Social Agencies Research Articles

COCON – A Multi-Cohort, Multi-Informant Panel Study

Abstract: COCON (COmpetence and CONtext) is an interdisciplinary longitudinal multi-cohort and multi-informant study with a focus on how children, adolescents, and young adults in Switzerland master developmental tasks and transitions in the institutionalized early life course, given unequal resources and opportunities inherent in their contexts of growing up. Based on the unique features of the study and its design, the data provide strong evidence for interindividual differences in children’s and adolescents’ competence development and their associations with opportunities and demands related to different social contexts. Findings also highlight how individual agency unfolds over time and dynamically relates to the mutual influence of important socialization agents in children’s and adolescents’ lives (parents, teachers) when coping with educational transitions. Exemplary findings are discussed with regard to the conceptual framework and signature features of the study, providing novel evidence for the study of child and adolescent development and potential implications.

Sense of relatedness and science engagement among Filipino high school students

AbstractPast studies indicate that feeling related to specific social agents such as parents, teachers, and peers can facilitate domain‐general academic engagement. However, there is scarce research on how relatedness may be associated with engagement in specific academic subjects. This cross‐sectional study explores the associations of sense of relatedness to mother, father, science teachers, friends, classmates, and neighbors with behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and social engagement in science. Four hundred and thirty‐eight high school students completed an online survey that included scales to assess demographic information, relatedness, and science engagement. Only relatedness to science teacher positively predicted behavioral, cognitive, and emotional engagement in science when controlling for other relatedness dimensions, age, gender, year in school, parental educational attainment, and daily allowance. Although further research that can uncover causal conclusions is needed, these findings suggest the importance of science teacher relatedness for students' science engagement.

“Tell me who your friends are, and I will tell you who you are:” The contribution of peers to adolescents' values

AbstractValues serve as guiding principles, motivating specific behaviors, and actions. Peers spend a considerable amount of time together, thus offering a unique platform for the acquisition and development of values. During adolescence, a stage of life when youth are actively defining their identities, peers emerge as vital social agents, contributing significantly to the process of value formation. In this article, I examine the ways peers contribute to the development of youth's values, with a focus on basic personal values theory. This theory sheds light on how and why peers play a role in shaping the values of adolescents. It examines the phenomenon of similarity in peer values (values similarity) and explores how factors such as gender, age, and culture act as potential moderators in the relation between peers' and youth's values similarity. I conclude by summarizing key insights and proposing directions for research.

Significant others and children’s mental toughness in sports: a longitudinal test of the social influence in sport model

ABSTRACT Mental toughness (MT) is a multidimensional psychological construct that characterises individuals who are psychologically persistent and durable in the face of challenges, adversities, and stressors. This two-wave longitudinal study examined if the social influences of coaches, fathers, mothers, and peers were predictive of children’s mental toughness in sport contexts. Participants were 112 children (7 to 12 years old) who played basketball at the recreational level in China. At baseline and 3-month follow-up, they completed a questionnaire measuring their mental toughness and perception of social influences, such as positive influence, punishment, and dysfunction, from the four social agents. The model with correlations between social influence and mental toughness at a change-score level yielded excellent goodness-of-fit using variance-based structural equation modeling (VB-SEM). Children’s mental toughness was positively associated with positive influence, and negatively associated with punishment and dysfunction. Multi-group SEM showed that the relationships were invariant between coaches, fathers, mothers, and peers. The findings show that children are more likely to have increased mental toughness when significant others exert positive social influence in the sporting environment.

