Publications in Economic & Social Sciences by NOMIS researchers

Systematic review of methods to discern antagonistic ties in social networks in community settings

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in Social Sciences & Humanities Open

July 30, 2024

Details

Importance

Human social networks are naturally signed, including both positive and negative ties. However, the instruments for appraising negative ties are less established than those focusing on positive, friendly connections. An improved consensus on useable instruments could support the comparability, reliability, and validity of measures used to map social networks involving negative ties.

Objective

This methodological systematic review summarizes and classifies “name generators” (NGs) used to identify negative ties, focusing on applications involving the ascertainment of face-to-face relationships in community settings, especially concerning health or wellbeing.

Method

Following the PRISMA guideline, we searched seven databases with no restrictions. Two blinded reviewers participated in screening, appraisal, and evaluation, and two different reviewers resolved conflicts. Quality assessment was assessed with the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale. We summarized study characteristics and the NGs by structure, properties, and methods.

Findings

We screened 31,350 titles and abstracts. Between 1986 and 2021, 18 studies were identified. Ten publications investigated negative ties regarding well-being outcomes, and eight analyzed the association of negative relationships with physical/mental health. Most studies were rated at least “Good” quality (n = 17), and the majority used a single NG for negative ties (n = 11). We reviewed 33 negative NGs, of which the majority (n = 22) focused on the ego’s experience of an alter (e.g., dislike), eight on describing an alter’s trait (e.g., an “annoying person”), and three on a dyadic interaction as the tie (e.g., fighting). Most NGs were used to evaluate already nominated positive ties (n = 10).

Conclusions

We observe little convergence in negative tie NG questions in community settings. Our results indicate eclectic instruments in the literature, making it difficult to evaluate what a negative tie means across diverse studies. Based on our findings, we propose a decision-making classification tree for designing negative NG. Rather than recommending which designs are most beneficial to assess negative ties, we provide a collection of empirical questions for future studies interested in this topic.

Research field(s)
Economic & Social Sciences

DOI
10.1016/j.ssaho.2024.101039

Super-additive cooperation

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in Nature

February 21, 2024

Details

Repeated interactions provide an evolutionary explanation for one-shot human cooperation that is counterintuitive but orthodox^1,2,3. Intergroup competition^4,5,6,7 provides an explanation that is intuitive but heterodox. Here, using models and a behavioural experiment, we show that neither mechanism reliably supports cooperation. Ambiguous reciprocity, a class of strategies that is generally ignored in models of reciprocal altruism, undermines cooperation under repeated interactions. This finding challenges repeated interactions as an evolutionary explanation for cooperation in general, which further challenges the claim that repeated interactions in the past can explain one-shot cooperation in the present. Intergroup competitions also do not reliably support cooperation because groups quickly become extremely similar, which limits scope for group selection. Moreover, even if groups vary, group competitions may generate little group selection for multiple reasons. Cooperative groups, for example, may tend to compete against each other⁸. Whereas repeated interactions and group competitions do not support cooperation by themselves, combining them triggers powerful synergies because group competitions constrain the corrosive effect of ambiguous reciprocity. Evolved strategies often consist of cooperative reciprocity with ingroup partners and uncooperative reciprocity with outgroup partners. Results from a behavioural experiment in Papua New Guinea fit exactly this pattern. They thus suggest neither an evolutionary history of repeated interactions without group competition nor a history of group competition without repeated interactions. Instead, our results suggest social motives that evolved under the joint influence of both mechanisms.

Research field(s)
Economic & Social Sciences

DOI
10.1038/s41586-024-07077-w

L’Exil, toujours recommencé: Chronique de la frontière

NOMIS Researcher(s)

January 5, 2024

Details

Anthropologue et médecin, Didier Fassin est professeur au Collège de France, titulaire de la chaire Questions morales et enjeux politiques dans les sociétés contemporaines, et directeur d’études à l’EHESS. Anne-Claire Defossez est sociologue, chercheure à l’Institute for Advanced Study de Princeton.

