Power and temporal commitment preference: An investigation in Portugal, Turkey, and the United States

The current research explores the impact of power on temporal commitment preference (an individual?s preference for shorter or longer time durations for agreements in decision making situations) across three countries: Portugal, Turkey, and the United States. A pilot study (N = 356) established cultural differences in uncertainty avoidance, which was expected to impact choices and behaviors involving power and temporality. The main study (N = 433) investigated the relationship between power and temporal commitment preference. Across all countries, high power individuals preferred shorter temporal commitments than low power individuals. In addition, the U.S. participants preferred longer temporal commitments than either the Portuguese or Turkish participants. We argue that differences in uncertainty avoidance help explain some of the differences in individuals? temporal commitment preferences across diverse cultural settings. Implications for practice and future directions are also discussed.Power, Time, National culture, Uncertainty avoidance

Gendered Races: Implications for Interracial Marriage, Leadership Selection, and Athletic Participation

Six studies explored the overlap between racial and gender stereotypes and the consequences of this overlap for interracial dating, leadership selection, and athletic participation. Two initial studies, utilizing explicit and implicit measures, captured the stereotype content of different racial groups: the Asian stereotype was seen as more feminine whereas the Black stereotype more masculine compared to the White stereotype. Study 3 found that preferences for masculinity versus femininity mediated White participants' attraction to Blacks relative to Asians. Analysis of the 2000 United States Census replicated this pattern with interracial marriages. In Study 5, Blacks were more likely and Asians less likely to be selected for a masculine leadership position compared to Whites. Study 6 analyzed the NCAA Student-Athlete Ethnicity Report and found Blacks were more heavily represented in masculine versus feminine sports relative to Asians. These studies demonstrate that the association between racial and gender stereotypes has important real-world consequences

Whatever it takes: rivalry and unethical behavior

This research investigates the link between rivalry and unethical behavior. We propose that people will engage in greater unethical behavior when competing against their rivals than when competing against non-rival competitors. Across a series of experiments and an archival study, we find that rivalry is associated with increased use of deception, unsportsmanlike behavior, willingness to employ unethical negotiation tactics, and misreporting of performance. We also explore the psychological underpinnings of rivalry, which help to illuminate how it differs from general competition, and why it increases unethical behavior. Rivalry as compared to non-rival competition was associated with increased status concerns, contingency of self-worth, and performance goals; mediation analyses revealed that performance goals played the biggest role in explaining why rivalry promoted greater unethicality. Lastly, we find that merely thinking about a rival can be enough to promote greater unethical behavior, even in domains unrelated to the rivalry. These findings highlight the importance of rivalry as a widespread, powerful, yet largely unstudied phenomenon with significant organizational implications. Further, the results help to inform when and why unethical behavior occurs within organizations, and demonstrate that the effects of competition are dependent upon relationships and prior interactions

Selective Akt Inhibitors Synergize with Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors and Effectively Override Stroma-Associated Cytoprotection of Mutant FLT3-Positive AML Cells

Objectives: Tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI)-treated acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients commonly show rapid and significant peripheral blood blast cell reduction, however a marginal decrease in bone marrow blasts. This suggests a protective environment and highlights the demand for a better understanding of stromal:leukemia cell communication. As a strategy to improve clinical efficacy, we searched for novel agents capable of potentiating the stroma-diminished effects of TKI treatment of mutant FLT3-expressing cells. Methods: We designed a combinatorial high throughput drug screen using well-characterized kinase inhibitor-focused libraries to identify novel kinase inhibitors capable of overriding stromal-mediated resistance to TKIs, such as PKC412 and AC220. Standard liquid culture proliferation assays, cell cycle and apoptosis analysis, and immunoblotting were carried out with cell lines or primary AML to validate putative candidates from the screen and characterize the mechanism(s) underlying observed synergy. Results and Conclusions Our study led to the observation of synergy between selective Akt inhibitors and FLT3 inhibitors against mutant FLT3-positive AML in either the absence or presence of stroma. Our findings are consistent with evidence that Akt activation is characteristic of mutant FLT3-transformed cells, as well as observed residual Akt activity following FLT3 inhibitor treatment. In conclusion, our study highlights the potential importance of Akt as a signaling factor in leukemia survival, and supports the use of the co-culture chemical screen to identify agents able to potentiate TKI anti-leukemia activity in a cytoprotective microenvironment

