus Vespilloides ◽  
Classical Models ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
Selection For ◽  
Provision Of Care

AbstractClassical models of evolution seldom predict evolution in the wild. One explanation is that the social environment has important, yet overlooked, effects on how traits change in response to natural selection. We tested this idea with selection experiments on burying beetles (Nicrophorus vespilloides), sub-social insects that exhibit biparental care. Populations responded to selection for larger adults only when parents cared for their offspring, and responded to selection for smaller adults only when we prevented parents from providing care. Comparative analyses revealed a similar pattern: evolutionary increases in species size within the genus Nicrophorus are associated with the obligate provision of care. Synthesising our results with previous studies, we suggest that cooperative social environments enhance the response to selection whereas conflict can prevent further directional selection.

The carnival is not over

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-195
Author(s):  
Andrea Capstick ◽  
John Chatwin
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Residential Care ◽  
Medical Discourse ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Cultural Resistance ◽  
Social Challenges ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
People With Dementia ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face

Within the still-dominant medical discourse on dementia, disorders of language feature prominently among diagnostic criteria. In this view, changes in ability to produce or understand coherent speech are considered to be an inevitable result of neuropathology. Alternative psychosocial accounts of communicative challenges in dementia exists, but to date, little emphasis has been placed on people with dementia as social actors who create meaning and context from their social interactions. In this article we draw on Bakhtin’s concepts of the carnivalesque, heteroglossia, polyphony and dialogism to analyse a series of interactions involving people with dementia in day and residential care environments. We argue that many of the communicative challenges faced by people with dementia arise from the social environments in which they find themselves, and that the utterances of people with dementia in the face of these social challenges show many of the hallmarks of cultural resistance identified by Bakhtin.

Neural Implementation of Bayesian mechanisms underlying the continous trade-off between cooperation and competition

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Andrea Pisauro ◽  
Elsa Fouragnan ◽  
Desislava Arabadzhiyska ◽  
Matthew A J Apps ◽  
Marios G Philiastides
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Social Preferences ◽  
Computational Modelling ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Social Orientation ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Cooperation And Competition ◽  
The Social

Social interactions are not all or nothing. In some moments we are highly competitive, in others we are very cooperative, but sometimes we are somewhere in between and we constantly adjust our social orientation over time. Such a continuous spectrum of social approaches depends on both the actions favoured by the social environment and those of conspecifics. However, research examining strategic social interactions typically uses binary choices and therefore cannot consider how people shift their behaviour along a cooperation-competition continuum. Here, we use a novel economic game – the Space Dilemma – in which two players make a choice of a spatial location to indicate their degree of cooperativeness on each trial. Participants played the game across different social environments allowing us to compare their behaviour and neural responses in cooperative and competitive contexts. Using computational modelling and fMRI we show that social environments, social biases and inferences about others’ intentions shape people’s decisions about their degree of cooperativeness, in a manner consistent with a Bayesian learning model. We show that sub-regions of the brain previously linked to social cognition, including the Temporo-Parietal Junction (TPJ), dorso-medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) and the anterior cingulate gyrus (ACCg), signalled features of the Bayesian model. This included context independent surprise signals in the TPJ, context dependent signals in ACCg and dmPFC when monitoring others’ changes in competitiveness, as well as signals guiding shifts along the cooperation-competition continuum in posterior dMPFC. These results highlight how the social environment, one’s own and others’ social preferences all contribute to guide the continuous trade-off between cooperation and competition.

