Collective efficacy beliefs in student work teams: Relation to self-efficacy, cohesion, and performance

A measure of collective efficacy was developed and administered to undergraduates working in project teams in engineering courses. Findings in each of two samples revealed that the measure contained a single factor and was related to ratings of team cohesion and personal efficacy. Collective efficacy was also found to relate to indicators of team performance at both individual and group levels of analysis. Consistent with social cognitive theory, collective efficacy was a stronger predictor of team performance than team members’ perceptions of their self-efficacy. We consider the implications of these findings for further research, theory, and practice on team functioning within occupational and educational settings.     

Locomotor pattern and mechanical exchanges during collective load transport

While the locomotor behavior of humans walking alone, loaded or unloaded, has been extensively studied, the locomotor behavior of humans transporting a load collectively is very poorly documented in the biomechanics literature. Yet, collective carriage is a task commonly performed in sport (CrossFit), military and health care (carriage of an injured person) activities and is a task that raises growing interest in robotics (Cobots). The primary aim of our research was to test the hypothesis that the mechanical cost of locomotion is comparable when two individuals are transporting an object collectively and when they are walking alone. To test this, the movements of ten pairs of individuals walking side by side, separately or while transporting collectively an object, were recorded with a three-dimensional motion analysis system (Vicon©). Our results show a similar pattern in the periodic displacement of the center of mass and in mechanical costs, between individuals walking alone and individuals carrying a load collectively. Moreover, a better pendulum-like behavior was found in the sagittal plane and in 3D for the pairs of individuals carrying an object, which suggests that the saving in mechanical exchanges is higher when two individuals are carrying an object collectively than when they are walking alone. The values of the parameters measured in our experiment could be used as a benchmark for the implementation of collective carriage tasks in robotics.     

‘Working on a rocky shore’: Micro-moments of positive affect in academic work

Neoliberal ideologies, marketization and performative regimes associated with recent reforms in universities have exerted considerable pressure on academic working conditions and subjects in recent years. While analysing these pressures is important, it is also productive to consider the ways in which academics engage in moments of resistance by mobilising resources beyond those of critique. This paper therefore focuses on joy and positive affect in the everyday moments of academic life. It utilises the feminist methodology of collective biography to explore ways of making the restricted spaces of our working day more expansive and finding within them unexpected openings for joy. Our analysis of the stories included in this paper traces the mercurial and ambiguous affective atmospheres of academic work. We suggest that joy is founded upon connections with others, that it arises in different academic spaces and that it can lead to revised knowing of ourselves. We argue that the glimpses of joy evident in this paper provoke affective attunement within the everyday, sensitizing us to other fragments of joy and providing strategies to strengthen that resistance.     

马克思每个人自由而全面发展思想的四个维度

马克思每个人自由而全面发展的理论内蕴着四个维度的内涵：人类的历史发展导向每个人自由而全面发展;个人自由发展的普遍性和全面性;从虚幻的集体到真实的集体的发展;建立在“共同占有的基础上”“重新建立个人所有制”的基础上。     

Observation as a method to enhance collective efficacy: An integrative review

ObjectivesThis review provides an integrative argument for the use of observation as an intervention to manipulate individual collective efficacy beliefs in sports teams.DesignAn exploration of the conceptual and empirical evidence underpinning observation-based interventions for increasing collective efficacy.MethodA presentation of reflections on the following. First, we reflect on existing techniques used to increase self- and collective efficacy beliefs. Second, we consider collective efficacy in the context of observational learning and the various modeling techniques employed in the sports and motor performance literature. Third, we highlight relevant literature from neuroscience, outlining the analogous neural pathways evident for social cognition (i.e., collective efficacy) and observation.ResultsThis review presents a case for the use of observation interventions to manipulate collective efficacy, drawing upon social psychological frameworks of human behavior, the observation-based literature, and contemporary understanding of brain and behavior.ConclusionsObservation-based interventions are suited for collective efficacy manipulation in sport. There is a need to advance understanding of this relationship in order to maximize improvements in collective efficacy across group contexts.     

Explaining effervescence: Investigating the relationship between shared social identity and positive experience in crowds

We investigated the intensely positive emotional experiences arising from participation in a large-scale collective event. We predicted such experiences arise when those attending a collective event are (1) able to enact their valued collective identity and (2) experience close relations with other participants. In turn, we predicted both of these to be more likely when participants perceived crowd members to share a common collective identity. We investigated these predictions in a survey of pilgrims (N = 416) attending a month-long Hindu pilgrimage festival in north India. We found participants' perceptions of a shared identity amongst crowd members had an indirect effect on their positive experience at the event through (1) increasing participants' sense that they were able to enact their collective identity and (2) increasing the sense of intimacy with other crowd members. We discuss the implications of these data for how crowd emotion should be conceptualised.     

A small-world network model of facial emotion recognition

Various models have been proposed to increase understanding of the cognitive basis of facial emotions. Despite those efforts, interactions between facial emotions have received minimal attention. If collective behaviours relating to each facial emotion in the comprehensive cognitive system could be assumed, specific facial emotion relationship patterns might emerge. In this study, we demonstrate that the frameworks of complex networks can effectively capture those patterns. We generate 81 facial emotion images (6 prototypes and 75 morphs) and then ask participants to rate degrees of similarity in 3240 facial emotion pairs in a paired comparison task. A facial emotion network constructed on the basis of similarity clearly forms a small-world network, which features an extremely short average network distance and close connectivity. Further, even if two facial emotions have opposing valences, they are connected within only two steps. In addition, we show that intermediary morphs are crucial for maintaining full network integration, whereas prototypes are not at all important. These results suggest the existence of collective behaviours in the cognitive systems of facial emotions and also describe why people can efficiently recognize facial emotions in terms of information transmission and propagation. For comparison, we construct three simulated networks—one based on the categorical model, one based on the dimensional model, and one random network. The results reveal that small-world connectivity in facial emotion networks is apparently different from those networks, suggesting that a small-world network is the most suitable model for capturing the cognitive basis of facial emotions.