scholarly journals FOCAL SOCIAL ACTORS AND TACIT COORDINATION

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher R. Chartier
Keyword(s):  
Focal Point ◽  
Focal Points ◽  
Social Actor ◽  
Group Project ◽  
Coordination Problem ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
New Type ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Tacit Coordination ◽  
Group Member

Tacit coordination is a fundamental task for interdependent social actors. Everyday examples include negotiating rush hour traffic, working collaboratively on a group project, conversing smoothly, and meeting friends for lunch. Previous research (Schelling, 1960; Mehta, Starmer & Sugden, 1994) has focused extensively on differences between behavioral options that aid in small group coordination. Highly salient options are referred to as structural focal points, and are popular choices for actors. The current work presents a new type of focal point based on differences between social actors in a coordination problem. The focal social actor effect is hypothesized to occur when one group member is more salient than others, and actors correspond to behavioral options in a clear way. Three Experiments explored and ultimately supported this hypothesis. In Experiment 1, social information about group members was manipulated such that one group member was unique. Furthermore, players were identified by color. In a subsequent coordination game, players were more likely to select an option sharing an identifying color with the unique group member than an option corresponding to a common player. In Experiment 2, actors and options corresponded through slight payoff differences between group members across different behavioral options. Once again, players were more likely to select the option corresponding to the unique player. In Experiment 3, uniqueness was manipulated orthogonally to intragroup status by virtue of bogus feedback on a leadership questionnaire. The focal social actor served as a coordination cue, as players were more likely to select the option corresponding to the unique player. The focal social actor cue was found to be effective even in the presence of the previously established status cue for coordination (de Kwaadsteniet & van Dijk, 2010). Focal social actors serve as strong coordination aids for small groups, and may help explain portions of previously published tacit coordination findings.

scholarly journals Groups Outperform Individuals in Tacit Coordination by Using Consensual and Disjunctive Salience

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher R. Chartier
Keyword(s):  
Focal Point ◽  
Focal Points ◽  
Research Attention ◽  
Considerable Research ◽  
Group Response ◽  
Tacit Coordination ◽  
Group Member

Tacit coordination between individuals has received considerable research attention (Mehta, Starmer & Sugden, 1994; Abele, & Stasser, 2008). However, groups often must coordinate tacitly with other groups, and such intergroup coordination has been rarely studied. In three experiments, we found that interacting groups are more successful at coordinating tacitly than are individuals. This advantage is driven by two types of coordination salience that are uniquely derived from groups deliberating and making collective responses. Consensual salience occurs when groups select a response because a majority of members support it. Majorities efficiently identify popular response tendencies (i.e., focal points) and thereby increase the chances of matching other groups’ responses. Disjunctive salience occurs when at least one member of a group suggests a focal point. We propose that focal points are often demonstratively evident when mentioned, and if proposed by any group member, are likely to be adopted as the group response.

Basin Fractalization Due to Focal Points in a Class of Triangular Maps

1997 ◽  
Vol 07 (07) ◽  
pp. 1555-1577 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gian-Italo Bischi ◽  
Laura Gardini
Keyword(s):  
Focal Point ◽  
Numerical Study ◽  
Basins Of Attraction ◽  
Focal Points ◽  
Stable Sets ◽  
Bifurcation Mechanism ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
New Type ◽  
Basin Boundaries ◽  
Triangular Maps

For a class of rational triangular maps of a plane, characterized by the presence of points in which a component assumes the form [Formula: see text], a new type of bifurcation is evidenced which creates loops in the boundaries of the basins of attraction. In order to explain such bifurcation mechanism, new concepts of focal point and line of focal values are defined, and their effects on the geometric behavior of the map and of its inverses are studied in detail. We prove that the creation of loops, which generally constitute the boundaries of lobes of the basins issuing from the focal points, is determined by contacts between basin boundaries and the line of focal values. A particular map is proposed for which the sequence of such contact bifurcations occurs, causing a fractalization of basin boundaries. Through the analytical and the numerical study of this example new structures of the basins of attraction are evidenced, characterized by fans of stable sets issuing from the focal points, assuming the shape of lobes and arcs, the latter created by the merging of lobes due to contacts between the basin boundaries and the critical curve LC.

scholarly journals Enter the WhatsApper: Reinventing digital activism at the time of chat apps

First Monday ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefania Milan ◽  
Sérgio Barbosa
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Digital Activism ◽  
Group Interactions ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Political Activist ◽  
New Type ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Organizing Principles

This paper investigates how the appropriation of chat apps by social actors is redesigning digital activism and political participation today. To this end, we look at the case of #Unidos Contra o Golpe (United Against the Coup), a WhatsApp “private group” which emerged in 2016 in Florianópolis, Brazil, to oppose the controversial impeachment of the then-president Dilma Rousseff. We argue that a new type of political activist is emerging within and alongside with contemporary movements: the WhatsApper, an individual who uses the chat app intensely to serve her political agenda, leveraging its affordances for political participation. We explore WhatsApp as a discursive opportunity structure and investigate the emergence of a repertoire specific to chat apps. We show how recurrent interaction in the app results into an all-purpose, identity-like sense of connectedness binding social actors together. Diffuse leadership and experimental pluralism emerge as the bare organizing principles of these groups. The paper is based on a qualitative analysis of group interactions and conversations, complemented by semi-structured interviews with group members. It shows how WhatsApp is more than a messaging app for “hanging out” with like-minded people and has come to constitute a key platform for digital activism, in particular in the Global South.

