People Hold Research Articles

Preying on the poor? Opportunities and challenges for tackling the social and environmental threats of cryptocurrencies for vulnerable and low-income communities

The rate of adoption of some cryptocurrencies is triggering alarm from energy researchers and social scientists concerned about the industry’s growing environmental and social impacts. In this paper we argue that the unsustainable trajectory of some cryptocurrencies disproportionately impacts poor and vulnerable communities where cryptocurrency producers and other actors take advantage of economic instabilities, weak regulations, and access to cheap energy and other resources. Globally, over 100 million people hold cryptocurrency, mostly as a speculative asset. The digital infrastructure behind the most popular cryptocurrency, bitcoin, currently requires as much energy as the whole of Thailand, with a carbon footprint exceeding the gold mining industry. Should bitcoin’s mass adoption continue, an escalating climate crisis is inevitable, disproportionately exacerbating social and environmental challenges for communities already experiencing multiple dimensions of deprivation. In mitigating these impacts, the paper considers 4 potential regulatory pathways, including: 1) promoting voluntary private-sector commitments to using only renewable energy, 2) encouraging a system of voluntary carbon offsetting, 3) using existing financial regulations and tax frameworks, and 4) imposing national and/or international bans on cryptocurrency ‘mining’. The paper argues that effective environmental regulation of cryptocurrencies is urgently required, both to reduce the threat of catastrophic climate change, and to help the world’s poorest towards sustainable development. However, regulating cryptocurrency mining in any context is likely to require a combination of efforts and is unlikely to result in win-win outcomes for all.

Why Is It Wrong to Sell Your Body? Understanding Liberals’ Versus Conservatives’ Moral Objections to Bodily Markets

People hold strong moral objections to commercial bodily markets—the buying and selling of the human body and its components (e.g., prostitution; commercial surrogacy; trade of kidneys, blood plasma, sperm, ovum, and hair). This research takes a descriptive approach to understand why people object to the marketing of the human body and how their moral objections differ across the political spectrum. The authors propose that liberals and conservatives find bodily markets to be morally wrong; however, the two groups object to bodily markets for different reasons. Liberals are more sensitive to exploitation concerns, but conservatives are more sensitive to violation of sanctity concerns in these markets. Real-world observational data and controlled experiments test these predictions. The findings show how sociopolitical leaders utilize the different moral objections to persuade their respective audiences, such as how conservative versus more liberal pastors sermonize differently on prostitution. Second, results show how targeted marketing campaigns encourage liberals and conservatives to participate in consumer advocacy and donate to political causes. Third, findings outline how liberals and conservatives support different regulatory laws that penalize buyers versus sellers. Finally, results show how the different moral objections manifest for live bodily products but not for dead bodily products.

Experiments and egalitarianism

AbstractIn this paper, I reflect on the implications that ultimatum and dictator game experiments might have for public policy and for the debates over egalitarianism. Experiments suggest that people are more inclined to redistribute when outcomes are influenced by luck than effort. This can create difficulties for public policy when people hold contrasting views over whether luck or effort determine outcomes. The results also appear to play into forms of luck egalitarianism. However, they may also be consistent with an alternative understanding of egalitarianism as the impulse to have rules that treat people equally.

Taxing the rich: public preferences and public understanding

ABSTRACT Who supports high taxes on the rich? Existing accounts of public attitudes focus on egalitarian values and material interests, but make little mention of the ideas people hold about how the economy works descriptively. Drawing on the distinction between positive- and zero-sum beliefs about the economy, and original survey data from five countries, I show that there are systematic differences in tax progressivity preferences across groups within the public who think differently about the economy. Positive-sum thinking is associated with less progressive preferences. However, despite theoretical attention, there is no evidence of systematic zero-sum thinking among the public. On the other hand, some descriptions focus on conflict between rich and poor, and these do predict support for greater progressivity. Further analysis is required to differentiate alternative causal explanations of the patterns observed, but different modes of descriptive economic thinking are an important feature of the mass politics of progressivity.

