Substitute or stepping stone? Assessing the impact of low‐threshold online collective actions on offline participation

Anecdotes of past social movements suggest that Internet‐enabled technologies, especially social media platforms, can facilitate collective actions. Recently, however, it has been argued that the participatory Internet encourages low‐cost and low‐risk activism—slacktivism—which may have detrimental consequences for groups that aim to achieve a collective purpose. More precisely, low‐threshold digital practices such as signing online petitions or “liking” the Facebook page of a group are thought to derail subsequent engagement offline. We assessed this postulation in three experiments (N = 76, N = 59, and N = 48) and showed that so‐called slacktivist actions indeed reduce the willingness to join a panel discussion and demonstration as well as the likelihood to sign a petition. This demobilizing effect was mediated by the satisfaction of group‐enhancing motives; members considered low‐threshold online collective actions as a substantial contribution to the group's success. The findings highlight that behavior that is belittled as slacktivism addresses needs that pertain to individuals' sense of group membership. Rather than hedonistic motives or personal interests, concerns for the ingroup's welfare and viability influenced the decision to join future collective actions offline. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A focused attention intervention for coping with ostracism

Ostracism—being excluded and ignored—thwarts satisfaction of four fundamental needs: belonging, self-esteem, control, and meaningful existence. The current study investigated whether training participants to focus their attention on the here-and-now (i.e., focused attention) reduces distress from an ostracism experience. Participants were first trained in either focused or unfocused attention, and then played Cyberball, an online ball-tossing game for which half the participants were included or ostracized. Participants reported their levels of need satisfaction during the game, and after a short delay. Whereas both training groups experienced the same degree of need-threat in the immediate measure, participants who were trained in focused attention showed more recovery for the delayed measure. We reason that focused attention would not reduce the distress during the ostracism experience, but it aided in recovery by preventing participants from reliving the ostracism experience after it concludes.     

Social support from evaluative familiar persons – a buffer against stress? Preliminary evidence of neuroendocrine and psychological responses

ABSTRACT

Background and Objectives: Social support may have a stress-buffering effect when an individual is or could be negatively judged by others, but paradoxically may also exacerbate stress. The aim of our study was to examine these findings when social support was provided by a positive or negative evaluative audience composed of familiar and close others (teachers).

Design and Methods: 84 men were confronted with the Trier Social Stress Test for Groups through a 3 (negative, positive, no-audience) x?2 (familiar, unfamiliar) experimental design with four measurement points of cortisol levels and state anxiety. We also tested whether closeness with the committee members predicted these variables for the participants in the familiar conditions.

Results: Using both a frequentist and a Bayesian approach, familiarity and social support did not have stress-buffering effects (or merely anecdotal effects) on cortisol levels but buffered self-reported anxiety only for the participants faced with a supportive audience composed of familiar persons. Closeness with the experimenters was not a significant predictor of the stress responses.

Conclusions: Because these results are preliminary evidence, further investigations into the relations between support provider and recipient during evaluative tasks would be worthwhile to better explain opposing findings found in this growing literature.     

Bats, balls, and substitution sensitivity: cognitive misers are no happy fools

Influential work on human thinking suggests that our judgment is often biased because we minimize cognitive effort and intuitively substitute hard questions by easier ones. A key question is whether or not people realize that they are doing this and notice their mistake. Here, we test this claim with one of the most publicized examples of the substitution bias, the bat-and-ball problem. We designed an isomorphic control version in which reasoners experience no intuitive pull to substitute. Results show that people are less confident in their substituted, erroneous bat-and-ball answer than in their answer on the control version that does not give rise to the substitution. Contrary to popular belief, this basic finding indicates that biased reasoners are not completely oblivious to the substitution and sense that their answer is questionable. This calls into question the characterization of the human reasoner as a happy fool who blindly answers erroneous questions without realizing it.     

First insights on “neuropedagogy of reasoning”

Statements that share an explanation tend to lend inductive support to one another. For example, being told that Many furniture movers have a hard time financing a house increases the judged probability that Secretaries have a hard time financing a house. In contrast, statements with different explanations reduce one another s judged probability. Being told that Many furniture movers have bad backs decreases the judged probability that Secretaries have bad backs. I pose two questions concerning such discounting effects. First, does the reduction depend on explanations being mutually incompatible or does it occur when explanations are deemed irrelevant to one another? I found that a small discounting effect occurred with statements that were blatantly unrelated. However, the discounting effect also depended on a factor external to the argument being judged; the composition of the argument set. Second, are explanation effects attributable to changes in the belief afforded statements or to response-specific changes resulting from misunderstanding of the probability rating task or response bias? The results implicate changes in belief. Prior belief influenced conditional probability more than argument strength judgements, as it would if participants understood the tasks in the same way as the experimenter. Also, conditional probability true and false judgements were complementary, suggesting no response bias.     

Learning,Motor Skill,and Long-Range Correlations

Long-range correlations have been evidenced in a number of experiments, generally using overlearned and overpracticed tasks. The authors hypothesized that long-range correlation could represent the byproduct of learning. They analyzed the series of periods produced by a group of expert and a group of novices during prolonged trials on a ski simulator. Results showed a very low variability in expert's series, as compared to novices. Fractal analyses showed that fluctuations were significantly more structured and correlated in experts. These results suggest that learning could be conceived as the progressive installation of complexity in the system.     

REFEREES' DECISION MAKING ABOUT TRANSGRESSIONS: THE INFLUENCE OF PLAYER GENDER AT THE HIGHEST NATIONAL LEVEL

Prior research has found that referees are harsher toward sporting offenses in regional-level matches between women than in regional-level matches between men. We tested whether this bias also occurs at a higher, national level of competition, despite the greater pressures for objectivity and fairness at this level. Referees' decisions were examined in 15 national-level handball matches between women and 15 national-level handball matches between men after transgressions that varied in severity. The results suggest that referees made harsher decisions in female than in male matches. Although more research is needed, this study supported the hypothesis that referees may use the gender of players as a powerful judgmental heuristic for deciding how to respond to aggression.