Measuring Emotional Contagion in Social Media

Social media are used as main discussion channels by millions of individuals every day. The content individuals produce in daily social-media-based micro-communications, and the emotions therein expressed, may impact the emotional states of others. A recent experiment performed on Facebook hypothesized that emotions spread online, even in absence of non-verbal cues typical of in-person interactions, and that individuals are more likely to adopt positive or negative emotions if these are over-expressed in their social network. Experiments of this type, however, raise ethical concerns, as they require massive-scale content manipulation with unknown consequences for the individuals therein involved. Here, we study the dynamics of emotional contagion using a random sample of Twitter users, whose activity (and the stimuli they were exposed to) was observed during a week of September 2014. Rather than manipulating content, we devise a null model that discounts some confounding factors (including the effect of emotional contagion). We measure the emotional valence of content the users are exposed to before posting their own tweets. We determine that on average a negative post follows an over-exposure to 4.34% more negative content than baseline, while positive posts occur after an average over-exposure to 4.50% more positive contents. We highlight the presence of a linear relationship between the average emotional valence of the stimuli users are exposed to, and that of the responses they produce. We also identify two different classes of individuals: highly and scarcely susceptible to emotional contagion. Highly susceptible users are significantly less inclined to adopt negative emotions than the scarcely susceptible ones, but equally likely to adopt positive emotions. In general, the likelihood of adopting positive emotions is much greater than that of negative emotions.     

Understanding Social Contagion in Adoption Processes Using Dynamic Social Networks

There are many studies in the marketing and diffusion literature of the conditions in which social contagion affects adoption processes. Yet most of these studies assume that social interactions do not change over time, even though actors in social networks exhibit different likelihoods of being influenced across the diffusion period. Rooted in physics and epidemiology theories, this study proposes a Susceptible Infectious Susceptible (SIS) model to assess the role of social contagion in adoption processes, which takes changes in social dynamics over time into account. To study the adoption over a span of ten years, the authors used detailed data sets from a community of consumers and determined the importance of social contagion, as well as how the interplay of social and non-social influences from outside the community drives adoption processes. Although social contagion matters for diffusion, it is less relevant in shaping adoption when the study also includes social dynamics among members of the community. This finding is relevant for managers and entrepreneurs who trust in word-of-mouth marketing campaigns whose effect may be overestimated if marketers fail to acknowledge variations in social interactions.     

Cohesion Fatigue Explains Why Pharmacological Inhibition of the APC/C Induces a Spindle Checkpoint-Dependent Mitotic Arrest

The Spindle Assembly Checkpoint (SAC) delays the onset of anaphase in response to unattached kinetochores by inhibiting the activity of the Anaphase-Promoting Complex/Cyclosome (APC/C), an E3 ubiquitin ligase. Once all the chromosomes have bioriented, SAC signalling is somehow silenced, which allows progression through mitosis. Recent studies suggest that the APC/C itself participates in SAC silencing by targeting an unknown factor for proteolytic degradation. Key evidence in favour of this model comes from the use of proTAME, a small molecule inhibitor of the APC/C. In cells, proTAME causes a mitotic arrest that is SAC-dependent. Even though this observation comes at odds with the current view that the APC/C acts downstream of the SAC, it was nonetheless argued that these results revealed a role for APC/C activity in SAC silencing. However, we show here that the mitotic arrest induced by proTAME is due to the induction of cohesion fatigue, a phenotype that is caused by the loss of sister chromatid cohesion following a prolonged metaphase. Under these conditions, the SAC is re-activated and APC/C inhibition is maintained independently of proTAME. Therefore, these results provide a simpler explanation for why the proTAME-induced mitotic arrest is also dependent on the SAC. While these observations question the notion that the APC/C is required for SAC silencing, we nevertheless show that APC/C activity does partially contribute to its own release from inhibitory complexes, and importantly, this does not depend on proteasome-mediated degradation.     

