Degree Variance and Emotional Strategies Catalyze Cooperation in Dynamic Signed Networks

We study the problem of the emergence of cooperation in dynamic signed networks where agent strategies coevolve with relational signs and network topology. Running simulations based on an agent-based model, we compare results obtained in a regular lattice initialization with those obtained on a comparable random network initialization. We show that the increased degree heterogeneity at the outset enlarges the parametric conditions in which cooperation survives in the long run. Furthermore, we show how the presence of sign-dependent emotional strategies catalyze the evolution of cooperation with both network topology initializations.Comment: 16 Pages, Proceeding of the European Conference on Modelling and Simumatio

EUSN 2021 Book of Abstracts, Fifth European Conference on Social Networks

Book of abstract of the fifth European conference on Social Networks EUSN 202

Altruistic Punishment Theory and Inter-Group Violence

This dissertation explores the role of altruistic punishment, the act of punishing outsiders perceived to harm members of one\u27s group at a personal cost, in explaining individual motivations to participate in inter-group violence. It first develops a social theory of this type punishment. This theory argues that an egalitarian social logic may be key to understanding motivations of parochial altruism, and that one\u27s social environment may influence thresholds of anger needed to induce punishment behavior. Empirically, it conducts two survey-experimental studies. The first experiment utilizes subject partisan identity in the context of American politics and hypothetical acts of violence to study altruistic punishment behaviors among two different populations in the US. The second experiment utilizes a comparative sample of American, German, and Kurdish participants to assess whether priming for anger tied to acts of political violence by outsiders against their respective in-group increases support for a hypothetical in-group punisher of these outsiders. The results of these studies offer two key findings: (1) anger induced costly punishment of outgroup perpetrators may be conditional on egalitarian attitudes; (2) this relationship is contextual and varies across population. The findings cautiously suggest two conclusions. First, there may be evolutionary and neurological mechanisms that promote participation in inter-group conflict and that superficial characteristics such as ethnicity, religion, and ideology may work in tandem with biological factors. Second, it suggests that social and political environments may be useful for modulating, or exacerbating, the role of anger in the decision to participate in inter-group conflict activities

Cultural Integration in Organizational Partnership with Statutory and Quasi Implications

The current academic literature is inadequate on the possibility of applying a typological model of effective cultural integration within the context of public-private partnerships, particularly when governments collaborate with multinational corporations. Using Schein\u27s organizational cultural framework as the foundation, the purpose of this case study of a partnership between a West African government and a multinational petroleum corporation is to understand clearly how synergistic cultural integration coupled with statutory requirements could catalyze public-private partnership success. Data for this study came from interviews with American or Nigerian individuals who were familiar with the partnership in the West African country, a review of documents related to the partnership, and observational notes compiled during interviews. The Organizational Cultural Assessment Instrument inspired the interview questions. Data was coded and analyzed using a modification of Strauss and Corbin\u27s 3-tiered analytic procedure. Key findings revealed the need for culturally based positive change dynamics to maximize evolving partnership growth and success. There were also indicators that an effective cultural integration synergistic typology would propel evolving competitive service delivery, efficient policy implementation, workforce motivation, economic and financial profitability, efficient communication channels and technological innovativeness, managerial and administrative expertise. The knowledge of organizational cultural integration dynamics is useful to academicians, public administrators, policy makers, and executives in structuring public and private partnerships in a culturally sensitive way for long-term organizational growth and success

Ideas in communities: a micro-perspective on entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Entrepreneurial ecosystems are seen as a stimulant of regional economic growth. Theory-building efforts on entrepreneurial ecosystems has sufficiently established an understanding of the macro-environment; the environmental infrastructure and conditions that support productive entrepreneurship. However, there has been a disproportionate lack of focus on the micro- and group-level dynamics that impact individual entrepreneurs and ventures within ecosystem. This has limited the availability of evidence to explain how and when ecosystems emerge and function at a high level. Therefore, this dissertation examines three distinct microfoundations that can be found in entrepreneurial ecosystem literature – community, learning, and venture development – to move toward a cohesive framework for understanding ecosystem development. Through semistuctured interviews with entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial actors in coworking spaces in the Midwestern and Southeastern United States, this study develops contributions to economic growth via entrepreneurial ecosystems, and of entrepreneurial communities, entrepreneurial learning, and venture developmen

