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Tipping point for large-scale social change
When organizations turn a blind eye to sexual harassment in the workplace, how many people need to take a stand before the behavior is no longer seen as normal? According to a new paper published in Science, there is a quantifiable answer: Roughly 25% of people need to take a stand before large-scale social change occurs. This idea of a social tipping point applies to standards in the workplace and any type of movement or initiative. Online, people develop norms about everything from what type of content is acceptable to post on social media, to how civil or uncivil to be in their language. We have recently seen how public attitudes can and do shift on issues like gay marriage, gun laws, or race and gender equality, as well as what beliefs are or aren't publicly acceptable to voice. During the past 50 years, many studies of organizations and community change have attempted to identify the critical size needed for a tipping point, purely based on observation. These studies have speculated that tipping points can range anywhere between 10 and 40%. The problem for scientists has been that real-world social dynamics are complicated, and it isn't possible to replay history in precisely the same way to accurately measure how outcomes would have been different if an activist group had been larger or smaller. "What we were able to do in this study was to develop a theoretical model that would predict the size of the critical mass needed to shift group norms, and then test it experimentally," says lead author Damon Centola, Ph.D., associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication and the School of Engineering and Applied Science. Drawing on more than a decade of experimental work, Centola has developed an online method to test how large-scale social dynamics can be changed. In this study, "Experimental Evidence for Tipping Points in Social Convention," co-authored by Joshua Becker, Ph.D., Devon Brackbill, Ph.D., and Andrea Baronchelli, Ph.D., 10 groups of 20 participants each were given a financial incentive to agree on a linguistic norm. Once a norm had been established, a group of confederates -- a coalition of activists that varied in size -- then pushed for a change to the norm. When a minority group pushing change was below 25% of the total group, its efforts failed. But when the committed minority reached 25%, there was an abrupt change in the group dynamic, and very quickly the majority of the population adopted the new norm. In one trial, a single person accounted for the difference between success and failure. The researchers also tested the strength of their results by increasing the payments people got for adhering to the prevailing norm. Despite doubling and tripling the amount of money for sticking with the established behavior, Centola and his colleagues found that a minority group could still overturn the group norm. "When a community is close to a tipping point to cause large-scale social change, there's no way they would know this," says Centola, who directs the Network Dynamics Group at the Annenberg School. "And if they're just below a tipping point, their efforts will fail. But remarkably, just by adding one more person, and getting above the 25% tipping point, their efforts can have rapid success in changing the entire population's opinion." Acknowledging that real-life situations can be much more complicated, the authors' model allows for the exact 25% tipping point number to change based on circumstances. Memory length is a key variable, and relates to how entrenched a belief or behavior is. For example, someone whose beliefs are based on hundreds of past interactions may be less influenced by one change agent, whereas someone who considers only their more recent interactions would be more easily swayed. "Our findings present a stark contrast to centuries of thinking about social change in classical economics, in which economists typically think a majority of activists is needed to change a population's norms," says Centola. "The classical model, called equilibrium stability analysis, would dictate that 51% or more is needed to initiate real social change. We found, both theoretically and experimentally, that a much smaller fraction of the population can effectively do this." Centola believes environments can be engineered to push people in pro-social directions, particularly in contexts such as in organizations, where people's personal rewards are tied directly to their ability to coordinate on behaviors that their peers will find acceptable. Centola also suggests that this work has direct implications for political activism on the Internet, offering new insight into how the Chinese government's use of pro-government propaganda on social networks like Weibo, for example, can effectively shift conversational norms away from negative stories that might foment social unrest. While shifting people's underlying beliefs can be challenging, Centola's results offer new evidence that a committed minority can change what behaviors are seen as socially acceptable, potentially leading to pro-social outcomes like reduced energy consumption, less sexual harassment in the workplace, and improved exercise habits. Conversely, it can also prompt large-scale anti-social behaviors such as internet trolling, internet bullying, and public outbursts of racism. The implications for large-scale behavior change are also the subject of Centola's new book, How Behavior Spreads, published this month by Princeton University Press.
