Characteristics Of Social Groups Research Articles

Культурный код: определение понятия и практическая проблематика феномена: теоретический обзор

The aim of the study is to form a theoretical core of understanding of this phenomenon within the framework of theoretical review of modern concepts of cultural code. The article considers different definitional, structural and functional aspects of the cultural code, reveals its psychic roots and significance in human behavior, structure, sign-symbolic, figurative and value content, the role of a connecting element between the psyche and culture, the function of a communicative element and an interpreter of cultural texts and a cipher encapsulating the main meanings of culture. The significance of the cultural code in ethnic and national forms of human existence, in the construction of social and cultural identity is established. The key problems and risks associated with the defragmentation of the cultural code are outlined: standardization and unification of cultural codes within the framework of globalization, ideological and cultural wars and propaganda, excessive subordination of culture to market and materialistic principles, erosion of traditional values and meanings and at the same time imbalance between traditional and innovative principles in culture, conflictogenicity and disharmony of socio-cultural space as factors of intergroup and international conflicts, destructive processes, and the emergence of new cultural codes. Based on the generalization and synthesis of the obtained knowledge, a new theoretical and conceptual core of the cultural code is formulated as a structure that determines the image-symbolic and value content of culture, its ethnic and national peculiarities, the prospects of development of the sociocultural environment or the mechanisms slowing down this development, as well as the specificity of unconscious thinking and behavior of the people-expressor of the culture and its codes. In the framework of the proposed concept, the cultural code appears as a kind of “genome” of culture, laying the foundations of its development, determining the nature of interaction and human assimilation of its products, serves as a basic mechanism of specific cultural mastering and transformation of the world around people, as well as a decoder that allows (if correctly interpreted) to read the mental characteristics of social groups and influence them in the mental and behavioral sense.

All together now: Assessing variation in maternal and nonmaternal handling of wild Colobus vellerosus infants.

Primatologists have a long-standing interest in the study of maternal care and nonmaternal handling (NH) of infants stemming from recognition that early social relationships can have enduring consequences. Though maternal care and NH often include expression of similar behaviors, they are regularly studied in isolation from each other with nonoverlapping terminology, thereby overlooking possible interplay between them and obfuscating potential developmental ramifications that ensue from trade-offs made between maternal (MH) and NH during infancy. To that end, identifying how MH and NH patterns interact and contribute to the total handling (TH) infants receive is a critical first step. We present durational handling data collected from 25 wild Colobus vellerosus infants from 2016 to 2017 and assess the relationships between TH, MH, and NH. Patterns of social affiliation are shaped in part by surrounding context, and therefore, we also assess whether NH and TH differ in their responsivity to various infant and social group characteristics. Ninety-four percent of observed handling was MH, while just 5.5% was NH. Young infants who received more MH (excluding nursing) also received more NH; there was no relationship between the two in older infants. Infants in larger groups participated in more handling of all types. Additionally, NH time was associated with infant sex and group stability. Non-nursing TH time was associated with group stability and infant cohort size. Though NH variation likely confers social-networking advantage, in this population NH is not a major contributor to TH and would not effectively replace reduced MH. The positive association between MH and NH during early infancy suggests that colobus mothers may play a mediating role in shaping infant socialization. This is a first step in elucidating how different forms of handling relate to one another in wild primates and in identifying the impact of handling on infant socialization.

The Differential Role of Perceived Same-Gender and Gender-Neutral Norms in Emerging Adult Risk Behavior

Background : Normative perceptions are strongly related to risk behaviors among emerging adults but the role of gender-specific normative perceptions remain unclear. Objectives : The current study examined the differential effects of same-gender and gender-neutral normative perceptions on self-reported substance use and sexual risk behavior. College students (n = 389, ages 18-25) reported binge drinking, cannabis use and prescription drug misuse, sexual risk behavior, and the perceived frequency of these behaviors by both the average- and same-gender adult. Results : Binge drinking was positively associated with same-gender norms only, whereas cannabis use and sexual risk behavior were also positively associated with gender-neutral norms perceptions. For binge drinking only, same-gender norms explained more variance in behavior than gender-neutral norms. Conclusions : Findings indicate perceptions of same-gender norms play a particularly important role in binge drinking during this developmental period. Interventions targeting emerging adult risk behavior should include within-group normative perceptions related to demographic and social group characteristics.

