Attitudes toward people with epilepsy (PWE) have improved over recent decades, especially in high-income countries including Germany. However, this trend is less pronounced in low-income countries. This study aims to assess and compare attitudes toward PWE in two large ethnocultural minority groups in Berlin: Arabic and Vietnamese residents. Residents of Berlin aged 18years or older, born and raised in selected Arabic countries or Vietnam were invited to participate in a survey. We used a preliminary version of the standardized "Scales of Attitudes toward People with Epilepsy" (SAPE) questionnaire with scales on Social Distance, Stereotypes, Personal Concerns, and Emotional Reactions to PWE differentiated by Fear, Anger, and Pity/Compassion. In addition, the Caveness Questions (CQ) about personal experience with epilepsy and knowledge about epilepsy were assessed. Limiting comparability with previous literature and overall validity of findings was the use of a preliminary version of SAPE and the lack of formal validation of Vietnamese and Arabic translations of SAPE. A total of 297 participants were interviewed; 15 of those had never heard of epilepsy and were excluded from the analysis. Eventually, questionnaires of 133 Arabic and 149 Vietnamese interviewees (female sex, 43 vs. 68%; mean age, 34.8±9.7 vs. 34.0±12.4years; duration of stay in Germany, 6.0±5.1 vs. 7.9±9.4years) were considered. Multivariable Generalized Linear Model (GLM) analyses showed that Arabic compared to Vietnamese participants had higher objections to having one's own children play with PWE, but less likely deemed epilepsy as a mental disease; furthermore, they had lower objections to employment of PWE. In the SAPE scales, Arabic interviewees scored significantly lower for the 'Social Distance' and the 'Emotional Reactions: Fear' scale. A strong predictor for more positive attitudes across almost all SAPE subscales in both groups was higher education. Arabic and Vietnamese residents of Berlin differed in some specific facets of the attitude toward PWE. Attitudes were generally more positive than in surveys done in several Arabic countries and Vietnam. Higher levels of education predicted more positive attitudes in both groups calling for specific knowledge transfer to the general population on epilepsy and persons affected.

Although prior research has linked social distance to defending in school-aged children and adolescents, it remains unclear whether this effect extends to preschool-aged children, generalizes to both defending behaviors and intentions, or demonstrates heterogeneity in this younger population. This study addressed these gaps by focusing on preschoolers, distinguishing between defending behaviors and intentions, and examining how social distance (friend vs. stranger) and age (early vs. late preschoolers) influence defending (direct and indirect defending), both independently and interactively. The final analytic sample had 200 Chinese preschoolers, including 101 early preschoolers (3-4 years, Mage = 48.94±6.49 months, 50 boys) and 99 late preschoolers (5-6 years, Mage = 67.31±4.77 months, 49 boys). A vignette task was used to measure children's defending intentions and behaviors. The analyses of covariance revealed significant effects of age and social distance on defending. First, compared to early preschoolers, late preschoolers exhibited fewer defending behaviors but more defending intentions. Second, a significant main effect of social distance revealed that both overall and indirect defending behaviors and intentions were stronger when the victim was a friend rather than a stranger. Third, the significant interactioneffects of social distance and age on overall and indirect defending intentions revealed that early preschoolers displayed stronger intentions toward a friend than late preschoolers. The findings demonstrate an age-related divergence between defending behaviors and intentions, providing nuanced evidence for how social distance motivates defending strategies across the preschool years. SUMMARY: A developmental divergence emerged: compared to early preschoolers, late preschoolers reported stronger defending intentions yet exhibited fewer defending behaviors. Preschoolers strategically prioritize indirect strategies (e.g., comforting victims and seeking adult help) to defend their close friends. Early preschoolers exhibit stronger intentions for indirect defending toward close friends compared to late preschoolers.

