Editorial: Coordination/ cooperation games

Depending on their motivation, individuals prefer different group contexts for social interactions. The present research sought to provide more insight into this relationship. More specifically, we tested how challenge/threat and a promotion/prevention focus predict attraction to groups with high- or low-power. As such, we examined differential outcomes of threat and prevention focus as well as challenge and promotion focus that have often been regarded as closely related. According to regulatory focus, individuals should prefer groups that they expect to “feel right” for them to join: Low-power groups should be more attractive in a prevention (than a promotion) focus, as these groups suggest security-oriented strategies, which fit a prevention focus. High-power groups should be more attractive in a promotion (rather than a prevention) focus, as these groups are associated with promotion strategies fitting a promotion focus (Sassenberg et al., 2007). In contrast, under threat (vs. challenge), groups that allow individuals to restore their (perceived) lack of control should be preferred: Low-power groups should be less attractive under threat (than challenge) because they provide low resources which threatened individuals already perceive as insufficient and high-power groups might be more attractive under threat (than under challenge), because their high resources allow individuals to restore control. Two experiments (N = 140) supported these predictions. The attractiveness of a group often depends on the motivation to engage in what fits (i.e., prefer a group that feels right in the light of one’s regulatory focus). However, under threat the striving to restore control (i.e., prefer a group allowing them to change the status quo under threat vs. challenge) overrides the fit effect, which may in turn guide individuals’ behavior in social interactions.

