Conversational remembering entails that people engage in recalling past experiences, which may th... more Conversational remembering entails that people engage in recalling past experiences, which may themselves have been shared. Conversational remembering comes with social benefits for the person telling the narrative and the one receiving it (e.g., developing and strengthening friendships, fostering entertainment, and consolidating group identity). COVID-19 lockdowns have significantly affected social interaction, including face-to-face interactions where conversational remembering occurs. The aim of this study was to explore how WhatsApp group messages supported conversational remembering in a large group of friends living in Buenos Aires where a complete lockdown was established between 19 March 2020 and 6 November 2020. To accomplish such aim, we conducted a mixed-methods longitudinal study. The data consisted of 32,810 WhatsApp group messages collected over a period of 700 consecutive days, from 13 April 2019 to 13 March 2021. Our study shows that WhatsApp group messages enabled group members to keep connected during the COVID-19 lockdown period. This occurred by remembering together situations, events, and actions associated with the group's identity. The use of WhatsApp group messages may have represented an adaptive collective behaviour in response to changes in global social norms.
Sentiment analysis is the automated coding of emotions expressed in text. Sentiment analysis and ... more Sentiment analysis is the automated coding of emotions expressed in text. Sentiment analysis and other types of analyses focusing on the automatic coding of textual documents are increasingly popular in psychology and computer science. However, the potential of treating automatically coded text collected with regular sampling intervals as a signal is currently overlooked. We use the phrase "text as signal" to refer to the application of signal processing techniques to coded textual documents sampled with regularity. In order to illustrate the potential of treating text as signal, we introduce the reader to a variety of such techniques in a tutorial with two case studies in the realm of social media analysis. First, we apply finite response impulse filtering to emotion-coded tweets posted during the US Election Week of 2020 and discuss the visualization of the resulting variation in the filtered signal. We use changepoint detection to highlight the important changes in the emotional signals. Then we examine data interpolation, analysis of periodicity via the fast Fourier transform (FFT), and FFT filtering to personal value-coded tweets from November 2019 to October 2020 and link the variation in the filtered signal to some of the epoch-defining events occurring during this period. Finally, we use block bootstrapping to estimate the variability/uncertainty in the resulting filtered signals. After working through the tutorial, the readers will understand the basics of signal processing to analyze regularly sampled coded text.
Background Trypophobia is characterised by an aversion to or even revulsion for patterns of holes... more Background Trypophobia is characterised by an aversion to or even revulsion for patterns of holes or visual stimuli featuring such patterns. Past research has shown that trypophobic stimuli trigger emotional and physiological reactions, but relatively little is known about the antecedents, prodromes, or simply covariates of trypophobia. Aim The goals of this study were (a) to draw the contours of the nomological network of trypophobia by assessing the associations of symptoms of trypophobia with several constructs that were deemed relevant from past research on anxiety disorders and specific phobias, (b) to compare such associations with those found for symptoms of spider phobia and blood and injection phobia (alternative dependent variables), and (c) to investigate the main effect of gender on symptoms of trypophobia and replicate the association of gender with symptoms of spider phobia and blood and injection phobia (higher scores for women).
Conversational partners who repeatedly refer to the same objects require less and less collaborat... more Conversational partners who repeatedly refer to the same objects require less and less collaborative effort to do so. This is due to lexical entrainment, the fact that they come to re-use the same words. Lexical entrainment may reflect the elaboration of conceptual pacts, partner-specific agreements about how to name objects which belong to the conversational partners’ common ground. Can lexical entrainment occur even if conversational partners cannot develop conceptual pacts about specific objects? In three experiments, we investigated whether lexical entrainment occurs in the matching task even when cards change over trials and partners are not able to develop pacts. We compared two conditions: a classic condition where cards remained the same for each trial, and a new cards condition where cards changed on each trial. Lexical diversity decreased for pairs in the new cards condition (albeit less than for classical pairs); inconsistent reductions in collaborative effort were also observed. Pairs in the new cards condition also were better able to adapt to novel referring situations (involving novel stimuli or new interaction partners) than classic pairs. The results suggest that lexical entrainment in the matching task may be due in part to factors other than the elaboration of conceptual pacts. These may include the development of an overarching meta-perspective on shared features of cards, reflecting category learning processes resulting from reference negotiation.
Proceedings of the 5th EAI International Conference on Wireless Mobile Communication and Healthcare - "Transforming healthcare through innovations in mobile and wireless technologies", 2015
Conversational interaction is the primary means of communication in everyday life. It serves to c... more Conversational interaction is the primary means of communication in everyday life. It serves to coordinate joint activities among individuals. But conversation is itself a species of joint activity that gets coordinated in an ongoing, emergent manner by participants. Participants coordinate on who participates in an interaction, what roles participants will enact, actions to be performed, and their timing and location. They achieve mutual understanding, or common ground, on these aspects by signaling to each other their beliefs about the state of the conversation on a moment-by-moment basis. We discuss examples of the myriad ways in which various aspects of joint activities get coordinated.
Nursing shift handovers are institutional routines aimed at the transfer of patient information a... more Nursing shift handovers are institutional routines aimed at the transfer of patient information and responsibility among teams of caregivers at the change of shift. They are essential to patient safety and a priority concern for regulatory institutions. Standardization of information transfer during nursing shift handovers is now mandatory in many hospitals. But to date, no study has shown that standardized handover protocols actually improve patient condition. In organization science, research on contingency theory has shown that standardization is efficient only when uncertainty is low. This paper examines how the research on handovers and practical design of handovers could be informed by approaches stemming from contingency theory. The following aspects of adaptability are proposed for more thorough investigation in relation to uncertainty in the unit: adaptability of functions, adaptability of contents, and adaptability of structure.
