Cultural Differences in Garnering Social Capital on Facebook: French People Prefer Close Ties and Americans Prefer Distant Ties

The link between social capital (SC) and Facebook has been widely studied in the U.S., and less is known about how students from different cultures use the site to garner SC. We measured network composition, communication on Facebook, and SC via questionnaires in France and the U.S. We found that American students have a greater proportion of distant to close ties in their networks and higher levels of bridging SC than French, the latter preferring bonding SC. A stronger relationship between SC and communication via Facebook was observed in the U.S. These findings are explained by cultural differences in relatedness

A step further in Peer Instruction: Using the Stepladder technique to improve learning

International audiencePeer Instruction (PI) is an instructional strategy for engaging students during class through a structured questioning process that improves the learning of the concepts of fundamental sciences. Although all students are supposedly engaged in discussions with their peers during Peer Instruction, the learning gains generally remain at a medium level, suggesting a lack of participation of certain students who do not benefit from social interactions. The present study examined whether the Stepladder technique might optimize the Peer Instruction method and increase learning gains. With this technique, students enter a group sequentially, forcing every group member to participate in discussions. Eighty-four chemistry students were asked to answer easy and difficult multiple-choice questions before and after being randomly assigned to one of three instructional conditions during a chromatography lesson (Classic PI vs. Stepladder PI vs. Individual Instruction without any discussion with peers). As predicted, results showed that learning gains were greatest in the Stepladder PI group, and that this effect was mainly observed for difficult questions. Results also revealed higher perceived satisfaction when students had to discuss the questions with their peers than when they were not given this possibility. By extending the Stepladder technique to higher education, these findings offer a step forward in the Peer Instruction literature, showing how it can enhance learning gains

Cultural Diversity in Couples and Collective Performance: Using a Culture-Based Memory Game to Measure Transactive Memory

Transactive memory refers to the way people in close relationships use each other’s memories as extensions of their own to improve their collaborative performance. Although pioneer research has been conducted among close couples, no studies have examined the effects of the cultural composition of couples on transactive memory. The goal of the present study was to extend research about the positive impact of cultural diversity on team performance to mixed- (French-Moroccan) and same-culture couples (French-French, Moroccan-Moroccan). Thirty heterosexual couples aged from 22 to 55 (M = 42.25 years and SD = 8.15) performed a culture-based memory game with cards depicting French and Moroccan culture. The order in which the pairs of cards were found is thought to reflect the efficiency of transactive memory. Results revealed that collective performance was better in mixed French-Moroccan couples than in same-culture couples, but only for the French culture cards. These findings suggest that cultural diversity in couples has an impact on transactive memory and should be taken into consideration

Private message me s'il vous plait : Preferences for personal and masspersonal communications on Facebook among American and French students

Facebook, a social networking tool used worldwide, provides affordances for public/masspersonal and private/personal communication. Based on previous cross-cultural research demonstrating that masspersonal communication is adaptive in individualistic cultural contexts, we hypothesized that using Facebook to broadcast messages to one's entire network would be relatively more common and appealing to people in countries with greater individualistic values. To test this hypothesis, data were collected in two Western countries differing in levels of individualism, France (204 women, 47 men) and the U.S. (75 women, 89 men), through questionnaires measuring their Facebook use. Results indicated that American college students had larger Facebook networks and used both more masspersonal and personal communication with acquaintances compared to French college students. Masspersonal communication was mediated by network size. French students used more personal communication with friends than American students, but this association was not mediated by network size. These findings suggest that the appeal of masspersonal communication increases as a function of social network size, however, level of engagement in personal communication on Facebook is a function of other cultural differences between the U.S. and France, such as differences in individualistic values

Measuring latent ties on Facebook: A novel approach to studying their prevalence and relationship with bridging social capital

