Desire For Contact Research Articles

How does the status of errant robot affect our desire for contact? – The moderating effect of team interdependence

Technological breakthroughs such as artificial intelligence and sensors make human-robot collaboration a reality. Robots with highly reliable, specialised skills gain informal status in collaborative teams, but factors such as unstructured work environments and task requirements make robot error inevitable. So how do status differences of errant robots affect the desire for contact, and do team characteristics also have an impact? This paper describes an intergroup experiment using the Experimental Vignette Method (EVM), based on the Expectation Violation Theory, 214 subjects were invited to test the following hypotheses: (1) Errant robot status has an influence on employees' desire for contact and support for robotics research through negative emotions; (2) Team interdependence is a boundary condition for the effect of errant robot status on negative emotions. This paper contributes to the literature on employee reactions to robot errors in human-robot collaboration and provides suggestions for robot status design.

Inclusive stimulating space planning for sustainable urban agglomeration

Open Spaces provides space for the expression of diversity, both personal and cultural. The social and cultural values of open space include attitudes towards nature and the desire for contact with it. Open space is now Inclusive part of statutory and community planning processes. Urban Spaces must be stimulating for all age groups encouraging their activities, events and gatherings via sustainable planning and design. This paper focuses on need, unconventional, visions and principles for urban open space in this modern era of planning. The social, cultural and physiological values of open space include attitudes towards nature and the desire for contact with it.

‘We like because we feel liked’ exposure to cultural fusion improves outgroup attitudes through contact metacognition

AbstractBased on the common ingroup identity model and the principle of group reciprocity, this study proposes that exposure to cultural fusion can improve outgroup attitudes by activating positive contact metacognition, that is, the subjective perception of the outgroup's desire for contact with the ingroup. To test this hypothesis, we conducted three experiments with Chinese Yi students. They were randomly primed with Dai‐Yi cultural fusion pictures, Dai cultural pictures, Yi cultural pictures or geometry pictures (Dai and Yi are two Chinese ethnic minorities). They were asked to report their contact metacognition, cultural identity (Experiments 2 and 3), explicit (willingness to help; Experiments 1 and 2) and implicit attitudes towards Dai (SC‐IAT; Experiment 3). The results found that exposure to Dai‐Yi cultural fusion improved contact metacognition among Yi participants, subsequently leading to more positive explicit and implicit attitudes towards Dai. Unexpectedly, cultural identity did not moderate the mediated effect of contact metacognition. These findings suggest that exposure to cultural fusion is an effective and stable strategy for fostering harmonious intergroup relationships and specifically highlight the importance of contact metacognition. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.

Touch (Sk)Interrupted?

This article focuses on Dante or Die Theatre's socially distanced performance installation Skin Hunger (2021), an intimate one-on-one experience which explores the fundamental role that touch plays in our lives. The desire for contact is enduring in the social and sensorial imagination, particularly now during what Richard Kearney has termed the ‘pandemic eclipse of the tactile’. Elsewhere I have asked whether our tactile starvation will manifest in an increase of productions that satiate our need for touch? Or whether our anxieties over contact will predominate and result in an increased ‘sanitization’ of productions, a reduction in (sk)interactivity, and the proliferation of narratives which draw on our phobic responses? With this line of questioning in mind, this article will document my experience of Skin Hunger, as a ‘socially distanced spectator’, within this new framework of the socially distanced performance installation. It will consider the (skin)aesthetics used – the performers, for example, are swathed in plastic – to enable safe, intimate encounters between performers and the audience. It will also focus on the ways in which the absence of touch might increase the power of ‘the promise of touch [as] an explicit dramaturgical tool’ (Shearing 2015: 72). With reference to the health and safety documentation prepared by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, in consultation with representatives of the performing arts sector, this article will ultimately suggest how 'statecraft,' or the visible COVID safety measures in place, might become a form of 'stagecraft' in relation to the development of new (skin)aesthetics and, more broadly, the enhancement of touch – or, rather, the absence and anticipation of touch – as a dramaturgical tool.

