Trobriander (Ost-Neuguinea, Trobriand Inseln, Kaile'una) Fadenspiele 'ninikula'

Sammelband 1, 1985-198

Trobriander (Ost-Neuguinea, Trobriand Inseln, Kaile'una) Fadenspiele 'ninikula'

Sammelband 1, 1985-198

A role for eyebrows in regulating the visibility of eye gaze direction

The human eye is unique amongst those of primates in having white sclera against which the dark iris is clearly visible. This high-contrast structure makes the gaze direction of a human potentially easily perceptible to others. For a social creature such as a human, the ability to perceive the direction of another’s gaze may be very useful, since gaze usually signals attention. We report data showing that the accuracy of gaze deviation detection is independent of viewing distance up to a certain critical distance, beyond which it collapses. This is, of itself, surprising since most visual tasks are performed better at closer viewing distances. Our data also show that the critical distance, but not accuracy, is affected by the position of the eyebrows so that lowering the eyebrows reduces the critical distance. These findings show that mechanisms exist by which humans could expand or restrict the availability of their gaze direction to others. A way to regulate the availability of the gaze-direction signal could be an advantage. We show that an interpretation of eyebrow function in these terms provides a novel explanation for several well-known eyebrow actions, including the eyebrow flash

Pragmatics

This entry takes an interdisciplinary approach to linguistic pragmatics. It discusses how the meaning of utterances can only be understood in relation to overall cultural, social, and interpersonal contexts, as well as to culture-specific conventions and the speech events in which they are embedded. The entry discusses core issues of pragmatics such as speech act theory, conversational implicature, deixis, gesture, interaction strategies, ritual communication, phatic communion, linguistic relativity, ethnography of speaking, ethnomethodology, and conversation analysis. It takes a transdisciplinary view of the field, showing that linguistic pragmatics has its predecessors in other disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, ethology, ethnology, and sociology

Mother-to-infant and father-to-infant initial emotional involvement

While infant attachment has been largely studied, parental attachment is still relatively unknown, especially when referred to fathers. However, it is mainly recognised that parents’ emotional involvement with the newborn contributes to the quality of the interaction and the care they provide. The aim of this study was to study mother-to-infant and father-to-infant initial emotional involvement; namely, differences between mothers and fathers and changes in mother’s emotions toward the neonate within the first days after delivery. The Bonding Scale, an extended Portuguese version of the ‘New Mother-to-Infant Bonding Scale’, was administered during the first two days after childbirth to a sample of 315 mothers and 141 fathers (n = 456), at the Júlio Dinis Maternity Hospital (Portugal). Most mothers and fathers show positive emotions and only a few of them showed negative emotions toward the infant. Maternal and paternal emotional involvement toward the newborn tend to be similar; nevertheless, fathers show less fear and better emotional involvement with the neonate, while mothers are sadder and show more emotions not related to bonding. During the first days following delivery, emotions not related to bonding, such as fear, seem to decrease in mothers.Bial Foundation - Grant 58/02.Human Development and Health Service of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation - Grant 48914

Social relations and presence of others predict bystander intervention: Evidence from violent incidents captured on CCTV:Evidence from violent incidents captured on CCTV

Are individuals willing to intervene in public violence? Half a century of research on the “bystander effect” suggests that the more bystanders present at an emergency, the less likely each of them is to provide help. However, recent meta‐analytical evidence questions whether this effect generalizes to violent emergencies. Besides the number of bystanders present, an alternative line of research suggests that pre‐existing social relations between bystanders and conflict participants are important for explaining whether bystanders provide help. The current paper offers a rare comparison of both factors—social relations and the number of bystanders present—as predictors of bystander intervention in real‐life violent emergencies. We systematically observed the behavior of 764 bystanders across 81 violent incidents recorded by surveillance cameras in Copenhagen, Denmark. Bystanders were sampled with a case–control design, their behavior was observed and coded, and the probability of intervention was estimated with multilevel regression analyses. The results confirm our predicted association between social relations and intervention. However, rather than the expected reversed bystander effect, we found a classical bystander effect, as bystanders were less likely to intervene with increasing bystander presence. The effect of social relations on intervention was larger in magnitude than the effect of the number of bystanders. We assess these findings in light of recent discussions about the influence of group size and social relations in human helping. Further, we discuss the utility of video data for the assessment of real‐life bystander behavior

Larger than Life: Humans' Nonverbal Status Cues Alter Perceived Size

Social dominance and physical size are closely linked. Nonverbal dominance displays in many non-human species are known to increase the displayer's apparent size. Humans also employ a variety of nonverbal cues that increase apparent status, but it is not yet known whether these cues function via a similar mechanism: by increasing the displayer's apparent size.We generated stimuli in which actors displayed high status, neutral, or low status cues that were drawn from the findings of a recent meta-analysis. We then conducted four studies that indicated that nonverbal cues that increase apparent status do so by increasing the perceived size of the displayer. Experiment 1 demonstrated that nonverbal status cues affect perceivers' judgments of physical size. The results of Experiment 2 showed that altering simple perceptual cues can affect judgments of both size and perceived status. Experiment 3 used objective measurements to demonstrate that status cues change targets' apparent size in the two-dimensional plane visible to a perceiver, and Experiment 4 showed that changes in perceived size mediate changes in perceived status, and that the cue most associated with this phenomenon is postural openness.We conclude that nonverbal cues associated with social dominance also affect the perceived size of the displayer. This suggests that certain nonverbal dominance cues in humans may function as they do in other species: by creating the appearance of changes in physical size

Social Waves in Giant Honeybees Repel Hornets

Giant honeybees (Apis dorsata) nest in the open and have evolved a plethora of defence behaviors. Against predatory wasps, including hornets, they display highly coordinated Mexican wave-like cascades termed ‘shimmering’. Shimmering starts at distinct spots on the nest surface and then spreads across the nest within a split second whereby hundreds of individual bees flip their abdomens upwards. However, so far it is not known whether prey and predator interact and if shimmering has anti-predatory significance. This article reports on the complex spatial and temporal patterns of interaction between Giant honeybee and hornet exemplified in 450 filmed episodes of two A. dorsata colonies and hornets (Vespa sp.). Detailed frame-by-frame analysis showed that shimmering elicits an avoidance response from the hornets showing a strong temporal correlation with the time course of shimmering. In turn, the strength and the rate of the bees' shimmering are modulated by the hornets' flight speed and proximity. The findings suggest that shimmering creates a ‘shelter zone’ of around 50 cm that prevents predatory wasps from foraging bees directly from the nest surface. Thus shimmering appears to be a key defence strategy that supports the Giant honeybees' open-nesting life-style