• This study combines network data and field experiments in a non-WEIRD society. • Social norms act as the primary reference point for social image effects. • Observation induces norm conformity rather than prosocial signaling. • Norm enforcement depends on participant-observer network relations. • Distant, weakly tied, and low-centrality observers trigger stronger conformity. Social image effects are a common phenomenon, yet strongly heterogeneous across situations and people. We use a lab-in-the-field experiment in small-scale societies of Papua New Guinea to study the drivers of heterogeneity in social image effects, focusing on the roles of social norms and social network relationships. Participants played a dictator game, both, in private and in front of an observer. This data is accompanied by incentive-compatibly measured information on the social norm location and detailed social network data. First, we present causal evidence that social norms serve as reference points for social image effects, with participants’ behavior shifting toward the norm when observed. Second, our analysis reveals that the strength of norm enforcement depends on the participant-observer relationship. We find that norm enforcement is stronger when i) social distance increases, ii) cooperative ties weaken, and iii) observer centrality in communication networks decreases.

ABSTRACT This Forum article examines pornography as an overlooked site of attraction that can deepen the conceptual understanding of soft power. While existing scholarship treats pornography primarily as an economic, moral, or representational issue, I argue that erotic media illuminate how attraction operates in its most direct, human form – through desire, affect, and embodied visibility. Drawing on examples from Japanese romance AV, Chinese homoerotic visual culture, and Mekong-region pornography, the article shows how erotic aesthetics generate cross-cultural intimacy and emotional proximity beyond state-led cultural diplomacy. These cases demonstrate that pornography may function as organic soft power, not by branding nations but by humanizing bodies and dissolving social distance. I propose the notion of ‘creative pornography’ to describe erotic media that cultivate aesthetic refinement, emotional literacy, and new cultural sensibilities. Reconsidering pornography in this light expands the scope of soft power and highlights desire as a fundamental mode of human communication.

The COVID-19 pandemic abruptly disrupted the lives of 1.7 million children and adolescents in Austria. School closures, social distancing, and limited leisure activities substantially affected daily routines and emotional well-being. This study examined age- and gender-related differences in anxiety and depression following COVID-19 infection in Austrian youth. A cross-sectional online survey conducted between March and October 2021 included 1495 families with children aged 4–18 years who had been infected during the early phase of the pandemic. Parents completed the DISYPS-III screening for anxiety and depression. Depression scores were elevated in younger children aged 4–10 years. Boys aged 11–13 years showed slightly higher anxiety and depression levels than girls. School-related stress was associated with poorer mental health outcomes, and longer quarantine duration correlated with higher symptom levels. The findings highlight age-specific vulnerabilities and the strong impact of school-related stress on mental health during public health crises.

Purpose Despite the rapid growth of pet-friendly tourism, this research focuses primarily on pet owners and their animals, neglecting the coexistence of non-pet owners as stakeholders at destinations. This study aims to explore the perception and acceptance of pets among non-pet owners, who are a vital component in ensuring the stability and openness of this tourism sector. Design/methodology/approach By using grounded theory and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), this research investigates the antecedents and configuration pathways of non-pet owners’ willingness to accept others’ pets at destinations. Findings Five key dimensions influencing non-pet owners’ acceptance are extracted via grounded theory. The fsQCA results indicate that these influencing factors are categorised into four driving models, with cognition, emotion, environment, control and pet owner behaviour management serving as core factors, while social distance functions as a supplementary factor. The findings reveal the complex antecedents and synergistic driving mechanisms of non-pet owners’ acceptance intentions. Originality/value This study first clarifies and constructs a multiple antecedent theoretical framework for non-pet owners’ acceptance willingness, which bridge the gap in the field of pet tourism research by recognising non-pet owners as one of the key stakeholders. Crucially, this research offers guidance for enhancing visitor diversity management and maintaining harmonious human–animal relationships at destinations.

