Reasons I Care: Exploring Relationships Among Social Identities, Cultural Values, and Black Adolescent Males’ Pro-Social Behaviors

Black male students face a multitude of challenges that often lead to poor academic and social outcomes at school (Ferguson, 2001; Noguera, 2003). There is extensive research on the predictors of their problems, but far less on the factors that can lead to positive outcomes. Research has demonstrated Black males who are positive about their racial-ethnic identity have better academic and psychological outcomes than peers who have less positive feelings (Chavous et al., 2003). Less is known about how racial identity and other social-cognitive variables influence Black males’ pro-social behaviors, an important component of school success. To address this gap, this sequential, explanatory mixed-method study asked two main questions. First, do racial-ethnic identity and gender identity predict Black males’ pro-social behaviors and, if so, is this done jointly or independently? Second, do moral reasoning and Afro-centric values predict Black males’ pro-social behaviors and, if so, is this done jointly or independently? One hundred thirty-one African American adolescent males completed quantitative assessments of these variables. Follow up focus groups were used to contextualize quantitative findings. Using regression analysis, this study found racial public regard, gender public regard, and gender private regard positively predicted participants’ pro-social behaviors. In addition, racial public regard moderated the positive relationship between racial centrality and pro-social behaviors as well as the positive relationship between racial private regard and pro-social behaviors. The two focus groups (one with the highest pro-social scores and another with the lowest) revealed three important themes. First, all participants valued respect more than acts of kindness. Second, all participants reported low levels of racial public regard, and this encouraged them to act in pro-social ways, contradicting quantitative findings. Participants in the low pro-social group described the social world in more racialized terms than those in the high pro-social group. Third, all participants asserted that race mediates justice. Overall, these quantitative and qualitative results demonstrate how important racial public regard is in understanding Black adolescent males’ pro-social behaviors. Findings suggest critical conversations concerning race and public regard should be included in social-emotional learning initiatives for these student

Community Influences on Individual Philanthropy: The Impact of Social Capital, Perception, and Demographics on Charitable Giving

Why do people donate money? The phenomenon of donation is rarely questioned, and yet remains an integral part of society. Studying philanthropy, described as “private action for the public good” by Brown and Ferris (2007:85), is informative because it shows how well individuals can identify and fight social problems. With 1 million charities in the United States in 2008, the nonprofit sector employing 7 percent of the workforce, and donations making up 2.2 percent of the GDP, philanthropy is a visible presence in US society (NPT 2008). Because of this, it is important to call into investigation the elements that influence financial donations, such as social, human and financial capital, as well as perceptions of donation behavior demographics. The concept of social capital, defined by Dillon (2010) as “individuals’ ties or connections to others” (255), is essential to understanding how donation occurs (Brown and Ferris 2007). Additionally, perceptions of others donation behaviors are also important in influencing an individual’s participation in donation as well as how much they donate. Human and financial capital are associated with ability to donate. Demographics like education and gender have also been shown to be strongly associated with philanthropic behavior (Andreoni Brown and Rischall 2003; Lee and Chang 2007). I hypothesize that in order for donation to occur, a person needs both inclination and capacity to give, inclination to give being formed by social capital and perceptions of other’s donation behaviors, and capacity to give coming from human and social capital. I also believe that social capital will have the strongest influence on donation behavior. Finally, I hypothesize that certain demographics will have higher associations with donation behavior than others

The Effect of Social Media on the Development of Peaceful Behavior Among High School Youth in Gorontalo Regency

This study aims to provide an understanding of the influence of social media on the development of peaceful behavior among high school youth in Gorontalo Regency. This research was conducted in ten high schools in Gorontalo Regency, consisting of seven public high schools and three private high schools. Using qualitative research and phenomenological approaches. Respondents in this study were high school students in class XI taken from ten public and private high schools as a representation of the population of high school students in class XI in Gorontalo District High School. The data was obtained by using a questionnaire method which was distributed to 100 respondents regarding the influence of social media on the development of peaceful behavior for high school youth in Gorontalo Regency. The data is then analyzed using the Content Analysis technique to determine the effect of social media on the behavior development of high school youth throughout Gorontalo Regency. The results of this study indicate that adolescents have various concepts of peaceful behavior and one of them is influenced by the media. The concept developed starts from the aspect of how to interact with each other, seen from the effects caused by their behavior, and in terms of the conditions they have. Peaceful behavior among adolescents includes self-directed behavior and behavior directed at others, both protective and promotive. Included in peaceful behavior are all behaviors that individuals themselves feel comfortable with, do not cause problems in society, and behaviors that foster friendship among adolescents

