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.     

Respect the technique: Status-based respect increases minority group social cohesion with majority groups,while also increasing minority collective action tendencies

The present work explores the implications of respect for social change. Social change can be achieved via improved attitudes between minority and majority groups (i.e., social cohesion) or via action taken by minority groups (i.e., collective action). Recent work suggests that the social cohesion route to social change, in particular an emphasis on commonality, may be incompatible with the collective action route to social change. We suggest that social-cohesion strategies rooted in status-based respect may allow for social cohesion and collective action. We experimentally investigated the relative effects of a majority group communicating status-based respect and commonality, as compared to a control, on minority group members’ social cohesion with the majority group and willingness to engage in collective action. Status-based respect increased positive attitudes toward a majority group, relative to commonality and control, but was also associated with increased collective action tendencies. Implications for social change are discussed.     

Portraits in painting and photography

In this paper, we offer an analysis of ‘group intentions.’ On our proposal, group intentions should be understood as a state of equilibrium among the beliefs of the members of a group. Although the discussion in this paper is non-technical, the equilibrium concept is drawn from the formal theory of interactive epistemology due to Robert Aumann. The goal of this paper is to provide an analysis of group intentions that is informed by important work in economics and formal epistemology.     

Testosterone–status mismatch lowers collective efficacy in groups: Evidence from a slope-as-predictor multilevel structural equation model

The study of the biological underpinnings of behavior is in its nascent stages in the field of management. We study how the hormone testosterone (T) is related to status and collective efficacy in a group. We assessed salivary testosterone of 579 individuals in 92 teams. We find that T does not predict status within the group. We also tested the effects of a mismatch between T and status in the group on the collective efficacy of the group. Using a novel slope-as-predictor multilevel structural equation model, we find that the greater the mismatch between T and status in the group (i.e., the more negative the within-group correlation among T and status), the lower is the collective efficacy of the group. We discuss the implications of our findings for the study of the biological underpinnings of group behavior in organizations.     

Group Threat, Collective Angst, and Ingroup Forgiveness for the War in Iraq

We examine the consequences of threat to the ingroup for emotional reactions to ingroup harm doing. It was hypothesized that reminders of a past threat to the ingroup would induce collective angst, and this emotional reaction would increase forgiveness of the ingroup for its harmful actions toward another group. In Experiment 1, Americans read an article about the war in Iraq that implied Americans would soon experience another attack or one where such implied future threat to the ingroup was absent. When the ingroup's future was threatened, forgiveness for the harm Americans have committed in Iraq was increased, to the extent that collective angst was induced. In Experiment 2, Americans experienced more collective angst and were more willing to forgive their ingroup for their group's present harm doing in Iraq following reminders of either the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, or the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor compared to when the victimization reminder was irrelevant to the ingroup. We discuss why ingroup threat encourages ingroup forgiveness for current harm doing.     

COVID-19 Interconnectedness: Health Inequity,the Climate Crisis,and Collective Trauma

The COVID-19 pandemic brings to the forefront the complex interconnected dilemmas of globalization, health equity, economic security, environmental justice, and collective trauma, severely impacting the marginalized and people of color in the United States. This lack of access to and the quality of healthcare, affordable housing, and lack of financial resources also continue to have a more significant impact on documented and undocumented immigrants. This paper aims at examining these critical issues and developing a framework for family therapists to address these challenges by focusing on four interrelated dimensions: cultural values, social determinants of health, collective trauma, and the ethical and moral responsibility of family therapists. Given the fact that family therapists may unwittingly function as the best ally of an economic and political system that perpetuates institutionalized racism and class discrimination, we need to utilize a set of principles, values, and practices that are not just palliative or after the fact but bring forth into the psychotherapeutic and policy work a politics of care. Therefore, a strong call to promote and advocate for the broader continuum of health and critical thinking preparing professionals to meet the challenges of health equity, as well as economic and environmental justice, is needed. The issues discussed in this paper are specific to the United States despite their relevance to family therapy as a field. We are mindful not to generalize the United States' reality to the rest of the world, recognizing that issues discussed in this paper could potentially contribute to international discourse.     