Aman Kumar Singh
Making happiness last longer
For most people, the sense of happiness derived from a luxurious vacation, a good movie or a tasty dinner at a restaurant may seem short-lived, but what if it were possible to extend these feelings of enjoyment? Researchers from the University of Minnesota and Texas A&M University decided to explore whether the way people frame their goals for an experience influences how much happiness they glean from the experience over time. They started by questioning whether the traditional approach to setting goals could be limiting the level of happiness for consumers, and their findings will be published in the October issue of the Journal of Consumer Psychology. Prior research has shown that people are more likely to have a sense of well-being if they set specific goals that are concrete and easy to measure -- rather than broad, general goals that may be harder to quantify and attain. While this approach may be effective in setting work, exercise or weight loss goals, the researchers hypothesized that this may not be as beneficial when happiness is the goal. In this area of life, general goals may be an advantage because people will be open to experiencing a broader range of positive emotions. "If people watch a movie with a specific goal like feeling excitement, then they may be less likely to remember the funny or meaningful elements of the movie," says Rohini Ahluwalia, a professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota and author of the study. "We predicted that people with general goals would engage a broader range of emotions and experience more happiness over time." In one experiment, the researchers asked participants to describe an important purchase they had made in the past month. One group described purchases aimed at increasing their level of joy and happiness in life -- a general goal. The other two groups described purchases they had made for more specific goals: to become happier by increasing excitement or to become happier by increasing peace of mind and relaxation. Then the participants completed a survey with questions about how much initial happiness they had derived from the purchase. Two weeks later, the participants received an e-mail asking how much their purchase was contributing to their overall happiness, and how aware they were of it at that point in time. They received an e-mail with the same questions six weeks after their initial purchase. The results from the study showed that although the levels of happiness were equal for the three groups at the initial time of the purchase, those who had more general goals reported more happiness as time passed. The difference between the groups was the most significant six weeks later. "Our findings suggest that people can change the amount of happiness they get out of an experience," Ahluwalia says. "A general happiness goal can leave a longer-lasting positive emotional imprint." This can apply to material purchases like a new car or dress as well as experiential purchases like spending money on vacation or a new music album. Another experiment in the study showed that participants with broader happiness goals experienced more positive emotions after listening to a new song than the participants who had a specific goal of feeling excitement and energy. The participants with the broader goals were also willing to pay more for the song. "Although more studies are needed to confirm our findings, these initial results show that we can make small changes in our thinking patterns to help us experience more joy," Ahluwalia says. "Given that short-lived happiness after experiences is such a common phenomenon, this is an important step in stretching that timeline."
Premature brains develop differently in B&G
Brains of baby boys born prematurely are affected differently and more severely than premature infant girls' brains. This is according to a study published in the Springer Nature-branded journal Pediatric Research. Lead authors Amanda Benavides and Peg Nopoulos of the University of Iowa in the US used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans as part of an ongoing study on premature babies to examine how the brains of baby boys and girls changed and developed. The researchers took high-quality MRI scans of the brains of 33 infants whose ages were corrected to that of one year. The sample included babies who were carried to full term (at least 38 weeks) and preterm (less than 37 weeks). The scans were analyzed in conjunction with information gathered from questionnaires completed by the infants' mothers and other data collected when they were born. "The window between birth and one year of age is the most important time in terms of brain development. Therefore studying the brain during this period is important to better understand how the premature brain develops," explains Benavides. Brain measurements taken from the MRIs showed that even at this very young age, there are major sex differences in the structure of the brain, and these are independent of the effects of prematurity. Brain tissue is divided into cerebral gray matter which includes regions of the brain that influence muscle control, the senses, memory, speech and emotion, and cerebral white matter which helps to link different parts of grey matter to each other. While boys' brains were overall larger in terms of volume, girls had proportionately larger volumes of gray matter and boys had proportionately larger volumes of white matter. These same sex differences are seen in children and adults, and therefore document how early in life these differences are seen. In regard to the effects of prematurity, the researchers found that the earlier a baby was born, the smaller the overall cerebral volume. However, the effect of prematurity on the specific tissues was different depending on a baby's gestation age in conjunction with its sex. The earlier a baby boy was born, the lower the researchers found his cortex volume (gray matter) to be. The earlier a baby girl was born, the lower was the volume of white matter in her brain. Overall, although the effects of prematurity were seen in both boys and girls, these effects were more severe for boys. According to the research team, it is well known that male fetuses are more vulnerable to developmental aberration, and that this could lead to other unfavorable outcomes. Findings from the current study now add to this by showing how the brains of baby boys born too early are affected differently to that of baby girls. "Given this background, it seems likely and even expected that the effects of prematurity on brain development would be more severe in males. The insults to the premature brain incurred within the first few weeks and months of life set the stage for an altered developmental trajectory that plays out throughout the remainder of development and maturation," says Nopoulos.