Fuyant les violences politiques, les persécutions religieuses ou la pauvreté, des hommes, des femmes, des enfants d’Afghanistan, d’Iran, du Maghreb et d’Afrique subsaharienne, se mettent en route pour des voyages de plusieurs années au cours desquels ils affrontent les rackets des bandes armées, les brutalités des polices, les camps d’enfermement, les murs de barbelés, les rigueurs du désert, les périls de la mer. Beaucoup y perdent la vie.
Cinq années durant, été comme hiver, Didier Fassin et Anne-Claire Defossez ont mené une recherche à la frontière entre l’Italie et la France, dans les Alpes, auprès de nombre de ces exilés, pour reconstituer leur périple en l’inscrivant dans le contexte géopolitique des bouleversements du monde. Ils ont pris part aux activités menées pour leur porter assistance. Ils ont rencontré les multiples acteurs de ce territoire de migrations millénaires.
Leur enquête donne ainsi à comprendre l’expérience des exilés, l’engagement des volontaires et même le désarroi des forces de l’ordre, conscientes de la vanité de leur mission. Elle dévoile l’inefficacité d’une militarisation de la frontière qui rend plus dangereuse la traversée de la montagne et d’une politique qui nie les droits de personnes en quête de protection.

Research field(s)
Social Sciences

Displaced people’s perilous journeys: border violence as a public health issue

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in The Lancet

October 7, 2023

Details

The 21st century has seen displacement of migrants and refugees unprecedented since World War 2. As of the end of 2022, of the 108 million people who had to leave their homes because of persecution, conflict, violence, or human rights violations, 62·5 million were internally displaced, 35·3 million were refugees, and 5·4 million were officially asylum seekers.

However, the number of people still in transit in search of protection or a better life is unknown. Whether they are Venezuelans trying to reach the USA, Senegalese trying to reach the Canary Islands, or Ethiopians trying to reach Saudi Arabia, or whether they are Guineans crossing the Sahara, Afghans crossing the Evros River, or Rohingyas crossing the Andaman Sea, the only figures that we have about these people are the conservative statistics produced by the International Organization for Migration of the number of deaths worldwide: 58 280 in 10 years.

But what about those who survived? In Europe, an indirect source is the number of asylum seekers, since most people arriving after forcible displacement apply for refugee status. In 2022, not counting Ukrainians who were granted temporary protection, there were 881 000 people seeking asylum, mostly from Syria, Afghanistan, Venezuela, and Türkiye.

This means at least an equivalent number of people travelled from their home country to their host country in the previous months or years. Yet, we know little of the journey of this approximately 1 million displaced people.

Research field(s)
Social Sciences

DOI
10.1016/S0140-6736(23)02030-5

Allocative Skill

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

September 1, 2023

Details

Jobs increasingly require good decision-making. Workers are valued not only for how much they can do, but also for their ability to decide what to do. In this paper we develop a theory and measurement paradigm for assessing individual variation in the ability to make good decisions about resource allocation, which we call allocative skill. We begin with a model where agents strategically acquire information about factor productivity under time and effort constraints. Conditional on such constraints, agents’ allocative skill can be defined as the marginal product of their attention. We test our model in a field survey where participants act as managers assigning fictional workers with heterogeneous productivity schedules to job tasks and are paid in proportion to output. Allocative skill strongly predicts full-time labor earnings, even conditional on IQ, numeracy, and education, and the return to allocative skill is greater in decision-intensive occupations.

Research field(s)
Economics

DOI
10.3386/w31674

New Caregiver Diagnoses of Severe Depression and Child Asthma Controller Medication Adherence

