Neutral Behavior Research Articles

Impact of Leader Mistreatment and Organizational Cynicism on Organization Citizenship Behavior OCB

Purpose: The paper contains a study upon the impact of Abuse of leaders caused by supervisor abuse, personal discrimination, and the mediation effect of organizational cynicism on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). The study explored the effect of leadership abuse including social discrimination, supervisor abuse, and organizational cynicism on OCB. Design/Methodology/Approach: The quantitative technique has been used to test the hypotheses. The study was conducted on two hundred respondents containing both genders from academies and the model was valid. In this study, four public sector universities, BUITEMS, UOB, Khuzdar University of Engineering and Technology, and Sardar Bahadur Khan Women University Quetta have been selected. Multiple regression and correlation analysis along with a test of mediation and F-Statistics were used. Findings: The results revealed that all these three newspapers gave significant coverage to the peace talks issue but Nation gave more coverage to the issue. Findings also revealed that Dawn and The News, most of the time showed neutral behavior but tilted towards an unfavorable position regarding peace talks. The nation showed strongly unfavorable behavior regarding peace talks. Implications/Originality/Value: So it is concluded that all these three newspapers were mostly against the peace talks and the government and media were not on the same page on the issue of peace talks. Mediation and F-Statistics. Usually, this survey validated the propositions of the research. The conclusions indicate that the Supervisor abuse and interpersonal injustice contain damaging effects for workers, thus supporting the assumption.

Phrase Depicting Immoral Behavior Dilates Its Subjective Time Judgment.

Intuitive moral emotions play a major role in forming our opinions and moral decisions. However, it is not yet known how we perceive the subjective time of moral-related information. In this study, we compared subjective durations of phrases depicting immoral, disgust, or neutral behaviors in a duration bisection task and found that phrases depicting immoral behavior were perceived as lasting longer than the neutral and disgusting phrases. By contrast, the subjective duration of the disgusting phrase, unlike the immoral phrase, was comparable to the neutral phrase. Moreover, the lengthening effect of the immoral phrase relative to the neutral phrase was significantly correlated to the anonymously prosocial tendency of the observer. Our findings suggest that immoral phrases induce embodied moral reaction, which alters emotional state and subsequently lengthens subjective time.

The impact of positive and negative testimony on children's attitudes toward others.

Children can identify who is benevolent or malevolent not only through first-hand experiences and observations but also from the testimony of others. In this study, we investigated whether 5- and 7-year-olds (N = 128) would form their attitudes toward others after hearing testimony about that person’s past moral behavior and whether the valence of testimony would differently influence the children. In the positive condition, half of the participants gained information about three puppets: puppet A’s prosocial behavior by their own first-hand observation, testimony about puppet B’s past prosocial behavior, and testimony about puppet C’s past neutral behavior. In the negative condition, the other half also learned information about the three puppets: puppet A’s antisocial behavior by their own first-hand observation, testimony about puppet B’s past antisocial behavior, and testimony about puppet C’s past neutral behavior. Then they engaged in tasks that measured their behavioral attitudes toward the puppets and evaluated the goodness of each puppet to assess their attitudes at a cognitive level. Our results concluded that the children form their behavioral attitudes toward others based on testimony starting at the age of 7, and attitude formation at the cognitive level based on testimony is seen at age 5. Negative testimony, rather than positive testimony, influences the children’s attitudes toward others. In addition, the 7-year-olds’ use of testimony differs depending whether they are the allocators or the receivers of rewards. Our findings deepen understanding of how children rely on the verbal information around themselves when they navigate interactions with others.

