The increasingly social nature of gaming suggests the importance of understanding its associated experiences and potential outcomes. This study examined the influence of social processes in gameplay and different gaming contexts on the experience of individual and group flow when engaged in the activity. It also examined the affective experiences associated with different types of social gaming...

Every human society includes social hierarchies— relationships between individuals and groups of unequal rank or status. Recent research has shown that even preverbal infants represent hierarchical relationships, expecting larger agents and agents from larger groups to win dominance contests. However, to successfully navigate social hierarchies, infants must also integrate information about soc...

This study aims to understand if, and how, social robots can promote wellbeing in the elderly. The existing literature suggests that social robots have the potential to improve wellbeing in the elderly, but existing robots focus more on healthcare and healthy behaviour among the elderly. This work describes a new investigation based on focus groups and home studies, in which we produced a set o...

Demographically-tagged social media messages are a common source of data for computational social science. While these messages can indicate differences in beliefs and behaviors between demographic groups, we do not have a clear understanding of how different demographic groups use platforms such as Twitter. This paper presents a preliminary analysis of how groups’ differing behaviors may confo...

The Canadian province of Manitoba has long pursued an aggressive strategy of hydroelectric development. This effort was predicated upon a mix of old and new assumptions, including long-held beliefs that power must be cheap and that the province, operating through its crown utility, Manitoba Hydro, possessed the only legitimate claim to northern land and water resources. The province also recogn...

The importance of older adults’ social networks in providing practical, emotional and informational support is well documented. In this paper, we reflect on the personal social networks of older adults, and the shortcomings of existing online Social Networking Sites (SNSs) in supporting their needs. We report findings from ethnographic interviews, focus groups and hands-on demonstrations with o...

This report addresses the challenges arising from a change in Mexico’s official poverty methodology from an income-only basis to a multidimensional basis that includes education, access to health services, access to social security, shelter characteristics, access to basic services, access to food, and level of social cohesion. The concept of poverty underlying this report is drawn from Amartya...

This paper examines the decentralized recognition of groups within a multiagent normative society. In this work we explore different mechanisms that allow agents to recognize the others as members of a certain social group. Considering as the basic mechanism the one that makes agents interact with other agents without considering the previous interactions and with no communication, three new al...

The rich set of interactions between individuals in the society results in complex community structure, capturing highly connected circles of friends, families, or professional cliques in a social network. Due to the frequent changes in the activity and communication patterns of individuals, the associated social and communication network is subject to constant evolution. The cohesive groups of...

Can people influence others solely by virtue of shared group membership? To address this and related questions, we offer a theory of group-mediated social influence and then test it in a standardized collective task setting. The theory capitalizes on uncertainty reduction principles found in two longstanding social psychological traditions: social identity theory and status characteristics theo...