Adding a psychological dimension to mass gatherings medicine

Objectives. Mass gatherings pose distinctive challenges for medicine. One neglected aspect of this is that the behaviour of people participating in such events is different from the behaviour they exhibit in their everyday lives. This paper seeks to describe a Social Psychological perspective on the processes shaping people's behaviour at mass gatherings and to explore how these are relevant for an understanding of the processes impacting on infection transmission. Conclusions. It is inadequate to conceptualise mass gatherings as simply an aggregate of a large number of individuals. Rather, those present may conceptualise themselves in terms of a collective with a shared group identity. Thinking of oneself and others as members of a collective, changes one's behaviour. First, one behaves in terms of one's understanding of the norms associated with the group. Second, the relationships between group members become more trusting and supportive. Understanding these two behavioural changes is key to understanding how and why mass gathering participants may behave in ways that make them more or less vulnerable to infection transmission. Implications for health education interventions are discussed.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Organisational practices and social inclusion:Inclusionary place‐making in the library

Social psychology has long been concerned with social exclusion. Much of this interest has focused on people's negative intergroup attitudes and how these may be changed through individual-level interventions. In this paper we explore a different level of intervention – one that targets the routine organisational practices that communicate who is welcome and able to draw on the organisation's services. Specifically, we investigate how a public-facing organisation—a library service—engaged in a process of self-reflection on its routine social practices with the aim of making people experiencing various forms of exclusion (e.g., job seekers, benefit claimants, ethnic minorities) more welcome. Our data arise from interviews (N = 19) with staff concerning their attempts to transform the practices that constitute the library as a distinctive public place. Throughout, we explore how they reflected on their everyday organisational practices, how these may unintentionally exclude, and how they could be modified to facilitate social inclusion. Moreover, we pay particular attention to our participants' understanding of the challenges involved in changing organisational culture and creating a social space in which diversity is accepted

Identity enactment as a social accomplishment:Shared identity and the provision of mutual support amongst pilgrims undertaking the Hajj

Experimental and survey research shows that a common group membership can result in increased levels of social support. Here we complement such research with qualitative data concerning the forms and function of such support. Specifically, we explore the mutual support reported by pilgrims undertaking the Hajj. This requires participants enact a series of identity-related beliefs and values (including specific rituals) in conditions that are practically and psychologically challenging. Using data obtained through semi-structured interviews (N = 33), we investigate how participants' shared identity facilitated their behavioural enactment of these identity-defining beliefs and values. We focus on how their shared understanding of their beliefs and values as Hajj pilgrims allowed various forms of support (psychological, material, informational, and behavioural) which helped participants translate their identity-related ideals into behaviour. Our analysis implies that a shared identity provides a frame of reference with which group members can recognize each other's identity-related concerns and what they need in order to enact their identity. In turn, it implies that in situations where there are practical and psychological constraints on behaviour, action in terms of one's social identity can be conceptualized as a joint accomplishment in which the mutual support of group members is key.</p

Identity enactment as a social accomplishment:Shared identity and the provision of mutual support amongst pilgrims undertaking the Hajj

Experimental and survey research shows that a common group membership can result in increased levels of social support. Here we complement such research with qualitative data concerning the forms and function of such support. Specifically, we explore the mutual support reported by pilgrims undertaking the Hajj. This requires participants enact a series of identity-related beliefs and values (including specific rituals) in conditions that are practically and psychologically challenging. Using data obtained through semi-structured interviews (N = 33), we investigate how participants' shared identity facilitated their behavioural enactment of these identity-defining beliefs and values. We focus on how their shared understanding of their beliefs and values as Hajj pilgrims allowed various forms of support (psychological, material, informational, and behavioural) which helped participants translate their identity-related ideals into behaviour. Our analysis implies that a shared identity provides a frame of reference with which group members can recognize each other's identity-related concerns and what they need in order to enact their identity. In turn, it implies that in situations where there are practical and psychological constraints on behaviour, action in terms of one's social identity can be conceptualized as a joint accomplishment in which the mutual support of group members is key.</p

Organisational practices and social inclusion:Inclusionary place‐making in the library

Social psychology has long been concerned with social exclusion. Much of this interest has focused on people's negative intergroup attitudes and how these may be changed through individual-level interventions. In this paper we explore a different level of intervention – one that targets the routine organisational practices that communicate who is welcome and able to draw on the organisation's services. Specifically, we investigate how a public-facing organisation—a library service—engaged in a process of self-reflection on its routine social practices with the aim of making people experiencing various forms of exclusion (e.g., job seekers, benefit claimants, ethnic minorities) more welcome. Our data arise from interviews (N = 19) with staff concerning their attempts to transform the practices that constitute the library as a distinctive public place. Throughout, we explore how they reflected on their everyday organisational practices, how these may unintentionally exclude, and how they could be modified to facilitate social inclusion. Moreover, we pay particular attention to our participants' understanding of the challenges involved in changing organisational culture and creating a social space in which diversity is accepted