Contagion of Cooperation in Static and Fluid Social Networks

Cooperation is essential for successful human societies. Thus, understanding how cooperative and selfish behaviors spread from person to person is a topic of theoretical and practical importance. Previous laboratory experiments provide clear evidence of social contagion in the domain of cooperation, both in fixed networks and in randomly shuffled networks, but leave open the possibility of asymmetries in the spread of cooperative and selfish behaviors. Additionally, many real human interaction structures are dynamic: we often have control over whom we interact with. Dynamic networks may differ importantly in the goals and strategic considerations they promote, and thus the question of how cooperative and selfish behaviors spread in dynamic networks remains open. Here, we address these questions with data from a social dilemma laboratory experiment. We measure the contagion of both cooperative and selfish behavior over time across three different network structures that vary in the extent to which they afford individuals control over their network ties. We find that in relatively fixed networks, both cooperative and selfish behaviors are contagious. In contrast, in more dynamic networks, selfish behavior is contagious, but cooperative behavior is not: subjects are fairly likely to switch to cooperation regardless of the behavior of their neighbors. We hypothesize that this insensitivity to the behavior of neighbors in dynamic networks is the result of subjects’ desire to attract new cooperative partners: even if many of one’s current neighbors are defectors, it may still make sense to switch to cooperation. We further hypothesize that selfishness remains contagious in dynamic networks because of the well-documented willingness of cooperators to retaliate against selfishness, even when doing so is costly. These results shed light on the contagion of cooperative behavior in fixed and fluid networks, and have implications for influence-based interventions aiming at increasing cooperative behavior.     

Matrilineal Cohesion and Social Networks in Macaca fuscata

In a provisioned troop of Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) in Arashiyama, Japan, greater adherence to Kawamura's rules of matrilineal rank inheritance and youngest ascendancy occurred among high-ranking females versus low-ranking females. Accordingly, high-ranking females formed more clustered hierarchies and low-ranking females had more dispersed hierarchies. A proximate explanation for this finding may be related to differences in how females maintain their social networks. To determine whether the clustering in the hierarchy was reflected in patterns of social cohesiveness, I compared network sizes of coalition and grooming partners for females in each third of the hierarchy. I calculated the proportion of available partners that were coalition and grooming partners within each category of relatedness (0.5 r 0.004 and r = 0). High-ranking females formed coalitions with a large proportion of their close relatives and a small proportion of their distant relatives; middle-ranking females supported an intermediate proportion of their close relatives and a small proportion of their distant relatives; and, low-ranking females formed coalitions with very few available close and distant relatives. High-ranking females groomed nearly all available close relatives and an intermediate proportion of distant relatives, whilst middle- and low-ranking females groomed a large proportion of available close relatives and a very small proportion of distant relatives. Thus, levels of clustering within the hierarchy appeared to reflect levels of social cohesion, in terms of grooming and coalition formation.     

Social Relationships in a Group of Captive Wolves

The social organization of a group of wolves in a large outdoorenclosure was followed through several breeding seasons. Duringthe breeding season conflicts become more frequent and the socialhierarchy obvious. The more dominant animals restrict courtshipactivities by inferior wolves of their own sex. However, apparentlyas a correlate of their position, two alpha males have shownless mating activity than other males. Mate preferences exhibitedby animals of both sexes also limit the number of matings. Thepreferences appear related to the social hierarchy existingwhen an animal matures. Cultural transmission of social statusis suggested by some changes in ranking of wolves raised inthe woods at Brookfield. Temporary removal of the original alphamale and death of the original alpha female appear to have promotedchanges in social order and an increase in actual mating combinations.The probable consanguineous nature of wolf groups and facetsof the social behavior suggest that some form of group selectioncould be operative in the wild.     

The Impact of Heterogeneous Thresholds on Social Contagion with Multiple Initiators

The threshold model is a simple but classic model of contagion spreading in complex social systems. To capture the complex nature of social influencing we investigate numerically and analytically the transition in the behavior of threshold-limited cascades in the presence of multiple initiators as the distribution of thresholds is varied between the two extreme cases of identical thresholds and a uniform distribution. We accomplish this by employing a truncated normal distribution of the nodes’ thresholds and observe a non-monotonic change in the cascade size as we vary the standard deviation. Further, for a sufficiently large spread in the threshold distribution, the tipping-point behavior of the social influencing process disappears and is replaced by a smooth crossover governed by the size of initiator set. We demonstrate that for a given size of the initiator set, there is a specific variance of the threshold distribution for which an opinion spreads optimally. Furthermore, in the case of synthetic graphs we show that the spread asymptotically becomes independent of the system size, and that global cascades can arise just by the addition of a single node to the initiator set.     