UNDERSTANDING TRANSGENDERISM THROUGH AYURVEDA – A PARADIGM SHIFT

Transgender can refer to any individual whose gender identity differs in some way from their birth or biological sex. A significant step in the modern conception of transgenderism was the separation of gender as a social construct from biological sex as a given at birth. Despite India showing progress in various medical, economic, and social fronts, the care of the transgender individual is still encumbered by the various biases and taboos that people hold. But this was not true in antiquity. Unlike the present era, Hindu mythology has always shown us many examples of transgender individuals thereby proving that they were also a part of our society. It is only in recent times that they have been at least given the necessary social security and an ability to integrate into the community. Furthermore, these individuals are subjected to stigma and biases that make them prone to both medical, as well as mental health issues. Ayurvedic science has a detailed explanation regarding the third gender called Napumsaka. Having learnt about the causes of Napumsaka in our science, it is our duty to ensure the production of healthy Beeja for developing a healthy upcoming generation. Keywords: Transgenderism, transgender, Ayurveda, Napumsaka.

Public perception of COVID-19 vaccines from the digital footprints left on Twitter: analyzing positive, neutral and negative sentiments of Twitterati

PurposeTwitter is gaining popularity as a microblogging and social networking service to discuss various social issues. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has become a global pandemic and is discussed worldwide. Social media is an instant platform to deliberate various dimensions of COVID-19. The purpose of the study is to explore and analyze the public sentiments related to COVID-19 vaccines across the Twitter messages (positive, neutral, and negative) and the impact tweets make across digital social circles.Design/methodology/approachTo fetch the vaccine-related posts, a manual examination of randomly selected 500 tweets was carried out to identify the popular hashtags relevant to the vaccine conversation. It was found that the hashtags “covid19vaccine” and “coronavirusvaccine” were the two popular hashtags used to discuss the communications related to COVID-19 vaccines. 23,575 global tweets available in public domain were retrieved through “Twitter Application Programming Interface” (API), using “Orange Software”, an open-source machine learning, data visualization and data mining toolkit. The study was confined to the tweets posted in English language only. The default data cleaning and preprocessing techniques available in the “Orange Software” were applied to the dataset, which include “transformation”, “tokenization” and “filtering”. The “Valence Aware Dictionary for sEntiment Reasoning” (VADER) tool was used for classification of tweets to determine the tweet sentiments (positive, neutral and negative) as well as the degree of sentiments (compound score also known as sentiment score). To assess the influence/impact of tweets account wise (verified and unverified) and sentiment wise (positive, neutral, and negative), the retweets and likes, which offer a sort of reward or acknowledgment of tweets, were used.FindingsA gradual decline in the number of tweets over the time is observed. Majority (11,205; 47.52%) of tweets express positive sentiments, followed by neutral (7,948; 33.71%) and negative sentiments (4,422; 18.75%), respectively. The study also signifies a substantial difference between the impact of tweets tweeted by verified and unverified users. The tweets related to verified users have a higher impact both in terms of retweets (65.91%) and likes (84.62%) compared to the tweets tweeted by unverified users. Tweets expressing positive sentiments have the highest impact both in terms of likes (mean = 10.48) and retweets (mean = 3.07) compared to those that express neutral or negative sentiments.Research limitations/implicationsThe main limitation of the study is that the sentiments of the people expressed over one single social platform, that is, Twitter have been studied which cannot generalize the global public perceptions. There can be a variation in the results when the datasets from other social media platforms will be studied.Practical implicationsThe study will help to know the people's sentiments and beliefs toward the COVID-19 vaccines. Sentiments that people hold about the COVID-19 vaccines are studied, which will help health policymakers understand the polarity (positive, negative, and neutral) of the tweets and thus see the public reaction and reflect the types of information people are exposed to about vaccines. The study can aid the health sectors to intensify positive messages and eliminate negative messages for an enhanced vaccination uptake. The research can also help design more operative vaccine-advocating communication by customizing messages using the obtained knowledge from the sentiments and opinions about the vaccines.Originality/valueThe paper focuses on an essential aspect of COVID-19 vaccines and how people express themselves (positively, neutrally and negatively) on Twitter.

