The combination of social and personal contexts affects dominance hierarchy development in shore crabs, Carcinus maenas

Many animals that live in groups maintain competitive relationships, yet avoid continual fighting, by forming dominance hierarchies. We compare predictions of stochastic, individual-based models with empirical experimental evidence using shore crabs to test competing hypotheses regarding hierarchy development. The models test (1) what information individuals use when deciding to fight or retreat, (2) how past experience affects current resource-holding potential, and (3) how individuals deal with changes to the social environment. First, we conclude that crabs assess only their own state and not their opponent's when deciding to fight or retreat. Second, willingness to enter, and performance in, aggressive contests are influenced by previous contest outcomes. Winning increases the likelihood of both fighting and winning future interactions, while losing has the opposite effect. Third, when groups with established dominance hierarchies dissolve and new groups form, individuals reassess their ranks, showing no memory of previous rank or group affiliation. With every change in group composition, individuals fight for their new ranks. This iterative process carries over as groups dissolve and form, which has important implications for the relationship between ability and hierarchy rank. We conclude that dominance hierarchies emerge through an interaction of individual and social factors, and discuss these findings in terms of an underlying mechanism. Overall, our results are consistent with crabs using a cumulative assessment strategy iterated across changes in group composition, in which aggression is constrained by an absolute threshold in energy spent and damage received while fighting.

Schizotypy as an organizing framework for social and affective sciences

Schizotypy, defined in terms of commonly occurring personality traits related to the schizophrenia spectrum, has been an important construct for understanding the neurodevelopment and stress-diathesis of schizophrenia. However, as schizotypy nears its sixth decade of application, it is important to acknowledge its impressively rich literature accumulating outside of schizophrenia research. In this article, we make the case that schizotypy has considerable potential as a conceptual framework for understanding individual differences in affective and social functions beyond those directly involved in schizophrenia spectrum pathology. This case is predicated on (a) a burgeoning literature noting anomalies in a wide range of social functioning, affiliative, positive and negative emotional, expressive, and social cognitive systems, (b) practical and methodological features associated with schizotypy research that help facilitate empirical investigation, and (c) close ties to theoretical constructs of central importance to affective and social science (eg, stress diathesis, neural compensation). We highlight recent schizotypy research, ie providing insight into the nature of affective and social systems more generally. This includes current efforts to clarify the neurodevelopmental, neurobiological, and psychological underpinnings of affiliative drives, hedonic capacity, social cognition, and stress responsivity systems. Additionally, we discuss neural compensatory and resilience factors that may mitigate the expression of stress-diathesis and functional outcome, and highlight schizotypy's potential role for understanding cultural determinants of social and affective functions.

Social and individual learning of helping in humans and other species.

Helping behaviors can be innate, learned by copying others (cultural transmission) or individually learned de novo. These three possibilities are often entangled in debates on the evolution of helping in humans. Here we discuss their similarities and differences, and argue that evolutionary biologists underestimate the role of individual learning in the expression of helping behaviors in humans.

Finding an apprenticeship : hidden curriculum and social consequences

In Switzerland, the majority of students are oriented towards professional training after compulsory schooling. At this stage, one of the biggest challenges for them is to find an apprenticeship position. Matching supply and demand is a complex process that not only excludes some students from having direct access to professional training but also forces them to make early choices regarding their future sector of employment. So, how does one find an apprenticeship? And what do the students' descriptions of their search for apprenticeships reveal about the institutional determinants of social inequalities at play in the system? Based on 29 interviews conducted in 2014 with 23 apprentices and 6 recruiters in the Canton of Vaud, this article interrogates how the dimensions of educational and social trajectories combine to affect access to apprenticeships and are accentuated by recruiters using a "hidden curriculum" during the recruitment process. A hidden curriculum consists of knowledge and skills not taught by the educational institution but which appear decisive in obtaining an apprenticeship. By analysing the contrasting experiences of students in their search for an apprenticeship, we identify four types of trajectories that explain different types of school-to-apprenticeship transitions. We show how these determinants are reinforced by the "hidden curriculum" of recruitment based on the soft skills of feeling, autonomy, anticipation and reflexivity that are assessed in the context of recruitment interactions. The discussion section debates how the criteria that appear to be used to identify the "right apprentice" tend to (re)produce inequalities between students. This not only depends on their academic results but also on their social and cultural skills, their ability to anticipate their choices and, more widely, their ability to be a subject in their recruitment search. "The Subject is neither the individual, nor the self, but the work through which an individual transforms into an actor, meaning an agent able to transform his/her situation instead of reproducing it." (Touraine, 1992, p.476).