Situational vulnerability within mental healthcare – a qualitative analysis of ethical challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic

BackgroundMental healthcare users and patients were described as a particularly vulnerable group in the debate on the burdens of the COVID-19 pandemic. Just what this means and what normative conclusions can be derived from it depend to a large extent on the underlying concept of vulnerability. While a traditional understanding locates vulnerability in the characteristics of social groups, a situational and dynamic approach considers how social structures produce vulnerable social positions. The situation of users and patients in different psychosocial settings during the COVID-19 pandemic has not yet been comprehensively considered and ethically analyzed under the aspect of situational vulnerability.MethodsWe present the results of a retrospective qualitative analysis of a survey of ethical challenges in different mental healthcare facilities of a large regional mental healthcare provider in Germany. We evaluate them ethically using a dynamic and situational understanding of vulnerability.ResultsDifficulties in implementing infection prevention measures, restrictions of mental health services in favor of infection prevention, social isolation, negative health effects on mental healthcare users and patients, and challenges in implementing regulations on state and provider levels within the local specificities emerged across different mental healthcare settings as ethically salient topics.ConclusionsApplying a situational and dynamic understanding of vulnerability allows the identification of specific factors and conditions that have contributed to an increased context-dependent vulnerability for mental healthcare users and patients. These factors and conditions should be considered on the level of state and local regulations to reduce and address vulnerability.

Gender‐ethnicity intersectional variation in work–family dynamics: Family interference with work, guilt, and job satisfaction

AbstractAlthough guilt is often considered the most prevalent emotional outcome of work–family conflict (WFC), most work–family research focuses on family‐related guilt stemming from work interference with family, rather than job‐related guilt stemming from family interference with work (FIW). In addition, there is little understanding of how different employee social groups experience the implications of FIW in their daily lives. To address these research gaps, this study explores the relationship between daily FIW and job‐related guilt, and its subsequent impact on job satisfaction. It also investigates variation in these relationships by (1) gender and (2) the intersection of gender and ethnicity. Bayesian multilevel structural equation modeling using data from 5‐day diary surveys from 210 solicitors in Britain shows daily FIW is associated with higher job‐related guilt and subsequently lower job satisfaction. The relationship is stronger for women than men in general, but is also stronger for South Asian women than white British women (and men), and for South Asian men than white British men. This suggests that studies focusing on single social group characteristics (e.g., gender) are likely to obscure intersectional effects that might produce significant within‐group variation. The findings also highlight the importance of integrating workplace inequality arguments into theorization of WFC.

Characterizing group and individual engagement in intergroup encounters between small groups of ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta) on St. Catherines Island, USA.

Primate species exhibit considerable variation in behavior and outcomes during intergroup encounters (IGEs). Social group characteristics, like group size, and individual traits, such as sex, rank, and reproductive status, within those groups can influence both IGE engagement and outcomes. To better understand the impact of group heterogeneity on IGEs, we must examine individual strategies to elucidate individual costs and benefits of engaging in these interactions. Here, we present a descriptive study of the IGEs between two small social groups of ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta) on St. Catherines Island, GA, USA. We distinguish between dyadic and multiple-individual interactions between groups to compare collective and individual agonistic engagement. All encounters occurred when the East Road group (N = 7 individuals) traveled from the center of their home range to the boundary with Windmill group's (N = 5 individuals) home range, indicating that East Road might have been actively testing this boundary for access to food resources, sleeping trees, and mating opportunities. We also found notable individual variation in participation during IGEs. The daughters of the highest-ranking females were the most-engaged in dyadic intergroup and intragroup aggression, had high "win" rates during intergroup dyadic encounters, and engaged in intergroup multiple-individual interactions at high levels. These findings indicate that they might value their home range more as "potential alphas" compared to other group members. Dominant females were the most engaged in multiple-individual interactions, suggesting that they contribute heavily to collective action that might result in a gain or loss of access to resources. Finally, these two small groups might be equally matched despite the two-individual group size disparity due to individual free-riding strategies. Future research should focus on individual strategies during IGEs to characterize the complex decisions and trade-offs that influence participation.

