scholarly journals Asynchrony induces polarization in attraction-based models of collective motion

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 190381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Strömbom ◽  
Tasnia Hassan ◽  
W. Hunter Greis ◽  
Alice Antia
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Collective Motion ◽  
Individual Particle ◽  
Causal Effects ◽  
Animal Groups ◽  
Particle Properties ◽  
The Social ◽  
Technical Assumption ◽  
The Individual

Animal groups frequently move in a highly organized manner, as represented by flocks of birds and schools of fish. Despite being an everyday occurrence, we do not fully understand how this works. In particular, what social interactions between animals give rise to the flock structures we observe? This question is often investigated using self-propelled particle models where particles represent the individual animals. These models differ in the social interactions used, individual particle properties, and various technical assumptions. One particular technical assumption relates to whether all particles update their headings and positions at exactly the same time (synchronous update) or not (asynchronous update). Here, we investigate the causal effects of this assumption in an attraction-only model and find that it has a dramatic impact. Polarized groups do not form when synchronous update is used, but are produced with asynchronous update, and this phenomenon is robust with respect to variation in particle displacements and inclusion of noise. Given that many important models have been implemented with synchronous update only, we speculate that our understanding of the social interactions on which they are based may be incomplete. Perhaps previously unobserved phenomena will emerge if other potentially more realistic update schemes are used.

Value-driven issues throughout the development of sociological theory

2020 ◽  
pp. 147-160
Author(s):  
Gulbarshyn Chepurko ◽  
Valerii Pylypenko
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social System ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Different Levels

The paper examines and compares how the major sociological theories treat axiological issues. Value-driven topics are analysed in view of their relevance to society in times of crisis, when both societal life and the very structure of society undergo dramatic change. Nowadays, social scientists around the world are also witnessing such a change due to the emergence of alternative schools of sociological thought (non-classical, interpretive, postmodern, etc.) and, subsequently, the necessity to revise the paradigms that have been existed in sociology so far. Since the above-mentioned approaches are often used to address value-related issues, building a solid theoretical framework for these studies takes on considerable significance. Furthermore, the paradigm revision has been prompted by technological advances changing all areas of people’s lives, especially social interactions. The global human community, integral in nature, is being formed, and production of human values now matters more than production of things; hence the “expansion” of value-focused perspectives in contemporary sociology. The authors give special attention to collectivities which are higher-order units of the social system. These units are described as well-organised action systems where each individual performs his/her specific role. Just as the role of an individual is distinct from that of the collectivity (because the individual and the collectivity are different as units), so too a distinction is drawn between the value and the norm — because they represent different levels of social relationships. Values are the main connecting element between the society’s cultural system and the social sphere while norms, for the most part, belong to the social system. Values serve primarily to maintain the pattern according to which the society is functioning at a given time; norms are essential to social integration. Apart from being the means of regulating social processes and relationships, norms embody the “principles” that can be applied beyond a particular social system. The authors underline that it is important for Ukrainian sociology to keep abreast of the latest developments in the field of axiology and make good use of those ideas because this is a prerequisite for its successful integration into the global sociological community.

scholarly journals Word of Mouth, Viral Marketing and Open Data: A Large-Scale Simulation for Predicting Opinion Diffusion on Ethical Food Consumption

2019 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Agostino G. Bruzzone ◽  
Matteo Agresta ◽  
Jen Hsien Hsu
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Choice Model ◽  
Open Data ◽  
Viral Marketing ◽  
The Social ◽  
First Results ◽  
Individual Opinion ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Choices

AbstractThis paper presents the first results of a large-scale-Agent-Based Simulation devoted to simulate individual behaviour inside a medium sized city (600,000 inhabitants). Humans are simulated as Intelligent Individual entities characterized by several attributes created from the Open Data available by means of a multi-layer approach. The work presented is divided into two main parts: the first part aims to describe the multi-layer approach adopted with the inclusion of the social network layer devoted to capture how social networks can be correlated with human activities and how an “Individual Opinion” can changes based on social interactions. The second part is devoted to present a preliminary case study for simulating the propagation dynamics of the individual opinion in the form of an ethical value function. The basic idea is to capture the changes in the individual opinion based on the social interactions predicted by the simulation. Finally, a food choice model for predicting individual choices based on the individual opinion function is presented; the model is based on three parameters: accessibility of ethical shops, price difference with standard products, and ethical value propagation.

Event ethics and their elasticity: weddings in Botswana and the exploration of the tacit extraordinary

Africa ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 87 (3) ◽  
pp. 462-478
Author(s):  
Rijk van Dijk
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Special Events ◽  
Everyday Ethics ◽  
Local Practices ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Opposite View ◽  
The Individual

AbstractWhereas Michael Lambek situates the exploration of the significance of ‘ordinary ethics’ in the everyday as the study of ‘the ethical in the conjunction or movement between explicit local pronouncements and implicit local practices and circumstances’, this article takes the opposite view by drawing attention to special events that appear to engage – or provide space for – extraordinary ethics. Special events and their extraordinary ethics bring into relief the implicitness of the ordinary in everyday ethics. Weddings in Botswana are moments in the social life of the individual, the family and the community that produce such event ethics. On one level, the event ethics relate to the execution of these highly stylized weddings in terms of concerns about their performance and marital arrangements. On another level, the event ethics can have tacit dimensions that belong to the special nature of the occasion. This article argues not only that ‘ordinary ethics’ may be privileged through the study of what is tacit in social interactions, but that ‘event ethics’ also demonstrate the importance of the tacit.

*The Study of Social Organizations

Behaviour ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 59 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 96-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glen Mcbride
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Model ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Animal Species ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Animal Societies

AbstractThis paper presents a theoretical model of and a practical approach to the study of social systems. It was prepared after discussions at the XI and XII International Ethological Conferences, and each draft was presented to many ethologists for comment, and many responded. The paper looks at the social organization within animal species, and at the way animals build, maintain, and change it by their behaviour. The questions asked move always from the individual behaviours, through the social interactions, to the social reiationships and groups which are stable features of societies. The main societal subsystems discussed are: I. Social phases, or social structures which are maintained for periods of time; 2. Organic specialization by castes; 3. Social specialization in groups ; 4. The pattern of dispersal of individuals or groups; 5. The social organization of sexual and parent-offspring behaviour; 6. The organization of behaviour in relation to the environment; 7. The dynamic aspects of animal societies, particularly with changes in density. In each section, questions aim to draw out the pattern of behavioural organization, emphasising the structural features of the theoretical model presented.

Do social interactions matter for borrowing behaviour of the Europeans aged 50+?

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Fernández-López ◽  
Djamila Daoudi ◽  
Lucía Rey-Ares
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Social Activities ◽  
Mortgage Debt ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Weak Evidence ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Household Borrowing ◽  
The Relationship

PurposeThis paper aims to explore the linkage between households' social interactions and credit context and how these interactions may influence household borrowing decisions.Design/methodology/approachBased on a sample of 45,907 individuals referred to 18 countries, drawn from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, different probit regressions are used to test the four hypotheses proposed.FindingsEmpirical evidence confirms that intensive and extensive sociability are positively related to consumer debt holding. However, when social activities are considered separately, there is weak evidence that they are also related to mortgage debt holding and over-indebtedness. Moreover, at this level of analysis, the different nature of the social activities in which the individual participates in may condition the relationship with borrowing behaviour. The findings also show that relative income plays a passive role in household borrowing behaviour, since low-income households are more likely to hold mortgage and informal loans or to be over-indebted in highly indebted countries.Originality/valueFirst, this paper extends the knowledge of the relationship between social interactions and borrowing behaviour by considering not only the intensity and diversity of the social activities in which the individual participates, but also the different nature of these activities. Second, it proposes that social interactions may play a passive role on borrowing decision, suggesting that household's behaviour might be passively affected by the density of borrowers surrounding it. To the best of our knowledge, there has not been any attempt to test this issue regarding household borrowing decisions. Third, unlike the few empirical papers on the topic, the paper also analyses previous issues by distinguishing between different types of debts; a distinction that revels the different role played by social interactions.

scholarly journals Unravelling competitors’ brain-andbody correlates. The two-persons social neuroscience approach to study competition

2021 ◽  
pp. 83-104
Author(s):  
Michela Balconi ◽  
Laura Angioletti
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Social Neuroscience ◽  
Competitive Behavior ◽  
Body System ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Single Person ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Brain

Competition refers to a condition for which an individual or a group strive to gain or win something by defeating or establishing superiority over others. It follows that, unlike cooperation, the gain of one foresees the loss of the other. Most accounts have focused on the individual and social cognitive mechanisms featuring cooperative/competitive behavior, however, a fascinating question regards the neurophysiological correlates of competitive social phenomenon. What happens at a neural and peripheral level in the brain-and-body system of two people engaged in a competitive dynamic? The combination of multiple neuroscientific techniques adopted to unveil the individual and social complexity of competition leads us discussing a more recent and promising paradigm in neuroscience, the hyperscanning. In the social neuroscience field, hyperscanning allowed shifting from a single-person to a two-persons perspective and can open new opportunities to study interpersonal brain-and-body connectivity during competitive social interactions in increasingly ecological contexts.

scholarly journals Social Interactions and Cultural Repertoires as Resources for Coping With Breast Cancer

SAGE Open ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 215824401769201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Zucchermaglio ◽  
Francesca Alby
Keyword(s):  
Breast Cancer ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
Coping With Cancer ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cultural Repertoires ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Cultural World

The article aims to better understand the role of cultural and social resources for coping with cancer as a disruptive experience. Fourteen women who had recently received a diagnosis of breast cancer and started a treatment in an Italian hospital have been interviewed individually to elicit narratives regarding the interactions with the other patients. The analysis focused on the role played by social interactions and cultural repertoires as devices for making sense of and facing the illness. Results show that patients use both interactive as well as noninteractive strategies. In both cases, however, the other patients are an important reference in the interviewees’ accounts. Even for noninteracting patients, the others and specific groups are taken into account and displayed in their narratives either directly or indirectly (i.e., typified or imagined), contributing to interpret and address what they experienced as cancer patients. Moreover, results provide empirical evidence of the various cultural repertoires (including examples retraceable to popular culture) on which people rely to address and cope with the illness. These results widen the individualistic framework commonly used in the understanding of coping strategies by including psychosocial phenomena that are created outside the individual in the complex interactions with the social and cultural world.

scholarly journals Collective rhythm as an emergent property during human social coordination

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arodi Farrera ◽  
Gabriel Ramos-Fernandez
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Group Dynamics ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Temporal Structure ◽  
Interpersonal Coordination ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Social Coordination ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sociocultural Processes ◽  
The Individual

The literature on social interactions has shown that participants coordinate not only at the behavioral but also at the physiological and neural levels, and that this coordination gives a temporal structure to the individual and to the social dynamics. However, it has not been fully explored whether such temporal patterns emerge during interpersonal coordination beyond dyads, whether this phenomenon arises from complex cognitive mechanisms or from relatively simple rules of behavior, or the sociocultural processes that underlie this phenomenon. We review the evidence for the existence of group-level rhythmic patterns that result from social interactions and argue that, by imposing a temporal structure at the individual and interaction levels, interpersonal coordination in groups leads to temporal regularities that cannot be predicted from the individual periodicities: a collective rhythm. Moreover, we use this interpretation of the literature to discuss how taking into account the sociocultural niche in which individuals develop can help explain the seemingly divergent results that have been reported on the social influences and consequences of interpersonal coordination. We make recommendations on further research to test these arguments and their relationship to the feeling of belonging and assimilation experienced during group dynamics.

The Need to Refocus on the Group as the Site of Radicalization

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 327-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura G. E. Smith ◽  
Leda Blackwood ◽  
Emma F. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Group Processes ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Socialization Process ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Violent Extremism ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
The Individual

The past decade has witnessed burgeoning efforts among governments to prevent people from developing a commitment to violent extremism (conceived of as a process of radicalization). These interventions acknowledge the importance of group processes yet in practice primarily focus on the idiosyncratic personal vulnerabilities that lead people to engage in violence. This conceptualization is problematic because it disconnects the individual from the group and fails to adequately address the role of group processes in radicalization. To address this shortcoming, we propose a genuinely social psychological account of radicalization as an alternative. We draw on recent developments in theory and research in psychological science to suggest that radicalization is fundamentally a group socialization process through which people develop identification with a set of norms—that may be violent or nonviolent—through situated social interactions that leverage their shared perceptions and experiences. Our alternative provides a way of understanding shifts toward violent extremism that are caused by both the content (focal topics) and process of social interactions. This means that people’s radicalization to violence is inseparable from the social context in which their social interactions take place.

scholarly journals CONCEPTUALIZING THE PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT: TEACHINGS FROM SELECTED VERSES OF SURAH AL-HUJURAAT

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Muhammad Maga Sule ◽  
Atiku Garba Yahaya
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Internet Technology ◽  
Guiding Principle ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Depth Interviews

<p><em>The speedy advancement in internet technology has revolutionized the use of social media platforms as ways of communication globally. </em><em>This paper examines the proliferations social media sites in the world and its use among the Muslims.  Unlike traditional media, most of internet based means of social interactions are user-generated. It allows the individual to determine the content of the message with or without censorship or regulation. The liberty to open an account with any site of choice and the freedom it entails, lured some Muslim</em><em>s</em><em> to surf social media without recourse to or in line with the basic tenets of Islamic teachings.  The paper </em><em>is</em><em> a qualitative method where In-Depth Interviews were conducted with seasoned social users.  The researchers purposively selected three participants for the study and interview because they are Muslims and possessed the knowledge about the phenomenon investigated. Some of the findings of the study revealed that some Muslims finds it convenient to share or post unsubstantiated religious messages on social media. Similarly, it has paved way for increasing number of untrained social media preachers. This makes it a delicate tool at the disposal of some of Muslim to fan antagonism among Muslim of creeds and sects in Nigeria. The article concludes that social media is a double-edged sword which side-effects as apparent when Muslim user do not resort to the teachings of Islam as the guiding principle when surfing the social media sites. The unfettered user-generated content of social media in 21<sup>st</sup> century enables the users to operate outside the ambit of the Islamic convention of social interactions.</em></p>

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