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AI & Society Apr 2022In combating the ongoing global health threat of the COVID-19 pandemic, decision-makers have to take actions based on a multitude of relevant health data with severe...
In combating the ongoing global health threat of the COVID-19 pandemic, decision-makers have to take actions based on a multitude of relevant health data with severe potential consequences for the affected patients. Because of their presumed advantages in handling and analyzing vast amounts of data, computer systems of algorithmic decision-making (ADM) are implemented and substitute humans in decision-making processes. In this study, we focus on a specific application of ADM in contrast to human decision-making (HDM), namely the allocation of COVID-19 vaccines to the public. In particular, we elaborate on the role of trust and social group preference on the legitimacy of vaccine allocation. We conducted a survey with a 2 × 2 randomized factorial design among = 1602 German respondents, in which we utilized distinct decision-making agents (HDM vs. ADM) and prioritization of a specific social group (teachers vs. prisoners) as design factors. Our findings show that general trust in ADM systems and preference for vaccination of a specific social group influence the legitimacy of vaccine allocation. However, contrary to our expectations, trust in the agent making the decision did not moderate the link between social group preference and legitimacy. Moreover, the effect was also not moderated by the type of decision-maker (human vs. algorithm). We conclude that trustworthy ADM systems must not necessarily lead to the legitimacy of ADM systems.
PubMed: 35469142
DOI: 10.1007/s00146-022-01412-3 -
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal... Sep 2022Characterizing non-human primate social complexity and its cognitive bases has proved challenging. Using principal component analyses, we show that primate social,... (Meta-Analysis)
Meta-Analysis
Characterizing non-human primate social complexity and its cognitive bases has proved challenging. Using principal component analyses, we show that primate social, ecological and reproductive behaviours condense into two components: (including most social and ecological variables) and (comprising mainly a suite of behaviours associated with pairbonded monogamy). We contextualize these results using a meta-analysis of 44 published analyses of primate brain evolution. These studies yield two main consistent results: cognition, sociality and cooperative behaviours are associated with absolute brain volume, neocortex size and neocortex ratio, whereas diet composition and life history are consistently associated with relative brain size. We use a path analysis to evaluate the causal relationships among these variables, demonstrating that social group size is predicted by the neocortex, whereas ecological traits are predicted by the volume of brain structures other than the neocortex. That a range of social and technical behaviours covary, and are correlated with social group size and brain size, suggests that primate cognition has evolved along a continuum resulting in an increasingly flexible, domain-general capacity to solve a range of socioecological challenges culminating in a capacity for, and reliance on, innovation and social information use in the great apes and humans. This article is part of the theme issue 'Cognition, communication and social bonds in primates'.
Topics: Animals; Biological Evolution; Brain; Cognition; Neocortex; Primates; Social Behavior
PubMed: 35934968
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2021.0296 -
Socio-economic Planning Sciences Mar 2022We aim to design a allocation approach to maximize the geographical diversity and avoid in the sense of demographic disparity. During the development of this work, the...
We aim to design a allocation approach to maximize the geographical diversity and avoid in the sense of demographic disparity. During the development of this work, the COVID-19 pandemic is still spreading in the U.S. and other parts of the world on large scale. Many poor communities and minority groups are much more vulnerable than the rest. To provide sufficient vaccine and medical resources to all residents and effectively stop the further spreading of the pandemic, the average medical resources per capita of a community should be independent of the community's demographic features but only conditional on the exposure rate to the disease. In this article, we integrate different aspects of resource allocation and create a synergistic intervention strategy that gives vulnerable populations higher priority in medical resource distribution. This prevention-centered strategy seeks a balance between geographical coverage and social group fairness. The proposed principle can be applied to other scarce resources and social benefits allocation.
PubMed: 34812203
DOI: 10.1016/j.seps.2021.101193 -
Bulletin of the World Health... 1999Both health inequalities and social group health differences are important aspects of measuring population health. Despite widespread recognition of their magnitude in...
