Preferences Of Others Research Articles

Metadiscourse and metalinguistic talk about script choice in Serbia: chasms and consequences for criticality

In Serbia, script diversity remains the norm whereby Serbian is routinely written in both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. This is not free of political contestation. Metadiscourses construct Cyrillic as the authentic script and central to ethnoidentity or, alternatively, as indexing dangerous nationalism, conservatism and Russian-leaning politics. On the flip side, metadiscourse associates Latin with modernity and progress, but for some with unwelcomed Western influence. But how do individuals themselves understand script preferences? This paper takes a folk linguistic approach to investigate whether the metalinguistic talk of Serbian individuals about script preferences is indeed informed by political metadiscourse. The data concern not only the stated preferences of individuals but also, borrowing from theory of mind, metatalk about how people explain the script preferences of others. The paper shows that the ideological oppositionality presupposed in metadiscourse tends not to be validated in metalinguistic talk, reminding us to be cognisant of chasms between societal-level metadiscourse and the lived experiences of individuals, and to avoid assumptions about the reach and impact of critical metadiscourse.

Attraction to politically extreme users on social media.

Political segregation is a pressing issue, particularly on social media platforms. Recent research suggests that one driver of segregation is political acrophily-people's preference for others in their political group who have more extreme (rather than more moderate) political views. However, acrophily has been found in lab experiments, where people choose to interact with others based on little information. Furthermore, these studies have not examined whether acrophily is associated with animosity toward one's political out-group. Using a combination of a survey experiment (N = 388) and an analysis of the retweet network on Twitter (3,898,327 unique ties), we find evidence for users' tendency for acrophily in the context of social media. We observe that this tendency is more pronounced among conservatives on Twitter and that acrophily is associated with higher levels of out-group animosity. These findings provide important in- and out-of-the-lab evidence for understanding acrophily on social media.

Disentangling the effects of similarity, familiarity, and liking on social inference strategies.

People constantly make inferences about others' beliefs and preferences. People can draw on various sources of information to make these inferences, including stereotypes, self-knowledge, and target-specific knowledge. What leads people to use each of these sources of information over others? The current study examined factors that influence the use of these sources of information, focusing on three interpersonal dimensions - the extent to which people feel (a) familiar with, (b) similar to, or (c) like the target. In four studies (total N = 1136), participants inferred the beliefs and preferences of others - celebrities (Studies 1a-1b), constructed fictional targets (Study 2), and actual acquaintances (Study 3). Participants also rated familiarity with, similarity to, and liking of the target. Analyses assessed the use of each source of information by comparing inferences with information provided by those sources. Familiarity was associated with greater use of target-specific knowledge, while similarity and liking were associated with self-knowledge. Low similarity and high liking were associated with increased use of stereotypes. We discuss the implication of these findings and their applicability to unique cases, including inferences about celebrities, public figures, and positively stereotyped groups, in which familiarity, similarity, and liking do not perfectly align.

Measurement of agricultural productivity and levels of development in the Malaprabha river basin, Karnataka, India

The present paper attempts to analyze the spatial patterns of agricultural productivity and assess regional disparities in the levels of agricultural development in the Malaprabha river basin, Karnataka state. The Malaprabha river basin is one of the natural regions, with agriculture being the lifeline activity of the inhabitants of the basin. However, surprisingly, the region experiences greater regional disparities in overall development in general and agricultural development in particular. Regional disparities in the river basin may be natural due to unequal distribution of natural resources or man-made in the sense of neglect of some regions and preferences for others for investment and infrastructural facilities, and to some extent, the developmental policies of the region. The present study has utilized the published sources of data and reports collected from the Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Govt. of Karnataka, the Directorate of Census Operations in Karnataka, Govt. of India, Bangalore, and other related statistical records at taluka level at two points in time, i.e., 1993–94 and 2013–14. Though the study area is a natural region, the taluka has been taken as the smallest unit of study. The findings suggest that significant disparities have extensively affected the various aspects of agricultural development in the talukas of the river basin. The areas with a low level of development should be given top priority so that they may come up at par with the developed areas and the concept of planning with social justice may be fulfilled.

Neural Reward Representations Enable Utilitarian Welfare Maximization.

