How Gossip Rules the World: Three Hypotheses

In the article have been described opportunities of realization of forming the public and social competences on the physical education lessons. It is based on questionnaire of physical education teachers from Lviv region and on pedagogical experiment to which middle school age pupils are involved. The verification was conducted and established the influence of named directions during trainings and motor games that were chosen specially on forming the public and social pupils’ competences. The level of forming of specified competences among middle school age pupils was determined and checked during the research. It was found out that implemented approaches and applied motor games positively influenced on increasing the level of public and social competences. Positive changes were noticed in the level of self-confidence (the level of low self-confidence has decreased from 40% to 10%, the adequate one has increased on 20% (55% from the beginning and 75% after the experiment), the high self-confidence has doubled (from 5% to 10%), too high self- confidence has increased on 5%). In the strategy of pupils’ behavior, the ability to make a decision during problematic situation become better in 7,5 times (10% in the beginning and 75% after the experiment). The need in extra help has decreased in 4 times (from 80% to 20%). The level of sociability and cooperation in children groups has increased in the average level of sociability on 15% (from 45% to 60% after the experiment) and in the high level of sociability on 20% (from 20% to 40%). No children with low level of sociability were noticed. The small positive tendency to grow was found out in children adaptation to school studying (the high level of cooperation has increased on 5%, the average – on 15% and low level has decreased on 20%). Modern society is facing new challenges, one of which is the formation of individuals who are able to make extraordinary decisions and effectively establish relationships in a rapidly changing reality. Activity, independence, creativity, sociability, adequate self-esteem, ability to adapt to rapid changes.

Lehmann & Keller (2006) convincingly argue that cooperation or altruism can evolve only when at least one of the following conditions are met: (i) cooperation has direct personal benefits, (ii) individuals are genetically related, (iii) individuals have information on the likely behaviour of others or (iv) individuals recognize other cooperators through a phenotypic label (green beard recognition). The first condition is quite obvious. The three others are also intuitive, given that they provide various conditions under which interacting individuals are positively related, meaning more likely than chance to interact with fellow cooperators (Frank, 1998; Pepper & Smuts, 2002; Foster & Wenseleers, 2006; Foster et al., 2006). By focusing on costs and benefits and relatedness, Lehmann and Keller (2006) are adopting an inclusive fitness or Hamilton’s rule-based approach to classify social evolution models (Hamilton, 1964). Personally, I believe a Hamiltonian perspective is indeed a very intuitive one, and should be adopted more widely. This is true particularly in the area of game theory, where currently little effort is made to interpret results this way, and models are frequently simulation-based, making general, intuitive interpretation of results difficult. In fact, in my own work, Hamilton’s rule has always taken a central place in the derivation and interpretation of model results (e.g. Wenseleers et al., 2003, 2004a, b; Ratnieks et al., 2006). At the same time, however, one may also wonder whether it is possible to translate every single social evolution model into the form of Hamilton’s rule. Here, I am skeptical, the reason being that Hamilton’s rule has well-known limitations. In particular, Hamilton’s rule only works correctly under weak selection and additive gene action (Cavalli-Sforza & Feldman, 1978; Michod, 1982; Grafen, 1985; Bulmer, 1994; Hamilton, 1964, 1995; Frank, 1997; Roze & Rousset, 2003; Rousset, 2004). In addition, evolution is normally assumed to be close to equilibrium, with most of the population fixed for a single type (Frank, 1998). Finally, with Hamilton’s rule being a deterministic equation, it entirely neglects stochasticity, and thus ignores the possibility for deleterious altruistic genotypes to go to fixation as a result of drift (Frank, 1997), which models have shown to be quite possible in small populations (Eshel, 1972; Rousset, 2004). In the section below I will give two worked-out examples where some of these limitations come into play and where, due to violations of assumptions, Hamilton’s rule does not correctly predict evolutionary change. The implication is that partitioning selection into direct and indirect fitness components is not always as straightforward as Lehmann and Keller make out. In many cases, the conditions under which a cooperative genotype would spread relative to a noncooperative one simply cannot be written in the form of Hamilton’s rule. In such situations, the inclusive fitness framework of Lehmann and Keller cannot be used to accurately classify models.

