3,309 research outputs found

    A Spark Of Emotion: The Impact of Electrical Facial Muscle Activation on Emotional State and Affective Processing

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    Facial feedback, which involves the brain receiving information about the activation of facial muscles, has the potential to influence our emotional states and judgments. The extent to which this applies is still a matter of debate, particularly considering a failed replication of a seminal study. One factor contributing to the lack of replication in facial feedback effects may be the imprecise manipulation of facial muscle activity in terms of both degree and timing. To overcome these limitations, this thesis proposes a non-invasive method for inducing precise facial muscle contractions, called facial neuromuscular electrical stimulation (fNMES). I begin by presenting a systematic literature review that lays the groundwork for standardising the use of fNMES in psychological research, by evaluating its application in existing studies. This review highlights two issues, the lack of use of fNMES in psychology research and the lack of parameter reporting. I provide practical recommendations for researchers interested in implementing fNMES. Subsequently, I conducted an online experiment to investigate participants' willingness to participate in fNMES research. This experiment revealed that concerns over potential burns and involuntary muscle movements are significant deterrents to participation. Understanding these anxieties is critical for participant management and expectation setting. Subsequently, two laboratory studies are presented that investigated the facial FFH using fNMES. The first study showed that feelings of happiness and sadness, and changes in peripheral physiology, can be induced by stimulating corresponding facial muscles with 5–seconds of fNMES. The second experiment showed that fNMES-induced smiling alters the perception of ambiguous facial emotions, creating a bias towards happiness, and alters neural correlates of face processing, as measured with event-related potentials (ERPs). In summary, the thesis presents promising results for testing the facial feedback hypothesis with fNMES and provides practical guidelines and recommendations for researchers interested in using fNMES for psychological research

    A Political Theory of Engineered Systems and A Study of Engineering and Justice Workshops

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    Since there are good reasons to think that some engineered systems are socially undesirable—for example, internal combustion engines that cause climate change, algorithms that are racist, and nuclear weapons that can destroy all life—there is a well-established literature that attempts to identify best practices for designing and regulating engineered systems in order to prevent harm and promote justice. Most of this literature, especially the design theory and engineering justice literature meant to help guide engineers, focuses on environmental, physical, social, and mental harms such as ecosystem and bodily poisoning, racial and gender discrimination, and urban alienation. However, the literature that focuses on how engineered systems can produce political harms—harms to how we shape the way we live in community together—is not well established. The first part of this thesis contributes to identifying how particular types of engineered systems can harm a democratic politics. Building on democratic theory, philosophy of collective harms, and design theory, it argues that engineered systems that extend in space and time beyond a certain threshold subvert the knowledge and empowerment necessary for a democratic politics. For example, the systems of global shipping and the internet that fundamentally shape our lives are so large that people cannot attain the knowledge necessary to regulate them well nor the empowerment necessary to shape them. The second part of this thesis is an empirical study of a workshop designed to encourage engineering undergraduates to understand how engineered systems can subvert a democratic politics, with the ultimate goal of supporting students in incorporating that understanding into their work. 32 Dartmouth undergraduate engineering students participated in the study. Half were assigned to participate in a workshop group, half to a control group. The workshop group participants took a pretest; then participated in a 3-hour, semi-structured workshop with 4 participants per session (as well as a discussion leader and note-taker) over lunch or dinner; and then took a posttest. The control group participants took the same pre- and post- tests, but had no suggested activity in the intervening 3 hours. We find that the students who participated in workshops had a statistically significant test-score improvement as compared to the control group (Brunner-Munzel test, p \u3c .001). Using thematic analysis methods, we show the data is consistent with the hypothesis that workshops produced a score improvement because of certain structure (small size, long duration, discussion-based, over homemade food) and content (theoretically rich, challenging). Thematic analysis also reveals workshop failures and areas for improvement (too much content for the duration, not well enough organized). The thesis concludes with a discussion of limitations and suggestions for future theoretical, empirical, and pedagogical research

    Information actors beyond modernity and coloniality in times of climate change:A comparative design ethnography on the making of monitors for sustainable futures in Curaçao and Amsterdam, between 2019-2022

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    In his dissertation, Mr. Goilo developed a cutting-edge theoretical framework for an Anthropology of Information. This study compares information in the context of modernity in Amsterdam and coloniality in Curaçao through the making process of monitors and develops five ways to understand how information can act towards sustainable futures. The research also discusses how the two contexts, that is modernity and coloniality, have been in informational symbiosis for centuries which is producing negative informational side effects within the age of the Anthropocene. By exploring the modernity-coloniality symbiosis of information, the author explains how scholars, policymakers, and data-analysts can act through historical and structural roots of contemporary global inequities related to the production and distribution of information. Ultimately, the five theses propose conditions towards the collective production of knowledge towards a more sustainable planet

    The Divided Self: Internal Conflict in Literature, Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience

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    This thematic project examines the notion of self-division, particularly in terms of the conflict between cognition and metacognition, across the fields of philosophy, psychology, and, most recently, the cognitive and neurosciences. The project offers a historic overview of models of self-division, as well as analyses of the various problems presented in theoretical models to date. This work explores how self-division has been depicted in the literary works of Edgar Allan Poe, Don DeLillo, and Mary Shelley. It examines the ways in which artistic renderings alternately assimilate, resist, and/or critique dominant philosophical, psychological, and scientific discourses about the self and its divisions. This dissertation argues that the internal conflict portrayed by the writers of these literary characters is conscious: it is the conflict of the metacognitive “I” against akratic impulses, unwanted cognitions, and, ultimately, consciousness as a whole

    FARC musicians' musical identities and political identities through their music: analysis of their narratives, musical practices and songs in the Colombian peace post-agreement

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    The Colombia Revolutionary Army Forces (FARC) was the largest and most important guerrilla movement in the long and persistent Colombian internal armed conflict. In November 2016, after overcoming significant difficulties, the Colombian government and FARC signed and ratified a Final Peace Agreement; nowadays, FARC has become a lawful political party: Los Comunes. For over fifty years, the movement stimulated cultural and musical activities; FARC's musicians created, composed, arranged, recorded, performed and distributed thousands of songs, initially as part of a guerrilla and now as political party members. This research studies the musical identities of FARC musicians and their political identities as constructed through their music, based on social and cultural perspectives from the field of musical identities, the music and social movements theoretical framework and the transformation of conflict approach. This study observes how musical identities are negotiated as a force for transformative political and cultural changes at the personal and collective levels. The FARC musicians' narratives are a primary source for analysing the sociocultural transformation of identities and how they negotiate their musical and political identities. Based on a phenomenological perspective and qualitative methods, this research applied an ethnographic approach and narrative analysis based on the Listening Guide Method (LGM) to undertake a qualitative study of two narratives: life histories and songs-as-narratives. The life histories and the songs-as-narratives can be understood as sociocultural performances with multiple and continuous constructions of selfhood. The analysis of (5) FARC musicians' musical biographies (life histories), obtained through three in-depth semi-structured interviews each, and four (4) songs-as-narratives, based on music video material, allows us to observe the relationship between their music and the social movement and the role of their music in the conflict transformation process. The analysis reveals how the negotiation of musical and political identities interacts mutually and intertwined during conflict transformation experiences involving personal and collective changes. The life histories and song-as-narratives analysis provide evidence about the relationship between Identities in Music (IIM) and their Music in Identities (MII). The IIM and MII are inseparable dimensions of the self. The former is narrated through ex-combatant musicians' experiences as songwriters, singers, instrumentalists, producers, and music teachers committed to their political ideas. The latter emerges in ideological terms, but mainly through personal and collective experiences, emotionally significant, expressing their belonging to the peasantry, indigenous and popular musical cultures. At individual and collective levels, their musical knowledge, interactions and experiences construct new social roles, particularly in transitioning from guerrilla combatants to political party members. The results reveal that music is a sociocultural resource developed by musicians and the entire movement throughout the decades. The ex-combatant musicians' narratives reveal how they employ their musical experiences to explore the possibilities of the moral imagination, changing lyrics, musical production and distribution processes. Exploring new musical genres or affirming their belonging to some of them, they build different social (political) and cultural (musical) realities in their contexts. The transformation of the conflict is a profound identity negotiation process. During the transformation of the conflict, musical and political identities support each other based on ex-combatant musicians' emotional competence or emotional capital, their different uses of "I" and "we", their personal and collective relationships and connections with broader socioeconomic, political and cultural structures

    Climate Change and Critical Agrarian Studies

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    Climate change is perhaps the greatest threat to humanity today and plays out as a cruel engine of myriad forms of injustice, violence and destruction. The effects of climate change from human-made emissions of greenhouse gases are devastating and accelerating; yet are uncertain and uneven both in terms of geography and socio-economic impacts. Emerging from the dynamics of capitalism since the industrial revolution — as well as industrialisation under state-led socialism — the consequences of climate change are especially profound for the countryside and its inhabitants. The book interrogates the narratives and strategies that frame climate change and examines the institutionalised responses in agrarian settings, highlighting what exclusions and inclusions result. It explores how different people — in relation to class and other co-constituted axes of social difference such as gender, race, ethnicity, age and occupation — are affected by climate change, as well as the climate adaptation and mitigation responses being implemented in rural areas. The book in turn explores how climate change – and the responses to it - affect processes of social differentiation, trajectories of accumulation and in turn agrarian politics. Finally, the book examines what strategies are required to confront climate change, and the underlying political-economic dynamics that cause it, reflecting on what this means for agrarian struggles across the world. The 26 chapters in this volume explore how the relationship between capitalism and climate change plays out in the rural world and, in particular, the way agrarian struggles connect with the huge challenge of climate change. Through a huge variety of case studies alongside more conceptual chapters, the book makes the often-missing connection between climate change and critical agrarian studies. The book argues that making the connection between climate and agrarian justice is crucial
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