A Social Network Analysis of Friendship and Spiritual Support in a Religious Congregation

Religious congregations are social settings where people gather together in community to pursue the sacred (Pargament, 2008). Such settings are important to understand as they provide a context for individuals to develop relationships, share ideas and resources, and connect individuals to larger society (Todd, 2017a). Yet, research to date has not deeply examined the inherently relational nature of religious congregations. Thus, in this study, we used social settings theory (Seidman, 2012; Tseng & Seidman, 2007) to develop and test hypotheses about relationships within one Christian religious congregation. In particular, we used social network analysis to test hypotheses about relational activity, popularity, and homophily for friendship and spiritual support types of relational links. Our findings demonstrate how relational patterns may be linked to participation in congregational activities, occupying a leadership role, a sense of community and spiritual satisfaction, stratification, socialization, and spiritual support. Overall, this advances theory and research on the relational aspects of religious congregations, and more broadly to the literature on social settings. Limitations, directions for future research, and implications for theory and religious congregations also are discussed.     

A meta-analysis of linguistic markers of extraversion: Positive emotion and social process words

Past literature has shown that extraversion is related to the use of positive emotion and social process words. However, the strength of the relationships varies substantially across studies. In this research, we conducted a meta-analysis (k = 37, N = 82,132) to estimate the overall effect size of the two linguistic correlates of extraversion. In addition, we tested potential moderators including demographic variables (e.g., age and gender) and communication contexts (e.g., synchronous vs. asynchronous, public vs. private). Our random effects models revealed a small correlation between extraversion and positive emotion words (r = 0.069, 95% CI = [0.041, 0.096]), and a small correlation between extraversion and social process words (r = 0.077, 95% CI = [0.044, 0.109]). In addition, the strength of the relationship between extraversion and positive emotion words varies across communication contexts, while the relationship between extraversion and social process words remains consistent across contexts. Our results suggest that positive emotion words and social process words are linguistic correlates of extraversion, but they are small in magnitude.     

Eighteen-month-olds integrate verbal cues into their action processing: Evidence from ERPs and mu power

Behavioral research has shown that infants use both behavioral cues and verbal cues when processing the goals of others’ actions. For instance, 18-month-olds selectively imitate an observed goal-directed action depending on its (in)congruence with a model’s previous verbal announcement of a desired action goal. This EEG-study analyzed the electrophysiological underpinnings of these behavioral findings on the two functional levels of conceptual action processing and motor activation. Mid-latency mean negative ERP amplitude and mu-frequency band power were analyzed while 18-month-olds (N = 38) watched videos of an adult who performed one out of two potential actions on a novel object. In a within-subjects design, the action demonstration was preceded by either a congruent or an incongruent verbally announced action goal (e.g., “up” or “down” and upward movement). Overall, ERP negativity did not differ between conditions, but a closer inspection revealed that in two subgroups, about half of the infants showed a broadly distributed increased mid-latency ERP negativity (indicating enhanced conceptual action processing) for either the congruent or the incongruent stimuli, respectively. As expected, mu power at sensorimotor sites was reduced (indicating enhanced motor activation) for congruent relative to incongruent stimuli in the entire sample. Both EEG correlates were related to infants’ language skills. Hence, 18-month-olds integrate action-goal-related verbal cues into their processing of others’ actions, at the functional levels of both conceptual processing and motor activation. Further, cue integration when inferring others’ action goals is related to infants’ language proficiency.     

Sense of agency: Sensorimotor signals and social context are differentially weighed at implicit and explicit levels

Sense of agency (SoA) describes the experience of being the author of an action. Cue integration approaches divide SoA into an implicit level, mostly relying on prospective sensorimotor signals, and an explicit level, resulting from an integration of sensorimotor and contextual cues based on their reliability. Integration mechanisms at each level and the contribution of implicit to explicit SoA remain underspecified. In a task of movements with visual outcomes, we tested the effect of social context (contextual cue) and sensory prediction congruency (retrospective sensorimotor cue) over implicit (intentional binding) and explicit (verbal judgments) SoA. Our results suggest that prospective sensorimotor cues determine implicit SoA. At the explicit level, retrospective sensorimotor cues and contextual cues are partly integrated in an additive way, but contextual cues can also act as a heuristic if sensorimotor cues are highly unreliable. We also found no significant association between implicit and explicit SoA.     

Education biases perception of social robots

IntroductionRecent research on human–robot interactions (HRI) emphasizes a role of user's attitudes in perceiving robot's with different robot embodiments of varying levels of human likenesses. However, other human factors such as educational background may also help understanding of what conditions contribute to enhance social perception of robot's features.ObjectivesThis study aimed to determine how people's attitudes towards and familiarization with robots influence social perception of particular features of robots.MethodFirst, we measured attitudes towards robots among undergraduate students with diverse educational background (engineering vs. psychology). Then, participants were presented with short movies showing the behaviour of three robots with different levels of sociability. Finally, participants evaluated the characteristics of these robots on a scale.ResultsPeople more familiar with social robots and with more positive attitudes towards them evaluate robots with human traits more highly.ConclusionHuman perception of social robots resembles social phenomena related to human perception of other people.     