Shift handovers in nursing units involve formal transmission of information and informal conversa... more Shift handovers in nursing units involve formal transmission of information and informal conversation about non-routine events. Informal conversation often involves telling stories. Direct reported speech (DRS) was studied in handover storytelling in two nursing care units. The study goal is to contribute to a better understanding of conversation in handover and use of DRS in storytelling in institutional contexts. Content analysis revealed that the most frequent sources quoted were oneself and patients, followed by physicians and colleagues. Further, DRS utterances are preceded by reports of situations, actions, and other reported speech, often constituting the climax of a story. Conversation analysis revealed how DRS participates in multimodal reenactments, complaints about patients, and justifying deviations from medical protocols. Results inform understanding of the uses of DRS in institutional storytelling, show how they index relevant membership categories and related knowledge and expectations, and serve as resources for making sense of non-routine events.
Accepted for publication in Swiss Journal of Psychology
Retaining valuable employees is a major issue for organizations, especially for professions chara... more Retaining valuable employees is a major issue for organizations, especially for professions characterized by shortage (e.g., nursing). It is thus important for organizations to determine factors predicting personnel satisfaction and intent to leave at various levels (i.e., organization, group, and individual). Yet, few studies of satisfaction in nursing have analyzed a comprehensive set of factors taking into account multiple organizational levels using appropriate statistical analysis techniques. We conducted a study with 1,547 nurses working in 17 hospitals in Switzerland. Results from multilevel analyses suggest that job satisfaction is predicted by both individual-level (burnout and work-family conflict) and group-level (group cohesion and unit effectiveness) factors, while organizational-level factors (e.g., autonomy) have less impact. Moreover, intent to leave the job is predicted by job satisfaction, but the relationship is moderated by perceived differences in priorities between nurses and their employer. Organizational administrators should consider both individual-level and group-level factors when developing strategies to satisfy and retain key personnel, but also how to align priorities and how to best communicate what they have done.
We investigate dynamics of public perceptions of the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic to understand c... more We investigate dynamics of public perceptions of the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic to understand changing patterns of sense-making and blame regarding the outbreak of emerging infectious diseases. We draw on social representation theory combined with a dramaturgical perspective to identify changes in how various collectives are depicted over the course of the pandemic, according to three roles: heroes, villains and victims. Quantitative results based on content analysis of three cross-sectional waves of interviews show a shift from mentions of distant collectives (e.g., far-flung countries) at Wave 1 to local collectives (e.g., risk groups) as the pandemic became of more immediate concern (Wave 2) and declined (Wave 3). Semi-automated content analysis of media coverage shows similar results. Thematic analyses of the discourse associated with collectives revealed that many were consistently perceived as heroes, villains and victims.
Aims. We explore variations in handover duration and communication in nursing units. We hypothesi... more Aims. We explore variations in handover duration and communication in nursing units. We hypothesize that duration per patient is higher in units facing high task uncertainty. We expect both topics and functions of communication to vary depending on task uncertainty. Background. Handovers are changing in modern healthcare organizations, where standardized procedures are increasingly advocated for efficiency and reliability reasons. However, redesign of handover should take environmental contingencies of different clinical unit types into account. An important contingency in institutions is task uncertainty, which may affect how communicative routines like handover are accomplished. Method. Nurse unit managers of 80 care units in 18 hospitals were interviewed in 2008 about topics and functions of handover communication and duration in their unit. Interviews were content-analysed. Clinical units were classified into a theory-based typology (unit type) that gradually increases on task uncertainty. Quantitative analyses were performed. Findings. Unit type affected resource allocation. Unit types facing higher uncertainty had higher handover duration per patient. As expected, unit type also affected communication content. Clinical units facing higher uncertainty discussed fewer topics, discussing treatment and care and organization of work less frequently. Finally, unit type affected functions of handover: sharing emotions was less often mentioned in unit types facing higher uncertainty. Conclusion. Task uncertainty and its relationship with functions and topics of handover should be taken into account during the design of handover procedures.
Women have a life-expectancy advantage over men, but a marked disadvantage with regards to morbid... more Women have a life-expectancy advantage over men, but a marked disadvantage with regards to morbidity. This is known as the female–male health-survival paradox in disciplines such as medicine, medical sociology, and epidemiology. Individual differences in physical and mental health are further notably explained by the degree of stress individuals endure, with women being more affected by stressors than men. Here, we briefly examine the literature on women’s disadvantage in health and stress. Beyond biological considerations, we follow with socio-cognitive explanations of gender differences in health and stress. We show that gender roles and traits (masculinity in particular) explain part of the gender differences in stress, notably cognitive appraisal and coping. Stress in turn degrades health. Implications are discussed. In conclusion, traditional socialization is advantageous for men in terms of health.
The present study examined the relationships between masculine and feminine traits, measured usin... more The present study examined the relationships between masculine and feminine traits, measured using the Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI), and the way young adults appraise events (i.e., as threats or as challenges). We hypothesized that the locus of control (LOC)—i.e., individuals' perceived control over the events that affect them—mediated these relationships. We tested these assumptions on two student samples from the French-speaking part of Switzerland (N = 123 and N = 504). Regression analyses demonstrated that, as expected, agentic masculine traits were positively related to challenge appraisals, and negatively to threat appraisals. LOC mediated these relationships, but most strongly among female participants. A different pattern was found for femininity. Feminine traits were positively related to increased challenge appraisals, but only in female participants of Sample 2. They were also related, in some cases, to increased threat appraisals. Furthermore, in line with previous research, LOC did not mediate the relationship between feminine traits and cognitive appraisal. Overall, the present results confirm that masculine and feminine stereotypical traits differ in their consequences for the way young adults appraise events in their everyday life.
