The value(s) of information on social network sites: The role of user personality traits

PurposeThe present research examines the relationship between personality of social network site (SNS) users and the perceived value of the information they seek. Building on the Reasoned Action Approach, personality is conceptualized as a background factor influencing people's attitude towards the information they search for on SNS.Design/methodology/approachData were collected using a face-to-face survey among Facebook users (n = 311). Personality traits were assessed based on the Big Five dimensions. Statistical analyses estimate the effects of personality traits on the various values of the information sought on SNS. A three-step procedure was followed to standardize the independent variables and create interaction variables for the moderation test.FindingsThe results support the predictions that certain personality traits (e.g., conscientiousness and extraversion), as described by the FFM framework, are related to particular facets of information value (economic value and social value respectively). The effect of personality was moderated by participants’ Facebook usage intensity. Usage intensity dampens the relationship between agreeableness and functional value of information, and strengthens the negative relationship between openness-to-experience and psychological value of information.Practical implicationsThe personality-information value relationships found can help social media practitioners and marketers shape the content and appeal of the messages communicated to their audience on SNS, and tailor marketer-customer interactions in an engaging way.Originality/valueThe present research contributes to understanding the pivotal role of personality in evaluating the information people seek on social networks. It also adds to the literature regarding FFM and social media usage by supporting the notion that the Big Five personality traits predict value aspects of information that people pursue in the course of search behavior on Facebook.Article classificationResearch paper.     

VIOLENCE AND MORALITY: The Concession of Loss in A Ghanaian Fishing Village

When African migrants disappear on the Mediterranean going to Europe they often leave no trace—except for the occasional bodies that wash ashore on the beaches of southern Europe. In this essay, the urgent social and existential ramifications of migrant fatalities on the sea are explored. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a small Ghanaian fishing village on the coast of the Gulf of Guinea, it is discussed how the bereaved struggle to make sense of these deaths to high‐risk migration—how they struggle to deal with devastating loss while retaining a sense of moral order.     

What makes a good driver on public roads and race tracks? An interview study

Future vehicles may drive automatically in a human-like manner or contain systems that monitor human driving ability. Algorithms of these systems must have knowledge of criteria of good and safe driving behavior with regard to different driving styles. In the current study, interviews were conducted with 30 drivers, including driving instructors, engineers, and race drivers. The participants were asked to describe good driving on public roads and race tracks, and in some questions were supported with video material. The results were interpreted with the help of Endsley’s model of situation awareness. The interviews showed that there were clear differences between what was considered good driving on the race track and good driving on the public road, where for the former, the driver must touch the limit of the vehicle, whereas, for the latter, the limit should be avoided. However, in both cases, a good driver was characterized by self-confidence, lack of stress, and not being aggressive. Furthermore, it was mentioned that the driver’s posture and viewing behavior are essential components of good driving, which affect the driver’s prediction of events and execution of maneuvers. The implications of our findings for the development of automation technology are discussed. In particular, we see potential in driver posture estimation and argue that automated vehicles excel in perception but may have difficulty making predictions.     

亲组织不道德行为的解释机制与理论模型

亲组织不道德行为(Unethical Pro-organizational Behavior, UPB)界定的是组织员工出于维护组织的利益而做出的不道德行为。UPB在组织中难以被识别, 却可能给组织带来严重的负面影响。因兼具亲组织性和不道德性, UPB的研究引起了各界的广泛关注。因此, 有必要明确UPB的来源与界定; 亦有必要借鉴“不道德行为”的解释路径, 从理性决策和直觉判断两个解释机制对UPB前因研究取得的进展进行理论归纳梳理, 形成理论模型。在此基础上提出未来的研究方向:亲领导不道德行为和亲团队不道德行为的细分研究, 中国本土背景下企业所有制形式对UPB理论模型可能产生的调节作用, 以及角色压力对UPB的影响。     

员工感知被信任影响工作投入的心理机制：维度差异及理论比较

领导－员工之间的信任是工作场所中宝贵的资源,但有关领导对员工的信任及其作用机制的研究相对缺乏。以423名企业员工为被试,通过问卷调查法从被信任方角度考察了员工感知被信任对工作投入的影响及其机制,并比较了三种主导解释理论的相对有效性。结果显示：感知被信任与工作投入正相关,但其具体作用机制有赖于感知被信任的不同维度;相对于不确定管理理论和认知评估理论,社会交换理论更能有效解释感知被信任与工作投入的关系。     

Scaling Up the Self,Scaling Down the World: Self-objectification and the Politics of Carbon Offsets and Personalised Genomics

