Power Game Research Articles

Hubristic Manipulation and Caleb(an) Resistance in Ex Machina

This paper investigates the literary/psychological manifestations in Ex Machina through analysing hubristic attitudes and morally driven resistance to unbridled hegemony. It traces the ways Garland externalized the conflict between human unethical superego and humane alter ego. The modern man’s aspiration to play god through developing a fully sentient AI droid is critically discussed in comparison with the Prospero-Caliban conflict in Shakespeare’s The Tempest as well as Ovid’s Pygmalion. The power game played throughout the drama is also probed in terms of Nathan’s manipulation of Caleb, Caleb’s resistance to Nathan’s hegemony and Ava’s eventually successful counter-manipulations. Besides, it attempts to explore the potentials of psychorobitc art as cinematically featured.

Twenty Years of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization: Achievements, Challenges and Prospects

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) started from solving boundary issues, grew from counter-terrorism cooperation, developed and deepened in political, economic, cultural, educational and other fields of cooperation, and gradually developed into a new model of multilateral cooperation. This paper intends to outline the main achievements, challenges and prospects of the SCO after the two decades of its existence. After debate and discussion, the results that emerge from this paper show that over the past 20 years since the SCO establishment in June 2001, its concept of cooperation has been constantly enriched and developed. Its cooperation mechanism has been constantly enriched and improved; and its areas of cooperation have been expanded. However, with its development over time and the advancement of its cooperation practices, the SCO also faces challenges and development difficulties on its way forward; these include the facts of: the intensification of great power game in the region, the weakness of the sense of community between its member states and the transformation of cooperation pattern faces after expansion. Looking ahead, the Shanghai Spirit will guide its multilateral cooperation vision. The SCO mechanism provides an important guarantee for its multilateral cooperation ahead. The new type of international relations will serve as an important driving force for its multilateral cooperation vision. Based on our findings, this paper reasoned that the SCO is fully capable of exerting greater influence and delivering greater results in the years to come.

An Extensive Evolutionary Mental Game Model for the Mandatory Evacuation of Protesters by Police

The street protests and other mass demonstrations that have occurred frequently in recent years have resulted in considerable political pressure and have destabilized countries. How governments respond to such emergencies, and whether to evacuate protesters quickly, has been one of the most important public management challenges facing modern governments. In the case of evacuating protesters through police force, issues to consider include the cognitive differences among the conflicting parties and the cost-benefit considerations between the alternative strategies of mandatory evacuation and compromise. In this paper, the evolutionary dynamic of the mandatory evacuation of protesters by police is analyzed by extensive evolutionary game theory. Considering the cognitive differences among the conflicting parties, mental models of the interactions between government officials and protesters are constructed, which can not only avoid the uncertainty of evolutionary equilibrium but also consider the belief learning in the interior of the dynamic stage game. The evolutionary dynamic analysis of the mandatory evacuation of protesters is subsequently performed. To verify the effectiveness of the model set out, a multiagent simulation analysis based on a real case study of the Ningbo PX incident is presented. Furthermore, the decision-making related to police evacuation of protesters is based on the cost-benefit analysis between mandatory evacuation and compromise, the minimal number of police required, and the on-the-spot deployment plans of the police. The analysis shows that when facing protesters marching along a street, the evacuation measures are more effective if the police actions target the first several rows of protesters. However, in the case of protesters gathering near iconic buildings (or surrounding their demonstration leaders), the emergency plan of the mandatory evacuation of the protesters is less effective.

THE INFLUENCE OF INTERACTIVE LEARNING ON THE LEVEL OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT OF JUNIOR SCHOOLCHILD