Liberating and Empowering Effects of Critical Reflection on Collective Action in LGBT and Cisgender Heterosexual Individuals

Critical consciousness represents the transformation from a passive target of oppression to an active actor with an increased capacity to analyze and negotiate conditions of oppression. It is considered as an antidote for oppression that can liberate people from oppressive ideologies and empower them to resist social injustice. Building on the theory of critical consciousness and the Social Identity Model of Collective Action, this paper examined the liberating and empowering effects of critical reflection on collective action for minority rights. Results of a cross-sectional study in 1,050 LGBT individuals (Study 1) showed that critical reflection was associated with lower levels of internalized oppression and higher levels of collective efficacy, which in turn were associated with greater intentions to undertake collective action for LGBT rights. Findings from a prospective longitudinal study in 428 cisgender heterosexual individuals (Study 2) indicated that critical reflection was associated with lower levels of internalized domination and heightened levels of efficacious beliefs, which positively predicted actual participation in collective action at a subsequent wave. The findings supported the effects of critical reflection on collective action mobilization and offered leads for future research and praxis on how to orient different sectors of society to work toward social equity.     

Adaptive thinking: Can adaptive dispositional attributions protect against the harmful effects of maladaptive situational attributions?

ObjectivesThe study was designed to examine if dispositional team-referent attributions moderate relationships between situational team-referent attributions and collective efficacy.DesignIn this cross-sectional design investigation, team athletes completed measures of dispositional team-referent attributions, situational team-referent attributions, and collective efficacy. Team outcome (i.e., win-loss status) was recorded.MethodAthletes (N = 163) on sport teams (K = 17) completed a measure of dispositional team-referent attributions (i.e., attributional style). They also completed a measure of situational team-referent attributions in reference to their most recent team competition and a measure of collective efficacy in reference to their next upcoming team competition.ResultsFollowing team victory, simple slopes analysis revealed a moderating effect such that adaptive dispositional team-referent attributions appeared to protect against the effects of maladaptive situational team-referent attributions on collective efficacy. This trend was demonstrated across stability and globality attribution dimensions. Following team defeat, no significant interaction effects were observed.ConclusionsThe results suggest that developing adaptive dispositional attributions after success may protect athletes from experiencing deleterious effects of maladaptive situational attributions. Future research is needed to confirm these results and understand how these results can be applied to attributional retraining interventions in sport.     

Reputation blackboard systems

Blackboard systems are motivated by the popular view of task forces as brainstorming groups in which specialists write promising ideas to solve a problem in a central blackboard. Here we study a minimal model of blackboard system designed to solve cryptarithmetic puzzles, where hints are posted anonymously on a public display (standard blackboard) or are posted together with information about the reputations of the agents that posted them (reputation blackboard). We find that the reputation blackboard always outperforms the standard blackboard, which, in turn, always outperforms the arrangement where the agents work independently. The asymptotic distribution of the computational cost of the search, which is proportional to the total number of agent updates required to find the solution of the puzzle, is an exponential distribution for those three search heuristics. Only for the reputation blackboard we find a nontrivial dependence of the mean computational cost on the system size and, in that case, the optimal performance is achieved by a single agent working alone, indicating that, though the blackboard organization can produce impressive performance gains when compared with the independent search, it is not very supportive of cooperative work.     

Sad-and-social is not smart: The moderating effects of social anticipation on mood and information processing

We examined if anticipating working collectively, rather than individually, moderates the effects of mood on information processing through (a) distraction, (b) loafing, and/or (c) task engagement. When participants anticipated working collectively, rather than individually, those in sad moods became distracted by the social elements of the task, resulting in a reduced information focus. In contrast, those in happy moods became engaged in the collective task, increasing their intended effort, raising their information focus, and improving their performance on the task. Social loafing effects did not occur. Mediation analyses revealed that these effects were due to changes in information focus, not social focus or intended effort.