Two perceptually given aspects of the self and their development

<p><strong>The IPCC states in its latest, 6th synthesis report that human activities have ‘unequivocally’ resulted in a rise in the surface temperature of the earth, inducing changes in the atmosphere, oceans, cryosphere and biosphere which have had adverse effects on both the natural world and humanity (IPCC, 2023). In order to limit warming to 1.5oC, the IPCC posits that annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions must decrease by 45% of their 2010 levels by 2030, and drop to net zero by 2050 (Masson-Delmotte et al., 2019). At present, 65% of global GHG emissions can be directly and indirectly linked to consumption within households (Ivanova et al., 2016). Consequently, individuals can have a profound effect on the levels of GHG’s emitted into the atmosphere. Thus, changing individual behaviour within households represents a significant leverage point (Ivanova et al., 2016; Pörtner et al., 2022). It is known that further actions may be taken by individuals to reduce the carbon footprint of households (Hall et al., 2018; Steg, 2018). However, it remains unclear how to induce individuals to undertake such additional pro-environmental behaviours.</strong></p><p>Currently, climate change policies have recruited economic understandings of behaviour to design interventions that incorporate fiscal motivations and deterrents as part of their structure (Cooper, 2011). For example, emission trading schemes (ETS), initially envisaged within the Kyoto Protocol, have been separately engineered in different regions of the world (Leining et al., 2020; Skjærseth & Wettestad, 2008; X.-Q. Wang et al., 2022). These policies have had negative consequences in the form of furthering existing inequities between countries (Liverman, 2009), as well as issues in quantifying their additionality as compared to a business-as-usual scenario (Teixidó et al., 2019; Verde, 2020). Furthermore, ETS are necessarily targeted at the social actors who participate in the engineered markets, rendering such policies ineffective for directly targeting the 65% of global GHG emissions embodied in individual/household behaviours.</p><p>The research in this PhD steps away from economic understandings of (environmental) behaviour, to explore the utility of other conceptualizations of human action. The work done here examines theories from environmental psychology and behavioural economics, to explore how psychological phenomena such as attitudes, and binds on rationality such as the recruitment of heuristics, direct decision making in relation to environmental issues. By examining alternative drivers of behaviour, it is hoped that different environmental policies directly targeting behaviour within households could be designed in the future.</p><p>Prior to the work undertaken here, the multitude of hypothesised determinates of environmental behaviour precluded the effective integration of alternative perspectives from environmental psychology and behavioural economics into policy discourses. As Shove (2010, pp. 1275) pointed put there was no ‘obvious limit to the number of possible determinants and no method of establishing their…precise role in promoting or preventing different behaviours’. Through the course of this research, multiple models of human behaviour from within and between the disciplines of environmental psychology and behavioural economics have been interrogated. These models have been examined in relation to both self-reported and observed measures of individuals’ environmental action, in an effort to delimit the critical determinates of pro-environmental behaviour - and curtail the number of possible pre-cursors lamented by Shove.</p><p>The first set of studies undertaken as part of this doctoral research focused on models of behaviour from environmental psychology. The numeracy of the models recruited within environmental psychology to explain behaviour ensured there existed considerable redundancy between these concerning the variables they incorporated into their structures. For example, biospheric values are cited in the norm activation model (Schwartz, 1977), value belief norm theory (Stern, 2000), and recent models concerning an individual’s connection to nature (Martin & Czellar, 2017). Work was initially undertaken to create a database documenting solely the variables from within these models. This was done for clarity, and to eliminate the aforementioned redundancy. Individual meta-analyses were run for each of the psychological variables to generate an effect size estimate for each. Effects size estimates were then compared between the psychological variables, to determine which of these correlated most strongly with pro-environmental actions and intentions. The five key variables with the largest (lower-bound) effect size estimates for both pro-environmental intentions and behaviour were revealed to be: attitudes, perceived behavioural control, injunctive norms, descriptive norms, and personal moral norms. Following the meta-analyses, an online study was run to investigate whether participants’ reported: attitudes, perceived behavioural control, injunctive norms, descriptive norms, and personal moral norms, were related to an observed (as opposed to a self-reported) measure of pro-environmental action. This was done to determine whether the results obtained in the meta-analyses were robust when participants could not simply report their own actions. In the online study, participants were asked how much (real) money they would like to donate to an environmental charity (the ‘Clean Air Task Force’), to observed directly whether they behaved in alignment with their proclaimed environmental beliefs, attitudes and norms. Regression analyses and structural equation modelling revealed that personal moral norms were the most critical antecedent to the observed measure of pro-environmental behaviour, with attitudes and injunctive norms also demonstrating strong relationships with monetary donations. Perceived behavioural control and descriptive norms did not demonstrate a significant direct association with participants’ charitable donation behaviours.</p><p>In a final online experiment, insights regarding human behaviour from behavioural economics were introduced. The experiment took place over two time points. At the first point in time, the three psychological variables that previously exhibited significant direct relationships with participants’ observed monetary donations (attitudes, injunctive norms and personal norms), were elicited from participants’, and their influence over behaviour was assessed in comparison with the effects of a social norms nudge. This investigation was undertaken to evaluate whether critical ingrained psychological variables (attitudes, injunctive norms and personal norms) were associated with environmental behaviour to a lesser or greater extent than an applied nudge, which manipulated the salient social norm and thus operated through the activation of a simple imitation heuristic within participants. At the second point in time the longevity of the effect of the social norms manipulation was investigated. This was done by comparing the subsequent behaviour of participants who were, and were not, exposed to the social norm nudge in part one. At time two, behaviour was evaluated in relation to the same action as before, and also in relation to a second action from a different domain of environmental behaviour. Discrepancies between participants’ who had, or had no prior exposure to the social norms manipulation at time one, were used to comment on the temporal and behavioural spillover effects of the social norms manipulation. At the first point in time, only the three psychological variables (attitudes, injunctive norms and personal norms) exhibited a significant association with the observed environmental behaviour. No effect over behaviour of the social norms nudge was observed at time one. The lack of significant influence demonstrated by the social norms nudge at time one, portended the lack of spillover effects detected for the nudge at time two. This research demonstrated the central importance of personal moral norms, attitudes, and injunctive norms for determining individuals’ substantive pro-environmental behaviours. This thesis advanced previous work by (i) using meta-analyses to summarise and compare the relationships between numerous heterogeneous psychological determinates of pro-environmental action, and self-reported environmental intentions and behaviours; (ii) advancing theory by using structural equation modelling to demonstrated that personal moral norms were more closely affiliated with an observed measure of environmental behaviour than other variables such as attitudes; and (iii) revealing the critical determinates of pro-environmental action in order to design appropriately targeted behaviour change intervention policies: the variables that most closely correlated with observed pro-environmental acts were not nudge interventions, but instead individuals internalised moral norms and attitudes. The results of this work are necessarily limited to some extent by the methodological decisions made in service of achieving the ambitions of this doctoral research. The chosen observed behaviour (charitable giving), the selected nudge (provision of information concerning a social norm), and the techniques used to elicit participant responses (online questionnaire), all represent valid techniques and constraints on the broader applicability of my findings. These should be taken into consideration when extrapolating any results of this work to alternative scenarios.</p>

