In-session gaming as a tool in treating adolescent problematic gaming

For some adolescent gamers, playing online games may become problematic, impairing functioning in personal, family, and other life domains. Parental and family factors are known to influence the odds that adolescents may develop problematic gaming (PG), negative parenting and conflictual family dynamics increasing the risk, whereas positive parenting and developmentally supportive family dynamics protecting against PG. This suggests that a treatment for adolescent PG should not only address the gaming behaviors and personal characteristics of the youth, but also the parental and family domains. An established research-supported treatment meeting these requirements is multidimensional family therapy (MDFT), which we adapted for use as adolescent PG treatment. We report here on one adaptation, applying in-session gaming. In-session demonstration of the “problem behavior” is feasible and informative in PG. In the opening stage of therapy, we use in-session gaming to establish an alliance between the therapist and the youth. By inviting them to play games, the therapist demonstrates that they are taken seriously, thus boosting treatment motivation. Later in treatment, gaming is introduced in family sessions, offering useful opportunities to intervene in family members' perspectives and interactional patterns revealed in vivo as the youth plays the game. These sessions can trigger strong emotions and reactions from the parents and youth and give rise to maladaptive transactions between the family members, thus offering ways to facilitate new discussions and experiences of each other. The insights gained from the game demonstration sessions aid the therapeutic process, more so than mere discussion about gaming.     

Worldviews about change: Their structure and their implications for understanding responses to sustainability,technology, and political change

People hold different perspectives about how they think the world is changing or should change. We examined five of these “worldviews” about change: Progress, Golden Age, Endless Cycle, Maintenance, and Balance. In Studies 1–4 (total N = 2733) we established reliable measures of each change worldview, and showed how these help explain when people will support or oppose social change in contexts spanning sustainability, technological innovations, and political elections. In mapping out these relationships we identify how the importance of different change worldviews varies across contexts, with Balance most critical for understanding support for sustainability, Progress/Golden Age important for understanding responses to innovations, and Golden Age uniquely important for preferring Trump/Republicans in the 2016 US election. These relationships were independent of prominent individual differences (e.g., values, political orientation for elections) or context-specific factors (e.g., self-reported innovativeness for responses to innovations). Study 5 (N = 2140) examined generalizability in 10 countries/regions spanning five continents, establishing that these worldviews exhibited metric invariance, but with country/region differences in how change worldviews were related to support for sustainability. These findings show that change worldviews can act as a general “lens” people use to help determine whether to support or oppose social change.     

Belief in a Just World and Employee Voice Behavior: The Mediating Roles of Perceived Efficacy and Risk

Abstract

In this research, we hypothesized that employees’ belief in a just world (BJW) would be positively related to their voice behavior, i.e., the expression of ideas or opinions with the intention of engendering organizational improvement or change, and that this relation would be mediated by perceived voice efficacy and perceived voice risk. To test these hypotheses, we collected self-reported data from employees in two different countries: China (N?=?313) and Germany (N?=?190). The results revealed a positive association between BJW and employee voice behavior in both samples. The two-mediator model was confirmed in the Chinese sample, while only perceived voice efficacy played a mediating role in the German sample. Possible reasons for these differences may be related to differences in cultural dimensions and education levels between the samples. The findings emphasize the importance of bolstering employees’ belief in justice and the organizational climate, which influence perceived voice efficacy and risk, as means to increase organizational voice behavior.     

Shackling the shoulders of giants

This paper informally summarizes a two-day symposium held at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., September 5–6, 2002. The issue was to what extent the progress of science and societal capacity for continued technological innovation are threatened by excessive protection of intellectual property. Excessive protection creates disadvantages not only for scientists and inventors but also for educators/students and for librarians/clientele. Speakers from a variety of disciplines and institutions agreed unanimously that scientific and technological progress is, indeed, under serious threat. Various opinions were expressed about the degree of threat, currently and prospectively, as well as what counter-measures are best suited to resist undue restrictions on creative uses of scientific and technical data and information. This summary is based entirely on the author’s notes from the symposium, and the commentary offered is his alone. My apologies to the speakers if this paper does not accurately reflect the primary intent of their presentations. The “Suggested Readings” offered at the end are not specific to the speakers’ statements but rather are offered as a general resource to aid further research. The definitive record of the symposium is planned to be available from the National Academies Press as a Proceedings publication in the summer of 2003. John Gardenier is an independent researcher, ethicist and science writer.     

Green Keynesianism: Bringing the Entrepreneurial State Back in(to Question)?

