Context Of Cooperation Research Articles

Theta band behavioral fluctuations synchronized interpersonally during cooperation.

Human behavior fluctuates. A growing body of evidence has demonstrated that behavioral performance in perception fluctuates rhythmically, with dynamics closely resembling spectral features of neural oscillations. However, it is unclear whether the behavioral fluctuations in a complex cooperation context can also express similar rhythmic features, and, more importantly, whether these behavioral rhythms are synchronized among co-actors in a neurophysiologically relevant manner. To answer these questions, we applied a time-resolved approach, previously used for probing individual-level behavioral oscillations in perception, in a complex social interaction context, and further probed dyad-level behavioral synchrony. Twenty pairs of male participants completed, in dyad, joint-action tasks with cooperation or competition demand. We extracted behavioral rhythms from ongoing cooperative performance and measured behavioral synchrony by computing the phase coherence of these behavioral rhythms between dyad members. Despite the absence of significant behavioral oscillations in individuals' amplitude spectrum, we observed enhanced theta-band phase coherence between co-actors' behavioral rhythms during cooperation compared to competition conditions. These results indicate that cooperative behaviors of co-actors fluctuated synchronously within the theta band, providing a behavioral counterpart of theta-band interbrain synchrony in cooperation reported in previous hyperscanning studies. Furthermore, the observed behavioral synchrony could be used as a sensitive predictor of cooperation pattern, as evidenced by its significant correlation with leader-follower relationship during cooperation.

Американо-израильские отношения: состояние и перспективы военного сотрудничества

Американо-израильские отношения: состояние и перспективы военного сотрудничества

"Diamond Stage" in Sino-Croatian Relations

By borrowing an ad hoc concept 'diamond stage' uttered by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang during his visit to Croatia in April 2019 to describe a new stage in Sino-Croatian bilateral relations, this article sets to analyse the reasons behind this flattering diplomatic designation. It departs from the context of weak, historically distant and asymmetrical Sino-Croatian cooperation (SCC), giving, firstly, a short account on historical relations between China and Croatia and, secondly, relying on small state power scholarship in IR, depicting the opening and advancing of SCC. While categories of state size, geographical proximity, bilateral history and relational capacity are relatively pointless given the previous track of SCC, the dynamics of decreasing asymmetry between a small state and a big power helps to understand the recent upcoming of a new, 'diamond' stage in bilateral relations. Therefore, the article proposes several features as particularly relevant for understanding decreased asymmetry in SCC.

Socioenvironmental networks and international cooperation: The Global Alliance for Recycling and Sustainable Development- GARSD

Networks of nongovernmental organizations dedicated to socio-environmental issues have emerged in recent decades. The involvement of these networks in the international sphere has enabled new approaches to international cooperation. This article introduces the concept of international cooperation and the Global Alliance for Recycling and Sustainable Development (GARSD), a socio-environmental network created by a coalition of NGOs dedicated to promoting recycling of municipal solid waste. This article is the result of a doctoral study conducted using documentary analysis, participant observation and other qualitative data collection methods. The study conclusively finds that it is neessary to analyze the work of these non-state actors within the context of international cooperation between nation states and the possibility of (re)creating political-territorial arrangements, such as networks comprising a variety of actors especially geared towards socio-environmental issues.

Enogastronomy in Northern Portugal: Destination Cooperation and Regional Identity

This study aims to understand how conflicting stakeholders’ interests and agendas of the public, private and non-profit sectors may affect the management of the tourism destination identity. It focuses on Northern Portugal, a geographical area with contrasting characteristics, ranging from coastal urban areas to rural hinterland, each dealing with different development issues. The study is qualitative in nature, being carried out using in-depth interviews conducted with various stakeholders (public, private and non-profit sectors) at three wine regions located in Northern Portugal. Data was examined through content analysis. The findings suggest that there is an evident lack of cooperation between the food-and-wine and the tourism sectors in the three wine regions, which tends to hinder the construction of a territorial identity for development purposes. This study identifies the role of public organisations in promoting a shared vision for endogenous products alongside local stakeholders, thus contributing to the construct of a territorial identity. Although regional identity is studied in the relatively limited context of cooperation among stakeholders’ practices, the paper exemplifies how local food and wine products can enhance the identity of tourism destinations.