The 21st Century University President: Building Blocks for Effective Rural Leadership

This paper was written to examine the fundamental areas of influence that can help to shape effective leadership for the 21st century college or university president in a rural setting. In the last few years, centuries of long held traditions, behaviors and expectations inside and outside of the university community have quickly and radically changed. The new and evolving knowledge-based economy of America has created an exceedingly competitive marketplace for higher education that has forever changed the social and financial contract between higher education and the American public. This new world features extremely complex and competitive organizations that must exist and flourish with less public funding, greater public oversight and increased private costs to consumers. An in-depth examination of the literature concerning the most effective methods by which presidents might shape their leadership to cope with this new world reveals the significant impact and influence the core skills, experiences, behaviors and values have on effective leadership in a rural setting. This paper specifically focuses on how the skills, experiences, behaviors and values identified by the presidents themselves can offer a root-cause analysis of how to effectively lead rural colleges and universities in this new era. It also reveals that while every rural college and university president is striving for leadership and institutional excellence in a highly competitive marketplace, only those who identify and manage their leadership through their skills, experiences, behaviors and values will be able to accomplish that goal

Exploring the Effect of Social Connections on Transactional Behaviors in Venmo

Mobile payment platforms such as Venmo, Zelle, Amazon Pay and others are becoming increasingly popular. One of the key elements of these platforms is the social connectivity to family, friends, and acquaintances. This social component adds a behavioral dimension in terms of how people’s transactional behaviors may vary across different social groups, for example, how they request or pay back money to friends, family, or acquaintances. In our everyday lives, we behave differently depending on the set of people and context. It is this way of behavior and presenting ourselves that gives others around us the information needed to understand us and our goals, without actually interacting with us (Goffman, 1956). People have varying types of behaviors and self-presentations on online platforms as well, presenting a more personal version of themselves on friendship building platforms such as Facebook, and a more professional version of themselves on job-seeking platforms such as Linkedin (Van Dijck, 2013). Social media users may even create multiple accounts on the same platform in order to post content that does not follow their usual self-presentation norms to a select group of people (Kang & Wei, 2020). People’s behavior differs between different groups of people within the same social media platform as well (Ozenc and Farnham, 2011). The mobile payment platforms with some social structure may also see this varied behavior of users, wherein the users modify their transaction behaviors with different groups of people. In this work, we aim to explore how people’s transactional behaviors differ between different social groups on the mobile payment application Venmo. We aim to go beyond the public and private segmentation of online transactions on Venmo, and want to increase knowledge around the use of peer-to-peer mobile payment services by addressing the following research questions: (1) How do people’s transaction behaviors differ depending on their relationship with the payment recipient on mobile payment applications? (2) What factors influence the different behaviors? While most prior research has studied the adoption of mobile payment services and the public/private nature of mobile transactions, this study will provide insights into the behaviors of the people using Venmo in their day-to-day lives. Additionally, this work hopes to contribute to the limited knowledge on how people behave with different social groups on mobile payment applications and may yield design recommendations for features that allow people to vary their interactions between different groups of people on these platforms

Prediction Models for Willingness to Support Private and Government Space Ventures: A Regression Study

Public opinion is critical to the future of United States (US) space ventures as it can affect factors such as funding and legislation. The purpose of this study was to identify factors that influence the American public’s willingness to support both private and government space ventures. A set of 15 possible predictors were identified via a review of similar articles and surveys, including demographic information, social media and news consumption behaviors, offline activity, and opinions about space ventures. A total of 638 adults from the US participated in this study via Amazon ® Mechanical Turk ®. A multiple regression analysis of these data yields regression equations for each Willingness to Support Private and Government Space Ventures. The regression equations suggest Willingness to Support Private Space Ventures was influenced by gender, political affiliation, familiarity with space ventures, and perceived value of space ventures, while Willingness to Support Government Space Ventures was influenced by education and perceived value; the two statistical models explain 42% and 46% of the variance, respectively. These results and future study recommendations may be of interest to private and governmental organizations interested in growing support for their space ventures among the American public

