Risky Contexts Research Articles

Inhibitory Control in Late Childhood as a Predictor of Antisocial Behavior in Adolescence and the Role of Social Context.

Understanding the factors contributing to adolescent antisocial behavior is crucial for effective interventions. Protracted development of cognitive control systems supporting inhibitory control may be linked to increases in adolescent antisocial behavior, suggesting the promotion of inhibitory control as a potential preventative strategy. Concurrently, social contextual factors, including peer relationships, parent-child dynamics, and the neighborhood environment, may exacerbate or buffer the risk posed by low inhibitory control. In a large, longitudinal sample of youth from racially and ethnically diverse low-income families (N = 731), we examined the association between inhibitory control (age 10.5) and antisocial behavior (age 14) and explored contextual factors (neighborhood, peer relationships, parent-child relationship) as potential moderators. Lastly, we investigated whether a randomized controlled trial of the Family Check-Up (FCU) intervention started at age 2 predicted a decreased youth report of antisocial behavior in adolescence via increased inhibitory control in late childhood. We found that lower inhibitory control in late childhood predicted increased antisocial behavior in adolescence. For youth with low inhibitory control, living in a dangerous neighborhood or associating more with deviant peers increased the risk for adolescent antisocial behavior. Finally, the FCU intervention indirectly reduced youth-reported adolescent antisocial behavior via enhancing inhibitory control in late childhood, and the indirect effect was strongest for youth in risky contexts (e.g., low parental knowledge and control). Although risky contexts can exacerbate individual risks related to deficits in inhibitory control, greater inhibitory control may be a protective factor. Additionally, early childhood interventions can improve inhibitory skills and decrease the risk of adolescent antisocial behavior, particularly for youth within risky contexts.

Evaluation of consequential risk in ED patients with non-cardiac syncope

BackgroundFollowing standard syncope care, after exclusion of cardiac syncope, further workup is generally only recommended in cases of severe syncope due to consequential risk such that syncope is associated with injury or negative impacts on quality of life. This study is aimed to identify incidence and risk factors of severe syncope due to consequential risk, in a cohort of ED patients with non-cardiac syncope. MethodsIn a sample of 356 cases, we we conducted a case-control study comparing personal data, drug regimen, comorbidities, characteristics of syncope and previous episodes in patients with vs. without a severe syncope. ResultsPatients with severe syncope (120, 31.7% of total) resulted more frequently treated with a polypharmacy and CNS agents and affected by comorbidities entailing risk of falling; they more frequently had syncope occurred in a risky context, unwitnessed (55.8%), not preceded by prodromes (56.6%) and with clinical characteristics different from reflex syncope (82.3%); in these patients, previous episodes more frequently were clustered in the last years and complicated by major injuries. Absence of witnesses and prodromes and ED diagnosis different from reflex syncope resulted to be independently associated with severe syncope due to consequential risk. ConclusionsSyncope has a negative impact on a patient's life, through injuries or other personal consequences, in roughly one third of cases; to identity these patients, needing further investigation, emergency physicians should focus on episodes not preceded by prodromes, unwitnessed and with characteristic other than reflex syncope. Nonetheless, specific tools are needed to evaluate the impact of syncope on quality of life, to avoid clogging the path after ED discharge.

Personal life environment within the socio-political context of modern Russia: status according to the attribute of certainty