From deciding which meal to prepare for our guests to trading off the proenvironmental effects of climate protection measures against their economic costs, we often must consider the consequences of our actions for the well-being of others (welfare). Vexingly, the tastes and views of others can vary widely. To maximize welfare according to the utilitarian philosophical tradition, decision-makers facing conflicting preferences of others should choose the option that maximizes the sum of the subjective value (utility) of the entire group. This notion requires comparing the intensities of preferences across individuals. However, it remains unclear whether such comparisons are possible at all and (if they are possible) how they might be implemented in the brain. Here, we show that female and male participants can both learn the preferences of others by observing their choices and represent these preferences on a common scale to make utilitarian welfare decisions. On the neural level, multivariate support vector regressions revealed that a distributed activity pattern in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), a brain region previously associated with reward processing, represented the preference strength of others. Strikingly, also the utilitarian welfare of others was represented in the VMPFC and relied on the same neural code as the estimated preferences of others. Together, our findings reveal that humans can behave as if they maximized utilitarian welfare using a specific utility representation and that the brain enables such choices by repurposing neural machinery processing the reward others receive.

Globalization’s Cultural Odyssey: Navigating Multicultural Waters in Business

Globalization has ushered in a transformative era in business, eradicating borders and fostering cross-border commerce. This phenomenon has led to an influx of multinational corporations (MNCs) venturing into developing nations. Consequently, MNCs are now prevalent in various countries, with diverse cultural landscapes. The essence of managing across cultures has emerged as a direct outcome of globalization, necessitating that expatriates, hailing from foreign cultures, adapt to and lead individuals from disparate cultural backgrounds in unfamiliar settings. This challenge has yielded a mixed track record, with both successes and failures. Managing across cultures demands the intricate balance of assimilating into, and yet retaining, one’s own culture while comprehending and respecting the cultures, customs, management practices, and preferences of others. It is a dynamic process of adjusting to a multitude of sometimes conflicting cultures while preserving one’s own cultural identity

Car-sharing subscription preferences and the role of incentives: The case of Copenhagen, Munich, and Tel Aviv-Yafo

Car-sharing services provide short-term car access, contributing to sustainable urban mobility and generating positive societal and environmental impacts. Attraction and retention of members are essential for the profitability and survival of these services in cities. Yet, the relevance of a variety of possible business models’ features for car-sharing subscriptions is still under-explored. This study examines individuals’ preferences for subscribing to different car-sharing business models, focusing on the attractiveness of car-sharing-related features and incentives in different contexts. We designed a stated preference experiment and collected data from three different urban car-sharing settings: Copenhagen, Munich, and Tel Aviv-Yafo. A mixed logit model was estimated to uncover the determinants of each city’s car-sharing plan subscription. The achieved insights pave the road for the actual design of car-sharing business models and attractive incentives by car-sharing companies in the studied or similar cities. Our findings reveal that although some car-sharing intrinsic features are likely to be relevant everywhere (e.g., pricing, parking conditions), the local context affects the preferences of others. In Munich, respondents prefer car-sharing services with fleets composed of electric vehicles and value high accessibility to shared cars, so marketing campaigns focusing on the positive environmental impacts of car-sharing and strategic distribution of shared cars (e.g., hubs) are expected to be very appealing there. As for Copenhagen, a high probability of finding a car, the opportunity to book a shared car in advance, and having plans including other modes are more appreciated, making hubs in high-demand areas and Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) plans very attractive. Finally, in Tel Aviv, our findings highlight the advantages of exploring different pricing schemes and offering dynamic incentives to users for fleet rebalancing to positively contribute to car-sharing subscriptions and ridership.

An experimental investigation of social risk preferences for health

In this paper, we use the risk apportionment technique of Eeckhoudt, Rey and Schlesinger (2007) to study higher order risk preferences for others’ health as well as ex-ante and ex-post inequality preferences for social risky distributions, and their interaction. In an experiment on a sample of university students acting as impartial spectators, we observe risk aversion towards social health losses and a dislike of ex-ante inequality. In addition, evidence for ex-post inequality seeking is much weaker than evidence for ex-ante inequality aversion. Because ex-ante inequality aversion is unrelated to risk aversion, we conclude that simple forms of utilitarianism are not relevant for individual judgment of social risk over health. Last, our investigation of precautionary distribution, which would occur when one particular group in the society suffers from background health risk, shows substantial polarization of preferences.

Influences of eye gaze cues on memory and its mechanisms: The function and evolution of social attention.

During evolution, humans have formed a priority perceptual preference for others’ gazes. The gaze direction of others is called the gaze cue, conveying environmental information, a critical non-verbal communication in early humans. Recently, empirical evidence has indicated that gaze cues can affect high-level cognitive processes, such as memory. Unlike non-social cues (e.g., arrows), gaze cues elicit special social attention. Research determining the underlying mechanisms suggests that social intention influences observers’ visual attention and influences their memory. This article provides a brief review of the current state of research on the relationship between gaze cues and memory. Future studies should focus on multiple gaze cues, the social nature of gaze cues, and clinical research.

