Intuitive Sociology: Children recognize decision-making structures and prefer groups with less concentrated power

From an early age, children recognize that people belong to social groups. However, not all groups are structured in the same way. The current study asked whether children recognize and distinguish among different decision-making structures. If so, do they prefer some decision-making structures over others? In two studies, 6-to-8-year-old children in the United States distinguished between two decision-making patterns, but 4- and 5-year-old children did not. In these studies, children were told stories about two groups that went camping. In the hierarchical group, one character made all the decisions; in the egalitarian group, each group member made one decision. Without being given explicit information about the group’s structures, 6 to 8-year-old children recognized that the two groups had different decision-making structures and the children preferred to interact with the group where decision making was shared. Crucially, children also inferred that a new member of the egalitarian group would be more generous than a new member of the hierarchical group. Thus, from an early age, children’s social reasoning includes the ability to compare social structures, which may be foundational for later complex political and moral reasoning.

Information flow to increase support for tidal energy development in remote islands of a developing country: agent-based simulation of information flow in Flores Timur Regency, Indonesia

Background Public awareness is crucial for successful deployment of tidal energy, a renewable energy source that can provide clean electricity to remote islands. However, considering public attitudes on tidal energy are not well known, especially in developing countries, a barrier exists in implementing public engagement strategies. This study aims to contribute by identifying strategies for information provision—the initial step in public engagement—and estimate how these can be engaged to enhance support for tidal energy among the local public in a remote area of a developing country, in this case, Flores Timur Regency, Indonesia, considering their socio-cultural background. Methods In this paper, we employ statistical analyses using multinomial probit modelling to identify the key variables that shape information flow. The aptness of the variables is then verified using post-estimation techniques for their use as input parameters for the simulation of the information flow in the field study area. Agent-based simulation (ABS) is employed to replicate the actual conditions in Flores Timur Regency, Indonesia, and simulate the flow of information through the local community. Results According to the multinomial probit estimations, the people belonging to the top hierarchical group show a higher probability to support tidal energy compared to the members belonging to the lower groups. Understandably, around twice as many information flow cycles are needed to disseminate information to the members of the lowest hierarchical group, compared to the members of the top hierarchical group. The results also show that increasing the amount of available information has a positive impact on information dissemination. Conclusions This study demonstrated that information provision is highly effective with propagation of information that specifically highlights the individual benefits, rather than the community benefits of tidal energy. Additionally, savings in terms of costs, time, and efforts can be realized if the most influential members of the local community are targeted initially before including all other stakeholders. The study also indicated that locals absorb more information and increase their support for tidal energy when additional data is made available. Finally, as long-term strategy, information provision becomes most effective when the local population gains higher educational capabilities.

The Impact of Political Apologies on Public Opinion

ABSTRACT Apology diplomacy promises to assuage historical grievances held by foreign publics, yet in practice appears to ignite domestic backlash, raising questions about its efficacy. This article develops a theory of how political apologies affect public approval of an apologizing government across domestic and foreign contexts. The authors test its implications using large-scale survey experiments in Japan and the United States. In the surveys, the authors present vignettes about World War II grievances and randomize the nature of a government apology. They find that apology-making, both as statements acknowledging wrongdoing and as expressions of remorse, boosts approval in the recipient state. But in the apologizing state, backlash is likely among individuals with strong hierarchical group dispositions—manifested as nationalism, social-dominance orientation, and conservatism—and among those who do not consider the recipient a strategically important partner. This microlevel evidence reveals how leaders face a crucial trade-off between improving support abroad and risking backlash at home, with implications for the study of diplomatic communication and transitional justice.