KNOT POINTS IN TWO-DIMENSIONAL MAPS AND RELATED PROPERTIES

2009 ◽  
Vol 19 (02) ◽  
pp. 545-555 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. TRAMONTANA ◽  
L. GARDINI ◽  
D. FOURNIER-PRUNARET ◽  
P. CHARGE
Keyword(s):  
Focal Point ◽  
Singular Line ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Focal Points ◽  
Singular Set ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
Attracting Set ◽  
Straight Line ◽  
Special Character ◽  
Stable And Unstable Sets

We consider the class of two-dimensional maps of the plane for which there exists a whole one-dimensional singular set (for example, a straight line) that is mapped into one point, called a "knot point" of the map. The special character of this kind of point has been already observed in maps of this class with at least one of the inverses having a vanishing denominator. In that framework, a knot is the so-called focal point of the inverse map (it is the same point). In this paper, we show that knots may also exist in other families of maps, not related to an inverse having values going to infinity. Some particular properties related to focal points persist, such as the existence of a "point to slope" correspondence between the points of the singular line and the slopes in the knot, lobes issuing from the knot point and loops in infinitely many points of an attracting set or in invariant stable and unstable sets.

scholarly journals Neural precursors of future liking and affective reciprocity

2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (17) ◽  
pp. 4375-4380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noam Zerubavel ◽  
Mark Anthony Hoffman ◽  
Adam Reich ◽  
Kevin N. Ochsner ◽  
Peter Bearman
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Neural Data ◽  
Social Network Data ◽  
The Social ◽  
Interaction Partners ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Flexible Framework ◽  
Predictive Strength ◽  
Group Member

Why do certain group members end up liking each other more than others? How does affective reciprocity arise in human groups? The prediction of interpersonal sentiment has been a long-standing pursuit in the social sciences. We combined fMRI and longitudinal social network data to test whether newly acquainted group members’ reward-related neural responses to images of one another’s faces predict their future interpersonal sentiment, even many months later. Specifically, we analyze associations between relationship-specific valuation activity and relationship-specific future liking. We found that one’s own future (T2) liking of a particular group member is predicted jointly by actor’s initial (T1) neural valuation of partner and by that partner’s initial (T1) neural valuation of actor. These actor and partner effects exhibited equivalent predictive strength and were robust when statistically controlling for each other, both individuals’ initial liking, and other potential drivers of liking. Behavioral findings indicated that liking was initially unreciprocated at T1 yet became strongly reciprocated by T2. The emergence of affective reciprocity was partly explained by the reciprocal pathways linking dyad members’ T1 neural data both to their own and to each other’s T2 liking outcomes. These findings elucidate interpersonal brain mechanisms that define how we ultimately end up liking particular interaction partners, how group members’ initially idiosyncratic sentiments become reciprocated, and more broadly, how dyads evolve. This study advances a flexible framework for researching the neural foundations of interpersonal sentiments and social relations that—conceptually, methodologically, and statistically—emphasizes group members’ neural interdependence.

scholarly journals The Isolated Choice Effect and Its Implications for Gender Diversity in Organizations

2020 ◽  
Vol 66 (6) ◽  
pp. 2752-2761 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward H. Chang ◽  
Erika L. Kirgios ◽  
Aneesh Rai ◽  
Katherine L. Milkman
Keyword(s):  
Personnel Selection ◽  
Gender Diversity ◽  
Multiple Group ◽  
Gender Diverse ◽  
Selection Decisions ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Groups And Teams ◽  
Group Diversity ◽  
Diverse Groups ◽  
Group Member

We highlight a feature of personnel selection decisions that can influence the gender diversity of groups and teams. Specifically, we show that people are less likely to choose candidates whose gender would increase group diversity when making personnel selections in isolation (i.e., when they are responsible for selecting a single group member) than when making collections of choices (i.e., when they are responsible for selecting multiple group members). We call this the isolated choice effect. Across six preregistered experiments (n = 3,509), we demonstrate that the isolated choice effect has important consequences for group diversity. When making sets of hiring and selection decisions (as opposed to making a single hire), people construct more gender-diverse groups. Mediation and moderation studies suggest that people do not attend as much to diversity when making isolated selection choices, which drives this effect. This paper was accepted by Yuval Rottenstreich, decision analysis.

scholarly journals Revision and Participation Patterns in Grades 5 and 6 Wiki Writing

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 110
Author(s):  
Christine Portier ◽  
Shelley Stagg Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Social Studies ◽  
Writing Groups ◽  
Middle Grade ◽  
Action Research Project ◽  
Word Level ◽  
Willingness To Change ◽  
Working Together ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Group Member