Aging and the Sense of Smell
August 2014 - How does the sense of smell change as people age? Some studies show that sensory neurons in the olfactory system in people over 60 may show responses to odour that make it difficult to identify specific smells. This can create issues with identifying dangerous substances and promoting good nutrition. Discussing research published in Neurobiology of Aging in 2011, Professor Diego Restrepo, Ph.D., director of the Center for NeuroScience at University of Colorado School of Medicine said: "We found clear changes in olfactory sensory neuron responses to odours for those 60 and up. When we presented two different odours to the olfactory sensory neurons of younger people they responded to one or the other. The sensory neurons from the elderly responded to both. This would make it harder for the elderly to differentiate between them." The study showed that people losing their sense of smell had a higher risk of malnutrition because taste and smell are closely related. Also they may be unable to detect spoiled food, gas leaks and other toxic vapours. 440 subjects in two age groups - 45-years-old and younger and people 60 and over - were tested for responses to two distinct odours and also subsets of those odours. The objective was to find out if age-related differences in the function of Olfactory Sensory Neurons (OSNs) might contribute to the impairment of the sense of smell. Cells from the two groups were biopsied in collaboration with Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. The researchers expected to find fewer OSNs in the older subjects and thought the neurons would be less likely to respond to stimuli. However, they found just as many neurons in the older group as the younger but the over 60s could not differentiate between two odours - they blended together. According to Diego Restrepo: "Whereas cells from younger donors were highly selective in the odorants to which they responded, cells from older donors were more likely to respond to multiple odor stimuli� suggesting a loss of specificity. The study suggests that changes in nose and the brain contribute to smell loss in the elderly." In a study of mice reported in 2014 in the Journal of Neuroscience, Florida State University post-doctoral researcher Nicolas Thiebaud and colleagues showed a reverse link: that a bad diet impacted on the sense of smell. When mice were given a high-fat diet over a period of six months showed a significant reduction in their ability to distinguish odours. Smell and Neurodegenerative Conditions Research by Dr Amy Johnston, from Griffith University's School of Nursing and Midwifery and the Eskitis Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology, published in the journal Chemical Senses in 2007 found that normal aging processes have little detrimental effect on the sense of smell. The study tested the ability of about 1000 Australian males and females of all ages to detect or identify a range of odours at different concentrations. The results showed that olfactory function deteriorates relatively slowly with age in the absence of other factors such as smoking, medication or history of nasal problems. Healthy women were found to have a more sensitive sense of smell than healthy men. However, the sense of smell was found to be adversely affected by some medications and deterioration to be associated with a number of neurodegenerative illnesses. The study supported findings that common anti-cholesterol and antihypertensive medications, and chronic conditions such as Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease were among those associated with impairment of the sense of smell. The study underlined important consequences of losing the sense of smell with particular relevance for older people, for example the risk of poor appetite and nutrition and being unable to assess the fitness of food for consumption.