Conversational remembering entails that people engage in recalling past experiences, which may th... more Conversational remembering entails that people engage in recalling past experiences, which may themselves have been shared. Conversational remembering comes with social benefits for the person telling the narrative and the one receiving it (e.g., developing and strengthening friendships, fostering entertainment, and consolidating group identity). COVID-19 lockdowns have significantly affected social interaction, including face-to-face interactions where conversational remembering occurs. The aim of this study was to explore how WhatsApp group messages supported conversational remembering in a large group of friends living in Buenos Aires where a complete lockdown was established between 19 March 2020 and 6 November 2020. To accomplish such aim, we conducted a mixed-methods longitudinal study. The data consisted of 32,810 WhatsApp group messages collected over a period of 700 consecutive days, from 13 April 2019 to 13 March 2021. Our study shows that WhatsApp group messages enabled group members to keep connected during the COVID-19 lockdown period. This occurred by remembering together situations, events, and actions associated with the group's identity. The use of WhatsApp group messages may have represented an adaptive collective behaviour in response to changes in global social norms.
Sentiment analysis is the automated coding of emotions expressed in text. Sentiment analysis and ... more Sentiment analysis is the automated coding of emotions expressed in text. Sentiment analysis and other types of analyses focusing on the automatic coding of textual documents are increasingly popular in psychology and computer science. However, the potential of treating automatically coded text collected with regular sampling intervals as a signal is currently overlooked. We use the phrase "text as signal" to refer to the application of signal processing techniques to coded textual documents sampled with regularity. In order to illustrate the potential of treating text as signal, we introduce the reader to a variety of such techniques in a tutorial with two case studies in the realm of social media analysis. First, we apply finite response impulse filtering to emotion-coded tweets posted during the US Election Week of 2020 and discuss the visualization of the resulting variation in the filtered signal. We use changepoint detection to highlight the important changes in the emotional signals. Then we examine data interpolation, analysis of periodicity via the fast Fourier transform (FFT), and FFT filtering to personal value-coded tweets from November 2019 to October 2020 and link the variation in the filtered signal to some of the epoch-defining events occurring during this period. Finally, we use block bootstrapping to estimate the variability/uncertainty in the resulting filtered signals. After working through the tutorial, the readers will understand the basics of signal processing to analyze regularly sampled coded text.
Background Trypophobia is characterised by an aversion to or even revulsion for patterns of holes... more Background Trypophobia is characterised by an aversion to or even revulsion for patterns of holes or visual stimuli featuring such patterns. Past research has shown that trypophobic stimuli trigger emotional and physiological reactions, but relatively little is known about the antecedents, prodromes, or simply covariates of trypophobia. Aim The goals of this study were (a) to draw the contours of the nomological network of trypophobia by assessing the associations of symptoms of trypophobia with several constructs that were deemed relevant from past research on anxiety disorders and specific phobias, (b) to compare such associations with those found for symptoms of spider phobia and blood and injection phobia (alternative dependent variables), and (c) to investigate the main effect of gender on symptoms of trypophobia and replicate the association of gender with symptoms of spider phobia and blood and injection phobia (higher scores for women).
Conversational partners who repeatedly refer to the same objects require less and less collaborat... more Conversational partners who repeatedly refer to the same objects require less and less collaborative effort to do so. This is due to lexical entrainment, the fact that they come to re-use the same words. Lexical entrainment may reflect the elaboration of conceptual pacts, partner-specific agreements about how to name objects which belong to the conversational partners’ common ground. Can lexical entrainment occur even if conversational partners cannot develop conceptual pacts about specific objects? In three experiments, we investigated whether lexical entrainment occurs in the matching task even when cards change over trials and partners are not able to develop pacts. We compared two conditions: a classic condition where cards remained the same for each trial, and a new cards condition where cards changed on each trial. Lexical diversity decreased for pairs in the new cards condition (albeit less than for classical pairs); inconsistent reductions in collaborative effort were also observed. Pairs in the new cards condition also were better able to adapt to novel referring situations (involving novel stimuli or new interaction partners) than classic pairs. The results suggest that lexical entrainment in the matching task may be due in part to factors other than the elaboration of conceptual pacts. These may include the development of an overarching meta-perspective on shared features of cards, reflecting category learning processes resulting from reference negotiation.
Proceedings of the 5th EAI International Conference on Wireless Mobile Communication and Healthcare - "Transforming healthcare through innovations in mobile and wireless technologies", 2015
Conversational interaction is the primary means of communication in everyday life. It serves to c... more Conversational interaction is the primary means of communication in everyday life. It serves to coordinate joint activities among individuals. But conversation is itself a species of joint activity that gets coordinated in an ongoing, emergent manner by participants. Participants coordinate on who participates in an interaction, what roles participants will enact, actions to be performed, and their timing and location. They achieve mutual understanding, or common ground, on these aspects by signaling to each other their beliefs about the state of the conversation on a moment-by-moment basis. We discuss examples of the myriad ways in which various aspects of joint activities get coordinated.
