People Hold Research Articles

Motivated Memory in Economics—A Review

Motivated reasoning refers to the idea that people hold certain beliefs about themselves or the world due to their desire to do so, rather than striving for accuracy. This type of belief formation can lead to overconfidence and polarization, as well as facilitate immoral behavior at both the individual and collective levels. One of the supply-side mechanisms for motivated reasoning is motivated memory, or the selective retrieval of past experiences or information based on self-serving criteria. In this article, we review the still young economics literature on motivated memory. Summarizing both theoretical and empirical work, we highlight the key results this literature has produced. We also discuss open questions and potentially exciting avenues for future research in this area.

Pictures of you: God images, gun ownership, and empowerment in the United States

AbstractObjectiveIn the current study, we seek to shed new light on the role of religion in American gun culture by considering whether images people hold of God affect the probability of gun ownership and the experience of empowerment through guns for religious Americans (i.e., the extent to which owners derive security, identity, and status from their guns).MethodsWe analyze nationally representative data from the 2021 Baylor Religion Survey in the United States. Binary logistic and ordinary least squares regression models were used.ResultsWe failed to observe any associations between God images and gun ownership. However, among gun owners (n = 430), belief in an engaged God was associated with lower levels of gun empowerment, while belief in a judgmental God was associated with higher levels.ConclusionGod images may contribute to the experience of empowerment through guns by representing spiritual connection and intimacy or divine anger and retribution. We suggest that future research delve deeper into the intersection of God images and gun‐related beliefs and behaviors.

Is Spontaneous Sex Ideal? Beliefs and Perceptions of Spontaneous and Planned Sex and Sexual Satisfaction in Romantic Relationships

ABSTRACT Sexual satisfaction is critical for relationship quality and people hold lay beliefs (implicit theories) about what makes for satisfying sex. A common belief in Western culture is that spontaneous sex is most satisfying, but this idea has not yet been studied. In pre-registered analyses of two studies – a cross sectional (N = 303 individuals) and a 21-day daily experience study (N = 121 couples) – we found support for two distinct beliefs (spontaneous sex as satisfying; planned sex as satisfying). Across both studies, people held stronger beliefs that spontaneous sex is satisfying compared to planned sex, but stronger spontaneous sex beliefs were only associated with higher sexual satisfaction in Study 1. In Study 1, when people perceived their most recent sexual experience as planned (versus spontaneous), they felt less sexually satisfied, but this was not the case for those who endorsed stronger planned sex beliefs. In Study 2, endorsing stronger planned sex beliefs was associated with a partner’s lower sexual satisfaction at baseline. There were no associations between perceptions of the extent to which sex was spontaneous and sexual satisfaction at baseline or in daily life. Future research could test whether beliefs about spontaneity and planning have value in clinical settings.

A Call to Truth Telling

Post-Dobbs, Catholics will need to find ways to move beyond the dichotomizing debate between pro-life and pro-choice. That primary language about abortion debates in the past few decades has not only appeared to pit prenatal children against women, but also fits rather too neatly into the two-party political system that does not help people engage fully with each other or with Catholic thought. I suggest that a way forward is to focus on truth-telling, especially by avoiding lies of omission about either one’s own debate position or that of the other side, and I give a couple of examples in this article. I argue that more concentrated focus on being truthful will enable us not only to see each other’s nuanced arguments but also to sit with peoples’ wrenching, difficult considerations in the midst of pregnancy. Striving to be more truthful in conversations will also bring the kind of complexity that enables us to see that people hold more shared concerns about women, children, and reproduction, than we may initially have thought.