Russia-Spain Cooperation on Counter-Terrorism: New Challenges or Old Problems?

Against the backdrop of globalization, international terrorism is becoming a complex threat, which can be countered only by the united efforts of all countries. The level of cooperation of states does not fully correspond to the scale of the world terror challenge. Cooperation in the fight against terrorism at the bilateral level opens up more opportunities because it is based on mutual trust between States, with greater effectiveness, as well as practical impact and benefits, due to the knowledge of the situation and the ability to respond quickly. The inefficiency of the global counterterrorism system can be compensated by the mechanism of bilateral cooperation in the sphere of counter-terrorism, despite all the existing problems such as: sanctions, human rights, the need to promptly equate national laws and legislation in line with international laws, etc. The choice of the Russian Federation and Spain as a case study for this research is not accidental, since the interaction of both countries allows us to trace the development of mechanisms and instruments to counter terrorism on a bilateral basis. As a result of the comparative analysis, it is established that while Russian-Spanish relations began to deteriorate in 2014 as a result of the sanctions policy, the bilateral contexts of cooperation in the field of countering extremism have become comparable in two parameters: the overall level of the threat of terrorism in Russia and Spain, as well as the types of terrorist challenges on their territory.

Effects of robot-human versus robot-robot behavior and entitativity on anthropomorphism and willingness to interact

As robots become prevalent, people are increasingly interacting with multiple robots at once. Thus, it is important to not only examine how robot behavior toward humans affects interaction, but how robot behavior toward other robots affects interaction. We examine this in two studies. In Study 1, 630 participants from the USA and Japan viewed a video of one or more minimally social robots interacting differently towards humans (functionally/socially) and towards robots (single robot/functionally/socially). In Study 2, 71 participants from the USA completed two box-sorting tasks on a team with two robots that behaved differently toward humans (functionally/socially) and toward robots (functionally/socially). Results from the two studies indicate that robot behavior toward robots that was social, compared to functional, increased anthropomorphism of robots. Robot behavior toward humans that was social, compared to functional, increased positive emotions and willingness to interact with them. Finally, in these cooperative contexts between humans and robots, perceptions of robot group cohesiveness or “entitativity” increased positive perceptions or willingness to interact with robots. When robots are designed for positive human interaction (e.g., computer), they should behave socially toward humans; when robots should be considered intelligent (e.g., tutor robots), they may best be designed as social toward robots as well.

The problem of fair division of surplus development rights in redevelopment of urban areas: Can the Shapley value help?

Many more people are expected to live in urban areas in the coming decades, and much of the physical transformation will take place in the built-up areas of cities. Landownership is a key factor in urban regeneration, and the fair division of benefits is a major obstacle to redeveloping urban land in a cooperative context. This paper aims to show that the Shapley value, a fair division scheme developed within the cooperative game theory framework, can be used to achieve a fair division of the surplus development rights among landowners remolding smaller and irregular parcels into bigger and regular ones, resulting in higher aggregate development rights. The methodology is illustrated by a case study of three parcels selected from the Karabaglar district in Izmir, Turkey, where surplus development rights are available for landowners cooperating for land amalgamation. The findings show that the Shapley values for the landowners satisfy the core conditions of the game and landowners can benefit from the highest possible development rights and share the surplus fairly. However, the current institutional setting has to be restructured to apply such division schemes.

Divergence in social traits in Trinidadian guppies selectively bred for high and low leadership in a cooperative context

In many animal species, individuals with certain morphological, physiological, or behavioural traits may have a disproportionately large role in determining group behaviour. While most empirical studies of leadership have focused on behaviour of individuals exploring new environments or foraging, little is known about leading behaviour in other ecological contexts. Here, we use a selective breeding design in the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata) to quantify the heritability of leadership in a cooperative context, and determine the behavioural traits associated with it. Firstly we found that phenotypic selection for high and low leadership (HL and LL, respectively) over three filial generations resulted in pronounced differences in leadership tendency with a moderate degree of heritability. In our assay of other social traits, LL males were more aggressive and sampled their social environment less than HL males, but HL and LL females did not differ in either aggressiveness or sociability. Traits such as boldness and exploratory tendency did not diverge between the two lines. Leading behaviour was thus associated with social traits in males, but not females; suggesting that there may be sex-specific mechanisms driving the emergence of leadership in this context. We discuss our findings in the context of the evolution of cooperation.

Competitive children, cooperative mothers? Effect of various social factors on the retrospective and prospective use of theory of mind

Our capacity to attribute mental states to others, or theory of mind (ToM), affects the way in which we manage social interactions. Likewise, the social scenario in which we find ourselves probably influences our use of ToM. In this study, 6-year-old children and adult women participated in pairs in a task where participants needed to infer their partner’s behavior considering the partner’s visual perception (Experiment 1), knowledge (Experiment 2), and false belief (Experiment 3) regarding the placement of rewards under cups. The results were analyzed according to the temporal direction of the inference (past or future behavior of the partner), the social context (competition or cooperation), and—in the case of women—the type of social relationship with their partner (another adult or their own child). Children solved only the visual perception task, and adults solved the three tasks but performed better in the visual perception task than in the false belief task, suggesting that not only developmental issues but also differences in the intrinsic difficulty of the tasks underlie children’s results. The temporal direction of the inference, in contrast, did not influence their results. Whereas children performed better in the competition context, adults performed better in the cooperation context in one experiment. Moreover, women avoided competing against their own child, and even cooperated with her or him when this was against their own interest, suggesting that cooperation between mothers and children might have been a key driving force in the evolution of ToM in our species.

A novel negotiation approach for requirements engineering in a cooperative context

A novel negotiation approach for requirements engineering in a cooperative context

Feedback processing in the context of social comparison.

In many situations, social comparison calls for the evaluation of one´s own performance in relative terms by taking into account the performances of other people. Here, we investigated the effects of social comparison on performance monitoring with the help of ERPs. Two participants performed two identical experiments at the same time and in the same room. Instructions created a social context of cooperation by suggesting that participants were performing the same task for the maximization of a shared bonus. The experiment was a response-choice task with two feedback signals presented in sequence after each response: one feedback described the personal performance (personal feedback) and one reflected the other participant's performance (nonpersonal feedback). In the present experiment, social comparison should induce interpretations of the second feedback in relative terms (e.g., "I performed better") according to the quality of the first feedback. ERP results showed that the first nonpersonal feedback affected the fronto-central P3 component (P3a) evoked by the second personal feedback but did not modulate the feedback-related negativity (FRN). The P3a component evoked by the personal feedback was larger when the comparison against the preceding nonpersonal feedback signaled that the personal performance was worse than the other participant's performance. Interestingly, the effect was prominent over bilateral fronto-central electrodes (FC3, FC4). The observed P3a effect might indicate the recruitment of attentional resources when the comparison between personal and nonpersonal performance shows that the personal performance was not as good as the performance of others.

Transnational policy transfer: the circulation of ideas, power and development models

ABSTRACT The study of policy transfer initially focused on transfers and transmissions among developed countries or from developed countries to the developing world. Today the circulation of policy and knowledge has become more dense and complex. The articles in the special issue concentrate on the growing velocity of policy innovations spreading from the developing world to other parts of the developing as well as into developed countries and towards international organisations. The context of international development cooperation has been particularly fertile in the cross-pollination of ideas, models and policy experiments, and the articles in this Special Issue draw deeply on this insight. Using a ‘development lens’ enables the authors to view processes of knowledge diffusion and policy transfer not from the centre, in the ministries of national governments, but from policy perimeters, in cities and local government, among those outside political power in opposition groups and movements, and bottom-up from policy implementers.