The subject of the article relates to the sociological discourse on the category of uncertainty at the personal level of analysis. The uncertainty of the environment inherently contains risks as a potential possibility of damage from an adverse outcome of events, phenomena, processes. The strategy of the analysis presented in the article takes as the initial and independent position of the study the fact that there is such a context in the environment, such conditions that can serve as sources of risks of various levels. In the research proposed in the article, the author proceeds from the fact that a fundamentally risky socio-political context at the country level (SMO, increasing sanctions pressure) by a particular person may not be perceived as causing uncertainty in the space of his personal life environment. The empirical basis of the analysis is data from a representative survey of the Russian population conducted on a quota sample in June 2023. A methodological approach is applied, the peculiarity of which is the formation within the sample the target groups according to the criterion corresponding to the main goal of the analysis – self-determination of the living environment status. The data was rearranged and analyzed under an intelligence strategy aimed at identifying similarities and differences between those who positively and clearly see their life prospects and those who are in a situation of uncertainty about the future and the present. The analysis of those resources and features that have the greatest weight in differentiating the selfdetermination of the living environment status within the risky external environment made it possible to assess their internal relationship and carry out an empirical (real), as opposed to a priori (theoretical) grouping. The empirical grouping revealed three blocks of resource determinants of differences between target groups in determining the adaptive status of the living environment, which correlate with the components of subjective intelligence: emotional as the ability to recognize, understand and use emotions, with social as skills and experience of communication with the institutional environment, rationality as the presence of skills of self-organization and self-control.

A Feasible Estimation of a “Corrected” EQ-5D Social Tariff

ObjectivesTo demonstrate the feasibility of estimating a social tariff free of utility curvature and probability weighting biases and to test transferability between riskless and risky contexts. MethodsValuations for a selection of EQ-5D-3L health states were collected from a large and representative sample (N = 1676) of the Spanish general population through computer-assisted personal interviewing. Two elicitation methods were used: the traditional time trade-off (TTO) and a novel risky-TTO procedure. Both methods are equivalent for better than death states, which allowed us to test transferability of utilities across riskless and risky contexts. Corrective procedures applied are based on rank-dependent utility theory, identifying parameter estimates at the individual level. All corrections are health-state specific, which is a unique feature of our corrective approach. ResultsTwo corrected value sets for the EQ-5D-3L system are estimated, highlighting the feasibility of developing national tariffs under nonexpected utility theories, such as rank-dependent utility. Furthermore, transferability was not supported for at least half of the health states valued by our sample. ConclusionsIt is feasible to estimate a social tariff by using interviewing techniques, sample sizes, and sample representativeness equivalent to prior studies designed to generate national value sets for the EQ-5D. Utilities obtained in distinct contexts may not be interchangeable. Our findings caution against routinely taking transferability of utility for granted.

A meta-analysis of loss aversion in risky contexts

Loss aversion is widely regarded as the most robust and ubiquitous finding in behavioural economics. According to the loss aversion hypothesis, the subjective value of losses exceeds the subjective value of equivalent gains. One common assumption in the literature is that this asymmetry represents a fundamental and stable feature of people’s preferences. In cumulative prospect theory, loss aversion is captured by the lambda (λ) parameter, which controls the steepness of the value function for losses. Estimates of λ by Tversky and Kahneman (1992) found evidence for considerable overweighting of losses in risky choice (λ = 2.25). But others find very different levels of loss aversion, with some reporting weak loss aversion or even loss neutrality. In order to assess what is the average level of λ reported in the literature, we set out to conduct a meta-analysis of studies in which λ parameter of the cumulative prospect theory was estimated from individual choices between risky prospects. We draw three conclusions. First, surprisingly few studies have estimated λ by fitting the prospect theory to individual choices between mixed gambles, and there are only a few available datasets suitable to perform model fitting. Second, much of the data are of poor quality, making it impossible to obtain precise estimates of the prospect theory’s parameters. Third, using a random-effect meta-analysis upon the available data, we found a small λ of 1.31, 95 % CI [1.10, 1.53].