Purpose While peer effects in education have been extensively studied in developed countries, there has been limited investigation of how physical proximity shapes academic achievement in rural educational settings. This study examines peer effects among primary school students in rural China and investigates whether these effects operate differently across student ability levels through distinct mechanisms. Design/methodology/approach Data from 2,956 primary school students across rural counties in Shaanxi Province, China, were analyzed. We employ an instrumental variable approach using physical distance between students in classroom seating arrangements to address endogeneity in peer group formation. Study group formation is measured through student-reported study partnerships, while academic performance is assessed using standardized mathematics test scores. Findings Study groups significantly enhance student achievement, with heterogeneous effects across ability levels. Middle tercile students show the strongest peer effects (0.318 standard deviations), compared to bottom tercile students (0.241 standard deviations). Mechanism analysis reveals that peer effects operate primarily through improved intrinsic motivation, enhanced self-concept, and reduced academic anxiety among middle-performing students, while effects for bottom tercile students operate through alternative pathways not captured in our measures. Research limitations/implications Our findings inform cost-efficient policy interventions in both educational institutions and corporate environments. The evidence indicates that optimizing spatial proximity in peer networks represents an efficient policy instrument for human capital accumulation, particularly valuable in resource-constrained settings, as it leverages existing human capital without substantial additional inputs. Originality/value This study provides the first evidence of peer effects using classroom seating arrangements as an identification strategy in a developing country/rural community context. The paper demonstrates that optimizing peer proximity represents a cost-efficient policy instrument for human capital development in resource-constrained rural areas, offering important implications for educational policy in agricultural communities where traditional educational resources are limited.

ABSTRACT Providing social assistance to poor populations in remote communities in times of crises, such as pandemics, is challenging but crucial. This paper examines how food assistance during the COVID‐19 pandemic affected people's behaviour, using our surveys among over 400 rural communities without road access in the Peruvian Amazon. Food assistance affected people's travel to cities by riverboat to collect cash assistance in distinct ways, depending on transportation costs. Both government and nongovernment food assistance increased social distancing, but nongovernment assistance may have unintentionally led to further contagion of the virus through river travel. We discuss mechanisms underlying these impacts, shaped by the distinct geographic targeting of assistance providers.

ABSTRACT In this article, we present a study comparing the production of German requesting forms in adults and in children from 4 to 11 years, depending on different social scenarios that varied in social distance of the addressee and in the urgency of the request. We explored the variation of the elicited utterances along the two different dimensions of sentence type (declarative, imperative, and interrogative) and whether participants used a modal verb. If so, we further investigated whether they employed subject-internal (Can I …) or subject-external modality (Can you …). Our results show that urgency had no effect on the choice of utterances in both adult speakers and children. On the other hand, social distance had an impact on the linguistic forms used, but in different ways for adults and children: While adults varied their use of sentence types, children did not display variation in the domain of sentence types, but rather varied the use of subject-internal versus subject-external modality. Moreover, our study indicates the acquisition path that the use of subject-external modality increases with age, and we highlight that this dovetails with the development of general cognitive capacities.

ABSTRACT Despite growing interest in corporate relocation decisions and sustainability, the existing literature is limited in its consumer‐centric approach. Integrating social exchange theory and construal level theory, this research investigates how consumers perceive sustainability‐driven nearshoring motives (i.e., socio‐economic vs. environmental) and further examines how psychological distance (i.e., spatial and social) shapes consumer gratitude and consumer brand reactions (i.e., willingness to reciprocate and brand avoidance), following a corporate hypocritical event. Based on three preregistered experiments, including a prestudy, we demonstrate that although sustainability motives foster consumer gratitude and willingness to reciprocate, corporate hypocrisy significantly diminishes positive consumer responses when it occurs in a recently nearshored country with lower spatial distance, rather than in a formerly offshored country with higher spatial distance. Interestingly, consumers often disregard corporate hypocritical practices when they occur in a formerly offshored country (vs. a recently nearshored country) or involve brands with a higher (vs. a lower) social distance, uncovering a distance paradox in consumer concern for sustainability. Highlighting the norm of reciprocity generated through nearshoring, with the conditioning role of psychological distance, we shed light on the mechanisms affecting consumer–brand relationships and provide important implications for both research and practice.