Those Who Return: An Evaluation of State Facilitated Extremist Reintegration Programs in Indonesia and Malaysia

HonorsUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/162629/1/jasarah.pd

Complexity Science in Human Change

This reprint encompasses fourteen contributions that offer avenues towards a better understanding of complex systems in human behavior. The phenomena studied here are generally pattern formation processes that originate in social interaction and psychotherapy. Several accounts are also given of the coordination in body movements and in physiological, neuronal and linguistic processes. A common denominator of such pattern formation is that complexity and entropy of the respective systems become reduced spontaneously, which is the hallmark of self-organization. The various methodological approaches of how to model such processes are presented in some detail. Results from the various methods are systematically compared and discussed. Among these approaches are algorithms for the quantification of synchrony by cross-correlational statistics, surrogate control procedures, recurrence mapping and network models.This volume offers an informative and sophisticated resource for scholars of human change, and as well for students at advanced levels, from graduate to post-doctoral. The reprint is multidisciplinary in nature, binding together the fields of medicine, psychology, physics, and neuroscience

A NEW CIVICS IN THE DIGITAL AGE: CONNECTING ONLINE AND OFFLINE ACTIVISM IN LITHUANIA

Political participation is critical for the legitimacy of democracy, yet the majority of Lithuanians refrain from participating 20 years after the restoration of independence. Low rates of participation have been reinforced by adverse mass beliefs, including deep-rooted mistrust and political powerlessness. Given that the development of civic culture in a democratic Lithuania is occurring simultaneously with the spread of new information and communication technologies, Lithuania serves as an interesting case study of the potential of online spaces for facilitating participation. Empirical knowledge regarding the relationships between online engagement, civic attitudes, and offline activism would strengthen campaigns to promote democracy through digital literacy. This study explored Lithuanian young adults\u27 grassroots participation, within the political and cultural contexts of society. It used a cross-sectional design to survey 580 18- to 30-year-olds from five Lithuanian universities in 2012, through a web-based questionnaire. The purpose of the study was to examine the types of Internet engagement and the civic values that contribute to offline participation in organizations, local community activities, and political discourse among self-selected Lithuanian students. Results indicated three primary factors of Internet engagement: social networking, information exchange, and political expression. Family socio-economic status measures were positively associated with more frequent Internet engagement, as were positive perceptions of government responsiveness and higher confidence in public institutions. Internet engagement dimensions were positively associated with only some civic attitudes. These findings have important implications for reaching out to disengaged and disaffected youth. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses, using background characteristics, structural features, Internet engagement dimensions, and civic attitudes as predictors, explained 20% of the variance in the sample\u27s organizational participation, 41% of the variance in community action, and 45% of the variance in political discourse. Internet engagement variables displayed powerful relationships with rates of offline activism above and beyond background characteristics and structural features. Results point to the many layers of social and psychological experiences that affect civic development in a cultural context, with individuals as active agents in creating their own environments. The study supports an alternative conception of citizenship based on networking, information exchange, and individual expression online, which may contribute to political efficacy and catalyze broader civic reform. The findings may inform programs that aim to promote civil and political rights in young democracies such as Lithuania

