Aspects Of Individual Behavior Research Articles

Cultural orientation and knowledge: the effects on the Hispanic American whistleblower

Purpose This study aims to analyze the relationships between cultural orientation and normative knowledge, in a direct and moderate way, on the whistleblowing intentions of accountants from Hispanic American countries. Design/methodology/approach This study used responses from a sample of 410 accountants, preparers and auditors of financial statements from Hispanic American countries. Descriptive statistics, nonparametric tests and structural equations with partial least squares algorithm were applied for data analysis. Findings The results emphasized the cultural positioning of horizontality, in which an individual perceives themselves as equals to their colleagues, allowing discussions on various aspects of individual behavior. The knowledge variable is proved to be important in explaining the intention to report and can also moderate the influence of cultural variables on intentions. Practical implications These findings contribute to the literature by offering a clearer definition the normative knowledge variable, and to organizations, which can explore the research’s evidence to improve their training and qualification programs, thereby generating significant knowledge for their employees. Originality/value Whistleblowing is the main tool for identifying organizational frauds, but it is differently perceived in several cultural contexts. The results demonstrated the ethical cultural positioning of these Hispanic American professionals in relation to cultural aspects of other countries. Some studies highlight knowledge as a relevant factor in the organizational environment, but this study innovates by testing and demonstrating its impact on whistleblowing and culture.

COVID‐19 stigma, Australia and slow violence: An analysis of 21 months of COVID news reporting

AbstractThroughout the peak periods of Australia's COVID‐19 pandemic experience of 2020–2021, some lower socioeconomic areas with high migrant populations in Sydney and Melbourne were subjected to strict lockdown enforcement that included heavy police surveillance not experienced in the more affluent areas of these cities. Analysis of four major newspapers' COVID‐19 coverage from January 2020 to September 2021 reveals their reporting focussed on aspects of individual behaviour that inferred people from lower socioeconomic areas had a heightened risk of exposure to COVID‐19. We argue this media portrayal of severe lockdowns and policing measures played a prominent role in exacerbating previously existing stigma as it compounded the stigma levelled at those communities. It further contributed to an “us and them” mentality that aligned with persistent structural inequality to compound existing stigma to develop a slow violence of COVID‐19‐related stigma. The lens of slow violence allows us to track incremental stigmatising processes, often imperceptible when viewed in isolation. Axiomatic violence adds a complementary perspective to slow violence, highlighting the role of crisis and disciplinary behaviours in embedding structural violence into the social norms of daily life.

Inflation, Informational Environment and Expectations of Households

The background information that forms the expectations of economic entities is a significant factor that determines their behavior.The purpose of this study is to identify and evaluate the relationship of inflation, perception and expectation of inflation by households with the parameters of the information (news’) background on the example of the Russian Federation.The materials for processing as a Russian information background were news’ reports issued by leading Russian TV channels and duplicated on the relevant sites, as well as Internet search (the number of news and search queries, the length of the headlines of the text versions of news, the frequency of mentioning certain topics in them, the tonality of texts), GoogleTrends data on internetrequests. The tonality of the texts was evaluated using automatic analyzers EurikaEngine and Repustate. Data from the reports of the Public Opinion Fund for the Central Bank of the Russian Federation posted on its website are also used; these reports contain monthly data on actual inflation (consumer price index) for 12 months and the results of respondents’ surveys on the perception of inflation, inflation expectations, consumer sentiment, assessments of economic and personal prospects, changes in behavior (starting a job search, making large purchases, etc.) and a wide range of other characteristics of public sentiment related to inflation. To process the collected data, correlation and regression analysis was used, as well as specific methods: Granger causality, principal component methods and lasso regression. As a result of the analysis, statistically significant correlations are found, which may be associated with individual reactions to the topics covered, expressed in changes in mood and behavior.Thus, inflation is negatively correlated with the number of political news on the “Russia” channel and with the length of headlines of text versions of political news of the “Pervy” channel, and positively correlated with web-search queries on the topic “Inflation”. Including these variables in a regression that estimates inflation based on lagged values significantly improves the quality of the regression, although their impact is small in terms of absolute values. We analyze how these relations change after the shift in the exchange rate regime and the introduction of inflation targeting. We find that in the period preceding to the shift, web-search demonstrated statistical significance in the equations we evaluate, and political news did not, while in the subsequent period, the opposite was true. We observe a connection between the parameters under consideration with certain aspects of individual behavior, such as the search for a better-paid job, or doing business. Finally, we find imperfections in the information activity of the Central Bank: an increase in the frequency of its mention in the news reduces people’s confidence that the inflation target can be achieved.In conclusion, the authors come to the following fundamental conclusions: the parameters of the information environment may be suitable for operational estimates of inflation, the effect of inflation targeting (i.e. greater controllability of inflationary processes by Central Bank) increases the importance of political news in decisions made by individuals, information policy and the overall image of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation requires improvement.