ABSTRACT Building on self-congruity theory and attribution theory, this research introduces a novel construct, Endorser — Self Distance (ESD) — the perceived psychological distance between a consumer’s self-concept and a brand endorser. Using both inductive and deductive approaches, and across 3 studies we develop and validate the ESD scale. We also employ a scenario-based experiment to test the predictive and mediating power of ESD. The current study positions ESD as a meaningful advancement over related concepts like social distance, offering greater precision in capturing consumer – endorser dynamics in moral violation contexts. Parallel mediation analyses reveal that ESD significantly mediates the relationships between an endorser’s immoral actions and consumer outcomes (i.e. willingness to pay, trust, and liking). Notably, social distance does not exhibit a significant mediating effect. Additionally, we find that attribution type moderates these effects: internal attributions (blaming the endorser) magnify the negative impact of immoral actions on consumer outcomes, compared to external attributions (blaming the situation). These findings highlight the distinct theoretical and practical value of ESD in explaining consumer reactions to endorser moral failures, with implications for developing marketing communications.

Depression is a major psychiatric disorder, and accumulating evidence indicates that inflammatory processes contribute to its pathophysiology. Peripheral administration of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) reliably induces systemic inflammation and is widely used to model inflammation-related depression and sickness behavior. However, despite the strong association between social behavior and depressive states, the impact of LPS-induced inflammation on social interactions remains insufficiently understood. Here, we investigated how acute inflammatory responses influence social and non-social behaviors in C57BL/6 J mice following intraperitoneal LPS administration. Immunological analyses using ELISA and flow cytometry revealed marked increases in circulating IL-1β, IL-6, and TNF-α, accompanied by reductions in T cells, B cells, neutrophils, and monocytes. Baseline levels of B cells, neutrophils, and monocytes differed between sexes. Behavioral assessments demonstrated that LPS-treated male mice exhibited increased social contact and reduced social distance in both familiar and unfamiliar dyads, whereas these effects were absent in female pairs. In contrast, LPS induced comparable reductions in body weight, locomotor activity, and fecal output in the open-field test, as well as decreased sucrose preference and overall licking counts in the sucrose preference task, in both sexes. These findings indicate that LPS-induced inflammation modulates social behavior in a sex-dependent manner. Notably, the enhanced social contact observed in male dyads cannot be attributed to weight loss, hypoactivity, altered orofacial movements, or reduced reward sensitivity, as these physiological and motivational impairments were similarly present in both sexes. This study highlights distinct social behavioral consequences of inflammatory activation and advances our understanding of immune-behavior interactions.

Reducing stigma and discrimination towards people with mental ill-health is a key priority in Australian mental health policy. Population-based surveys conducted in Australia between 2003 and 2011 showed some improvement in stigmatising attitudes, but also a deterioration in attitudes about dangerousness and unpredictability, particularly in relation to schizophrenia. This study aimed to investigate whether stigmatising attitudes have changed since the 2011 national survey. Two large, nationally representative samples of Australian adults were surveyed in 2011 (n=1967) and 2024 (n=1984). At each time point, participants were presented with vignettes of a person in the early stages of depression or schizophrenia and completed questionnaires about stigmatising attitudes towards the person in the vignette (Personal Stigma Scale) and willingness to interact with them (Social Distance Scale). Using weighted data, logistic regressions assessed change from 2011 to 2024 while controlling for sociodemographic characteristics. Results were considered significant at p<.01. There were significant reductions in endorsement of stigmatising attitudes towards depression and early schizophrenia. Notably, there were large reductions in beliefs about dangerousness (depression 22.5-4.8% and schizophrenia 37.1-18.1%). Conversely, the willingness to interact with a person with depression remained unchanged and had worsened for schizophrenia, with the odds of being unwilling to interact approximately doubling (11.0-26.9% unwilling to make friends and 18.8-33.2% unwilling to work closely with them). The data show mixed findings regarding change in stigma in the Australian population. Despite negative beliefs diminishing over time, this has not translated into greater willingness to interact with people with depression or schizophrenia. Key action is needed on understanding the barriers to interacting with people with mental health conditions and reducing perceptions of unpredictability, particularly for schizophrenia, which remains more highly stigmatised.