CHALLENGES OF ADHERING TO HAND WASHING PROTOCOLS AS A COVID-19 PREVENTION MEASURE AMONG SLUM DWELLERS IN NAIROBI, KENYA

In an effort to mitigate the outbreak of COVID-19, many countries have imposed drastic lockdown, movement control, or shelter-in-place orders on their residents. The effectiveness of these mitigation measures is highly dependent on the cooperation and compliance of all members of society. The knowledge, attitudes, and practices people hold toward the disease play an integral role in determining a society’s readiness to accept behavioral change measures from health authorities. Urban informal settlements are characterized by large populations occupying a small land area. Housing in informal settlements is close to each other with most households making do with poor quality and erratic water supply. How challenges of sanitation in slum dwellings in Kenya affect the spread of COVID-19 is not known. Social distancing, wearing masks and hand washing among other measures are known to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Although access to hand-washing facilities with soap and water is nearly universal in high-income countries, the same is not true for low-income countries. The purpose of this survey was to assess the challenges of hand washing as a COVID-19 prevention measure among urban slum populations in Kenya. Key information of practices on hand-washing practices among this sub-population will inform the ministry of health, its collaborators, and interested health sectors, on areas of improvement. A descriptive cross-sectional survey for quantitative data was used. Solvins formula for the calculation of sample size was used. A properly designed data collection tool was used in collecting the primary data on hand washing to prevent transmission of COVID-19 with a combination of face-to-face interviews. A pre-test of the data collection tool prior to pilot data collection was performed to ascertain validity and reliability. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequencies, mean and standard deviation and displayed using tables and figures. Inferential statistics for predictive associations between variables was performed. In the analysis, data was combined to allow reporting on an array of issues. The results indicate salient challenges on hand-washing and show an acceptable level of knowledge in mitigating COVID-19 through hand-washing and hygiene and, highlight the importance of consistent messaging from local health authorities and the government as well as the need for tailored community health education and sensitization programs to improve levels of knowledge, attitudes, and practices mostly on handwashing as this pandemic may be there for some time or there could be a possible upsurge in future.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0202/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Unpredictable robots elicit responsibility attributions.

Do people hold robots responsible for their actions? While Clark and Fischer present a useful framework for interpreting social robots, we argue that they fail to account for people's willingness to assign responsibility to robots in certain contexts, such as when a robot performs actions not predictable by its user or programmer.

Predicting Grade Outcomes in EFL: Self-Efficacy versus Past Performance

This paper aims to empirically test Bandura’s (1977; 1986) claims that the beliefs people hold in their attainment potential predict standards of subsequent achievement more accurately than past performances. This quantitative research study thoroughly tested the accuracy of self-efficacy scales by comparing the grades of third-year university business students who believed themselves capable of achieving vis-à-vis their end-of-third-year English test scores. These scores were also compared to those achieved at the end of the previous year to determine the predictive accuracy of past performances. The results of this experiment were mixed. Initial t-test inferred that there was no significant difference between prior stated beliefs of self-efficacy and end-of-third-year English scores. Furthermore, students’ past performances (end-of-second-year scores) significantly differed from those achieved at the end of the third year, suggesting that self-efficacy beliefs were the more reliable predictor. While Bandura’s (1977; 1986) claims held true according to general calculations, it transpired that across more precise measures, such as gender, ability level, and task specificity, a series of confounding implications were brought to light.

Analysis of Discrimination Towards the Mental Health of Women COVID-19 Survivors

Infectious disease patients such as those with HIV, AIDS, TB and Leprosy have always been shunned by society. They often face discrimination such as people refusing casual contact and social isolation from the community due to the stigma people hold. These discriminatory actions have a detrimental effect on the patients’ emotional and mental health. The effect is reported to other infectious diseases such as COVID-19. Discrimination toward COVID-19 survivors was high in 2021. Despite the sentiments going down in 2022, no studies have been conducted to explore the phenomenon. Hence, this study attempts to understand the causes and effects on the mental health of women COVID-19 survivors. Therefore, the study employed qualitative research to determine the causes and effects on the mental health of women COVID-19 survivors. To arrive at the result, researchers interviewed six COVID-19 survivors that were infected in 2021 and 2022 purposely from civilian, media, and medical practitioners. The result of the study discovered four themes namely ‘Public Reaction Towards COVID-19 Survivors’, ‘Survivors’ Behaviour During the Mistreatment’, ‘Mental Health of Survivors facing Public Discrimination’, and ‘Causes of the Discrimination according to the Survivors’ - all of which answered the research question developed. By creating an indicator that recognises early warning systems of potential indicators of conflict, the government may be able to address this issue as well as other potential kinds of discrimination. Besides that, media practitioners must adhere to Peace Journalism elements and Society of Professional Journalists to promote social stability. Keywords: Qualitative method, discrimination, mental health, women, COVID-19.

