Spread of Risk Information Through Microblogs: Twitter Users with More Mutual Connections Relay News That is More Dreadful1

In elucidating the spread of risk information through microblogging, it is important to understand the behaviors of numerous average users, in addition to the activities of authorities. We followed the transmission pathways of 10 actual widely spread tweets concerning several risk information topics, including natural disasters, nuclear disasters, and infectious diseases, and we identified the types of risk that affected retweeting by classifying each tweet based on Slovic's risk-perception model. Furthermore, we examined the types of users who did and did not retweet the information. Users with few connections in the form of followers (i.e., people who are following a user) or followees (people a user is following), or with a low ratio of mutual followers within their connections, had a tendency to retweet a large amount of risk information, regardless of the type of risk involved. On the other hand, users with a high ratio of mutual followers exhibited a greater tendency to retweet risk information when it was perceived as dreadful, though they did not retweet risk information much on the whole. These results suggest that there are two mechanisms by which risk information is spread within the Twitter network: information exchange and social sharing of personal reactions.     

A preliminary sketch of a Jungian socioanalysis – an emerging theory combining analytical psychology,complexity theories,sociological theories,socio- and psycho-analysis,group analysis and affect theories1

This paper presents a preliminary sketch of what we have termed a Jungian socioanalysis – an emerging theory combining analytical psychology, complexity theories, sociological theories, socio- and psycho-analysis, group analysis and affect theories. Our assumption is that Jungian theory and practice need to attend to and focus more on social contexts, sociality and the influence of societal developments. But also, on the other hand, that analytical psychology, primarily Jung’s theory of individuation and the transcendent function as well as the broad complexity perspective of his theory of psyche, can be extended to a ‘socio’ and not just a ‘psycho’ perspective. The paper presents five foundational assumptions for a Jungian socioanalysis, with the following headings: 1) A Jungian socioanalysis calls for a complex psychology; 2) (Un)consciousness is social and sociality has a dimension of (un)consciousness; 3) A Jungian socioanalysis explores social fields ‘from within’ by smaller groups; 4) A Jungian socioanalysis enables and is enabled by emerging metaphors and affect-imagery; 5) Socio-cultural fields have an impulse toward individuation. This is the first of two papers in the present edition of the journal – the second paper gives socio-clinical illustrations of our thesis in this paper.     

A note on computing Louis’ observed information matrix identity for IRT and cognitive diagnostic models

Using Louis’ formula, it is possible to obtain the observed information matrix and the corresponding large-sample standard error estimates after the expectation–maximization (EM) algorithm has converged. However, Louis’ formula is commonly de-emphasized due to its relatively complex integration representation, particularly when studying latent variable models. This paper provides a holistic overview that demonstrates how Louis’ formula can be applied efficiently to item response theory (IRT) models and other popular latent variable models, such as cognitive diagnostic models (CDMs). After presenting the algebraic components required for Louis’ formula, two real data analyses, with accompanying numerical illustrations, are presented. Next, a Monte Carlo simulation is presented to compare the computational efficiency of Louis’ formula with previously existing methods. Results from these presentations suggest that Louis’ formula should be adopted as a standard method when computing the observed information matrix for IRT models and CDMs fitted with the EM algorithm due to its computational efficiency and flexibility.     

The effects of exposure to political and domestic violence on preschool children and their mothers

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of exposure to political violence on preschool children and their mothers. We explored whether these dyads are different from dyads with no known history of exposure to violence and from mother–child dyads with known exposure to domestic violence. Specifically, we explored differences in mothers' psychological status (depression and anxiety), dyadic emotional availability (EA), children's social information processing, and children's social behaviour, in a sample of 216 dyads divided into three groups (exposure to political violence, no exposure to violence, and exposure to domestic violence). We found evidence to support our hypotheses that children exposed to domestic violence exhibit the highest levels of social maladjustment with smaller but still significant differences between children exposed to political violence and children in the comparison group. As expected, the lowest EA scores were found in the exposure to domestic violence group, followed by dyads in the exposure to political violence group. Dyads belonging to the comparison group (no exposure) exhibited the highest levels of EA. These findings contribute to our understanding of the meaning of exposure to political violence, as well as sharpen the difference between exposure to political and domestic violence.     

Modeling Asymmetry in the Time–Distance Relation of Ordinal Personality Items

In analyzing responses and response times to personality questionnaire items, models have been proposed which include the so-called “inverted-U effect.” These models predict that response times to personality test items decrease as the latent trait value of a given person gets closer to the attractiveness of an item. Initial studies into these models have focused on dichotomous personality items, and more recently, models for Likert-type scale items have been proposed. In all these models, it is assumed that the inverted-U effect is symmetrical around 0, while, as will be explained in this article, there are substantive and statistical reasons to study this assumption. Therefore, in this article, a general inverted-U model is proposed which accommodates two sources of asymmetry between the response times and the attractiveness of the items. The viability of this model is demonstrated in a simulation study, and the model is applied to the responses and response times of the Temperament and Character Inventory–Revised, covering a broad range of personality dimensions.     

