Offline: The possible effects of Internet-related behavior on work values,expectations, & behavior among Ultra-Orthodox millennials

ABSTRACT

This work examines differences in the work-related values, expectations, and behaviors between millennials who are significant users of technology and social media, and those who are not. We delineate the development of millennial behavior using a unique group of millennials, those in the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish (known as “Haredi”) community in Israel. Due to religious and community norms, many Haredi millennials were shielded from digital technology, and particularly the Internet and the various technologies associated with it, such as text messaging and social media. Those who were raised and remained in Haredi communities did not encounter the Internet with any regularity as children. Many as adults are still unfamiliar with social media. Thus, this community presents a unique natural experiment, comparing Haredi millennials who are immersed in social media with those who are not.     

Influential observations in principal factor analysis

We propose a method for detecting influential observations in iterative principal factor analysis. For this purpose we derive the influence functionsI(x; LL ^T ) andI(x; ) for the common variance matrixT =LL ^T and the unique variance matrix , respectively, in the common factor decomposition =LL ^T + . A numerical example is given for illustration.The authors are grateful to Tomoyuki Tarumi and Atsuhiro Hayashi for their kind permission to use their software Seto/B for drawing Figures 1 and 2 and to anonymous reviewers for comments on the paper.     

Susceptibility to prosocial and antisocial influence in adolescence following mindfulness training

Mindfulness training programmes have shown to encourage prosocial behaviours and reduce antisocial tendencies in adolescents. However, less is known about whether training affects susceptibility to prosocial and antisocial influence. The current study investigated the effect of mindfulness training (compared with an active control) on self-reported prosocial and antisocial tendencies and susceptibility to prosocial and antisocial influence. 465 adolescents aged 11–16 years were randomly allocated to one of two training programmes. Pre- and post-training, participants completed a social influence task. Self-reported likelihood of engaging in prosocial and antisocial behaviours did not change post-training, and regardless of training group, participants showed a higher propensity for prosocial influence than for antisocial influence. Finally, participants were less influenced by antisocial ratings following both training programmes.     

Understanding environments: The key to improving social processes and program outcomes

The contributions to this Special Issue illustrate research on several important types of environmental units, including psychiatric and substance abuse treatment programs, neighborhood block groups, and entire communities. They also exemplify alternative methodologies, such as assessing environments by relying on participants' appraisals, external observers' ratings, historical archives, and direct observation. I draw on these contributions and some of my own work to discuss four recurrent issues: (a) how to conceptualize environmental domains and dimensions; (b) how to understand environmental dynamics, that is, the interplay of environmental factors both within one setting and across settings; (c) how to comprehend the processes that link environmental factors to outcomes, especially with respect to the power and evanescence of environmental influence; and (d) how to use information about environments to monitor and improve them. Increased knowledge in these four areas is essential to help fulfill a major aim of community psychology: to understand social processes and improve intervention program outcomes.     

Curiosity Is Contagious: A Social Influence Intervention to Induce Curiosity

Our actions and decisions are regularly influenced by the social environment around us. Can social cues be leveraged to induce curiosity and affect subsequent behavior? Across two experiments, we show that curiosity is contagious: The social environment can influence people's curiosity about the answers to scientific questions. Participants were presented with everyday questions about science from a popular on-line forum, and these were shown with a high or low number of up-votes as a social cue to popularity. Participants indicated their curiosity about the answers, and they were given an opportunity to reveal a subset of those answers. Participants reported greater curiosity about the answers to questions when the questions were presented with a high (vs. low) number of up-votes, and they were also more likely to choose to reveal the answers to questions with a high (vs. low) number of up-votes. These effects were partially mediated by surprise and by the inferred usefulness of knowledge, with a more dramatic effect of low up-votes in reducing curiosity than of high up-votes in boosting curiosity. Taken together, these results highlight the important role social information plays in shaping our curiosity.     