Landscape memories of land struggles in plateaus of two Nsukka villages in Nigeria

The memories of landscapes that people hold can stabilize histories and traditions in rural areas, are entwined with everyday lives and have several meanings. The paper explores the memories that people hold about plateaus in two adjoining villages (Alor-Uno and Edem-Ani) in the Nsukka area of Enugu State, Southeastern Nigeria. This area is an exciting and essential area of the world, distinctly underrepresented in landscape memory scholarship. The paper shows that the plateaus separating Alor-Uno and Edem-Ani are landscapes of political memory of the ancient wars between the two communities and more contemporary disputes regarding territorial extent of the communities and use of the land behind the plateaus if you are in Alor-Uno. Alor-Uno claims that wars waged against it by several kingdoms displaced the community, permitting occupation of parts of the community’s land, and they seek to reclaim it from Edem-Ani. However, extant narratives often recognize the disputed area as part of Edem-Ani because of the use of the plateaus as a boundary by colonial administrators. The presence of the plateaus helps the people recollect these ancient wars’ memories, and they use it to seek legitimation of their claim over the land. The paper argues that the memory of past land use reinforces the legitimacy of current land tenure configurations and shapes sensitivity to territoriality leading to exclusion. This can sustain group identities across generations translating into a ground for future fighting. It calls for more attention to the non-human agency and in connection to landscapes’ political memory, which speaks to the current post-human thinking in human geography. It suggests that resource conflicts analysis should take social meanings, memories and identities connected to the physical landscape seriously, as they contain ideological and symbolic elements foregrounding conflict environments.

An evaluation model for the development of more humane correctional institutions: Evidence from Penghu Prison

Over time, correctional institutions have actively implemented innovations in prison administration. Most correctional institutions constitute conservative and closed societies. Generally, people do not have sufficient knowledge or understanding of penal correction. Therefore, it is difficult but necessary to break the stereotyped impression people hold about correctional institutions, actively integrate them into society, and encourage people to assume a more humane attitude towards correctional institutions. We conducted an inductive analysis of Penghu Prison administered by the Agency of Corrections, Ministry of Justice, Taiwan. After creating evaluation indices for the development of more humane correctional institutions, we conducted a survey to classify the evaluation indices into criteria under the four major evaluation dimensions. Using DEMATEL, we determined the causal relationship among different evaluation indicators and generated an influential network relation map about the evaluation criteria. Using DANP, we subsequently calculated weightings for the influence of each criterion. Finally, using the modified VIKOR, we conducted a gap analysis. The results of this study can be used to build a more positive and human reputation for correctional institutions and enable their sustainable creation.

Social-demographic correlates of mindset in China

Mindset, growth or fixed, refers to two different beliefs people hold about the underlying nature of ability, and was first put forward by the psychologist Carol Dweck. The central role of mindset in motivation, self-regulation and interpersonal processes has been the subject of growing research interest, but there are few discussions of mindset in the context of China. Using the China Family Panel Studies, this study aims to offer a comprehensive understanding of social-demographic correlates of mindset in China. Following the psychological literature, we construct a binary status of mindset via exploratory factor analysis. We find that place of origin (rural or urban), educational level, employment status and life-course events are correlated to mindset. It is also determined that mindset acts as a fundamental psychological factor strongly associated with multiple outcomes, including educational attainment, cognitive skills, attitudes and subject well-being.

Pakistani Drama And Critical Analyses On Gendered Display Of Culture

The research looked into how media stereotypes and the people's hold of gender concerning drama on TV shows can change how people perceive each other. It relies a lot on specific and detailed data on a data set consisting of most Pakistani university students in national and private institutions. A questionnaire was created with specific attributes in mind as the critical input; these were given significant consideration in selecting and compiling the data. As discussed by the data group, the social variety in Pakistani cultures, such as the inclusion of two different educational institutions, must be regarded as a variable in this research. For most people, daily exposure to Gender-Stereotyping in traditional media has adverse effects on how they perceive social identities, most notably women.

