Archetypes and architecture: The coniunctio of Canary Wharf

In The Psychology of the Unconscious Jung foretold his hypothesis of the collective unconscious and the way it is represented in the stories and symbolism of myths and legends. Later, he uncovered this in the texts of the alchemists, especially the Rosarium Philosophorum , which he believed allegorized the archetype of relationship and new birth that they called the mysterium coniunctionis . He recognized the same symbolic meaning in the building of his home, ‘the tower’, at Bollingen, which represented his own individuation and new birth. Similarly, group process might evoke or be influenced by archetypes, which are then manifested in socio-cultural phenomena, one expression of which is architectural design.

This article argues that such archetypal expression can be discerned in the design and landscaping of Canary Wharf in London. It explores how the socio-economic aims of the development, coupled with the geographic characteristics of the area, might have evoked in the group of individuals concerned the archetype of the mysterium coniunctionis . Thus the design characteristics of Canary Wharf's architecture appear curiously similar to those of the woodcuts in the Rosarium Philosophorum , and some examples are presented. Both seem creative manifestations of the same archetype. In concluding, the author reflects on the meaning of his work, and, as Jung wrote, ‘the unexpected and the incredible belong to this world. Only then is life whole’.     

Collective Efficacy as a Task Specific Process: Examining the Relationship Between Social Ties, Neighborhood Cohesion and the Capacity to Respond to Violence, Delinquency and Civic Problems

In the neighborhood effects literature, collective efficacy is viewed as the key explanatory process associated with the spatial distribution of a range of social problems. While many studies usefully focus on the consequences of collective efficacy, in this paper we examine the task specificity of collective efficacy and consider the individual and neighborhood factors that influence residents’ perceptions of neighborhood collective efficacy for specific tasks. Utilizing survey and administrative data from 4,093 residents nested in 148 communities in Australia, we distinguish collective efficacy for particular threats to social order and assess the relative importance of social cohesion and neighborhood social ties to the development of collective efficacy for violence, delinquency and civic/political issues. Our results indicate that a model separating collective efficacy for specific problems from social ties and the more generalized notions of social cohesion is necessary when understanding the regulation potential of neighborhoods.     

Broken Windows and Low Adolescent Prosociality: Not Cause and Consequence, but Co-symptoms of Low Collective Efficacy

The current study presents a case in which adolescent prosociality is lower in neighborhoods with greater physical disorder. Current theory provides two interpretations for such a pattern: (1) that disorder signals a threatening environment and discourages prosociality (“broken windows theory”); (2) that disorder and low prosociality are both symptoms of a weak community (i.e., low collective efficacy). A survey of 642 students from a small American city was combined with an assessment of the built environment to evaluate these two interpretations. Students were nested in 59 Census block groups. Multilevel models demonstrated that collective efficacy best explained variation in prosociality between neighborhoods, and that perceived collective efficacy best explained variation within neighborhoods. Objective and perceived disorder had no significant relationship with prosociality in these models, suggesting that disorder is not directly responsible for cross-neighborhood variation in prosociality. The paper discusses the implications for place-based interventions promoting prosociality. The results also emphasize the need for measures of social processes (e.g., collective efficacy) when evaluating “broken windows” hypotheses.     

Modeling collective rule at ancient Teotihuacan as a complex adaptive system: Communal ritual makes social hierarchy more effective

Experts remain divided about the nature of the sociopolitical system of ancient Teotihuacan, which was one of the earliest and largest urban civilizations of the Americas. Excavations hoping to find compelling evidence of powerful rulers, such as a royal tomb, keep coming away empty-handed. But the alternative possibility of collective rule still remains poorly understood as well. Previously we used a computational model of this city’s hypothetical sociopolitical network to show that in principle collective rule based on communal ritual could be an effective strategy of ensuring widespread social coordination, as long as we assume that the network’s structure could be transformed via social learning and local leaders were not strongly subdivided. Here we extended this model to investigate whether increased social hierarchy could mitigate the negative effects of such strong divisions. We found a special synergy between social hierarchy and communal ritual: only their combination improved the extent of social coordination, whereas the introduction of centralization and top-down influence by themselves had no effect. This finding is consistent with portrayals of the Teotihuacan elite as religious specialists serving the public good, in particular by synchronizing the city’s ritual calendar with the rhythms of the stars.     

