Multiplex Communities and the Emergence of International Conflict

Advances in community detection reveal new insights into multiplex and multilayer networks. Less work, however, investigates the relationship between these communities and outcomes in social systems. We leverage these advances to shed light on the relationship between the cooperative mesostructure of the international system and the onset of interstate conflict. We detect communities based upon weaker signals of affinity expressed in United Nations votes and speeches, as well as stronger signals observed across multiple layers of bilateral cooperation. Communities of diplomatic affinity display an expected negative relationship with conflict onset. Ties in communities based upon observed cooperation, however, display no effect under a standard model specification and a positive relationship with conflict under an alternative specification. These results align with some extant hypotheses but also point to a paucity in our understanding of the relationship between community structure and behavioral outcomes in networks.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1802.0039

Degrees of freedom in social bonds of crested macaque females

Social bonds between group members can affect individual fitness and well-being. While the impact of bond strength is well studied, the consequences of bond predictability and equitability are often overlooked. Similarly, whether bonds reflect short-term contingencies and/or long-term social strategies remains understudied. We investigated these questions in female crested macaques (Macaca nigra), which display a tolerant social style within a nepotistic hierarchical social structure. We analysed the structure of dyadic social bonds by testing whether similarity within dyads - in kinship, dominance and age - predicted the strength, predictability and equitability of bonds. We then tested the value of social bonds by analysing the effect of their characteristics on three fitness-related behaviours: coalitionary support, feeding-in-proximity and aggression. We found that the bond characteristics of females differed substantially from those of other species with comparable data: bonds were of average strength, of moderate endurance and relatively balanced. Stronger bonds were more equitable but less predictable than weaker bonds. Closely-ranked females, but not kin or age peers, had stronger, more predictable and more equitable bonds than others. Coalitionary support was not related to any of the bond characteristics, feeding-in-proximity was positively associated with strength and predictability and aggression was positively linked to strength and equitability. These results highlight the complex picture of the benefits of social bonds in this species. They reflect the degrees of freedom tolerant macaque females can express in their social relationships within their stable social structure, a pattern that may not be given enough consideration in stable nepotistic hierarchical societies. Comparative research is necessary to establish whether these patterns are more general than previously thought or a specific feature of tolerant macaques. Investigating various characteristics of bonds together is paramount in order to appreciate the dynamics of social relationships and to better understand the social components of fitness

How Supervisors Influence Performance: A Multilevel Study of Coaching and Group Management in Technology-Mediated Services

This multilevel study examines the role of supervisors in improving employee performance through the use of coaching and group management practices. It examines the individual and synergistic effects of these management practices. The research subjects are call center agents in highly standardized jobs, and the organizational context is one in which calls, or task assignments, are randomly distributed via automated technology, providing a quasi-experimental approach in a real-world context. Results show that the amount of coaching that an employee received each month predicted objective performance improvements over time. Moreover, workers exhibited higher performance where their supervisor emphasized group assignments and group incentives and where technology was more automated. Finally, the positive relationship between coaching and performance was stronger where supervisors made greater use of group incentives, where technology was less automated, and where technological changes were less frequent. Implications and potential limitations of the present study are discussed

The function of postconflict interactions: new prospects from the study of a tolerant species of primate

Aggression can generate anxiety, create uncertainty about its aftermath and jeopardise social relationships. Postconflict interactions serve as conflict management strategies to mitigate these consequences. Whereas postconflict interactions are well characterized in many animals, their functions are still insufficiently investigated. Four functional hypotheses have been proposed: stress reduction, relationship repair, self-protection and benign intent. We aimed to test these hypotheses in females of a tolerant macaque species, the crested macaque, Macaca nigra, under natural conditions, for three postconflict interactions: reconciliation, affiliation and aggression with third parties. Our results provide meaningful contrasts compared with findings in other species. We found no evidence that aggression had consequences for individuals' behavioural indicators of anxiety, although it increased the likelihood of secondary aggression with third parties. There was little evidence for the stress reduction hypothesis as the occurrence of any of the three postconflict interactions investigated had little effect on the measured behavioural indicators of anxiety. Conflict and dyad characteristics also had limited influence on anxiety. The relationship repair function was only partly validated: dyads with stronger bonds or that exchanged more support did not reconcile more often, but dyads with attributes related to the symmetry, stability and predictability (i.e. security) within relationships did. Patterns of initiation and directionality of postconflict interactions in this study population suggest that reconciliation may constitute the signalling of appeasement and benign intent. Furthermore, we found that aggression towards third parties may serve as a source of self-protection and reassertion of the females' social status. The distinctive pattern of postconflict management strategies revealed in wild female crested macaques appears to be related to their typically tolerant social style. These results demonstrate the usefulness of concomitantly studying aggression, postconflict interactions and their functions, to understand conflict management strategies comprehensively, while taking into account the level of social tolerance characterizing the studied society

Democratic Reflections : To what extent do representatives mirror their constituents, and how does it affect the challenges modern, representative democracy are facing?