Sociality involves a constant trade-off between fitness benefits and costs of living in groups, and this trade-off can be influenced by the social and ecological environment in which individuals live. In this PhD I explored socioecological factors underlying the social and spatial population structure and dynamics of a large tropical herbivore with a highly fission-fusion social system, the giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis). Using a dataset of more than 3,000 uniquely identified individuals collected over a period of 8 years in the coupled human-natural Tarangire Ecosystem of northern Tanzania, I (1) investigated natural and anthropogenic factors as mechanisms of giraffe grouping dynamics, social structure, space use, and vital rates; (2) quantified fitness consequences of social behaviours of adult female giraffes in relation to the influence of their physical environment; and (3) compared social versus spatial dispersal of subadult female and male giraffes. I used capture-mark-recapture techniques to estimate survival rates while accounting for imperfect detection, and social network analysis to derive network- and individual-level social metrics and to delineate discrete communities of socially associated adult female giraffes within a larger contiguous metapopulation. Natural and anthropogenic factors included vegetation types and preferred plant forage species, natural predation, and distance to traditional (bomas) and modern human settlements (towns). I found that grouping patterns of giraffes were influenced by food availability, predation risk, and presence of humans, with particular requirements for mothers with calves (chapter 1). I parsed the metapopulation into 14 distinct, modular yet overlapping communities of socially associated adult female giraffes, with 11 communities large enough to test hypotheses explaining variation in social structure (chapter 2). Adult females in communities closer to bomas had weaker relationship strengths among all members of the community and more exclusive relationships with fewer other females, suggesting that the presence of humans disrupted their social structure. In an examination of social versus ecological drivers of variation in reproduction and survival among 10 of the communities, I showed demographic rates were correlated with vegetation and proximity to humans, as communities with more dense bushlands had lower calf survival while those closer to human settlements had higher reproductive rates (chapter 3). Adult female survival did not differ among communities (chapter 3), but more gregarious females (being in larger groups) and females with higher betweenness (associated with more groups) had higher survival (chapter 4). Survival of adult females is improved by being well-integrated into their larger social community through having weaker bonds with many others rather than by forming stronger and highly stable bonds with just a few individuals. This suggests that the disruption of social structure close to bomas as evidenced in chapter 2 could have demographic consequences, although proximity to bomas did not influence adult female survival as much as their level of sociability (chapter 4). In chapter 5, I investigated patterns of natal dispersal, and found that while most young males dispersed into new social communities far from where they were first detected as calves, many shifted into new communities that were close to their natal areas. In contrast, few young females dispersed, but those that did disperse rarely shifted into a new social community. Instead females moved spatially while remaining within their natal community, further demonstrating the importance of maintaining social ties, from calf to adulthood, across their community of associates. Human presence influenced space use of adults, as adult females living closer to densely populated towns had significantly larger home ranges, but no such relationship was evident with bomas, indicating a difference in anthropogenic impact on movements of giraffes between traditional versus modern human lifestyles (chapter 6). My research indicates that social associations among individuals in addition to ecological conditions are likely to be important for population persistence, and should be considered when developing and implementing conservation measures for giraffes such as land-use plans and translocations.

Experimental and theoretical investigations of the emergence and sustenance of prosocial behavior in groups

This thesis consists of three essays that analyze choices and beliefs to explore how both lead to adaptive behavior. The first essay examines the positive net migration flow from the eastern to western parts of Germany. The migration decision is substantially based on expectations about future developments. With economic conditions changing substantially over the past 20 years in the eastern part of Germany, the incentives to migrate have also altered, so changing the composition of the east-to-west migrant body. This essay explores variations in economic disparities between the region of origin and region of destination, relating them to changes in the skill level, age and labor force status of the migrant population. Analyzing SOEP data from 1993-2011, the findings suggest that, with falling wage differentials, older migrants are less frequent job-to-job movers and are more likely to be non-working prior to migration. Furthermore, while migrants tend to be younger and better educated than stayers, the group of movers becomes partly less distinct from the group of stayers with respect to the skill and age composition when regional disparities in employment opportunities increase. The second and the third essay of this thesis model the decision making process in social interactions between strangers. In these situations, choices are often affected by beliefs about others behavior. In the second essay of this work, I develop a simple model of prosocial behavior for encounters between strangers. By abstracting from the possibility of reputation building and punishment between anonymous partners, I remove the main strategic motives for prosocial behavior so reducing it to a simple non-strategic decision. The principal motivation to behave prosocially is then intrinsic, based on altruism, with a taste for conforming to the behavior of others. In this way, individual decisions are conditional on the behavior of others. Emerging equilibria will then explain the occurrence of prosocial or cooperative behavior within a given society. In a second step, I analyze whether the model’s predictions are consistent with the empirical evidence on the link between beliefs and prosocial behavior using data on blood donations. The third essay outline a (possible) micro-structure and conditions which lead to the observed urban-rural differences in cooperative behavior using agent-based modeling. The model presented here adapts the familiar framework of a prisoners dilemma which is played repeatedly with randomly matched members of a large population. I introduce features that are often found in real world interactions: imperfect information, voluntary participation and a taste for conforming to majority behavior. In this analysis, peoples beliefs about the level of cooperation in the population and their resulting behavior are determined endogenously. Both are governed principally by the experience that they derive from interactions. I present results of an agentbased simulation in order to study the emerging dynamic relationships, to examine how cooperative behavior evolves over time under different circumstances, and to determine how urban-rural differences in behavior emerge. The factors that give rise to rural-urban differences are heterogeneity in individual loss aversion or risk taking, and limited migration possibilities between rural and urban areas.