Consensus Reaching in Multiple Attribute Group Decision Making: A Multi-Stage Optimization Feedback Mechanism With Individual Bounded Confidences

Existing consensus models focus on improving the group consensus level, but ignore whether a higher group consensus level means higher mutual acceptance of decision makers. In the field of opinion dynamics, the bounded confidence model asserts that the decision makers will accept the preferences of others within a neighborhood of theirs with width a certain confidence level. Inspired by this research methodology, this article develops a consensus model to address the acceptance issue based on individual bounded confidences. Specifically, a bounded confidence-based consensus measure is designed to measure the level of group mutual acceptance, and a multi-stage optimization feedback mechanism based on individual bounded confidences is proposed to maximize the group mutual acceptance and minimize the amount of preference adjustment. A numerical example and a simulation analysis are included to illustrate the use of the model and to justify its effectiveness, respectively.

Bonobos assign meaning to food calls based on caller food preferences.

Human communication relies heavily on pragmatic competence. Speech utterances are often ambiguous requiring listeners to use interaction history, shared knowledge, presumed intention and other contextual variables to make inferences about a speaker’s meaning. To probe the evolutionary origins of pragmatic competence we tested whether bonobos (Pan paniscus) can make inferences about the type of food available from listening to other group members’ food calls. We trained two group members to either prefer blue or pink chow and demonstrated these preferences to observers. A third group member served as an untrained control. In playback experiments, we broadcast the food calls of a trained demonstrator and the untrained group member to investigate whether subjects were able to infer which coloured chow was most likely available, based on the callers’ trained food preferences or lack thereof. As predicted, when hearing the untrained group member’s calls, subjects did not exhibit a bias, whereas they responded with a significant foraging bias when hearing a trained group member’s calls. These findings suggest that bonobos may take into account the idiosyncratic food preferences of others, although subjects probably differed in what they remembered.

Incorporating global and local social networks for group recommendations

Due to the social nature of human beings, group activities have become an integral part of daily life. This creates the need for an in-depth study of the group-recommendation task: recommending items to a group of users. Unlike individual decision-making, which relies primarily on personal preferences, group decision-making is a process of negotiation and agreement among group members, in which social characteristics are a critical factor in achieving positive recommendation results. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a new model to solve the group recommendation problem from both global and local social networks. In a global network, a user’s social influence spreads through social connections and affects the preferences of others. In a local network, group members may contribute differently to the final decision, forming a dynamic negotiation and consensus process. We propose to model global and local networks with two components: 1) an attentive graph convolutional network based global network diffusion (GND) module to simulate the spread of social influence and capture the social gate of each user, and 2) a multi-channel attention-based local network fusion (LNF) module to learn the complex decision-making process among group members and integrate them into a final representation of the group. Finally, two separate neural collaborative filtering (NCF) modules are presented to model group-item and user-item interactions, respectively, to enhance each other. Extensive experimental results from two real-world datasets show the effectiveness of our proposed model.

Information about others’ choices selectively alters risk tolerance and medial prefrontal cortex activation across adolescence and young adulthood

Adolescence is associated with major changes in the cognitive, emotional and social domains. One domain in which these processes intersect is decision-making. Previous research has shown that individuals’ attitudes towards risk and ambiguity shape their decision-making, and information about others’ choices can influence individuals’ decisions. However, it is currently unknown how information about others’ choices influences risk and ambiguity attitudes separately, and the degree to which others’ choices shape decision-making differentially across development from adolescence to young adulthood. The current study used a computational modeling framework to test how information about others’ choices influences these attitudes. Participants, aged 14–22 years, made a series of risky and ambiguous choices while undergoing fMRI scanning. On some trials, they viewed risky or safe choices of others. Results showed that participants aligned their choices toward the choice preferences of others. Moreover, the tendency to align choices was expressed in changes in risk attitude, but not ambiguity attitude. The change in risk attitude was positively related to neural activation in the medial prefrontal cortex. Results did not show age related differences in behavior and corresponding neural activation, indicating that the manner in which adolescents are influenced by peers is not ubiquitous but rather, is highly context-dependent.