Beyond Contagion: Reality Mining Reveals Complex Patterns of Social Influence

Contagion, a concept from epidemiology, has long been used to characterize social influence on people’s behavior and affective (emotional) states. While it has revealed many useful insights, it is not clear whether the contagion metaphor is sufficient to fully characterize the complex dynamics of psychological states in a social context. Using wearable sensors that capture daily face-to-face interaction, combined with three daily experience sampling surveys, we collected the most comprehensive data set of personality and emotion dynamics of an entire community of work. From this high-resolution data about actual (rather than self-reported) face-to-face interaction, a complex picture emerges where contagion (that can be seen as adaptation of behavioral responses to the behavior of other people) cannot fully capture the dynamics of transitory states. We found that social influence has two opposing effects on states: adaptation effects that go beyond mere contagion, and complementarity effects whereby individuals’ behaviors tend to complement the behaviors of others. Surprisingly, these effects can exhibit completely different directions depending on the stable personality or emotional dispositions (stable traits) of target individuals. Our findings provide a foundation for richer models of social dynamics, and have implications on organizational engineering and workplace well-being.     

Social Cohesion,Social Participation,and HIV Related Risk among Female Sex Workers in Swaziland

Social capital is important to disadvantaged groups, such as sex workers, as a means of facilitating internal group-related mutual aid and support as well as access to broader social and material resources. Studies among sex workers have linked higher social capital with protective HIV-related behaviors; however, few studies have examined social capital among sex workers in sub-Saharan Africa. This cross-sectional study examined relationships between two key social capital constructs, social cohesion among sex workers and social participation of sex workers in the larger community, and HIV-related risk in Swaziland using respondent-driven sampling. Relationships between social cohesion, social participation, and HIV-related risk factors were assessed using logistic regression. HIV prevalence among the sample was 70.4% (223/317). Social cohesion was associated with consistent condom use in the past week (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]  = 2.25, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.30–3.90) and was associated with fewer reports of social discrimination, including denial of police protection. Social participation was associated with HIV testing (AOR = 2.39, 95% CI: 1.36–4.03) and using condoms with non-paying partners (AOR = 1.99, 95% CI: 1.13–3.51), and was inversely associated with reported verbal or physical harassment as a result of selling sex (AOR = 0.55, 95% CI: 0.33–0.91). Both social capital constructs were significantly associated with collective action, which involved participating in meetings to promote sex worker rights or attending HIV-related meetings/ talks with other sex workers. Social- and structural-level interventions focused on building social cohesion and social participation among sex workers could provide significant protection from HIV infection for female sex workers in Swaziland.     

Fertility Politics as "Social Viagra": Reproducing Boundaries, Social Cohesion, and Modernity in Italy

In this article, we investigate the delicacy of adopting pronatalism as a public position in Italy. Mounting scientific and political knowledge about the demographic "problem" exposes a new hegemonic formation that low fertility is dangerous. Drawing on ethnographic contexts, political debates, media publications, and policy documents, we trace the "demographic emergency" and compare two policies: a monetary baby bonus and a law restricting assisted reproduction. The coexistence of incentives to counter superlow fertility with prohibitions on high-tech baby making reflect the contested governance of "social cohesion." We conclude that scholarly and popular discourses serve as a sort of "social Viagra." Ultimately, both policies sought to rejuvenate family norms. Both aimed to fortify the political terrain of a nation-state struggling to achieve and maintain modernity against a backdrop of immigration and aging. Modernity became a weapon of the state to exert control over Italian fertility practices and of its critics to deploy orientalizing representations of backwardness.     

Group Colocation Behavior in Technological Social Networks

We analyze two large datasets from technological networks with location and social data: user location records from an online location-based social networking service, and anonymized telecommunications data from a European cellphone operator, in order to investigate the differences between individual and group behavior with respect to physical location. We discover agreements between the two datasets: firstly, that individuals are more likely to meet with one friend at a place they have not visited before, but tend to meet at familiar locations when with a larger group. We also find that groups of individuals are more likely to meet at places that their other friends have visited, and that the type of a place strongly affects the propensity for groups to meet there. These differences between group and solo mobility has potential technological applications, for example, in venue recommendation in location-based social networks.     

