Social Explanations Research Articles

Modelling cultural selection on biological fitness to integrate social transmission and adaptive explanations for human behaviour.

One of the difficulties with cultural group selection theory highlighted in the review by Smith (2020, Evol. Hum. Sci., 2, e7) is its inability to separate the evolutionary effects of selection of cultural traits based on biological fitness (Cultural Selection 1) from the effects of selection based on cultural fitness (Cultural Selection 2). Confusing these two processes can hinder the integration of adaptive explanations for human behaviour, which focus on biological fitness, and cultural evolution explanations, which often focus on social transmission. Recent empirical work is starting to bridge this gap, but progress in mathematical modelling has been considerably slower. Here, I suggest that modellers can contribute to achieving this integration by further developing models of Cultural Selection 1, where behaviours are influenced by culturally inherited traits selected on the basis of their effects on biological fitness. These models should build on existing social evolution theory methods and replace genetic relatedness with cultural relatedness, that is the probability that two individuals share a cultural variant.

The Freedom to Become a Christian: A Kierkegaardian Account of Human Transformation in Relationship with God by Andrew B. Torrance

Reviewed by: The Freedom to Become a Christian: A Kierkegaardian Account of Human Transformation in Relationship with God by Andrew B. Torrance Walter Wietzke The Freedom to Become a Christian: A Kierkegaardian Account of Human Transformation in Relationship with God. By Andrew B. Torrance. London: Bloomsbury Press, 2016. 217 pp. In his book The Point of View for My Work as an Author, Kierkegaard wrote that the central issue of his authorship had been to explain what it meant for a person to become a Christian. This remark has captivated readers ever since, and numerous arguments have been offered for how Kierkegaard understands Christian religious transformation (i.e., conversion), including religious, social, and psychological explanations. It is also the subject of Torrance's book. Torrance argues that, for Kierkegaard, God's assistance is essential for Christian conversion. The book has five chapters. Chapter one is an exposition of the moral and psychological concepts in Kierkegaard's writings relevant to religious conversion. Chapter two elucidates the theme ofxy [End Page 230] reconciliation in Kierkegaard's writings, describing the various parables and metaphors Kierkegaard uses to explain how God brings about salvation for humans. Chapters three and four explain the human side of this process—specifically, the kinds of beliefs and values that facilitate the reception of divine assistance. Chapter five concludes with more discussion of how humans relate to God, as well as some critical analysis of scholarship that minimizes how Kierkegaard understands God's role in conversion. In general, Torrance's analysis is illuminating and innovative. This book is not written for the beginning student of Kierkegaard, but it will be very helpful to those looking for an analytical account of a Christian conversion experience. It also distinguishes itself with a deeper incorporation of Kierkegaard's religious writings into a discussion that usually focuses on his philosophical works. Yet, on this note, an abiding concern of mine has to do with the fact that Kierkegaard's main philosophical positions conflict with some of the dogmatic Christian views expressed in the religious writings, a fact that raises some questions about Torrance's main thesis. For example, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (arguably Kierkegaard's most important philosophical work) treats Christian dogma as a hypothetical issue: if the claims of God's intervention in human history through the person of Jesus Christ are true, then it must be true that Christian doctrine is absurd, paradoxical, and offensive to reason. Christianity is incommensurate with a naturalistic explanation of human nature, and several important claims follow. Crucially, in this view human beings lack the epistemic ability to know whether God really exists, whether Jesus was truly the Son of God, or even if the individual aspiring to become a Christian ever succeeds. Belief in these matters is a matter of faith, not knowledge. If they were objects of our knowledge their status would shift to that of objective, historical facts, and this would invalidate one of the central arguments of the Postscript. That is, once religious beliefs become objective facts, they can no longer support the subjective conditions necessary for religious faith. It is the uncertainty of religious dogma that generates the passion that is the defining characteristic of religious faith. To be sure, Torrance acknowledges all these points in Kierkegaard's work, but [End Page 231] granting them requires having a more nuanced account of God's role in our religious life. The Sickness Unto Death provides an important perspective on this issue. In this work Kierkegaard explains how the concept of sin draws a line between the naturalistic, non-Christian explanations and Christian explanations of human existence. Sin attributes a human being's failure to achieve moral or religious goals to a fundamentally flawed constitution. Kierkegaard is also clear that the concept of sin strictly belongs to Christian religious faith; no secular, purely psychological explanation for how human beings are so constitutionally flawed is possible. The result is that an individual will understand her experience of moral failure differently depending on whether or not she believes in sin. Torrance provides helpful exposition of these issues, but he does not draw out their implications for the subject of conversion. As with belief in sin, once...

