Surgical Outcomes of Epiblepharon Related to Atopic Dermatitis

Purpose: Patients with atopic dermatitis often have difficulty managing their condition after epiblepharon repair surgery due to edema and itching at the operation site. We examined surgical outcomes in relation to atopic dermatitis.Methods: A retrospective review of medical records was performed on epiblepharon patients and eyelids (patients = 1,829; eyelids = 4,694) that were followed after surgical correction between 2005 and 2016. Patients were classified into those with atopic dermatitis (the atopic dermatitis group) and a control group. Success rates and recurrence rates were compared and analyzed.Results: The mean patient age was 5.82 ± 2.87 years. Of the 200 eyelids with atopic dermatitis, 12 eyelids (6.0%) had undercorrection, as did 108 (2.4%) of the 4,494 eyelids of the control group. Of the 188 eyelids with atopic dermatitis, 13 (6.9%) underwent reoperation due to recurrence, as did 57 (1.3%) of the 4,386 eyelids of the control group. A statistically significant difference between two groups was confirmed in comparing failure rates and recurrence rates (p = 0.002, p < 0.001).Conclusions: The failure rates of surgery and recurrence rates of epiblepharon symptoms were significantly higher in patients with atopic dermatitis. It can be assumed that the suture fixed to the tarsal plate was untied or loosened due to edema and itching of the operation site due to atopic dermatitis. In consideration of this, more effective treatment methods, such as solid suturing, are needed in clinical practice for atopic dermatitis patients.

People are more tolerant of inequality when it is expressed in terms of individuals rather than groups at the top

Despite the ever-growing economic gap between the very wealthy and the rest of the population, support for redistributive policies tends to be low. This research tested whether people’s tolerance of inequality differs when it is represented in terms of a successful individual versus a group of people at the top of the economic ladder. We propose that drawing people’s attention to wealthy individuals undermines support for redistribution by leading people to believe that the rich person’s wealth is well deserved. Across eight studies (n = 2,800), survey participants rated unequal distributions of resources as more fair when presented with an individual, rather than a group, at the top of the distribution. Participants also expressed lower support for redistributive policies after considering inequality represented by successful individuals compared to groups. This effect was driven by people’s different attributions for individual versus group success. Participants thought that individuals at the top were more deserving of their successes and, in turn, were less likely to support redistribution when inequality was represented by individual success. These findings suggest that support for inequality, and policies to reduce it, may depend on who people are led to consider when they think about the top of the economic distribution.

A Mutualism, Affiliation and Status Seeking (MASS) Framework of Fundamental Affective Dynamics and their Survival Benefits

Primates have developed a unique set of complex drives for successful group living, yet theorists rarely contemplate their taxonomy and how such drives relate to affective dynamics fundamental for group success. Affective dynamics and drive fulfillment exert mutual influence on one another, ultimately collectively promoting or undermining survival. We first identify six core benefits of group living common among both humans and other animals, and from this foundation we propose three broad social drives that have evolved to preserve or enhance group living benefits: (i) Mutualism comprises cooperation, reciprocity, trust, and fairness; (ii) Affiliation comprises assimilation and belonging, whereby one aims to fit into the group through adherence to group norms and ideologies; (iii) Status-Seeking is represented by a drive to build one’s value in the group and acquire differential access to mates and other resources. We identify affective dynamics that facilitate each social drive: (i) Reactive flexibility involves qualitative shifts in affect in response to shifting goals, which facilitates mutualism; (ii) Affective synchrony is the reproduction of another individual’s emotions in oneself and facilitates social affiliation; (iii) Regulatory flexibility facilitates status-seeking through a broad repertoire of regulatory approaches during strategic behavioral pursuits. Finally, we posit that fulfilling Mutualism, Affiliation, and Status-Seeking (MASS) drives enhances the benefits of social living and supports development of fundamental affective dynamics.

Perspectives of prisoners on alcohol and other drug group treatment approaches

Purpose The purpose of this study is to describe what a sample of men in prison believe works well for the delivery of prison-based group alcohol and other drug (AoD) treatment programs. The authors hope the findings will help inform future practise in AoD program delivery in prison. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative research paper reporting on a thematic analysis of in-depth interviews with 30 male prisoners on their perspectives on AoD group treatment approaches. Findings Results indicate that matching readiness and motivation to start treatment is important for group success. Program content must be relevant and delivered by empathic facilitators who maintain confidentiality. It would be advantageous if one of the program facilitators was a peer with personal experience of overcoming an AoD use disorder. Originality/value According to the authors’ knowledge, this is one of few qualitative studies into the delivery of AoD treatment for men in prison and the only study of its kind in Australia. The consumer perspective is an important element in improving quality of treatment provision.

