The Effects of Collective Ritual on Affect, Unity, and Pro-Sociality: A Naturalistic Study

<p>Anthropologists have long speculated that collective group rituals endure due to their functional capacity to foster co-operation and cohesion within groups and thus help societies to overcome free-rider problems. Recently, experimental studies have provided empirical data to support this hypothesis and have suggested that synchronous group movement as a key element in this process. Further more, recent field studies have suggested that the sacred values surrounding rituals may mediate the synchrony/pro-sociality relationship. The current study aims to further explore the psychological affects of group ritual in terms of positive affect, perceptions of group unity, and pro-sociality in naturalistic settings. Additionally the current study extrapolates out physical arousal and religiosity as important elements of ritual as well as synchronous movement. Our results suggest that the psychological modulations of positive affect, perceived group unity, and pro-sociality in rituals are primarily due to the meaning context within which they are performed. Results have also shown that when used together in a religious context, rituals that use high levels of synchrony and physicality are associated with higher levels of positive affect and co-operation within groups. These findings may help to explain the expansion of charismatic religions in those regions of the world where there are lower levels of security. They also suggest that past laboratory studies of ritual have been limited due to their inability to assess the meaning contexts that may be driving the effects found. Further research is required to assess the rates of endurance of these psychological affects outside of ritualistic settings and also the generalisation of pro-sociality to outgroups. Also, future development of more accurate measures of variables for field use will provide additional strength and reliability within this field.</p>

The Effects of Collective Ritual on Affect, Unity, and Pro-Sociality: A Naturalistic Study

<p>Anthropologists have long speculated that collective group rituals endure due to their functional capacity to foster co-operation and cohesion within groups and thus help societies to overcome free-rider problems. Recently, experimental studies have provided empirical data to support this hypothesis and have suggested that synchronous group movement as a key element in this process. Further more, recent field studies have suggested that the sacred values surrounding rituals may mediate the synchrony/pro-sociality relationship. The current study aims to further explore the psychological affects of group ritual in terms of positive affect, perceptions of group unity, and pro-sociality in naturalistic settings. Additionally the current study extrapolates out physical arousal and religiosity as important elements of ritual as well as synchronous movement. Our results suggest that the psychological modulations of positive affect, perceived group unity, and pro-sociality in rituals are primarily due to the meaning context within which they are performed. Results have also shown that when used together in a religious context, rituals that use high levels of synchrony and physicality are associated with higher levels of positive affect and co-operation within groups. These findings may help to explain the expansion of charismatic religions in those regions of the world where there are lower levels of security. They also suggest that past laboratory studies of ritual have been limited due to their inability to assess the meaning contexts that may be driving the effects found. Further research is required to assess the rates of endurance of these psychological affects outside of ritualistic settings and also the generalisation of pro-sociality to outgroups. Also, future development of more accurate measures of variables for field use will provide additional strength and reliability within this field.</p>

The measure of spatial position within groups that best predicts predation risk depends on group movement

Both empirical and theoretical studies show that an individual's spatial position within a group can impact the risk of being targeted by predators. Spatial positions can be quantified in numerous ways, but there are no direct comparisons of different spatial measures in predicting the risk of being targeted by real predators. Here, we assess these spatial measures in groups of stationary and moving virtual prey being attacked by three-spined sticklebacks ( Gasterosteus aculeatus ). In stationary groups, the limited domain of danger best predicted the likelihood of attack. In moving groups, the number of near neighbours was the best predictor but only over a limited range of distances within which other prey were counted. Otherwise, measures of proximity to the group's edge outperformed measures of local crowding in moving groups. There was no evidence that predators preferentially attacked the front or back of the moving groups. Domains of danger without any limit, as originally used in the selfish herd model, were also a poor predictor of risk. These findings reveal that the collective properties of prey can influence how spatial position affects predation risk, via effects on predators' targeting. Selection may therefore act differently on prey positioning behaviour depending on group movement.

Dehumanized gender identity: Critical reflection on neuroscience, power relationship and law

This article discusses the gender question which is directed towards power, whether it is family dynamics, scientific domain or another sociocultural arena. Gender was not discussed as prominently in various forums integrating neuroscience and law. The gender movement comprising feminist and queer group movement addressed various issues of prejudices in the legal domain including, the logic derived from the dominant male value system. This metatheory to critically address gender in various domains has an important role in the interdisciplinary social sciences. The context of the body in all forms were observed from the eye of the male observer rather than the eye of beholder of one’s body. The genesis of one’s existence in the context of gender was heavily theorized both in order to subjugate the matter of identity movement, ownership and self. Article discusses how the stereotypical view corresponding to the mythology and parasitic view prevalent in the history was made as fact through discourse construction, scientific appropriations, historical writings. Thus, identifying simplistic psychology of one’s agency, societal framing of the methods of socialization and institutionalizing the common sense of inferiority about one’s identity including the process of internalization along with the biological inferiority has maintained the gap in the gender equality