The article considers the influence of interactive learning and constant psychological support on the level of mental development of a junior schoolchild. The analysis of literature sources showed that interactive learning as a specific form of organization of cognitive activity, promotes the manifestation of internal potential, optimizes the mental development of primary school students, creates comfortable learning conditions in which each student feels his success and intellectual ability. It is substantiated that the game, as one of the types of interactive learning, plays an important role in working with younger students, because the game is an extremely powerful tool for developing the abilities of primary school students. The experiment involved 366 junior high school students, namely: 111 students of the experimental class of parallel "B" of the primary school of the first stream, 129 students of the experimental class of parallel "B" of the primary school of the second stream and 126 students of the control class of parallel "A" of the second stream. The following methods were used: 1) Phillips school anxiety test; 2) sociometric method (J. Moreno); 3) proofreading test "Ring of Landolt" (selectivity of attention); 4) methods for studying the concentration and stability of attention (modification of the Pieron-Roser method); 5) methods for determining the mental development of junior high school students EF Zambatsevichene. It is determined that modern children need a completely different approach to education and upbringing. learning, in which each student feels his success and intellectual ability. The influence of interactive learning on: the formation of a high level of motivation to learn and the level of cohesion of class groups; to improve selectivity and concentration; to improve logical and mechanical memory, reduce anxiety in younger students. It is concluded that an effective means of developing the mental abilities of primary school students are new methods of interactive learning, including psychological play in combination with constant psychological support. It was determined that . From this we can conclude about the effectiveness of the latest methods of interactive learning and psychological support for the development of the personality of primary school children. Based on the results of the study, the impact of interactive learning on: reducing the level of anxiety in younger students; on the formation of a high level of motivation for learning and the level of cohesion of class groups; on the selectivity and concentration of attention; to improve logical and mechanical memory. Based on the obtained results, methodological recommendations for primary school teachers were developed and tested in order to ensure the positive impact of interactive learning on the development of the personality of primary school students. Prospects for further research are the improvement of interactive teaching methods, including psychological games and their further implementation in the educational process of secondary schools.

La pantalla como síntoma: La teleserie “Juegos de poder” y el 18 de octubre

Se demuestra que varios de los rasgos que se esgrimieron posteriormente como posibles explicaciones del movimiento social del 18 de octubre se hallaban presentes, con nitidez, en la serie “Juegos de poder”, que se exhibía en la televisión abierta en forma paralela a estos acontecimientos. De esta manera se valida la necesidad de ejercer la crítica cultural, ya que los productos de nuestra entretención masiva, especialmente la audiovisual, constituyen el espacio donde se construye, se valida y se difunde la realidad social.

A luta pelo poder dizer “impeachment” e “golpe” na narrativa midiática do impedimento de Dilma Rousseff

O processo de impedimento de Dilma Rousseff foi um dos acontecimentos históricos mais emblemáticos e tensos de nossa história política recente, sendo marcado por uma luta acirrada pelo poder e pelo poder dizer. Diante desse confronto discursivo, surgiu o objetivo central da presente pesquisa, que é analisar os processos de designação desse acontecimento histórico na narrativa midiática do Jornal O Globo e das revistas Veja e Carta Capital, em suas versões online, observando os funcionamentos discursivos que produziram os sentidos de legalidade (efeito parafrástico) e de golpe (efeito metafórico), para o termo “impeachment”. Para tanto, filiamo-nos à teoria da Análise de Discurso Pecheuxtiana, a partir da qual desenvolvemos nossos gestos de análise sobre o funcionamento da memória discursiva nas narrativas midiáticas dos referidos órgãos de imprensa. Para efeitos de conclusão, podemos dizer que a narrativa midiática produzida sobre o evento de 2016 foi determinada por um jogo de forças que acabou institucionalizando o discurso da legalidade, o qual foi construído, essencialmente, por meio do funcionamento da paráfrase discursiva, que (re)atualizou os saberes da FD do impeachment, cristalizados no imaginário social brasileiro, após o processo de impeachment de Collor. Por seu turno, a narrativa midiática do golpe foi construída, essencialmente, por meio do efeito metafórico, que produziu a deriva dos sentidos em torno do significante “impeachment” que, em meio ao jogo de forças existentes, gradativamente, tem se descolado do sentido de legalidade e tem funcionado como paráfrase de golpe.