A Continuum of Care: School Librarian Interventions for New Teacher Resilience

School librarians occupy a unique position to offer supports for first year teachers to build resilience, reduce burnout, and ensure retention. The researcher used the psychology theory of resilience to develop the Continuum of Care model which initiates in mentoring and moves toward a collaborative partnership. Fifteen school librarians in one urban district recruited 26 new teachers in their schools to form the treatment group. All new teachers in the district were surveyed to establish their initial level of resilience and collect demographics. A comparison group of 26 new teachers were matched by scores on a resilience scale at the start of the school year, by school level and by Title I status of the school. The treatment group received interventions using the Continuum of Care model over the course of the following four months. Post-treatment, the comparison group and treatment group were surveyed for level of resilience, burnout, and retention. ANOVA was used to find change in resilience over time for the treatment group. ANCOVA was used to compare resilience and burnout scores for the comparison and treatment groups. Binary logistic regression was used to compare retention of the comparison and treatment groups. Interviews of three school librarian-new teacher pairs brought forth the lived experiences of participants. Findings show that new teachers in the treatment group received significantly higher levels of mentoring and collaboration than new teachers in the comparison group. There was a significant effect for the interaction between level of resilience for the treatment group and age. School librarians and new teachers valued their relationship and voiced the effect on resilience, burnout, and retention. Reaching out to new teachers to bridge the gap between the library and classroom may be considered as best practice for school librarians. This exploratory research study laid the groundwork for further study of the role of the school librarian to support new teacher resilience in the authentic school setting

Human-Machine Teamwork: An Exploration of Multi-Agent Systems, Team Cognition, and Collective Intelligence

One of the major ways through which humans overcome complex challenges is teamwork. When humans share knowledge and information, and cooperate and coordinate towards shared goals, they overcome their individual limitations and achieve better solutions to difficult problems. The rise of artificial intelligence provides a unique opportunity to study teamwork between humans and machines, and potentially discover insights about cognition and collaboration that can set the foundation for a world where humans work with, as opposed to against, artificial intelligence to solve problems that neither human or artificial intelligence can solve on its own. To better understand human-machine teamwork, it’s important to understand human-human teamwork (humans working together) and multi-agent systems (how artificial intelligence interacts as an agent that’s part of a group) to identify the characteristics that make humans and machines good teammates. This perspective lets us approach human-machine teamwork from the perspective of the human as well as the perspective of the machine. Thus, to reach a more accurate understanding of how humans and machines can work together, we examine human-machine teamwork through a series of studies. In this dissertation, we conducted 4 studies and developed 2 theoretical models: First, we focused on human-machine cooperation. We paired human participants with reinforcement learning agents to play two game theory scenarios where individual interests and collective interests are in conflict to easily detect cooperation. We show that different reinforcement models exhibit different levels of cooperation, and that humans are more likely to cooperate if they believe they are playing with another human as opposed to a machine. Second, we focused on human-machine coordination. We once again paired humans with machines to create a human-machine team to make them play a game theory scenario that emphasizes convergence towards a mutually beneficial outcome. We also analyzed survey responses from the participants to highlight how many of the principles of human-human teamwork can still occur in human-machine teams even though communication is not possible. Third, we reviewed the collective intelligence literature and the prediction markets literature to develop a model for a prediction market that enables humans and machines to work together to improve predictions. The model supports artificial intelligence operating as a peer in the prediction market as well as a complementary aggregator. Fourth, we reviewed the team cognition and collective intelligence literature to develop a model for teamwork that integrates team cognition, collective intelligence, and artificial intelligence. The model provides a new foundation to think about teamwork beyond the forecasting domain. Next, we used a simulation of emergency response management to test the different teamwork aspects of a variety of human-machine teams compared to human-human and machine-machine teams. Lastly, we ran another study that used a prediction market to examine the impact that having AI operate as a participant rather than an aggregator has on the predictive capacity of the prediction market. Our research will help identify which principles of human teamwork are applicable to human-machine teamwork, the role artificial intelligence can play in enhancing collective intelligence, and the effectiveness of human-machine teamwork compared to single artificial intelligence. In the process, we expect to produce a substantial amount of empirical results that can lay the groundwork for future research of human-machine teamwork