Predicting the Popularity of Online Content by Modeling the Social Influence and Homophily Features

Predicting the popularity of online content on social network can bring considerable economic benefits to companies and marketers, and it has wide application in viral marketing, content recommendation, early warning of social unrest, etc. The diffusion process of online contents is often a complex combination of both social influence and homophily; however, existing works either only consider the social influence or homophily of early infected users and fail to model the joint effect of social influence and homophily when predicting future popularity. In this study, we aim to develop a framework to unify the social influence and homophily in popularity prediction. We use an unsupervised graph neural network framework to model nondirectional social homophily and integrate the attention mechanism with the graph neural network framework to learn the directional and heterogeneous social relationship for generating social influence representation. On the other hand, existing research studies often overlook the social group characteristics of early infected users, and we try to divide users into different social groups based on user interest and learn the social group representation from clusters. We integrate the social influence, homophily, and social group representation of early infected users to make popularity predictions. Experiments on real datasets show that the proposed method significantly improves the prediction accuracy compared with the latest methods, which confirms the importance of joint model social influence and homophily and shows that social group characteristic is an important predictor in the popularity prediction task.

Effects of social capital of social networking site on social identity and continuous participant behavior

PurposeThe paper focuses on social capital as the characteristic of social groups that promote coordination; moreover, social identity plays a key role in the construction of group relationships. However, few research studies have looked at how the social capital of social networking sites (SNSs) is related to the social identity of its members. Drawing on social capital and social identity theory, this study investigated the effects of SNS social capital (shared language, social trust and network density) on social identity and continuous participation. The mediating role of social identity was also investigated.Design/methodology/approachIn total, 444 SNS members volunteered to participate in this study. Structural equation modeling was applied to analyze a conceptual model.FindingsThe results revealed that SNS social trust and network density directly and significantly affected the social identity and continuous participation behavior of members. SNSs using a shared language positively affected social identity, but this was not directly associated with continuous participation behavior.Originality/valueBecause the network externalities of SNSs exert critical effects on user benefits, attracting continuous user participation remains one of the critical challenges for SNS administrators. Both the theoretical and practical implications of this study can aid SNS administrators in developing effective continuous participation strategies.Peer reviewThe peer-review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-07-2021-0369

The social disintegration from a mixed approach of quantitative and qualitative analysis

This paper aims to analyze, through a quantitative and qualitative approach, social categories related to vulnerability. This reflection is based on the analysis of concepts that are part of the sociology of poverty, exclusion, and social vulnerability, with contributions from the theory of intersectionality and the concept of social disintegration. Through this approach, vulnerability is a plural concept that results from the intersection of social positions, life experiences, and skills. In addition to the analysis of secondary data, the characteristics of social groups in situations of vulnerability will be examined through interviews with professionals who carry out their daily monitoring. The results indicate that social vulnerability results from the intersection of socio-demographic and economic factors that weaken the educational and professional trajectory of people in situations of vulnerability, particularly about their social and emotional competencies.

Precarisation of Labour as a Growing Form of Employment of Young Specialists in the Context of the Сovid-19 Pandemic

The Сovid-19 pandemic has catalysed the inevitable digitalisation of communications and rapidly changed the organisation and technologies of professional activities of millions of employees worldwide. The growth of unemployment, the transition of professional groups to remote work (wherever possible) due to the need for isolation to minimise the spread of COVID-19 in 2020 led to radical changes in the labour market. Studying the processes of precariation can facilitate the search for responses to new challenges related to deregulation of labour relations. We are interested in examining the participation of youth in these processes. Young population is receptive to social innovation and has excellent competencies in the field of information technology. An analysis of professional trajectories of university graduates (employed in the Ural region and beyond) helps identify whether precarious employment in the labour market can be successful, and determine the characteristics of social groups involved. We used the monitoring of university graduates conducted in 2017–2019 based on survey and administrative data. To process the data, we applied the methods of classification and expert evaluations. The analysis showed that 34.4% of university graduates belong to the precariat, with only 8.8 % being unemployed. Young freelancers and IT-professionals are successfully employed, satisfied with their jobs and high salaries, demonstrating high rates of employment in their specialty. The results can be applied for balancing precarious work; its best practices, accumulated by freelancers and IT-professionals, can be used as a social tool for regulating labour relations in an unfavourable epidemiological situation.