Laypeople perception and interpretation of simulated life-threatening bleeding: a controlled experimental study

IntroductionFirst aid performed by immediate responders can be the difference between life and death in the case of trauma with massive bleeding. To develop effective training programs to teach bleeding control to laypersons, it is important to be aware of beliefs and misconceptions people hold on bleeding and severity of bleeding situations.MethodA controlled study was conducted in which 175 American college students viewed 78 video clips of simulated bleeding injuries. The volume of blood present (between 0 and 1900 ml), rate of blood flow, and victim gender were systematically varied within participants. Participants were asked to rate injury severity, indicate the appropriate first aid action, and estimate the amount of time until death for the victim.ResultsThough the Stop the Bleed® campaign recommends training laypeople to treat 165 ml of blood loss as life threatening, participants largely rated this volume of blood loss as minimal, mild, or moderate and estimated that the victim had just under one hour to live. Increased blood loss was associated with increased recommendations to use a tourniquet. However, in the 1900 ml conditions, participants still estimated that victims had around 22 minutes to live and approximately 15% recommended direct pressure as the intervention. Severity ratings and recommendations to use a tourniquet were also higher for the male victim than the female victim.ConclusionsInjury classification, intervention selection, and time to death-estimations revealed that training interventions should connect classifications of blood loss to appropriate action and focus on perceptions of how much time one has to respond to a bleeding. The study also revealed a gender related bias in terms of injury classification and first aid recommendations. Bleeding control training programs can be designed to address identified biases and misconceptions while building on existing knowledge and commonly used terminology.

Christian functional views of suffering: a review and theoretical overview

ABSTRACT We argue that advancing our understanding of religious meaning-making in the face of trauma and suffering requires greater attention to the specific meanings of suffering that religions offer, and offer an overview of eight functional Christian views of suffering. The beliefs people hold about the traumas they experience lead to differing forms of engagement with their suffering. We first situate religious meanings of suffering in the psychological literature on meaning-making. We next review existing research on religious views of suffering. We then differentiate between causal and functional views of suffering and show why increased attention to functional views promises to strengthen religious meaning-making processes for coping with trauma. Finally, we present an overview of functional views of suffering present in the Christian tradition. In the concluding section, we suggest next steps and implications for research and therapy.

When diversity leads to closed-mindedness: Cognitive factors explain the effects of perceived diversity

This paper makes a case for explaining diversity effects through cognitive factors as compared to demographic or other differences in backgrounds. We argue that studying perceived diversity in conjunction with diversity beliefs can explain positive and negative effects through a motivated opening or closing of the mind (Need for Cognitive Closure, NFCC). NFCC is the motivation to avoid uncertainty and ambiguity. In Study 1, we experimentally demonstrate that asking participants to think about differences among their coworkers increases their NFCC. Study 2 shows that greater uncertainty about social norms in the workplace is positively related to NFCC. Study 3 confirms the mediating role of NFCC in explaining divergent thinking attitudes in expatriates working in various multicultural cities around the world. Study 4 demonstrates that perceived diversity is positively associated with NFCC when people hold negative beliefs about diversity, whereas positive beliefs mitigate this effect. Lastly, Study 5 shows that the interaction between perceived diversity and diversity beliefs is further moderated by task type. Taken together, the present research highlights the importance of studying cognitive factors to explain diversity effects.