A Pragmatic Intellectual: Dutch Fabians, Boekman, and Cultural Policy in the Netherlands, 1890-1940

Around 1900, the notion of community art (gemeenschapskunst) served to crystallize Dutch social democratic thinking about the role of the arts in society. Drawing on the pragmatism of leading social democrats like Wibaut, and drawing on his formal education in economics and statistics, the self‐made social democrat Emanuel Boekman redressed the utopian meaning of community art to signify the dissemination of "good" culture over all layers of society in his influential 1939 dissertation on the relation of the state to the arts. Being about facts rather than opinions, Boekman set the boundaries of his work to exclude a substantial discussion of the meaning of "good" culture. On the one hand, this pragmatism helped Boekman to gain support for government intervention for the arts over most of the political spectrum. On the other hand, Boekman thus pre‐empted discussions about the tension between "quality" and "accessibility" of the arts that haunts cultural policy in the Netherlands to this day.

Social Support, Social and Temporal Comparisons Protect Well-Being and Health between 45 and 70 Years Old in Four Urban Communities

This study examined the impact of social support and of temporal and social comparisons on well-being and selfreported health in four capital cities: Paris, Berlin, Moscow and Beijing. Based on the lifespan control theory, an integrative model investigating the influence of these coping strategies, especially on the psychological regulation of health losses, was tested on 1141 respondents aged 45 to 70 years by using structural equation modelling with multigroup comparisons. Results indicated a good fit of the model to participants' responses. In all contexts, physical weaknesses favoured the use of social and temporal comparison strategies rather than social support. Moreover, across the cities, coping strategies were oriented more toward protecting self-evaluation of health than toward enhancement of well-being. Social comparison decreased the impact of physical weaknesses on health evaluation and on well-being in the four cities, but to a lesser extent in China. Results are discussed regarding the normative cross-cultural aspects that intervene during ageing in the four urban contexts.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation: Pawn or Global Player?,

This contribution aims at exploring the significance of the new generation of UNESCO conventions for the recognition of higher education qualifications. It discusses three possible scenarios and links them to the empirical findings of a study that compares the enabling conditions of the first generation of recognition conventions established in the 1970s and 1980s with the ones establishing the second generation today. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the paper argues that the changes illustrate a more general shift in the architecture of the global order and highlights a new role of UNESCO.

Measurement of parent satisfaction in french-speaking PICUs: a need for translation and cultural adaptation of the empathic questionnaire

Background and aims: Family-centred care is an expected standard in PICU and parent reported outcomes are rarely measured. The Dutch validated EMPATHIC questionnaire provides accurate measures of parental perceptions of family-centred care in PICU. A French version would provide an important resource for quality control and benchmarking with other PICUs. The study aimed to translate and to assess the French cultural adaptation of the EMPATHIC questionnaire. Methods: In September 2012, following approval from the developer, translation and cultural adaptation were performed using a structured method (Wild et al. 2005). This included forward-backward translation and reconciliation by an official translator, harmonization assessed by the research team, and cognitive debriefing with the target users' population. In this last step, a convenience sample of parents with PICU experience assessed the comprehensibility and cultural relevance of the 65-item French EMPATHIC questionnaire. The PICUs in Lausanne, Switzerland and Lille, France participated. Results: Seventeen parents, including 13 French native and 4 French as second language speakers, tested the cognitive equivalence and cultural relevance of the French EMPATHIC questionnaire. The mean agreement for comprehensibility of all 65 items reached 90.2%. Three items fell below the cut-off 80% agreement and were revised for inclusion in the final French version. Conclusions: The translation and the cultural adaptation permitted to highlight a few cultural differences that did not interfere with the main construct of the EMPATHIC questionnaire. Reliability and validity testing with a new sample of parents is needed to strengthen the psychometric properties of the French EMPATHIC questionnaire.

Concurrent versus simultaneous use of alcohol and non-medical use of prescription drugs: is simultaneous use worse for mental, social, and health issues?

Abstract This study investigated the difference between concurrent and simultaneous use of alcohol and non-medical use of prescription drugs (NMUPD) in relation to mental, social, and health issues. The 544 study participants of the Swiss ongoing Cohort Study on Substance Use Risk Factors (C-SURF) had a combined use of alcohol with NMUPD during the previous 12 months. Alcohol-related problems (i.e., dependence and consequences), as well as mental, social, and health concerns (i.e., depression, general mental/physical health, and social/health consequences), were assessed. The simultaneous use of alcohol and NMUPD proved to be a greater risk factor for mental, social, and health issues than concurrent use. This study adds information regarding simultaneous polydrug use, which results in distinct effects compared to concurrent use, including important social, psychosocial, and health-related consequences.