Convergent evidence for a theory of rapid, automatic, and accurate sex ratio tracking

It is presumed that people track the sex ratios in their environment (the number of males relative to number of females) in order to adaptively adjust their decisions and behaviors, but this actual tracking ability has not been established. The relevance of sex ratio information, drawn from evolutionary biology and studies of human relationship decision making, is integrated here with memory research (on frequency encoding), perception research (on ensemble coding), and neuroscience research. A series of four experiments provide empirical results to help fill research gaps and facilitate this theoretical integration. In particular, these studies connect details from memory research on relatively automatic frequency encoding of both items and categories, perception research on summary statistics from ensemble coding, and theoretical ideas about the function of these abilities (specifically applied to human sex ratios based on faces) from social and evolutionary approaches. Collectively this research demonstrates an evolved psychological mechanism for functional, fast, and relatively automatic human abilities to track experienced sex ratios in the social world. This sex ratio information is theorized to underpin documented facultative adjustments in relationship dynamics as well as perceptions of social group characteristics. This integrative approach highlights how the coding, memory, and judgments about population sex ratios can both account for a number of existing findings and point towards key further research.

Gender Diversity in Academic Sector—Case Study

Diversity is one of the main characteristics of social groups, including work-teams. At the same time, gender is an important aspect of diversity in organizations, and gender diversity deals with the equal representation of men and women in the workplace. This article aims to analyze the issue of gender diversity in the academic sector and to evaluate the organizational maturity of particular universities in gender diversity management. To do so, the method of comparative case studies is used—Polish and Spanish higher education institutions are compared. First of all, the author describes the status of men and women in Poland and in Spain, in general (considering different socio-economic factors). In the next part of the article, the gender structure of employment in both the Polish and the Spanish academic sector is presented. Finally, the analysis of gender diversity in two universities is conducted. Additionally, the author introduces the model of organizational maturity in gender diversity management (OMDM), to evaluate organizational attitudes toward gender diversity and the type of gender diversity policy in universities. The findings reveal that, in both Polish and Spanish societies and economies, there still are barriers that cause inequalities between men and women in the labor market. Considering the situation in the academic sector, it can be said that the gender structure of employment is more balanced in Poland than in Spain. At the same time, the highest positions of full professors are mainly occupied by men both in Poland and in Spain. When analyzing the situation in the organizations, employment is more diverse in the Polish university, but both universities face the same problem—too little representation of women in top job positions. Consequently, both institutions are classified as those which are in the preliminary stage in the model of gender diversity management. This study contributes to a better understanding of the issue of gender diversity by comparing the status of men and women in the academic sector in two countries and in two universities. Additionally, the model of OMDM presented in this article can be a useful tool to assess the policy of gender diversity in different organizations.

The Cultural Psychological Motivations and Strategies for theDevelopment of Cultural Industry: An Interpretation of Social CulturalPsychology Based on the Engel's Theorem

The cultural industry is an industry that takes culture and creativity as the core of product design, faces the masses, and takes the cultural identity of the masses and the cultural and psychological characteristics of social groups as reference factors for marketing and development. The key to its success lies in its social and cultural psychology. Perception and use. And Engel’s theorem is a typical theory that reflects the economic and cultural level of the country and local people and the psychological state of needs. The analysis of cultural industries based on it can also help contemporary cultural creative workers to more intuitively understand the social market needs and maintain the cultural industry healthy growth.