“Keeping the Queen’s Peace”: A Sociomaterial Study of Police and Guns in a “Mangle of Risk”

This sociomaterial study analyzes the ways that material agency plays a key role in the organizing dynamics of risky work through a study of the carrying and use of handguns by U.S. and U.K. police officers. Qualitative data (interviews and focus groups) were collected over a three-year period with police (N = 61) in New York, where officers routinely carry guns, and in London, where they typically do not. Police unanimously describe the agentic role non-human artefacts like guns play in: a) framing their cognitive processes, b) influencing their behaviour and decision-making processes, and c) impacting individuals around them. Expanding Pickering's theorization of a mangle of practice, we inductively develop a mangle of risk to explain how human and non-human agency become entangled in risky work contexts, where danger is real and time pressure is high. Understanding these dynamics requires analysis of both frontline police narratives and the prescribed organizational policies, procedures, and routines intended to contain risky situations. Findings reveal that the tools provided to police to do their job both frame and constrain operational capabilities, potentially escalating danger for police, suspects, and the community in a mangle of risk.

Finding your Sea Legs: Exploring Newcomer Embodied Learning in an Extreme Context

AbstractEmbodied learning involves developing not only socio‐technical know‐how but also the bodily capacity to execute practices competently. In extreme contexts, newcomers encounter threatening experiences that may incapacitate their ability to participate. How newcomers develop the bodily capacity to participate in such situations is a research area that requires further attention. Using ethnographic data from a study of novices working in the risky context of seafaring, we show that newcomers encounter threat experiences (imagined, immediate, and attenuated) that trigger them to engage in three types of body work: priming, battling, and enduring, from which they develop the capacity to participate. Our analysis suggests a model of newcomer embodied learning in practices in an extreme context and contributes to embodied learning literature by showing: (1) body work directed at capacity to participate, (2) the mutually constitutive relationship between body work and threat experiences, and (3) the temporal complexity of embodied learning anchored in the body work and threat experiences.

Highly logical and non-emotional decisions in both risky and social contexts: understanding decision making in autism spectrum disorder through computational modeling.

In risky contexts, autism spectrum disorder (ASD) individuals exhibit more logical consistency and non-emotional decisions than do typical adults (TAs). This way of deciding could be also prevailing in social contexts, leading to maladaptive decisions. This evidence is scarce and inconsistent, and further research is needed. Recent developments in computational modeling allow analysis of decisional subcomponents that could provide valuable information to understand the decision-making and help address inconsistencies. Twenty-seven individuals with ASD and 25 TAs were submitted to a framing-task and the ultimatum game (UG). The Rescorla-Wagner computational model was used to analyze UG decisions. Results showed that in the UG, the ASD group exhibited a higher utilitarianism, characterized by lower aversion to unfairness and higher acceptance of offers. Moreover, this way of deciding was predicted by the higher economic rationality found in the framing task, where people with ASD did not manifest emotional biases such as framing effect. These results could suggest an atypical decision making, highly logical and non-emotional, as a robust feature of ASD.

What works in improving inter-agency responses to missing children investigations: A scoping review

Responsibility for responding to missing children belongs to multiple agencies, including police, children’s homes and social services, but evidence highlights issues with collaboration. The following scoping review seeks to identify what is currently known about mechanisms that enhance collaboration in responding to missing. Findings highlight the value of (i) information-sharing techniques; (ii) cross-agency technology; (iii) single points of contact; (iv) regular multi-agency meetings; (v) shared understanding of terminology; (vi) clarifying roles and responsibilities; and (vii) joint training. However, research is needed that empirically tests the effectiveness of strategies and interventions for improving inter-agency working in this risky and uncertain context.

Mantled howler monkey males assess their rivals through formant spacing of long-distance calls.