Delight or disappointment? A model of signal-based other-pleasing choice

This paper develops a discrete choice model to address the problem of an other-pleasing decision-maker (DM), who makes a choice for another individual without knowing her/his preferences and expectation. The DM's choice may delight or disappoint the other, depending on her/his expectation from the DM. The psychological utility of the other is a function of the emotion triggered by the DM's choice. The objective of the DM is to maximise the expected psychological utility of the other. In the absence of complete information, a risky choice is made by the DM, based on signals about the other's expectation that s/he receives. In terms of personality trait, the DM may be a delight-seeker, or disappointment-averse, or neutral. While a delight-seeker overweighs the other's psychological utility from delight, a disappointment-averse DM overweighs the disutility of disappointment. Based on the model, hypotheses have been constructed and tested in a gamified decision-making scenario that simulated the model conditions. In this serious game experiment, delight-seeking, disappointment-averse, and neutral behaviours were induced by use of appropriate incentivisation of the subjects in the corresponding treatment groups. Unique choice architecture has been given to subjects in each treatment group to signal the expectation of a hypothetical other, and choice decisions were observed under elicited belief. Compared to the control (neutral) group, those in delight-seeking treatment were observed to be less likely, and those in disappointment-averse more likely, to make a choice in conformity to the signal they received. Statistically significant results were obtained only when the signals were strong.

Towards a complete Logical Phonology model of intrasegmental changes

All changes to the internal structure of phonological segments arise from combinations of rules based on two set-theoretic operations: feature deletion by set subtraction and feature insertion by unification. Apparent cases of rules targeting underspecified segments reflect two kinds of vacuous rule application, one due to unification failure and the other due to vacuous unification. Despite this reduction of all segment-internal changes to two basic mechanisms we can account for a wide variety of patterns, including the reciprocal neutralization and apparent exceptional behavior seen in Hungarian voicing assimilation.

Impact of the baseline payoff on evolutionary outcomes.

Do individuals enjoying a higher baseline payoff behave similarly in competitive scenarios compared to their counterparts? The classical replicator equation does not answer such a question since it is invariant to the background or baseline payoff of individuals. In reality, however, if one's baseline payoff is higher than the possible payoffs of an interaction (or game), the individual may respond generously or indifferently if s(he) is satisfied with the prevailing benchmark payoff. This work intends to explore such a phenomenon within the realm of pairwise interactions-taking the prisoner's dilemma as a metaphor-in well-mixed finite and infinite populations. In this framework, a player uses the payoff (comprising baseline and game payoffs) -expectation difference to estimate a degree of eagerness and, with that degree of eagerness, revises his or her strategy with a certain probability. We adopt two approaches to explore such a context, naming them as the Fermi and imitation processes, in which the former uses a pairwise Femi function and the latter considers the relative fitness to estimate probabilities for strategy revision. In a finite population, we examine the effect of intensities to payoff-expectation and strategic payoff differences (denoted by k_{1} and k_{2}, respectively) as well as the level of contentment (ω) on the fixation probability and fixation time (for a single defector). We observe that the fixation probability surges with the increase of intensity parameters. Nevertheless, the maximum fixation probability may require a substantially larger time to fixate, especially when the expectation is lower than the baseline payoff. This means that cooperators can persist for a longer period of time. A higher expectation or greed, however, considerably reduces the fixation time. Interestingly, our numerical simulation reveals that both approaches are equivalent under weak k_{2}(≪1) in the Fermi process. We further derive mean-field equations for both approaches in the context of an infinite population, where we observe two possible evolutionary consequences: either full-scale defection or the persistence of the initial frequency of cooperators. The latter scenario indicates players' uninterested or neutral behavior in relation to the interaction due to their satisfaction on the baseline payoff.

Tehrik e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Militancy in Pakistan

Purpose: Negotiations between two parties always have newsworthiness. Results of the negotiations can be strongly influenced by the media coverage. Pakistan’s government was also involved in peace negotiation with Tahrik e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) during January and February 2014. It was the most discussing issue in Pakistani media at that time. The aim of this research is to analyze the editorial policy of three Pakistani English language newspapers; Dawn, Nation and The News to check their favorable or unfavorable behavior regarding peace talks during January and February 2014.
 Design/Methodology/Approach: Agenda setting, priming and farming theories were used in this study. Qualitative content analysis method was used in this study to analyze the editorial policy of these three newspapers.
 Findings: The results revealed that all these three newspapers gave significant coverage to the peace talks issue but Nation gave more coverage to the issue. Findings also revealed that Dawn and The News, most of the time showed neutral behavior but tilted towards unfavorable position regarding peace talks. Nation showed strongly unfavorable behavior regarding peace talks.
 Implications/Originality/Value: So it is concluded that all these three newspapers were mostly against the peace talks and government and media were not on the same page on the issue of peace talks.