Nursing shift handovers are institutional routines aimed at the transfer of patient information a... more Nursing shift handovers are institutional routines aimed at the transfer of patient information and responsibility among teams of caregivers at the change of shift. They are essential to patient safety and a priority concern for regulatory institutions. Standardization of information transfer during nursing shift handovers is now mandatory in many hospitals. But to date, no study has shown that standardized handover protocols actually improve patient condition. In organization science, research on contingency theory has shown that standardization is efficient only when uncertainty is low. This paper examines how the research on handovers and practical design of handovers could be informed by approaches stemming from contingency theory. The following aspects of adaptability are proposed for more thorough investigation in relation to uncertainty in the unit: adaptability of functions, adaptability of contents, and adaptability of structure.
Shift handovers in nursing units involve formal transmission of information and informal conversa... more Shift handovers in nursing units involve formal transmission of information and informal conversation about non-routine events. Informal conversation often involves telling stories. Direct reported speech (DRS) was studied in handover storytelling in two nursing care units. The study goal is to contribute to a better understanding of conversation in handover and use of DRS in storytelling in institutional contexts. Content analysis revealed that the most frequent sources quoted were oneself and patients, followed by physicians and colleagues. Further, DRS utterances are preceded by reports of situations, actions, and other reported speech, often constituting the climax of a story. Conversation analysis revealed how DRS participates in multimodal reenactments, complaints about patients, and justifying deviations from medical protocols. Results inform understanding of the uses of DRS in institutional storytelling, show how they index relevant membership categories and related knowledge and expectations, and serve as resources for making sense of non-routine events.
Accepted for publication in Swiss Journal of Psychology
Retaining valuable employees is a major issue for organizations, especially for professions chara... more Retaining valuable employees is a major issue for organizations, especially for professions characterized by shortage (e.g., nursing). It is thus important for organizations to determine factors predicting personnel satisfaction and intent to leave at various levels (i.e., organization, group, and individual). Yet, few studies of satisfaction in nursing have analyzed a comprehensive set of factors taking into account multiple organizational levels using appropriate statistical analysis techniques. We conducted a study with 1,547 nurses working in 17 hospitals in Switzerland. Results from multilevel analyses suggest that job satisfaction is predicted by both individual-level (burnout and work-family conflict) and group-level (group cohesion and unit effectiveness) factors, while organizational-level factors (e.g., autonomy) have less impact. Moreover, intent to leave the job is predicted by job satisfaction, but the relationship is moderated by perceived differences in priorities between nurses and their employer. Organizational administrators should consider both individual-level and group-level factors when developing strategies to satisfy and retain key personnel, but also how to align priorities and how to best communicate what they have done.
We investigate dynamics of public perceptions of the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic to understand c... more We investigate dynamics of public perceptions of the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic to understand changing patterns of sense-making and blame regarding the outbreak of emerging infectious diseases. We draw on social representation theory combined with a dramaturgical perspective to identify changes in how various collectives are depicted over the course of the pandemic, according to three roles: heroes, villains and victims. Quantitative results based on content analysis of three cross-sectional waves of interviews show a shift from mentions of distant collectives (e.g., far-flung countries) at Wave 1 to local collectives (e.g., risk groups) as the pandemic became of more immediate concern (Wave 2) and declined (Wave 3). Semi-automated content analysis of media coverage shows similar results. Thematic analyses of the discourse associated with collectives revealed that many were consistently perceived as heroes, villains and victims.
Aims. We explore variations in handover duration and communication in nursing units. We hypothesi... more Aims. We explore variations in handover duration and communication in nursing units. We hypothesize that duration per patient is higher in units facing high task uncertainty. We expect both topics and functions of communication to vary depending on task uncertainty. Background. Handovers are changing in modern healthcare organizations, where standardized procedures are increasingly advocated for efficiency and reliability reasons. However, redesign of handover should take environmental contingencies of different clinical unit types into account. An important contingency in institutions is task uncertainty, which may affect how communicative routines like handover are accomplished. Method. Nurse unit managers of 80 care units in 18 hospitals were interviewed in 2008 about topics and functions of handover communication and duration in their unit. Interviews were content-analysed. Clinical units were classified into a theory-based typology (unit type) that gradually increases on task uncertainty. Quantitative analyses were performed. Findings. Unit type affected resource allocation. Unit types facing higher uncertainty had higher handover duration per patient. As expected, unit type also affected communication content. Clinical units facing higher uncertainty discussed fewer topics, discussing treatment and care and organization of work less frequently. Finally, unit type affected functions of handover: sharing emotions was less often mentioned in unit types facing higher uncertainty. Conclusion. Task uncertainty and its relationship with functions and topics of handover should be taken into account during the design of handover procedures.
Women have a life-expectancy advantage over men, but a marked disadvantage with regards to morbid... more Women have a life-expectancy advantage over men, but a marked disadvantage with regards to morbidity. This is known as the female–male health-survival paradox in disciplines such as medicine, medical sociology, and epidemiology. Individual differences in physical and mental health are further notably explained by the degree of stress individuals endure, with women being more affected by stressors than men. Here, we briefly examine the literature on women’s disadvantage in health and stress. Beyond biological considerations, we follow with socio-cognitive explanations of gender differences in health and stress. We show that gender roles and traits (masculinity in particular) explain part of the gender differences in stress, notably cognitive appraisal and coping. Stress in turn degrades health. Implications are discussed. In conclusion, traditional socialization is advantageous for men in terms of health.