Determining Behavioural Syndromes in Voles – The Effects of Social Environment

Animal personality and behavioural syndromes have experienced rapid increase in interest in the last few years because of their possible role in the evolution of life histories. However, there is still a scarcity of studies concerning the mechanisms maintaining variation in behaviour as well as addressing their relationships to each other. In this paper, we tested the main assumptions of personality, focusing on the individual variability and repeatability of behaviour, and the identification of behavioural syndromes using the common vole (Microtus arvalis) as the species being studied. We also studied the effects of family group characters (group size, sex ratio and affinity to family) on the behaviour in this rodent. The animals were repeatedly tested in two behavioural experiments – novel environment (NE) test and radial‐arm maze (RAM) test, from which seven personality traits were extracted. The study revealed that inter‐individual variance in vole behaviour was consistent and repeatable. Individual‐specific responses to NE corresponded with the performance in the maze, which revealed behavioural syndromes and possible trade‐offs. Anxiety was determined by the size of the family group, whereas escape‐related behaviours and maze‐exploring tactic were more dependent on the affinity to the family. It seems that the development of personality traits we identified here is determined by the effects and structure of the family groups. Further studies are needed to confirm whether the observed variance in vole personalities is maintained by the fitness costs and benefits of the opposite tactics (here fast‐random vs. slow‐systematic exploration) in more natural circumstances.     

Improving Decision Speed,Accuracy and Group Cohesion through Early Information Gathering in House-Hunting Ants

Background

Successful collective decision-making depends on groups of animals being able to make accurate choices while maintaining group cohesion. However, increasing accuracy and/or cohesion usually decreases decision speed and vice-versa. Such trade-offs are widespread in animal decision-making and result in various decision-making strategies that emphasize either speed or accuracy, depending on the context. Speed-accuracy trade-offs have been the object of many theoretical investigations, but these studies did not consider the possible effects of previous experience and/or knowledge of individuals on such trade-offs. In this study, we investigated how previous knowledge of their environment may affect emigration speed, nest choice and colony cohesion in emigrations of the house-hunting ant Temnothorax albipennis, a collective decision-making process subject to a classical speed-accuracy trade-off.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Colonies allowed to explore a high quality nest site for one week before they were forced to emigrate found that nest and accepted it faster than emigrating naïve colonies. This resulted in increased speed in single choice emigrations and higher colony cohesion in binary choice emigrations. Additionally, colonies allowed to explore both high and low quality nest sites for one week prior to emigration remained more cohesive, made more accurate decisions and emigrated faster than emigrating naïve colonies.

Conclusions/Significance

These results show that colonies gather and store information about available nest sites while their nest is still intact, and later retrieve and use this information when they need to emigrate. This improves colony performance. Early gathering of information for later use is therefore an effective strategy allowing T. albipennis colonies to improve simultaneously all aspects of the decision-making process – i.e. speed, accuracy and cohesion – and partly circumvent the speed-accuracy trade-off classically observed during emigrations. These findings should be taken into account in future studies on speed-accuracy trade-offs.     

Preface: Recent advances in Crustacean Genomics

Aquatic plants fulfil a wide range of ecological roles, and make a substantial contribution to the structure, function and service provision of aquatic ecosystems. Given their well-documented importance in aquatic ecosystems, research into aquatic plants continues to blossom. The 14th International Symposium on Aquatic Plants, held in Edinburgh in September 2015, brought together 120 delegates from 28 countries and six continents. This special issue of Hydrobiologia includes a select number of papers on aspects of aquatic plants, covering a wide range of species, systems and issues. In this paper, we present an overview of current trends and future directions in aquatic plant research in the early twenty first century. Our understanding of aquatic plant biology, the range of scientific issues being addressed and the range of techniques available to researchers have all arguably never been greater; however, substantial challenges exist to the conservation and management of both aquatic plants and the ecosystems in which they are found. The range of countries and continents represented by conference delegates and authors of papers in the special issue illustrates the global relevance of aquatic plant research in the early twenty first century but also the many challenges that this burgeoning scientific discipline must address.     