Abstract: A person’s behavior in social interactions is shaped by both their individual characteristics and the social context. However, research on the processes that capture behavioral dynamics within social interactions is limited. This brief report focuses on short-term assessments of expressive behaviors in group interactions among adolescents (80 groups with N = 301 participants, M age = 15.73, 60.08% girls). Specifically, we examined how trained observers can code nonverbal and verbal expressiveness through 30-second sequences in a 10-minute interaction. Our findings demonstrated the convergent validity of the behavioral expressiveness assessments with measures of extraversion and behavioral ratings during the interactions. Focusing on dynamics, results illustrated that participants varied substantially in their expressiveness during the interaction, revealing distinct patterns across behavioral channels. These first insights highlight the potential of short-term assessments to explore behavioral dynamics in social interactions, and we discuss future directions for research in this area.

Previous studies have demonstrated that the media, by specifically framing news articles, may systematically affect a nondisabled recipient’s perception of athletes with disabilities (AWDs). However, it remains unclear how specific sports news frames affect a recipient’s quality perception of a journalistic product and if news frames further affect an individual’s postexposure behavior in social interaction with a person with a disability (PWD). To shed some light on these potential news-framing effects, 2 experimental studies (between-subjects designs) were conducted. Study 1 revealed systematic news framing’s effects on recipients’ attitudes toward a depicted AWD and showed effects on a recipient’s perceived quality of a news story. Study 2 further revealed that specific news frames may (automatically) affect a recipient’s behavior (e.g., verbal communication performance, visual attention/ eye contacts) in a subsequent face-to-face social interaction with a PWD. The findings are discussed regarding their implications for the journalistic coverage of disability sports in the media.

Multimodal phenotyping of psychiatric disorders from social interaction: Protocol of a clinical multicenter prospective study

Given the critical role of human activities in mitigating environmental degradation and climate change, it is of great significance to identify the determinants of residents’ pro-environmental behavior for sustainable development. Based on Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) data 2021, the paper investigates the influence of social interaction on residents’ pro-environmental behavior in China. Three types of pro-environmental behaviors are analyzed, including environmental payment, garbage recycling behavior, and green purchase behavior. Results show that social interaction with neighbors can encourage low-education level group to pay more money and time for environmental protection. Social interaction with friends makes residents in high-education level group more willing to pay more money and time for environmental protection. Internet usage influences environmental payment behavior the most, while life happiness affects green purchase behavior the most. Garbage recycling behavior is hardly affected by these factors. Moreover, the results show a significant difference between higher and lower education levels, low-income and high-income, party members and non-party members. These findings suggest that differentiated policies should target distinct social groups to enhance pro-environmental behavior.

The spontaneous pro-environmental behavior (PEB) of rural residents is essential for rural environmental governance. Existing studies have primarily focused on the impact of objective factors on individual PEB, while less attention has been paid to the role of subjective factors, such as rural residents’ subjective well-being, in shaping such behaviors. Based on the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) data, this study evaluates the impact of subjective well-being on the PEB of rural residents. The results show that subjective well-being significantly promoted the PEB in both the private sphere with reciprocity and the public sphere with altruistic attributes. Subjective well-being affected PEB mainly by enhancing rural residents’ social interaction and reciprocity with others and raising their fraternity and altruism. Moreover, the positive effect was mainly driven by women and individuals with more environmental knowledge. Therefore, enhancing rural residents’ subjective well-being is not only an important development goal, but also the starting point and foothold of solving the contradiction between economic development and environmental protection and promoting social harmony.