‘No Human Skeletons, No Shackles’: Revisiting Local Interpretations of Mtumbei Kitambi Site in Matumbi Hills, Southern Tanzania

Mtumbei Kitambi site in Matumbi Hills, southern Tanzania, has generated contradictory interpretations among the locals. Its famous alternate name, Kwa Akida Mwidau, literally means a settlement of Akida Mwidau in Swahili language. Yet, much more mystery is attached to the place than the name suggests. The local people hold that it was a place where troublesome Africans were hanged to death during the nineteenth-century colonial incursions. Some reported seeing human skeletal remains, chains and shackles at the site. In the present, the locals avoid conducting any activity at the site to for fear of disturbing human remains. Using historical archaeology, this article examines the local narratives to disentangle myths from the historical reality of the site. It scrutinises both oral accounts and nineteenth-century European documents against on-site material evidence to determine the historical facts. The article concludes by establishing that the bones interpreted by the local people as human skeletal remains are, in fact, donkey bones and metal objects—the latter hitherto mistaken for chains and shackles.

Individual Attitudes towards Immigration in Turkey: Evidence from the European Social Survey

One of the reasons why people hold anti-immigration attitudes is the fear that immigrants “rob jobs” of natives and decrease wages. However, academic literature finds that this is not the case. Nevertheless, in various countries, people still tend to oppose immigration. Opposition to immigration was particularly high in Turkey in the early 2000s, where almost half of the respondents to the Turkish part of the European Social Survey reported they would prefer to allow no immigrants into Turkey. This is although immigration to Turkey is very low. Turkey is becoming an important destination country as conflicts in neighboring countries force many people to flee. Therefore, understanding the opposition to immigration in Turkey is crucial for managing age immigration flows efficiently. For this purpose, we investigate the determinants of attitudes towards immigration in Turkey using the European Social Survey and Turkish population census data. The findings of the ordered probit model reveal that Turkish people tend to hold more negative attitudes towards immigration where the regional share of immigrants is higher. The little chance of contact with immigrants in Turkey through a lower share of immigrants compared to other European countries seems to influence natives’ pro-immigrant attitudes negatively.

Where Does It Hurt?

The question of an existential experience of hurt is not only relevant during present times of enduring hurt through realities such as a deadly pandemic, racialized violence, precarious educational realities, and ongoing struggles for justice in its many forms. The work of this poetic inquiry is enduringly relevant insofar as both institutions and people hold, create, sustain, and attempt to respond to hurt of many kinds. At times, we may cause more hurt than we soothe. As I write, I am grounded in the practices of poetic and literary analysis and position this piece a space and a form to hold the seemingly incommensurable questions for us as teachers, as artists, and as humans existing and living through a world of hurt. As a philosopher of education, I am perpetually concerned with the possibilities of a humanizing education that may soothe and eradicate existential hurt. I look toward poetry and art to show us the way.

Friends, food or worth fighting for? A proposed stereotype content model for nonhuman animals

Abstract The human perception of nonhuman animals is a burgeoning area of anthrozoology, with the past decade seeing an increase in work within the field. This study attempted to assess people’s social perceptions about various nonhuman animals. Food animals, for example, have often been classified as being less sentient and have been historically devoid of rights and moral concern due to their nature as a consumable commodity. Advancements in social psychology have allowed the general hypothesis that some key theories might be transferrable toward understanding how people perceive animals. This study borrows from work on the Stereotype Content Model (SCM) and attempts to replicate the social perceptions of animals along the warmth-competence dimensions among a Singaporean sample (N = 325) of vegetarians, animal activists, and those who regarded themselves as neither. Ratings on the scales of warmth and competence for 16 animals were subjected to multidimensional scaling analysis. Results indicate people hold different social perceptions congruent to the various animal species. Four main clusters were identified, and these were named, ‘Love’, ‘Save’, ‘Indifferent’, and ‘Dislike’ based on the expectancy of how participants might feel toward the animals. The ethical ideology of participants was also measured, with vegetarians and animal activists holding more ‘absolutist’ beliefs. When factored into the scaling process, ethical ideology had little impact on participants’ social perceptions of nonhuman animals.