Is orientalism bad? Between the communication game and the non-game

Linguistics deals with communication and its pragmatic effects in terms of dynamic changes in human relationships fostered by the information circulated between the interacting parties. Such relationships may be especially complex in the inter-cultural context, when certain information belonging to the source environment may not be clear to the participants functioning in the target environment. Communication may relate to the facts verified with solely technical means, but also to the unverifiable convictions, views and stereotypes. Its specific manifestation in the contemporary circulation of pop-cultural (and not only) relations is the presence of orientalism-related threads. Some premises on whether such threads should be recognized as harmful and distorting the communication perspective by their very definition – and why – are presented in the paper. The methodology of game research, with reference to the psychological games and the roles of the Child, the Adult and the Parent, being alluded on purpose by the triad of the expert, non-expert and careless narratives, makes it possible to differentiate effectively the verifiable reports on facts from the narratives which, by their very definition, are not subject to verification, and which are often misleading or do not go beyond the harmful stereotypes.

Intelligence and Mind Games in Concept Teaching in Social Studies

In the Social Studies lesson, the impacts of using intelligence and mind games on academic achievement and students' attitudes towards Social Studies lesson were examined for the teaching of the concepts in the 6th grade Effective Citizenship Learning Area. In the study, semi-experimental pattern with pre-test-post-test, experimental-control group was studied. In the research, teaching the concepts with intelligence and mind games prepared by the researchers was carried out with the experimental group. On the other hand, the control group was taught in line with the activities in the current curriculum. As a result of the t-test analysis of the pre-post-application scores of attitude in the control and experimental group, it was observed that there was a significant difference in favor of the post-test both in control group (t = -2.955, p <.05) and in experimental group (t = -4.109, p <.05). As a result of the research, a conclusion was reached in favor of the experimental group in terms of both academic achievement (t = -7.028, p <.05) and attitude towards the course (t = -2.411, p <.05). Intelligence and mind games can be used to teach the concepts of the Social Studies course. Mind games named "Tick Tack Concept" (Tik Tak Kavram Oyunu) and "Keep in your mind" (Aklında Tut) which were developed in this study can be used for concept teaching.

Simple guilt and cooperation

We introduce simple guilt into a generic prisoner’s dilemma (PD) game and solve for the equilibria of the resulting psychological game. It is shown that for all guilt parameters, it is a pure strategy equilibrium that both players defect. But if the guilt parameter surpasses a threshold, a mixed strategy equilibrium and a pure strategy equilibrium in which both players cooperate emerge. We implement three payoff constellations of the PD game in a laboratory experiment and find in line with our equilibrium analysis that first- and second-order beliefs are highly correlated and that the probability of cooperation depends positively on these beliefs. Maximum likelihood estimations of a model of noisy introspection reveal that experimental data is best fitted with positive guilt levels and that omission of guilt results in a substantial increase in the noise parameters.

Energy geopolitics in Central Asia: China’s involvement and responses

To ensure adequate oil supply and mitigate geopolitical uncertainties, China has diversified its sources of crude oil imports in recent years. Central Asia is a neighbor region of China, rich in oil and natural gas reserves, which can play an important role in China’s strategy to reduce its dependence on energy supplies from the Middle East. The geopolitical attributes of energy and the geopolitical situation in Central Asia determine that Central Asia’s energy development and cooperation are disturbed by domestic and foreign factors, and also face the risks of complex energy structural evolution and geopolitical games, which create a unique energy geopolitical pattern in Central Asia. This study proposes an analysis framework for energy geopolitics in Central Asia, arguing that the complexity of energy geopolitics in Central Asia can be demonstrated from the perspectives of both the main countries of energy development (game actors) and the whole-industry-chain of energy development (game themes). The most obvious feature of Central Asian energy geopolitics is the fierce game that is played between key countries and regions, Russia, the United States, China, the European Union (EU), Japan, India, Iran, and Turkey. Strategic geopolitical considerations and resource requirements necessitate the active participation of these players in Central Asian energy development and mean that the foreign policy agendas of states in this region are likely to become ever more crowded. Therefore, the energy cooperation between China and Central Asia faces the geopolitical risks of the great power games. It is necessary to develop reasonable and effective policies to establish guarantee mechanisms to minimize the risks of energy cooperation. This study characterizes the energy geopolitical strategies of Russia, the United States, China, and other related powers in Central Asia. It also assesses the country risks faced by energy cooperation between China and Central Asian countries. To withstand possible geopolitical and country risks, this study develops a series of policy frameworks which can be used to fortify the stability of the energy cooperation between China and Central Asian countries, and can also be effective in responding to the array of risks that might be encountered in the coming years.