Is there a self-positivity bias for destination memory? Behavioral and ERP evidence

Despite extensive existing research concerning source memory (i.e., memory for what has been said, given, or done to us by whom) during social interaction, destination memory (i.e., memory for what we have said, given, or done to whom) remains to be explored. Furthermore, although destination memory is believed to involve a self-reference process, it remains unclear whether such a process is sufficient to trigger a self-positivity bias. To address these issues, we combined the destination memory paradigm with the social dilemma game to compare destination memory for cooperation and cheating. Both behavioral performance and the neural index of successful encoding, the Dm (difference due to memory) effect, were concerned. Behaviorally, destination memory for cooperative, cheating, and neutral behaviors decreased successively. For neural activities, the pre-400 ms Dm effects during 200–400 ms were non-significant under any condition. In the latency windows of 400–800 ms and 800–1000 ms, the post-400 ms Dm effects were reliably observed for both cooperative and cheating behaviors and were statistically comparable between the two behavior types, but the effect was not obtained for neutral behaviors. These data suggest a self-positivity bias in the behavioral performance but not in the encoding-related Dm effects of destination memory.

Analisis Linguistik Wasathiyyah Dalam Al-Qur’an, Hadis Dan Aqwal Ulama

Wasathiyyah refers to spontaneous, unequivocal, or oblique reactions to anything. Mathematical centers are difficult to define and define, just as passive neutral behavior. Furthermore, contrary to popular belief, the term wasat has two meanings. To eradicate prejudice against wasathiyyah, there is no need to desire the pinnacle of goodness, which comprises knowledge, worship, and worldliness. In the Qur'an, the word wasat appears five times. There are many things that have food in between these two extremes. Each can be found in Al-Baqarah verses 143 and 238 , Al-Qur'an Al-Maidah 89 , Al-Qur'an Al-Qalam 28 , and Al-Qur'an Al-'Adiyat 4-5in the Qur'an .In these verses, the phrase wasath refers to the meanings of midway, just, and choice. Based on the suggested meaning behind this term from a linguistic standpoint, mufassirins and academics express their judgments concerning the features of wasathiyyah in the above verses.

The Influence of Visual Perspective on Moral Licensing Effect

This study examined how visual perspective affected the moral licensing effect. It was hypothesized that participants would act less morally when a moral behavior was recalled or imagined with a first-person perspective, whereas the effect would reverse in the third-person perspective condition. Participants recalled (Study 1) or imagined (Study 2 and 3) either a moral or an immoral/a neutral behavior, with either one of the two visual perspectives. The behavioral intentions of different subsequent moral behaviors as well as a real donating behavior were measured. All experiments found the licensing effect in the first-person perspective conditions but mixed results in the third-person perspective conditions. Moreover, the proposed mediation of construal level was not supported.

Observing physicians acting with different levels of empathy modulates later assessed pain tolerance.

