Authority relationships between obedience and disobedience

Recent episodes of public dissent (such as the demonstrations against G8 policies) raise the issue of the psychological processes triggered in obeying and disobeying the authority. Even if obedience to authority is an important aspect of social life and it plays a key role in maintaining social order, the concept of obedience has been studied in social psychology mainly in terms of its destructive aspects. Besides, most of the studies have overlooked the role of disobedience in the authority relationship. Disobedience may be conceived of as a protest that undermines the legitimacy of the authority or it can represent an instrument for controlling the legitimacy of the authority's demands, becoming a factor protecting against authoritarianism. In this article, a new perspective on the study of the relationship between the individual and the authority is put forward, considering obedience and disobedience as parallel concepts, each having constructive and destructive aspects.     

Intuitive control of mobile robots: an architecture for autonomous adaptive dynamic behaviour integration

In this paper, we present a novel approach to human–robot control. Taking inspiration from behaviour-based robotics and self-organisation principles, we present an interfacing mechanism, with the ability to adapt both towards the user and the robotic morphology. The aim is for a transparent mechanism connecting user and robot, allowing for a seamless integration of control signals and robot behaviours. Instead of the user adapting to the interface and control paradigm, the proposed architecture allows the user to shape the control motifs in their way of preference, moving away from the case where the user has to read and understand an operation manual, or it has to learn to operate a specific device. Starting from a tabula rasa basis, the architecture is able to identify control patterns (behaviours) for the given robotic morphology and successfully merge them with control signals from the user, regardless of the input device used. The structural components of the interface are presented and assessed both individually and as a whole. Inherent properties of the architecture are presented and explained. At the same time, emergent properties are presented and investigated. As a whole, this paradigm of control is found to highlight the potential for a change in the paradigm of robotic control, and a new level in the taxonomy of human in the loop systems.     

The dual path of the rejection (dis)identification model: A study on adolescents with a migrant background

Ethnic-based rejection, especially when prolonged over time, can result in withdrawal (e.g., resignation) and antisocial (e.g., delinquent) behaviors. Rejection (dis)identification literature suggests that identification with the minority (ethnic) group and disidentification with the majority (national) group mediate the relationship between rejection and different dimensions of well-being. Through secondary analyses of survey data from an international sample of adolescents with a migrant background (N = 1,163) we tested the predictions that, following chronic experiences of rejection, disidentification from the national (rejecting) group will increase withdrawal and feelings of resignation whereas identification with the ethic (rejected) group will have a protective role toward delinquent behaviors. Results of the path analysis were consistent with these hypotheses without significant differences between immigrant generations. The study sheds light on the multifaceted nature of identification processes following social rejection and contributes to the integration of the rejection-identification model with classical theorizations of social exclusion.     

The Motivating Role of Perceived Right Violation and Efficacy Beliefs in Identification with the Italian Water Movement

Because individuals' fundamental right to water is often taken for granted, little is known about why individuals participate in water activism. We examine how individuals identify with and intend to participate in the Italian Water Movement to defend the “public management” of water supply. Building on the collective‐action literature, we test an explanatory model in which the perceived violation of the right to water and group and participative‐efficacy beliefs increase movement identification, which predicts subsequent activism. Study 1 (N = 153 activists) largely confirmed our hypotheses: right violation and participative efficacy uniquely influenced movement identification, which in turn predicted activism. Study 2 corroborated these findings by employing a broader sample of 132 Italian citizens, with right violation, participative and group‐efficacy beliefs predicting movement identification, which in turn predicted activism. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.     

Masked suffix priming and morpheme positional constraints

Although masked stem priming (e.g., dealer–DEAL) is one of the most established effects in visual word identification, it is less clear whether primes and targets sharing a suffix (e.g., kindness–WILDNESS) also yield facilitation. In a new take on this issue, we show that prime nonwords facilitate lexical decisions to target words ending with the same suffix (sheeter–TEACHER) compared to a condition where the critical suffix was substituted by another one (sheetal–TEACHER) or by an unrelated nonmorphological ending (sheetub– TEACHER). We also show that this effect is genuinely morphological, as no priming emerged in noncomplex items with the same orthographic characteristics (sportel–BROTHEL vs. sportic–BROTHEL vs. sportur–BROTHEL). In a further experiment, we took advantage of these results to assess whether suffixes are recognized in a position-specific fashion. Masked suffix priming did not emerge when the relative order of stems and suffixes was reversed in the prime nonwords—ersheet did not yield any time saving in the identification of teacher as compared to either alsheet or obsheet. We take these results to show that –er was not identified as a morpheme in ersheet, thus indicating that suffix identification is position specific. This conclusion is in line with data on interference effects in nonword rejection and strongly constrains theoretical proposals on how complex words are identified. In particular, because these findings were reported in a masked priming paradigm, they suggest that positional constraints operate early, most likely at a prelexical level of morpho-orthographic analysis.