State‐Level Determinants of Hate Crime Reporting: Examining the Impact of Structural and Social Movement Influences

In this article, we investigate factors affecting hate crime policies by examining anti‐LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) hate crime reports as a type of policy implementation. Analyzing state‐level data drawn primarily from the US Census between 1995 and 2008, we examine how structural and social movement mobilization factors explain hate crime reporting. We find that anti‐LGBT hate crimes are more likely to be reported in more urbanized states and in states with both split political elites and a greater number of LGBT social movement organizations. We discuss the implications of our findings for separating the drivers of policy passage from policy implementation and for complementary criminological and social movement explanations for hate crime reporting.

Causality in life course research: the potential use of ‘natural experiments’ for causal inference

Recent decades have seen renewed attention to issues of causal inference in the social sciences, yet implications for life course research have not been spelled out nor is it clear what types of approaches are best suited for theoretical development on life course processes. We begin by evaluating a number of meta-theoretical perspectives, including critical realism, data mining and experimentation, and find them limited in their potential for causal claims in a life course context. From this, we initiate a discussion of the logic and practice of ‘natural experiments’ for life course research, highlighting issues of how to identify natural experiments, how to use cohort information and variation in the order and timing of life course transitions to isolate variation in exposure, how such events that alter social structures are the key to identification in causal processes of the life course and, finally, of analytic strategies for the extraction of causal conclusions from conventional statistical estimates. Through discussion of both positive and negative examples, we outline the key methodological issues in play and provide a road map of best practices. While we acknowledge that causal claims are not necessary for social explanation, our goal is to explain how causal inference can benefit life course scholarship and outline a set of practices that can complement conventional approaches in the pursuit of causal explanation in life course research.

Personality, (NEURO) Trust and LMX in Information Apportionment

Neuromanagement has evolved into a full-fledged enterprise of consilience; an attempt to not only test and bridge, but truly unify natural science and social science explanations of human behaviour (Wilson, 1998; Glimcher and Rustichini, 2004; Rangel, Camerer and Montague, 2008). This paper presents an empirical approach to neuro - based information sharing dynamics via personality, (neuro) trust and LMX. The Big Five Inventory matrix has been adopted to test the phenomenon. A neuro – based pathway has been projected. A symbiotic relational model has been arrived at.

Empathy, honour, and the apprenticeship of violence: rudiments of a psychohistorical critique of the individualistic science of evil

Research seeking to explain the perpetration of violence and atrocities by humans against other humans offers both social and individualistic explanations, which differ namely in the roles attributed to empathy. Prominent social models suggest that some manifestations of inter-human violence are caused by parochial attitudes (attitudes characterized by interests centred on one's own community) and obedience reinforced by within-group empathy. Individualistic explanations of violence, by contrast, posit that stable intra-individual characteristics of the brain and personality of some individuals lead them to commit violence and atrocities. An individualistic explanation argues that the chief cause of violence is the perpetrator’'s lack of empathy with the victim. To offer the rudiments of a critique of the individualistic approach, I critically examine a model stating that violence is caused by empathy erosion (Baron-Cohen 2011). Specifically, the discussion of the empathy-erosion model is applied to the case of honour-based violence (HBV), a type of violence known for its communal character. Building from prior enquiries into violence and social cognition, I argue that an empathy-erosion explanation of HBV is defective because it does not consider important cultural and historical enablers of violence. Finally, as an alternative to individualism, I propose a psychohistorical approach to HBV in the migration context. This alternative combines psychological and philosophical enquiry with historical and ethnographical analysis. The psychohistorical approach hypothesises that distinct processes of cultural learning of honour codes both scaffold HBV and modulate the perpetrators’ emotions and empathy.

Social trust and sharing economy size: country level evidence from home sharing services

ABSTRACT The sharing economy (peer-to-peer based sharing or renting activities coordinated through community-based online services) is often said to be closely related to trust. This paper examines the association empirically. Using data collected from the two sharing economy companies Airbnb and Flipkey that exist in over 100 countries, we construct a measure of sharing economy penetration and examine its correlation with social trust and other potential explanations. Sharing economy penetration is promoted by ICT-infrastructure and economic openness. Conditional on ICT-infrastructure, countries with higher social trust have significantly lower sharing economy penetration. Our conclusion is that sharing economy services do not require high levels of social trust to succeed. Rather, they provide institutions that facilitate trust-intensive economic activities also where social trust is low.