An Exploration of Relationships Between Perceptual and Cognitive Racial Biases

People are often biased in how they evaluate characteristics of individuals of different races. Some of these biases are perceptual: for example, the “race-lightness effect” demonstrates that for grayscale photos at equivalent luminance values, the faces of black individuals are frequently judged to be darker than the faces of white individuals. Other biases are cognitive: the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and direct assessments of racial attitudes demonstrate that people hold both negative implicit and explicit racial prejudices. Despite extensive literature on both topics, no study has explored the relationship between perceptual and cognitive racial biases in the same individuals in a within-subjects design. In this experiment, these relationships were explored in 28 individuals using three tasks: in one task, deemed the Race-Lightness Task (RLT), participants completed a 2-interval forced-choice procedure where they were shown pairs of faces (some with European features, some with African features) and asked to judge whether the second face was lighter or darker than the first. In a second task, individuals completed the IAT to measure their associations between race and positive/negative adjectives. Lastly, subjects answered a series of questions to measure explicit attitudes about different racial groups. While results from the RLT and IAT were uncorrelated, a significant correlation was shown between the IAT and a survey question about systemic racism. These results provide preliminary support for the independence of perception and cognition for racially based tasks, and provide insight into the pervasive nature of implicit and explicit racial prejudice.

Ageism and late-life mortality: How community matters

Ageismthe deeply entrenched biases that people hold about old age—is a persistent social problem that intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic. The harmful physical, emotional, and cognitive health consequences of individual-level age bias are well-documented, with most studies operationalizing ageism as an older adult's personal encounters with age discrimination, self-perceptions of their own aging, and internalized negative beliefs about old age. However, the impacts of community-level age bias on older adults' well-being have received less attention. This commentary reviews recent evidence (Kellogg et al.,) showing that county-level explicit age bias is associated with lower mortality rates among older adults, with effects limited to older adults residing in counties with relatively younger populations. Effects were not detected in counties with relatively older populations, or for implicit age bias. These counterintuitive findings require further exploration, including the use of more fine-grained measures of community-level ageism, attention to the role of gentrification in communities, and the development of new measures of structural ageism, drawing on approaches used to study the impacts of structural racism. Data science approaches, including the use of social media data in tandem with mortality data, may reveal how age bias affects older adults. Communities are especially important to older adults, who spend much of their time in areas immediately proximate to their homes. As more individuals age in place, and as federal funding for home-based and community services (HCBS) increases, researchers should identify which community-level characteristics, including age bias, undermine or enhance late-life well-being.

THE INDIVIDUAL ENTITY OF A CULTURALLY DIVERSE PLACE IN BANGLADESH: A CASE OF SAIDPUR CITY

Establishing the Largest Railway workshops of Assam-Bengal Railway here in Saidpur in 1870 by the British Crown, brought in Railway officers, service holders, workers, and traders from throughout the Indian sub-continent. Soon, this place was thriving with people of diverse cultures & ethnicities. It had become so prosperous & burgeoning that it became the third-largest city in East Pakistan. Since then, Saidpur has been facing a decline in growth due to conflicts in post-partition British India, the Independence War of Bangladesh & post-war problems. These incidents left deep scars in the people's hearts and generated misguided hatred. It had resulted in uneasy interaction & irrational mistrust among the diverse ethnic group of people living there for more than one & a half centuries. In this paper, the author aims to tell the true city narrative without any biases and means to alleviate the misunderstanding to identify between the stranded Pakistanis & other non-Bengalis. This paper intends to find out the present character of Saidpur city and the potential reasons behind it. In addition, it also aims to investigate and find the probable identity that the city and its people hold by analyzing them in contemporaneous situations. It's a qualitative research study conducted using a mixed method approach. Based on a conceptual framework & a review of relevant literature, the author applied different methods to collect primary data about this historical city. In-depth surveys, experiments, observations, key person interviews, focus group discussion & oral histories are considered to collect these data.

Major trends in a future South Africa and some implications for intercultural communication in marketing

It is now broadly accepted that long term shifts occur in the values that people hold which determine their behaviour. In the South African con text this process is being accelerated by the clash between Ideologies. It is argued that there is one megatrend in South Africa, namely Equality, which is leading to the development of parallel and reactionary sub-trends. In many respects South Africa is moving in the opposite direction to other developed countries, but it can not hide from certain global influ ences, in particular the gathering world-wide concern about Environmental Conservation. These deep seated changes, which, for the most part, reflect a conflict between the freedom of the individual and a de sire for uniformity, have considerable significance for communication and marketing.

