In social science and humanities, coherence is an important but vaguely defined concept used for understanding the structure of belief systems and their physical representations like political parties. In our contribution, we provide a specified definition and measure of coherence based on superparamagnetic clustering. The measure captures the intuition, that coherence includes both a static co...

We hypothesized that gratitude would be related to sense of coherence via positive reframing, which is a process by which negative events or circumstances are seen in a positive light. We tested this hypothesis in two studies. In Study 1 (N1⁄4 166) we found a strong, robust relationship between trait gratitude and sense of coherence above and beyond life satisfaction, positive and negative affe...

We used Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) to simultaneously measure brain activity in two people while they played a computer-based cooperation game side by side. Inter-brain activity coherence was calculated between the two participants. We found that the coherence between signals generated by participants' right superior frontal cortices increased during cooperation, but not during competitio...

The purpose of this study was to clarify the factors related to perceived positive change and sense of coherence in mothers (n = 293) of children with cleft lip and palate. The strongest negative correlation with sense of coherence was stigmatizing words from others; there were positive correlations with social capital and perceived positive change. Multiple regression showed that to be aware o...

This study examines how education benefits health through social well-being in Hawaii where the centrality of community life is underscored. The 2007 Hawaii Health Survey with linked zip-code information was used to investigate the effects of education at both individual and neighborhood levels using mixed-effects models. Geographic Information System was applied to map the geographical distrib...

Human history has been marked by social instability and conflict, often driven by the irreconcilability of opposing sets of beliefs, ideologies, and religious dogmas. The dynamics of belief systems has been studied mainly from two distinct perspectives, namely how cognitive biases lead to individual belief rigidity and how social influence leads to social conformity. Here we propose a unifying ...

This paper considers the present state of applied economics and the difficulties of integrating its findings and insights with those of other social sciences. The philosophical basis of social science is re-considered as a route to resolving these difficulties. Without a more integrated narrative about how our social systems work, applied economics, and all applied social sciences, run the subs...

Existing studies in cognitive neuroscience predominantly focus on a single participant’s behavioral and brain responses. Lack of an interactive context for joint action particularly limited social neuroscience studies to simulated social contexts. Advances in portable brain imaging technologies have made it practical to simultaneously monitor the brain activity of two or more people in an inter...

BACKGROUND Studies have shown associations between health indices and access to "green" environments but the underlying mechanisms of this association are not clear. OBJECTIVES To examine associations of perceived neighbourhood "greenness" with perceived physical and mental health and to investigate whether walking and social factors account for the relationships. METHODS A mailed survey co...