Anomie or imitation? The Werther effect of celebrity suicides on suicide rates in 34 OECD countries, 1960–2014

Anomie and imitation have been prominent mechanisms explaining the Werther effect, i.e., the effect of celebrity suicides on a general population's suicide rate. This study presents a new approach to empirically disentangle both mechanisms. Imitation theory suggests that celebrities act as role models, and that the Werther effect is triggered by the status of the celebrity in question. Anomie theory, on the other hand, suggests that the Werther effect is triggered by the unexpectedness of the event. To this end, we empirically compare the effects of celebrity suicides with the effects of celebrities who died unexpectedly from causes other than suicide (accidents, illnesses, alcohol abuse). Based on language and page-link data from 3855 Wikipedia pages of the 495 celebrities who died from suicide between 1960 and 2014, we measure the status a celebrity has in a particular country and calculate the potential country-specific imitation effect of their suicide. In the same manner, we measure the status of celebrities who died unexpectedly from accidents, illnesses, or alcohol abuse to reflect anomie-related effects. We use these measures in an ecological study based on a time-series cross-sectional dataset for 34 OECD countries to assess their effects on a country's overall annual suicide rate. Fixed-effects analyses reveal that the country-specific status of celebrity suicides is associated with significant increases in overall suicide rates, while anomie-related, unexpected celebrity deaths are not associated with the overall suicide rates. The findings remain robust across a number of alternative specifications, such as controlling for further anomic factors at the macro level (divorce or unemployment rate, for instance). We conclude that the results support the imitation mechanism as an essential social explanation for the Werther effect.

Nesting behaviours during pregnancy: Biological instinct, or another way of gendering housework?

Nesting is a hormonally-determined set of behaviours, observed in some animals, relating to the preparation of the space in which the offspring will be born and raised. Texts on childbirth and pregnancy advise women that they will experience nesting behaviours during pregnancy, causing them to tidy, clean, and prepare their living space. In this paper, I analyse the discussion of nesting behaviours on popular pregnancy websites. I then investigate the evidence base for nesting in humans through conducting a systematic review of the academic literature, and conclude that it is inadequate to ground the claims made in the popular discourse. The article concludes by presenting social explanations for nesting behaviours which are more plausible than the proposed biological narrative. These explanations make reference to the influence of gender stereotypes and the specific pressures experienced by women during pregnancy.

Evolúciós és társas hatások szerepe a nagyszülői gondoskodás alakulásában

A nagyszülők szerepe nagyon meghatározó az életünkben mind szülőként, mind unokaként. Az a törődés és gondoskodás, amit ők nyújtanak érzelmileg meghatározó élmény, ami egyben kötődési mintául is szolgál. Már ősidők óta szerepe van a nagyszülőknek, elsősorban a nagymamáknak az unokák túlélésében.Feltehetően a postmenpauzális nőknek, a nagymamáknak köszönhető hogy az ember gyermekénél a hosszú fejlődés időszaka kialakulhatott, aminek rendkívüli a jelentősége az ember kognitív evolúciójában. Azonban számos kérdés vetődik fel a nagyszülői segítségnyújtás tekintetében, melyekre mind evolúciós, mind szociális magyarázatokkal szolgálnak a kutatók. Ezen kutatások számba veszik mért jelenhetett meg a nagymamai szerep a humán evolúcióban, milyen faktorok befolyásolják a nagyszülői segítségnyújtást és azt, hogy a szülők, unokák miképp viszonyulnak majd ehhez.

Corporate social responsibility movement in an emerging economy: an institutional and social movement explanation

This study explores the CSR movement in India from the perspective of institutional theory and social movement theory. The paper draws important theoretical framework in the field of CSR in emerging economies. The study takes entirely new theoretical perspective of social movement theory and combines it with institutionalization to give important insights to the adoption of CSR as a law in India. Propositions are developed by drawing on the role of organizational actors and their interactions with institutional forces; and also on the interaction among the different forces. First, these interactions are examined in dyadic form and then the overall effects of these interactions are proposed. It is examined how different actors interact differently with the institutional forces, and how the dominant or competing forces interact with each other to in turn influence the actors. Another set of propositions examine how the organizational strategies shaped the CSR movement in India and how they have been or are likely to be shaped by the CSR movement in India. Implications for public affairs and policy making are drawn for CSR.

