Humans adapt to social diversity over time

Humans have evolved cognitive processes favoring homogeneity, stability, and structure. These processes are, however, incompatible with a socially diverse world, raising wide academic and political concern about the future of modern societies. With data comprising 22 y of religious diversity worldwide, we show across multiple surveys that humans are inclined to react negatively to threats to homogeneity (i.e., changes in diversity are associated with lower self-reported quality of life, explained by a decrease in trust in others) in the short term. However, these negative outcomes are compensated in the long term by the beneficial influence of intergroup contact, which alleviates initial negative influences. This research advances knowledge that can foster peaceful coexistence in a new era defined by globalization and a socially diverse future

Does ethnic diversity affect well-being and allostatic load among people across neighbourhoods in England?

Modern societies are facing unprecedented changes in their ethnic composition. Increasing ethnic diversity poses critical new challenges as people interact with new cultures, norms, and values, or avoid such encounters. Heated academic and political debates focus on whether and how changes in ethnic composition affect societies and local communities. Yet, there is insufficient scientific evidence of how living in a more diverse society affects individuals' well-being and health. The aim of this study is to test the extent to which increasing neighbourhood ethnic diversity affects individuals’ subjective health and well-being and objective stress levels as measured by allostatic load. We analyse a large panel data set containing over 47,000 English respondents living in 15,545 neighbourhoods in England from the British Household Panel Survey and the UK Household Longitudinal Study, from 2004 to 2011. We match respondents to neighbourhoods and merge contextual information about levels of neighbourhood ethnic diversity and deprivation from UK Censuses, whilst controlling for background characteristics. We distinguish between short- and long-term effects of ethnic diversity on individual subjective well-being and health as well as allostatic load using a set of multilevel mixed-effects models. We make cautious causal interpretations by estimating fixed-effects models and cross-lagged panel models. We assess the robustness of our findings by replicating our analysis using alternative composite measures of diversity and allostatic load. In the short-term, increasing ethnic diversity of local areas is associated with a dip in subjective well-being, but short-term changes are not prolonged or profound enough to affect chronic stress (allostatic load). The initial negative impact of ethnic diversity on subjective well-being and health dissipates with time. In the long-term, no effects of ethnic diversity on well-being and health or chronic stress (allostatic load) are detected. Understanding the dynamic nature of the effects of ethnic diversity on individuals has critical implications for social and public health policies – issues prominent in, for example, the UK (Brexit) and the US (election of President Donald Trump). Our analysis identifies and enables the promotion of beneficial effects, while targeting the pernicious components to turn diversity into a valuable asset in a globalising world

Game Theoretical Interactions of Moving Agents

Game theory has been one of the most successful quantitative concepts to describe social interactions, their strategical aspects, and outcomes. Among the payoff matrix quantifying the result of a social interaction, the interaction conditions have been varied, such as the number of repeated interactions, the number of interaction partners, the possibility to punish defective behavior etc. While an extension to spatial interactions has been considered early on such as in the "game of life", recent studies have focussed on effects of the structure of social interaction networks. However, the possibility of individuals to move and, thereby, evade areas with a high level of defection, and to seek areas with a high level of cooperation, has not been fully explored so far. This contribution presents a model combining game theoretical interactions with success-driven motion in space, and studies the consequences that this may have for the degree of cooperation and the spatio-temporal dynamics in the population. It is demonstrated that the combination of game theoretical interactions with motion gives rise to many self-organized behavioral patterns on an aggregate level, which can explain a variety of empirically observed social behaviors

Electrical transport studies of quench condensed Bi films at the initial stage of film growth: Structural transition and the possible formation of electron droplets

The electrical transport properties of amorphous Bi films prepared by sequential quench deposition have been studied in situ. A superconductor-insulator (S-I) transition was observed as the film was made increasingly thicker, consistent with previous studies. Unexpected behavior was found at the initial stage of film growth, a regime not explored in detail prior to the present work. As the temperature was lowered, a positive temperature coefficient of resistance (dR/dT > 0) emerged, with the resistance reaching a minimum before the dR/dT became negative again. This behavior was accompanied by a non-linear and asymmetric I-V characteristic. As the film became thicker, conventional variable-range hopping (VRH) was recovered. We attribute the observed crossover in the electrical transport properties to an amorphous to granular structural transition. The positive dR/dT found in the amorphous phase of Bi formed at the initial stage of film growth was qualitatively explained by the formation of metallic droplets within the electron glass.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

The New Urban Revival in the United States

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68657/2/10.1080_00420989320081901.pd

Segregation in the twenty first century: Processes, complexities and future directions

Economic inequality, international migration and urban transformation have generated fresh interest in segregation and given new social significance to questions of socio‐spatial separation and interaction. At the same time, advances in data, methods and theory are opening up new avenues of inquiry that push the focus beyond simple measures of unevenness of residential patterns towards more nuanced analysis of spatial asymmetry, structure and scale. There is also a drive towards considering spaces and activities outside the neighbourhood, bringing new richness to our understanding of how various social groups interact in the various aspects of their lives. These processes and complexities form the backdrop for our special issue and we reflect on the implications for future priorities in research on segregation in the twenty first century

Racial Differences in Physical and Mental Health

This article examines the extent to which racial differences in socio-economic status (SES), social class and acute and chronic indicators of perceived discrimination, as well as general measures of stress can account for black-white differences in self-reported measures of physical and mental health. The observed racial differences in health were markedly reduced when adjusted for education and especially income. However, both perceived discrimination and more traditional measures of stress are related to health and play an incremental role in accounting for differences between the races in health status. These findings underscore the need for research efforts to identify the complex ways in which economic and non-economic forms of discrimination relate to each other and combine with socio-economic position and other risk factors and resources to affect health.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/67159/2/10.1177_135910539700200305.pd

ETHNIC SEGREGATION AND THE ROLE OF PUBLIC HOUSING IN AMSTERDAM

Dutch cities are characterized by moderate levels of ethnic (and social) segregation if compared with other countries in the Western world. Dutch cities are also famous for their large share of public housing in the total stock. Not surprisingly these two features are frequently supposed to be causally related. However, in this contribution this association is challenged on the basis of a review of existing and well- described segregation situations, and on the basis of an empirical GIS analysis of micro-level data from the Amsterdam population register. Ethnic segregation may also develop within the large public housing secto