Privacy in crowdsourcing:a systematic review

The advent of crowdsourcing has brought with it multiple privacy challenges. For example, essential monitoring activities, while necessary and unavoidable, also potentially compromise contributor privacy. We conducted an extensive literature review of the research related to the privacy aspects of crowdsourcing. Our investigation revealed interesting gender differences and also differences in terms of individual perceptions. We conclude by suggesting a number of future research directions.</p

The Democratic Biopolitics of PrEP

PrEP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis) is a relatively new drug-based HIV prevention technique and an important means to lower the HIV risk of gay men who are especially vulnerable to HIV. From the perspective of biopolitics, PrEP inscribes itself in a larger trend of medicalization and the rise of pharmapower. This article reconstructs and evaluates contemporary literature on biopolitical theory as it applies to PrEP, by bringing it in a dialogue with a mapping of the political debate on PrEP. As PrEP changes sexual norms and subjectification, for example condom use and its meaning for gay subjectivity, it is highly contested. The article shows that the debate on PrEP can be best described with the concepts ‘sexual-somatic ethics’ and ‘democratic biopolitics’, which I develop based on the biopolitical approach of Nikolas Rose and Paul Rabinow. In contrast, interpretations of PrEP which are following governmentality studies or Italian Theory amount to either farfetched or trivial positions on PrEP, when seen in light of the political debate. Furthermore, the article is a contribution to the scholarship on gay subjectivity, highlighting how homophobia and homonormativity haunts gay sex even in liberal environments, and how PrEP can serve as an entry point for the destigmatization of gay sexuality and transformation of gay subjectivity. ‘Biopolitical democratization’ entails making explicit how medical technology and health care relates to sexual subjectification and ethics, to strengthen the voice of (potential) PrEP users in health politics, and to renegotiate the profit and power of Big Pharma

Evaluating the Evidence for Enclothed Cognition:Z-Curve and Meta-Analyses

Enclothed cognition refers to the systematic influence that clothes can have on the wearer’s feelings, thoughts, and behaviors through their symbolic meaning. It has attracted considerable academic and nonacademic interest, with the 2012 article that coined the phrase cited more than 600 times and covered in more than 160 news outlets. However, a recent high-powered replication failed to replicate one of the original effects. To determine whether the larger body of research on enclothed cognition possesses evidential value and replicable effects, we performed z-curve and meta-analyses using 105 effects from 40 studies across 24 articles (N = 3,789). Underscoring the marked improvement of psychological research practices in the mid-2010s, our results raise concerns about the replicability of early enclothed cognition studies but affirm the evidential value for effects published after 2015. These later studies support the core principle of enclothed cognition—what we wear influences how we think, feel, and act.</p

Perspective-Taking and Self-Other Overlap: Fostering Social Bonds and Facilitating Social Coordination

The present article offers a conceptual model for how the cognitive processes associated with perspective-taking facilitate social coordination and foster social bonds. We suggest that the benefits of perspective-taking accrue through an increased self-other overlap in cognitive representations and discuss the implications of this perspective-taking induced self-other overlap for stereotyping and prejudice. Whereas perspective-taking decreases stereotyping of others (through application of the self to the other), it increases stereotypicality of one’s own behavior (through inclusion of the other in the self). To promote social bonds, perspective-takers utilize information, including stereotypes, to coordinate their behavior with others. The discussion focuses on the implications, both positive and negative, of this self-other overlap for social relationships and discusses how conceptualizing perspective-taking, as geared toward supporting specific social bonds, provides a framework for understanding why the effects of perspective-taking are typically target-specific and do not activate a general helping mind-set. Through its attempts to secure social bonds, perspective-taking can be an engine of social harmony, but can also reveal a dark side, one full of ironic consequences

Microtiming patterns and interactions with musical properties in Samba music

In this study, we focus on the interaction between microtiming patterns and several musical properties: intensity, meter and spectral characteristics. The data-set of 106 musical audio excerpts is processed by means of an auditory model and then divided into several spectral regions and metric levels. The resulting segments are described in terms of their musical properties, over which patterns of peak positions and their intensities are sought. A clustering algorithm is used to systematize the process of pattern detection. The results confirm previously reported anticipations of the third and fourth semiquavers in a beat. We also argue that these patterns of microtiming deviations interact with different profiles of intensities that change according to the metrical structure and spectral characteristics. In particular, we suggest two new findings: (i) a small delay of microtiming positions at the lower end of the spectrum on the first semiquaver of each beat and (ii) systematic forms of accelerando and ritardando at a microtiming level covering two-beat and four-beat phrases. The results demonstrate the importance of multidimensional interactions with timing aspects of music. However, more research is needed in order to find proper representations for rhythm and microtiming aspects in such contexts