Dynamics of correlation between the level of anxiety and abilities to adapt to university in students

Elaborated is the content of the concepts of “anxiety” and “adaptation”. The dynamics of neuropsychiatric stability, situational anxiety and adaptation in students during the initial period of study at the university were revealed. During the adaptation period, reactive anxiety changes in the direction of its increase. The presence of the relationship of adaptive abilities and anxiety in students in 1–3 semester of study is shown. There is an increased interaction of these mental phenomena among themselves in 1st semester. During the adaptation period, the level of statistical connection between reactive anxiety and communicative abilities increases. Moral normality is a situational characteristic during adaptation and its relationship with personal and reactive anxiety is weak, but tends to increase. Most students successfully overcome the initial period of study, but the values of personal adaptation potential in students lie in the zone of “reduced adaptation”, that is, the adaptation process is in a positive direction, but it is difficult. In order for a student to effectively pass the adaptation period, he needs to increase the level of communicative abilities and neuropsychiatric resistance. This will reduce anxiety to the optimal level.

To Sit Quietly in a Room Alone: The Psychology of Social, Material, and Sensation Seeking Input

External input is any kind of physical stimulation created by an individual’s surroundings that can be detected by the senses. The present research established a novel conceptualization of this construct by investigating it from the perspective of three research areas that tap into its different aspects but have so far been disconnected—materialism, social motives, and sensation seeking. Studies 1-5 focused on individual differences regarding external input (i.e., the needs for material, social, and sensation seeking input). It was established that the three needs are positively related and constitute different dimensions of the overarching construct of external input, that the needs for social and sensation seeking input have negative consequences for how people experience long-term input deprivation (i.e., COVID-19 restrictions), and that the need for material input has negative consequences for people’s experiences of short-term input deprivation (i.e., sitting in a chair without doing anything else but thinking). Finally, Study 6 focused on external input as a situational characteristic and showed that the degree of sensation seeking input constituting various situations is a more important predictor, relative to social and material input, of how enjoyable and meaningful people perceive the situations and of their willingness to engage in them. Overall, the present research established a novel construct that has fundamental implications for people’s experiences and actions in a range of different contexts.

Communication Strategies and Information Choice Strategy of the Arab Tourists

The main purpose of this study is to examine the mediating role of situational characteristics on the relationship between communication strategies and information choice strategy of the Arab tourists in Malaysia. The study adopted a cross-sectional design with a quantitative survey approach. Overall, the study finds that situational characteristics significantly mediate the influence of information source on the information choice strategy of the Arab tourists but not on the relationship between information source and information choice. The study therefore concludes among others that situational characteristic can only explain the influence of information channels on the information choice strategy but not on the influence of information source on the information choice strategy.

Beyond the Urban-Rural Divide: Complexities of Class, Status and Hierarchy in Bankok

The Thai political conflict is often described in terms of an urban-rural class divide. Using an emic, ethnographic approach, I problematise this analysis by examining Bangkokian notions of class and status differentiation. These have their bases in the feudal sakdina era as well as notions of Buddhist hierarchy, and privilege cosmopolitanism, foreignness and wealth, as encapsulated by such hybrid concepts as ‘inter’ and ‘hi-so’ — both of which are adopted from the English language phrases ‘international’ and ‘high society’, respectively. Such notions cannot adequately be explained in terms of Western-centric concepts of class, yet are nevertheless shaped by Thailand’s historical engagement with Western powers as well as subsequent processes of globalization. Furthermore, status appraisal in Bangkok includes nuanced distinctions of consumption, education, ethnicity, and occupation, amongst other things, while simultaneously having a situational characteristic. This compels us to examine a variety of factors beyond the urban-rural divide in the discussion of the ongoing crisis.

From User-adaptive to Context-adaptive Information Systems (Von benutzeradaptiven zu kontextadaptiven Informationssystemen)

SummaryThis paper introduces context-adaptive information systems reflecting the current needs of the user. Context-adaptive information systems reflect more than classical user-adaptive systems where user and task characteristics are considered for adaptation. In context-adaptive information systems the usage episode is additionally defined by the time and the location, by the physical and social environment and the technical infrastructure and eventually by relevant situational characteristic such as sound, light or movement.To begin with, the rationality of adaptive systems and the concept of context-adaptiveness will be explained. Based upon the description of the three functions of adaptivity, i.e., the interaction logging, adaptation inference and adaptation performance, we describe user-adaptive and context-adaptive systems and the role sharing between the system and the user during the adaptation process. Techniques of location-awareness as currently an important determinant of context are described showing advantages and disadvantages for several application scenarios. At the end, application examples are presented for context-adaptive systems to understand the utility of context-adaptiveness in different fields of information and communication services.

When Do We Think About Detection? Structural Opportunity and Taxpaying Behavior

Past studies have generally found that perceptions of the likelihood of formal and informal sanctions have lower explanatory power of noncompliance with laws than do internalized norms. Using data from two telephone surveys, we examined a situational characteristic, structural opportunity, that may prod individuals to think about the likelihood of detection from the Internal Revenue Service for underreporting income. Structural opportunity is the degree to which an individual's economic or social situation provides ways to avoid detection. Individuals with high structural opportunity perceived a lower likelihood of IRS detection and indicated that they were less likely to feel guilty if they engaged in tax cheating. Our data also suggested that some individuals with high structural opportunity may be in social networks which condone tax cheating. As expected, structural opportunity provided a condition under which individuals took into consideration the perceived likelihood of formal and informal detection in formulating intentions to engage in tax cheating. Our findings suggest that an examination of the interaction between situational and individual characteristics will provide a more complete understanding of decisions to engage in illegal behavior. Implications for deterrence theory are discussed.