How to Build Sustainable Online Communities: Implications from Lithuania Urban Communities Case Study

This research aims to extend our knowledge about the factors for increasing participation and sustainability of digitally enhanced communities. Thus, the subject of the research is online community projects which act as the catalysts for collective behaviors exhibited through the crowd effect. Typical to online communities and their social orientation is the use of new forms of self-regulation and self-governance. Sustainable online communities can improve public services and lead to broader civic participation. The communities were analyzed in the course of experimental qualitative research that was conducted in Lithuania. Participants in digital urban communities and initiators of such platforms were interviewed face-to-face. Analysis of the empirical data revealed different motivational, socio-cultural, and organizational factors influencing the sustainable online community ecosystem. According to the research results, community organizers and IT developers should focus on online collaborations through technologies that create social value (collective decision-making tools, gamification, virtual brainstorming, and other technological solutions).

On Counteracting the Investigation of Prison-Related Crimes: Features of the Preliminary Stage

Introduction: the article analyzes the content and typical methods and ways that convicts, suspects, and defendants held in correctional institutions and pre-trial detention centers use to counter the investigation of penitentiary crimes. Aim: using the analysis of investigative and judicial practice for criminal cases initiated against persons who committed crimes while in custody or while serving their prison terms, we make an attempt to identify the most distinctive features of counteracting the investigation of prisonrelated crimes. Methods: dialectical method of cognition, general scientific methods of analysis and generalization, empirical methods of description, interpretation; theoretical methods of formal and dialectical logic. Results: using a scientific approach that highlights the preliminary stage of investigation of crimes, we reveal some typical counteraction techniques used by prison offenders. Conclusions: destruction, concealment, staging, and falsification are among the most popular methods used directly by offenders to prevent prison-related crimes from being solved. The indirect attitude of offenders toward counteracting the investigation of prison-related crimes is successfully implemented by creating a crowd effect, as well as using the media and the activities of human rights organizations. Keywords: Prison-related crime; counteracting crime investigation; correctional institution; pre-trial detention center; convicted person; suspect; defendant

The Psychology of Second Guesses: Implications for the Wisdom of the Inner Crowd

Prior research suggests that averaging two guesses from the same person can improve quantitative judgments, a phenomenon known as the “wisdom of the inner crowd.” In this article, we find that this effect hinges on whether people explicitly decide in which direction their first guess had erred before making their second guess. In nine studies (N = 8,465), we found that asking people to explicitly indicate whether their first guess was too high or too low before making their second guess made people more likely to provide a second guess that was more extreme (in the same direction) than their first guess. As a consequence, the introduction of that “Too High/Too Low” question reduced (and sometimes eliminated or reversed) the wisdom-of-the-inner-crowd effect for (the majority of) questions with non-extreme correct answers and increased the wisdom-of-the-inner-crowd effect for questions with extreme correct answers. Our findings suggest that the wisdom-of-the-inner-crowd effect is not inevitable but rather that it depends on the processes people use to generate their second guesses. This paper was accepted by Yuval Rottenstreich, decision analysis.

Gazing Without Eyes: A “Stare-in-the-Crowd” Effect Induced by Simple Geometric Shapes

Of the many effects that eye contact has, perhaps the most powerful is the stare-in-the-crowd effect, wherein faces are detected more readily when they look directly toward you. This is commonly attributed to others’ eyes being especially salient visual stimuli, but here we ask whether stares-in-the-crowd might arise instead from a deeper property that the eyes (but not only the eyes) signify: the direction of others’ attention and intentions. In fact, even simple geometric shapes can be seen as intentional, as when numerous randomly scattered cones are all consistently pointing at you. Accordingly, we show here that cones directed at the observer are detected faster (in fields of averted cones) than are cones averted away from the observer (in fields of directed cones). These results suggest that perceived intentionality itself captures attention—and that even in the absence of eyes, others’ directed attention stands out in a crowd.

TYPOLOGY OF RUSSIAN INVESTORS OF FINANCIAL PYRAMIDS

Thanks to a large-scale campaign to increase the financial literacy of Russian citizens, financial pyramids began to seem like ghosts from the past, but in 2019 in Russia a significant number of financial pyramids were recorded. Financial literacy protects citizens from the so-called economic methods of involvement in dubious money enterprises. To a lesser extent, the layman is protected from psychological and sociological methods of influence. Psychology implies managing a person with controversial methods. Sociology offers the so-called crowd effect as an explanation of the phenomenon of mass insanity. This work classifies typical methods of attracting investors to the Russian financial pyramids, for which purpose a combined model of influence on citizens, including economic, psychological and sociological methods, is constructed. Based on this model, a typology of investors is proposed taking into account the methods of their involvement.