Integrating patient perspectives in the development of a mobile health intervention to address chronic pain and heavy drinking in primary care: a qualitative study of patients in an urban, safety-net hospital setting

BackgroundChronic pain and heavy drinking are conditions that commonly co-occur among primary care patients. Despite the availability of behavioral interventions that target these conditions individually, engagement and adherence to treatment remain a challenge, and there have been no interventions designed to address both of these conditions together for patients presenting to primary care. This study seeks to incorporate the perspectives of patients regarding symptoms, treatment experiences, views on behavior change, and technology use to develop a tailored, integrated mobile health intervention that addresses both pain and heavy drinking among patients in primary care.MethodsTwelve participants with moderate or greater chronic pain intensity and heavy drinking were recruited from primary care clinics in a large urban safety-net hospital. One-on-one interviews were recorded and transcribed. Codes were developed from interview transcripts, followed by thematic analysis in which specific meanings were assigned to codes. Participants also completed a series of Likert-based rating scales to evaluate components of the proposed intervention to supplement qualitative interviews.ResultsA number of themes were identified that had implications for intervention tailoring including: ambivalence about changing drinking, low expectations about pain treatment success, desire for contact with a designated provider, common use of smartphones but lack of familiarity with functions as a potential barrier to use, and strategies to maintain engagement and adherence. Evaluative ratings indicated that the proposed intervention content was perceived as helpful and the proposed structure, layout and design of the mobile intervention was acceptable to patients.ConclusionsResults supported the view that a mobile health intervention delivered via smartphone with electronic coaching is an acceptable method of addressing chronic pain and heavy drinking among patients in primary care. The interviews highlight the need to utilize an intervention approach that addresses motivation to change drinking, sets realistic expectations for change, provides careful attention to training/education of the use of technology components, and fosters engagement through the use of reminders, feedback, and personalized activities.

Remote viewing: a brief historical inquiry into theatre and social distance

ABSTRACT This article takes up the complicated relationship between audience presence and absence by exploring a series of historical theatre examples alongside contemporary performances. These juxtapositions aim to engender a better understanding of the ways that theatrical audiences are conceived and addressed on screens, a phenomenon best characterized as televisual theatre. Live performance has always created the conditions for bracketing and enlarging moments of time and suturing spaces of unusual significance. We zoomed in theatre long before we zoomed optically through telescopic lenses or, more recently, thanks to videoconferencing. But if we stop to think about it, our experiences are just as often about being out of synch – before or after an imagined experience (of spectating, even). And while a viewer can't have the same level of ‘access’ to a performance when watching it on a video screen (notably, he/she can't interrupt the performance, whether intentionally or not), the viewer becomes a ‘second’ audience that nevertheless retains key attributes of the ‘first’ audience. Now, more than ever, the desire for contact and connection is emerging as a key concern for theatre practitioners and theorists. The long history of remote viewing in the theatre may offer some cause for optimism.

828-P: Challenges in Care Relationships in Diabetic Setting: The Diabetologists’ Perspective

Purpose: Poor medication adherence in persons with diabetes is a well documented issue, overall leading to worse glycemic control and quality of life. Previous studies have shown that the quality of the patient-provider relationship is a crucial factor for patient diabetes management and self-care. Most of research has focused on patient perspective, with poor attention to providers’ relational skills to handle interpersonal difficulties concerning care challenges. The purpose of the present study was to explore providers’ subjective perspective about care relationship so to detect some clues that may contribute to better manage patient medication adherence. Methods: A purposive sample of 18 Italian diabetologists participated in the study. Face-to-face interviews on providers’ emotional experience about care relationship were collected, digitally recorded, and transcribed. A computer-aided text analysis based on word co-occurrences was performed through T-Lab software, by using the conceptual model of Emotional Text Analysis. This allowed the identification of thematic domains pertaining to implicit sense-making processes, beyond the cognitive discourse organization. Results: Six thematic domains were identified across interviews, which respectively referred to: (1) preoccupation, in terms of separation anxiety and desire for contact; (2) control, focused on hypervigilance and conflict management; (3) fear for excessive closeness and effort to distance; (4) proud self-affirmation in opposition to care burden; (5) guilt feelings and over-involvement; (6) strive for achievement and satisfaction gain. Conclusions: The findings suggest the importance of providers’ awareness about potential defensive strategies in facing care challenges, from distancing to intrusive reactions, which may interfere patient health engagement and capacity to self-regulate in care behaviors, respectively. Disclosure V. Langher: None. A. Caputo: None. C. Giuliani: None. A. Convertino: None. A. Napoli: None.