Prototypes all the way Down

This paper examines enactments of prototyping in a recent experimental effort to introduce ‘Technology Comprehension’ (TC) as a mandatory school subject in the Danish Public School. The overall concern of the programme was to educate young people to become not only users, but makers and analysts of the digital technological society. We adopt a social-theoretical view of prototyping that suggests it has moved well beyond design, and has become part of a broader cultural repertoire. We explore the capacity of prototyping as a site of social knowledge-production, illuminating prototypes as instruments of experimentation, epistemic negotiation, and civic participation. We analyse two prototypes: 1) an artefact that was the outcome of a pupil’s work in a TC lesson; 2) an experimental lesson plan called ‘App Design’ put to use by a teacher in a series of 5th grade TC lessons. Attending to how prototyping is performed in the pupils’, teachers’, and subject matter experts’ making, demoing, testing, and iterating on ‘first type’ tangible and material artefacts–prototypes. Prototyping in the trial programme can be understood as the rehearsal of chaotic conditions, in the teacher-pupil relation, and in the pupil-world relation. Prototyping can absorb the seeming impossibility of bridging ‘theoretical’ and ‘practical’ knowledges, and make new social and material agencies arise. The trial of TC seems in this light as much as an experiment in rendering social relations and knowledge-making, open-ended and experimental as it is an experiment in cultivating that exact attitude towards technology, but also towards societal affairs and knowledge-production.

Empowering the Traditional Indigenous Politics through Education: An Agent of Political Socialization

Empowering the Traditional Indigenous Politics through Education: An Agent of Political Socialization

가정폭력 피해 이주여성 지원 제도 및 서비스에 대한 고찰: 문제점과 개선 방안을 중심으로

While public awareness on domestic violence has increased over the past few decades in Korea, little is known about domestic violence issues pertaining to immigrant women. This study is an attempt to provide an overview of domestic violence issues, legal and policy structures, and current social service system in place for battered immigrant women in Korea. The findings show that various sound legal and policy framework has been established over the past years, resulting in provisions added to the existing laws on domestic violence, policies developed specifying support for battered immigrant women and implementation of social service agencies to assist and protect the battered immigrant women and their families. Using the AAAQ framework by UN, we examined the current service delivery system. The result shows that service availability, accessibility, and acceptability are found to be quite compromised by gaps between the policy and practice. A large number of service providers are located in metropolitan areas, reducing the accessibility of battered women in other regions. A limited budget is also a barrier to provide comprehensive services to all in need. Lastly, a lack of translator and interpreter services limits accessibility and acceptability as both the service providers and the victims are unable to communicate with language barriers. Based on the findings, we suggested implications for policy and practice.

Brokerage and social segregation: a case study of cluster housing environment in Gading Serpong, Indonesia

PurposeThe paper aims is to see why social conflict caused by class segregation did not occur in Gading Serpong? What factors prevent conflict from occurring? This research seeks to find the causes of the nonoccurrence of social conflict due to class segregation in the Gading Serpong cluster area and explore the factors that restrain conflict there.Design/methodology/approachThis research is qualitative research with data collection techniques through in-depth interviews with several parties identified as brokerages in the research object area. In this context, one of the media and analytical tools is to recognize agents or brokers who connect two groups of people. Brokerage occurs in sectors, patterns or forms of informal, personal relationships; to understand it, one must pay close attention to micro-level relationships and social psychological processes. However, brokerage can have a significant impact on macro-level social relations, as it is generally associated with social integration processes.FindingsThe lack of involvement of developers in overcoming social conflicts that occur between Gading Serpong natives and migrants in Gading Serpong housing has given rise to new actors. These new actors are what we can call brokers, where they have a role as brokers who are able to connect between migrants and natives in the Gading Serpong area. The broker phenomenon is actually familiar in academia, where in practice the broker acts as someone who is able to find solutions to problems. The broker is the reason even social segregation is created between migrant citizens and native citizens in Gading Serpong but never becomes a conflict between them.Research limitations/implicationsEven if the brokerage phenomenon is the reason why there is no conflict over social segregation brokerage is not the only factor in this nonconflict segregation. Therefore, to cover the larger area of these suburban segregation problems, there must be further research on this topic.Practical implicationsThe practical implication of this research is to encourage the housing developers that create urban housing, such as clusters or other gated communities, to evaluate the social factors, such as potential segregation and conflict management. Also to encourage the developers to get involved and create some social engineering systems, like brokerage, market and other social agents, to create some nonconflict segregation or even more inclusive communities.Originality/valueThis research is uncovering the main reason why social segregation between migrant and native people in Gading Serpong, which could potentially lead to conflict, is never a conflict. The main reason is social actors like brokerage.