The patient-physician relationship is essential for treatment success. Previous studies demonstrated that physicians who behave empathic in their interaction with patients have a positive effect on health outcomes. In this study, we investigated if the mere perception of physicians as empathic/not empathic modulates pain despite an emotionally neutral interaction with the patients. N = 60 women took part in an experimental study that simulated a clinical interaction. In the paradigm, each participant watched two immersive 360° videos via a head-mounted display from a patient's perspective. The physicians in the videos behaved either empathic or not empathic towards a third person. Importantly, these physicians remained emotionally neutral in the subsequent virtual interaction with the participants. Finally, participants received a controlled, painful pressure stimulus within the narratives of the videos. The physicians in the high compared with the low empathy videos were rated as more empathic and more likable, indicating successful experimental manipulation. In spite of later neutral behaviour of physicians, this short observation of physicians' behaviour towards a third person was sufficient to modulate pain tolerance of the participants. The finding of this study that the mere observation of physicians' behaviour towards a third person modulates pain, despite a neutral direct interaction with the participants, has important clinical implications. Further, the proposed paradigm enables investigating aspects of patient-physician communication that are difficult to examine in a clinical setting.

First Impressions Count! The Role of the Human's Emotional State on Rapport Established with an Empathic versus Neutral Virtual Therapist

Intelligent virtual agents are being endowed with empathic behaviours to perform roles such as virtual therapists. Studies often evaluate the level of rapport established, but do not measure the therapeutic benefit and the relative advantage of empathic versus neutral behaviours. We have created two virtual (empathic/neutral) therapists. Our experiment with 63 participants consisted of one within-subjects (empathic/neutral) and one between-subjects (order) factors. Regardless of the virtual therapist used, improvements in baseline emotion were reported after the first interaction (time one) and further improvement after the second interaction (time two). Our study reveals that if the human initially expresses strong emotional feeling for a problem they are facing, rapport will be higher for the empathic therapist and the level of rapport established at the first meeting will persist regardless of whether the second encounter used empathic or neutral dialogue. Conversely, participants experiencing low emotional feeling reported greater rapport with the neutral therapist, and that level of rapport persisted in the second encounter with the alternative therapist. This study shows that an empathic agent will not necessarily build more rapport or deliver better emotional outcomes than a neutral agent. Further studies are needed to determine when tailoring and complex behaviours are justified.

Who Could We Blame? The Impact of Strategic Orientations on the Failure of Financial Institutions

We evaluate the impact of strategic orientation on the failure probability of financial institutions. Using the US credit union industry as the empirical setting, we find that credit unions which exhibit preferential treatment to borrowers are more likely to fail, whereas those who set operational strategies towards balancing the benefits between savers and borrowers experience a lower failure probability. The impacts appear to be more pronounced in small credit unions and in credit unions which have a lower operating experience. We also find that borrower-oriented credit unions generate lower interest margins while neutral behavior credit unions generate higher margins.

Wild robust capuchin monkey interactions with sympatric primates.

Examining interactions among sympatric primate species can provide interesting information about competition, cooperation, and avoidance between those species. Those interactions can be neutral, positive, or negative for the species involved. Capuchin monkeys are medium-sized primates that can encounter both larger and smaller primates in their varied habitats. Gracile capuchins (Cebus) are reported to present different types of interactions with other primates. Interactions with howler monkeys frequently include physical aggression, while interactions with spider monkeys are mostly threats and chases. Moreover, interaction types are not consistent across populations. Among robust capuchins (Sapajus spp.), however, no reports have been published. Here we describe and classify encounters of Sapajus libidinosus and S. nigritus with Alouatta caraya, A. guariba, Brachyteles arachnoides, and Callithrix jacchus in three sites in the environments of Cerrado, Caatinga (savannah-like), and Atlantic forest, and compare the interaction patterns among sites and different group sizes. The latter is a factor that can influence the outcome, and we expected capuchins in larger groups to be more aggressive toward other primates. Our results of 8421h of total contact with the capuchin groups show that, indeed, capuchins in sites with larger groups presented aggressive interactions with higher frequency. However, the other species' body size also seems important as smaller primates apparently avoided capuchins, and interactions with the larger muriquis were mostly neutral for the capuchin. Capuchins showed neutral or aggressive behaviors toward howler monkeys, with differences between the rainforest and savannah groups. We found that robust capuchins can present aggressive interactions even to primates larger than themselves and that aggressive behavior was the most common response in populations living in larger groups and drier environments.