The goal of the current study was to develop an empirical measure of latent ties on Facebook. We begin with a brief literature review of the influence of social media use on social capital and how latent ties fit into this literature. Latent ties are defined as ties with whom a connection is made possible by an affordance of a technological platform, such as the Facebook friend list, but with whom one never communicates. Latent ties have often been considered beneficial for garnering bridging social capital, but their prevalence and relationship to social capital has not been measured empirically. In the current study, we describe a novel approach for measuring latent ties by questionnaire. In a sample of 164 participants, we found that nearly 40% of Facebook users’ networks were latent ties. Furthermore, the percent of latent ties in users’ networks was negatively associated with bridging social capital. Finally, we examined the discriminant validity of the latent ties measure, and found that the percent of latent ties in one’s Facebook network and the total number of Facebook friends (network size) were unrelated. Results are discussed in regard to possible uses of this measure of latent ties in future research

Avatar-mediated creativity: When embodying inventors makes engineers more creative

An important challenge today is to support creativity while enabling geographically distant people to work together. In line with the componential theory of creativity, self-perception theory and recent research on the Proteus Effect, we investigate how avatars, which are virtual representations of the self, may be a medium for stimulating creativity. For this purpose, we conducted two studies with a population of engineering students. In the first study, 114 participants responded to online surveys in order to identify what a creative avatar may look like. This enabled us to select avatars representing inventors, which were perceived as creative by engineering students, and neutral avatars. In the second study, 54 participants brainstormed in groups of 3, in 3 different conditions: in a control face-to-face situation, in a virtual environment while embodying neutral avatars and in a virtual environment with inventor avatars. The results show that inventor avatars led to higher performance in fluency and originality of ideas. Moreover, this benefit proved to endure over time since participants allocated to inventor avatars also performed better in a subsequent face-to-face brainstorming. The prospects of using avatars for enhancing creativity-relevant processes are discussed in terms of theoretical and applicative implication

Revisiting the Effects of Gender Diversity in Small Groups on Divergent Thinking: A Large-Scale Study Using Synchronous Electronic Brainstorming

Numerous studies have examined the effects of gender diversity in groups on creative performance, and no clear effect has been identified. Findings depend on situational cues making gender diversity more or less salient in groups. A large-scale study on two cohorts (N = 2,261) was conducted among business students to examine the impact of the gender diversity in small groups on divergent thinking in an idea-generation task performed by synchronous electronic brainstorming. Participants were automatically randomized in three- or four-member groups to generate ideas during 10 min on a gendered or neutral task. Then, five categories of groups where the proportion of men/women in groups varied from three/four men to three/four women were compared to examine creative performance on three divergent thinking measures (fluency, flexibility, and originality). A Multivariate Generalized Linear Mixed Model (mGLMM) showed greater fluency in all-women groups than in other groups (except mixed-gender groups composed of two men and two women), and more specifically “solo” groups composed of a single woman/man among a majority of men/women. For flexibility and originality, the superiority of all-women groups was found only in comparison to “solo” groups composed of a single woman. As gender differences are more salient in “solo” groups than in other groups faultlines may appear in groups, leading to a deleterious impact on creative performance

Social Comparison Orientation Moderates the Effects of Group Membership on the Similarity-Attraction Relationship

International audienceThe present study examined how the similarity-attraction relationship is affected by a combination of the tendency to compare oneself to other people (Social Comparison Orientation, SCO) and group membership. We expected that high-SCO individuals would prefer similar to dissimilar others only when the target belonged to their in-group and was relevant for the evaluation of their self-concept. It was also expected that among low-SCO individuals who are more certain about the self and less concerned about “being evaluated,” a main effect of attitude similarity would appear, regardless of the group membership of the target. Results partially support these predictions and suggest that further research should be carried out into the combined effects of individual and group variables in the attraction literature

Investigating the relationship between transactive memory and performance in collaborative learning

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Postural feedback and creative thinking

Can an individual’s body posture (expansive or contractive) affect their creative thinking (divergent or convergent)? Based on embodied cognition, we conducted five experiments to examine whether expansive postures would have a positive effect on divergent creative thinking, whereas contractive postures would have a positive effect on convergent creative thinking. Data and supplementary materials can be download for statistical analyses. We do our analyses with the JASP open source sofware (https://jasp-stats.org) Reference: Michinov, N. & Michinov, E. (2020). Do open or closed postures boost creative performance? The effects of postural feedback on divergent and convergent thinking. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, https://doi.org/10.1037/aca000030