First Impressions of Physicians According to Their Physical and Social Group Characteristics

People often make inferences about others from the physical appearance and social group characteristics revealed through their photographs. Because physicians’ photographs are routinely displayed to prospective patients in websites, print media, and direct mail, it is possible that this practice triggers conscious or unconscious biases in potential patients. We investigated first impressions of physicians based on seeing their photographs. In two studies (Study 1 N = 59; Study 2 N = 99), we used an experimentally composed set of physician photographs that varied their gender, age, nationality (USA vs. India), and smiling; their physical attractiveness was also measured. Analogue patients rated the physicians’ patient centeredness, technical competence, and their desire to see the physician again. For patient centeredness, the data revealed bias against older (especially if older and male), Indian, less attractive, and non-smiling physicians, and for competence there was bias against younger physicians (especially if younger and female). For desire to see the physician again, the bias was against Indian, less attractive, and non-smiling physicians. These biases may impact how patients select physicians and may persist to shape their interactions with them.

Social Recommendation With Learning Personal and Social Latent Factors

Due to leveraging social relationships between users as well as their past social behavior, social recommendation becomes a core component in recommendation systems. Most existing social recommendation methods only consider direct social relationships among users (e.g., explicit and observed social relations). Recently, researchers proved that indirect social relationships can be effective to improve the recommendation quality when users only have few social connections, because it can identify the user interesting group even though the users have no observed social connection. In the literature, separate two-stage methods are studied, but they cannot explicitly capture the natural relationship between indirect social relations and latent user/item factors. In this paper, the main contribution is to propose a new joint recommendation model taking advantage of the Indirect Social Relations detection and Matrix Factorization collaborative filtering on social network and rating behavior information, which is called as InSRMF. In our work, the user latent factors can simultaneously and seamlessly capture user's personal preferences and social group characteristics. To optimize the InSRMF model, we develop a parallel graph vertex programming algorithm for efficiently handling large scale social recommendation data. Experiments based on four real-world datasets (Ciao, Epinions, Douban and Yelp) are conducted to demonstrate the performance of the proposed model. The experimental results have shown that InSRMF has ability to mine the proper indirect social relations and improve the recommendation performance compared with the testing methods in the literature, especially on the users with few social neighbors, Near-cold-start Users, Pure-cold-start Users and Long-tail Items.

Urbanization and the temporal patterns of social networks and group foraging behaviors.

Urbanization causes dramatic and rapid changes to natural environments, which can lead the animals inhabiting these habitats to adjust their behavioral responses. For social animals, urbanized environments may alter group social dynamics through modification of the external environment (e.g., resource distribution). This might lead to changes in how individuals associate or engage in group behaviors, which could alter the stability and characteristics of social groups. However, the potential impacts of urban habitat use, and of habitat characteristics in general, on the nature and stability of social associations remain poorly understood. Here, we quantify social networks and dynamics of group foraging behaviors of black‐capped chickadees (N = 82, Poecile atricapillus), at four urban and four rural sites weekly throughout the nonbreeding season using feeders with radio frequency identification of individual birds. Because anthropogenic food sources in urban habitats (e.g., bird feeders) provide abundant and reliable resources, we predicted that social foraging associations may be of less value in urban groups, and thus would be less consistent than in rural groups. Additionally, decreased variability of food resources in urban habitats could lead to more predictable foraging patterns (group size, foraging duration, and the distribution of foraging events) in contrast to rural habitats. Networks were found to be highly consistent through time in both urban and rural habitats. No significant difference was found in the temporal clumping of foraging events between habitats. However, as predicted, the repeatability of the clumping of foraging events in time was significantly higher in urban than rural habitats. Our results suggest that individuals living in urban areas have more consistent foraging behaviors throughout the nonbreeding season, whereas rural individuals adjust their tactics due to less predictable foraging conditions. This first examination of habitat‐related differences in the characteristics and consistency of social networks along an urbanization gradient suggests that anthropic habitat use results in subtle modifications in social foraging patterns. Future studies should examine potential implications of these differences for variation in predation risk, energy intake, and information flow.