A Social Self-Awareness Agent with Embodied Reasoning

In the realm of multi-agent systems, establishing social self-awareness in agents stands as a critical challenge within the broader scope of artificial general intelligence research. Addressing this challenge, in this paper, we draw upon Tomasello’s social self-awareness theory as a foundational framework, and employ Non-Axiomatic Reasoning System (NARS), an artificial general intelligence model, to simulate analogical and recursive reasoning methods used by socially embodied agents. In this paper, we assume that an agent can possess sensorimotor capabilities and physical common sense, it explores the process of constructing a “core self” through embodied reasoning. On this basis, we explore deeper into the construction process of social self-awareness. As a result, we clarify how agents generate common knowledge about themselves through recursive reasoning regarding the mental states of others and communication dynamics. Following this initial step, metaphors are generated utilizing analogical reasoning, intertwining public knowledge with these metaphors to facilitate mutual comprehension between humans and machines. This paper delves into the simulation of perspective representation and recursive reasoning within social embodied agents, employing NARS– an overarching artificial intelligence platform. The experimental results substantiate the viability of constructing a social self-agent within a machine framework grounded in embodied reasoning.

The Link between Family Financial Socialization in Adulthood and Investment Literacy of P2P Investors

AbstractThis paper examines how family financial socialization in adulthood is linked to the development of investment literacy among individual family members within the context of innovative financial services, specifically peer-to-peer (P2P) lending. Our findings revealed that P2P lending investors engage in a moderate level family financial socialization suggesting that family, as a key financial socialization agent in childhood and adolescence, maintains its role in adulthood. Additionally, such investors possess a high-level investment knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Explicit family financial socialization has a significant and positive effect on the individuals’ investment knowledge, skills, and attitudes, while the effect of implicit financial socialization is significant but negative for knowledge and attitudes. Such findings suggest that family discussion among adult members result in higher, while observations of family members’ investment behavior led to lower investment literacy. Our study found no significant moderating effect of the strength of social ties indicating that dynamics of family relations neither strengthen nor weaken proximal socialization outcomes. The analysis of differences across demographic groups unveiled statistically significant distinctions concerning respondents’ gender, income, and education. These results provide important insights for stakeholders, underscoring the significant role family socialization in adulthood plays in shaping individuals’ investment literacy, particularly of those investing on P2P lending platforms.

Inclusion or Exclusion?: Gendered Experiences and Strategies of Migrants in Informal Settlements in Bengaluru

Internal migration, nearly four times more than the migration across national boundaries, accounts for the largest human movements in the world. In context of agrarian distress, circular migration between the rural and the urban is a common livelihood trajectory of at least 100 million Indians. It is known that circular migrants face numerous economic and social challenges of survival in the city. This article focuses on gendered experiences and strategies adopted by migrants for inclusion in informal settlements in Bengaluru. Drawing on the concepts of social exclusion, inclusion and agency, we use household surveys ( n = 1,109) in 30 informal settlements in Bengaluru in 2016, semi-structured interviews ( n = 20) in one informal settlement, key informant interviews ( n = 5) and participant observation in events and meetings in the city to illustrate individual and collective strategies used by diverse groups and the ways in which these are gendered. We find that the length of stay in the settlement is a crucial determinant of social inclusion in the city.

Beyond Explicit Acknowledgment: Brain Response Evidence of Human Skepticism towards Robotic Emotions

Using the N400 component of event-related brain potentials, a neurophysiological marker associated with processing incongruity, we examined brain responses to sentences spoken by a robot that had no arms or legs. Statements concerning physically impossible actions (e.g., knitting) elicit significant N400 responses, reflecting that participants perceived these statements as incongruent with the robot’s physical condition. However, this effect was attenuated for participants who indicated that the robot could have hidden limbs, indicating that expectations modify the way an agent’s utterances are interpreted. When it came to statements relating to emotional capabilities a distinct pattern was found. Although participants acknowledged that the robot could have emotions, there were significant N400 responses to statements about the robot’s emotional experiences (e.g., feeling happy). This effect was not modified by participants’ beliefs, suggesting a cognitive challenge of accepting robots as capable of experiencing emotions. Our findings thus point to a boundary in human acceptance of artificial social agents: while physical attributes may be negotiable based on expectations, emotional expressions are more difficult to establish as credible. By elucidating the cognitive mechanisms at play, our study informs the design of social robots that are capable of more effective communication to better support social connectivity and human well-being.