Finding a home: Developmental and neurobiological perspectives on cultural models

This article looks at cultural models in the light of human development, and neurobiological findings in motivation, learning, and cognition. It is argued that at the individual level, the acquisition of cultural models relies on several innate, neurobiologically based motivational, learning, and cognitive systems. These are: (a) a primary motivation to form social bonds which is driven by affect; (b) highly specialized social learning circuits, involving, but not limited to, mirror neuron systems, that facilitate the encoding of social information through implicit, embodied, imitational learning processes; and (c) the formation of culturally based templates for behavior and cognition centered around structures, collectively known as the “default mode network,” which is essential to self‐understanding, autobiographical memory, social cognition, prospection, and theory‐of‐mind. Cultural models, it is argued, are acquired through innate motivational processes that tie the individual emotionally to a secure base of familiar people and customs. This instinctual desire for proximity to others facilitates the efficient, largely implicit, patterning of knowledge and expectations. Shared knowledge and expectations, in turn, create a common, mostly implicit or unconscious, experience of subjectivity within groups. This allows each individual to automatically and effortlessly interact with similarly enculturated others.     

FNDNet – A deep convolutional neural network for fake news detection

With the increasing popularity of social media and web-based forums, the distribution of fake news has become a major threat to various sectors and agencies. This has abated trust in the media, leaving readers in a state of perplexity. There exists an enormous assemblage of research on the theme of Artificial Intelligence (AI) strategies for fake news detection. In the past, much of the focus has been given on classifying online reviews and freely accessible online social networking-based posts. In this work, we propose a deep convolutional neural network (FNDNet) for fake news detection. Instead of relying on hand-crafted features, our model (FNDNet) is designed to automatically learn the discriminatory features for fake news classification through multiple hidden layers built in the deep neural network. We create a deep Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to extract several features at each layer. We compare the performance of the proposed approach with several baseline models. Benchmarked datasets were used to train and test the model, and the proposed model achieved state-of-the-art results with an accuracy of 98.36% on the test data. Various performance evaluation parameters such as Wilcoxon, false positive, true negative, precision, recall, F1, and accuracy, etc. were used to validate the results. These results demonstrate significant improvements in the area of fake news detection as compared to existing state-of-the-art results and affirm the potential of our approach for classifying fake news on social media. This research will assist researchers in broadening the understanding of the applicability of CNN-based deep models for fake news detection.     

Daily relations between social perceptions and physical activity among college women

ObjectivesThere is a need to develop more effective physical activity (PA) promotion programs for college women. Theory and evidence suggest that perceptions of the social environment play a role in college women’s PA, though little is known about how these perceptions are associated with PA at the day level. The goal of this study was to examine relations between changes in college women’s daily social perceptions and objectively assessed PA over seven days.DesignDaily diary method.MethodCollege women (n = 80, M_Age = 20, M_BMI = 23.1 kg/m²) wore Fitbit wristbands and completed daily self-reports of (1) the quantity and perceived intensity of their social interactions (positive/negative), and (2) the occurrence of social comparisons (based on appearance/health/status) for seven days.ResultsMultilevel models showed daily variability in predictors and outcomes (ps < 0.0001), as well as relations between within-person changes in social perceptions and PA. Increases in negative interactions (particularly those with friends) were consistently associated with decreases in daily PA, whereas increases in positive interactions showed limited relations (srs = −0.22-0.34). Days with health comparisons were days with greater PA for women who had stronger overall interest in comparisons, but were days with less PA for women with weaker overall interest (srs = 0.22–0.33). PA did not differ between days with vs. without appearance comparisons.ConclusionsSocial perceptions show meaningful day-to-day variability and relations with college women’s daily PA, and specific associations may be useful for improving tailored interventions for college women.     

Characterizing positive and negative ‘voicers’ in elite sport teams: The role of the Five Factor Model and narcissism in players’ frequency and passing on of voice

ObjectiveThis study examined the role of the Five Factor Model and grandiose narcissism in players’ positive (i.e., constructive voice, supportive voice) and negative voice (i.e., defensive voice, destructive voice) in elite sport teams.MethodPlayers from six field hockey and seven korfball teams from the two highest national levels were assessed for four weeks. Using social network analyses, players’ personality was related to their self-reported voice frequency, their voice frequency as perceived by all teammates (other-ratings), and the extent to which they pass on voice.ResultsExtraversion was positively related to players’ frequency of positive and negative voice. Other traits such as conscientiousness and emotional stability were only related to, respectively, positive or negative types of voice. Not all personalities (e.g., extraversion) were consistent in how they assess their own voice versus how others perceive this. Interestingly, traits such as extraversion, emotional stability and the agentic facet of narcissism were found to predict the passing on of voice.ConclusionThis study explored the importance of personality for (a) players’ frequency of a differentiated set of positive and negative voice and (b) the extent to which they function as ‘gates’ that more covertly pass on voice. Further, the results provide perspective on how specific personalities view their voice behavior versus how their teammates perceive their voice behavior. In this way, this study is a first step in identifying players who have the potential to endanger or strengthen a team in a clear or subtle, yet influential way.