The Development of Prosociality: Evidence for a Negative Association between Age and Prosocial Value Orientation from a Representative Sample in Austria

While the ontogeny of prosociality during infancy, childhood, and adolescence has received substantial attention over the last decades, little is known about how prosocial preferences develop beyond emerging adulthood. Recent evidence suggests that the previously observed positive association between age and prosocial preferences is less robust than assumed. This study reports results on the association between social preferences, age, gender, and education from an Austrian representative sample (N = 777, aged 16–94 years) in which incentivized social value orientations (SVO) were measured along with various other sociodemographic characteristics. The analyses confirm that men are less prosocial than women, however, mainly during emerging adulthood (16–25 years). At the same time, the decline of prosociality is stronger among women leading to a convergence of prosociality between men and women as they age. Overall, we find that a prosocial value orientation is negatively correlated with people’s age. We suspect that the susceptibility of peoples’ social preferences to the preferences of others in their social environment is a critical factor unifying these different observations in the development of prosociality. We hypothesize that the opposite associations between age and SVO observed in two previous studies using unincentivized measures of social preferences are explained in parts by an age-related change in social desirability, measurement inaccuracy (continuous vs. categorical), and cross-cultural differences promoting competitive preferences among emerging adults in Japan. Moreover, we find that political orientations towards right-wing populists are consistently associated with less prosocial preferences, while education seems to be positively associated with prosociality. Overall, our study highlights the importance of conducting representative studies using incentivized measurements across cultures.

Unravelling into war: trust and social preferences in Hobbes’s state of nature

AbstractAccording to Hobbes, individuals care about their relative standing in a way that shapes their social interactions. To model this aspect of Hobbesian psychology, this paper supposes that agents have social preferences, that is, preferences about their comparative resource holdings. Introducing uncertainty regarding the social preferences of others unleashes a process of trust-unravelling, ultimately leading to Hobbes’s ‘state of war’. This Trust-unravelling Model incorporates important features of Hobbes’s argument that past models ignore.

Influencing the Preferences of Children through Legal Impacts on Parenting Style

Abstract The overriding theme of the conference honoring Bob Cooter and his work is the question whether law and policy can change people’s preferences. The conventional “law and economics” answer is “no.” People have preferences that are fixed. What changes in law and policy do is to change how people behave by altering the costs and benefits people face in pursuit of their preferences. Put simply, the assumption of the “law and economics” model is that people respond to financial incentives by changing how they act, not what they want. So, to take a simple example, imagine two people at the same starting point, both wanting to drive separately to visit a mutual friend. Their preference to get there promptly and safely is common to both of them, but how they act in pursuit of that goal may well differ. Moreover, government can alter how they drive to their friend’s by making changes such as putting in a freeway, or adding a new lane to the road, or installing lots of new traffic signals or stop signs along one route. The two people may have driven different routes previously, and they may alter their driving strategy in response to the policy changes government has adopted and may still decide that different routes are better for them. But they do not change their desire to see their friend in a prompt and safe manner. In this Article I offer a counterexample — an instance in which changes in law and policy can not only alter the behavior of some with fixed preferences, but also can impact the preferences of others. My example is about changes in society that can alter parenting style (of those parents with a fixed preference to have their children succeed) and can also change the underlying preferences that those children have as to how their lives should play out.

Increased Conformity to Social Hierarchy Under Public Eyes.

Why would people conform more to others with higher social positions? People may place higher confidence in the opinions of those who rank higher in the social hierarchy, or they may wish to make better impressions on people of higher social status. We investigated how individual preferences for novel stimuli are influenced by the preferences of others in the social hierarchy and whether anonymity affects such preference changes. After manipulation of their social rank, participants were asked to indicate how much they liked or disliked a series of images. Then, they were shown the rating given to each image by a partner (either inferior or superior in social rank) and were given a chance to adjust their ratings. The participants were more likely to change their preferences to match those of a superior partner in the public vs. private condition. The tendency to conform to the views of the superior partner was stronger among those with higher social dominance orientation (SDO) and those with greater fear of negative evaluation (FNE) by others. Altogether, the findings suggest that the motivation to make better impressions on people of higher social status can be the major driver of conformity to others with higher social positions.

(An Empirical study of Egyptian Employees) The Role of Authentic leadership During COVID-19