Value-driven issues throughout the development of sociological theory

2020 ◽  
pp. 147-160
Author(s):  
Gulbarshyn Chepurko ◽  
Valerii Pylypenko
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social System ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Different Levels

The paper examines and compares how the major sociological theories treat axiological issues. Value-driven topics are analysed in view of their relevance to society in times of crisis, when both societal life and the very structure of society undergo dramatic change. Nowadays, social scientists around the world are also witnessing such a change due to the emergence of alternative schools of sociological thought (non-classical, interpretive, postmodern, etc.) and, subsequently, the necessity to revise the paradigms that have been existed in sociology so far. Since the above-mentioned approaches are often used to address value-related issues, building a solid theoretical framework for these studies takes on considerable significance. Furthermore, the paradigm revision has been prompted by technological advances changing all areas of people’s lives, especially social interactions. The global human community, integral in nature, is being formed, and production of human values now matters more than production of things; hence the “expansion” of value-focused perspectives in contemporary sociology. The authors give special attention to collectivities which are higher-order units of the social system. These units are described as well-organised action systems where each individual performs his/her specific role. Just as the role of an individual is distinct from that of the collectivity (because the individual and the collectivity are different as units), so too a distinction is drawn between the value and the norm — because they represent different levels of social relationships. Values are the main connecting element between the society’s cultural system and the social sphere while norms, for the most part, belong to the social system. Values serve primarily to maintain the pattern according to which the society is functioning at a given time; norms are essential to social integration. Apart from being the means of regulating social processes and relationships, norms embody the “principles” that can be applied beyond a particular social system. The authors underline that it is important for Ukrainian sociology to keep abreast of the latest developments in the field of axiology and make good use of those ideas because this is a prerequisite for its successful integration into the global sociological community.

On Measuring the Social Opportunity Cost of Labour in the Presence of Tariffs and an Informal Sector (The Distinguishedl Lecture)

1992 ◽  
Vol 31 (4I) ◽  
pp. 535-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Ali Khan
Keyword(s):  
Informal Sector ◽  
Opportunity Cost ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Open Letter ◽  
Review Of The Literature ◽  
The Social ◽  
Action Project ◽  
Relevant Group ◽  
Net Benefits ◽  
The Individual

Harberger introduced his influential 1971 essay with the following words. This paper is intended not as a scientific study, nor as a review of the literature, but rather as a tract - an open letter to the profession, as it were - pleading that three basic postulates be accepted as providing a conventional framework for applied welfare economics. The postulates are: (a) The competitive demand price for a given unit measures the value of that unit to the demander; (b) The competitive supply price for a given unit measures the value of that unit to the supplier; and (c) When evaluating the net benefits or costs of a given action (project, programme, or policy), the costs and benefits accruing to each member of the relevant group (e.g., a nation) should normally be added without regard to the individual(s) to whom they accrue.

Social ethology of the wolverine

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey P. Copeland ◽  
Arild Landa ◽  
Kimberly Heinemeyer ◽  
Keith B. Aubry ◽  
Jiska van Dijk ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Resource Availability ◽  
Social Behaviour ◽  
Social System ◽  
Group Living ◽  
Field Studies ◽  
Ecological Framework ◽  
The Social ◽  
Living Species

Social behaviour in solitary carnivores has long been an active area of investigation but for many species remains largely founded in conjecture compared to our understanding of sociality in group-living species. The social organization of the wolverine has, until now, received little attention beyond its portrayal as a typical mustelid social system. In this chapter the authors compile observations of social interactions from multiple wolverine field studies, which are integrated into an ecological framework. An ethological model for the wolverine is proposed that reveals an intricate social organization, which is driven by variable resource availability within extremely large territories and supports social behaviour that underpins offspring development.

A Phenomenology of Rhythm

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lexi Eikelboom
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Henri Lefebvre ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
The Social ◽  
Analytical Importance ◽  
Jazz Performance

This chapter proposes a framework for approaching the theological significance of rhythm through phenomenology, prosody, and the social sciences. In accordance with the general categories of phenomenology established by Merleau-Ponty and the “rhythmanalysis” of Henri Lefebvre, the chapter investigates two experiences of rhythm: approaches to analysing the human encounter with rhythm in the reading of poetry and the role of rhythm in social interactions introduced through commonalities between rhythm in conversation and in jazz performance. These explorations establish two features of rhythm that are of analytical importance for the chapters that follow: (1) the synchronic and the diachronic as two necessary but distinct theoretical perspectives on rhythm, each of which emphasizes different features of rhythm and (2) the importance of interruption for understanding rhythm’s significance.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document