Working Across Faultlines—Assessing Intersubgroup Communication in Teams

Communication between different subgroups is essential to group success, as different perspectives and knowledge need to be integrated. Especially when subgroups form due to faultlines, hypothetical dividing lines splitting a group into homogeneous subgroups, the resulting subgroups are vulnerable to negative intergroup processes. In this article, we evaluate different methods that have been used to trace communication between faultline-based subgroups and discuss challenges that researchers face when applying those methods. We further present the faultline communication index (FCI) as a novel approach to meet those challenges. We combine techniques from social network analysis with a behavioral process approach to trace communication processes between subgroups and provide scholars with tools to integrate in their own research. We illustrate this approach by observing and coding real time interactions in 29 organizational meetings. Results show that although functional faultline strength does not impact information exchange between subgroups, intersubgroup interactions positively relate to the quality of action plans defined at the end of a meeting. Managers and practitioners who work with diverse teams can be given guidance on how communication between subgroups evolves and how it can be shaped to become more effective. We further discuss implications for future research on communication between subgroups.

Algorithmic and human prediction of success in human collaboration from visual features

As groups are increasingly taking over individual experts in many tasks, it is ever more important to understand the determinants of group success. In this paper, we study the patterns of group success in Escape The Room, a physical adventure game in which a group is tasked with escaping a maze by collectively solving a series of puzzles. We investigate (1) the characteristics of successful groups, and (2) how accurately humans and machines can spot them from a group photo. The relationship between these two questions is based on the hypothesis that the characteristics of successful groups are encoded by features that can be spotted in their photo. We analyze >43K group photos (one photo per group) taken after groups have completed the game—from which all explicit performance-signaling information has been removed. First, we find that groups that are larger, older and more gender but less age diverse are significantly more likely to escape. Second, we compare humans and off-the-shelf machine learning algorithms at predicting whether a group escaped or not based on the completion photo. We find that individual guesses by humans achieve 58.3% accuracy, better than random, but worse than machines which display 71.6% accuracy. When humans are trained to guess by observing only four labeled photos, their accuracy increases to 64%. However, training humans on more labeled examples (eight or twelve) leads to a slight, but statistically insignificant improvement in accuracy (67.4%). Humans in the best training condition perform on par with two, but worse than three out of the five machine learning algorithms we evaluated. Our work illustrates the potentials and the limitations of machine learning systems in evaluating group performance and identifying success factors based on sparse visual cues.

The diversity bonus in pooling local knowledge about complex problems

Recently, theoreticians have hypothesized that diverse groups, as opposed to groups that are homogeneous, may have relative merits [S. E. Page, The Diversity Bonus (2019)]—all of which lead to more success in solving complex problems. As such, understanding complex, intertwined environmental and social issues may benefit from the integration of diverse types of local expertise. However, efforts to support this hypothesis have been frequently made through laboratory-based or computational experiments, and it is unclear whether these discoveries generalize to real-world complexities. To bridge this divide, we combine an Internet-based knowledge elicitation technique with theoretical principles of collective intelligence to design an experiment with local stakeholders. Using a case of striped bass fisheries in Massachusetts, we pool the local knowledge of resource stakeholders represented by graphical cognitive maps to produce a causal model of complex social-ecological interdependencies associated with fisheries ecosystems. Blinded reviews from a scientific expert panel revealed that the models of diverse groups outranked those from homogeneous groups. Evaluation via stochastic network analysis also indicated that a diverse group more adequately modeled complex feedbacks and interdependencies than homogeneous groups. We then used our data to run Monte Carlo experiments wherein the distributions of stakeholder-driven cognitive maps were randomly reproduced and virtual groups were generated. Random experiments also predicted that knowledge diversity improves group success, which was measured by benchmarking group models against an ecosystem-based fishery management model. We also highlight that diversity must be moderated through a proper aggregation process, leading to more complex yet parsimonious models.