ANALYSIS OF ULTRASOUND IMAGE BIOLOGICAL IMAGE ALGORITHM IN THE RESTORATION OF MUSCLE GROUP MOVEMENT FUNCTION

ABSTRACT Objective: By studying the recognition effect of ultrasonic biological image data analysis on muscle group motion function, the evaluation value and significance of ultrasonic biomedical image combination algorithm on muscle group motion function are discussed. Methods: A Gabor filtering algorithm is proposed to smooth the original image. The MVEF algorithm is used to enhance the ultrasonic image and binary further the image again. Using the principle of the Hove transform, the thickness of the muscle is automatically estimated. Results: The square of correlation coefficients of the manual measurement method, Gabor filtering algorithm and MVEF algorithm are 91.3%, 91.3% and 87.8%, respectively. The difference between the manual measurement and the estimation based on the Gabor filtering algorithm is 1.45 ± 0.48mm. The difference between the results of manual measurement and the MVEF algorithm is 1.38 ± 0.56mm. The computation time of the MVEF algorithm and Gabor algorithm are 5 seconds and 0.3 seconds, respectively. Conclusions: The algorithm proposed in this study can effectively measure the muscle thickness, fast, convenient and accurate, and can reflect the contractility of skeletal muscle well, which is of great value for the recognition and evaluation of muscle group movement function. Level of evidence II; Therapeutic studies - investigation of treatment results.

MARKETING RESEARCH IN THE PIZZERIA MARKET

В настоящее время в России продолжает расти популярность пиццы. Авторами выделены лидеры российского рынка пиццерий, а также составлен рейтинг пиццерий на нижегородском рынке. Целью статьи выступает определение емкости рынка выбранного сегмента. Научная новизна статьи представлена результатами проведенного маркетингового исследования на рынке пиццерий в г. Н. Новгород. Рассмотрены причины развития маркетинговых исследований как практической области. Представлены источники получения информации для проведения маркетинговых исследований сферы питания в современном обществе. Выделены клиентские потоки применительно к специфике деятельности предприятий общественного питания сетевых форматов (постоянные и дискретные), а также его признаки (причина движения, однородность группы, регулярность движения, переход представителей клиентского потока в качественно иной статус, наличие процесса движения группы). The authors point out that marketing is a type of activity that develops changes and evolves with us. There is the essence of the concept of “marketing research” and the authors reveal the reasons for the development of marketing research as a practical area. The authors note that marketing research is a broader concept than market research, as it covers all the factors that affect, to one degree or another, the activities of an organization. There are sources of information for marketing research in the article. The catering sector in modern society is a rather popular type of service. Client flows are highlighted in relation to the specifics of the activities of public catering enterprises of network formats (permanent and discrete) The authors list the signs of the client flow (the reason for the movement, the homogeneity of the group, the regularity of the movement, the transition of the representatives of the client flow to a qualitatively different status, the presence of the group movement process). Currently, the popularity of pizza among Russians is increasing. In order to determine the state of the pizza market, the authors conducted a marketing research. The leaders of the Russian pizzeria market were identified, and a rating of pizzerias in the Nizhny Novgorod market was compiled. The purpose of this article is to determine the market capacity of the selected segment. The scientific novelty of the article comes down to the fact that the authors conducted a marketing research in the pizza market of Nizhny Novgorod.

A Pilot Study of the Effects of Human Intervention on Canine Group Movement Behavior

Dogs are the oldest domesticated animals. The process of domestication of dogs is still unclear; however, they have established themselves as human partners and are sometimes more cooperative with humans than their conspecifics. In this study, to determine the effect of affiliative human presence on group behavior in dogs, we conducted short-time trials analyzing dog group movements. There was a hierarchical relationship in which juvenile dogs were aware of adult dogs, and adult dogs were aware of human movements. We also found that the age of the juvenile dog and the characteristics of their mothers may affect the movement behavior of juvenile dogs.

Group-walking effect on bidirectional pedestrian flow in a corridor

Groups are commonly found in general crowds and their behaviors are distinguished from that of isolated pedestrians. Thus, in recent five years researchers have started to investigate pedestrian group movement. In this paper, we considered group walking effect and introduced group floor field to the traditional floor field model. Furthermore, two different methods of generating group floor field were put forward, i.e. group center generation (method 1 for short) and group leader generation (method 2 for short), and we applied the proposed group model to simulate bidirectional pedestrian flow in a corridor. No matter which method of generating group floor field is adopted, the simulation results show that group members walk slower than singles, and with the group size increasing the transition point from the free flow phase to the jamming has a decrease trend. In addition, it seems that method 2 of generating group floor field makes group more cohesive and stable at the same crowd density than method 1. Afterwards it is found that the crowd with large group size is more easily affected by asymmetric injection rate. At last, people’s walking preference is shortly discussed, and it is obtained that people’s walking preference is also good for group movement from the perspective of movement efficiency.

The measure of spatial position within groups that best predicts predation risk depends on group movement

Both empirical and theoretical studies show that an individual's spatial position within a group can impact the risk of being targeted by predators. Spatial positions can be quantified in numerous ways, but there are no direct comparisons of different spatial measures in predicting the risk of being targeted by real predators. Here we assess these spatial measures in groups of stationary and moving virtual prey being attacked by three-spined sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus). In stationary groups, the limited domain of danger best predicted the likelihood of attack. In moving groups, the number of near neighbours was the best predictor but only over a limited range of distances within which other prey were counted. Otherwise, measures of proximity to the group's edge outperformed measures of local crowding in moving groups. There was no evidence that predators preferentially attacked the front or back of the moving groups. Domains of danger without any limit, as originally used in the selfish herd model, were also a poor predictor of risk. These findings reveal that the collective properties of prey can influence how spatial position affects predation risk, via effects on predators' targeting, hence selection may act differently on prey positioning behaviour depending on group movement.