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

May 29, 2023

Details

Background and Objectives: Children with asthma who have depressed caregivers are known to be less adherent to medication regimes. However, it is less clear how adherence responds to a caregiver’s new diagnosis of severe depression or whether there is a similar relationship with other serious caregiver diagnoses. The hypothesis is that adherence worsens both with new diagnoses of depression and possibly with new diagnoses of other serious conditions. Methods: This study follows a cohort of 341,444 continuously insured children with asthma before and after a caregiver’s new diagnosis of severe depression or another serious health condition. The effect of a new depression diagnosis on a child’s medication adherence is compared to the effect of new diagnoses of other common caregiver chronic conditions including diabetes, cancer, congestive heart failure, coronary artery disease, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Results: Results show that children’s medication adherence declines following a caregiver’s new diagnosis of severe depression, but that it also declines following a caregiver’s new diagnosis of diabetes. There is no association with new diagnoses of the other caregiver chronic conditions examined. Conclusions: Children whose caregivers have a new diagnosis of depression or diabetes may be at increased risk of deterioration in their medication adherence. These caregivers may benefit from additional support and follow-up. The relationship between caregivers’ health and children’s medication adherence is complex and deserves further study.

Research field(s)
Economic & Social Sciences, Pediatrics, Public Health

DOI
10.3390/ijerph20115986

Re-cognizing the new self: The neurocognitive plasticity of self-processing following facial transplantation

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

March 27, 2023

Details

The face is a defining feature of our individuality, crucial for our social interactions. But what happens when the face connected to the self is radically altered or replaced? We address the plasticity of self-face recognition in the context of facial transplantation. While the acquisition of a new face following facial transplantation is a medical fact, the experience of a new identity is an unexplored psychological outcome. We traced the changes in self-face recognition before and after facial transplantation to understand if and how the transplanted face gradually comes to be perceived and recognized as the recipient’s own new face. Neurobehavioral evidence documents a strong representation of the pre-injury appearance pre-operatively, while following the transplantation, the recipient incorporates the new face into his self-identity. The acquisition of this new facial identity is supported by neural activity in medial frontal regions that are considered to integrate psychological and perceptual aspects of the self. Copyright © 2023 the Author(s).

Research field(s)
Economic & Social Sciences, Social Sciences, Education

DOI
10.1073/pnas.2211966120

Changing minds about climate change: a pervasive role for domain-general metacognition

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

February 4, 2023

Details

Updating one’s beliefs about the causes and effects of climate change is crucial for altering attitudes and behaviours. Importantly, metacognitive abilities – insight into the (in)correctness of one’s beliefs- play a key role in the formation of polarised beliefs. We here aimed at investigated the role of metacognition in changing beliefs about climate change. To that end, we focused on the role of domain-general and domain-specific metacognition in updating prior beliefs about climate change across the spectrum of climate change scepticism. We also considered the role of how climate science is communicated in the form of textual or visuo-textual presentations. We asked two large US samples to perform a perceptual decision-making task (to assess domain-general decision-making and metacognitive abilities. They next performed a belief-updating task, where they were exposed to good and bad news about climate change and we asked them about their beliefs and their updating. Lastly, they completed a series of questionnaires probing their attitudes to climate change. We show that climate change scepticism is associated with differences in domain-general as well as domain-specific metacognitive abilities. Moreover, domain-general metacognitive sensitivity influenced belief updating in an asymmetric way: lower domain-general metacognition decreased the updating of prior beliefs, especially in the face of negative evidence. Our findings highlight the role of metacognitive failures in revising erroneous beliefs about climate change and point to their adverse social effects. © 2023, The Author(s).

Research field(s)
Economic & Social Sciences

DOI
10.1057/s41599-023-01528-x

An Axiomatic Characterization of Bayesian Updating

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in Journal of Mathematical Economics

December 9, 2022

Details

We provide an axiomatic characterization of Bayesian updating, viewed as a mapping from prior beliefs and new information to posteriors, which is disentangled from any reference to preferences. Bayesian updating is characterized by Non-Innovativeness (events considered impossible in the prior remain impossible in the posterior), Dropping (events contradicted by new evidence are considered impossible in the posterior), and Proportionality (for other events, the posterior simply rescales the prior’s probabilities proportionally). The result clarifies the differences between the normative Bayesian benchmark, alternative models, and actual human behavior.