Formant frequency spacing of long-distance vocalizations is allometrically related to body size and could represent an honest signal of fighting potential. There is, however, only limited evidence that primates use formant spacing to assess the competitive potential of rivals during interactions with extragroup males, a risky context. We hypothesized that if formant spacing of long-distance calls is inversely related to the fighting potential of male mantled howler monkeys (Alouatta palliata), then males should: (1) be more likely and (2) faster to display vocal responses to calling rivals; (3) be more likely and (4) faster to approach calling rivals; and have higher fecal (5) glucocorticoid and (6) testosterone metabolite concentrations in response to rivals calling at intermediate and high formant spacing than to those with low formant spacing. We studied the behavioral responses of 11 adult males to playback experiments of long-distance calls from unknown individuals with low (i.e., emulating large individuals), intermediate, and high (i.e., small individuals) formant spacing (n = 36 experiments). We assayed fecal glucocorticoid and testosterone metabolite concentrations (n = 174). Playbacks always elicited vocal responses, but males responded quicker to intermediate than to low formant spacing playbacks. Low formant spacing calls were less likely to elicit approaches whereas high formant spacing calls resulted in quicker approaches. Males showed stronger hormonal responses to low than to both intermediate and high formant spacing calls. It is possible that males do not escalate conflicts with rivals with low formant spacing calls if these are perceived as large, and against whom winning probabilities should decrease and confrontation costs increase; but are willing to escalate conflicts with rivals of high formant spacing. Formant spacing may therefore be an important signal for rival assessment in this species.

Effort Expenditure Increases Risk-Taking for Improbable Rewards.

Previous studies have found that exerting effort can lead people to engage in risk-taking behaviors. While effort can be either cognitive or physical, risk-taking can take place in either a risky context with known outcome probabilities or an ambiguous context with unknown outcome probabilities. The goal of the current research is to investigate how effort type and decision context influence risk-taking after effort exertion. Across three experiments, we find evidence that investing effort increases risk-taking at a short timescale. Importantly, this effect is particularly noticeable when the chance of winning is low, rather than when it is uncertain. Furthermore, the increase in risk-taking happens regardless of whether the effort is cognitive or physical. These findings suggest the existence of a cost-invariant but decision context-variant mechanism for the risk-taking after-effect of effort expenditure, which helps to bring the negative emotions caused by effort exertion back to a state of emotional homeostasis.

Factors Influencing Entrepreneurial Intention among Agricultural Engineering Students in Adverse Business Environment

Entrepreneurial intention is an important step toward nascent entrepreneurship. Many studies have been conducted in developed countries, but the key factors enhancing entrepreneurial intention in developing countries still need to be discovered. In many developing countries, adverse business environment hampers entrepreneurial intention, particularly among young people who tend to develop migration intention instead. However, when they are educated, young people have the potentiality to innovate and face risky business environments. In this study, the first to analyze the entrepreneurial intention of students in agricultural schools in Haiti, we collected primary data from a country-representative sample of 281 students studying in 21 Haitian agricultural engineering schools. Following the theories of planned behavior and entrepreneurial intention, we use both statistical and econometric analysis to assess the entrepreneurial intention and its determinants. Despite a turbulent context, the results revealed a high rate (54.1%) of entrepreneurial intention among students in agricultural engineering schools. This intention was significantly associated with factors like knowledge in business plan preparation, identification of successful agribusiness, experience in leadership and a relentless quest for autonomy.In contrast with the fact that when the stakes are high, people tend to be risk averse, results of this study show agricultural engineering students want to bring solutions even in risky contexts with limited resources. This study suggests that, in troubled countries like Haiti, with severe food insecurity, agricultural engineering students represent actors that can help create a promising future if appropriate support is brought to transform entrepreneurial intention into effective business creation.

Influence of social and physical environmental variation on antipredator behavior in mixed-species parid flocks.