IntroductionAutism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a group of neurodevelopmental disorders mainly representing impaired social communication. The etiology of ASD includes genetic and environmental risk factors. Rodent models containing ASD risk gene mutations or environmental risk factors, such as exposure to maternal inflammation, show abnormal behavior. Although zebrafish conserves many important brain structures of humans and has sophisticated and fine behaviors in social interaction, it is unknown whether the social behaviors of their offspring would be impaired due to exposure to maternal inflammation.MethodsWe exposed zebrafish to maternal immune activation (MIA) by injection with polyinosinic:polycytidylic acid [poly(I:C)], and screened their behaviors through social behavioral tests such as social preference and shoaling behavior tests. We compared phenotypes resulted from different ways of poly(I:C) exposure. RNA sequencing was performed to explore the differential expression genes (DEGs). Gene ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) and protein–protein interaction (PPI) network analysis was performed with the detected DEGs to find the concentrated pathways. Finally, we knocked out the fatty acid-binding protein 2 (fabp2), a key node of the concentrated PPI network, to find its rescues on the altered social behavior.ResultsWe reported here that MIA offspring born to mothers injected with poly(I:C) exhibited impaired social approach and social cohesion that mimicked human ASD phenotypes. Both maternal exposure and direct embryo exposure to poly(I:C) resulted in activations of the innate immune system through toll-like receptors 3 and 4. RNA-sequencing results from MIA brain tissues illustrated that the numbers of overexpressed genes were significantly more than that of underexpressed genes. GO and KEGG analyses found that MIA-induced DEGs were mainly concentrated in complement and coagulation cascade pathways. PPI network analyses suggested that villin-1 (vil1) pathway might play a key role in MIA-induced ASD. Knockout of fabp2 in F0 zebrafish rescued the social behavior deficits in MIA offspring.ConclusionsOverall, our work established an ASD model with assessable behavior phenotype in zebrafish and provided key insights into environmental risk factor in ASD etiology and the influence of fabp2 gene on ASD-like behavior.

The recognition of emotional facial expressions is an important means to adjust behavior in social interactions. As facial expressions widely differ in their duration and degree of expressiveness, they often manifest with short and transient expressions below the level of awareness. In this combined behavioral and fMRI study, we aimed at examining whether or not consciously accessible (subliminal) emotional facial expressions influence empathic judgments and which brain activations are related to it. We hypothesized that subliminal facial expressions of emotions masked with neutral expressions of the same faces induce an empathic processing similar to consciously accessible (supraliminal) facial expressions. Our behavioral data in 23 healthy subjects showed that subliminal emotional facial expressions of 40 ms duration affect the judgments of the subsequent neutral facial expressions. In the fMRI study in 12 healthy subjects it was found that both, supra- and subliminal emotional facial expressions shared a widespread network of brain areas including the fusiform gyrus, the temporo-parietal junction, and the inferior, dorsolateral, and medial frontal cortex. Compared with subliminal facial expressions, supraliminal facial expressions led to a greater activation of left occipital and fusiform face areas. We conclude that masked subliminal emotional information is suited to trigger processing in brain areas which have been implicated in empathy and, thereby in social encounters

Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) such as Guild Wars and World of Warcraft are persistent virtual fantasy environments, which account for a large portion of the revenue generated by the games industry. Development of MMORPGs often involves significant costs in terms of funding, resources and people and an MMORPG requires a committed and stable player base in order to be successful. Due to these constraints, understanding why people choose to play MMORPGs and how players make use of the game environment can ensure that player behaviour is fully supported through effective game design. The purpose of this research was to explore whether current game design in MMORPGs supports player behaviour in social interactions and Team Work, and if not, to propose some ways to more fully support player activities in these areas. Participant observations were undertaken in order to develop a corpus of evidence of player behaviour in MMORPGs. The main study in this thesis provides detailed evidence of the social play behaviour of players in Guild Wars using a virtual ethnographic approach. The results of the ethnographic study revealed three foci of social behaviour in Guild Wars, which have been categorised as: the Marketplace, Team Work and Free Play. The Marketplace category of behaviour describes the ways that players make use of the game’s communication channels to engage in trade activities such as buying and selling in-game goods and services. The Marketplace also includes profession related activities such as joining guilds and sharing knowledge. The Team Work category of behaviour describes the activities of players in relation to teams: the language of teams, leadership, role negotiation and conflict resolution. These two types of play behaviour – the Marketplace and Team Work – represent instrumental play in Guild Wars. The language used in these situations changes as the nature of the community changes: it is open to new players and characterised by expertise in game mechanics and the use of jargon at high levels. Finally, the Free Play category of behaviour describes the social activities of players that is free-form and not governed by rules. This type of play includes imaginary and fun play, as well as play that involves mockery and gamesmanship. The ethnography that was undertaken in Guild Wars was evaluated as to the quality of the study, using a concept analysis of player interactions which confirms the three foci as relevant to the player population in general. The final study in the research reported in this thesis was undertaken to contextualise the results within one of the more prominent descriptions of player behaviour: Bartle’s (1996) taxonomy of player types. This study demonstrated that Bartle’s taxonomy of player types was incomplete without Team Work, as Team Work is a significant aspect of play in most, if not all, currently available MMORPGs. The contributions of this thesis include demonstrating that many of the forms of play that exist in the real world are intrinsic forms within online games as well. In particular, players engage in forms of play that allow them to develop skills that are valuable to the game community, a type of play that is identified as “play as progress” by Sutton-Smith (2001). Players also engage in other forms of play, such as identityrelated play, imaginary play and play as power, which incorporates grief play identified in previous work (Bartle, 1996; Foo & Koivisto, 2004). The studies that were conducted for this thesis provide evidence that players in Guild Wars have developed a complex community with its own language and social norms. Many aspects of this community are supported by game design, but there are aspects which can be improved upon, an issue which applies to other MMORPGs. The implications for design of future MMORPGs are 1) designing to avoid profession imbalance, where the community of players both relies on and is antagonistic towards one player profession and 2) the need to fully support the expectations of the player community as play and social activities develop from simple and accessible to dependant on expertise and understanding of jargon.

Dignity, honor, and face culture is a new and different normative script for behavior in social interaction and negotiations. The main objective of the study was to develop and validate a theoretical model to measure the cultural logic of dignity, honor, and face culture. The study was configured in three phases using samples from different Universities in Pakistan with an age range of 18-25. In phase A, items were developed using a literature review and Thematic Analysis of data obtained through focused group discussions and interviews. Phase B was comprised of scale development in which the factor structure of the scale was confirmed using Principal Axis Factoring on the sample of N=348 emerging adults. In phase C, the measure was further subjected to confirmatory factor analysis, reliability, and validity procedures (N= 422). It was established through CFA that the measure had construct validity. Coefficient alpha ranged from .93 to .95. Validity of the measure was established through Average Variance Extracted (AVE= .64-.73), Maximum Variance Extracted (MSV= .02-.10) Fornell - Lacker Criterion and Hetro-trait Mono-trait criteria. Overall results indicated that the Perceived Cultural Logic Scale is a self-report, psychometrically sound, and comprehensive measure comprised of 23 items that can be used to evaluate the perception of cultural logic among emerging adults.

Rejection experiences are likely to influence individuals’ subsequent feelings about others and their behavior in social interactions. The present study specifically examined whether stigma-based rejection leads to decreased trust in others, compared to rejections that are not stigma based. Trust was assessed behaviorally with an online task where the interaction partner was preprogrammed. Participants showed less trust after stigma-based rejection than after a nonstigma-based rejection. This research provides the first experimental evidence that stigma-based rejection uniquely influences trust in others.

The present study was designed to investigate the developmental process of interpersonal distance and bodily orientation in relation to sex of the subjects and interpersonal feelings.Ss were 120 male and 120 female students from 3rd, 5th, and 8th grades of elementary and junior high school within the same public school system and from the undergraduate students of a university. They served as subjects in same sex pair or opposite sex pair. Each pair of the subjects was photographed through one-way mirror every 20 seconds when they were playing the roles of liking pair and disliking pair. In each relationship, ten photographs were obtained. Interpersonal distances and bodily orientations were measured on the basis of analysis of the photographs.The major findings are as follows:(1) The interpersonal distances of the same sex pairs enlarged relatively linear, while those of the opposite sex pairs showed curvilinear pattern having the highest level at puberty.(2) In all the grade levels, male-male dyads were inclined to maintain greater interpersonal distance than female-female dyads.(3) In all the grade levels, disliking pairs maintained greater interpersonal distance than liking pairs.(4) In all the grade levels, liking pairs interacted face-to-face more often than disliking pairs.(5) In comparison with younger graders, adults (undergraduate students) interacted with less faced bodily orientation.In summary, the childrens' spatial behavior in social interactions is similar to adults', and so the mode of spatial bebavior is considered to be learned earlier than the age of the subjects in the present study.

© The Author(s) 2020. Interactional adjustment refers to people’s tendency to adjust, or adapt, their communication behavior in social interactions. In recent years, three distinctive approaches to this topic that have featured prominently in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology are communication accommodation theory (CAT), language style matching (LSM), and discursive psychology using conversation analysis (DPCA). In this article, we provide a review of these three approaches, highlighting what defines and distinguishes them, as well as what insights into interactional adjustment each offers. We draw out the connections and points of tensions between these approaches; in so doing, we identify future directions for research on interactional adjustment as a fundamental aspect of human communication, and in the study of language and social psychology.