Research field(s)
Economics

DOI
10.1016/j.jmateco.2022.102799

Crisis as experience and politics

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in Global Discourse

September 1, 2022

Details

In the tradition of Koselleck, crisis has often been approached as an idea or as a narrative, but less research has been conducted on how people produce, respond to, and live through crises. Most of the articles of the present issue explore this perspective, with its dual dimension of experience and politics. In line with it, the present article proposes an analysis of the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic through the questions of the rupture in time, the state of exception and the uncovering of inequalities.

Research field(s)
Economic & Social Sciences, Social Sciences, Political Science & Public Administration

DOI
10.1332/204378921X16354481297194

Facing the pandemic with trust in science

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

December 1, 2021

Details

How essential is trust in science to prevent the spread of COVID-19? People who trust in science are reportedly more likely to comply with official guidelines, implying that higher levels of adherence could be achieved by improving trust in science. However, analysis of a global dataset (n = 4341) suggests otherwise. Trust in science had a small, indirect effect on adherence to the rules. Nonetheless, it predicted people’s approval of prevention measures such as social distancing, and bridged political ideology and approval of the measures (conservatives trusted science less and in turn approved of the measures less). These effects were stronger in the USA than in other countries. Even though any increase in trust in science is unlikely to yield strong behavioural changes, given its relationships with both ideology and individuals’ attitudes to the measures, trust in science may be leveraged to yield longer-term sustainable social benefits.

Research field(s)
Economic & Social Sciences, Social Sciences, Education

DOI
10.1057/s41599-021-00982-9

When the lens is too wide: The political consequences of the visual dehumanization of refugees

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

December 1, 2021

Details

Photojournalistic images shape our understanding of sociopolitical events. How humans are depicted in images may have far-reaching consequences for our attitudes towards them. Social psychology has shown how the visualization of an ‘identifiable victim effect’ can elicit empathic responses. However, images of identifiable victims in the media are the exception rather than the norm. In the context of the Syrian refugee crisis, the majority of images in Western media depicted refugees as large unidentifiable groups. While the effects of the visual depiction of single individuals are well-known, the ways in which the visual framing of large groups operates, and its social and political consequences, remain unknown. We here focus on the visual depiction of refugees to understand how exposure to the dominant visual framing used in the media, depicting them in large groups of faceless individuals, affects their dehumanization and sets off political consequences. To that end we brought together insights from social psychology, social sciences and the humanities to test a range of hypotheses using methods from social and political psychology in 10 studies with the participation of 3951 European citizens. Seeing images of large groups resulted in greater implicit dehumanization compared with images depicting refugees in small groups. Images of large groups are also explicitly rated as more dehumanizing, and when coupled with meta-data such as newspaper headlines, images continue to play a significant and independent role on how (de)humanizing we perceive such news coverage to be. Moreover, after viewing images of large groups, participants showed increased preference for more dominant and less trustworthy-looking political leaders and supported fewer pro-refugee policies and more anti-refugee policies. In terms of a mechanistic understanding of these effects, the extent to which participants felt pity for refugees depicted in large groups as opposed to small groups mediated the effect of visual framing on the choice of a more authoritarian-looking leader. What we see in the media and how it is shown not only has consequences for the ways in which we relate to other human beings and our behaviour towards them but, ultimately, for the functioning of our political systems.

Research field(s)
Economic & Social Sciences, Social Sciences, Education

DOI
10.1057/s41599-021-00786-x

Using random assignment to measure court accessibility for low-income divorce seekers

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

April 6, 2021

Details

We conducted a field experiment in which 311 low-income individuals seeking a divorce were randomly assigned to receive access to a pro bono lawyer (versus minimal help) to assist with filing for divorce. Examining court records, we found that assignment to an attorney made a large difference in whether participants filed for and obtained a divorce. Three years after randomization, 46% of the treated group had terminated their marriages in the proper legal venue, compared to 9% of the control group. Among “compliers”- participants who obtained representation only if assigned to receive it-those with lawyers were far more likely to file for and obtain a divorce than those not assigned lawyers. Because divorce implicates fundamental constitutional interests and can be effectuated only by resort to the courts, the US Constitution requires that dissolution of marriage be made achievable regardless of ability to pay. Yet, we observed few low-income individuals who were able to initiate divorce suits on their own. Through interviews and archival research, we identified barriers that low-income litigants faced in navigating the divorce system, including mandatory wait times, limited hours at important facilities, and burdensome paperwork sometimes requiring access to photocopiers and typewriters. This study therefore documents a salient instance in which a civil legal process was inaccessible to those without lawyers, even though their legal issues were straightforward, involving few if any matters for courts to adjudicate.