A social host in the machine? The case of group attention

I argue that akin to mind-body dualism, social-mental dualism is open to critique. That is, mental processes can be inherently social, with sociality ‘baked into’ the architecture of the cognitive mechanism. As a case in point, I introduce the reader to the cognitive mechanism of group attention. In particular, I focus on the differences between group attention and ideomotor imitation in terms of their (a) compliance to the social-mental dichotomy, and (b) contributions to building common knowledge—a prerequisite for human communication and collective action. Finally, I suggest possible implications of group attention scholarship for other social memory phenomena such as social contagion, socially shared memory-induced forgetting, and the saying-is-believing effect.     

Mnemonic convergence in a social network: Collective memory and extended influence

Research on the social influences on remembering has focused on how people influence one another's memory through direct conversation. This project examined indirect influence, that is, the influence of those to whom one may be connected through a social network. We extend Christakis and Fowler's (2007. The spread of obesity in a large social network over 32 years. The New England Journal of Medicine, 357(4), 370–379) discovery that factors may propagate across several degrees of influence; influences of social remembering may also propagate. In a naturalistic study, we tracked weekly recollections of a narrative in a small social network. Two individuals’ mnemonic convergence could be predicted by their degree of separation. Directly and indirectly connected pairs show more convergent remembering than unconnected pairs, indicating that conversation is not the only route by which two individuals may come to hold a shared representation of the past. This propagation of memories across the links of a social network is an important means by which a group converges on a collective memory.     

Does interaction matter? Testing whether a confidence heuristic can replace interaction in collective decision-making

In a range of contexts, individuals arrive at collective decisions by sharing confidence in their judgements. This tendency to evaluate the reliability of information by the confidence with which it is expressed has been termed the ‘confidence heuristic’. We tested two ways of implementing the confidence heuristic in the context of a collective perceptual decision-making task: either directly, by opting for the judgement made with higher confidence, or indirectly, by opting for the faster judgement, exploiting an inverse correlation between confidence and reaction time. We found that the success of these heuristics depends on how similar individuals are in terms of the reliability of their judgements and, more importantly, that for dissimilar individuals such heuristics are dramatically inferior to interaction. Interaction allows individuals to alleviate, but not fully resolve, differences in the reliability of their judgements. We discuss the implications of these findings for models of confidence and collective decision-making.     

Group belongingness and collective action: Effects of need to belong and rejection sensitivity on willingness to participate in protest activities

Engaging in political protests are becoming increasingly common, and considering the potential, individual, costs and the low probability of affecting the political outcome, it is necessary to understand the motivations behind such actions. The desire to be part of a social group is deeply rooted in human nature, and previous research proposes that the groups one belongs to may influence the decision to engage in protests. We build on this research and suggest that social exclusion, individual fear of exclusion and need to belong interact in explaining who is likely to become engaged. In two studies, one natural experiment and one lab‐experiment, we show that social exclusion increase willingness to participate in protests for individuals high in both rejection sensitivity and need to belong. We conclude that contextual factors, such as exclusion or marginalization should be considered in relation to individual level personality factors when explaining who is likely to become engaged in political protests. These results are important since they suggest that some people engage in politics simply due to social reasons and are less ideologically motivated.     

Piezoelectric and electromechanical coupling constants for GaxIn1-xSb semiconducting alloys

The compositional dependence of piezoelectric stress and strain constants and electromechanical coupling coefficient of Ga_xIn_1-xSb have been investigated. The calculations were performed using a pseudopotential approach combined with the Adachi model where different concepts of ionicity are considered. Our results are compared with the available data and found to be in good accord with each other. Our findings show that as the Ga content varies, the piezoelectric and related constants and transport properties of the alloy system of interest are significantly affected.     

How we have fallen: implicit trajectories in collective temporal thought

ABSTRACT

Memory may play a critical role in the ability to imagine events in the future. While most work on this relation has concerned episodic memory and simulated episodic events in the future, the current study examines how collective memories relate to imagination for the collective future. Two thousand American participants provided events for (1) America’s origins, (2) normative events that all Americans should remember, and (3) events in America’s future. Each event was rated for emotional valence. Whereas collective memories – particularly origin events – showed pronounced positivity biases, there was a negativity bias in collective future thought, indicating an implicit trajectory of decline in Americans’ representations of their nation across time. Imagination for the social future may not be simulated based on the template of collective memories, but may rather relate to the past in a way that is mediated by cultural narrative schemata.