This study examines influence and IT in group polarization. Group polarization is the tendency of group members to shift their initial positions to a more extreme direction following discussion. We hypothesize that informational influence is relatively more important than normative influence in causing group members to shift their positions and that IT can be used to enhance the effects of info...

People taking part in argumentativedebates through collective annotations face a highly cognitive taskwhen trying to estimate the group’s global opinion. In order to reduce this effort, we propose in this paper to model such debates prior to evaluating their “social validation.” Computing the degree of global confirmation (resp. refutation) enables the identification of consensual (resp. contro...

This article identifies four factors for consideration in norms-based research to enhance the predictive ability of theoretical models. First, it makes the distinction between perceived and collective norms and between descriptive and injunctive norms. Second, the article addresses the role of important moderators in the relationship between descriptive norms and behaviors, including outcome ex...

Consent to perform a small favor increases a respondent's susceptibility to perform a relatively large favor. This phenomenon, known as the foot-in-the-door effect, is considered to result from induced self-perception changes: the respondent comes to feel helpful for doing the small favor and complies again later out of a desire to maintain the instilled self-view. This study did not find a lin...

YouhadamanagementwhichknewwhatpeopleIemployees]coulddo'which took an interest in them and made demands' There were very strict guidelines dur ingthatt ime.| fyouhada.,conference' ' thatwentonha|f thenight, there werenoexcusesfornotarr iv ingatther ight t imethefol |owingmorning. l f you did not arrive on time you got a public reprimand' You had-to be there at 8 o'clock in the morning, in fresh ...

Introduction Giles has proposed Speech Accommodation Theory (SAT) to account for language usage between individuals (see e.g. Giles et al., 1977). That theory is concerned with determining what motivates an individual to de-accentuate ethnolinguistic characteristics and converge toward the dominant culture, or to accentuate his/her ethnolinguistic characteristics and diverge from the dominant p...

EVOLUTION OF HYBRID INCOMPATIBILITIES IN GENE REGULATORY NETWORKS SEPTEMBER 2013 ALEXANDER Y. TULCHINSKY, B.S., VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY, RICHMOND M.S., VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY, RICHMOND Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS, AMHERST Directed by: Adam H. Porter Under the Dobzhansky-Muller model, postzygotic isolation results from incompatibility between interacting genes. Evidence...

A major mechanism for bacterial resistance to antibiotics is through the acquisition of a plasmid coding for resistance-mediating proteins. Described herein is a strategy to eliminate these plasmids from bacteria, thus resensitizing the bacteria to antibiotics. This approach involves mimicking a natural mechanism for plasmid elimination, known as plasmid incompatibility. The compound apramycin ...

The genetic basis of vegetative incompatibility in the cellular slime mold, Dictyostelium discoideum, is elucidated. Vegetatively compatible haploid strains from parasexual diploids at a frequency of between 10(-6) and 10(-5), whereas "escaped" diploids are formed between vegetatively incompatible strains at a frequency of approximately 10(-8). There is probably only a single vegetative incompa...

Uncovering the genetic and molecular basis of barriers to gene flow between populations is key to understanding how new species are born. Intrinsic postzygotic reproductive barriers such as hybrid sterility and hybrid inviability are caused by deleterious genetic interactions known as hybrid incompatibilities. The difficulty in identifying these hybrid incompatibility genes remains a rate-limit...