Examining four types of anti-vaccination attitudes prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

People hold different anti-vaccination attitudes. Having an understanding of how these attitudes have changed prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic is critical for combatting anti-vaccination attitudes and increasing vaccine intention and uptake. Data were collected from different samples in the United States at three time points prior to (n = 840) and four time points during (n = 1543) the pandemic. All participants completed a multi-dimensional measure of anti-vaccination attitudes (VAX Scale) through an online platform. Results showed that, when it comes to vaccines, worries about unforeseen side effects, concerns about commercial profiteering, and preference for natural immunity were higher during the COVID-19 pandemic than they were prior to it. However, mistrust of vaccine benefit was lower during the COVID-19 pandemic than prior to it. These differences were found even after controlling for the potential effects of participant sex, education, socioeconomic status, age, and race/ethnicity. Additionally, worries about unforeseen side effects, concerns about commercial profiteering, and preference for natural immunity increased linearly alongside the persistence of COVID-19; whereas, mistrust of vaccine benefit showed no change. Although it might be intuitive to emphasize vaccines' effectiveness to increase uptake, the public's trust in vaccine effectiveness did not appear to be the major concern. Thus, public health efforts to increase uptake of vaccines should also focus on reducing concerns about potential side effects from the vaccine, tempering the attention on financial benefits to pharmaceutical companies, and rebuffing the overreliance on natural immunity.

Misperceptions about Refugee Policy

This letter explores the prevalence of misperceptions about refugee policy and tests whether correcting these misperceptions changes attitudes toward refugees. Large numbers of people hold misperceptions about both the nature and effects of refugee policy. An experiment directly compares the effects of correcting misperceptions about existing refugee policy (e.g., the refugee admission process) with correcting misperceptions about the outcomes of refugee policy (e.g., the proportion of refugees in the United States and the percentage who receive welfare benefits). Corrective information about existing policy substantially increases support for refugees, but corrective information about policy outcomes has no effect on attitudes. The results suggest that including descriptive information about existing U.S. policy in media coverage of refugees could both correct misperceptions and change attitudes.

Multimodal fusion recognition for digital twin

The digital twin is the concept of transcending reality, which is the reverse feedback from the real physical space to the virtual digital space. People hold great prospects for this emerging technology. In order to realize the upgrading of the digital twin industrial chain, it is urgent to introduce more modalities, such as vision, haptics, hearing and smell, into the virtual digital space, which assists physical entities and virtual objects in creating a closer connection. Therefore, perceptual understanding and object recognition have become an urgent hot topic in the digital twin. Existing surface material classification schemes often achieve recognition through machine learning or deep learning in a single modality, ignoring the complementarity between multiple modalities. In order to overcome this dilemma, we propose a multimodal fusion network in our article that combines two modalities, visual and haptic, for surface material recognition. On the one hand, the network makes full use of the potential correlations between multiple modalities to deeply mine the modal semantics and complete the data mapping. On the other hand, the network is extensible and can be used as a universal architecture to include more modalities. Experiments show that the constructed multimodal fusion network can achieve 99.42% classification accuracy while reducing complexity.

Using diffusion of innovation framework with attitudinal factor to predict the future of mobility in the Indian market.

Rising temperatures across the world is posing a serious challenge to the longevity of earth’s natural cycle. Use of private and conventional cars is growing year by year as standard of living continues to increase and affordability remaining no more of an issue for a significant proportion of the population. However, there has been a growing voice from segments of the society for a behavioural shift towards more sustainable modes of transport like usage of electric vehicles (EVs), mobility sharing and rental services and public transportation powered by electricity. One of the biggest importers of foreign crude oil, India, is reeling under immense pressure to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions and thereby contributing to environment protection. In India, the statistics or stock of EVs continues to remain poor when compared to its counterparts like China. Hence, this study is conducted to predict the influence of factors on purchase intention of consumers with respect to EVs in the Indian context. A questionnaire was prepared and circulated in New Delhi region to gather the responses people hold about this new technology based on the diffusion of innovation framework. The data of 225 respondents was analysed with the help of SPSS and AMOS software. Structural equation modelling technique was applied to test the hypotheses of this research. The results indicate that attitude has the most influential impact on purchase intention followed by related advantages but consumers also believe EVs to be complex in terms of their usability, limited availability and the absence of required public charging infrastructure. The mediating role of attitude between determinants of diffusion and purchase intention was also established except in the case of complexity. This study is contemporary and adds to the limited literature available on EV adoption in the Indian market by integrating attitudinal factor within the DOI framework. It also provides suitable insights to further the development of EVs in the domestic and global market.