The empirical research on the public goods game (PGG) indicates that both institutional rewards and institutional punishment can curb free-riding and that the punishment effect is stronger than the reward effect. Self-regarding models that are based on Nash equilibrium (NE) strategies or evolutionary game dynamics correctly predict which incentives are best at promoting cooperation, but individuals do not play these rational strategies overall. The goal of our study is to investigate the dynamics of human decision making in the repeated PGG with institutional incentives. We consider that an individual’s contribution is affected by four factors, which are self-interest, the behavior of others, the reaction to rewards, and the reaction to punishment. We find that people on average do not react to rewards and punishment, and that self-interest and the behavior of others sufficiently explain the dynamics of human behavior. Further analysis suggests that institutional incentives promote cooperation by affecting the self-regarding preference and that the other-regarding preference seems to be independent of incentive schemes. Because individuals do not change their behavioral patterns even if they were not rewarded or punished, the mere potential to punish defectors and reward cooperators can lead to considerable increases in the level of cooperation.

Introduction: Self-management (SM) disease is recognized as the most important part in providing quality medical care for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) Aim: To create a methodology for selection of the patients with COPD that would have a high degree of motivation to participate in SM programs. Methods and Results: We have developed a method of assessing patient motivation. It has 2 stages: motivational interview and calculation of patient’s motivation potential. An interview is conducted using a 4 part questionnaire: “Level of cooperation” (14 questions), “Level of treatment perception” (7 questions), “Level of sociability” (13 questions), “Level of preparedness” (4 questions). Motivational potential (M) is calculated as the sum of the contributions of each part with the obtained weighting coefficients and takes values from 0 to 1. It was found that the M- value divides patients into 3 psycho-types. 1. High potential for motivation (M ≥0.5). This group of COPD patients are potential participants in SM programs. 2. Patients without motivation (M ≤ 0.25) are not ready to participate in SM and should receive regular medical care. 3. Patients with M from 0. 25 to 0.5 - motivation is not defined. From this group individual patients can be included in SM programs. 148 patients with GOLD II / III COPD (B, D), age 55-70, were interviewed and M was calculated. It was found that M ≥0.5 had - 37.5% of patients, M Conclusion: According to our study, only 37% of patients with COPD can certainly participate in SM programs.

In this study, 11 traditional play activities available in one nursery classroom attached to a primary school were investigated for their potential in contributing towards the development of sociability and cooperation in children aged 4 years. The levels of sociability and cooperation were determined through use of an observational schedule which supported the recording of reciprocal sequences of play behaviours and discourse employed by interacting children as they engaged with individual activities. Event sampling was used. As well as revealing insights into the interactive potential of these traditionally available activities, the findings have also provided some foundation for the formulation of a developmental framework for recognising sociability and cooperation in interacting peers. Links with individual cognitive development in cooperative settings are explored with particular reference to Vygotskian theory. Some implications for the use, by practitioners, of the developmental framework in nursery settings are considered. Ongoing research applications are briefly discussed.