Choice of histopathology as a specialty among doctors yet to commit to a specialty in a young Nigerian teaching hospital

Objectives: The aim of this study was to determine the doctors' choice of pathology as a specialty and the factors affecting such choice. Materials and Methods: Self-administered objective-structured questionnaire was administered to doctors in Enugu State University Teaching Hospital, who were yet to commit to a postgraduate specialty by obtaining the primary postgraduate fellowship. Obtained data were analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software (SPSS) version 16.0. Missing data were excluded from the study. Results: There were 50 (69.4%) respondents from 72 questionnaires distributed. Most of them, 76% (n = 38), have excellent knowledge of the duties of a pathologist. Except for age (P = 0.04), sociodemographic characteristics and knowledge of pathologists' duties do not significantly affect choice about pathology. A total of 29 of 47 (59.2%) respondents rejected histopathology; however, of the 24.5% who might choose histopathology, three rated it last choice while one rated it first. The most common reasons for choosing pathology include flexibility of work hours and availability of job positions. The most common reasons for rejecting pathology include desire for contact with patients, dislike for autopsy, and desire for better remuneration. Most participants, 87.5% (n = 42 of 49), have an overall positive perception of pathology and the pathologist. Course volume, quality of teachers, and pathology examination affect perception of pathology most but not significantly. However, perception does not significantly affect and has weak correlation with choice of pathology. Conclusion: Pathology is not a preferred specialty among doctors seeking postgraduate training in our center. Factors responsible for this state of affairs including desire for better remuneration and contact with patients should be addressed by all those concerned.

Does religion matter? Italians’ responses towards Muslim and Christian Arab immigrants as a function of their acculturation preferences

A 2 × 2 × 2 experiment examined the role of immigrants’ religion and perceived acculturation strategy on majority members’ attitudes. Acculturation strategies were manipulated along the two dimensions of contact and culture maintenance. Italian majority members (N = 247) read fictitious but seemingly real interviews with Arab immigrants, in which the immigrants’ religion (Muslim vs. Christian) and acculturation preferences (desire for contact and for culture maintenance) were manipulated. MANOVA showed a main effect of contact: majority members associated immigrants who were perceived to favour contact with more positive attitudes, empathy, trust, positive stereotypes and metastereotypes, and lower levels of threat. MANOVA also showed a main effect of culture maintenance: when immigrants were perceived to abandon their culture, majority members reported lower levels of symbolic threat and greater empathy towards them. A significant Religion x Culture maintenance interaction effect emerged on majority members’ stereotypes and contact intentions: Muslim immigrants who were perceived to abandon their heritage culture elicited more favourable responses than Muslim immigrants who were perceived to maintain their heritage culture. Taken together, these findings suggest that desire for intergroup contact amongst immigrants, independently of their religion, can promote harmonious intergroup relations with the majority group.

P06 2A Planning Aspect of balancing Sustainability and Green Form for 21st Centuries Mega Cities

Open Spaces provides space for the expression of diversity, both personal and cultural. The social and cultural values of open space include attitudes towards nature and the desire for contact with it. Open space is now Inclusive part of statutory and community planning processes. Urban Spaces must be stimulating for all age groups encouraging their activities, events and gatherings via sustainable planning and design. This paper focuses on need, unconventional visions and principles for urban green form in this modern era of planning for 21st century Mega cities. The social, cultural and physiological values of open space include attitudes towards nature and the desire for contact with it.