The present study examined the relationships between masculine and feminine traits, measured usin... more The present study examined the relationships between masculine and feminine traits, measured using the Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI), and the way young adults appraise events (i.e., as threats or as challenges). We hypothesized that the locus of control (LOC)—i.e., individuals' perceived control over the events that affect them—mediated these relationships. We tested these assumptions on two student samples from the French-speaking part of Switzerland (N = 123 and N = 504). Regression analyses demonstrated that, as expected, agentic masculine traits were positively related to challenge appraisals, and negatively to threat appraisals. LOC mediated these relationships, but most strongly among female participants. A different pattern was found for femininity. Feminine traits were positively related to increased challenge appraisals, but only in female participants of Sample 2. They were also related, in some cases, to increased threat appraisals. Furthermore, in line with previous research, LOC did not mediate the relationship between feminine traits and cognitive appraisal. Overall, the present results confirm that masculine and feminine stereotypical traits differ in their consequences for the way young adults appraise events in their everyday life.
Purpose:
In this contribution, we examine the press coverage of the H1N1 A(2009) pdm influenza v... more Purpose:
In this contribution, we examine the press coverage of the H1N1 A(2009) pdm influenza virus, the H1N5 avian flu virus and the common/seasonal flu viruses. We ask several questions, including: Are there lexical patterns that organize the data, allowing to recognize the strand discussed from the lexicon ? How does the depiction of emerging infectious diseases differ from the coverage of the seasonal flu generally ? Are the swine and avian flu depicted differently ?
Methods and materials :
From the archives of two prominent newspapers (the New York Times and the Guardian), we retrieved two thousand articles that contained the term ‘flu’ in their title. The articles spanned over 30 years, (from January 1980 to May 2013). Included articles featured the word 'flu' in their title. We produced the term/document matrix using tf-idf as a measure, after tokenization, top-word filtering stemming and pruning.
Results:
We present descriptive analyses which display the frequency of mentions of each strain monthly and yearly. Logistic regressions in which the strain discussed is regressed on the tf-idf measure of each term simultaneously, show that the lexicon for discussing the different strains is partly specialized, but also overlapping. Association rules further explore these relationships.
Conclusion :
The main interest of this contribution is to understand the differences and similarities in the press coverage of flu-type emerging diseases, and the seasonal flu. The media communicate about the different flu strands is specialized to some extent, but part of the lexicon is common between the strands. Implications regarding the automatic classification of articles will be discussed.
In this paper, we present a psychophysiological study, which uses a wearable device for the conti... more In this paper, we present a psychophysiological study, which uses a wearable device for the continuous collection of heart rate (HR) measures in 66 participants (53% women). We examine the impact of gender roles and cognitive appraisal on HR and HR adaptation during laboratory induced stress. We show that average values hide patterns of adaptation and advocate the use of measurements with a high granularity (e.g., at the level of the second). Using such measurements, we show that femininity, masculinity (gender roles) and threat and challenge appraisals moderate HR adaptation to stress.
Data from 239 employees (119 women and 120 men) from Albania were analyzed using repeated measure... more Data from 239 employees (119 women and 120 men) from Albania were analyzed using repeated measures and moderated mediation analysis to examine how the type of affirmative action policy influences the attribution of feminine and masculine traits to female candidates selected for a decision-making position. In a group-based policy, ambiguous with regard to individuating information about the female candidate (e.g., quota in comparison to weak preferential treatment), participants were expected to draw on group identity to categorize and evaluate its beneficiaries. Confirming this assumption, women benefiting from quota were perceived as more feminine than masculine, while those benefiting from weak preferential treatment were evaluated as more masculine than feminine. We further examined the relationship between the affirmative action policies and the essentialization (i.e., feminization) of women benefiting from these policies by examining the mediating role of the perceived threat to men’s economic status. In line with our expectations, the results of the moderated mediations showed that quota triggered stronger feminization, partly because this policy was perceived to threaten men’s status. Moreover, the mediating role of perceived threat was found only among male participants in the quota condition. To conclude, we discuss these findings by focusing on the strategic use of intergroup essentialization.
Females and males are socialized differently since their early years. Gender roles are related to... more Females and males are socialized differently since their early years. Gender roles are related to cognitive appraisal type. In turn, cognitive appraisal type predicts coping strategies and perceived stress. The importance of social support has also been highlighted in the stress literature (e.g., the buffering hypothesis), but the examination of the role of interpersonal trust has previously been largely neglected. Here, we show it these relate to perceived stress. Sixty-nine (62% female) were recruited on the campus of a Swiss university. They filled in Bem Sex Role inventory (short form), Skinner and Brewer’s cognitive appraisal scale (CA), a scale measuring interpersonal trust (IT, modified from the General Social Survey), and Cohen and colleagues’ Perceived Stress Scale (our dependent variable). Scales were built following principal component analysis results. All scales had an adequate to very good reliability as measured by Cohen’s alpha. We ran hierarchical regressions to examine the impact of Gender Roles, CA, IT, and GBS on perceived stress, controlling for gender. A first model predicted 10% of variance. It included masculinity and femininity and was only marginally significantly different from the control model (including gender only). In this model, masculinity predicted PSS. A second model including threat and challenge appraisal as well explained 23% of variance and was significantly better than the first. Challenge appraisal was related to a decrease in perceived stress, whereas masculinity was no longer a significant predictor. A third model in which we added IT (positively and negatively worded; 7% additional variance explained) was significantly better than model 2. IT (positively worded only) was related to a decrease in stress. The scope of results will be extended and implications will be presented.