More than Fresh Fruits and Veggies: Farmers’ Markets as a Locus of Social Participation for Older Adults

As awareness of the benefits of social participation for older adults has grown, ideas for how social services agencies can increase older adults’ social participation have proliferated. The goal of this research is to explore how older adults experience the farmers’ market as a hub of social participation. Fifteen older adults in a rural area in the deep South of the U.S. participated in semi-structured interviews. All interviews were transcribed verbatim; transcripts were analyzed using analytic induction techniques. Most participants describe the farmers’ market as an important context for their social participation. They enjoyed the family-like environment, expanded their social network with vendors and volunteers, and received financial support such as the Senior Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program. Some described their experiences of civil engagement and their contribution to the community. Yet some barriers to their participation exist, such as transportation issues. Implications include further exploration into the potential for farmers’ markets as a context for increasing social participation of rural older adults. In particular, future research should explore the perceptions of social service professionals regarding this connection and the potential for social service agencies to harness the reciprocal nature of the relationship between markets and older patrons.

Doing landscape: sensorial and artistic approaches to Donkalnis and Spiginas Mesolithic–Neolithic ritual sites in western Lithuania

ABSTRACT During the Mesolithic and Neolithic, foragers dwelling in the Eastern Baltic, Scandinavia and Fennoscandia regions buried some of their dead on lake islands or other coastal sites. Based on ethnographic accounts, these sites are often understood as liminal places where water separates the lands of the dead and the living. In this paper, we take a more relational view of place and suggest that a particular combination of spatial perception of landscape and the dynamic nature of coastal sites might have contributed to the social agency of these places, resulting in their use as places for ritual activity. By exploring two Mesolithic–Neolithic burial places, Donkalnis and Spiginas (western Lithuania), with sensory archaeological and artistic approaches, we suggest that the ancient foragers of this region buried human bodies in these locations to be part of the place itself. Similar to other depositional acts, this could have been done to mark the location or communicate with the surrounding world.

Research on differential game of platform corporate social responsibility governance strategy considering user and public scrutiny.

The development of digital technology and the sharing economy has extended corporations' innovative activities beyond the corporation's boundaries, so it has become more urgent to govern the lack of social responsibility and alienation of platform corporations from the perspective of social agents. First, the platform's CSR classification and social responsibility governance's main content are analyzed in this research. Then, this study uses government agencies, platform corporations, users, and the public as governance subjects and compares governance decisions with and without public and user oversight. Finally, the optimal balance strategy for each governing subject, the optimal trajectory of governance volume, and the trajectory of total revenue are obtained. The study found that: 1) Public and user supervision can improve the governance volume while encourage the governance motivation of government agencies and platform corporations. 2) The level of user supervision effort has a greater impact on the total governance revenue than public supervision. 3) The revenue of the system and the governance volume are greater in a centralized decision-making process, indicating that those involved should co-operate in governance based on the principle of mutual benefit. 4) The platform corporation has an incompatible but unified relationship between its social duty and financial success.

Preventing Electoral Fraud in Indonesia: Protecting the Social Security of Election Management Personnel

Indonesia’s Election Management Bodies (EMBs), constitutionally mandated to manage legislative and presidential elections, face substantial risks, including accidents and fatalities. However, their social security rights are often overshadowed by the focus on civil servants and private-sector workers. This study, employing normative legal research, urges the need for state protection of EMBs’ social security rights, drawing on secondary data sources. EMBs should receive comprehensive work-related accident benefits, death benefit programs, and old-age protection schemes from the Workers Social Security Agency (BPJS Ketenagakerjaan). The legal basis for these social security rights can be found in several legislative provisions, including the Indonesian 1945 Constitution, the National Social Security System Law, and other related regulations. Recognizing EMBs as state-serving workers is a crucial step in safeguarding their social security rights. This recognition is not merely a matter of legal interpretation; it is a necessity to ensure a fair and secure electoral environment. By ensuring that EMBs are accorded the same rights and protections as other workers, the state can create a more equitable electoral process and reinforce the integrity of its democratic institutions.

Children's anthropomorphism of inanimate agents.