Building ecological networks with local ecological knowledge in hyper‐diverse and logistically challenging ecosystems

Abstract Collecting interaction data to build frugivory or seed dispersal networks is logistically challenging in ecosystems that have very high plant and animal diversity and/or where fieldwork is difficult or dangerous. Consequently, the majority of available networks are from ecosystems with low species diversity or they represent a subset of the community. Here, we propose an approach applying local ecological knowledge (LEK) of indigenous communities to build quantitative interaction databases and networks that would otherwise be difficult to achieve with direct observations. Indigenous communities live in many hyper‐diverse ecosystems and the people within these communities often have detailed knowledge of ecological processes. Working in a Sundaland biodiversity hotspot—Royal Belum State Park, Peninsular Malaysia—we used visually oriented interviews with indigenous people (Orang Asli, in the Jahai and Temiar ethnic subgroups), field data and published records to collate interactions, and their estimated frequency of occurrence, of animal fruit consumption and seed dispersal. We documented 2,063 fruit consumption and 1,360 seed dispersal interactions among 164 plant species and 34 animal taxa, the latter representing groups of closely related species or individual species. The majority of the interactions (97%) were identified by the LEK interviews, with the additional methods (field data and published records) used to support and marginally expand the interview data. The metrics for the networks we built reflect those of networks structured by biological mechanisms, supporting the validity of our novel approach. LEK is highly relevant for building detailed databases for ecological interactions in hyper‐diverse and/or challenging ecosystems. Such ecosystems are among the most vulnerable on earth, harbouring ecological interactions that are often poorly documented at a community level. We show how LEK can broaden our knowledge of such sensitive ecosystems, but our approach is useful for any ecosystem in which people hold rich LEK.

The sound of social class: Do music preferences signal status?

In three studies, we explore the subjective construal of associations between music preferences and social class. Two small-scale studies ( N = 100, N = 70) and one study involving a large representative sample of the Italian population ( N = 1,045) reveal that (a) people hold well-defined stereotypes on how music preferences are linked to social class, (b) that these stereotypes do not map onto actual class differences in music taste, (c) that they operate at both an implicit and explicit level, (d) that they are subject to ingroup bias among those who prefer “low-class” genres, and (e) that they are only weakly affected by streaming habits. Together, these findings shed new light on the psychological processes through which people draw inferences about social class on the basis of cultural expression.

Living in today's world: Reflections on the interactions between technology and human relational patterns

This essay paper focuses on how the idea and use of technology is gradually reorganizing not only the structural arrangements but also redefining relationships and relational patterns. In particular reference to new technological applications and sites that are increasingly used by people for networking and bonding, there is a macro-discourse of being and staying connected through technology. Such platforms assume an easy access or an imagined availability of the other person at all times. Such availability also assumes psychological availability of the person, despite any personal circumstances he/she may be in. Experiencing the compressed space and time has given birth to the debate of quality of life and relations surrounding it vs. the constant flux of technology that restricts the psychological freedom while facilitating a structural freedom to communicate. Technology is an artifact that not only symbolizes values of ease and convenience but also has the potential to affect the deeper assumptions and values people hold about life and relationships. Thus, it mediates our personal, social and organizational realities, pushing us to live in dual worlds.

Taking the discourse seriously: Rational self-interest and resistance to mining in Kyrgyzstan

Faced with mounting resistance against mining, neoliberal governance resorts to polarising strategies that delegitimise the heterogenous positions people hold regarding mining. In this paper, we contrast and complicate these dichotomies with the lived experiences on the ground in Kyrgyzstan. We focus on the ‘Taldy-Bulak Levoberezhny’ gold mine near the town of Orlovka that has been lauded by the state and business community as a paragon of company-community ‘cooperation’. We question how the gold mine has come to be an exemplary case of cooperation in a conflict-rife sector. Based on behavioural experiments, surveys, and in-depth inquiry, we follow and unpack entanglements of valuations, discourses and practices that have repackaged Orlovka from a former Soviet mining town in depression into a putative model of progress. Our interdisciplinary account unravels the contradictory processes of re/making extractive frontiers and managing resistance to extractivist expansion that interweave neoliberal practices with nationalist discourses. Beneath the discourses praising Orlovka, we find a community that has never stopped resisting despite consenting to the gold mine. The extractive entanglements we unearth exemplify the diversity of exigencies and aspirations behind resisting, negotiating and/or allowing mining while attesting to the diversified portfolio of tactics that silence and delegitimise these life concerns.

