Virtual muscularity: a content analysis of male video game characters

The 150 top-selling video games were content analyzed to study representations of male bodies. Human males in the games were captured via screenshot and body parts measured. These measurements were then compared to anthropometric data drawn from a representative sample of 1120 North American men. Characters at high levels of photorealism were larger than the average American male, but these characters did not mirror the V-shaped ideal found in mainstream media. Characters at low levels of photorealism were also larger than the average American male, but these characters were so much larger that they appeared cartoonish. Idealized male characters were more likely to be found in games for children than in games for adults. Implications for cultivation theory are discussed.     

Tensile deformation behaviour of Zr-based glassy alloys

This paper presents a study of the deformation behaviour of a glassy phase in two Zr-based alloys, Zr₆₅Ni₁₀Cu₅Al_7.5Pd_12.5 and Zr₆₅Al_7.5Ni₁₀Pd_17.5, performed in situ in a transmission electron microscope. In contrast to the case of shear localisation and formation of 10–20 nm thick shear bands in deformed bulk glassy samples studied earlier, it is found that in thin (electron-transparent) samples the glassy phase in front of a crack deforms more homogeneously and no nanocrystallisation takes place. The reasons for such behaviour are discussed. According to the observed results, one can conclude that the studied metallic glasses can be intrinsically ductile in submicrometre-sized volumes.     

A Logic for Information Systems

A conception of an information system has been introduced by Pawlak. The study has been continued in works of Pawlak and Orlowska and in works of Vakarelov. They had proposed some basic relations and had constructed a formal system of a modal logic that describes the relations and some of their Boolean combinations. Our work is devoted to a generalization of this approach. A class of relation systems and a complete calculus construction method for these systems are proposed. As a corollary of our main result, our paper contains a solution of a Vakarelov's problem: how to construct a formal system that describes all the Boolean combinations of the basic relations.     

Can You Hear Me Now? The Impact of Voice in an Online Gaming Community

This paper reports the results of a controlled field experiment in which voice communication was introduced into an existing online community (online gaming guilds within the popular game “World of Warcraft”), comparing a mix of voice and text with text only. Quantitative results suggest increases in liking and trust due to the addition of voice, as well as insulation from unexpected negative impacts of text‐only play. The findings are discussed with respect to social capital, cyberbalkanization, and the general computer‐mediated communication literature, with special attention paid to social information processing theory.     

Diachronic Dutch Books and Evidential Import

A handful of well‐known arguments (the ‘diachronic Dutch book arguments’) rely upon theorems establishing that, in certain circumstances, you are immune from sure monetary loss (you are not ‘diachronically Dutch book‐able’) if and only if you adopt the strategy of conditionalizing (or Jeffrey conditionalizing) on whatever evidence you happen to receive. These theorems require non‐trivial assumptions about which evidence you might acquire—in the case of conditionalization, the assumption is that, if you might learn that e, then it is not the case that you might learn something else that is consistent with e. These assumptions may not be relaxed. When they are, not only will non‐(Jeffrey) conditionalizers be immune from diachronic Dutch bookability, but (Jeffrey) conditionalizers will themselves be diachronically Dutch bookable. I argue: 1) that there are epistemic situations in which these assumptions are violated; 2) that this reveals a conflict between the premise that susceptibility to sure monetary loss is irrational, on the one hand, and the view that rational belief revision is a function of your prior beliefs and the acquired evidence alone, on the other; and 3) that this inconsistency demonstrates that diachronic Dutch book arguments for (Jeffrey) conditionalization are invalid.     

Emotion regulation in relation to smartphone use: Process smartphone use mediates the association between expressive suppression and problematic smartphone use

Previous research has shown that problematic smartphone use (PSU) is related to several affect-related psychopathology variables. Emotion dysregulation has been regarded as a central psychological factor associated with that type of psychopathology. In this paper, the association between expressive emotional suppression, a form of emotion dysregulation, with PSU was investigated. Furthermore, we tested if types of smartphone use (process and social use) mediated that association. Three hundred American college students participated in a web-based survey that included the Smartphone Addiction Scale (for problematic smartphone use), Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (assessing suppression), and Process vs. Social Smartphone Usage scale. We found that expressive suppression was correlated with both process smartphone use and PSU severity. Mediation analysis showed that process smartphone use completely mediated relations between suppression and PSU severity. The findings suggest that dysfunctional emotion regulation could lead to more process smartphone use that, in turn, may manifest in PSU severity. Contributions and limitations of the study are discussed.

     

The impact of time online: social capital and cyberbalkanization.

Hypotheses and research questions about the Internet displacing social capital, atomizing users, creating loneliness, and creating new forms of community were addressed through an original survey of Internet users. A key innovation of this research is that it collects parallel measures of social capital for online and offline contexts, which can then be compared. The results show that while Internet use does suggest a displacing effect, it is also a source of new, qualitatively different social capital. However, there is no connection between Internet use and atomization (or out-group antagonism), and the latter is actually lower online. Taken together, the results suggest that the Internet is no panacea but is not a direct source of problems either. More likely is the case that the costs and benefits for individuals will be predicted by their personalities and particular kinds of Internet use. The results are discussed, along with their implications for theory and future research.     

A Content Analysis of Female Body Imagery in Video Games

The 150 top-selling video games sold in the U.S. across nine platforms were content analyzed to study representations of female bodies. All human females in the games were captured via screenshot and body parts measured. These measurements were then compared to actual anthropometric data drawn from a representative sample of 3,000 American women. The results show that female video game characters at low levels of photorealism are systematically larger than the average American woman whereas female characters at the highest level of photorealism are systematically thinner. This study also found that games rated for children featured females that are thinner than characters in games rated for adults. These findings are discussed in terms of cultivation theory.