Carolina chickadees (Poecile carolinensis) and tufted titmice (Baeolophus bicolor) regularly form flocks with multiple species through the winter months, including white-breasted nuthatches (Sitta carolinensis). Earlier studies found that behavior of both chickadees and titmice was sensitive to mixed-species flock composition. Little is known about the influence of background noise level and vegetation density on the antipredator behaviors of individuals within these flocks, however. We tested for the effects of vegetation density, traffic noise, and flock composition (conspecific number, flock diversity, and flock size) on antipredator behavioral responses following an alarm call playback (Study 1) and an owl model presentation (Study 2) at feeders. We recorded background traffic noise and performed lidar scans to quantify vegetation density at each site. After a feeder had been stocked with seed and a flock was present, we recorded calls produced, and we identified flock composition metrics. We coded seed-taking latency, call latency, mob latency, and mob duration following the respective stimulus presentation and tested for effects of flock composition metrics, vegetation density, and background noise on these responses. For the alarm call playback study, flock composition drove behaviors in chickadees and titmice, and vegetation density drove behaviors in chickadees and nuthatches. For the owl model study, conspecific number predicted behavior in chickadees, and mob duration was predicted by nuthatch number. The results reveal individual sensitivity to group composition in anti-predatory and foraging behavior in simulated risky contexts. Additionally, our data suggest that the modality of perceived simulated risk (acoustic vs. visual) and the density of vegetation influence behavior in these groups.

The Memory Influence on Opinion Dynamics in Coopetitive Social Networks: Analysis, Application, and Simulation

In social psychology, it is well known that the evolution of opinion dynamics in a society depends not only on the current opinions of individuals, but also on the past opinions stored in memory. However, it is still difficult to clearly characterize and analyze the memory influence on opinion dynamics in social networks, especially in coopetitive (cooperative and competitive) networks. In this paper, we propose a novel model of opinion dynamics to describe the memory influence in coopetitive networks. In this model, memory and memoryless communication rules are simultaneously proposed for the opinion update mechanism. In terms of the network topological structure and the graph spectrum, sufficient and/or necessary conditions are respectively established to ensure that the opinion is nonstationary polarization, nonstationary consensus and neutral. We employ the Kahneman's seminal experiment on choices in risky and riskless contexts to interpret the results obtained in the present paper. Simulation analysis shows that the memory capacity of the individual is inversely proportional to the speeds of the ultimate opinions formational, and the opinions reach a persistent disagreement when the individuals are very confident.

Farmers’ perspectives on water availability in the lower Volta Delta region in Ghana

Smallholder farmers in the lower Volta Delta of Ghana operate in a risky and uncertain context due to water scarcity. However, the conventional analyses of water availability have mainly focused on drought, rainfall occurrence, and other climatic or weather elements, using secondary biophysical data with relatively little emphasis on farmers’ perceptions and how socioeconomic factors contribute to the vulnerability of farming in the lower Volta Delta. This study examines farmers’ perceptions of vulnerability to water availability to determine how perception is socially constructed and differentiated in various locations. The study was conducted using qualitative research methods in the Ada East, Ada West, South Tongu, and Anloga Districts in the lower Volta Delta of Ghana. Findings reveal that climate is not the only stressor on livelihoods in the area. Farmers perceive their livelihoods as vulnerable to socioeconomic stressors, including limited freshwater and groundwater resources. The perceived severity of water availability conditions determines farmers’ response strategies, such as crop selection, planting dates, irrigation strategies, and other agronomic practices. These findings have important implications for researchers, agricultural extension agents, and policymakers to design appropriate measures and approaches to deal with water scarcity for farming in the region. The study also contributes valuable insights into the loss and damage incurred by farmers due to climate change and variability in the region.

Confidence and risky decision-making in gambling disorder.

People with Gambling Disorder (GD) often make risky decisions and experience cognitive distortions about gambling. Moreover, people with GD have been shown to be overly confident in their decisions, especially when money can be won. Here we investigated if and how the act of making a risky choice with varying monetary stakes impacts confidence differently in patients with GD (n = 27) relative to healthy controls (HCs) (n = 30). We used data from our previous mixed-gamble study, in which participants were given the choice of a certain option or a 50/50 gamble with potential gains or losses, after which they rated their confidence. While HCs were more confident when making certain than risky choices, GD patients were specifically more confident when making risky choices than certain choices. Notably, relative to HCs, confidence of patients with GD decreased more strongly with higher gain values when making a certain choice, suggesting a stronger fear of missing out or "anticipated regret" of missing out on potential gains when rejecting the risky choice. The current findings highlight the potential relevance of confidence and "regret" as cognitive mechanisms feeding into excessive risk-taking as seen in GD. Moreover, this study adds to the limited previous work investigating how confidence is affected in value-based risky contexts.