This paper aims is to examine COVID-19 and its influence on Authentic leadership. The research aims to identify the main items of CoronaVirus affecting Authentic leadership. A questionnaire was used to collect data. The survey included 305 employees from different occupations and different age group. A convenient sample was used. The hypotheses were tested using Correlation and Regression analysis. A reliability analysis was firstly investigated to ensure that the data was reliable once this was ensured a Correlation and Regression analysis was investigated. This research shows how Authentic leaders helps employees in dealing with COVID-19 during pandemic. Findings of this research are interesting and beneficial. The results showed that there is a Correlation between Covid-19 and Authentic leadership. And Covid-19 affected Authentic leadership. Greeting had a major impact then Opinion and Isolation and finally comes wearing masks. The study recommended the importance of increasing the awareness of the Egyptian employees and workers towards Covid-19. As well as giving Authentic leaders workshops to give effective methods to deal during Covid-19 pandemic Keywords: Isolation, Symptoms of COVID-19, Authentic leadership, Ethics, Preferences of others, Listening to opposers, Admitting Mistakes, Considering the opinion of others هدفت هذه الدراسة إل معرفة تاثير کوفيد- 19علي القيادة الحقيقة لدى الموظفين و العمال المصريين ، واستخدمت الدراسة المنهج الوصفي الارتباطي و معامل الانحدار ، حيث تکون مجتمع الدراسة من وظائف مختلفةو اعمار مختلفة. وبلغ حجم عينة الدراسة (305) تم اختبارهم باستخدام العينة المتاحة. ولتحقيق أهداف الدراسة قد تم عمل استبيان لجمع المعلومات و ذلک لقياس عناصر من کوفيد-19. قد تم عمل تحليل الموثوقيية لمعرفة جودة البيانات و فد تم التاکد من ذلک. تم تحليل الاستبيانة باستخدام معامل الانحدار و الارتباط بيرسون لمعرفة طبيعة العلاقة و التاثير بين متغيرات الدراسة وتوصلت الدراسة إلي عدد من النتائج و هي: هناک ارتباط بين کل من کوفيد-19 و القيادةالحقيقة و ان هناک تاثير بعض عوامل لکوفيد-19 علي القيادة الحقيقة. الاکثر تاثيرا التحية وقت کوفيد-19 ثم الاراء ثم الاعراض و اخيرا ارتداء الماسکات. و اوصت الدراسة بضرورة توعية الموظفين و العمال المصريين بمعلومات عن کوفيد-19 و کيفية التعامل معة اتناء الجائحةو التعامل مع القيادة الحقيقة. ممکن عقد دورات تدريبية وورش عمل من اجل التوعية القيادة الحقيقية عن کيفية التعامل في وقت جائحة کورونا الکلمات الافتتاحية: الانعزال , الاعراض , القيادة الحقيقية , الاخلاق , اختارات الاخرين , الاستماع الي المعارضين , الاعتراف بالاخطاء , الاهتمام باراء الاخرين

Time-use preference and adaptation in relational exchanges

Orientation: Similarity of leaders and members encourage positive relational exchanges. However, the role of different time-use preferences, and how leaders and members adapt to the preferences of others in relational exchanges have not yet been studied. Research Purpose: This research explores how time-use preference plays a role in the dyadic relationships between leaders and members within leader–member exchange (LMX) theory. Motivation for the study: We argue that differences between the time-use preferences of leaders and team members result in relational adaptations. Research approach/design and method: The qualitative research design employed semi-structured interviews with nine leaders and 11 employees in a major retail bank in South Africa and data were analysed through thematic analysis. Main findings: The research shows the nature of time-use preference in varying relational exchanges, discover how time-use preferences manifest and how leaders and members adapt to one another’s preferences. Contribution/value add: The study contributes to time-use preference literature by illustrating how polychronic and monochronic preferences may manifest in the workplace. Furthermore, we contribute to an understanding of the nature of relational exchanges in LMX theory by illustrating the influence of polychronicity on dyadic relationships and discuss how leaders and members adapt their preferences. Practical/managerial implications: We propose a framework of the dynamics of time-use preference-based relational entrainment and provide practical considerations to help mitigate the negative impacts that differing preferences can have.

Plasma acetylcholine and nicotinic acid are correlated with focused preference for photographed females in depressed males: an economic game study

Interpersonal difficulties are often observed in major depressive disorder (MDD), while the underlying psychological and biological mechanisms have not yet been elucidated. In the present case–control study, a PC-based trust game was conducted for 38 drug-free MDD patients and 38 healthy controls (HC). In the trust game, participants invested money in a partner (trusting behaviors), and also rated each partner’s attractiveness (preference for others). In addition, blood biomarkers including metabolites were measured. Both MDD and HC males exhibited more trusting behaviors compared to females. MDD males’ preference for ordinary-attractive partners (lay-person photographs) was lower than HC males, whereas their preference for high-attractive females (fashion-model photographs) was similar levels to HC males. This tendency in MDD males could reflect a “focused (narrowed) preference for females”. As for blood biomarker analysis, the levels of 37 metabolites including acetylcholine, AMP, GMP, nicotinic acid and tryptophan were significantly different between two groups. Interestingly, among male participants, acetylcholine and nicotinic acid were negatively correlated with the level of focused preference for photographed females. In sum, we have revealed some behavioral, psychological and biological traits of trusting behaviors and preference for others especially in MDD males. Larger studies should be conducted to validate our preliminary findings.