Both health inequalities and social group health differences are important aspects of measuring population health. Despite widespread recognition of their magnitude in many high- and low-income countries, there is considerable debate about the meaning and measurement of health inequalities, social group health differences and inequities. The lack of standard definitions, measurement strategies and indicators has and will continue to limit comparisons--between and within countries, and over time--of health inequalities, and perhaps more importantly comparative analyses of their determinants. Such comparative work, however, will be essential to find effective policies for governments to reduce health inequalities. This article addresses the question of whether we should be measuring health inequalities or social group health differences. To help clarify the strengths and weaknesses of these two approaches, we review some of the major arguments for and against each of them.
Topics: Causality; Health Status; Humans; Public Health; Racial Groups; Social Class; Social Justice; Socioeconomic Factors
PubMed: 10444876
DOI: No ID Found -
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal... Jun 2008Social cognition concerns the various psychological processes that enable individuals to take advantage of being part of a social group. Of major importance to social... (Review)
Review
Social cognition concerns the various psychological processes that enable individuals to take advantage of being part of a social group. Of major importance to social cognition are the various social signals that enable us to learn about the world. Such signals include facial expressions, such as fear and disgust, which warn us of danger, and eye gaze direction, which indicate where interesting things can be found. Such signals are particularly important in infant development. Social referencing, for example, refers to the phenomenon in which infants refer to their mothers' facial expressions to determine whether or not to approach a novel object. We can learn a great deal simply by observing others. Much of this signalling seems to happen automatically and unconsciously on the part of both the sender and the receiver. We can learn to fear a stimulus by observing the response of another, in the absence of awareness of that stimulus. By contrast, learning by instruction, rather than observation, does seem to depend upon awareness of the stimulus, since such learning does not generalize to situations where the stimulus is presented subliminally. Learning by instruction depends upon a meta-cognitive process through which both the sender and the receiver recognize that signals are intended to be signals. An example would be the 'ostensive' signals that indicate that what follows are intentional communications. Infants learn more from signals that they recognize to be instructive. I speculate that it is this ability to recognize and learn from instructions rather than mere observation which permitted that advanced ability to benefit from cultural learning that seems to be unique to the human race.
Topics: Brain; Cognition; Communication; Culture; Humans; Psychology, Social; Social Behavior
PubMed: 18292063
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2008.0005 -
Journal of Healthcare Engineering 2022To compare the mental health status of the elderly under different pension modes and to provide evidence for improving institutional services and the quality of life of...
OBJECTIVE
To compare the mental health status of the elderly under different pension modes and to provide evidence for improving institutional services and the quality of life of the elderly.
METHODS
A total of 118 elderly people in social welfare homes, nursing homes, and elderly welfare centers in D city and 165 elderly people from families in D city were assessed by self-made questionnaire, Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), activities of daily living scale (ADL), and social support rating scale (SSRS).
RESULTS
The total scores of mental health and self, emotion, and adaptation subscales in the social group were higher than those in the home group, with a significant difference ( > 0.05). The scores of cognitive and interpersonal subscales in the home group were higher than those in the social group, but the differences were not significant ( > 0.05). Under the mode of family pension and social institution pension, the health status of the elderly has certain differences. The elderly in different old-age care modes have good performance in diet and sleep, and there is no statistical difference between them ( > 0.05).
CONCLUSION
The investigation shows that the mental health status of the elderly under the family pension model is obviously better than that under the social institution pension model.
Topics: Activities of Daily Living; Aged; Humans; Mental Health; Nursing Homes; Pensions; Quality of Life
PubMed: 35178223
DOI: 10.1155/2022/2367406 -
Proceedings. Biological Sciences Oct 2018Over our species history, humans have typically lived in small groups of under a hundred individuals. However, our face recognition abilities appear to equip us to...
Over our species history, humans have typically lived in small groups of under a hundred individuals. However, our face recognition abilities appear to equip us to recognize very many individuals, perhaps thousands. Modern society provides access to huge numbers of faces, but no one has established how many faces people actually know. Here, we describe a method for estimating this number. By combining separate measures of recall and recognition, we show that people know about 5000 faces on average and that individual differences are large. Our findings offer a possible explanation for large variation in identification performance. They also provide constraints on understanding the qualitative differences between perception of familiar and unfamiliar faces-a distinction that underlies all current theories of face recognition.