Social decision-making is fundamental for successful functioning and can be affected in psychiatric illness and by serotoninergic modulation. The Prisoner's Dilemma is the archetypal paradigm to model cooperation and trust. However, the effect of serotonergic enhancement is poorly characterized, and its influence on the effect of variations in opponent behavior unknown. To address this, we conducted a study investigating how the serotonergic enhancer 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA) modulates behavior and its neural correlates during an iterated Prisoner's Dilemma with both trustworthy and untrustworthy opponents. We administered 100 mg MDMA or placebo to 20 male participants in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study. While being scanned, participants played repeated rounds with opponents who differed in levels of cooperation. On each round, participants chose to compete or cooperate and were asked to rate their trust in the other player. Cooperation with trustworthy, but not untrustworthy, opponents was enhanced following MDMA but not placebo (respectively: odds ratio = 2.01; 95% CI, 1.42-2.84, p < 0.001; odds ratio = 1.37; 95% CI, 0.78-2.30, not significant). Specifically, MDMA enhanced recovery from, but not the impact of, breaches in cooperation. During trial outcome, MDMA increased activation of four clusters incorporating precentral and supramarginal gyri, superior temporal cortex, central operculum/posterior insula, and supplementary motor area. There was a treatment × opponent interaction in right anterior insula and dorsal caudate. Trust ratings did not change across treatment sessions. MDMA increased cooperative behavior when playing trustworthy opponents. Underlying this was a change in brain activity of regions linked to social cognition. Our findings highlight the context-specific nature of MDMA's effect on social decision-making.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT We provide a detailed analysis of the effect of 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA) on cooperative behavior during interpersonal interactions, as well as the neural correlates underlying these effects. We find that, following administration of MDMA, participants behave more cooperatively, but only when interacting with trustworthy partners. While breaches of trustworthy behavior have a similar impact following administration of MDMA compared with placebo, MDMA facilitates a greater recovery from these breaches of trust. Underlying this altered behavior are changes in brain activity during the viewing of opponents' behavior in regions whose involvement in social processing is well established. This work provides new insights into the impact of MDMA on social interactions, emphasizing the important role of the behavior of others toward us.

has become an iconic figure of liberalism. Nevertheless, his credentials as a liberal have occasionally been doubted. For instance, in a recent study, Gregory Claeys claims: "We make Mill 'liberal' by rendering invisible his illiberal themes, in a manner not unlike the old Stalinist erasing of unpersons from pictures." 1 Anti-liberal strands in Mill's work have been alleged before. In particular, Mill allows and even encourages certain interactions, which seem to be fairly similar to undue interference with individual autonomy, with other people's self-regarding conduct. Among the important examples of this type of interpersonal engagement are what Mill calls "natural penalties," upon which this article focuses. I argue that, far from being an aberration in Mill's thinking, natural penalties play a vital role in his brand of liberalism: they serve to enable the interpersonal negotiation, within society, of the proper boundaries of the self-regarding sphere. Natural penalties express personal convictions regarding which conduct should be subject to social coercion. Because natural penalties can themselves be answered and rejected, they are part of an expressive dialogue within society about the normative status of types of behavior; whether they are acceptable or should be considered harmful to others.

Schizophrenia is often regarded as a disorder of premature aging. We investigated (a) whether polygenic risk for schizophrenia (PRSsch) relates to pace of epigenetic aging and (b) whether personal dispositions toward active and emotionally close relationships protect against accelerated epigenetic aging in individuals with high PRSsch. The sample came from the population‐based Young Finns Study (n = 1348). Epigenetic aging was measured with DNA methylation aging algorithms such as AgeAccelHannum, EEAAHannum, IEAAHannum, IEAAHorvath, AgeAccelHorvath, AgeAccelPheno, AgeAccelGrim, and DunedinPACE. A PRSsch was calculated using summary statistics from the most comprehensive genome‐wide association study of schizophrenia to date. Social dispositions were assessed in terms of extraversion, sociability, reward dependence, cooperativeness, and attachment security. We found that PRSsch did not have a statistically significant effect on any studied indicator of epigenetic aging. Instead, PRSsch had a significant interaction with reward dependence (p = 0.001–0.004), cooperation (p = 0.009–0.020), extraversion (p = 0.019–0.041), sociability (p = 0.003–0.016), and attachment security (p = 0.007–0.014) in predicting AgeAccelHannum, EEAAHannum, or IEAAHannum. Specifically, participants with high PRSsch appeared to display accelerated epigenetic aging at higher (vs. lower) levels of extraversion, sociability, attachment security, reward dependence, and cooperativeness. A rather opposite pattern was evident for those with low PRSsch. No such interactions were evident when predicting the other indicators of epigenetic aging. In conclusion, against our hypothesis, frequent social interactions may relate to accelerated epigenetic aging in individuals at risk for psychosis. We speculate that this may be explained by social‐cognitive impairments (perceiving social situations as overwhelming or excessively arousing) or ending up in less supportive or deviant social groups.