The Impact of Individual Attitudinal and Organisational Variables on Workplace Environmentally Friendly Behaviours

Although research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) has grown steadily, little research has focused on CSR at the individual level. In addition, research on the role of environmental friendly organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) within CSR initiatives is scarce. In response to this gap and recent calls for further research on both individual and organizational variables of employees' environmentally friendly, or green, behaviors, this article sheds light on the influence of these variables on three types of green employee behaviors simultaneously: recycling, energy savings, and printing reduction. An initial theoretical model identifies both individual (employees' general environmentally friendly attitudes and the importance of an organization's environmentally friendly reputation to the employee) and organizational (perceived environmental behavior of an organization and perceived incentives and support from an organization) variables that affect different types of green behaviors as a stepping stone for further research. The results reveal managerial implications and future research directions on the design of effective social marketing interventions that motivate different types of OCBs in the workplace. In particular, the results suggest that creating separate interventions for each type of environmental behavior, as well as for each organization, sector, and type of organization (public vs. private), is necessary. In addition, this research illustrates patterns of attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors by exploring individual and organizational variables and behaviors across seven different organizations belonging to different sectors. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

International Study of Childhood Obesity, Lifestyle and the Environment (ISCOLE) : Contributions to Understanding the Global Obesity Epidemic

The purpose of this review is to summarize the scientific contributions of the International Study of Childhood Obesity, Lifestyle and the Environment (ISCOLE) in extending our understanding about obesity in children from around the world. ISCOLE was a multi-national study of 9 to 11 year-old children from sites in 12 countries from all inhabited continents. The primary purpose was to investigate relationships between lifestyle behaviors and obesity, and the influence of higher-order characteristics such as behavioral settings, and physical, social and policy environments. ISCOLE has made several advances in scientific methodology related to the assessment of physical activity, dietary behavior, sleep and the neighborhood and school environments. Furthermore, ISCOLE has provided important evidence on (1) epidemiological transitions in obesity and related behaviors, (2) correlates of obesity and lifestyle behaviors at the individual, neighborhood and school levels, and (3) 24-h movement behaviors in relation to novel analytical techniques. A key feature of ISCOLE was the development of a platform for international training, data entry, and data quality for multi-country studies. Finally, ISCOLE represents a transparent model for future public-private research partnerships across low, middle and high-income countries.Peer reviewe

On being loud and proud: Non-conformity and counter-conformity to group norms

Most experiments on conformity have been conducted in relation to judgments of physical reality; surprisingly few papers have experimentally examined the influence of group norms on social issues with a moral component. In response to this, we told students that they were either in a minority or in a majority relative to their university group on their attitudes toward recognition of gay couples in law (Experiment 1: N=205) and a government apology to Aborigines (Experiment 2: N=110). We found that participants who had a weak moral basis for their attitude, or who perceived high societal support for their attitude, were more willing to privately act in line with their attitude when they had group support than when they did not. In contrast, those who had a strong moral basis for their attitude, or who perceived low societal support for their attitude, showed non-conformity on private behaviors and counter-conformity on public behaviors. Incidences of non-conformity and counter-conformity are discussed with reference to the traditional theoretical emphasis on assimilation to group norms

An Integrated Psycho-Sociological Perspective on Public Employees’ Motivation and Performance

In the context of profound social, economic and financial changes, private and public organizations managers turn their attention towards the most valuable resource they have – the human resource (HR), the one that can ensure increased organizational performance. Using adequate HR policies and practices, organizations can build a positive work environment that sustains employees’ development, encourages communication, innovation, and pro-active attitudes and behaviors. However, managerial practices specific to the private sector do not seem to be the solution to the problems public institutions deal with. While specialists have mainly explored the link between human resources management (HRM) and performance in the private sector, due consideration ought to be paid to the particularities of this relationship in the public sector as well, and to the factors that influence public employees’ motivation and determine their level of performance. The purpose of our paper is to show that HRM in public institutions should be approached in a manner that focuses more on the work motivation theory, specifically on the psycho-sociological profile of the public employee, and argue that higher performance can be achieved by establishing a social exchange relationship between managers and the members of their teams. A supportive work environment positively impacts upon public employees’ performance, self-efficacy and job satisfaction, even though they are mainly driven in performing their tasks by intrinsic motivators and devotion to public values and interest