Most mental disorders involve disruptions of normal social behavior. Social neuroscience is an interdisciplinary field devoted to understanding the biological systems underlying social processes and behavior, and the influence of the social environment on biological processes, health and well-being. Research in this field has grown dramatically in recent years. Active areas of research include ...

We introduce a new class of games, called social contribution games (SCGs), where each player’s individual cost is equal to the cost he induces on society because of his presence. Our results reveal that SCGs constitute useful abstractions of altruistic games when it comes to the analysis of the robust price of anarchy. We first show that SCGs are altruism-independently smooth, i.e., the robust...

I count myself honored indeed to be included among those who have been chosen to present this, the Wade Hampton Frost Lecture. Unlike my predecessors in this series, I never had the privilege of knowing or meeting Dr. Frost, although of course I know many of his illustrious students. I do claim one unique experience, however; I read his collected papers when practicing in South Africa before I ...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the transformation of stimulus functions from socially relevant to arbitrary stimuli as a model of social stigmatization and categorization. Specifically, participants were trained to respond to arbitrary stimuli as if they were obese or thin stimuli via a matching-to-sample preparation. The impact of this relational conditioning was tested using the...

The main objective of this study is to provide a comprehensive description as well as evaluation of the emergence of zakat System. Simultaneously we have to analyze its contribution in the social and economic development in Pakistan. Consequently on the basis of this analysis, we may be able to establish a significant relationship between zakat and social/economic development. This system is to...

Organisers of crowd mapping initiatives seek to identify practices that foster an active contributor community. Theory suggests that social contribution settings can provide important support functions for newcomers, yet to date there are no empirical studies of such an effect. We present the first study that evaluates the relationship between colocated practice and newcomer retention in a crow...

The long-term viability of virtual communities depends critically on contribution behavior by their members. We deepen and extend prior research by conceptualizing contributions to virtual communities in terms of small friendship group–referent intentional actions. Specifically, we investigate cognitive, emotional, and social determinants of shared we-intentions and their consequences for membe...

It is widely established that the levels of generalized trust, norms of reciprocity, and identification (collectively known as relational social capital) in a virtual community have a positive effect on a member’s motivation to contribute knowledge in the community. However, little is known on the antecedents of such relational social capital. This study longitudinally investigates the effects ...