Technological advances like natural language processing, computer vision and machine learning all... more Technological advances like natural language processing, computer vision and machine learning allow machines to exhibit a range of human-like characteristics, such as to hold a conversation and recognize emotions (e.g., JAXA’s space robot ‘Kirobo’). People have a tendency to anthropomorphise animals and objects. But can a machine seem human enough to be considered as an equal partner in interaction? Theories of anthropomorphism, implicit theories of human nature and dehumanization are here generalized to interactions with virtual humans. A second part of the contribution tests predictions regarding the gradual dehumanization of virtual humans. Using LIWC and repeated measures ANOVAs, we analysed 200 conversations from the Loebner Prize, where judges have to discover if they are chatting with a human or a virtual human. People start addressing machines as humans and then, allegedly considering that they do not feel emotions as humans do, cease showing them the politeness they show human conspecifics.
A new strand of flu virus appeared in Mexico in April 2009. It spread quickly, first in Mexico ci... more A new strand of flu virus appeared in Mexico in April 2009. It spread quickly, first in Mexico city - causing the closing of schools and restaurants, then on the American continent and globally. The A/H1N1 virus otherwise known as Swine flu, or Mexican flu virus became the first pandemic virus of the 21st century in June 2009. Media coverage of the outbreak and propagation of the A/H1N1 virus was intense and at times contradictory. This study examines similarities and differences between coverage of the Swine flu pandemic virus, the avian flu virus and the common/seasonal flu viruses. We used Lexis Nexis to retrieve two thousand articles spanning over 30 years, (from January 1980 to May 2013) that contain the word 'flu' in their title, in two newspapers: the New York Times and the Guardian. We used Rapidminer 5 to process the content of the articles, which were tokenized, stop-word filtered and stemmed. The term-document matrix was produced using the tf/idf ratio. We present initial analyses visually, mostly in the form of scatter plots, histograms and association graphs available in Rapidminer 5.
Few studies have investigated multitasking in joint actions, especially two joint actions perform... more Few studies have investigated multitasking in joint actions, especially two joint actions performed by two people together and coordinated via multimodal communication. We investigate the case of two people walking and talking together, a common combination of joint actions. In an experiment, pairs talked together in four varying conditions of mobility. A narrator told a story to a partner. They did this while either standing immobile, walking along a straight-line itinerary, or walking along a complex itinerary featuring several turns. They also completed a walking task along a complex itinerary without having to tell a story. One person (the navigator) was also entrusted with a map of the itinerary. We analyzed how participants coordinated turning in the complex itinerary while telling a story. Narrators relied more on verbal means to signal turning, and were more distracted during the turn, leading to more repetition of story-related content.
In August 2011, the killing of a black young man by the police triggered a series of violent riot... more In August 2011, the killing of a black young man by the police triggered a series of violent riots across England. While direct references to ethnicity were avoided, ethnic diversity was an apparent feature in public debates and media depictions of the riots. The present study relied on a mixed method design to examine how agreement with the official discourse was related to individuals’ ethnic diversity attitudes during these tumultuous events. First, a content analysis was performed on four official speeches delivered during the riots. Although ethnicity was barely mentioned, distinctions between a virtuous ingroup and dangerous outgroups linked with references to stereotypes of ethnic minorities were constantly made, justifying harsh measures against rioters. Then, based on data (N = 233) collected online during the riots, we examined the relationships between individuals’ agreement with the content of the speeches and ethnic diversity attitudes. Two complementary methods were sequentially used to measure individuals’ agreement: In addition to a scale directly assessing agreement, we evaluated, by means of automated content analysis, the similarity between the official speeches and the comments provided by the participants (N = 99). Regression analyses showed that agreement was related to negative ethnic diversity attitudes. Moreover, the more participants blamed diversity for the riots, the closer to the speeches their comments were. Overall, the use of mixed methods was necessary to not only capture the meaning of agreement with the official speeches, but also to confirm its consequences for ethnic diversity attitudes.
Men and women differ in cognitive appraisal and perception of potential harm. But are these diffe... more Men and women differ in cognitive appraisal and perception of potential harm. But are these differences explained by acquired gender-role identification rather than biology? This study explores this issue. Cognitive appraisal determines emotional and cognitive responses to aversive situations, while risk perception is determinant in the adoption of prevention strategies. Participants (N=336) completed the feminity and masculinity subscales of the Bem Sex Role Inventory and Skinner & Brewer’s assessment of cognitive appraisals of threat and challenge. Participants also assessed the potential harm of 8 violent events (e.g., sexual harassment, physical aggression) and 8 diseases (e.g., depression, diabetes).
Four groups were created from the feminity and masculinity subscales: feminine, masculine, androgynous (high on both subscales) and undifferentiated (low on both subscales). As expected, gender-role identification impacted appraisal of challenge. Androgynous participants were the group with the highest appraisal of challenge in life and undifferentiated the least. In line with hypotheses, gender-role identification also impacted appraisal of threat, despite additional impacts of biological sex. Feminine and undifferentiated participants were the two groups with the highest appraisal of threat in life, whereas masculine participants the least. Finally, on the one hand, gender-role identification impacted how harmful most violent events were assessed, as expected. On the other, gender-role identification influenced the assessments of only one disease, whereas biological sex impacted the assessment of 3 diseases. Overall, the study showed that gender-role identification is a stronger predictor of cognitive appraisal and perception of potential harm of violent events than biological sex.
Stressors are appraised as neutral, threatening or challenging, with documented sex differences. ... more Stressors are appraised as neutral, threatening or challenging, with documented sex differences. Drawing on gender schema theory, two studies show that these differences originate in traits traditionally expected for men or women. Study 1 explores the mediating impact of locus of control (LOC). Study 2 considers the impact on perceived stress.