Научный анализ ментальных особенностей социальных групп

Научный анализ ментальных особенностей социальных групп

Self-regulation of life purpose values in youth cultural space

Young people’s transitioning into adulthood is accompanied by their inclusion into society’s socio-cultural context, together with the development of their own cultural models and interaction practices. Youth cultural space develops as a result of layered connections between young people and culture in general – elements of which are simultaneously inherited and altered by them – as well as subculture models, which emerge in the realm of intra-group interactions, i.e. within youth communities. During the dialectical process of inheritance, denial and construction, young people obtain their own social-group characteristics. In turn their cultural space is distinguished by features which differentiate their activities from other social groups. In modern society youth cultural space is very much a self-regulating realm, within which occurs the development and construction of the most important values which then become the foundation for purpose in life. Base culture plays an essential role in shaping purpose, with its models – contained within the collective unconscious – being directly linked to historic memory. Historic memory, reflected in archetypical and mental structures, influences the content of life purpose values. Engraining itself into habitus during the habitualization process, it becomes the basis for purpose which defines the direction for behavioral predispositions. Together with historic memory, youth life purpose values are significantly influenced by everyday knowledge and experience, which accumulate as a result of young people interacting with others participating in the development of cultural space. In order to confirm self-regulation of youth life purpose values as a holistic process, this article analyzes the connection between young people’s concepts on the meaning of life and various types of culture, archetypes, mentality, habitus. This was facilitated by the fact that the article presents results of developing a cultural space typology, of highlighting – based on analyzing existing approaches towards studying the unconscious – the most common archetypes, mental and modern features of national character, habitual attitudes. Analyzing their relationship allowed for tracing the influence of each on the development of young people’s purposes in life during the self-regulation process. The article substantiates the conclusion – drawn as a result of analyzing how life purposes are connected with types of culture and archetypes – that young people for the most part accept traditional culture, which defines the general direction for the development of meaning in their lives. Based on analyzing the connection between life purpose values and mental, modern features of national character, the study reveals the dialectics of “traditional” and “contemporary” in the altering of meanings in young people’s lives. Analyzing the connection between life purpose values and habitus allows us to consider the modification (hybridization) of meanings in the process of developing behavioral inclinations among young people in terms of self-regulating their living activity. Therefore self-regulation of young people’s life purpose values appears to be a dynamic process which fills their lives with new meanings in an evolving cultural space.

Silver screen sorting: Social identity and selective exposure in popular film viewing

While research in media and politics has long stressed the importance of television, the political impact of movies has largely been ignored. However, a small body of literature suggests that both political docudramas and popular films may have the capacity to change the issue attitudes of viewers. Building on that work, this paper examines the potential for selective exposure in movie viewership. We develop a theory that there is large-scale sorting into popular movies rooted in social identity theory. We argue that sorting is a result of two processes: film studios marketing films towards particular social groups and individuals sorting into films based on social group characteristics. We test this theory using a unique dataset in which undergraduate students were asked to rate trailers for a variety of political docudramas and popular films. Our results indicate that there is indeed widespread sorting into popular films on the basis of social identities rooted in socio-demographic traits.

Research on Chinese College Students’ Start Up Business: Multiple Motivation, Behaviour Characteristics and Management Policy——Based on the Investigations of Six Universities

College student’s entrepreneurial motivation determines their entrepreneurial behavior, and affects the school's management strategy. The investigation study of six Universities and Literature Search shows that College student’s entrepreneurial motivation is diverse. There are seven motivations, and their weight from high to low are individual development (21.25%), infusing entrepreneurial culture (16.61%), increasing income (14.21%), play major advantage (14%), utilizing family resources (13.30%), improve the quality of employment (13.21%) and entertainment (7.41%). According to it, we could inductive the major and minor motivation of Chinese college students' entrepreneurship, and construct the multiple motivation model. The students entrepreneurial behavior is different from the characteristics of social groups, such as non utilitarian consciousness, awareness of quality improvement is bright, easily affected by the external environment, business resources and business channel is narrow, etc. So we can put forward the suggestions on the classification of entrepreneurship education in colleges.