The essential characteristic of an associative good is that, when choosing which producer to patronize, a consumer is interested not just in the quality and price of the firm's products, but also in the personal characteristics of the firm's other customers. And so it is with education. When choosing among undergraduate colleges, for example, a student is interested not just—or even primarily—i...

PURPOSE A considerable number of medical students drop out due to low academic achievement, and these students have a high probability of repeated failure experiences. This study investigated the personal and academic problems of these students to help develop student support systems. METHODS First-year (n=146) and second-year (n=119) medical students were asked to complete questionnaires. Th...

Research has shown that warmth and competence are core dimensions on which perceivers judge others and that warmth has a primary role at various phases of impression formation. Three studies explored whether the two components of warmth (i.e., sociability and morality) have distinct roles in predicting the global impression of social groups. In Study 1 (N= 105) and Study 2 (N= 112), participant...

The chief objective in many online communities is to allow for knowledge sharing and learning, which is enabled by technologies such as a discussion forum. The value realized from these communities depends on ongoing participation in terms of two key activities i.e., knowledge seeking and contribution. However, a large number of communities fail as they cannot sustain these activities. This pos...

Sociability promotes a sound daily life for individuals. Reduced sociability is a central symptom of various neuropsychiatric disorders, and yet the neural mechanisms underlying reduced sociability remain unclear. The prelimbic cortex (PL) and infralimbic cortex (IL) have been suggested to play an important role in the neural mechanisms underlying sociability because isolation rearing in rats r...

XXY men (Klinefelter syndrome) are testosterone deficient, socially isolated, exhibit impaired gender identity, and may experience more homosexual behaviors. Here, we characterize social behaviors in a validated XXY mouse model to understand mechanisms. Sociability and gender preference were assessed by three-chambered choice tasks before and after castration and after testosterone replacement....

A wide range of measurements can be made on the collective motion of groups, and the movement of individuals within them. These include, but are not limited to: group size, polarization, speed, turning speed, speed or directional correlations, and distances to near neighbours. From an ecological and evolutionary perspective, we would like to know which of these measurements capture biologically...