Outcomes of agonistic interactions alter sheltering behavior in crayfish

‘Winner’ and ‘loser’ effects have been demonstrated in a broad range of species, but such investigations are often limited to the effects of prior contest outcomes on future agonistic interactions. Much less is known about the impacts of winning or losing contests on other aspects of individual behavior, like courtship interactions and sheltering behavior. In this investigation, I examined the effect of prior contest outcomes on sheltering behavior in the crayfish Faxonius virilis. I predicted that winners of contests would spend less time inside shelters and more time exploring, while losers of contests would spend more time inside shelters and less time exploring. I compared individual sheltering behavior before and after staged dyadic encounters between competitively mismatched individuals. This experiment revealed strong effects on the behavior of contest losers, which showed significant increases in the amount of time spent inside the shelter immediately after the contest. However, there was no significant change in the sheltering behavior of contest winners. These results reinforce the idea that contest outcomes can affect individual behaviors other than agonistic behavior, and suggest that losing a contest may motivate individual crayfish to engage in less-risky behavior, at least for a brief period after the contest.

Konsep al-Falah dalam Islam dan Implementasinya dalam Ekonomi

The study aims to: (1) know the epistemology and concept of al-fala>h in Islamic perspective; (2) know the implementation of al-fala>h concept in micro and macroeconomic. The study uses a qualitative-descriptive approach with library research technique. The results showed that in Islamic epirstemology, al- al-fala>h defined as all forms of happiness, luck, success and prosperity that is perceived by a person, both born and inner, which it can be feeled in the world and in the hereafter, from all sides and dimensions (comprehensive) in all aspects of life. The concept of al-fala>h demands a muslim to be oriented to the community in every activity, where the hereafter becomes the ultimate goal of the process in the world continuously, while the material facilities in the world can be maximised to maximize the implementation of worship to God more perfectly. Al-fala>h is a multidimensional concept that has implications on the aspects of individual behaviour (micro) and collective behavior (macro), namely survival, freedom of desire, strength and self-esteem and spirituality.

Miniaturized multi-sensor loggers provide new insight into year-round flight behaviour of small trans-Sahara avian migrants

BackgroundOver the past decade, the miniaturisation of animal borne tags such as geolocators and GPS-transmitters has revolutionized our knowledge of the whereabouts of migratory species. Novel light-weight multi-sensor loggers (1.4 g), which harbour sensors for measuring ambient light intensity, atmospheric pressure, temperature and acceleration, were fixed to two long-distance migrant bird species - eurasian hoopoe (Upupa epops) and great reed warbler (Acrocephalus arundinaceus). Using acceleration and atmospheric pressure data recorded every 5 and 30 min, respectively, we aimed at reconstructing individual diurnal and seasonal patterns of flight activity and flight altitude and thereby, at describing basic, yet hitherto unknown characteristics of migratory flight behaviour. Furthermore, we wanted to characterise the variability in these migration characteristics between individuals, species and migration periods.ResultsThe flight duration from breeding to sub-Saharan African non-breeding sites and back was more variable within than between the species. Great reed warblers were airborne for a total of 252 flight hours and thus, only slightly longer than eurasian hoopoes with 232 h. With a few exceptions, both species migrated predominantly nocturnally - departure around dusk and landing before dawn. Mean flight altitudes were higher during pre- than during post-breeding migration (median 1100 to 1600 m a.s.l.) and flight above 3000 m occurred regularly with a few great reed warblers exceeding 6000 m a.s.l. (max. 6458 m a.s.l.). Individuals changed flight altitudes repeatedly during a flight bout, indicating a continuous search for (more) favourable flight conditions.ConclusionsWe found high variation between individuals in the flight behaviour parameters measured – a variation that surprisingly even exceeded the variation between the species. More importantly, our results have shown that multi-sensor loggers have the potential to provide detailed insights into many fundamental aspects of individual behaviour in small aerial migrants. Combining the data recorded on the multiple sensors with, e.g., remote sensing data like weather and habitat quality on the spatial and temporal scale will be a great step forward to explore individual decisions during migration and their consequences.