Social Psychological Explanations of Political Inaction: Citizens’ Perspectives in Brazil, Hungary, and the Netherlands

AbstractEngaging in political action can ensure adequate political representation for citizens. Except for voting, however, only a nonrepresentative, small group of people regularly engages in political action. Social psychological theories provide individual, group, and system‐level explanations for why people could remain inactive. However, they often focus only on personally held attitudes and do not fully consider the dynamics of attitude formation in interactions. Based on 26 focus group discussions conducted in Brazil, Hungary, and the Netherlands, we explored how citizens explain political inaction. We used latent thematic analysis, informed by social psychological theories, to understand how people form opinions about their own and others’ political inaction. In all three countries, the prevalent norm in the focus group discussions was that political inaction should be reduced but a lack of political efficacy constituted a core theme in explaining why people remain politically inactive. Depending on the sociopolitical context and how people self‐categorized within the discussions, people blamed unresponsive governments, or cited personal fears of repercussions and cultural differences within and between countries as reasons for inaction. The findings and interpretations are discussed within a framework that extends and integrates previous perspectives on why people remain politically inactive.

Az ezredforduló pszichológiája II

Az összefoglaló tanulmány azt elemzi, hogyan változott meg az utóbbi néhány évtizedben a pszichológiai kutatás mondanivalója és működésmódja. A pszichológia három magyarázati modellje, a neurális, az evolúciós és a társas modell új módon kapcsolódnak egymáshoz. Megjelenik a kidolgozott evolúciós pszichológia, mely a társas életet és a társas magyarázatot is igyekszik bekebelezni. Az evolúciós fejlődés felfogások pedig egyszerre helyezik el a mentális életet egy neuroszociális és egy kultúrára is kiterjesztett evolúciós modellben. Mindezt az innátista fejlődésfelfogások finomodása révén olyan pszichogenetika érvelések kísérik, melyek az univerzális és az egyéni különbségekkel foglalkozó gentika hagyományt egyesítik.

The ethical, legal and social implications of using artificial intelligence systems in breast cancer care

Breast cancer care is a leading area for development of artificial intelligence (AI), with applications including screening and diagnosis, risk calculation, prognostication and clinical decision-support, management planning, and precision medicine. We review the ethical, legal and social implications of these developments. We consider the values encoded in algorithms, the need to evaluate outcomes, and issues of bias and transferability, data ownership, confidentiality and consent, and legal, moral and professional responsibility. We consider potential effects for patients, including on trust in healthcare, and provide some social science explanations for the apparent rush to implement AI solutions. We conclude by anticipating future directions for AI in breast cancer care. Stakeholders in healthcare AI should acknowledge that their enterprise is an ethical, legal and social challenge, not just a technical challenge. Taking these challenges seriously will require broad engagement, imposition of conditions on implementation, and pre-emptive systems of oversight to ensure that development does not run ahead of evaluation and deliberation. Once artificial intelligence becomes institutionalised, it may be difficult to reverse: a proactive role for government, regulators and professional groups will help ensure introduction in robust research contexts, and the development of a sound evidence base regarding real-world effectiveness. Detailed public discussion is required to consider what kind of AI is acceptable rather than simply accepting what is offered, thus optimising outcomes for health systems, professionals, society and those receiving care.

Collectivism and Individualism in Status Hierarchies: Socialization and Social Identity Explanations

Social scientists have produced major theoretical and empirical advances documenting the importance of group status in shaping the group members’ perceptions of themselves and of society at large. Evidence is accumulating showing that members of high-status groups favor individualistic and autonomous self-conceptions and worldviews, whereas members of low-status groups turn to more collectivistic and less personalized ones. This paper reports on research that has examined this phenomenon with a focus on social class divisions. It outlines two main explanations that have been developed to account for this self-group discrepancy in status hierarchies. One explanation rests on the long run diverging socialization processes that take place in high and low social classes. A complementary explanation is based on social identity dynamics. It suggests that such orientations result from differing motivations among members of high-status and low-status groups: While the former aim to protect a positive social identity, the latter must cope with a social identity threat.

Educational Attainment and Social Norms of Voting

Why does the likelihood of voting increase with education in the US? Prominent theories attribute education’s effect to human capital, which affords individuals resources needed to participate, but neglect social motivations. We test a theory of internalized social norms as another contributing factor, providing evidence in three studies. First, we show that highly educated people are more likely to view voting as a civic duty, and that civic duty partially mediates the effect of education on voting. Second, we show education is associated with a higher likelihood of overreporting voting in the 2016 election. Third, we show that educated respondents are more likely to withstand stimuli incentivizing them to report they will not vote in an upcoming election. The results imply that voting norms vary by education, and invite more attention to social explanations for socioeconomic disparities in turnout.

