Psychological Safety and Norm Clarity in Software Engineering Teams

In the software engineering industry today, companies primarily conduct their work in teams. To increase organizational productivity, it is thus crucial to know the factors that affect team effectiveness. Two team-related concepts that have gained prominence lately are psychological safety and team norms. Still, few studies exist that explore these in a software engineering context. Therefore, with the aim of extending the knowledge of these concepts, we examined if psychological safety and team norm clarity associate positively with software developers' self-assessed team performance and job satisfaction, two important elements of effectiveness. We collected industry survey data from practitioners (N = 217) in 38 development teams working for five different organizations. The result of multiple linear regression analyses indicates that both psychological safety and team norm clarity predict team members' self-assessed performance and job satisfaction. The findings also suggest that clarity of norms is a stronger (30\% and 71\% stronger, respectively) predictor than psychological safety. This research highlights the need to examine, in more detail, the relationship between social norms and software development. The findings of this study could serve as an empirical baseline for such, future work.Comment: Submitted to CHASE'201

Destabilising conventions using temporary interventions

Conventions are an important concept in multi-agent systems as they allow increased coordination amongst agents and hence a more efficient system. Encouraging and directing convention emergence has been the focus of much research, particularly through the use of fixed strategy agents. In this paper we apply temporary interventions using fixed strategy agents to destabilise an established convention by (i) replacing it with another convention of our choosing, and (ii) allowing it to destabilise in such a way that no other convention explicitly replaces it. We show that these interventions are effective and investigate the minimum level of intervention needed

Is Participation Contagious? Evidence From a Household Vector Control Campaign in Urban Peru

Objective: High rates of household participation are critical to the success of door-to-door vector control campaigns. We used the Health Belief Model to assess determinants of participation, including neighbour participation as a cue to action, in a Chagas disease vector control campaign in Peru. Methods: We evaluated clustering of participation among neighbours; estimated participation as a function of household infestation status, neighbourhood type and number of participating neighbours; and described the reported reasons for refusal to participate in a district of 2911 households. Results: We observed significant clustering of participation along city blocks (p\u3c0.0001). Participation was significantly higher for households in new versus established neighbourhoods, for infested households, and for households with more participating neighbours. The effect of neighbour participation was greater in new neighbourhoods. Conclusions: Results support a ‘contagion’ model of participation, highlighting the possibility that one or two participating households can tip a block towards full participation. Future campaigns can leverage these findings by making participation more visible, by addressing stigma associated with spraying, and by employing group incentives to spray

Gratefully received, gratefully repaid:The role of perceived fairness in cooperative interactions

It is well documented that people would remunerate fair behaviours and penalize unfair behaviours. It is argued that individuals' reactions following the receipt of a gift depend on the perceived intentions of the donors. Fair intentions should prompt positive affect, like gratitude, triggering cooperative behaviours; while intended unfairness should trigger negative affect, like anger, fostering anti-social actions. It is, however, contended that when people lack information to infer others' intention they may use 'normative' beliefs about fairness - what a typical fair individual 'should' do in these circumstances - to guide their behaviour. In this experiment we examined this assertion. We had 122 participants play a one-shot, double-anonymous game with half playing as potential helpers (P1s) and half as recipients (P2s). Whether a participant was a P1 or P2 was chance-determined and all participants knew this. P1s decided whether to help P2s and whether to make their help unconditional (no repayment needed) or conditional (full or 'taxed' repayment). P2s decided whether to accept the offer and whatever conditions attached but were blind to the list of helping options available to P1s. We anticipated that recipients would refer to the 'injunctive norm' that 'fair people should help "for free" when it is only by chance that they are in a position to help'. Therefore, without knowing P1s' different helping options, unconditional offers should be rated by recipients as fairer than conditional offers, and this should be linked to greater gratitude with greater gratitude linked to greater reciprocation. Path analyses confirmed this serial mediation. The results showed that recipients of unconditional offers, compared to conditional ones, interpreted the helpers' motives as more helpful, experienced greater gratitude and were more eager to reciprocate. The behavioural data further revealed that, when given a latter option to default, 38% of recipients of conditional offers did so

Institutions and Functions

What is an institution? And what distinguishes one type of institution from another? We answer these questions using a functionalist approach: types of institutions are identified by their function, or the coordination problems they solve; token institutions are specific solutions to these problems, or equilibria of strategic games. The functionalist approach provides some insights into the limits of reform, or the extent to which institutions \u2013 like marriage, property, or democracy \u2013 can be modified without turning them into entities of a different kind

Cooperation, Norms, and Revolutions: A Unified Game-Theoretical Approach

Cooperation is of utmost importance to society as a whole, but is often challenged by individual self-interests. While game theory has studied this problem extensively, there is little work on interactions within and across groups with different preferences or beliefs. Yet, people from different social or cultural backgrounds often meet and interact. This can yield conflict, since behavior that is considered cooperative by one population might be perceived as non-cooperative from the viewpoint of another. To understand the dynamics and outcome of the competitive interactions within and between groups, we study game-dynamical replicator equations for multiple populations with incompatible interests and different power (be this due to different population sizes, material resources, social capital, or other factors). These equations allow us to address various important questions: For example, can cooperation in the prisoner's dilemma be promoted, when two interacting groups have different preferences? Under what conditions can costly punishment, or other mechanisms, foster the evolution of norms? When does cooperation fail, leading to antagonistic behavior, conflict, or even revolutions? And what incentives are needed to reach peaceful agreements between groups with conflicting interests? Our detailed quantitative analysis reveals a large variety of interesting results, which are relevant for society, law and economics, and have implications for the evolution of language and culture as well

Cracking down on bribery

Do crackdowns on bribery impact corrupt behavior in the long run? In this paper we observe the long-run impact of a short-term punishment institution (i.e., a crackdown) on bribery behavior in a lab setting. We conduct lab experiments in two countries with cultures that differ in corruption norms, and which experience very different levels of bribery: the US and Pakistan. Bribery is implemented in the laboratory as a repeated three-player sequential game, consisting of a firm, a government official and a citizen. The design contains three phases: pre-crackdown, crackdown, and post-crackdown. Results show that post-crackdown behavior is not significantly different from pre-crackdown behavior in either country. We conclude that short-term crackdowns may impact behavior in the short run, depending on the strength of the existing corruption norms in the country. More importantly, in our setting crackdowns are completely ineffective in the long run, as corrupt behavior rebounds to pre-crackdown levels