Life Expectancy and Retirement Age

The extension of life has exerted more and more pressure on the Chinese pension industry. In order to alleviate this pressure, more and more experts and scholars put forward policy recommendations for postponing retirement. At present, the specific reform scheme of the retirement age in China has not yet been introduced, and there are still some disputes on how to carry out the policy of postponing retirement. However, from the perspective of international experience, some countries or regions adjust retirement age directly or indirectly according to the life expectancy of population. This practice is important reference for our country. Whether China should build the adjustment mechanism of life expectancy and retirement age has very high research value. Under this background, this paper investigates the feasibility of establishing the linkage mechanism of life expectancy and retirement age from a perspective of a social planner through mathematical deduction and theoretical research, and further explores the adjustment formula between them. It hopes that this research can enrich and develop the application of overlapping generations model to the pension problem, and give relevant reference to government departments regarding the issue of postponing retirement. This paper, based on two-period overlapping generations model, introduces the retirement factors, and builds a general equilibrium framework in four aspects of individual behavior, enterprise behavior, government behavior and capital market equilibrium under the assumptions of completely competitive market, full employment and government control of the retirement age. With the optimality principle and the comparative static analysis, we find that when the economy is in a stable state, life expectancy with the maximum social welfare is positively related to the retirement age, manifesting a negative inverse proportion function form. Based on this functional relation, we use the parametric estimation method and assignment simulation to solve the adjustment formula of the life expectancy and retirement age of the population, and put forward an adjustment comparison table between them. According to the calculation results and prediction of life expectancy by China Issues National Plan on Population Development（between 2016 to 2030）, we recommend extending the retirement age to 65 years before 2030. In the end, by testing the model, on the premise of keeping the pension balance, we find that if there is no adjustment mechanism between the life expectancy and retirement age, sudden changes in life expectancy will reduce the pension payment, and can lead to the losses of social welfare. Therefore, based on the findings of this paper, and in the context of the extended life expectancy of Chinese population, we suggest that the governments should consider building the adjustment mechanism of life expectancy and retirement age, and increase the retirement age with the extension of life expectancy.

Sex difference and Allee effects shape the dynamics of sex‐structured invasions

The rate at which a population grows and spreads can depend on individual behaviour and interactions with others. In many species with two sexes, males and females differ in key life-history traits (e.g. growth, survival and dispersal), which can scale up to affect population rates of growth and spread. In sexually reproducing species, the mechanics of locating mates and reproducing successfully introduce further complications for predicting the invasion speed (spread rate), as both can change nonlinearly with density. Most models of population spread are based on one sex, or include limited aspects of sex differences. Here we ask whether and how the dynamics of finding mates interact with sex-specific life-history traits to influence the rate of population spread. We present a hybrid approach for modelling invasions of populations with two sexes that links individual-level mating behaviour (in an individual-based model) to population-level dynamics (in an integrodifference equationmodel). We find that limiting the amount of time during which individuals can search for mates causes a demographic Allee effect which can slow, delay, or even prevent an invasion. Furthermore, any sex-based asymmetries in life history or behaviour (skewed sex ratio, sex-biased dispersal, and sex-specific mating behaviours) amplify these effects. In contrast, allowing individuals to mate more than once ameliorates these effects, enabling polygynandrous populations to invade under conditions where monogamously mating populations would fail to establish. We show that details of individuals' mating behaviour can impact the rate of population spread. Based on our results, we propose a stricter definition of a mate-finding Allee effect, which is not met by the commonly used minimum mating function. Our modelling approach, which links individual- and population-level dynamics in a single model, may be useful for exploring other aspects of individual behaviour that are thought to impact the rate of population spread.

