Course Of Game Research Articles

Some effects of source behavior on target's compliance to threats

A robot player sent intermittent threat messages of 10 percent, 50 percent, or 90 percent credibility to 180 subjects, 90 of each sex, during the course of a mixed motive conflict game. The magnitude of the threatened punishment was either low or high. The simulated player was either 0 percent, 50 percent, or 100 percent accommodative in his use of coercive power on the threat-related trials. The results indicated a strong effect of source accommodation on a behavioral measure of target compliance. Supplementary analyses of the compliance data according to an expected value model of social power indicated that males complied as a direct function of the difference between the expected values for compliance and noncompliance, while females did not. Furthermore, a threat credibility by sex interaction was found on the proportion of cooperative responses made by targets on nonthreat occasions. The combined compliance and cooperation results indicated that targets' responses to threats are highly dependent upon both the words and the deeds of the threatener.

The social value of Venda riddles

SYNOPSIS Knowledge, understanding and magical power in Venda society: Venda riddles are used in the course of a competitive game for young people. They are educational chiefly because they may be an asset to fuller participation in Venda social life; they are not important as exercises of intellectual skill, and their contents do not appear to instruct or stimulate the imaginations of those who know them. Both riddle and answer are learnt as a linguistic whole, and it is more important to know the riddle than to be able to puzzle out the answer or understand their content, Amongst the Venda, knowledge of formal language is in a sense equivalent to magical power; the individual increases his status by joining social groups, the membership of which is assured by his knowledge of certain word‐formulae. The form of riddles resembles that of milayo formulae, which must be known by anyone who claims that he has been to certain initiation schools. Knowledge of riddles helps a Venda child to establish his identit...

Nasal fractures; the neglected nose.

A NASAL fracture was first observed by one of us (J. G. R.) some 50 years ago as a third-year medical student. In the course of a baseball game, a grandstand collapsed; the victim suffered only a broken nose. Imbued with enthusiasm for modern surgical procedure, the student thought immediately of a hospital operating room and aseptic facilities. However, the local country practitioner who immediately assumed charge had other ideas. Removing from his pocket a lead pencil, he proceeded to pass it forcibly up each nostril of the patient; with vice-like thumb and finger he proceeded to mold the nose to his not too discriminating taste while the patient writhed in agony. The technique was not particularly impressive at the time. While this variety of surgery is, of course, a thing of the past, it is feared that the feeling still prevails that reduction of a nasal fracture is a