Topics: Facial Recognition; Humans; Individuality; Mental Recall; Recognition, Psychology
PubMed: 30305434
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2018.1319 -
Comprehensive Psychoneuroendocrinology Nov 2021Acute stress has been found to elicit pro-social, anti-social or null responses in humans. The causes for these contradicting findings are currently poorly understood,...
Acute stress has been found to elicit pro-social, anti-social or null responses in humans. The causes for these contradicting findings are currently poorly understood, and may rise from subjects' characteristics, such as sex or hormonal status, as well as stimuli-based traits, such as group membership. In the current study, 120 subjects performed either the Trier Social Stress Test or a control (non-stress inducing) condition, followed by ranking displayed faces according to several attributes (e.g., trustworthiness, attractiveness, dominance). Participants' eye gaze was also tracked while viewing facial stimuli. We examined how acute stress interacts with participants' sex, female participants' hormonal status (hormonal contraceptives, early-follicular phase and mid-luteal phase), and the observed faces' social group (ethnicity-based in-group or out-groups). In general, frequentist and Bayesian analyses showed that acute stress exposure did not affect social attributions or gaze behavior, nor did it interact with subjects' sex or the group membership of the observed faces. Interestingly, sub-group analyses showed that in females, acute stress interacted with hormonal status to yield heterogenous anti-social effects, such as post-stress reductions in perceived trustworthiness in the early-follicular phase, and lower perceived attractiveness in the mid-luteal phase. Given the small sample sizes for the sub-groups, these results should be viewed as preliminary until further replicated. Our results highlight the necessity for large-scale studies, particularly in females, to further refine existing theories regarding the nature and contexts by which acute stress elicits changes in social cognition and behavior.
PubMed: 35757674
DOI: 10.1016/j.cpnec.2021.100093 -
Scientific Reports Aug 2017Learning from other individuals (e.g. social learning) is subjected to biases affecting whom to learn from. Consistent with research in animals, showing similarity-based...
Learning from other individuals (e.g. social learning) is subjected to biases affecting whom to learn from. Consistent with research in animals, showing similarity-based learning biases and a general tendency to display pro-social responses to in-group individuals, we recently demonstrated that social learning of both fear and safety was enhanced when information was transmitted between same-race individuals. Here, we addressed how two different social group categories jointly affect the transmission of fears by investigating the interplay between racial and supporter group membership. We demonstrate that supporter group membership differentially influenced learning from a racial in-group vs. racial out-group individual. Thus, conditioned skin conductance responses in the same-race condition were significantly higher when fear was transmitted by an in-group (same team) vs. an out-group (rival team) individual, and were related to supporter team identification. However, supporter group membership did not influence learning from a racial out-group demonstrator, suggesting that the presence of an alternative alliance does not necessary reduce the influence of racial biases on social fear learning.
PubMed: 28794414
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-07522-z -
British Journal of Preventive & Social... Dec 1977Morality rates for various social groups within the population of Finland were compared, using 179 919 death certificates for the period 1969-72. Morality was generally...
Morality rates for various social groups within the population of Finland were compared, using 179 919 death certificates for the period 1969-72. Morality was generally lowest in the highest social groups and highest among unskilled workers. Male mortality from coronary heart disease was also high among lower salaried employees. In the less developed area of northern Finland, female mortality from coronary heart disease and vascular lesions of the central nervous system was highest among the agricultural population. Cancer of the breast, cancer of the intestine, and suicides among women were apparently concentrated in the higher classes. Life table analysis showed that the social group differences in life expectancy at birth could be as great as 7.2 years. It is considered indispensable for a national health policy to improve on the recording of occupational data and to give regularly the occupation of the deceased when publishing mortality rates.
Topics: Female; Finland; Humans; Life Expectancy; Male; Mortality; Sex Factors; Social Class
PubMed: 597676
DOI: No ID Found