Application Effect of Hierarchical Group Responsibility System Holistic Nursing in Department of Gastroenterology

Objective: To analyze the application effect of hierarchical group responsibility system of holistic nursing in Department of Gastroenterology. Methods: 655 patients in our hospital from August 2020 to January 2021 were selected as the research objects. They were randomly divided into experimental group (328 cases) and control group (327 cases) to explore nursing satisfaction, nursing quality score and clinical symptoms before and after nursing. Results: In the experimental group, 266 cases (81.10%) were very satisfied, 33 cases (10.06%) were satisfied and 29 cases (8.84%) were dissatisfied. The total number of satisfied cases (very satisfied + satisfied) was 299 cases (91.16%);In the control group, 167 cases (51.07%) were very satisfied, 63 cases (19.27%) were satisfied, 97 cases (29.66%) were dissatisfied, and 230 cases (70.34%) were satisfied. The nursing satisfaction of the experimental group was significantly higher than that of the control group; The nursing quality score of the experimental group was (91.67 ± 0.66), and that of the control group was (71.66 ± 0.88), which was significantly higher than that of the control group;The clinical symptom score of the experimental group was (2.42 ± 0.32), and that of the control group was (4.66 ± 1.11), which was significantly better than that of the control group.Conclusion: The application of hierarchical group responsibility holistic nursing mode in gastroenterology department can not only improve the nursing satisfaction of patients, but also improve the quality of nursing, promote the good development of patients' condition, and provide a comfortable treatment environment for patients, which is worthy of clinical promotion.

Multiagent Hierarchical Cognition Difference Policy for Multiagent Cooperation

Multiagent cooperation is one of the most attractive research fields in multiagent systems. There are many attempts made by researchers in this field to promote cooperation behavior. However, several issues still exist, such as complex interactions among different groups of agents, redundant communication contents of irrelevant agents, which prevents the learning and convergence of agent cooperation behaviors. To address the limitations above, a novel method called multiagent hierarchical cognition difference policy (MA-HCDP) is proposed in this paper. It includes a hierarchical group network (HGN), a cognition difference network (CDN), and a soft communication network (SCN). HGN is designed to distinguish different underlying information of diverse groups’ observations (including friendly group, enemy group, and object group) and extract different high-dimensional state representations of different groups. CDN is designed based on a variational auto-encoder to allow each agent to choose its neighbors (communication targets) adaptively with its environment cognition difference. SCN is designed to handle the complex interactions among the agents with a soft attention mechanism. The results of simulations demonstrate the superior effectiveness of our method compared with existing methods.

Information Flow to Increase Support for Tidal Energy Development in Remote Islands of a Developing Country: Agent-Based Simulation of Information Flow in Flores Timur Regency, Indonesia

BackgroundPublic awareness is crucial for successful deployment of tidal energy, a renewable energy source that can provide clean electricity to remote islands. However, considering public attitudes on tidal energy are not well known, especially in developing countries, a barrier exists in implementing public engagement strategies. This study aims to contribute by identifying strategies for information provision – the initial step in public engagement – and estimate how these can be engaged to enhance support for tidal energy among the local public in a remote area of a developing country, in this case, Flores Timur Regency, Indonesia, considering their socio-cultural background.MethodsIn this paper we employ statistical analyses using Multinomial Probit modelling to identify the key variables that shape information flow. The aptness of the variables is then verified using post-estimation techniques for their use as input parameters for simulation of the information-flow in the field study area. Agent-Based Simulation (ABS) is employed to replicate the actual conditions in Flores Timur regency, Indonesia and simulate the flow of information through the local community.ResultsAccording to the Multinomial Probit estimations, the people belonging to the top hierarchical group show a higher probability to support tidal energy compared to the members belonging to the lower groups. Understandably, it takes around twice as many information flow cycles to disseminate information to the members of the lowest hierarchical group, compared to the members of the top hierarchical group. Results also show that increasing the amount of available information has a positive impact on information dissemination.ConclusionsThis study found that information provision is highly effective with propagation of information that specifically highlights the individual benefits, rather than the community benefits of tidal energy. Additionally, savings in terms of cost, time, and effort can be realized if the most influential members of the local community are targeted initially before including all other stakeholders. The study also found that locals absorb more information and increase their support for tidal energy when additional data is made available. Finally, albeit long-term strategy, information provision becomes most effective when the local population gains higher educational capabilities.