Not fair for me! The influence of personal relevance on social justice inferences

In this paper, we argue that the personal relevance of a situation primarily influences spontaneous inferences about social justice, and not necessarily affects explicit justice judgments. To test this hypothesis, two studies manipulated personal relevance and assessed justice inferences and judgments: Participants read descriptions of fair or unfair events happening to stimulus persons referred to with first-person versus third-person pronouns (Experiment 1) or as "a friend" versus "a stranger" (Experiment 2). We then measured spontaneous justice inferences (using the probe recognition paradigm) and explicit justice judgments (using rating scales). As predicted, both studies showed stronger spontaneous justice inferences for high personal relevance descriptions, of unjust events specifically, whereas explicit justice judgments were not significantly influenced by our personal relevance manipulations. These findings suggest that especially the spontaneous component of the justice judgment process is sensitive to personal relevance

Robots sing the body electric: Investigations of body language for social and spatial interaction

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Neighbourhood immigrant concentration effects on migrant and native youth’s educational commitments, an enquiry into personality differences

Part of the research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–2013) / ERC Grant Agreement n. 615159 (ERC Consolidator Grant DEPRIVEDHOODS, Socio-spatial inequality, deprived neighbourhoods, and neighbourhood effects) and from the Marie Curie programme under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–2013) / Career Integration Grant n. PCIG10-GA-2011-303728 (CIG Grant NBHCHOICE, Neighbourhood choice, neighbourhood sorting, and neighbourhood effects).In the literature examining neighbourhood effects on educational outcomes, the socialisation mechanism is usually investigated by looking at the association between neighbourhood characteristics and educational attainment. The step in between, that adolescents actually internalise educational norms held by residents, is often assumed. We attempt to fill this gap by looking at how the internalisation of educational norms (commitments) is influenced by neighbourhoods’ immigrant concentration. We investigate this process for both migrant and native youth, as both groups might be influenced differently by immigrant concentrations. To test our hypothesis we used longitudinal panel data with five waves (N = 4255), combined with between-within models which control for a large portion of potential selection bias. These models have an advantage over naïve OLS models in that they predict the effect of change in neighbourhood characteristics on change in educational commitment, and therefore offer a more dynamic approach to modelling neighbourhood effects. Our results show that living in neighbourhoods with higher proportions of immigrants increases the educational commitments of migrant youth compared to living in neighbourhoods with lower proportions. Besides, we find that adolescents with a resilient personality experience less influence of the neighbourhood context on educational commitments than do adolescents with non-resilient personalities.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Neighbourhood deprivation and the Big Five personality traits : associations with adolescent problem behaviour and educational attainment

Funding: The UK Medical Research Council and Wellcome (Grant ref: 102215/2/13/2) and the University of Bristol provide core support for ALSPAC. A comprehensive list of grants funding is available on the ALSPAC website. This research was specifically funded by the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) / ERC Grant Agreement n. 615159 (ERC Consolidator Grant DEPRIVEDHOODS, Socio-spatial inequality, deprived neighbourhoods, and neighbourhood effects).We studied the relation between cumulative exposure to neighbourhood deprivation and adolescents’ Big Five personality traits, and the moderating role of personality in the relation between neighbourhood deprivation and the development of problem behaviour and educational attainment. We studied 5365 British adolescents from ages 10 to 16, with neighbourhood information from birth onwards. Extraversion, agreeableness, emotional stability, and openness to experience moderated the relation between deprivation and problem behaviour. For educational attainment, only extraversion was a moderator. This means that higher values on personality traits were related to weaker relations between neighbourhood deprivation and problem behaviour and educational attainment. The results showed the importance of taking into account adolescents’ personality when assessing developmental outcomes in relation to neighbourhood deprivation.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

The influence of social cues in persuasive social robots on psychological reactance and compliance

People can react negatively to persuasive attempts experiencing reactance, which gives rise to negative feelings and thoughts and may reduce compliance. This research examines social responses towards persuasive social agents. We present a laboratory experiment which assessed reactance and compliance to persuasive attempts delivered by an artificial (non-robotic) social agent, a social robot with minimal social cues (human-like face with speech output and blinking eyes), and a social robot with enhanced social cues (human-like face with head movement, facial expression, affective intonation of speech output). Our results suggest that a social robot presenting more social cues will cause higher reactance and this effect is stronger when the user feels involved in the task at hand

How Social Robots can Influence Motivation as Motivators in Learning:A Scoping Review