The role of drivers’ social interactions in their driving behavior: Empirical evidence and implications for car-following and traffic flow

Models for describing the microscopic driving behavior rarely consider the “social effects” on drivers’ driving decisions. However, social effect can be generated due to interactions with surrounding vehicles and affect drivers’ driving behavior, e.g., the interactions result in imitating the behavior of peer drivers. Therefore, social environment and peer influence can impact the drivers’ instantaneous behavior and shift the individuals’ driving state. This study aims to explore empirical evidence for existence of a social effect, i.e., when a fast-moving vehicle passes a subject vehicle, does the driver mimic the behavior of passing vehicle? High-resolution Basic Safety Message data set (N = 151,380,578) from the Safety Pilot Model Deployment program in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is used to explore the issue. The data relates to positions, speeds, and accelerations of 63 host vehicles traveling in connected vehicles with detailed information on surrounding environment at a frequency of 10 Hz. Rigorous random parameter logit models are estimated to capture the heterogeneity among the observations and to explore if the correlates of social effect can vary both positively and negatively. Results show that subject drivers do mimic the behavior of passing vehicles –in 16 percent of passing events (N = 18,099 total passings occurred in freeways), subject vehicle drivers are observed to follow the passing vehicles accelerating. We found that only 1.2 percent of drivers normally sped up (10 km/hr in 10 s) during their trips, when they were not passed by other vehicles. However, if passed by a high speed vehicle the percentage of drivers who sped up is 16.0 percent. The speed change of at least 10 km/hr within 10 s duration is considered as accelerating threshold. Furthermore, the acceleration of subject vehicle is more likely if the speed of subject driver is higher and more surrounding vehicles are present. Interestingly, if the difference with passing vehicle speed is high, the likelihood of subject driver’s acceleration is lower, consistent with expectation that if such differences are too high, the subject driver may be minimally affected. The study provides new evidence that drivers’ social interactions can change traffic flow and implications of the study results are discussed.     

“By the time I got to London I was like a coke bottle that had been shaken up and was about to explode!” A case study of performance expectations with a retired athlete

ObjectivesThis study aimed to address voids in academic literature by exploring the consequences of performance expectations from the perspective of a retired athlete.MethodologyAn instrumental case study was used to capture the experiences of a retired female athlete who had been exposed to performance expectations throughout her career. Six conversational life story interviews were conducted with the athlete and the data were represented in two portrait vignettes.ResultsThe vignettes provide a rich and holistic account of the participant’s experiences of performance expectations. Salient points that are detailed throughout the vignettes include: i) the consequences (e.g., fear of failure, perceptions of pressure, magnification of intrapersonal expectations) of media expectations for the athlete; ii) factors that the athlete perceived to influence the consequences of media expectations (e.g., the amount of media attention received); iii) the cumulative consequences (e.g., nausea, lack of perceived control, butterflies) of interpersonal expectations from multiple perceivers (e.g., the media, coaches, the public, opponents); and iv) the presence of a fear culture associated with expectations, which had ramifications for the athlete’s well-being and their ability to talk about their experiences.ConclusionsThis article offers a novel insight to the multi-modal consequences of performance expectations for an athlete, the dominant role that the media played in shaping the athlete’s experiences, and the athlete’s inability to disclose her experiences of expectations. Stakeholders are encouraged to develop their own meanings, interpretations, and evaluations of the vignettes, and apply their interpretations to policy and practice.     

Rewards decrease risky decisions for adolescent drivers: Implications for crash prevention

Motor vehicle crashes (MVCs) are a major contributor to adolescent mortality. Adolescent drivers are more likely to make risky decisions in the presence of peers. However, rewards have also been shown to improve decision making in adolescence. Our goal was to determine if peer observation and reward effects on decision-making were dependent upon adolescent driving styles.Twenty-four healthy adolescents played a driving game in a 2 (no peer; peer) × 2 (no rewards; rewards) within-subjects experiment. Driving styles were measured by self-report.Rewards favoring safe choices reduced risky decision making, but this effect was especially robust for adolescents with driving styles that increase risk of MVCs (i.e., dangerous, fast, angry, or distracted styles). Findings suggest that rewards for safe driving can be an effective mechanism for reducing MVCs, especially for the most at-risk drivers, if they can be made appetizing to adolescents.