Information and Communication Technologies have changed the way people live and work. In the education field, the ICT evolution is increasingly supporting innovative methods of learning and many universities are investing in creating their own e-Learning Environments. Besides, learners' performance still and issue, the social learning theory states that people can learn by observing the behavior of others and the outcome of those behaviors. Furthermore, the theory also mentions that other people will most likely exhibit the behavior if the outcome is positive. This research proposes a game theory based model to enhance learners' performance (in terms of rate of interaction, participation/contribution and attendance). Researchers presented a novel model (CEM) composed of three loosely-coupled components for enhancing the cooperation and communication levels between learners in e-Learning Environments (eLE). Each learner represents a player in a "game" within the eLE. The model used for setting the list of positive and negative activities, storing players' actions and evaluating players' behavior throughout the game. The performance of CEM has been evaluated based on the mean values and the ratio of positive actions taken by all groups in a particular class session.

Promising and how promises work have received great deal of attention from philosophers. One obvious reason for this is importance of promising; if people did not generally keep their promises valuable part of our way of life would be lost. A number of philosophers have spoken of promising as if it were universal and some have gone so far as to assert its universality.' Belief in its universality seems to rest not on empirical examination of other societies but on priori arguments about nature of society. Indeed, some philosophers find it difficult even to imagine society without promising.2 Yet if one looks at ethnographic accounts of other societies, one finds that, while obligations everywhere play crucial role in social life, promising is not preeminent among sources of obligation and is not even mentioned by most anthropologists. Moreover, we know of at least one society, Tonga Islands of South Pacific, where there is no institution of promising. This claim may well be greeted with incredulity by those who believe that promising is an essential element of social life. For example, H. L. A. Hart regards promising as part of what he calls the minimum content of natural law . .. rules of conduct which any social organization must contain if it is to be viable.3 He argues that division of labor and need for cooperation found in every society secure recognition of promises as source of obligation; institution of promising is a standing procedure providing for such self-binding operations . . . required in order to create minimum form of confidence in future behavior of others, and to ensure predictability necessary for cooperation.4

There is a close connection between health and the quality of one’s social life. Strong social bonds are essential for health and wellbeing, but often health conditions can detrimentally affect a person’s ability to interact with others. This can become a vicious cycle resulting in further decline in health. For this reason, the social management of health is an important aspect of healthcare. We propose that socially assistive robots (SARs) could help people with health conditions maintain positive social lives by supporting them in social interactions. This paper makes three contributions, as detailed below. We develop a framework of social mediation functions that robots could perform, motivated by the special social needs that people with health conditions have. In this framework we identify five types of functions that SARs could perform: (a) changing how the person is perceived, (b) enhancing the social behavior of the person, (c) modifying the social behavior of others, (d) providing structure for interactions, and (e) changing how the person feels. We thematically organize and review the existing literature on robots supporting human–human interactions, in both clinical and non-clinical settings, and explain how the findings and design ideas from these studies can be applied to the functions identified in the framework. Finally, we point out and discuss challenges in designing SARs for supporting social interactions, and highlight opportunities for future robot design and HRI research on the mediator role of robots.

Research has shown that persons with disabilities continually face discrimination. More research attention has focused on individuals’ experiences of visible disability, despite evidence that there are higher numbers worldwide of people with invisible disabilities. As such, persons with invisible disabilities can feel under-represented in disability literature. A qualitative study was conducted to address this. Twenty-five persons with an invisible disability were recruited to take part in focus groups and interviews aimed at understanding the lived experience of invisible disability on social life and within the workplace. Data were analyzed using Braun and Clarke’s reflexive thematic analysis, identifying themes of (1) Incongruity between looking and feeling, (2) The impact of others, (3), Adaptation, (4) Talking about disability, (5) (Un)supported and (un)accepted, and (6) Discrimination/legislation. The findings indicate that the language, attitudes and behaviour of others are important to support inclusion in the social and working lives of those with invisible disabilities. Persons without a disability should be willing to talk about disability, see the strengths of those with an invisible disability and be mindful of language used around visibility. Suggestions relating to what we can do to be better support those with an invisible disability in society are discussed.