Group efficacy as a moderator on the associations between perceived discrimination, acculturation orientations, and psychological well‐being

AbstractWe investigated whether associations between perceived discrimination (PD), acculturation orientations (desire for culture maintenance and desire for contact), and well‐being (psychological well‐being and life satisfaction) were moderated by group efficacy beliefs—the extent to which group members believe in their ability to achieve social change collectively. We recruited 163 Syrian refugees (Mage = 36.43, SD = 12.68; 88 females and 75 males) from a south‐eastern city in Turkey. PD was negatively associated with desire for culture maintenance and positively associated with desire for contact, indicating an assimilation trend as a response to PD. Both acculturation orientations in turn predicted well‐being positively. However, the ones with higher group efficacy did not experience the detrimental effects of PD on well‐being and indicated a stronger desire for contacting mainstream society. Further conditional indirect effects demonstrated that only among the ones with lower group efficacy, PD was related to lower psychological well‐being through reduced culture maintenance. Findings indicate the critical role of group efficacy beliefs in the understanding of disadvantaged group members' reactions to PD.

The double-edged effect of intergroup similarity: Muslim and Christian immigrants’ acculturation preferences on intergroup relations in Sweden

A 2 x 2 x 2 experiment examined effects of the acculturation orientations seen to be endorsed by immigrants (of two different religions) on intergroup relations in Sweden. Swedish majority participants ( N = 448) read interviews with Iraqi immigrants in which the immigrants’ religion (Muslim vs. Christian), desired level of contact with the host society (high vs. low), and desire to maintain their own culture (high vs. low) were manipulated. Overall, immigrants who were perceived to favour contact elicited more favourable intergroup attitudes. Desire for contact also interacted with immigrants’ religion: contact among Muslim minorities increased majority members’ support for multiculturalism. In addition, majority members identified more with being Swedish when Christian minorities appeared to endorse contact and reject their heritage culture, which corresponds to an acculturation strategy of assimilation. These findings demonstrate the complex role of religious similarity in intergroup relations. Implications for future research are proposed.

Controlled Motivational Orientation and Prejudice

Abstract. This research investigates the effect of controlled versus autonomous motivation on intergroup relations. Two studies were conducted: Study 1 (N = 152 Greek Cypriot undergraduate students) showed that controlled motivational orientation, measured as a personality variable, was related to more prejudicial beliefs toward outgroups, lower intrinsic motives for contact, less desire for contact, and less actual contact with outgroups. Study 2 (N = 93 Greek Cypriot undergraduate students) experimentally replicated the findings of Study 1, revealing that controlled motivation, manipulated as a social/situational variable, was related to a higher level of prejudice toward outgroups, less intrinsic motives for contact with outgroups, and less desire for contact with outgroups. Most importantly, these relationships were mediated by dehumanization (i.e., denial of uniquely human traits) of the outgroup. The findings highlight the role of interpersonal control as an important factor determining the quality of intergroup relations.

Study and development of concepts of auxetic structures in bio-inspired design

This work discusses the experience of using auxetic (negative Poisson's ratio) materials in different design objects, including chairs, bags, seat belts, etc., developed by the authors with their students. Auxetics have become of interest in engineering, whenever a support instead of a pronounced flexure, of a cellular, therefore lightweight material, is desirable. Structures have been calculated and modelled as chiral with defined geometrical parameters and then applied to concepts with the fabrication of real models using neoprene or generally rubbery material. Indications on the possible sensations of the user are suggested, which provided rationale for likely improved comfort and/or desirability of contact. Limitations of this study in terms of material experience appear the use of a single material as for auxetic properties and the focusing on one single possible auxetic structure, the chiral one. Despite this, this could be considered as a starting point for a possible database of material experience on the use of auxetics. From these considerations, it appears as the use of auxetic structures would lead to a more sustainable scenario for these objects, especially because improved user's experience would extend their duration of life and lead to a lower rate of discarded pieces.