Social identity and health at mass gatherings

The Prayag Magh Mela research was funded by the ESRC (UK) research grant ‘Collective participation and social identification: A study of the individual, interpersonal and collective dimensions of attendance at the Magh Mela’ (RES-062-23-1449).Identifying with a group can bring benefits to physical and psychological health. These benefits can be found with both small-scale and large-scale social groups. However, groups can also be associated with health risks: a distinct branch of medicine (‘Mass Gathering Medicine’) has evolved to address the health risks posed by participating in events characterized by large crowds. We argue that emphasizing either the positive or the negative health consequences of group life is one-sided: both positive and negative effects on health can occur (simultaneously). Moreover, both such effects can have their roots in the same social psychological transformations associated with a group-based social identification. Reviewing evidence from across a range of mass gatherings, we offer a conceptual analysis of such mixed effects. Our account shows i., how social identity analyses can enrich mass gatherings medicine, and ii., how social identity analyses of health can be enriched by examining mass gatherings.PostprintPeer reviewe

Everyday citizenship:identity claims and their reception

Citizenship involves being able to speak and be heard as a member of the community. This can be a formal right (e.g., a right to vote). It can also be something experienced in everyday life. However, the criteria for being judged a fellow member of the community are multiple and accorded different weights by different people. Thus, although one may self-define alongside one’s fellows, the degree to which these others reciprocate depends on the weight they give to various membership criteria. This suggests we approach everyday community membership in terms of an identity claims-making process in which first, an individual claims membership through invoking certain criteria of belonging, and second, others evaluate that claim. Pursuing this logic we report three experiments investigating the reception of such identity-claims. Study 1 showed that in Scotland a claim to membership of the national ingroup was accepted more if couched in terms of place of birth and ancestry rather than just in terms of one’s subjective identification. Studies 2 and 3 showed that this differential acceptance mattered for the claimant’s ability to be heard as a community member. We discuss the implications of these studies for the conceptualization of community membership and the realization of everyday citizenship rights

The Origin and Evolution of the Galaxy Mass-Metallicity Relation

We use high-resolution cosmological zoom-in simulations from the Feedback in Realistic Environment (FIRE) project to study the galaxy mass-metallicity relations (MZR) from z=0-6. These simulations include explicit models of the multi-phase ISM, star formation, and stellar feedback. The simulations cover halo masses Mhalo=10^9-10^13 Msun and stellar mass Mstar=10^4-10^11 Msun at z=0 and have been shown to produce many observed galaxy properties from z=0-6. For the first time, our simulations agree reasonably well with the observed mass-metallicity relations at z=0-3 for a broad range of galaxy masses. We predict the evolution of the MZR from z=0-6 as log(Zgas/Zsun)=12+log(O/H)-9.0=0.35[log(Mstar/Msun)-10]+0.93 exp(-0.43 z)-1.05 and log(Zstar/Zsun)=[Fe/H]-0.2=0.40[log(Mstar/Msun)-10]+0.67 exp(-0.50 z)-1.04, for gas-phase and stellar metallicity, respectively. Our simulations suggest that the evolution of MZR is associated with the evolution of stellar/gas mass fractions at different redshifts, indicating the existence of a universal metallicity relation between stellar mass, gas mass, and metallicities. In our simulations, galaxies above Mstar=10^6 Msun are able to retain a large fraction of their metals inside the halo, because metal-rich winds fail to escape completely and are recycled into the galaxy. This resolves a long-standing discrepancy between "sub-grid" wind models (and semi-analytic models) and observations, where common sub-grid models cannot simultaneously reproduce the MZR and the stellar mass functions.Comment: 17 pages, 14 figures, re-submitted to MNRAS after revisions on referee comment

Artistic Style as the Expression of Ideals

What is artistic style? In the literature one answer to this question has proved influential: the view that artistic style is the expression of personality. In what follows we elaborate upon and evaluatively compare the two most plausible versions of this view with a new proposal—that style is the expression of the artist’s ideals for her art. We proceed by comparing the views’ answers to certain questions we think a theory of individual artistic style should address: Are there limits on what range of features can figure in a style? Can flaws be stylistic? Are there limits on the range of art forms across which a given style can be exhibited? To what extent is a style a kind of unity, and why? What makes style an artistic achievement? Why do we care about style? By considering the different views' answers to these questions we argue that our proposal is a workable theory of individual style and suggest that it fares better on the whole than both versions of the influential and widely accepted view