Behavioural Sciences
Social dilemmas reveal selective inattention in indirect reciprocity
Cooperation with others generates prosperity within human society, yet research into the evolution of cooperation, particularly indirect reciprocity, has left much unexplained. Indirect reciprocity involves assessment rules and draws on moral judgment. Most studies assume that people will consider all the information available to them before deciding whether to cooperate. Dr Isamu Okada, Associate Professor at Soka University, Japan, has […]
The purpose of emotion: An overlooked self-regulatory sense
We are all familiar with the term ‘emotions’ and experience a myriad of good and bad feelings every day. But what do we really understand about their biological origin or purpose? In a thorough analysis and integration of existing theory and literature, Katherine Peil-Kauffman redefines emotion as a sense, a complex elaboration of the first simple sensory system to have […]
Shaping a regional offline esports market: Jönköping’s success
Esports, also known as electronic sports, is a form of competitive sport played through video games. These sports are incredibly popular and have a growing audience of around 600 million people. Dr Brian McCauley from the Media, Management and Transformation Centre (MMTC) at Jönköping International Business School (JIBS), with his co-authors Dr Kieran Tierney and Dr Dinara Tokbaeva, have studied […]
The new leadership paradigm for the public sector
The world is evolving at an unprecedented pace, which is forcing public sector organisations to adapt their operations and develop their leadership capabilities and behaviours. Marika Tammeaid, Director of Development and Dr Petri Virtanen, CEO, at the Finnish Itla Children’s Foundation collaborated to publish their book Developing Public Sector Leadership: New Rationale, Best Practices and Tools (Springer, 2020). Their work […]
Harnessing anger for social change
Dr Monique Turner of Michigan State University, is an expert in persuasion and health and risk communication, and is conducting research into the way people cognitively process campaign messages. Emotions, including anger, are known to be predominant in persuasion, decision-making and risk assessments. Although commonly associated with negative behaviours, anger as a positive motivator in behaviour change is a promising […]
Fathers who use violence: Shifting the focus toward the perpetrator
Professor Cathy Humphreys of the University of Melbourne and Dr Susan Heward-Belle of the University of Sydney examine the best ways we can bring about organisational change in the way we handle domestic abuse and domestic violence by fathers, using communities of practice that allow bottom-up participatory action research to bring about top-down complex systems change. When examining the field […]
The effect of religiosity on emotional well-being among prisoners
Studies show that religion enhances emotional well-being among prisoners, but they rarely address how. Professors Sung Joon Jang and Byron R. Johnson at the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University, examine the effects of religion on offenders in the South African correctional system. They test whether religiosity is likely to lead to a sense of meaning and purpose […]
Meaningful human control: Designing safety into automated driving systems
Automated vehicles hold great potential for improving traffic flow, fuel consumption and road safety, while reducing workload and stress for drivers. However, the vehicle still requires human supervision, with the human-machine interface improving the human’s ability to supervise the automated driving system (ADS). Simply putting the human in control of supervising such an automated system, however, is not meaningful. Humans […]
A new frontier for hate
James Hawdon, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention at Virginia Tech, USA, has spent many years studying online hate, including hate speech and other forms of cyberviolence. His work has examined how hate speech gets produced, how the hate groups and individuals that produce it become radicalised, how it spreads across the […]
Couples bickering: Disaffiliation and discord in Chinese conversation
In “Couples Bickering”, Guodong Yu, Yaxin Wu and Paul Drew use conversation analysis on candid, everyday conversations in Mandarin from China in order to understand communication and social action. Using the relationships in interaction of arguments and conflicts found in conversations between couples, they show how there are many linguistic and grammatical ways that conflict can be limited to bickering, […]