When dueling emotions and conflicting beliefs predict subjective ambivalence: The role of meta-bases

Within the emotions and beliefs upon which attitudes are based, people can hold simultaneously positive and negative reactions. In addition, independent from the emotions and beliefs in their attitude structure, people hold subjective perceptions about their affective and cognitive attitudinal bases (i.e., meta-bases), which reflect interest in processing emotions or beliefs, respectively. We tested how much people experience subjective ambivalence when they hold mixed positive and negative affective or cognitive reactions and whether this depends on relevant meta-bases. In Study 1, for an attitude object dominated by affective meta-bases (i.e., strong interest in processing emotions), intra-affect conflict (IAC), but not intra-cognition conflict (ICC), predicted subjective ambivalence (SA). Moreover, individual differences in meta-bases mattered. Even for a normatively affective meta-basis topic, ICC predicted SA among individuals with relatively cognitive meta-bases but not those with relatively affective meta-bases (Study 2). Similarly, even for a normatively cognitive meta-basis topic, IAC predicted SA among individuals with relatively affective meta-bases but not those with cognitive meta-bases (Study 3). In Study 4, both IAC and ICC's effects on SA were moderated by individual differences in meta-bases for a topic without a clearly normative meta-basis. Study 5 demonstrated that ICC caused more SA for individuals who received cognitive meta-bases feedback than those who received affective meta-bases feedback, whereas IAC caused more SA for individuals who received affective meta-bases feedback than cognitive meta-bases feedback. Thus, we shed light on novel distinctions between intra-affect and intra-cognition conflict in the experience of ambivalence.

Is the Medium Really the Message: Disambiguating the Sender’s Role.

McLuhan uses the term 'message' to signify both the content of the medium as a message which can be easily grasped and the character of the medium as another message which can be easily overlooked. He proposed that it was the medium itself that shaped and controlled "the scale and form of human association and action", suggesting that the "content of any medium is always another medium.” Thus, speech is the content of writing, writing is the content of print, and print itself is the content of the telegraph. Does this mean that the medium is everything and everything is the medium? This Marshallian postulation leaves the role of the source/sender as the message creator as well as the medium and target audience selector in limbo. This article while agreeing with McLuhan that a medium is not something neutral as it takes hold of people and massages them, especially a new medium, notes nevertheless, that it’s all at the behest and pleasure of the source/sender. This study uses in-depth literature review, analyses and synthesis to resolve this research question in favour of the sender as the message himself, and all other elements of the communication process take life from him.

The Implications of Diverse Human Moral Foundations for the Ethicality of Artificial Intelligence

Organizations are making massive investments in artificial intelligence (AI), and recent demonstrations and achievements highlight the immense potential for AI to improve organizational and human welfare. But realizing the potential of AI necessitates a better understanding of the various ethical issues involved with deciding to use AI, developing and maintaining it, and allowing it to make decisions that have moral consequences. People want organizations using AI and the AI systems themselves to behave “ethically”. But “behaving ethically” means different things to different people. How should organizations using AI—and the AI itself—handle ethical dilemmas where humans cannot agree on the right course of action? Though a variety of ethical frameworks have been suggested, these approaches do not adequately answer how people make ethical evaluations of AI systems or how to incorporate the fundamental disagreements that people have regarding what is and is not ethical behavior. Drawing on moral foundations theory, we theorize that a person will perceive an organization’s use of AI and AI decisions as ethical to the extent that those decisions resonate with the person’s moral foundations. Since people hold diverse moral foundations, this highlights the crucial need to address individual moral differences in the development, application, and evaluation of AI systems. Our approach addresses several unresolved issues existing in the current state of the ethical AI literature. It suggests potential solutions to handling conflict in moral judgment and highlights future directions to augment ethical AI frameworks by incorporating individual differences in moral judgment.