Our study examined middle grade students’ participation in wikis during their two-month social studies unit co-taught by two teachers as part of a larger action research project. Using an analysis of 42 grades 5 and 6 students working together in eight wiki writing groups, we report on the frequency and types of revisions they made to collaboratively-written essays, and the distribution of the workload across group members in each of the wiki groups. Discussion data with 16 students from these wiki groups helps contextualize our analysis.Our findings suggest that given their extended time to write, students revised frequently, making replacements more often than they deleted, added or moved content. Students indicated a willingness to change others’ contributions and to have their own contributions revised by others in order to improve the quality of the essays. The majority of their revisions were at the word level, rather than at sentence, paragraph, and whole-text levels. One student in each group contributed significantly more frequently than any other group member. There were no gender or grade patterns in the frequencies or types of contributions that students made to the wikis.

Home truths: fieldwork, writing and anthropology’s ‘home encounter’

2019 ◽  
pp. 19-38
Author(s):  
Rachel Humphris
Keyword(s):  
Social Roles ◽  
Writing Process ◽  
Entry Point ◽  
Social Actor ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Social ◽  
Home Space

This chapter presents the methodology of the research including theoretical discussions of ‘anthropological truth’, the researchers’ shifting situated positions throughout the fieldwork and the writing process. This chapter draws on Munn’s conception of the social actor as a mobile spatial field. The home emerged as the most salient site of interaction through this methodology. This has two implications. First, it provides a different entry point to social worlds (resonating with feminist analytics) rather than choosing a space and exploring the social actors that create it. Second, this approach revealed the home as the site where ‘culture’ was located and contested. This opens the home space to studies on diversity and conviviality. It also demonstrates the different terms that encounters in the home took on through the social roles of host and hosting, the materiality of the space, and gendered dynamics.

scholarly journals Prey synchronize their vigilant behaviour with other group members

2007 ◽  
Vol 274 (1615) ◽  
pp. 1287-1291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivier Pays ◽  
Pierre-Cyril Renaud ◽  
Patrice Loisel ◽  
Maud Petit ◽  
Jean-François Gerard ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Predation Risk ◽  
Group Size ◽  
Prey Species ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Group Member

It is generally assumed that an individual of a prey species can benefit from an increase in the number of its group's members by reducing its own investment in vigilance. But what behaviour should group members adopt in relation to both the risk of being preyed upon and the individual investment in vigilance? Most models assume that individuals scan independently of one another. It is generally argued that it is more profitable for each group member owing to the cost that coordination of individual scans in non-overlapping bouts of vigilance would require. We studied the relationships between both individual and collective vigilance and group size in Defassa waterbuck, Kobus ellipsiprymnus defassa , in a population living under a predation risk. Our results confirmed that the proportion of time an individual spent in vigilance decreased with group size. However, the time during which at least one individual in the group scanned the environment (collective vigilance) increased. Analyses showed that individuals neither coordinated their scanning in an asynchronous way nor scanned independently of one another. On the contrary, scanning and non-scanning bouts were synchronized between group members, producing waves of collective vigilance. We claim that these waves are triggered by allelomimetic effects i.e. they are a phenomenon produced by an individual copying its neighbour's behaviour.

Wave Height Measurements Behind Submerged Lens-Shaped Structures

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew L. Bloxom ◽  
Karl D. von Ellenrieder ◽  
Matthew R. Anderson ◽  
Ryan S. Mieras ◽  
William S. Weidle
Keyword(s):  
Wave Height ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Focal Length ◽  
Experimental Tests ◽  
Geometrical Optics ◽  
Width Ratio ◽  
Focal Points ◽  
Wave Amplification ◽  
Strip Theory ◽  
Longitudinal Position

The ability of submerged lens-shaped structures to focus linear surface waves in deep water is explored through a series of experimental tests in a wave making basin. Three lenses were designed using a combination of linear strip theory and a surface wave analogy to geometrical optics. Two of these lenses were designed to focus waves of a single wavelength of 0.482 m (18.97 in.), one with a focal length to lens width ratio (f-number) of 2.0 and the other with an f-number of 0.5. The third lens was designed to function as a compound lens that could focus a range of wavelengths of between 0.39 m (15.37 in.) and 0.694 m (27.32 in.) at an f-number of 2.0. Using resistance wave height gauges, the sensitivity of wave height at the focus to variations in wavelength from between 0.39 m (15.37 in.) to 0.61 m (24.01 in.) was experimentally measured for all three lenses; the sensitivity of wave height at the focus to variations of lens depths of submergence spanning the range of between 0.75 to 1.25 times the design submergence depth was also explored for the two simple lenses. It was found that the linear strip theory and geometrical optics approach predicted the wave amplification to within ten percent at the design wavelengths and depths, but that the longitudinal position of the experimentally observed focal lengths differed substantially from that expected, by as much as a factor of 2.2 for an f-number of 0.5. Additionally, while the theory predicted a single focal point for each lens, multiple focal points were found to exist behind the compound lens.

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