220,131 research outputs found
The adaptive problem of absent third-party punishment
Language is a uniquely human behaviour, which has presented unique adaptive problems. Prominent among these is the transmission of information that may affect an individual’s reputation. The possibility of punishment of those with a low reputation by absent third parties has created a selective pressure on human beings that is not shared by any other species. This has led to the evolution of unique cognitive structures that are capable of handling such a novel adaptive challenge. One of these, we argue, is the propositional theory of mind, which enables individuals to model, and potentially manipulate, their own reputation in the minds of other group members, by representing the beliefs that others have about the first party’s intentions and actions. Support for our theoretical model is provided by an observational study on tattling in two preschools, and an experimental study of giving under threat of gossip in a dictator game
How to Ask for Technical Help? Evidence-based Guidelines for Writing Questions on Stack Overflow
Context: The success of Stack Overflow and other community-based
question-and-answer (Q&A) sites depends mainly on the will of their members to
answer others' questions. In fact, when formulating requests on Q&A sites, we
are not simply seeking for information. Instead, we are also asking for other
people's help and feedback. Understanding the dynamics of the participation in
Q&A communities is essential to improve the value of crowdsourced knowledge.
Objective: In this paper, we investigate how information seekers can increase
the chance of eliciting a successful answer to their questions on Stack
Overflow by focusing on the following actionable factors: affect, presentation
quality, and time.
Method: We develop a conceptual framework of factors potentially influencing
the success of questions in Stack Overflow. We quantitatively analyze a set of
over 87K questions from the official Stack Overflow dump to assess the impact
of actionable factors on the success of technical requests. The information
seeker reputation is included as a control factor. Furthermore, to understand
the role played by affective states in the success of questions, we
qualitatively analyze questions containing positive and negative emotions.
Finally, a survey is conducted to understand how Stack Overflow users perceive
the guideline suggestions for writing questions.
Results: We found that regardless of user reputation, successful questions
are short, contain code snippets, and do not abuse with uppercase characters.
As regards affect, successful questions adopt a neutral emotional style.
Conclusion: We provide evidence-based guidelines for writing effective
questions on Stack Overflow that software engineers can follow to increase the
chance of getting technical help. As for the role of affect, we empirically
confirmed community guidelines that suggest avoiding rudeness in question
writing.Comment: Preprint, to appear in Information and Software Technolog
Analysis of a Reputation System for Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks with Liars
The application of decentralized reputation systems is a promising approach
to ensure cooperation and fairness, as well as to address random failures and
malicious attacks in Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks. However, they are potentially
vulnerable to liars. With our work, we provide a first step to analyzing
robustness of a reputation system based on a deviation test. Using a mean-field
approach to our stochastic process model, we show that liars have no impact
unless their number exceeds a certain threshold (phase transition). We give
precise formulae for the critical values and thus provide guidelines for an
optimal choice of parameters.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figure
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Smile asymmetries and reputation as reliable indicators of likelihood to cooperate: An evolutionary analysis
Cooperating with individuals whose altruism is not motivated by genuine prosocial emotions could have been costly in ancestral division of labour partnerships. How do humans ‘know’ whether or not an individual has the prosocial emotions committing future cooperation? Frank (1988) has hypothesized two pathways for altruist-detection: (a) facial expressions of emotions signalling character; and (b) gossip regarding the target individual’s reputation. Detecting non-verbal cues signalling commitment to cooperate may be one way to avoid the costs of exploitation. Spontaneous smiles while cooperating may be reliable index cues because of the physiological constraints controlling the neural pathways mediating involuntary emotional expressions. Specifically, it is hypothesized that individuals whose help is mediated by a genuine sympathy will express involuntary smiles (which are observably different from posed smiles). To investigate this idea, 38 participants played dictator games (i.e. a unilateral resource allocation task) against cartoon faces with a benevolent emotional expression (i.e. concern furrows and smile). The faces were presented with information regarding reputation (e.g. descriptions of an altruistic character vs. a non-altruistic character). Half of the sample played against icons with symmetrical smiles (representing a spontaneous smile) while the other half played against asymmetrically smiling icons (representing a posed smile). Icons described as having altruistic motives received more resources than icons described as self-interested helpers. Faces with symmetrical smiles received more resources than faces with asymmetrical smiles. These results suggest that reputation and smile asymmetry influence the likelihood of cooperation and thus may be reliable cues to altruism. These cues may allow for altruists to garner more resources in division of labour situations
What\u27s the Harm of Trademark Infringement?
For decades, the concept of actionable trademark infringement has been expanding. Source confusion, reverse confusion, approval/affiliation confusion, initial interest confusion, post-sale confusion, endorsement confusion, and so on, all have won cases for plaintiffs. Whether or not the confusion cost the plaintiff any sales, or was in any way material to consumers, our concept of trademark infringement now encompasses it. These expansions occurred for reasons that seemed sufficient to courts at the time, when advocates offered theories about how all these kinds of confusion could cause harm to the trademark owner. Primarily, courts feared that non-competing uses would preclude trademark owners from expanding into natural markets or tarnish its reputation among its existing consumers
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