Two global initiatives, the Genographic Project and the Carbon Lottery, share an ambition to make abstract, global processes—human evolution and climate change—comprehensible and engaging to non-specialists. Despite their differences, they both do so by means of self-objectifications that scale up the selves of participants and scale down complex, spatio-temporal models of human–world relations. The author’s auto-ethnographic experiences in both initiatives illustrate how carbon calculators and personalised genomics involve a pragmatics of scale that evaluates and compares users on the basis of their relative expression of, or deviation from, a standard. Furthermore, this is not based on actual resources that participants do or do not possess, but on forms of capitalist exchange that underwrite carbon trading and population genomics, as experts and corporations make intellectual property derived from purportedly rare DNA and sustainable practices, which are typically indigenous and non-western. In fact, the global inequalities that make possible transactions in carbon offsets and genetic ancestry are obscured from view. As a result, though initiatives like the Genographic Project and Carbon Lottery may provide comprehensible self-objectifications, they potentially make the world more unequal in the process.     

The role of working memory in information acquisition and decision making: Lessons from the binary prediction task

The effects of memory constraints upon information acquisition and decision making were examined in two experiments using binary prediction tasks, where participants observe outcomes for two options before deciding which one to bet upon. Our studies extend previous investigations to the case where participants learn the structure of the task through observation, but where information acquisition is separated from the task of prediction. Participants with higher cognitive capacity (larger memory span or higher intelligence) were more likely to adopt the “maximizing” strategy (always selecting the more frequent alternative). This finding conflicts with some recent investigations of similar tasks, a contrast that implies that the presence of feedback on choices may be important in determining the strategic actions of high-capacity individuals. Participants selecting the optimal strategy were in turn more efficient in their data acquisition. The behaviour of participants adopting suboptimal choice strategies was consistent with prediction based upon a “narrow window of experience”—that is, seeking to match the characteristics of small samples of observations.     

Visual span and change detection in soccer: An expertise study

There is evidence to suggest that sports experts are able to extract more perceptual information from a single fixation than novices when exposed to meaningful tasks that are specific to their field of expertise. In particular, Reingold et al. (2001) showed that chess experts use a larger visual span including fewer fixations when compared to their less skilled counterparts. The aim of the present study was to examine whether also in a more complex environment, namely soccer, skilled players use a larger visual span and fewer fixations than less skilled players when attempting to recognise players’ positions. To this end, we combined the gaze-contingent window technique with the change detection paradigm. Results seem to suggest that skilled soccer players do not use a larger visual span than less skilled players. However, skilled soccer players showed significantly fewer fixations of longer duration than their less skilled counterparts, supporting the notion that experts may extract more information from a single glance.     

Influences of credibility of testimony and strength of statistical evidence on children’s and adolescents’ reasoning

According to dual-process models that include analytic and heuristic modes of processing, analytic processing is often expected to become more common with development. Consistent with this view, on reasoning problems, adolescents are more likely than children to select alternatives that are backed by statistical evidence. It is shown here that this pattern depends on the quality of the statistical evidence and the quality of the testimonial that is the typical alternative to statistical evidence. In Experiment 1, 9- and 13-year-olds (N = 64) were presented with scenarios in which solid statistical evidence was contrasted with casual or expert testimonial evidence. When testimony was casual, children relied on it but adolescents did not; when testimony was expert, both children and adolescents relied on it. In Experiment 2, 9- and 13-year-olds (N = 83) were presented with scenarios in which casual testimonial evidence was contrasted with weak or strong statistical evidence. When statistical evidence was weak, children and adolescents relied on both testimonial and statistical evidence; when statistical evidence was strong, most children and adolescents relied on it. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for dual-process accounts of cognitive development.     

A Conversation between Theory,Methods, and Data

The 10 year anniversary of the COGITO Study provides an opportunity to revisit the ideas behind the Cattell data box. Three dimensions of the persons × variables × time data box are discussed in the context of three categories of researchers each wanting to answer their own categorically different question. The example of the well-known speed-accuracy tradeoff is used to illustrate why these are three different categories of statistical question. The 200 persons by 100 variables by 100 occasions of measurement COGITO data cube presents a challenge to integrate theories and methods across the dimensions of the data box. A conceptual model is presented for the speed-accuracy tradeoff example that could account for cross-sectional between persons effects, short-term dynamics, and long-term learning effects. Thus, two fundamental differences between the time axis and the other two axes of the data box include ordering and time scaling. In addition, nonstationarity in human systems is a pervasive problem along the time dimension of the data box. To illustrate, the difference in nonstationarity between dancing and conversation is discussed in the context of the interaction between theory, methods, and data. An information theoretic argument is presented that the theory-methods-data interaction is better understood when viewed as a conversation than as a dance. Entropy changes in the development of a theory-methods-data conversation provide one metric for evaluating scientific progress.