(How Much) Do Temporal Social Comparisons Matter?

Moving beyond static perspectives in social comparison theory, Reh and colleagues (2018) provided initial evidence for the relevance of “temporal social comparisons” (i.e., comparing one’s own with others’ past development over time on a salient dimension). Although this research has received wide attention, the study illustrating the authors’ basic rationale (Study 1a) suffered from a small sample size, and its results did not reach conventional significance levels. Thus, we provide a direct, preregistered, and high-powered replication of this study. Our results corroborate the original conclusions, indicating that unfavorable temporal social comparisons evoke social undermining in more (but not less) competitive contexts. These findings reiterate the importance of a dynamic, temporal perspective for a complete understanding of social comparison processes.

Do Diversity and Context Collapse Kill an Online Social Network?

Our social lives are segmented into various circles including family, friends, and colleagues. Differences in social norms and expectations between these circles can create tension, especially on large online social networks (OSNs), where their boundaries are blurred. It is unclear whether such phenomenon, called context collapse, outweighs the convenience of having diverse communities in one place for users of OSNs. To better understand this trade-off, we analyze whether ego-network characteristics suggestive of context collapse can explain exit choices from iWiW, a defunct Hungarian OSN with over 3.5 million active users at its peak. We measured context collapse with the presence of two conditions: the first is that communities of the user are non-overlapping, while the second is that these communities are different from each other. We find that users having merely overlapping communities were more likely to stay on the site. This result suggests that the benefits of being connected to diverse communities outweighs the tension from context collapse. Differences in gender composition of alter communities were associated with leaving, while having geographically distant connections were associated with staying longer on iWiW. Our results suggest that the tradeoff between access to diverse contacts and the stress of context collapse is a salient dimension in predicting user churn.

The relative salience of numerical and non-numerical dimensions shifts over development: A re-analysis of Tomlinson, DeWind, and Brannon (2020)

Visual displays of objects include information about number and other magnitudes such as cumulative surface area. Despite the confluence of cues, a prevalent view is that number is uniquely salient within multidimensional stimuli. Consistent with this view, Tomlinson, DeWind, and Brannon (2020) report that, in addition to greater acuity for number than area among both children and adults, number biases area judgments more than the reverse, at least in childhood. However, a failure to consider perceived area, undermines these results. To address this concern, we used an index of perceived area when assessing acuity and bias of number and area. In this context, number and area were comparable in acuity among children and adults. Bias, however, differed across development. Although adults showed greater bias of number on area judgments than the reverse, children experienced greater area bias on number judgments. Thus, contra Tomlinson et al., when differences in mathematical and perceived area are accounted for, area is more salient than number early in development. However, number does become the more salient dimension by adulthood, suggesting a role for experience with symbolic number and education in drawing attention to number within multidimensional visual stimuli.

Introduction

This chapter sets the stage for how central Santa Ana functions as a space in which a substantial number of residents experience a close link between faith and ethnic identity. The chapter introduces the role of faith as a critical resource in the lives of Mexican immigrants in Santa Ana. Faith functions as a salient dimension of identity because it provides resources of survival for many marginalized Mexican immigrants. General statistics on the city highlight particular aspects of inequality experienced by many working-class Mexican immigrants. Finally, this chapter invites the reader to look beyond institutional forms of faith and to examine how Mexican immigrants express agency through forms of lived religion in the city.

Handover in Nursing: A Concept Analysis

Background and PurposeThe broad use of the term handover to describe any activity involving the transfer of professional responsibility from one person to another has led to an ambiguous understanding. Recently, handover has become a process central to the delivery of high-quality and safe patient care. The aim of this analysis was to clarify the concept of handover within the context of nursing practice.MethodsRodgers's evolutionary approach was used as the analysis method along with some aspects of the dimensional analysis guided by Caron and Bowers, to understand the perspectives of senders and receivers.ResultsThe analysis revealed four attributes of handover: transfer of information, interaction for disambiguation, process, and strategy. Handover is defined as a process for transferring responsibility from sender to receiver through communication through the transfer of information, the interaction for disambiguation, and the context-sensitive strategy for accomplishing the continuity and safety of patient care. The salient dimension of handover was process, and the sub-dimensions were transfer of information, interaction for disambiguation, and strategy. From the sender's perspectives, it is the process of transferring information organized by the sender, and from the receiver's perspective, handover is the process establishing care plan through interactive strategy.Implications for PracticeThe definition and identified attributes serve as a heuristic for designing strategies and further developing the construct of handover in nursing.

