Evolution and Culture

The goal of cross-cultural psychology to identify and explain similarities and differences in the behavior of individuals in different cultures requires linking human behavior to its context (Cole, Meshcheryakov & Ponomariov, 2011). In order to specify this relation, the focus is usually on the sociocultural environment and how it interacts with behavior. Since cross-cultural psychology also deals with the evolutionary and biological bases of behavior, this focus on culture has regularly led to an unbalanced view (Berry, Poortinga, Breugelmans, Chasiotis & Sam, 2011). Too often, biology and culture are seen as opposites: what is labeled as cultural is not biological and what is labeled as biological is not cultural (Chasiotis, 2010, 2011a). This article will first introduce the central concepts of natural and sexual selection, adaptation, and the epigenetic (open) genetic processes in evolutionary biology, and indicate their psychological implications. It will then argue that biology and culture are intricately related. Finally, empirical evidence from diverse psychological research areas will be presented to illustrate why the study of the evolutionary basis is as essential as the analysis of the sociocultural context for the understanding of behavior. Due to space restrictions, cultural transmission will be the only research area which is addressed in more detail (more examples of evolutionary approaches in intelligence, personality, and behavior genetics and their implications for cross-cultural research can be found on the website accompanying Berry et al., 2011; see also further readings section)

Implicit Motives Across Cultures

In recent years, methodological and substantial progress has been made in the field of cross-cultural studies on implicit motives. We propose that cross-cultural studies on implicit motives are indispensable to understand universal and culture-specific variations in individuals’ mental processes and behavior. It is assumed that implicit motives represent the first motivational system to be shaped in a human being’s ontogeny and that they have far-reaching consequences for individuals’ development, their feelings and actions in everyday life across different cultural groups. Applying psychometrically sound measurements cross-culturally, researchers have revealed a number of universal relationships between implicit motives and psychological and behavioral correlates. Despite these promising advancements, fundamental work still needs to be done with respect to the developmental antecedents of motives and behavioral correlates, particularly focusing on affiliation and power, which have received much less attention compared to the achievement motive. We conclude that if we want to do a better job at predicting behavior both within and across cultural groups, we need to supplement our typical reliance on explicit measures with implicit measures of motivation, beliefs, and values

A New Microtensile Tester for the Study of MEMS Materials with the Aid of Atomic Force Microscopy

An apparatus has been designed and implemented to measure the elastic tensile properties (Young's modulus and tensile strength) of surface micromachined polysilicon specimens. The tensile specimens are "dog-bone" shaped ending in a large "paddle" for convenient electrostatic or, in the improved apparatus, ultraviolet (UV) light curable adhesive gripping deposited with electrostatically controlled manipulation. The typical test section of the specimens is 400 µm long with 2 µm x 50 µm cross section. The new device supports a nanomechanics method developed in our laboratory to acquire surface topologies of deforming specimens by means of Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) to determine (fields of) strains via Digital Image Correlation (DIC). With this tool, high strength or non-linearly behaving materials can be tested under different environmental conditions by measuring the strains directly on the surface of the film with nanometer resolution

The integration of share repurchases into US and UK listed firms’ financial decision-making

This study explores the question whether share repurchases are an integral part of US and UK firms’ financial decision-making, or whether they are merely an afterthought and therefore not systematically related to managers’ principal financial decisions, namely dividends, investment and leverage. It aims to address concerns that share repurchases might be detrimental to firms’ ability to create value through investment (FINNOV, 2012) and can lead to the excessive leverage of companies (Foroohar, 2013). As the US and the UK display differences in terms of the legal and institutional environment, the first two chapters focus in the US and the UK respectively. The US findings indicate that share repurchases are driven not merely by free cash flows, but also by decisions about investment and dividends, and both dividends and investments are in turn affected by share repurchases. The fact that these results hold both for the period before and subsequent to the credit crunch suggests that share repurchases have become an essential consideration when managers take financial decisions in large US firms. By contrast, the UK research fails to show a consistent interaction between share repurchases and investment. Moreover, the findings suggest that share repurchases are being used as a complementary form of payout and not as a substitute. Considering the differences in the results from the first and second empirical chapter, the question arises, whether these are due to differences in the sample characteristics, as the size of S&P 500 companies tends to much larger than that of FTSE All Share Index companies, or whether they reflect country-specific institutional differences. This question is explored in the third empirical chapter. This research supports the contention that national differences in terms of regulatory frameworks and the development of financial markets can affect corporate decision-making (e.g. Bennedsen and Nielsen 2010, La Porta et al. 2000). More specifically, country specific factors appear to lead to a lower use of share repurchases in the UK possibly due to the stricter regulatory framework. In addition, UK firms seem to try to maintain higher dividend payout ratios than their US counterparts, which can be attributed to a culture of high dividend payouts. These differences seem to explain the non-integration of share repurchases into UK firms’ financial decision-making. Therefore, without considering country specific factors, it is not feasible to generalise economist concerns that share repurchases can be detrimental to firms’ ability to create value through investment (FINNOV, 2012) and for leading to the excessive leverage of companies (Foroohar, 2011)

On the selection of optimal subdata for big data regression based on leverage scores

The demand of computational resources for the modeling process increases as the scale of the datasets does, since traditional approaches for regression involve inverting huge data matrices. The main problem relies on the large data size, and so a standard approach is subsampling that aims at obtaining the most informative portion of the big data. In the current paper, we explore an existing approach based on leverage scores, proposed for subdata selection in linear model discrimination. Our objective is to propose the aforementioned approach for selecting the most informative data points to estimate unknown parameters in both the first-order linear model and a model with interactions. We conclude that the approach based on leverage scores improves existing approaches, providing simulation experiments as well as a real data application.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2305.0021