Earlier research has investigated how educational social robots can influence learner motivation and learning outcomes as motivators instead of learning materials. This paper presents a scoping literature review of this body of work, focusing on the educational strategies used, and describing the range of approaches used to influence motivation and learning through social robots, not as learning tools but as motivators. Nineteen advanced studies are identified and described according to the components of the ARCS model (a motivation model dominant in robotics research): Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction. We summarized the measures used for motivation in the studies and relate these measures to the four ARCS model components. Finally, we analyzed the studies from the perspectives of sample groups, study type, and domain or subject. Our analyses suggested that beyond focusing on persuasive (educational) strategies that educational social robots can use to keep learners' attention, researchers should also focus on the satisfaction component of motivation. Furthermore, future studies should examine long-term interactions, apply more rigor in using validated questionnaires, and combine qualitative and quantitative methods to understand not only the effects of these different approaches but also the reasons behind them.</p

Assessing the effect of persuasive robots interactive social cues on users’ psychological reactance, liking, trusting beliefs and compliance

Research in the field of social robotics suggests that enhancing social cues in robots can elicit more social responses in users. It is however not clear how users respond socially to persuasive social robots and whether such reactions will be more pronounced when the robots feature more interactive social cues. In the current research, we examine social responses towards persuasive attempts provided by a robot featuring different numbers of interactive social cues. A laboratory experiment assessed participants’ psychological reactance, liking, trusting beliefs and compliance toward a persuasive robot that either presented users with: no interactive social cues (random head movements and random social praises), low number of interactive social cues (head mimicry), or high number of interactive social cues (head mimicry and proper timing for social praise). Results show that a persuasive robot with the highest number of interactive social cues invoked lower reactance and was liked more than the robots in the other two conditions. Furthermore, results suggest that trusting beliefs towards persuasive robots can be enhanced by utilizing praise as presented by social robots in no interactive social cues and high number of interactive social cues conditions. However, interactive social cues did not contribute to higher compliance

Assessing the effect of persuasive robots interactive social cues on users’ psychological reactance, liking, trusting beliefs and compliance

Research in the field of social robotics suggests that enhancing social cues in robots can elicit more social responses in users. It is however not clear how users respond socially to persuasive social robots and whether such reactions will be more pronounced when the robots feature more interactive social cues. In the current research, we examine social responses towards persuasive attempts provided by a robot featuring different numbers of interactive social cues. A laboratory experiment assessed participants’ psychological reactance, liking, trusting beliefs and compliance toward a persuasive robot that either presented users with: no interactive social cues (random head movements and random social praises), low number of interactive social cues (head mimicry), or high number of interactive social cues (head mimicry and proper timing for social praise). Results show that a persuasive robot with the highest number of interactive social cues invoked lower reactance and was liked more than the robots in the other two conditions. Furthermore, results suggest that trusting beliefs towards persuasive robots can be enhanced by utilizing praise as presented by social robots in no interactive social cues and high number of interactive social cues conditions. However, interactive social cues did not contribute to higher compliance

Being poorer than the rest of the neighborhood : relative deprivation and problem behavior of youth

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/ 2007-2013)/ERC Grant Agreement n. 615159 (ERC Consolidator Grant DEPRIVEDHOODS, Socio-spatial inequality, deprived neighbourhoods, and neighbourhood effects), from the Marie Curie programme under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013)/Career Integration Grant n. PCIG10-GA-2011- 303728 (CIG Grant NBHCHOICEAccording to the neighborhood effects hypothesis, there is a negative relation between neighborhood wealth and youth’s problem behavior. It is often assumed that there are more problems in deprived neighborhoods, but there are also reports of higher rates of behavioral problems in more affluent neighborhoods. Much of this literature does not take into account relative wealth. Our central question was whether the economic position of adolescents’ families, relative to the neighborhood in which they lived, was related to adolescents’ internalizing and externalizing problem behavior. We used longitudinal data for youth between 12–16 and 16–20 years of age, combined with population register data (N = 926; 55% females). We employ between-within models to account for time-invariant confounders, including parental background characteristics. Our findings show that, for adolescents, moving to a more affluent neighborhood was related to increased levels of depression, social phobia, aggression, and conflict with fathers and mothers. This could be indirect evidence for the relative deprivation mechanism, but we could not confirm this, and we did not find any gender differences. The results do suggest that future research should further investigate the role of individuals’ relative position in their neighborhood in order not to overgeneralize neighborhood effects and to find out for whom neighborhoods matter.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe