Effect of empathy trait on attention to faces: an event-related potential (ERP) study

BACKGROUND: Empathy is deeply linked with the ability to adapt to human social environments. The present study investigated the relationship between the empathy trait and attention elicited by discriminating facial expressions. METHODS: Event-related potentials were measured while 32 participants (17 men and 15 women) discriminated facial expressions (happy or angry) and colors of flowers (yellow or purple) under an oddball paradigm. The empathy trait of participants was measured using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis, 1980). RESULTS: The empathy trait correlated positively with both the early portion (300 to 600 ms after stimulus onset) and late portion (600 to 800 ms after stimulus onset) of late positive potential (LPP) amplitude elicited by faces, but not with LPP elicited by flowers. CONCLUSIONS: This result suggests that, compared to people with low empathy, people with high empathy pay more attention when discriminating facial expressions. The present study suggests that differences exist in methods of adapting to social environments between people with high and low empathy

Exploring the Influence of Social Media Information on Interpersonal Trust in Virtual Work Partners

This developmental paper aims to start an exploratory investigation regarding the impact of social media information on interpersonal trust in virtual work partners. The potential impact will be examined via the lens of three key social theories used for studying virtual teams in Information System (IS) research. An initial theoretical model is proposed at the end of the paper

Scaling of soaring seabirds and its implication for the maximum size of flying pterosaurs

The flight ability of animals is restricted by the scaling effects imposed by physical and physiological factors. In comparisons of the power available from muscle and the mechanical power required to fly, theoretical studies have predicted that the margin between the powers should decrease with body size and that flying animals have a maximum body size. However, predicting an absolute value of this upper limit has been difficult because wing morphology and flight styles vary among species. Albatrosses and petrels have long, narrow, aerodynamically efficient wings and are considered to be soaring birds. Here, using animal-borne accelerometers, we show that scaling analyses of wing-flapping frequencies in these seabirds indicate that the maximum size limit for soaring animals is a body mass of 41 kg and a wingspan of 5.1 m. Soaring seabirds were observed to have two modes of flapping frequencies: vigorous flapping during takeoff and sporadic flapping during cruising flight. In these species, high and low flapping frequencies were found to scale with body mass (_mass_ ^-0.30^ and _mass_ ^-0.18^) in a manner similar to the predictions from biomechanical flight models (_mass_ ^-1/3^ and _mass_ ^-1/6^). The scaling relationships predicted that animals larger than the limit will not be able to flap fast enough to stay aloft under unfavourable wind conditions. Our result therefore casts doubt on the flying ability of large, extinct pterosaurs. The largest extant soarer, the wandering albatross, weighs about 10 kg, which might be a pragmatic limit to maintain a safety margin for sustainable flight and to survive in a variable environment

Biological characteristics of euphausiids preyed upon by Adelie penguin, Pygoscelis adeliae, breeding at Hukuro Cove, Lutzow-Holm bay in 1995/1996

Adelie penguins were used as a biological sampler from late December 1995 to late January 1996 to study biological characteristics of euphausiids in Lutzow-Holm Bay, which is generally covered with fast sea-ice even in summer. Stomach contents and diving behavior of the penguins were examined. Euphausiids accounted for 73% of total wet weight of stomach contents, and fish 27%. Among euphausiids, Euphausia superba occupied 83%, and E. crystallorophias 17%. Females occupied 96% of the total number of E. superba, males only 4%. E. crystallorophias consisted of 73% females, 10% males and 17% juveniles. Adelie penguins might eat nutritionally superior female euphausiids selectively, and/or they could not catch male euphausiids which can swim faster. It was suggested that those individuals which dived deeper ate more euphausiids than fish, and larger E. superba