Parental involvement plays an important role in shaping students’ academic achievement, emotional well-being, and spiritual development, especially within faith-based educational contexts. This study explored how Catholic senior high school students experience and perceive parental involvement in relation to their academic and spiritual resilience. Using a qualitative descriptive approach within an interpretive paradigm, data were collected through semi-structured interviews with six Grade 12 students from two Catholic educational institutions in Manila, Philippines. Thematic analysis following Braun and Clarke’s framework was used to analyze the narratives. Findings revealed that students experience parental involvement as a multidimensional process characterized by academic guidance and parental sacrifice, emotional reassurance, shared faith practices, and sustained communication. These forms of support strengthened students’ capacity to cope with academic pressure and personal challenges by providing motivation, emotional stability, and spiritual meaningmaking. However, several factors were identified as hindrances to effective parental involvement, including parental time constraints, communication gaps, physical distance due to work or migration, generational differences, and emotional pressure associated with parental expectations. Based on these findings, guidance service interventions are proposed to strengthen family engagement through parent formation programs, communication workshops, family-oriented activities, and counseling initiatives. The study shows that parental involvement in Catholic school contexts supports not only students’ academic perseverance but also their spiritual resilience, thus offering a more holistic understanding of how family engagement can be strengthened through school-based guidance and pastoral programs. The study highlights the importance of strengthening school-family partnerships in fostering academic perseverance and spiritual resilience among students.

Cha-xu sharing refers to the differentiated resource-sharing behaviors of individuals based on their social distance to different target others. Existing research has not adequately investigated the internal mechanisms that produce such differential behaviors from the perspective of “egoistic altruism,” nor has it examined whether culturally rooted Cha-xu Geju (differential mode of association) can be externally modulated. Study 1 employed three ecologically valid scenarios to provide basic evidence that individuals’ resource allocations follow a cha-xu sharing pattern. Study 2 further demonstrated that perceived role responsibility, self-interest, and reciprocity jointly mediate the effect of social distance on sharing, and proposed a responsibility–benefit dual-drive model to account for cha-xu sharing. Study 3 manipulated pro-sharing social norms and found that, although they increased overall sharing levels, in certain respects they also strengthened the cha-xu pattern. These findings advance our understanding of differentiated decision-making in Confucian-influenced cultural contexts and offer a basis for designing managerial strategies to balance fairness with cultural fit.

Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia is a serious opportunistic infection in immunocompromised individuals. Despite recognized person-to-person transmission and healthcare-associated outbreaks, optimal infection control strategies remain unclear. The COVID-19 pandemic led to the implementation of universal masking and physical distancing in hospitals, providing a unique setting to observe P. jirovecii transmission under stringent "droplet precaution"-like conditions. This study investigated healthcare-associated P. jirovecii transmission between June 2020 and November 2021. Retrospective cohort study. One tertiary-care hospital in Montréal, QC, Canada. All patients with P. jirovecii pneumonia at our institution during that period. Cases were identified via laboratory data and chart review. P. jirovecii-positive samples underwent genotyping using multilocus sequence typing. A transmission map was constructed based on shared genotypes and spatiotemporal overlap of hospital visits within a defined window of potential exposure. Twenty-eight P. jirovecii pneumonia cases were identified. Genotyping succeeded at providing a distinct sequence type (ST) in 21 cases, revealing 7 patients with shared genotypes (3 with ST52, 2 with STX7, 2 with ST19). The transmission map of 12 patients with shared or unknown genotypes revealed 34 same-day and 34 within-one-day contacts, exclusively within outpatient clinics and imaging facilities. Three spatiotemporal clusters of plausible healthcare-associated transmission were identified despite universal masking. The occurrence of plausible healthcare-associated P. jirovecii transmission despite stringent universal masking suggests that traditional "droplet precautions" alone may be insufficient to prevent spread, supporting airborne transmission. Infection prevention strategies may need to be expanded in high-risk settings and should account for airborne transmission.

Exploring social distance of iranian students from international students: a preliminary survey study

This study analyzed the post-pandemic perception of older adults in Long-Term Care Institutions (LTCIs) in Montes Claros, Minas Gerais. Considered a high-risk group, the elderly faced social distancing, subjective and objective losses, and many still struggle with institutionalization. The relevance of this study lies particularly in the lack of scientific literature directed toward the elderly population in LTCIs. In this sense, interpreting and analyzing the perceptions of elderly individuals in Long-Term Care Institutions will benefit the academic community and allow the voices of this vulnerable group to be heard, at least on some level. The exploratory and qualitative research used in-person interviews with seven participants, identified by the names of the Seven Wonders of the World. The analysis followed Bardin’s method, resulting in five categories: “Emotions in Social Reopening,” “Access to Information,” “Memory Lost in Time,” “Social Contact,” and “Social Reconnection.” The results show relief and gratitude for the end of the pandemic but also a persistent fear of physical contact. Despite this, there is a strong desire for interaction with people outside the institution. Although, this research presents some limitations, aspects of older people perception of the post-pandemic scenario were unraveled, taking into account elements such as the emotions triggered by the reopening and the process of (re)connecting socially, important perceptions for the management of professionals working with this group.

Gamma synchrony is ubiquitous in visual cortex, but whether it contributes to perceptual grouping remains contentious based on observations that gamma frequency is not consistent across stimulus features and that gamma synchrony depends on distances between image elements. These stimulus dependencies have been argued to challenge the idea that the visual system groups image elements by synchronizing the neural assemblies that encode them. Here, we argue instead that these dependencies may shape synchrony in perceptually meaningful ways. Indeed, according to the theory of weakly coupled oscillators (TWCO), synchrony-based grouping mechanisms require stimulus dependence. Synchronization among coupled oscillators depends on frequency dissimilarity and coupling strength, which in early visual cortex relate to local feature dissimilarity and physical distance, respectively. We manipulated these factors in a texture segregation experiment wherein human observers identified the orientation of a figure defined by reduced contrast heterogeneity compared to the background. Human performance followed TWCO predictions both qualitatively and quantitatively, as formalized in a computational model. Moreover, we found that when enriched with a Hebbian learning rule, our model also predicted human learning effects: Increases in model gamma synchrony due to perceptual learning predicted improvements in texture segregation across sessions. Taken together, our data suggest that the stimulus-dependence of gamma synchrony captures local image statistics and is linked to the stimulus-dependence of texture segregation, and that the effect of visual experience on gamma synchrony provides a viable perceptual learning mechanism for training-induced improvements in texture segregation. Our results suggest that gamma synchrony with its inherent stimulus dependencies can provide a plausible mechanistic basis for perceptual grouping and visual scene segmentation.

ABSTRACT Protected areas aim to conserve biodiversity and the natural environment, yet their effectiveness depends on how people understand and relate to them. This study examines perceptions of Monte Louro, a Natura 2000 site in Galicia (Spain), to analyze how conservation designations shape people’s representations and relations to the landscape. Drawing on semistructured interviews (n = 13) and questionnaires (n = 136), we identify two main interpretations of the area: one that sees it as a wild landscape, and another that emphasizes its agrarian past and shaping by humans. The Natura 2000 designation plays a key role in reshaping these views. Visitors tend to perceive the area as more natural simply because it is formally protected, while local residents experience increasing emotional detachment as restrictions limit traditional practices. These contrasting responses reveal how conservation policies alter place meanings and produce new social distances. The findings highlight a persistent gap between institutional conservation frameworks and local perceptions, underscoring the need to integrate cultural and historical values into management strategies.