The Game of Communication: An Analysis of The Emoji Landscape in Social Media

The empowerment of social media makes us into the era of diversification of transmission. The spread of the mass media content production and social organization monopoly pattern is broken. The Internet emerges as one the most unique landscape within the framework of public discourse. As a communication tool, emojis gradually become a refuge for various ideologies. It can be said that the popularity of emojis on social media is the result of a power game between various forms of ideologies. On the one hand, the emoji landscape formed in social media can be seen as the awakening of the subject consciousness of the public and the objectified product of network quality, but on the other hand, people have to watch out for the dissolution of social solemnness brought by the excessive entertainment of emojis, and the public has since become one-dimensional creature.

COVID-19 and Power Games in Africa: Can Sino-African Relations Withstand?

COVID-19 and Power Games in Africa: Can Sino-African Relations Withstand?

How the Bible Is Written

How the Bible Is Written

Becoming-game: an assemblage of perspectives on challenges for early career academics in neoliberal times

Our script Becoming-game is an assemblage in the spirit of Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) concept of the assemblage as a contingent formation of elements that could equally be separate, differently formed and/or combined with other things altogether. It comprises fragments of our distinct creative writings around the theme of games from a collaborative creative writing research project in which we – eight academics from differing backgrounds, all bearing broadly feminist and/or queer outlooks – came together to share and compare our experiences and perspectives with the aim of realising strategies we can engage to resist inequality in and beyond academia today. Performing our assemblage enriched our appreciation of the multiple themes running in and across our writings – and thus of the complex games played in and through neoliberal academia. Theatre researcher and practitioner Di Niro directed our collective in translating the creative piece to a theatrical medium. We performed Becoming-game at the JM Coetze Centre’s ‘Scholarship is the New Conservative’ Symposium on 6 September 2019. Overall, this collaborative work speaks to games of power and privilege, especially although not only those of gender and late capitalist modes of production.

Evolutionary compromise game on assortative mixing networks

Different from the cooperative game, in reality, heterogeneous individuals who choose to cooperate usually need to make a consistent strategic decision instead of directly entering the process of dividing payoffs. During the process of making consensus decisions, subjective psychology is a key factor affecting the final result, especially when individuals have similar abilities. Considering the subjective attitudes and objective abilities, this paper proposes a compromise game to model the dynamic change of subjective compromise value of individuals, which is a kind of psychological game. Here, the compromise value represented by parameter α is the strategy in game, which ranges from 0 to 1. And in terms of the continuous nature of compromise value α, we use particle swarm optimization to update strategies. Moreover, the subjective attitudes are profoundly affected by social surroundings, and thus we simulate this model on diverse assortative mixing networks by regulating the assortativity coefficient r. Simulations show that the compromise value of individuals gradually decreases as the assortativity of networks increases, and the compromise values of high-degree individuals are much higher than that of low-degree individuals in networks. Through the simulation results, we find that the subjective compromise of individual is greatly relevant with environment, which is important for the development of individuals. When meeting the individuals who have the similar ability, individuals from disassortative network tend to persist himself compared with individuals from assortative networks.

Power Game: Position of the Dominant Actors in Public Assets Management of Forest and Wildlife Sectors

