In Multi-Agent Systems there has been quite an amount of research on how to model conflicts in (intelligent) agent architectures for example by imitating mental states and augmenting them with social notions. Nevertheless, a great deal of investigation is missing on the transition between internal and external conflicts. Arguments in favor of taking a closer look at this transition include a pr...

Environmental conflict management involves the management of multiple stakeholders with conflicting stakes. In this paper, an attempt is made to develop a shared mental model of stakeholders in an environmental conflict. The Transmission Gully project, a large-scale transport infrastructure project in the Wellington region of New Zealand is used as a case study. Selected stakeholders of this pr...

Early research on the mental health of civilians displaced by armed conflict focused primarily on the direct effects of exposure to war-related violence and loss. Largely overlooked in this war exposure model were the powerful effects of ongoing stressors related to the experience of displacement itself. An ecological model of refugee distress is proposed, drawing on research demonstrating that...

BACKGROUND Warring groups that compete to dominate a civilian population confront contending behavioral options: target civilians or battle the enemy. We aimed to describe degrees to which combatant groups concentrated lethal behavior into intentionally targeting civilians as opposed to engaging in battle with opponents in contemporary armed conflict. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We identif...

BACKGROUND The displacement of populations as the result of an armed conflict generally entails a worsening of the living and health conditions of those undergoing such a displacement. This paper is aimed at analyzing the health-related needs perceived by men and women displaced by the armed conflict and their main strategies to address those needs. METHODS A qualitative study was carried out...

Abstract Data from a recent survey on pastoral care consultations (PCC) in Norway (N=408) is presented, showing that PCC service priests and deacons provide for people the municipality, independent of faith affiliation. The most common themes regarded mental social distress, such as grief, conflicts, loneliness. Furthermore, illness-related were prominent, specter religious moral issues. We dis...

Although documentation that war inflicts psychological casualties dates back to the American Civil War and earlier, most research began after the Vietnam conflict, when studies focused on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). With ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, there has been significant research to illuminate the epidemiology of war-related psychological casualties. Significant fi...

We use ethnographically informed survey and interview data to explore therapeutic and problematic play in the online World of Warcraft (WoW). We focus on how game-play in WoW is driven by shared and socially transmitted models of success that we conceptualize as cultural ideals. Our research reveals associations between having higher online compared to offline success, on the one hand, and game...