The Role of Executive Function and Theory of Mind in Pragmatic Computations

In sentences such as “Some dogs are mammals,” the literal semantic meaning (“Some and possibly all dogs are mammals”) conflicts with the pragmatic meaning (“Not all dogs are mammals,” known as a scalar implicature). Prior work has shown that adults vary widely in the extent to which they adopt the semantic or pragmatic meaning of such utterances, yet the underlying reason for this variation is unknown. Drawing on theoretical models of scalar implicature derivation, we explore the hypothesis that the cognitive abilities of executive function (EF) and theory of mind (ToM) contribute to this observed variation. In Experiment 1, we show that individuals with better ToM are more likely to compute a scalar implicature and adopt the pragmatic meaning of an utterance; however, EF makes no unique contribution to scalar implicature comprehension after accounting for ToM. In Experiment 2, we replicate this finding and assess whether it generalizes to the comprehension of other pragmatic phenomena such as indirect requests (e.g., “It's hot in here” uttered to ask for something to be done) and metaphor (e.g., “to harvest courage”). This is the first evidence that differences in ToM are associated with pragmatic competence in neurotypical adults across distinct pragmatic phenomena.     

Memory and Counterfactual Simulations for Past Wrongdoings Foster Moral Learning and Improvement

In four studies, we investigated the role of remembering, reflecting on, and mutating personal past moral transgressions to learn from those moral mistakes and to form intentions for moral improvement. Participants reported having ruminated on their past wrongdoings, particularly their more severe transgressions, and they reported having frequently thought about morally better ways in which they could have acted instead (i.e., morally upward counterfactuals; Studies 1–3). The more that participants reported having mentally simulated morally better ways in which they could have acted, the stronger their intentions were to improve in the future (Studies 2 and 3). Implementing an experimental manipulation, we then found that making accessible a morally upward counterfactual after committing a moral transgression strengthened reported intentions for moral improvement—relative to resimulating the remembered event and considering morally worse ways in which they could have acted instead (Study 4). We discuss the implications of these results for competing theoretical views on the relationship between memory and morality and for functional theories of counterfactual thinking.     

Linguistic Distributional Knowledge and Sensorimotor Grounding both Contribute to Semantic Category Production

The human conceptual system comprises simulated information of sensorimotor experience and linguistic distributional information of how words are used in language. Moreover, the linguistic shortcut hypothesis predicts that people will use computationally cheaper linguistic distributional information where it is sufficient to inform a task response. In a pre-registered category production study, we asked participants to verbally name members of concrete and abstract categories and tested whether performance could be predicted by a novel measure of sensorimotor similarity (based on an 11-dimensional representation of sensorimotor strength) and linguistic proximity (based on word co-occurrence derived from a large corpus). As predicted, both measures predicted the order and frequency of category production but, critically, linguistic proximity had an effect above and beyond sensorimotor similarity. A follow-up study using typicality ratings as an additional predictor found that typicality was often the strongest predictor of category production variables, but it did not subsume sensorimotor and linguistic effects. Finally, we created a novel, fully grounded computational model of conceptual activation during category production, which best approximated typical human performance when conceptual activation was allowed to spread indirectly between concepts, and when candidate category members came from both sensorimotor and linguistic distributional representations. Critically, model performance was indistinguishable from typical human performance. Results support the linguistic shortcut hypothesis in semantic processing and provide strong evidence that both linguistic and grounded representations are inherent to the functioning of the conceptual system. All materials, data, and code are available at https://osf.io/vaq56/ .     

What could be My Next Job? Using Flat Information Structures to Generate Creative Future Career Ideas

In a dynamic labor market, it is important to help people combine information and generate creative solutions to cope with complex career challenges. In the present research, we apply the theory of information structure to creative career idea generation and hypothesize that flat information structures—that is, structures in which the information is disorganized—are more conducive to creativity than hierarchical information structures—that is, structures in which information is organized in higher‐order categories. In two experimental studies, participants had to combine career information related to self and work preferences that was presented either in flat or hierarchical structures. We found that flat information structures, compared with hierarchical information structures, led to future career ideas that were more creative on average. Our results suggest that cognitive flexibility explains the effect of information structure on the creativity of career ideas. Theoretical implications and suggestions for career management practices are discussed.