This review article examines the extant literature on animism and anthropomorphism in infants and young children. A substantial body of work indicates that both infants and young children have a broad concept of what constitutes a sentient agent and react to inanimate objects as they do to people in the same context. The literature has also revealed a developmental pattern in which anthropomorphism decreases with age, but social robots appear to be an exception to this pattern. Additionally, the review shows that children attribute psychological properties to social robots less so than people but still anthropomorphize them. Importantly, some research suggests that anthropomorphism of social robots is dependent upon their morphology and human-like behaviors. The extent to which children anthropomorphize robots is dependent on their exposure to them and the presence of human-like features. Based on the existing literature, we conclude that in infancy, a large range of inanimate objects (e.g., boxes, geometric figures) that display animate motion patterns trigger the same behaviors observed in child-adult interactions, suggesting some implicit form of anthropomorphism. The review concludes that additional research is needed to understand what infants and children judge as social agents and how the perception of inanimate agents changes over the lifespan. As exposure to robots and virtual assistants increases, future research must focus on better understanding the full impact that regular interactions with such partners will have on children's anthropomorphizing. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Learning Cognitive Biology > Cognitive Development Computer Science and Robotics > Robotics.

Populist Attitudes among Teenagers: How Negative Relationships with Socialization Agents Are Linked to Populist Attitudes

While the origins and consequences of populist attitudes in adults are being studied extensively, it is still unknown when populist attitudes might emerge in a person’s life. Drawing on the existing literature on political socialization, we focus on populist attitudes during adolescence and explore the contributing role of negative relationships with parents, peers, and teachers. We provide the first comprehensive analysis of populist attitudes among a representative sample of children aged 12 to 18 (mean: 14.66 years) using a unique dataset gathered through interviews conducted in schools in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland (n=3,123). Our findings reveal a strong association between perceived unjust teacher behavior and the level of populist attitudes in adolescents, while the connection of peers and parents with populist attitudes appears to be limited. Further analyses using panel data from the UK support these findings.

Voice-based personal assistant (VPA) trust: Investigating competence and integrity

While intelligence of voice-based personal assistants (VPAs) is evolving, limited research has investigated how various intelligence attributes impact consumer trust and adoption of VPAs. Drawn from social agency theory and the technology acceptance model, the current study developed and empirically tested a holistic research framework of the effects of intelligence attributes on consumers’ behavioral responses to VPAs through trust. We identified three aspects of intelligence attributes as functional (ease of use, usefulness), hedonic (enjoyment, innovativeness), and anthropomorphic attributes (humanness, autonomy) and two types of trust in VPAs as competence and integrity. Results showed dynamic relationships among VPAs’ intelligence attributes, consumer trust, and behavioral intentions. Specifically, both functional and hedonic attributes promote competence, whereas anthropomorphic attributes increase integrity. Further, both competence and integrity lead to positive word-of-mouth (WOM), while only competence positively influences consumers’ usage intention. In addition, a user's level of technology anxiety (an individual difference variable) was found to serve as a moderator in the trust model. This study offers both theoretical contributions and practical implications regarding consumer trust development in the context of VPAs.

“You Need to Listen to the Market!”: Making Decisions Through Senses in China’s Largest Cut-Flower Market

The Dounan flower market can be a “hot and noisy” time and space, which is composed of the engine sound of motor tricycles, the grating of trailers rubbing against the concrete floor, the honks of reversing vehicles, and bargaining, chitchats, provocations, quarrels, and sometimes fighting. A booming market is a market clamoring with noise (auditory sense) and heat (an embodied feeling). In a couple of hours, floral traders deploy their embodied feelings of perception to make decisions on when to close a deal, what is a good price, and how to make bargains. My two ethnographic case studies—“you need to listen to the market” and “feelings of the market” delineate how the senses as a decision-making repertoire inform the everyday economic practices of floral traders in Dounan. At the interface of the sensory and the economic, I explore how rational, economic decisions are embedded into the “irrational,” sensory knowledge. Situated in sensory studies in Asia, this article elaborates the socio-cultural specificities inoculating the sensory knowledge of social agents without ignoring the nuances of how phenomenologically individuals engage in their everyday sensory practices.