Use of Dynamic Analysis to Investigate the Behaviour of Short Neutral Sections in the Overhead Line Electrification

The ‘short’ neutral section is a feature of alternating current (AC) railway overhead line electrification that is often unreliable and a source of train delays. However hardly any dynamic analysis of its behaviour has been undertaken. This paper briefly describes the work undertaken investigating the possibility of modelling the behaviour using a novel approach. The potential for thus improving the performance of short neutral sections is evaluated, with particular reference to the UK situation. The analysis fundamentally used dynamic simulation of the pantograph and overhead contact line (OCL) interface, implemented using a proprietary finite element analysis tool. The neutral section model was constructed using physical characteristics and laboratory tests data, and was included in a validated pantograph/OCL simulation model. Simulation output of the neutral section behaviour has been validated satisfactorily against real line test data. Using this method the sensitivity of the neutral section performance in relation to particular parameters of its construction was examined. A limited number of parameter adjustments were studied, seeking potential improvements. One such improvement identified involved the additional inclusion of a lever arm at the trailing end of the neutral section. A novel application of pantograph/OCL dynamic simulation to modelling neutral section behaviour has been shown to be useful in assessing the modification of neutral section parameters.

First encounter effects in testing of highly automated vehicles during two experimental occasions – The need for recurrent testing

Abstract To explore driver behavior in highly automated vehicles (HAVs), independent researchers are mainly conducting short experiments. This limits the ability to explore drivers’ behavioral changes over time, which is crucial when research has the intention to reveal human behavior beyond the first-time use. The current paper shows the methodological importance of repeated testing in experience and behavior related studies of HAVs. The study combined quantitative and qualitative data to capture effects of repeated interaction between drivers and HAVs. Each driver ( n = 8 n=8 ) participated in the experiment on two different occasions (∼90 minutes) with one-week interval. On both occasions, the drivers traveled approximately 40 km on a rural road at AstaZero proving grounds in Sweden and encountered various traffic situations. The participants could use automated driving (SAE level 4) or choose to drive manually. Examples of data collected include gaze behavior, perceived safety, as well as interviews and questionnaires capturing general impressions, trust and acceptance. The analysis shows that habituation effects were attenuated over time. The drivers went from being exhilarated on the first occasion, to a more neutral behavior on the second occasion. Furthermore, there were smaller variations in drivers’ self-assessed perceived safety on the second occasion, and drivers were faster to engage in non-driving related activities and become relaxed (e. g., they spent more time glancing off road and could focus more on non-driving related activities such as reading). These findings suggest that exposing drivers to HAVs on two (or more) successive occasions may provide more informative and realistic insights into driver behavior and experience as compared to only one occasion. Repeating an experiment on several occasions is of course a balance between the cost and added value, and future research should investigate in more detail which studies need to be repeated on several occasions and to what extent.

Effect of sodium alginate molecular structure on electrospun membrane cell adhesion

Alginate-based electrospun nanofibers prepared via electrospinning technique represent a class of materials with promising applications in the biomedical and pharmaceutical industries. However, to date, the effect of alginate molecular mass and block composition on the biological response of such systems remains to some extent unclear. As such, in the present work, three alginates (i.e., M.pyr, L.hyp, A.nod) with different molecular features are employed to prepare nanofibers whose ability to promote cell adhesion is explored by using both skin and bone cell lines. Initially, a preliminary investigation of the raw materials is carried out via rheological and zeta-potential measurements to determine the different grade of polyelectrolyte behaviour of the alginate samples. Specifically, both the molecular mass and block composition are found to be important factors affecting the alginate response, with long chains and a predominance of guluronic moieties leading to a marked polyelectrolyte nature (i.e., lower dependence of the solution viscosity upon the polymer concentration). Subsequently, physically crosslinked alginate nanofibrous mats are first morphologically characterized via both scanning electron and atomic force microscopy, which show a homogenous and defect-free structure, and their biological response is then evaluated. Noticeably, fibroblast and keratinocyte cell lines do not show significant differences in terms of cell adhesion on the three mats (i.e., 30–40% and 10–20% with respect to the seeded cells, respectively), with the formers presenting a greater affinity toward the alginate-based nanofibers. Conversely, both the investigated osteoblast cells are characterized by a distinct behaviour depending on the alginate type. Specifically, polysaccharide samples with an evident polyelectrolyte nature are found to better promote cell viability (i.e., cell adhesion in the range 15–36% with respect to seeded cells) compared to the ones displaying a nearly neutral behaviour (i.e., cell adhesion in the range 5–25% with respect to seeded cells). Therefore, the obtained results, despite being preliminary, suggest that the alginate type (i.e., molecular structure properties) may play a topical role in conditioning the efficiency of healing patches for bone reparation, but it has a negligible effect in the case of skin regeneration.