The size and rate dependence of the large deformation response of polystyrene nanofibers

The intertwined effects of macromolecular length scale and specimen size on the large deformation response of individual polystyrene (PS) nanofibers were investigated. Glassy PS fibers with diameters of 150–5000 nm were electrospun from seven monodisperse PS powders with molecular weights between 13,000 and 9,000,000 g/mol. Individual nanofibers were tested using a MEMS-based microscale testing platform under an optical microscope over six decades of strain rate ranging from 0.0003 to 200 per second. The uniaxial stress–strain response demonstrated not only unusual but also repeatable postyielding behavior including strain-softening, necking, and strain-hardening, unlike the brittle behavior of bulk PS. The aforementioned deformation mechanisms were exclusive to specific combinations of specimen size and molecular weight (molecular dimensions). Extremely low and high molecular weights resulted in glassy or craze-assisted brittle failure, whereas intermediate molecular weight sustained stable necking leading to ductilities exceeding 100%, and strain hardening that increased the fiber strength by 200% compared with bulk PS. A size dependent brittle-to-ductile transition occurred within the intermediate molecular weight regime wherein thin fibers showed pronounced strain-hardening behavior and 100–300% increase in failure strength which was reduced with increasing fiber diameter until brittle failure ensued. In addition, experiments over six decades of strain rate showed that nanofibers of specific combinations of molecular weight and diameter can sustain stable necking at localized strain rates reaching 25,000 per second, thereby resulting in rate-independent elongation and drastically improved capacity for energy dissipation

Microtensile tests with the aid of probe microscopy for the study of MEMS materials

Mechanical tests of thin films require novel and sophisticated methods that can address the geometry and microstructure of the films. A new method of micro-tensile testing of MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) films has been demonstrated. An improved apparatus has been designed and implemented to measure the elastic tensile properties. (Young's modulus, Poisson's ration and tensile strength) of surface micromachined polysilicon specimans. The tensile specimans are dog-bone shaped ending in a large paddle for convenient electrostatic or, in the improved apparatus, UV adhesive gripping. The test section of the specimens is 400µm long with 2µmx50µm cross section. The method employs Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) acquired surface topologies of deforming specimans to determine (fields of) strain by way of the Digital Image Correlation method (DIC). With this method, high strength of non- linearly behaving materials under different environmental conditions can be tested by measuring the strains directly on the surface of the film with nanometer resolution in in-place and out-of-plane measurements

Residual stress and mechanical property measurements in amorphous Si photovoltaic thin films

The mechanical reliability and efficiency of thin film photovoltaics attached to structural members depends on the initial state of residual stresses in the films. In this study, predictions for the mechanical and functional failure of photovoltaic films cocured with carbon fiber composite laminates were made possible by quantifying the mean and gradient residual stresses and the failure properties of the individual layers in thin film inorganic photovoltaics consisting of an amorphous silicon (Si) p–n junction diode, a zinc oxide (ZnO) Transparent Conductive Oxide layer (each 1 micron thick), a Kapton layer, and a thick aluminum substrate. The mean residual stress (1466 ± 118) MPa in the Si monolayer and the Si/ZnO bilayer (1661 ± 93) MPa were calculated from the geometrical details of straight and telephone cord type buckling delaminations induced to the p–n junction layer. Curvature measurements provided the residual stress gradient of the Si monolayer as 274 ± 20 MPa/microns and the stress gradient profile in the Si/ZnO bilayer. The tensile strength of freestanding amorphous Si monolayer and Si/ZnO bilayer strips was measured as 425 ± 75 MPa and 109 ± 23 MPa, respectively. These microscale tension experiments also showed that there is weak adhesion between the Si and the mechanically weak ZnO layers. The aforementioned experimental results were employed to predict the onset of fragmentation of the ZnO layer and the initiation of functional degradation of the PV films that were cocured with 00 carbon fiber composite laminates, as 0.3% and 0.9% applied strain, respectively, which was in very good agreement with experimental measurements at the composite level

When freedom of choice leads to bias: How threat fosters selective exposure to health information

Selective exposure to online health information can be ascribed to two related defense motives: the motivation to confirm one's subjective perceptions and the motivation to protect relevant parts of the self-image, such as physical integrity. Our aim was to identify how these motives come into effect in the context of a health threat (fictitious feedback on an alleged heart disease risk). In a preregistered online study with N = 763 participants, we analyzed the impact of perceived and suggested risk on the degree of bias in selecting risk-related information on a fictitious Google search results page. Applying a 2 × 2 design with the experimental factor "risk feedback" and the quasi-experimental factor "perceived risk," we formulated six hypotheses. First, we expected a main effect of perceived risk on selective exposure to information suggesting no risk, and second, we hypothesized a main effect of perceived risk on mean quality rating of information suggesting a risk. Third, we proposed a main effect of risk feedback on selective exposure to information which suggests no risk, and fourth, we proposed a main effect of risk feedback on mean quality rating of information suggesting a risk. Fifth, we expected an interaction effect between perceived and suggested risk, and sixth, we proposed an interaction effect between perceived and suggested risk in different forms for each of the four conditions on quality ratings. Only the third hypothesis was confirmed: Receiving information which suggested a health risk increased the tendency to select information denying the risk. Additional exploratory analyses revealed moderator effects of health information literacy and participant age on the aforementioned relationships. In sum, our results underline the crucial role of defense motives in the context of a suggested health threat