This thesis addresses the important challenges that contemporary, representative democracies are facing, and shows how (better) representation can contribute to tackling them. In doing so, I limit the scope to one specific aspect of the research on representation, namely congruence. As such, the main question that I address in my thesis is: In what way does congruence matter for contemporary, representative democracies? To answer this question, I focus on four important challenges to contemporary democracy, namely democratic legitimacy, growing demand for direct democracy, political polarisation and emerging cleavages, and growing economic and political inequalities. In turn, I show how each of these challenges can be linked to the congruence between citizens and elites and how better representation can remedy some of the worrying developments in contemporary democracies. Specifically, this thesis contributes with four articles, which stand as independent contributions to the literature, and, in the context of this dissertation, contributes to answering the overarching research question. In the first article, An Empirical Evaluation of Explanations for Political System Support, I focus on democratic legitimacy and study which variables best predict citizens’ satisfaction with democracy. I find that, among other things, congruence is an important predictor of regime support and argue that this covariate is understudied and under-theorised in the literature on satisfaction. The second article, Procedural Congruence and the Delegate-Trustee Dilemma focuses on how elites evaluate a direct democratic procedure and whether they are congruent with citizens in their evaluations of such procedures. Using a novel survey experimental design, the article shows that elites have changing perceptions of the legitimacy of a referendum depending on whether the turnout and size of the majority are low or high. Representatives also have an outcome favourability bias. Additionally, we demonstrate that representatives are less likely to think that a referendum is legitimate compared to citizens. To understand this, we turn to the tension between the role of representatives as either trustees or delegates. The incongruence can be explained by the fact that trustees think referendums are less legitimate compared to delegates. The third article, Conditional Satisfaction: Political Support, Congruence, and the (Un)certainty of Political Marginalization, uses insights from the first paper and study the conditional relationship between citizens’ satisfaction with democracy, ideological congruence, and government type. Article III pays particular attention to the conditioning effects of coalition governments’ ideological make-up and individual-level education. The findings show that higher educated citizens are more sensitive to being ideologically distant from single-party governments compared to coalition governments. In addition, the findings also show that higher-educated citizens are more satisfied, when incongruent, as the ideological diversity of multi-party governments increases. The fourth article, Beliefs About the Income Generating Process and Social Preferences – a Comparison Between Elected Representatives and the Citizens explore how beliefs about the income generating process shape preferences for redistribution. The findings show that preferences for redistribution negatively associate with believing in meritocratic factors, both for citizens and politicians. Contrary to previous findings, the article provides evidence that the politicians’ redistribution preferences are more aligned with the less affluent compared to the more affluent and that elites want to redistribute more than citizens. Finally, the article shows that people who vote for parties on the left of the political spectrum are more congruent on income redistribution with their representatives than people on the right. The thesis contributes to the existing literature on congruence with theoretical, conceptual, empirical, and methodological advances. Theoretically, I develop an argument about how malfunctioning representation may be a source of many of the challenges discussed above. Conceptually, I develop the concept of congruence based on existing research and I contribute with two new concepts, procedural and metabelief congruence. Empirically, I show that congruence is related to satisfaction, that citizens and elites are procedurally incongruent, and that meta-beliefs shape redistribution preferences. Methodologically, I employ diverse, state-of-the-art methodological approaches such as machine learning and survey experiments administered to elites and citizens. Taken together, the dissertation highlights the importance of congruence for the challenges facing contemporary, representative democracies and argue that better functioning representation can contribute to tackling these challenges.Doktorgradsavhandlin

Exploratory Description and Longitudinal Modeling of Predictors of Sexual Function and Satisfaction Post-Myocardial Infarction

Myocardial infarction (MI) negatively impacts many aspects of a patient’s quality of life, one of which is sexual function. Though sexual function is a crucial component of quality of life for many individuals, it is critically understudied in the post-MI population. The lack of evidence has left health care providers and patients unsure on how sexual function components change when facing an acute or chronic illness, and what options are available to assist with maintaining optimal sexual function. Identification of modifiable predictors of both increased and decreased function is paramount before effective interventions can be developed. Therefore, the purpose of this dissertation was to illuminate the changes in sexual function over time and apply exploratory modeling to examine potential predictors of function in patients post-MI. The specific aims of this dissertation were three-fold including: 1. Describe sexual function and satisfaction in a population of adults within two weeks and at three months post-MI, and examine changes from two weeks post-MI to three months post-MI. 2. Determine the impact of depression, fear, anxiety, and use of coping strategies on predicting sexual function, satisfaction, and activity at three months post-MI. 3. Describe the relationships between the biopsychosocial domains of sexual function and satisfaction at two weeks post-MI. A total of 99 patients in a Midwestern hospital were approached out of 395 screened. Of these, 63 provided informed consent (consent/decline rate 63.6%). Participants were mailed surveys at two weeks and three months following discharge from the hospital for an MI. Sexual function data was captured with a multidimensional instrument, the Female/Male Sexual Function Index. Additionally, anxiety, depression, coping strategies, and sexual fear data were gathered using validated survey instruments. Cross-sectional and longitudinal description were performed, and linear and logistic regressions were utilized to examine associations with function and activity at three months. Eighteen participants returned all survey data (response rate 33%). There were three major findings from this dissertation. The first finding was that physical components of function (i.e. erection, orgasm), were poorly correlated with psychosocial components (i.e. sexual satisfaction) at both two weeks and three months post discharge for MI. The second finding was that sexual function scores improved among male participants within the first few months of discharge (18.8%), particularly among those who were sexually active at three months. The third finding was that sexual function was negatively associated with sexual fear, and positively associated with utilization of problem-solving and support-seeking coping strategies at three months. Furthermore, problem-solving and support-seeking strategies revealed a statistically significant association with function at three months, though clinically insignificant. Problem-solving and support-seeking strategies were also identified as positive predictors of sexual function in the models. Altogether, these results, while modest, help to contribute to our understanding of sexual function post-MI, particularly in a short-term capacity post discharge. The studies herein provide some intriguing avenues for predictive research to elucidate the relationship between utilization of coping strategies with sexual function. This study also provided information on functional components at a short time post-MI, which providers and patients can utilize to understand what to expect after discharge. However, additional research is also needed with a more generalizable population to further explore the potential relationships observed in this dissertation. Additional descriptive work should also include more females and a broader distribution of racial minorities.PHDNursingUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163096/1/smiasa_1.pd