Fish learn collectively, but groups with differing personalities are slower to decide 1 and more likely to split

We tested zebrafish shoals to examine whether groups exhibit collective spatial learning and whether this relates to the personality of group members. To do this we trained shoals to associate a collective spatial decision with a reward and tested whether shoals could reorient to the learned location from a new starting point. There were strong indications of collective learning and collective reorienting, most likely by memorising distal cues, but these processes were unrelated to personality differences within shoals. However, there was evidence that group decisions require agreement between differing personalities. Notably, shoals with more boldness variation were more likely to split during training trials and took longer to reach a collective decision. Thus cognitive tasks, such as learning and cue memorisation, may be exhibited collectively, but the ability to reach collective decisions is affected by the personality composition of the group. A likely outcome of the splitting of groups with very disparate personalities is the formation of groups with members more similar in their personality

Convincing the Skeptics: Concrete Claims with Supporting Images Persuade Skeptical Consumers to Support Companies Promoting Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives

Skepticism has been identified as one of the main impediments to successful CSR communication and previous research has established a robust effect of individual differences in ad skepticism on negative responses to advertising. However, little work has explored how ad skepticism impacts responses to CSR communication. Integrating work on CSR communication and ad skepticism, the present work advances a conceptual model addressing how concrete CSR claims and images supporting those claims can override skeptical consumers’ less favorable response to CSR advertising. Results show that highly skeptical consumers (a) respond less favorably to CSR ads than less skeptical consumers, overall; (b) respond more favorably to CSR ads that contain a combination of concrete (vs. vague) CSR claims and images (vs. no images) supporting those claims; and (c) respond as favorably as less skeptical consumers when ads feature concrete CSR claims with supporting images. Additional results reveal that images are especially effective among highly skeptical consumers because skeptical consumers have a reduced ability to visualize advertising claims. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed

The Turkish intervention of Cyprus 1974 and its consequences in international law.

The aim of the present thesis is basically twofold. First, to examine from the International Law viewpoint the 1974 Turkish Intervention of Cyprus; actually whether there are any grounds upon which Turkey may rely in order to establish the legality of intervention. Second, to explore the legal consequences of the intervention. In this way, the dissertation would be forward-looking as prospects for a future settlement of the Cyprus issue would be analysed in the light of Public International Law. Although Turkey's 1974 intervention has been the subject of much comment, a fresh study is warranted. This is so, because the present analysis will take advantage of information not available to many of the earlier commentators. Extensive research has been conducted in the Public Records Office examining available Foreign Office and War Office Files relevant to the study. Greek Cypriot politicians have been interviewed who gave their own exposition of the events surrounding the issue, and will be cited where relevant. Greek as well as Turkish material has been thoroughly studied and shall also be included in the study. Needless to mention that massive International Law works are quoted in detail, thus making possible the application of legal principles to the issue under examination. Furthermore, this new study is distinctive and even imperative, in that it ranges beyond the question whether the intervention was lawful to consider the legal consequences which flowed from it, and looks to the future exploring prospects for a just and viable settlement to the Cyprus Issue

Plasticity varies with boldness in a weakly-electric fish

BACKGROUND: The expression of animal personality is indicated by patterns of consistency in individual behaviour. Often, the differences exhibited between individuals are consistent across situations. However, between some situations, this can be biased by variable levels of individual plasticity. The interaction between individual plasticity and animal personality can be illustrated by examining situation-sensitive personality traits such as boldness (i.e. risk-taking and exploration tendency). For the weakly electric fish Gnathonemus petersii, light condition is a major factor influencing behaviour. Adapted to navigate in low-light conditions, this species chooses to be more active in dark environments where risk from visual predators is lower. However, G. petersii also exhibit individual differences in their degree of behavioural change from light to dark. The present study, therefore, aims to examine if an increase of motivation to explore in the safety of the dark, not only affects mean levels of boldness, but also the variation between individuals, as a result of differences in individual plasticity. RESULTS: Boldness was consistent between a novel-object and a novel-environment situation in bright light. However, no consistency in boldness was noted between a bright (risky) and a dark (safe) novel environment. Furthermore, there was a negative association between boldness and the degree of change across novel environments, with shier individuals exhibiting greater behavioural plasticity. CONCLUSIONS: This study highlights that individual plasticity can vary with personality. In addition, the effect of light suggests that variation in boldness is situation specific. Finally, there appears to be a trade-off between personality and individual plasticity with shy but plastic individuals minimizing costs when perceiving risk and bold but stable individuals consistently maximizing rewards, which can be maladaptive. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12983-016-0154-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

The impact of review valence and awareness of deceptive practices on consumers’ responses to online product ratings and reviews

Many online retailers and some manufacturers/service providers have recently been engaging in questionable practices, where product reviews are often fabricated and/or posted without sufficient clarity and objectivity. Across an exploratory study and two main studies, we empirically examine this phenomenon and observe a pattern of effects that suggests that review valence (i.e., the average number of rating-stars a product receives) influences product attitudes and intentions, but that these outcomes are significantly impacted by the extent to which consumers are aware of potentially deceptive online review practices. Awareness of deceptive practices was found to differentially influence attitudes and intentions, depending upon whether the star-ratings were perfect (5/5 stars), highly positive (4.9/5 stars), or generally positive (4.5/5 or 4.7/5 stars). Participants’ perceptions of the e-retailer’s manipulative intent were also shown to mediate these effects, with higher perceptions of perceived manipulative intent yielding less favorable product attitudes and reduced purchase intentions

Autism-associated gene shank3 is necessary for social contagion in zebrafish

BACKGROUND: Animal models enable targeting autism-associated genes, such as the shank3 gene, to assess their impact on behavioural phenotypes. However, this is often limited to simple behaviours relevant for social interaction. Social contagion is a complex phenotype forming the basis of human empathic behaviour and involves attention to the behaviour of others for recognizing and sharing their emotional or affective state. Thus, it is a form of social communication, which constitutes the most common developmental impairment across autism spectrum disorders (ASD). METHODS: Here we describe the development of a zebrafish model that identifies the neurocognitive mechanisms by which shank3 mutation drives deficits in social contagion. We used a CRISPR-Cas9 technique to generate mutations to the shank3a gene, a zebrafish paralogue found to present greater orthology and functional conservation relative to the human gene. Mutants were first compared to wild types during a two-phase protocol that involves the observation of two conflicting states, distress and neutral, and the later recall and discrimination of others when no longer presenting such differences. Then, the whole-brain expression of different neuroplasticity markers was compared between genotypes and their contribution to cluster-specific phenotypic variation was assessed. RESULTS: The shank3 mutation markedly reduced social contagion via deficits in attention contributing to difficulties in recognising affective states. Also, the mutation changed the expression of neuronal plasticity genes. However, only downregulated neuroligins clustered with shank3a expression under a combined synaptogenesis component that contributed specifically to variation in attention. LIMITATIONS: While zebrafish are extremely useful in identifying the role of shank3 mutations to composite social behaviour, they are unlikely to represent the full complexity of socio-cognitive and communication deficits presented by human ASD pathology. Moreover, zebrafish cannot represent the scaling up of these deficits to higher-order empathic and prosocial phenotypes seen in humans. CONCLUSIONS: We demonstrate a causal link between the zebrafish orthologue of an ASD-associated gene and the attentional control of affect recognition and consequent social contagion. This models autistic affect-communication pathology in zebrafish and reveals a genetic attention-deficit mechanism, addressing the ongoing debate for such mechanisms accounting for emotion recognition difficulties in autistic individuals