A self-determination theory perspective on customer participation in service development

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore what motivates patients to participate in service development and how participation may influence their well-being. Health-care providers are increasingly adopting practices of customer participation in such activities to improve their services. Design/methodology/approach – This paper builds on an analysis of data from a service development project in which lung cancer patients contributed by sharing their ideas and experiences through diaries. Out of the 86 lung cancer patients who were invited to participate, 20 agreed to participate and 14 fully completed the task. The study builds on participants’ contributions, in-depth interviews with six participants and the reasons patients gave for not participating. Findings – This paper identifies a number of motives: non-interest in participating, restitution after poor treatment, desire for contact with others, volunteerism, desire to make a contribution and the enjoyment of having a task to complete. A self-determination theory perspective was adopted to show how the need to satisfy basic human needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness determines if and how patients participate. Participation may have important benefits for patients, especially an improved sense of relatedness. Practical implications – Service providers must be prepared to meet different patient needs in service development, ranging from the need to express strong distress to expressing creativity. By understanding the dynamics of motivation and well-being, organizers may achieve better results in terms of improved services and in patient well-being. Originality/value – This study makes a significant contribution to the study of customer participation in service development, especially in relation to health care, by offering a self-determination-based typology for describing different styles of patient participation.

The sociocultural adjustment trajectory of international university students and the role of university structures: A qualitative investigation

The present research explores the sociocultural adjustment of international students and the role played by university structures in the process. The adjustment process of international students has been modelled in psychological literature as a U-curve, a learning curve and most recently as a long, uneven and unending process of change. Yet, little of the literature has addressed the role played in this process by university structures. The research was conducted in the UK with 58 undergraduates from Malaysia. It utilized a qualitative design and consisted of two waves of semi-structured small-group interviews. It was found that university structures, in the form of accommodation provision, course provision, and student union clubs and societies, provide opportunities for integration and adjustment support in the early stages of the sojourn. However, the desire for contact with a wide range of others, central to the adjustment process, takes time to develop in international students. It is suggested that an understanding of adjustment as a long and uneven process should be built into structures aiming to support the adjustment of international students.

How Race Is Made: Slavery, Segregation, and the Senses (review)

How Race Is Made: Slavery, Segregation, and the Senses. By Mark M. Smith. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Pp. 200. Cloth, $29.95.)Reviewed by Micki McElyaSpanning an ambitious chronology from contact and enslavement to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, Mark M. Smith examines how white southerners made sense, literally, of a vicious racial ideology of immutable difference that was shot through with obvious contradic- tions and profound hypocrisy. Decrying what he sees as a tyranny of the visual in the current scholarship on race in the United States, Smith argues that whites marshaled their senses of smell, hearing, taste, and touch to solidify a black-white racial binary in the context of visual uncertainties and a prevailing one-drop rule. These other senses became increasingly important over time, he contends, when whites were confronted with a growing population of seemingly white people who were legally and socially black. Smith also explores the various ways in which African Americans resisted these sensory stereotypes from the antebellum period to the dawn of the modern civil rights movement. This book is a provocative example of the growing field of sensory history of which its author is a leading proponent. It offers fresh insights for understanding historical experience and crafting multidimensional narratives and analytical frameworks as it also raises a host of important methodological and historiographical questions.How Race Is Made focuses largely on how blackness smelled pungent, loathsome, and intoxicating - in the noses of white southerners, with some consideration of their other senses and stereotypes. Of particular interest to Journal of the Early Republic readers will be Smith's contention that these sensory notions took shape in the eighteenth century and lingered into the antebellum period, when they were used to anchor slaveholding southern paternalism before sustaining the architecture and inconsistencies of Jim Crow segregation (12). This part of the book might also be the most frustrating for scholars of the Atlantic world and early America, for it moves briskly and impressionistically across three centuries, drawing evidence from travel narratives, economic reports, scientific papers, and Notes on the State of Virginia. In one of Smith's more compelling examples, and one that pushes his argument beyond a racial binary, he discusses naturalist Mark Catesby's assertion in 1 754 that the of Carolina and Florida were naturally a very sweet People, their Bodies emitting nothing of that Rankness that is so remarkable in Negres [sic.] (14). Indicative of the ways whites boasted about and authenticated their racial knowledge through interracial intimacies, Catesby claims that he knows this well because he has shared sleeping quarters with several Indians during his travels. Desire for contact and closeness was always equal to, and often simultaneous with, repulsion in framing racial hierarchy and attempting to legitimize slavery and then segregation, as long as it remained on white supremacist terms.Smith goes on to argue that extravisual sensory history holds the key to understanding the violence, emotional extremity, and horror of southern white responses to abolition, Reconstruction, and integration, particularly massive resistance to the implementation of Brown. He posits a distinction between sight and the more instinctual sensory perceptions of sound, smell, taste, and touch, arguing that nonvisual senses often indexed viscera and emotion more than thought and reason, and drawing a line between race-thinking and gut-feeling (2). …

Preference for Nature in Urbanized Societies: Stress, Restoration, and the Pursuit of Sustainability

Urbanicity presents a challenge for the pursuit of sustainability. High settlement density may offer some environmental, economic, and social advantages, but it can impose psychological demands that people find excessive. These demands of urban life have stimulated a desire for contact with nature through suburban residence, leading to planning and transportation practices that have profound implications for the pursuit of sustainability. Some might dismiss people's desire for contact with nature as the result of an anti‐urban bias in conjunction with a romantic view of nature. However, research in environmental psychology suggests that people's desire for contact with nature serves an important adaptive function, namely, psychological restoration. Based on this insight, we offer a perspective on an underlying practical challenge: designing communities that balance settlement density with satisfactory access to nature experience. We discuss research on four issues: how people tend to believe that nature is restorative; how restoration needs and beliefs shape environmental preferences; how well people actually achieve restoration in urban and natural environments; and how contact with nature can promote health. In closing, we consider urban nature as a design option that promotes urban sustainability.

The role of discordant acculturation attitudes in perceived threat: An analysis of host and immigrant attitudes in Germany

The present research examines discordant acculturation attitudes of host society members and immigrants as an antecedent to intergroup threat. Based on integrated threat theory and the concordance model of acculturation, we posited that discordance on culture maintenance and on desire for contact would predict intergroup threat beyond the influence of other antecedents of threat, such as in-group identification, knowledge, and negative contact. A study with 202 German host society members and 151 Turkish and Italian immigrants was conducted. In line with our assumptions, path analyses revealed that culture discordance and contact discordance contribute independently to the prediction of realistic threat, symbolic threat, and intergroup anxiety for host society members and immigrants. Moreover, differences in threat between cultures were mediated by the discordance in acculturation attitudes.

Sexuality and attachment from a clinical point of view

The clinical experience of five attachment-based psychoanalytic psychotherapists is pooled in an exploration of how issues in relation to sexuality and attachment emerge in the consulting room. Our clinical experience shows that sexuality, far from being a powerful instinctual drive that invariably needs to be explored clinically, is far more a reflection of early attachment histories. Instead of the standard pressure cooker of sexuality, which if not expressed leads to pathological emotional conflict we identify a melancholy sexuality, a cold arctic-like desert unwarmed by human relationship that barely achieves expression. We find that a broader and more fluid conception of sexuality as not just genitally focused but as erotic helps us relate to difficulties around sexuality as having to do with conflicts in relation to or associated with desire for contact and connection linked to past histories of loss, abandonment and sexual abuse. We argue theoretically that the psychological dimension of the biological system of human reproductive capacities, that is to say, the actually lived experience of human sexuality cannot be separated from the psychological dynamics of attachment within a social and cultural context. We discuss clinical issues including the sequelae of primary erotic attachments and working with sexual fantasies and working with erotic transference/countertransference re-enactments. A clinical example illustrates in some detail how we work with an adult survivor of sexual abuse troubled by intrusive sexual fantasies.