Revenue sharing on the Internet

Revenue sharing contracts between Content Providers (CPs) and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) can act as leverage for enhancing the infrastructure of the Internet. ISPs can be incentivised to make investments in network infrastructure that improve Quality of Service (QoS) for users if attractive contracts are negotiated between them and CPs. The idea here is that part of the revenue of CPs is shared with ISPs to invest in infrastructure improvement. We propose a model in which CPs (leaders) determine contracts, and an ISP (follower) reacts by strategically determining the infrastructure enhancement (effort) for each CP. Two cases are studied: (i) the ISP differentiates between the CPs and puts (potentially) a different level of efforts to improve the QoS of each CP, and (ii) the ISP does not differentiate between CPs and makes equal amount of effort for all the CPs. The last scenario can be viewed as neutral behavior by the ISP. Our analysis of optimal contracts shows that preference of CPs for the neutral and non-neutral regime depends on their monetizing power - CPs which can better monetize their demand tend to prefer non-neutral regime whereas the weaker CPs tend to prefer the neutral regime. Interestingly, ISP revenue, as well as social utility, are also found to be higher under the non-neutral regime. We then propose an intermediate regulatory regime that we call "soft-neutral", where efforts put by the ISP for all the CPs need not be equal same but the disparity is not wide. We show that the soft-neutral regime alleviates the loss in social utility in the neutral regime and the outcome further improves when CPs determine their contracts through bargaining.

Effect of Septoria on the specific activity of Glycines max (L.) Merr hydrolases

Soybean (Glycines max (L.) Merr) is culture-sensitive to diseases and infections. The article states that a detailed study of the physiological processes at the biochemical level is required. It induces oxidative stress to create a cultivar resistant to S. glycines. Enzymes play a leading role in adaptation to stressors. The hydrolase enzymes we have selected for the study have selective neutral behaviour (concerning S. glycines on the studied soybean varieties), which allows them to be used as protein markers for the selection of the most resistant cultivar to S. glycines at the molecular level.

Using prosocial behavior to safeguard mental health and foster emotional well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic: A registered report protocol for a randomized trial.

The COVID-19 pandemic, the accompanying lockdown measures, and their possible long-term effects have made mental health a pressing public health concern. Acts that focus on benefiting others—known as prosocial behaviors—offer one promising intervention that is both flexible and low cost. However, neither the range of emotional states prosocial acts impact nor the size of those effects is currently clear, both of which directly influence its attractiveness as a treatment option. Using a large online sample from Canada and the United States, we will examine the effect of a three-week prosocial intervention on two indicators of emotional well-being (happiness and the belief that one’s life is valuable) and mental health (anxiety and depression). Respondents will be randomly assigned to perform prosocial, self-focused, or neutral behaviors each week. Two weeks after the intervention, a final survey will assess whether the intervention has a lasting effect on mental health and emotional well-being. Our results will illuminate whether prosocial interventions are a viable approach to addressing mental health needs during the current COVID-19 pandemic, as well for those who face emotional challenges during normal times.