This paper provides an understanding of the issues which emerged as a result of the prevailing power struggle to control agendas and resources that take place between actors in policy making process related to forest and wildlife management. The paper helps to learn the manner in which actors relate in the power game. The paper examines the way change in bureaucratic paradigm has affected other actors’ interests and beliefs in designing as well as implementing policies for improving forest and wildlife management in Tanzania. The paper reveals that more reform efforts are needed to eradicate classical public administration bureaucratic paradigm and increase the power of local communities and private sector by fully adopting the new public management in Tanzania public sectors of forest and wildlife conservation. The paper suggests that current poor policy outcomes are the result of the strong beliefs and adherence by bureaucrats to the existing policy, legal and regulatory frames on one hand, and loss of other actors’ interests and beliefs (i.e. local communities and the private sector interests and beliefs) into the current systems and processes which also include policy, legal and regulatory frames, on the other. The paper shows that the present policy, legal and regulatory frames collectively contradict and discourage participation of key actors in designing and implementing policies. The paper further indicates that local communities’ and the private sector’s ideas are without doubt weapons or strategic tools which can have political, social and economic influence, but unfortunately at the moment MNRT has not been able to make use of such weapons to improve the poor policy outcomes. Hence, paper suggests that the ideas which are needed to design and implement policies must serve the interests of the dominant actors (i.e. local communities and the private sector, according to Forest Policy 1998 and the Revised Wildlife Policy 2007) by strengthening their position in the power game of designing and implementing policies. Currently, the ideas which are being used in power game of designing and implementing policies are those coming from bureaucrats and development partners, thereby weakening the position of the local communities and private sector as dominant actors. The weak position of local communities and the private sector in the power game has led to the formulation and implementation of weak policy provisions and eventually produced poor policy outcomes. Therefore, paper further suggests that status quo of marginalisation of key actors in designing and implementing policies should and can be avoided. At the moment, bureaucrats may have designed policies, legislations and regulations that allows them to take more control over forest and wildlife resources. However, paper shows that local communities have more opportunities than the bureaucrats which increases their power to defy the laws and regulations introduced, such as preventing encroachments into the forest and wildlife reserves. Similarly, the private sector may choose to withhold their technical and financial prowess. Thus, MNRT should make use of the opportunities possessed by local communities and the private sector, as compared to current marginalisation. Additionally, MNRT should recognise that interaction and mutual trust are necessary in any established social system. Keywords: Bureaucratic Paradigm, New Public Management, Classical Public Administration, Forest and Wildlife Management, Tanzania DOI: 10.7176/PPAR/10-10-09 Publication date: October 31 st 2020

The Effectiveness of Mind Games in Improving the Psychological Adjustment in Older Men

The Effectiveness of Mind Games in Improving the Psychological Adjustment in Older Men

Systemic failures in north–south climate change knowledge transfer: a case study of the Congo Basin

ABSTRACT Climate change cooperation projects in the Congo Basin are often rooted in a paradigm based on scientific knowledge transfer between north and south. Their outputs, however, have often been criticized by both policymakers and scientists in Central African countries who claim that the projects are not contributing to the development of the Congo Basin. This study used the Research-Integration-Utilization framework to identify and document how the combination of power imbalances and misalignment of actors’ incentives undermined the capacity building potential of a large, multi-year north–south knowledge transfer project. Using data from documents, interviews and participant observation, we found that, under the umbrella of a development project, experts from developed countries pushed the specific aims of research toward global modelling instead of focusing on local impacts on land use in the Congo Basin, which were the primary concerns of stakeholders in the area. Moreover, both the integration and utilization phases were undermined by the power imbalance and resulted in a product of little relevance or utility for Congo Basin countries. Key policy insights As currently conducted, north–south scientific climate change knowledge transfer is not substantially supporting either the development prospects or the capacity building needs of Congo Basin countries. The main cause of this problem lies in domination of the scientific climate change knowledge transfer process by power games, along with misalignment of actors’ incentives. Identifying the interests and agendas of all actors at the integration stage before the research stage would be a useful strategy for such projects moving forward.

Unethical amnesia responds more to instrumental than to hedonic motives

Humans care about morality. Yet, they often engage in actions that contradict their moral self. Unethical amnesia is observed when people do not remember or remember less vividly these actions. This paper explores two reasons why individuals may experience unethical amnesia. Forgetting past unethical behavior may be motivated by purely hedonic or affective reasons, such as the willingness to maintain one's moral self-image, but also by instrumental or strategic motives, in anticipation of future misbehavior. In a large-scale incentivized online experiment (n = 1,322) using a variant of a mind game, we find that hedonic considerations are not sufficient to motivate the forgetting of past cheating behavior. This is confirmed in a follow-up experiment (n = 1,005) in which recalls are elicited the same day instead of 3 wk apart. However, when unethical amnesia can serve as a justification for a future action, such as deciding on whether to keep undeserved money, motivated forgetting is more likely. Thereby, we show that motivated forgetting occurs as a self-excuse to justify future immoral decisions.

Great Power Game around the Chemical Weapons Attacks in Syria and the New Norm on Banning Chemical Weapons

Great Power Game around the Chemical Weapons Attacks in Syria and the New Norm on Banning Chemical Weapons