Since the global financial crisis of 2007/8, proliferating calls for a Keynesian Green New Deal have cast the publicly (and environmentally) minded state as a necessary driver of technological innovation and social transformation, while, vice versa, innovation has moved to political centre-stage. The history and genesis of this particular Green Keynesian paradigm illustrate that some of its most high-profile proponents selectively and problematically frame twentieth-century Keynesianism and the ‘public good’. It is important to examine critically the calls for an ‘entrepreneurial state’ in which Green Keynesian ideas are mobilized in support of an agenda for continued and accelerated development of commercially focused, privately developed green technologies. The entrepreneurial state represents a neoliberal re-appropriation of Green Keynesianism, where dominant financial actors (in Silicon Valley, as opposed to on Wall Street) are tapped as the visionaries who can and should set our collective innovation agenda. Although there is a need for large-scale, coordinated techno-social efforts to address climate change, supporting ‘green’ innovation cannot simply be framed as maximizing ‘innovation’ while taking the ‘state’ for granted. Instead, it must entail a careful assessment of the specific trajectories of innovation being enabled and the underlying socio-natures that they maintain and promote. Science and technology studies (STS)-informed analysis allows, and compels, asking how socio-technological innovation and their constitutive power relations are crucially interrelated, making the reshaping of the state—still the primary institution and system of social relations of collective governance—a core but neglected political, technological and ecological project of our time, with a key role for STS.     

Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Globalization of Converging Technology Policy: Technological Developmentalism in South Korea

The United States (US), European Union (EU), and South Korea had different definitions and visions of technological convergence before interacting with each other from the late 2000s. The Korean government has used Western policies as a benchmark but produces a distinct concept of technological convergence due to a particular imaginary of technology as a vehicle for national economic growth. This sociotechnical imaginary of technological developmentalism influences Korea’s translation of technological convergence from other jurisdictions. Because the sociotechnical imaginaries of different nations are difficult to communicate across national contexts, the translation of visions often changes the original meaning of things like technological convergence. Western sociotechnical imaginaries such as human enhancement and sustainable development do not translate well into South Korea due to the national imaginary of technological developmentalism. First, Korea’s Lee administration predominantly envisioned converging technology (CT) as a new growth engine, in contrast to the US and EU which emphasize visions of trans-humanist or sustainable futures respectively. Second, the Park administration’s CT vision imitates the Western societal challenge-driven rationale, but this vision was not enacted. As such, the democratic, sustainable imaginary of societal challenge-driven innovation is not easily translated into Korea’s national imaginary or technology policy.     

Examining Multi-Sector Community Collaboratives as Vehicles for Building Organizational Capacity

While community collaboratives have emerged as a prominent vehicle for fostering a more coordinated community response to complex issues, research to date suggests that the success of these efforts at achieving community/population-level improvements is mixed. As a result, researchers and practitioners are increasing their focus on the intermediate outcomes accomplished by these entities. The purpose of this study is to expand upon this examination of potential intermediate outcomes by investigating the ways in which collaboratives strengthen the capacity of the organizations who participate as members. Utilizing a mixed methods design, we present an empirically-based framework of organizational outcomes associated with participation in a community collaborative. The dimensions of this framework are validated based on quantitative findings from representatives of 614 different organizations and agencies nested within 51 different community collaboratives. This article then explores how the characteristics of organizations and their representatives relate to the nature and type of impacts associated with membership. Based on study findings, we argue that community collaboratives can be effective interventions for strengthening organizational capacity across all sectors in ways that can promote greater community resiliency.     

试析高校创新氛围的营造路径

21世纪是一个充满了激烈竞争的世纪,是一个由“创新”引领时代潮流的世纪。国家富强,社会发展,教育进步离不开这一主旋律,更离不开具有创新思维的人才。本文通过探讨营造校园创新氛围的路径,来阐释校园创新氛围对大学生创新思维的养成有着至关重要的作用。     

Personality predicts innovation and social learning in children: Implications for cultural evolution

Innovation and social learning are the pillars of cultural evolution, allowing cultural behaviours to cumulatively advance over generations. Yet, little is known about individual differences in the use of social and asocial information. We examined whether personality influenced 7-11-year-old children's (N = 282) propensity to elect to observe others first or independently generate solutions to novel problems. Conscientiousness was associated with electing for no demonstrations, while agreeableness was associated with opting for demonstrations. For children receiving demonstrations, openness to experience consistently predicted deviation from observed methods. Children who opted for no demonstrations were also more likely than those opting for demonstrations to exhibit tool manufacture on an innovation challenge and displayed higher creativity, as measured by an alternate uses task. These results highlight how new cultural traditions emerge, establish and advance by identifying which individuals generate new cultural variants in populations and which are influential in the diffusion of these variants, and help reduce the apparent tension within the ‘ratchet’ of cumulative culture.     

Effets des pratiques organisationnelles vertueuses sur les comportements citoyens et l’intention de rester dans l’entreprise : le rôle médiateur de l’adéquation personne-organisation

The aims of this study were to explore the effects of virtuous organizational practices on employees’ citizenship behaviors towards the organization and employees’ intention to remain, and to test the mediating role of the person-organization fit in these relationships. A total of 290 employees from different sectors responded to the study. The results revealed that these practices had positive effects on citizenship behavior and intention to stay in the organization and that person-organization fit mediated these relationships partially and completely respectively. The results of this study, devoted to the innovative construct of virtuous organizational practices and its relationship to work attitudes and behaviors, suggest different avenues for research and action, which are discussed.