Les explications populaires des maladies émergentes invoquent souvent les actions des exogroupes,... more Les explications populaires des maladies émergentes invoquent souvent les actions des exogroupes, qui seraient responsables de l’émergence et la diffusion de la maladie de par leurs habitudes (alimentaires, sexuelles) déficientes ou par volonté de nuire à l’endogroupe (Joffe, 1999). De telles explications permettent de situer symboliquement la maladie hors de l’endogroupe et sous-tendent souvent une minimisation du risque (Joffe & Haarhoff, 2002). Il existe cependant peu de recherches qui étudient l’évolution des explications au cours d’une crise aiguë, notamment lorsque la maladie apparaît dans un pays particulier. De tels phénomènes peuvent rendre inapplicables les explications par le biais de l’exogroupe. En effet, on a pu montrer dans le cas d’une épidémie iatrogène (Washer & Joffe, 2006) que les explications populaires mettaient plutôt en cause les autorités sanitaires et les politiciens du pays.
Notre étude analyse les explications populaires de la pandémie de H1N1 en 2009 au début, au milieu et après celle-ci. Nous avons menés une série d’entretiens avec des représentants de la population suisse en été 2009 (début de la pandémie), en décembre 2009 (campagne de vaccination, et en décembre 2010 (après la pandémie). Les discours produits ont été retranscrits et chaque référence à un groupe a été codé, ainsi que le contenu de la référence. Nous avons aussi mené une analyse médiatique pour les mêmes périodes, analyse qui reprenait les mêmes éléments que dans les entretiens. Les résultats montrent une transition claire d’un pattern explicatif focalisé sur les exogroupes (surtout des pays étrangers) lors du début de la pandémie vers un pattern mettant en cause des groupes internes à la Suisse lorsque la maladie apparaît en Suisse (p.ex. des industries pharmaceutiques ou des groupes à risque).
Les résultats illustrent un aspect peu étudié de la représentation sociale des maladies, notamment l’évolution dynamique des explications au cours d’une crise aiguë.
Nurses’ shortage is a worldwide threat to patient safety. Causes are an increasing demand for hea... more Nurses’ shortage is a worldwide threat to patient safety. Causes are an increasing demand for health care services mainly because of population’s ageing, insufficient numbers of newly graduates, and an increasing number of nurses leaving nursing. Our study’ objective is to better understand the last two points
Registered nurses (N=904) from 14 Swiss hospitals and nursing students (N=288) from 4 Swiss nursing schools filled online questionnaires. In the nursing sample we measured intent to leave their job and occupation, job satisfaction and organizational commitment. We also measured the importance given to 18 practices related to working conditions (e.g., salary, working hours, promotion opportunities, work-life balance) and nurses’ perception of the importance given by the hospital to these practices. In the students sample we measured intent to leave school for another and intent to leave the occupation, identification towards nursing, satisfaction with education, and the importance given to the 18 practices.
Discrepancies between the importance given by nurses to the practices and perception of importance given by the employer were related to job satisfaction, organizational commitment and intent to leave. The importance given by students to the practices was similar to results of the nursing sample, making students potentially unsatisfied when entering the job market. Moreover students’ satisfaction with education was related to nursing identification, which was related to their intent to leave nursing. Better collaborations between nursing schools and employers can potentially help tackling the shortage by offering more satisfying education and adjusting students’ expectancies towards their future working conditions.
Stereotypical gender traits are known to influence the way people evaluate stressors (i.e. challe... more Stereotypical gender traits are known to influence the way people evaluate stressors (i.e. challenge and/or threat cognitive appraisals) ; yet the mediating mechanisms remain unclear. The present study focuses on the role played by external locus of control (LOC), which has been related to both gender traits and cognitive appraisal. Indeed, people with strong masculine traits (e.g., agency) are prone to evaluate situations as positive challenges, which may be due to their tendency to not attribute control to external factors. While the impact of feminine traits (e.g., nurturance) on cognitive appraisal has not been tested, a positive relation between such traits and external LOC has been found ; we predict this will lead to higher levels of threat appraisal and lower levels of challenge appraisal. Our hypotheses were tested using data from a web-based questionnaire (N = 324) including items on stereotypical gender traits (Bem Sex Role Inventory, 1974), external LOC (back luck and powerful others subscales ; Levenson, 1974) and cognitive appraisal (Skinner & Brewer, 2002). Exploratory factor analyses reveal that both LOC subscales load on a single factor, so a unique score of externality is considered. Results of multiple regressions confirm most of our expectations. Both externality and threat appraisal are positively related to femininity and negatively to masculinity. Challenge appraisal is not significantly related to femininity, but is positively impacted by masculinity. Externality is related to higher scores of threat appraisal and lower scores of challenge appraisal. Sobel tests indicate that the relation between both types of gender trait and threat appraisal is partially mediated by externality, while this is found for masculinity only in the case of challenge appraisal. Overall the present results deepen our understanding of the relation between gender traits and reactions to stressful events by highlighting the role played by external LOC.
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Papers by Eric Mayor
Background. Handovers are changing in modern healthcare organizations, where standardized procedures are increasingly advocated for efficiency and reliability reasons. However, redesign of handover should take environmental contingencies of different clinical unit types into account. An important contingency in institutions is task uncertainty, which may affect how communicative routines like handover are accomplished.
Method. Nurse unit managers of 80 care units in 18 hospitals were interviewed in 2008 about topics and functions of handover communication and duration in their unit. Interviews were content-analysed. Clinical units were classified into a theory-based typology (unit type) that gradually increases on task uncertainty. Quantitative analyses were performed.
