Daily social media use, social ties, and emotional well-being in later life

Older American adults are increasingly utilizing communication technologies, but research has seldom explored older adults’ daily social media use and its interface with other “offline” social ties. To explore a complementary and/or compensatory function of social media in later life, this study employed data from the Daily Experiences and Well-Being Study (2016–2017) to examine associations between daily social media use, daily social encounters, social network structure, and daily mood. Community-dwelling older adults ( N = 310; Mage = 73.96) reported on their overall social network structure (diversity in types of social ties and size of network), their daily social encounters in-person and by phone, social media use, and emotional well-being for 5 to 6 days. Multilevel models revealed that daily social media use was associated with daily mood in the context of daily social encounters and the size of the social network. Individuals reported less negative mood on days with more social media use and more in-person encounters. More daily social media use was associated with more positive mood for individuals with a relatively small social network but not for their counterparts with larger social networks. Findings suggest that social media is a distinct form of social resource in later life that may complement the emotional benefits of daily social encounters and compensate for the age-related reduction in social network size. Future research should consider how socially isolated older adults might use computer-mediated communication such as social media to foster a sense of social connection.

[PREPRINT] Mind the Machines: Applying Implicit Measures of Mind Perception to Social Robotics

Beyond conscious beliefs and goals, automatic cognitive processes shape our social encounters, and interactions with complex machines like social robots are no exception. With this in mind, it is surprising that research in human-robot interaction (HRI) almost exclusively uses explicit measures, such as subjective ratings and questionnaires, to assess human attitudes towards robots - seemingly ignoring the importance of implicit measures. This is particularly true for research focusing on the question whether or not humans are willing to attribute complex mental states mind perception, such as agency (i.e., the capacity to plan and act) and experience (i.e., the capacity to sense and feel), to robotic agents. In the current study, we (i) created the mind perception implicit association test (MP-IAT) to examine subconscious attributions of mental capacities to agents of different degrees of human-likeness (here: human vs. humanoid robot), and (ii) compared the outcomes of the MP-IAT to explicit mind perception ratings of the same agents.Results indicate that (i) already at the subconscious level, robots are associated with lower levels of agency and experience compared to humans, and that (ii) implicit and explicit measures of mind perception are not significantly correlated. This suggests that mind perception (i) has an implicit component that can be measured using implicit tests like the IAT and (ii) might be difficult to modulate via design or experimental procedures due to its fast-acting, automatic nature.

Reshaping Louisiana’s Coastal Frontier: Managed Retreat as Colonial Decontextualization

This article describes social encounters produced through climate adaptation policy experimentation focused on managed retreat—a framework increasingly used by academics and planning professionals to describe various kinds of planned relocations from areas exposed to environmental hazards. Building on scholarship that examines the political ecology of resettlement and adaptation (Shearer, 2012; Maldonado, 2014; Marino 2015; Whyte et al. 2019), I draw on five years of ethnographic work conducted alongside Isle de Jean Charles Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribal leaders as their longstanding Tribal resettlement planning was transformed by government investment. I found that Louisiana’s Office of Community Development relied on Tribal-led planning to garner federal funds, used those funds to transform the resettlement, and used planning process and documentation to erase the rationales behind and aims of Indigenous-led planning—a process I liken to Dina Gilio-Whitaker (2019)’s notion of decontextualization as a colonial strategy of erasure. I contend that state decontextualization of the resettlement from a struggle for cultural survival to managed retreat policy experimentation reproduced a frontier dynamic whereby colonial and capitalist coastal futures are rested upon the erasure of Indigenous peoples and their lifeways, institutions, and self-determination. Constructions of risk and community and timelines published in planning documentation were particularly important state tools used for decontextualization. Ethnographic accounts of such processes can inform future resistance to eco-colonial schemes within climate adaptation.

Jessica's Journey

This personal story chapter describes the journey undertaken by a transgender youth as she discovers her true gender identity. Told by a mother and daughter team, each individual shares her feelings and experiences from the time J is a toddler until the present, including preschool experiences, travel abroad anecdotes, school and social encounters, and family reactions and adjustments to J's transition and ongoing transformation. The chapter addresses the social, emotional, physical, academic, and economic factors that many transgender youth and adults face on a daily basis and suggests ways that schools and society can ease this complex process for individuals who are LGBTQ+.

New Nutritional Perspectives in the Context of Chronic Disease Patient Management

As living standards change with the development of modern industry and social encounters, people tend to change their lifestyle and environment exposure along with their psychophysiological factors, leading to an imbalance of homeostasis and increasing the risk for chronic diseases. In addition to ingredients, methods, and food conditions storage and processing, the use of additives and certain new foods have facilitated the increased occurrence of chronic diseases in children or adults. The interaction of some components of the food system with enzymes that metabolize different types of drugs can affect the body's clearance and therapeutic index.The objective of this chapter was to present the general principles of food development for special nutritional conditions, also the adjuvants used for chronic disease status improvement, under the condition of nutritional nutrivigilence and food safety standards, and specific to introduce an adjuvant food for atopic dermatitis management.