Research field(s)
Economic & Social Sciences, Social Sciences, Law

DOI
10.1073/pnas.2009086118

Out of our skull, in our skin: the Microbiota-Gut-Brain axis and the Extended Cognition Thesis

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in Biology and Philosophy

April 1, 2021

Details

According to a shared functionalist view in philosophy of mind, a cognitive system, and cognitive function thereof, is based on the components of the organism it is realized by which, indeed, play a causal role in regulating our cognitive processes. This led philosophers to suggest also that, thus, cognition could be seen as an extended process, whose vehicle can extend not only outside the brain but also beyond bodily boundaries, on different kinds of devices. This is what we call the ‘Externally Extended Cognition Thesis.’ This notion has generated a lively debate. Here, we offer a novel notion of extended cognition, according to which cognition can be seen as being realized (and expanded) outside the brain, but still inside the body. This is what we call the ‘Internally Extended Cognition Thesis’. Not only our thesis but also our approach while defending it is innovative. The argument we offer is supported by recent empirical findings in the life sciences and biomedicine, which suggest that the gut microbiota’s activity has a functional role in regulating our cognitive processes and behaviors. In doing so, we embrace the holobiont-perspective, according to which it is possible to claim that what we call biological individuals are not autonomous entities with clear boundaries, but should rather be seen as networks of multiple interactions among species. Thus, by analyzing different sets of evidence in light of the holobiont-perspective, we argue that the gut microbiota could be seen as a component of our organism. On the basis of the philosophical interpretation of this evidence, however, we also suggest that there are no impediments standing the way of considering the gut microbiota also as a functional extension of our cognitive system. If so, this amounts to extending cognition out of ‘our skull’, though still confining it within ‘our body’: to ‘our gut’. This is an instance of the ‘Internally Extended Cognition Thesis,’ whose benefits for an original (biologically informed) theory of extended cognition are discussed.

Research field(s)
Economic & Social Sciences, Social Sciences, Science Studies

DOI
10.1007/s10539-021-09790-6

Hazardous confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic: The fate of migrants detained yet nondeportable

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in Journal of Human Rights

October 19, 2020

Details

As the French government decided on a lockdown of the population to prevent the spread of COVID-19, it soon appeared that, in an apparent paradox, two forcibly confined categories were particularly at risk: prisoners and detainees. Confronted with multiple mobilizations from civil society, authorities reacted in two distinct ways, significantly reducing the demographic of correctional facilities to allow for protective measures, but refusing to temporarily close detention centers, despite their insalubrious conditions and the impossibility of organizing deportations. These differential policies reveal an implicit moral hierarchy, in which undocumented migrants occupy the lower segment of the social scale, as well as a politics of indifference, which inculcates in them the illegitimacy of their presence and the unworthiness of their lives. Rebellions, self-harm, and hunger strikes are attempts to denounce and resist this intolerable situation.

Research field(s)
Economic & Social Sciences, Social Sciences, International Relations

DOI
10.1080/14754835.2020.1822155

Rational inattention, optimal consideration sets, and stochastic choice

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in Review of Economic Studies

May 1, 2019

Details

We unite two basic approaches to modelling limited attention in choice by showing that the rational inattention model implies the formation of consideration sets—only a subset of the available alternatives will be considered for choice. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for rationally inattentive behaviour which allow the identification of consideration sets. In simple settings, chosen options are those that are best on a stand-alone basis. In richer settings, the consideration set can only be identified holistically. In addition to payoffs, prior beliefs impact consideration sets. Linear inequalities identify all priors consistent with each possible consideration set.

Research field(s)
Economic & Social Sciences, Economics & Business, Economics

DOI
10.1093/restud/rdy037

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