Neural similarity in nucleus accumbens during decision-making for the self and a best friend: Links to adolescents' self-reported susceptibility to peer influence and risk taking.

Adolescence is marked by increased peer influence on risk taking; however, recent literature suggests enormous individual variation in peer influence susceptibility to risk-taking behaviors. The current study uses representation similarity analysis to test whether neural similarity between decision-making for self and peers (i.e., best friends) in a risky context is associated with individual differences in self-reported peer influence susceptibility and risky behaviors in adolescents. Adolescent participants (N = 166, Mage = 12.89) completed a neuroimaging task in which they made risky decisions to receive rewards for themselves, their best friend, and their parents. Adolescent participants self-reported peer influence susceptibility and engagement in risk-taking behaviors. We found that adolescents with greater similarity in nucleus accumbens (NACC) response patterns between the self and theirbest friend reported greater susceptibility to peer influence and increased risk-taking behaviors. However, neural similarity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) was not significantly associated with adolescents' peer influence susceptibility and risk-taking behaviors. Further, when examining neural similarity between adolescents' self and their parent in the NACC and vmPFC, we did not find links to peer influence susceptibility and risk-taking behaviors. Together, our results suggest that greater similarity for self and friend in the NACC is associated with individual differences in adolescents' peer influence susceptibility and risk-taking behaviors.

Cardiogenic control of affective behavioural state

Emotional states influence bodily physiology, as exemplified in the top-down process by which anxiety causes faster beating of the heart1–3. However, whether an increased heart rate might itself induce anxiety or fear responses is unclear3–8. Physiological theories of emotion, proposed over a century ago, have considered that in general, there could be an important and even dominant flow of information from the body to the brain9. Here, to formally test this idea, we developed a noninvasive optogenetic pacemaker for precise, cell-type-specific control of cardiac rhythms of up to 900 beats per minute in freely moving mice, enabled by a wearable micro-LED harness and the systemic viral delivery of a potent pump-like channelrhodopsin. We found that optically evoked tachycardia potently enhanced anxiety-like behaviour, but crucially only in risky contexts, indicating that both central (brain) and peripheral (body) processes may be involved in the development of emotional states. To identify potential mechanisms, we used whole-brain activity screening and electrophysiology to find brain regions that were activated by imposed cardiac rhythms. We identified the posterior insular cortex as a potential mediator of bottom-up cardiac interoceptive processing, and found that optogenetic inhibition of this brain region attenuated the anxiety-like behaviour that was induced by optical cardiac pacing. Together, these findings reveal that cells of both the body and the brain must be considered together to understand the origins of emotional or affective states. More broadly, our results define a generalizable approach for noninvasive, temporally precise functional investigations of joint organism-wide interactions among targeted cells during behaviour.

Taking Risks on Behalf of Another

AbstractA growing number of decision theorists have, in recent years, defended the view that rationality is permissive under risk: Different rational agents may be more or less risk‐averse or risk‐inclined. This can result in them making different choices under risk even if they value outcomes in exactly the same way. One pressing question that arises once we grant such permissiveness is what attitude to risk we should implement when choosing on behalf of other people. Are we permitted to implement any of the rationally permissible risk attitudes, is there some specific risk attitude that is required when choosing for others, or are we required to defer to the risk attitudes of the people on whose behalf we are choosing? This article elaborates on this question, explains its wider practical and theoretical significance, provides an overview of existing answers, and explores how to go about providing a more systematic account of how to choose on behalf of others in risky contexts.

Observing the Unobservable: Connecting Persistent Emotional State to Behavior in Risky Contexts

Observing the Unobservable: Connecting Persistent Emotional State to Behavior in Risky Contexts