Joint Custody Laws and Mother's Welfare: Evidence from the US

Recent research has focused on the consequences on the unilateral divorce laws on several aspects of individual behavior but the issue of children custody after divorce has been almost neglected. This paper studies the implications on mothers of the changes in child custody law from maternal preference to joint custody using the 1960-2000 Census Public Use Micro Sample (IPUMS). Variation in the timing of joint custody reforms across states provides a natural experimental framework to study the causal effect of shared custody on mothers' economic outcomes. We also study the heterogeneity of the effect according to the years of exposure and to the age of the child at the time of the reform. The results show that divorced/separated mothers are negatively affected by the adoption of the joint custody laws in terms of a decrease in total income and earnings, exposing them to a higher risk of poverty. The paper discusses a possible rationale for these findings in terms of higher child support payments the mother gets from the non custodial father in case of joint custody which might discourage them from looking for high paid jobs or investing in their careers.

The Irrationality Illusion: A New Paradigm for Economics and Behavioral Economics

A new conceptual and formal framework for analyzing economic decisions, the homo communitatis paradigm, is introduced. The framework is in the form of seven principles, which collectively articulate the entire range of factors that affect choice, including all aspects of individual behavior and of the social context—the communities—the actor is a member of. Traditional economic analysis is shown to be a special case of homo communitatis analysis in which key variables are omitted. Using the principles, we show that experimental results such as loss aversion, framing effects, mental accounting, and judgment biases are not irrational and that the apparent irrationality is in every case an illusion arising from incomplete specification and control of independent variables elucidated in the principles. Several implications for future work are discussed, including high-fidelity models of socioeconomic systems, significantly more powerful and detailed economics simulations, and adoption of significantly different approach to design of economic experiments, one that takes into account all the variables involved in human choice.

How do Mutual Fund Fees Affect Investor Choices?: Evidence from Survey Experiments

Over the past few decades, risks associated with providing for financial security in retirement have increasingly shifted from employers to employees as employer-provided pensions have shifted from defined-benefit to defined-contribution (DC) plans. Recent work in behavioral finance suggests that investors do not make optimal investment decisions in their DC plans. The authors designed and administered a pair of mutual fund choice experiments to over 1000 survey respondents who participate in the RAND American Life Panel. Their analysis sheds light on the question of how mutual fund investors respond to variation in fees in a hypothetical scenario in which fees should be obvious to the investor. The results show that some aspects of individual behavior are consistent with rational wealth-maximization and the majority of the respondents are able to provide estimates of fees that lie within a benchmark range. However, they find that respondents tend not to minimize expected fees and are more averse to backend load fees than to front-end loads. The trade-off between expense ratios and loads is found to be somewhat sensitive to the expected holding period in a manner consistent with expected-wealth maximization, but investors may tend to be too averse to loads. Differences in measured financial literacy predict differences in behavior, with lower rates of literacy among women accounting for differences in choice behavior by gender. They also find that financial literacy mediates individual responses to the presentation of information intended to enhance decision making.