Diffusion of ideas in the era of the Belt and Road: Insights from China\u2013CEE think tank cooperation

To address part of the puzzle on China’s ideational impact in the era of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the article studies social interaction of Chinese and CEE think tanks by employing the concept of diffusion of ideas. The article proposes a theoretical framework to study diffusion inspired by reflexive social science that focuses on frames, (geoeconomic) imaginaries, and translations. The asymmetrical interaction of think tanks led to aligning the frames of the different actors and producing a context of peaceful and pragmatic cooperation, extension of the geoeconomic imaginaries to include previously unorthodox positions, and translation of policy concepts that are localized in accord with the dispositions of the CEE actors involved. Nevertheless, the China–CEE think tank cooperation, when analyzed in a broader context, has relatively limited impact on societal and policy levels, and is increasingly challenged by actors with greater leverage in the region. What sustain the diffusion of ideas are the potent narratives of imagined futures of prosperity under the New Silk Roads.

社会デザインのアクション・リサーチとゲーミング・エクササイズ

社会デザインのアクション・リサーチとゲーミング・エクササイズ

Глобальные проблемы экологической безопасности и изменения климата в контексте международного сотрудничества

Глобальные проблемы экологической безопасности и изменения климата в контексте международного сотрудничества

Scottish Presbyterianism and the National Education Debates, 1850–62

This article examines the mid-nineteenth-century Scottish education debates in the context of intra-Presbyterian relations in the aftermath of the 1843 ‘Disruption’ of the Church of Scotland. The debates of this period have been characterized as an attempt to wrest control of Scottish education from the Church of Scotland, with most opponents of the existing scheme critical of the established kirk's monopoly over the supervision of parish schools. However, the debate was not simply between those within and outside the religious establishment. Those advocating change, particularly within non-established Presbyterian denominations, were not unified in their proposals for a solution to Scotland's education problem. Disputes between Scotland's largest non-established churches, the Free Church and the United Presbyterian Church, and within the Free Church itself over the type of national education scheme that should replace the parish schools severely hampered their ability to express common opposition to the existing system. These divisions also placed increasing strain on the developing cooperation in Scottish Dissent on ecclesiastical, political and social matters after the Disruption. This article places the issue of education in this period within this distinctly Dissenting context of cooperation, and examines the extent of the impact these debates had on Dissenting Presbyterian relations.

Game theory for resource sharing in large distributed systems

<span lang="EN-US">In game theory, cooperative and non-cooperative approaches are distinguished in terms of two elements. The first refers to the player's ability to engage: in a non-cooperative context, they are entirely free to make decisions when they make their choices; However, in a cooperative context, they have the opportunity to engage contractually the strategies that should be adopted during the game, that during a phase of discussions held before the game and during combinations which may be formed.In this context, the problem is not so much to predict the outcome of the game between players to leave the benefit of cooperation. To achieve this, and this is the second major difference with the non-cooperative approach, it adopts an axiomatic approach (or normative) by which we set upstream properties a priori reasonable (or desirable) on the outcome of the game. The purpose of this paper is to present briefly the main types of non-cooperative games and the tools that allow them to be analyzed in a complete information context where all aspects of the game are well known to decision makers.</span>

Russia and NATO: A History of Relations within the Context of Practical Cooperation at Sea

Russia and NATO: A History of Relations within the Context of Practical Cooperation at Sea

Differentiation in prefrontal cortex recruitment during childhood: Evidence from cognitive control demands and social contexts

Emerging cognitive control during childhood is largely supported by the development of distributed neural networks in which the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is central. The present study used fNIRS to examine how PFC is recruited to support cognitive control in 5–6 and 8-9-year-old children, by (a) progressively increasing cognitive control demands within the same task, and (b) manipulating the social context in which the task was performed (neutral, cooperative, or competitive), a factor that has been shown to influence cognitive control. Activation increased more in left than right PFC with cognitive control demands, a pattern which was more pronounced in older than younger children. In addition, activation was higher in left PFC in competitive than cooperative contexts, and higher in right PFC in cooperative and neutral than competitive contexts. These findings suggest that increasingly efficient cognitive control during childhood is supported by more differentiated recruitment of PFC as a function of cognitive control demands with age.