Overcoming Stereotypes to “Master Our Dreams”: The Salience of Ethnic Climate and Racial Diversity Among Students of Color in Middle School

Ethnic-racial climate is a salient dimension of school context, especially amid the current sociopolitical climate. This study examined perceptions of school ethnic-racial climate among adolescent students of color, and the significance they place on being part of a diverse student population, in two urban middle schools, using interviews and focus groups. Qualitative analyses revealed that students’ perceptions were contradictory. Students characterized their school interactions in meritocratic terms, where opportunities were grounded in equality and individual effort. However, their reports of racialized treatment were frequent, whereby ethnically segregated peer groups and the presence of stereotypes were prominent. Despite this, students articulated the benefits of school diversity, most notably, because it supported them in “mastering their dreams.” Findings suggest that early adolescents are challenged with navigating the racialized context of the school environment. As such, schools must interrogate the promotion of colorblindness, in favor of practices that are more culturally affirming.

Causal understanding is not necessary for the improvement of culturally evolving technology

Bows and arrows, houses, and kayaks are just a few examples of the highly-optimized tools that humans produced and used to colonize new environments. Because there is much evidence that humans’ cognitive abilities are unparalleled, many believe that such technologies resulted from our superior causal reasoning abilities. However, others have stressed that the high dimensionality of human technologies make them very hard to understand causally. Instead, they argue that optimized technologies emerge through the retention of small improvements across generations without requiring understanding of how these technologies work. Here, we show that a physical artifact becomes progressively optimized across generations of social learners in the absence of explicit causal understanding. Moreover, we find that the transmission of causal models across generations has no noticeable effect on the pace of cultural evolution. The reason is that participants do not spontaneously create multidimensional causal theories but instead mainly produce simplistic models related to a salient dimension. Finally, we show that the transmission of these inaccurate theories constrains learners’ exploration and has downstream effects on their understanding. These results indicate that complex technologies need not result from enhanced causal reasoning but instead can emerge from the accumulation of improvements made across generations.

“They Learn to Convivir”: Immigrant Latinx Parents’ Perspectives on Cultural Socialization in Organized Youth Activities

This qualitative study explored immigrant Latinx parents’ views of the role organized youth activities play in their children’s cultural socialization. Respondents were 29 Latinx caregivers of adolescents participating in 13 project-based youth programs. Most caregivers were female ( n = 25) and biological parents ( n = 27); all were born outside the United States (83% in Mexico). Caregivers participated in structured open-ended interviews, which were analyzed using a consensual inductive approach. Although the programs did not focus primarily on cultural issues, two thirds of the caregivers discussed cultural elements relating to their child’s program participation. Three dimensions were identified that reflected how youth programs supported adolescents’ socialization: (a) Latinx socialization, (b) multicultural socialization, and (c) civic socialization. Collectively, these different types of socialization provide youth with skills for living in a diverse society. Parents’ views of cultural socialization as a multifaceted process are consistent with the growing consensus that successful adaptation for children of immigrants involves maintaining connections with the family’s heritage culture (enculturation) while developing skills to function in larger society (acculturation). By acknowledging culture as a salient dimension for Latinx youth from immigrant families, program effectiveness can be increased for all youth.

Some Things I Have Learned About Aging by Studying the Life Course

“Aging” and the “life course” are distinct but complementary phenomena that inform one another. Building on this insight, this essay conveys some lessons the author has learned about aging by studying the life course. These include that (1) age is a salient dimension of individual identity and social organization; (2) a reconfigured life course brings reconfigured aging; (3) old age is a highly precarious phase of life; (4) difference and inequality are not the same, but both can accumulate over time; (5) aging is gendered; (6) aging is interpersonal, and “independence” is an illusion; (7) “choice” and “responsibility” can be dirty words; (8) much of aging is in the mind—it is imagined and anticipated; and (9) history leaves its footprints on aging, and the future of aging is already here. These lessons culminate in a final insight: that to understand personal aging, gerontologists must look beyond the personal, for much of the relevant action is to be found in social experience.

Quantitative Analysis of Japan’s Energy Security Based on Fuzzy Logic: Impact Assessment of Fukushima Accident

The Fukushima accident of March 2011 had great political, economic, and social impacts on Japan and marked a very important turning point in Japan’s energy policy. As the accident has also greatly exposed the vulnerability of Japan’s energy security, it is crucial to clarify the path that Japan should take to maintain and secure its energy security in case of any possible future outbreak that may threaten its energy security. For this purpose, we conducted a comprehensive and structural analysis of Japan’s energy security based on APERC’s 4As framework and by using fuzzy logic and the Fuzzy-DEMATEL method to quantitatively understand the performance of Japan’s energy security and how the Fukushima accident had impacted the performance. Our results demonstrate that Japan’s energy security has clearly degraded after experiencing Fukushima accident. In addition, the results of the structural analysis by the Fuzzy-DEMATEL method show that the most salient dimension in the 4As framework for improving Japan’s energy security is the “Availability” dimension, and for this purpose nuclear energy and renewables play very important roles in securing the future energy security in Japan; this is consistent with the current energy policy measures announced in the Strategic Energy Plan of 2014.