Behavioural responses of juvenile Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) to presence of boulders

The influence of boulder presence on the behaviour of juvenile Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) was investigated experimentally in an indoor flume fed by a 161s(-1) flow of natural river water. The flume was divided into 16 arenas (each 1 m2) that were landscaped with river gravel and standardized boulders, to represent relative 'complex' or 'simple' habitats. Each arena housed three wild-caught fish. In a three-week trial, the effects of landscape on aspects of individual behaviour were recorded. Food intake was highest in the simple landscape and directly related to social status and time spent in the water column. The fish in the complex chambers actively maintained station in the water column significantly more than fish in simple landscapes and therefore partially compensated for reduced foraging rates associated with complexity. Fish in simple chambers spent more time orientated upstream than those in complex landscapes. There was no evidence that habitat complexity influenced levels of aggression, average aggressive distance, 'constrained' territory size, or dominance. Activity and space use varied with social status. Overall, this study illustrates that addition of boulders can result in costs to Atlantic salmon parr, which can be expected to offset to some extent benefits brought about by increased stream complexity. Work is now needed to evaluate the balance of costs and benefits at different life stages and under various environmental conditions.

The Dynamics and the Interpersonal and Intrapersonal Relations Within an Isolated Group in Extreme Environments

The evolution of interpersonal and intrapersonal relations within an isolated group was investigated during two Italian Antarctic summer campaigns using the Matrix of Intra and Interpersonal Processes in the Group (MIPG). This instrument was effective in the detection of particular modifications of the underlying social-emotional dynamics taking place in the group. In the group of the first campaign, fear of revealing one’s true self decreased during the campaign, whereas idealization of the harmony and the repression of all tensions increased. In the second campaign, idealization decreased even more with time, whereas the fear of revealing the self increased at the end of the stay. An indirect confirmation of the validity of the MIPG parameters is provided by the correlation between some of its configurations and the positive aspects of individual behavior empirically assessed by the medical officers.

Heterogeneous Players and Specialized Models

Game theory has been criticized as neglecting key aspects of individual behavior and as relying too heavily on special assumptions. It can, in fact, handle individual heterogeneity if the modeler is willing to carefully specify how people are different, but to the extent that such things as heterogeneity and culture are important, the desire for a single unified model is impossible to satisfy. At the same time, game theory's approach is very useful for building specialized models.

The Extent and Limitations of the Contributions of Biology To Understanding Human Social Behaviour

My aim was to consider the extent and the limitations of usefulness of a biological approach in understanding human behaviour. It has been argued that this is facilitated by distinguishing successive levels of social complexity, each of which is affected by the 'sociocultural structure'. Whilst all social behaviour at each level is affected by both genetic and social (including cultural) factors, there are some aspects of individual behaviour whose biological bases are particularly clear. Differences in social experience play only a limited role in their development, and indirect evidence concerning their biological function is available. At the level of relationships, a biological approach helps to integrate diverse and otherwise independent facts into a coherent whole. Even at the level of the socio-cultural structure, some features can be related to basic human propensities. However much human behaviour is clearly neutral or even maladaptive in terms of natural selection. Some such cases can be understood in terms of the excessive expression of tendencies that were adaptive in our environment of evolutionary adaptedness but are no longer so under modern conditions, or as the result of the exploitation of some individuals by others. However in many cases the potency of the sociocultural forces in determining individual behaviour is paramount. Since the sociocultural structure is complex, each feature depending on many psychological characteristics of individuals, it may be remote from the psychological mechanisms on which natural selection acted.

Psychology, individual, and society: An interview with Seymour Sarason

The phenomenal unity of consciousness must flow from some element immutably present in each and every representation of the individual and binding the whole into one. To unearth and accurately define this phenomenal self becomes one of the fundamental tasks of psychology. We will assume that any kind of psychology that explains the behavior of the individual also explains the behavior of society, in so far as the psychological point of view is applicable to and sufficient for the study of social behavior. It is true that for certain purposes it is very useful to look away entirely from the individual and to think of socialized behavior as though it were carried on by certain larger entities which transcend the psycho-physical organism. But this viewpoint implicitly demands the abandonment of the psychological approach to the explanation of human conduct in society … Social behavior is merely the sum, or better, arrangement of such aspects of individual behavior as are referred to culture patterns that have their proper context, not in the spatial and temporal continuities of biological behavior, but in historical sequences that are imputed to actual behavior by a principle of selection. The life of a man is a double series—a series of effects produced in him by the rest of the world, and a series of effects produced in that world by him. A man's make-up, or nature, equals his tendencies to be influenced in certain ways by the world and to react in certain ways to it. To describe even one man's intellect and character fully, at even any one time, it would be necessary to list all the world's happenings that he might possibly encounter, and to state in each case how he would feel and think and act in response to that happening.