GENDERED URBAN SPACES AND STRANGENESS IN JEAN RHYS’ GOOD MORNING, MIDNIGHT (1939)

This article analyses Jean Rhys’ 1939 novel Good Morning, Midnight from the standpoint of spatial and gender theory. Firstly, it explores the portrayal of gendered spaces in the modern city. In order to do so, it examines how Sasha Jensen challenges spatial constraints but is then identified as a stranger to the social order. Secondly, a parallelism between the urban automatisation of production and the female body is established to explore how consumer culture affects Sasha. Finally, it examines how the influence that Sasha’s fractured subjectivity has on her social encounters, which situate her on a liminal space.

Amazement as a necessary element for a comprehensive formation

We will talk about the systematization of the educational experiences in amazement didactics in the Autonomous University of Queretaro. The objective is to comprehend how a comprehensive formation is achieved on the participants in the classrooms based on amazement didactics. The classes were imparted under the didactic strategies of theater, clown, and magic with the goal of fostering amazement in social encounters. The sessions were registered in a class journal. The systematization process consisted of answering the question: How does amazement contributes to the comprehensive formation of the involved in the educational process of the university classroom. The focus of the systematization was thoughtful, it sought to explain how a happy environment was created in the classes. The systematization process was used in the classes at the end of the school year 2020-1. Amazement uses laughter, looks, silence, and thoughtfulness that wakes up the creativity, foster trust, and create bonds of love, as well as the curiosity to learn in virtual environments in the confinement period brought by the health emergency. This was one of the results found, as well as recognizing that recognition makes us exist and motivates us to be more, humanizes us, achieving a comprehensive education, originating from a participative process that leads to the harmonious development attending all the dimensions of the person, such as the cognitive, affective, community, ethic, cultural for the full humanization of the person, from amazement strategies that lead to think and act from other possibilities.

Facial Stereotyping Drives Judgments of Perceptually Ambiguous Social Groups

When seeing a face, people form judgments of perceptually ambiguous social categories (PASCs), for example, gun-owners, gay people, or alcoholics. Previous research has assumed that PASC judgments arise from the statistical learning of facial features in social encounters. We propose, instead, that perceivers associate facial features with traits (e.g., extroverted) and then infer PASC membership via learned stereotype associations with those traits. Across three studies, we show that when any PASC is more stereotypically associated with a trait (e.g., alcoholics = extroverted), perceivers are more likely to infer PASC membership from faces conveying that trait (Study 1). Furthermore, we demonstrate that individual differences in trait–PASC stereotypes predict face-based judgments of PASC membership (Study 2) and have a causal role in these judgments (Study 3). Together, our findings imply that people can form any number of PASC judgments from facial appearance alone by drawing on their learned social–conceptual associations.

Connections, Identity and Resilience Amongst International Students at Victoria University

<p>This study used a re-storying methodology to develop narratives of 13 Asian students who came from overseas to study in New Zealand at Victoria University. These narratives considered connections the students made both on and off campus and their reflections on how these connections shaped cultural identity. The research also explored students’ experiences of resilience and agency. Their stories revealed strong connections made with other international students but less well formed relationships with domestic students, where ties are superficial despite programmes designed to facilitate these connections. The exception was the stronger connections students developed with domestic minority learners, such as Pasifika and Maori students. Volunteering, rather than paid work or homestays, were contexts that offered community connections. Student narratives suggest that the experience of studying at VUW refreshed home country identity but also encouraged a flexible identity with a growing awareness of cultural diversity, which for some students, constituted a global citizen perspective. While all students reported struggles, they maintained resilience in the face of challenges, using their networks to sustain them, rather than formal support services. They demonstrated agency in making moves to improve their situation and that of prospective students. Micro-aggressions encountered did cause social suffering but students confronted racism, in their own way, trying to enlarge cultural space at university. Leadership opportunities taken, along with the difficult social encounters they navigated, lead to personal change and growth. Implications of these findings, for policy makers and providers of support services, are discussed.</p>

Connections, Identity and Resilience Amongst International Students at Victoria University

<p>This study used a re-storying methodology to develop narratives of 13 Asian students who came from overseas to study in New Zealand at Victoria University. These narratives considered connections the students made both on and off campus and their reflections on how these connections shaped cultural identity. The research also explored students’ experiences of resilience and agency. Their stories revealed strong connections made with other international students but less well formed relationships with domestic students, where ties are superficial despite programmes designed to facilitate these connections. The exception was the stronger connections students developed with domestic minority learners, such as Pasifika and Maori students. Volunteering, rather than paid work or homestays, were contexts that offered community connections. Student narratives suggest that the experience of studying at VUW refreshed home country identity but also encouraged a flexible identity with a growing awareness of cultural diversity, which for some students, constituted a global citizen perspective. While all students reported struggles, they maintained resilience in the face of challenges, using their networks to sustain them, rather than formal support services. They demonstrated agency in making moves to improve their situation and that of prospective students. Micro-aggressions encountered did cause social suffering but students confronted racism, in their own way, trying to enlarge cultural space at university. Leadership opportunities taken, along with the difficult social encounters they navigated, lead to personal change and growth. Implications of these findings, for policy makers and providers of support services, are discussed.</p>