Findings. Unit type affected resource allocation. Unit types facing higher uncertainty had higher handover duration per patient. As expected, unit type also affected communication content. Clinical units facing higher uncertainty discussed fewer topics, discussing treatment and care and organization of work less frequently. Finally, unit type affected functions of handover: sharing emotions was less often mentioned in unit types facing higher uncertainty.
Conclusion. Task uncertainty and its relationship with functions and topics of handover should be taken into account during the design of handover procedures.
Background. Handovers are changing in modern healthcare organizations, where standardized procedures are increasingly advocated for efficiency and reliability reasons. However, redesign of handover should take environmental contingencies of different clinical unit types into account. An important contingency in institutions is task uncertainty, which may affect how communicative routines like handover are accomplished.
Method. Nurse unit managers of 80 care units in 18 hospitals were interviewed in 2008 about topics and functions of handover communication and duration in their unit. Interviews were content-analysed. Clinical units were classified into a theory-based typology (unit type) that gradually increases on task uncertainty. Quantitative analyses were performed.
Findings. Unit type affected resource allocation. Unit types facing higher uncertainty had higher handover duration per patient. As expected, unit type also affected communication content. Clinical units facing higher uncertainty discussed fewer topics, discussing treatment and care and organization of work less frequently. Finally, unit type affected functions of handover: sharing emotions was less often mentioned in unit types facing higher uncertainty.
Conclusion. Task uncertainty and its relationship with functions and topics of handover should be taken into account during the design of handover procedures.
In this contribution, we examine the press coverage of the H1N1 A(2009) pdm influenza virus, the H1N5 avian flu virus and the common/seasonal flu viruses. We ask several questions, including: Are there lexical patterns that organize the data, allowing to recognize the strand discussed from the lexicon ? How does the depiction of emerging infectious diseases differ from the coverage of the seasonal flu generally ? Are the swine and avian flu depicted differently ?
Methods and materials :
From the archives of two prominent newspapers (the New York Times and the Guardian), we retrieved two thousand articles that contained the term ‘flu’ in their title. The articles spanned over 30 years, (from January 1980 to May 2013). Included articles featured the word 'flu' in their title. We produced the term/document matrix using tf-idf as a measure, after tokenization, top-word filtering stemming and pruning.
Results:
We present descriptive analyses which display the frequency of mentions of each strain monthly and yearly. Logistic regressions in which the strain discussed is regressed on the tf-idf measure of each term simultaneously, show that the lexicon for discussing the different strains is partly specialized, but also overlapping. Association rules further explore these relationships.
Conclusion :
The main interest of this contribution is to understand the differences and similarities in the press coverage of flu-type emerging diseases, and the seasonal flu. The media communicate about the different flu strands is specialized to some extent, but part of the lexicon is common between the strands. Implications regarding the automatic classification of articles will be discussed.
Four groups were created from the feminity and masculinity subscales: feminine, masculine, androgynous (high on both subscales) and undifferentiated (low on both subscales). As expected, gender-role identification impacted appraisal of challenge. Androgynous participants were the group with the highest appraisal of challenge in life and undifferentiated the least. In line with hypotheses, gender-role identification also impacted appraisal of threat, despite additional impacts of biological sex. Feminine and undifferentiated participants were the two groups with the highest appraisal of threat in life, whereas masculine participants the least. Finally, on the one hand, gender-role identification impacted how harmful most violent events were assessed, as expected. On the other, gender-role identification influenced the assessments of only one disease, whereas biological sex impacted the assessment of 3 diseases. Overall, the study showed that gender-role identification is a stronger predictor of cognitive appraisal and perception of potential harm of violent events than biological sex.
Notre étude analyse les explications populaires de la pandémie de H1N1 en 2009 au début, au milieu et après celle-ci. Nous avons menés une série d’entretiens avec des représentants de la population suisse en été 2009 (début de la pandémie), en décembre 2009 (campagne de vaccination, et en décembre 2010 (après la pandémie). Les discours produits ont été retranscrits et chaque référence à un groupe a été codé, ainsi que le contenu de la référence. Nous avons aussi mené une analyse médiatique pour les mêmes périodes, analyse qui reprenait les mêmes éléments que dans les entretiens. Les résultats montrent une transition claire d’un pattern explicatif focalisé sur les exogroupes (surtout des pays étrangers) lors du début de la pandémie vers un pattern mettant en cause des groupes internes à la Suisse lorsque la maladie apparaît en Suisse (p.ex. des industries pharmaceutiques ou des groupes à risque).
Les résultats illustrent un aspect peu étudié de la représentation sociale des maladies, notamment l’évolution dynamique des explications au cours d’une crise aiguë.
Registered nurses (N=904) from 14 Swiss hospitals and nursing students (N=288) from 4 Swiss nursing schools filled online questionnaires. In the nursing sample we measured intent to leave their job and occupation, job satisfaction and organizational commitment. We also measured the importance given to 18 practices related to working conditions (e.g., salary, working hours, promotion opportunities, work-life balance) and nurses’ perception of the importance given by the hospital to these practices. In the students sample we measured intent to leave school for another and intent to leave the occupation, identification towards nursing, satisfaction with education, and the importance given to the 18 practices.
Discrepancies between the importance given by nurses to the practices and perception of importance given by the employer were related to job satisfaction, organizational commitment and intent to leave. The importance given by students to the practices was similar to results of the nursing sample, making students potentially unsatisfied when entering the job market. Moreover students’ satisfaction with education was related to nursing identification, which was related to their intent to leave nursing. Better collaborations between nursing schools and employers can potentially help tackling the shortage by offering more satisfying education and adjusting students’ expectancies towards their future working conditions.