Glycogen in Crustacean Fast and Slow Muscles

Ultrastructural examination of crayfish superficial (tonic)and deep (phasic) abdominal extensor muscles reveals a distributionand quantitative difference in glycogen between these muscles.Both superficial and deep fibers have a dense accumulation ofglycogen in the interfibrillar sarcoplasm. In addition, thesuperficial extensors, but not the deep extensors, contain glycogenin the I band region. The glycogen granules are of the ßtype and can be removed enzymatically. The superficial medialand lateral fibers contain more glycogen than the medial andlateral deep fibers. A possible functional role for this differenceis suggested.     

Calcium-Dependent Calcium Decay Explains STDP in a Dynamic Model of Hippocampal Synapses

It is widely accepted that the direction and magnitude of synaptic plasticity depends on post-synaptic calcium flux, where high levels of calcium lead to long-term potentiation and moderate levels lead to long-term depression. At synapses onto neurons in region CA1 of the hippocampus (and many other synapses), NMDA receptors provide the relevant source of calcium. In this regard, post-synaptic calcium captures the coincidence of pre- and post-synaptic activity, due to the blockage of these receptors at low voltage. Previous studies show that under spike timing dependent plasticity (STDP) protocols, potentiation at CA1 synapses requires post-synaptic bursting and an inter-pairing frequency in the range of the hippocampal theta rhythm. We hypothesize that these requirements reflect the saturation of the mechanisms of calcium extrusion from the post-synaptic spine. We test this hypothesis with a minimal model of NMDA receptor-dependent plasticity, simulating slow extrusion with a calcium-dependent calcium time constant. In simulations of STDP experiments, the model accounts for latency-dependent depression with either post-synaptic bursting or theta-frequency pairing (or neither) and accounts for latency-dependent potentiation when both of these requirements are met. The model makes testable predictions for STDP experiments and our simple implementation is tractable at the network level, demonstrating associative learning in a biophysical network model with realistic synaptic dynamics.     

A Social Network Analysis of Social Cohesion in a Constructed Pride: Implications for Ex Situ Reintroduction of the African Lion (Panthera leo)

Animal conservation practices include the grouping of captive related and unrelated individuals to form a social structure which is characteristic of that species in the wild. In response to the rapid decline of wild African lion (Panthera leo) populations, an array of conservational strategies have been adopted. Ex situ reintroduction of the African lion requires the construction of socially cohesive pride structures prior to wild release. This pilot study adopted a social network theory approach to quantitatively assess a captive pride’s social structure and the relationships between individuals within them. Group composition (who is present in a group) and social interaction data (social licking, greeting, play) was observed and recorded to assess social cohesion within a released semi-wild pride. UCINET and SOCPROG software was utilised to represent and analyse these social networks. Results indicate that the pride is socially cohesive, does not exhibit random associations, and the role of socially influential keystone individuals is important for maintaining social bondedness within a lion pride. These results are potentially informative for the structure of lion prides, in captivity and in the wild, and could have implications for captive and wild-founder reintroductions.     

Reduced Methylene Blue as a Stain for Crustacean Nerves

Effective in situ staining of crustacean nerves was achieved with leuco methylene blue reduced with either ascorbic acid or sodium hydrosulfite (Na₂S₂O₄). A stock solution of methylene blue, 0.4% (ca. 0.001 M), and the reductants, ascorbic acid or sodium hydrosulfite (0.01 M), were prepared in van Harreveld's crayfish physiological solution. Methylene blue stock solution was mixed with either of the reductants in the approximate ratio of 1:10, v/v, and titrated to the end point. Ascorbic acid reduction is light catalyzed and requires intense illumination during titration. The cleared or leucomethylene blue stock solution is suitable for immediate use as a working nerve stain. With either reductant, the working solution oxidizes on standing in air, but can be titrated repeatedly without loss of staining properties. Dissected nerve trunks or tissue were immersed in the working stain for 20 min at room temperature and the staining process observed until suitable contrast developed. Excess dye was decanted and the tissues flooded with crayfish physiological solution. Contrast could sometimes be enhanced by flooding the stained area with 1% hydrogen peroxide in van Harreveld's solution. When permanent mounts were prepared, tissues were dehydrated with tertiary butyl alcohol in preference to ethyl alcohol series. For anatomical and neurophysiological studies of nerve distribution in crustaceans, the alternative use of either ascorbic acid or sodium hydrosulfite, as reductants for methylene blue, was preferable to the more complicated rongalit-technique and characterization of neural elements was fully as satisfactory.