Consecutive interpreting performance. Women and men compared

AbstractWhy are there so few male students attending the SSLMIT (Advanced School of Modern Languages for Interpreters and Translators) in Forlì? Why are interpreters generally women? Is there a biological or social explanation linked to gender differences in speaking abilities? This study is intended to provide an experimental analysis of possible differences and similarities between male and female students of interpretation. On the basis of the theories put forward by Gender Studies and a series of neuro-linguistic investigations on simultaneous interpreters, it seems that women and men in fact differ in the way they speak, communicate and also in their practice of interpretation. For this study, the interpretation mode chosen is consecutive and the linguistic combination is from German into Italian; the sample is made up of 14 women and 14 men, whose first or second foreign language is German. The texts selected for the CI (Consecutive Interpreting) present different linguistic features, topic, reading pace and length. The first is a speech, which deals with economic-financial matters, shows a high density of numerical expressions and specific sectorial terms. The second text is an article about health, which presents a considerable number of idiomatic expressions and terms related to the medical field. The comparison between the deliveries made by the interpreters of both sexes and the analysis of the answers provided by the questionnaires handed out to the students show some remarkable gender differences. Overall, it seems that male interpreters perform better as far as numbers, dates, and economic vocabulary are concerned, while female interpreters are better at handling figurative language and words related to health. Consistent with this finding, women maintained a higher degree of fluency in the delivery of the second text, while men were more fluent in the first. Although these results do not claim to be of statistical significance, they show that differences related to sex may have an impact on the performance of interpreters.

Understanding the impact of the Hajj: Explaining experiences of self‐change at a religious mass gathering

AbstractPrevious research has shown that participation in the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca can lead to both more positive outgroup attitudes and increased commitment to Muslim identity. We describe a survey of pilgrims (N = 1,176) carried out at Mecca, during the Hajj, which tested explanations for these experiences of self‐change at the time of their occurrence. In line with contact theory, perceived cooperation among pilgrims indirectly predicted more positive outgroup attitudes (as well as enhanced Muslim identification), via identification with the crowd. In line with social identity and identity congruence explanations, positive emotional experience and the perception that the crowd embodied the Muslim value of unity predicted self‐change variables through identification with the crowd. The finding that participation in an all‐Muslim gathering increases positive views of other groups (including non‐Muslims) through identification with the crowd offers an alternative perspective to suggestions that such gatherings might encourage intolerance.

Process-ing with mechanism: The renaissance of critical realism in human geography?

This paper fleshes out the advantages of critical realism in social explanation. It does so first through criticizing the obsession with process-ing in the field of geography, which uses time to explain space, for obscuring inherited social relations and key mechanism in social research. Second, the paper argues that under such a circumstance, Yeung’s ((2019) Rethinking mechanism and process in the geographical analysis of uneven development. Dialogue in Human Geography 9(3): 226–255) accusation that the conflation of process and mechanism leads to chaotic concepts makes great sense. While he distinguishes the process as a contingent change from the mechanism as a necessary relation, he combines them to explain specific and concrete outcomes. Finally, the paper argues that this insight suggests the need to return to Doreen Massey’s distinction and interaction between time- and space-dimension explanations by comparing Harvey’s views on the Marxist political economy with Ong’s assemblage thinking used when scrutinizing ‘neoliberalization’ in China. As such, the purpose of this paper is to underscore the merit of causal analysis as advocated by critical realism.

Social and Non-social Mechanisms of Inequity Aversion in Non-human Animals.

Research over the last decades has shown that humans and other animals reveal behavioral and emotional responses to unequal reward distributions between themselves and other conspecifics. However, cross-species findings about the mechanisms underlying such inequity aversion are heterogeneous, and there is an ongoing discussion if inequity aversion represents a truly social phenomenon or if it is driven by non-social aspects of the task. There is not even general consensus whether inequity aversion exists in non-human animals at all. In this review article, we discuss variables that were found to affect inequity averse behavior in animals and examine mechanistic and evolutionary theories of inequity aversion. We review a range of moderator variables and focus especially on the comparison of social vs. non-social explanations of inequity aversion. Particular emphasis is placed on the importance of considering the experimental design when interpreting behavior in inequity aversion tasks: the tasks used to probe inequity aversion are often based on impunity-game-like designs in which animals are faced with unfair reward distributions, and they can choose to accept the unfair offer, or reject it, leaving them with no reward. We compare inequity-averse behavior in such impunity-game-like designs with behavior in less common choice-based designs in which animals actively choose between fair and unfair rewards distributions. This review concludes with a discussion of the different mechanistic explanations of inequity aversion, especially in light of the particular features of the different task designs, and we give suggestions on experimental requirements to understand the “true nature” of inequity aversion.