Some aspects of individual behaviour during nest moving in the ant Tapinoma erraticum

Tapinoma erraticum workers change their nest site if disturbed. Fewer than half of them displace the brood, with varying degrees of efficiency. In order to determine individual reactivity, the following measurements were carried out on each ant during a removal test: (1) seizures of larvae with the mandibles, (2) journeys between the two nests, (3) functional transports. A large number of seizures and a more rapid transport response are poorly correlated with high removal activity. In this situation, the journeys made between the two nests appear independent of transport activity. Each transporting worker was observed to show a characteristic transport rate which may vary during the test period. The extreme heterogeneity of all aspects of individual responses illustrates the probabilistic nature of the behaviour of social insects.

The Social Psychology of Marriage

ject by the artificiality of the experimental situation makes it unnecessary for the observer to attribute much complexity to the subject. It is such a simplified version of learning theory which these social scientists employ and such a simplified picture of the experimental situation to which they compare culture. The crude hedonism which infers reward from overt acts in unconstructed social situations directs attention away from the questions to be answered in understanding individual behavior. These include the relation of the social and psychological aspects of individual behavior, especially the relation of psychological motivation to social role, and the problem of creativeness or change, both social and psychological. To conclude, none of the writers has succeeded in getting beyond supplying new labels for events after they occur. They reason in a circle by inferring drive, cue, and reward from a selected overt act which they call response. As far as these studies are concerned, the analytic identity of culture and training situation has not been established.26

The Case Worker's Aim in Treating Family Discord

T HE legalistic method of enforcing family status, and the use of various means of supplying deficiencies in the budget of family needs and services has been accepted as the traditional technique suitable for dealing with domestic difficulties. This is giving way to an attempt to base treatment upon a careful diagnosis of the social and psychological factors involved. The case practice upon which Professor Groves bases his generalizations may be related to similar efforts of Mental Hygiene Clinics, the practice of psycho-analysts, and others. All of these apply, in various forms and interpretations, the organized experience of the social sciences, psychiatry and biology to a solution of the patient's problem. The social case worker upon whose viewpoint this discussion is premised, similarly employs various hypotheses and techniques, depending upon the range of his experience and knowledge. The treatment of domestic discord is an open field, far from standardization and organization. As a developing practice it must continue to be experimental and tentative, imbued, however, with the spirit of research and equipped with research facilities. In this discussion it might be of interest to relate present social work theory and practice to the suggestions presented by Professor Groves, who approaches the problem as a sociologist. The methods of the social worker in domestic discord are related to the customary practices of case analysis and treatment, which in their turn rest upon developed methods of observation and study of the individuals and families who bring their problems to the attention of social agencies. Case work is based on theoretical presuppositions of the family as a social institution, the traditions and mores of contemporary family life, the legal aspects of individual responsibility in family relations, and the physiological, psycho-sexual, and psychological aspects of individual behavior. It might be said that the social worker is emphasizing at the present time the importance of psychological factors, which includes an attempt to understand the personal motivation in its relation to the situation of family disorganization which is being treated. While the social worker has integrated in his underlying assumptions various generalizations offered by anthropology, sociology, and psychiatry, as a practitioner the social worker seeks variable details rather than types. The social worker wishes to understand the total personality and total situation rather than the critical event. Each family problem, therefore, must be visualized in terms beyond existing theories and generalizations, even though such generalizations aid in the interpretation of the personal situation which is being studied. A family relationship, similar to all other expressions of human behavior, cannot be conceived of as a single instance of general patterns of conduct or behavior types. Neither should the concept of family organization itself be considered as a fixed abstraction. As Professor Groves has pointed out, discord as a by-product of the interaction of individuals in the family group is the inevitable accompaniment of family relationship. It is the coefficient of the close relationships of persons differing in sex, age, temperament and in other attributes,