It's the biology, stupid! Proxy failures in economic decision making.

Utilitarian characterizations of economic decision making fail to capture the complex, conditional, and heterogeneous motivations underlying human behavior as shaped by the predictive, multicriterial drivers of biological regulation. Unless economic models start to acknowledge that humans have bodies and a biology with its own adaptive logic and tradeoffs, economic policies will be systematically exposed to, and systematic generators of, proxy failures.

Imagination vs. routines: festive time, weekly time, and the predictive brain.

This paper examines the relationship between societal structures shaped by traditions, norms, laws, and customs, and creative expressions in arts and media through the lens of the predictive coding framework in cognitive science. The article proposes that both dimensions of culture can be viewed as adaptations designed to enhance and train the brain's predictive abilities in the social domain. Traditions, norms, laws, and customs foster shared predictions and expectations among individuals, thereby reducing uncertainty in social environments. On the other hand, arts and media expose us to simulated experiences that explore alternative social realities, allowing the predictive machinery of the brain to hone its skills through exposure to a wider array of potentially relevant social circumstances and scenarios. We first review key principles of predictive coding and active inference, and then explore the rationale of cultural traditions and artistic culture in this perspective. Finally, we draw parallels between institutionalized normative habits that stabilize social worlds and creative and imaginative acts that temporarily subvert established conventions to inject variability.

Searching for meaning in a post-scarcity society. Implications for creativity and job design.

The significance of meaningful and productive work, and the search for profound meaning within it, is akin to the air we breathe. Its importance is often realized only when it becomes contaminated or depleted. In contemporary societies, there is a growing awareness of the significance of the meaning of work, while simultaneously witnessing mounting mistrust and disillusionment as to the significance and social value of numerous jobs. There is paradoxically an increasing demand for meaningful work, while the supply of such work appears to be gradually decreasing. At present, we are recognizing the importance of this vital component that sustains our well-being as it begins to dwindle. The absence of meaningful work may stem from the nature of the work itself, the organizational environment in which it takes place, the prevailing corporate culture, or even the way in which tasks are defined and managed, which makes it challenging to find a sense of purpose and meaning in what we do. While progress can be made on both fronts, addressing cultural and organizational aspects is a more expedient means of intervention without the need of waiting for structural changes in the global economic and social systems.

Proactive vs. reactive country responses to the COVID-19 pandemic shock.

The infection caused by SARS-CoV-2, responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, is characterized by an infectious period with either asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic phases, leading to a rapid surge of mild and severe cases putting national health systems under serious stress. To avoid their collapse, and in the absence of pharmacological treatments, during the early pandemic phase countries worldwide were forced to adopt strategies, from elimination to mitigation, based on non-pharmacological interventions which, in turn, overloaded social, educational and economic systems. To date, the heterogeneity and incompleteness of data sources does not allow to quantify the multifaceted impact of the pandemic at country level and, consequently, to compare the effectiveness of country responses. Here, we tackle this challenge from a complex systems perspective, proposing a model to evaluate the impact of systemic failures in response to the pandemic shock. We use health, behavioral and economic indicators for 44 countries to build a shock index quantifying responses in terms of robustness and resilience, highlighting the crucial advantage of proactive policy and decision making styles over reactive ones, which can be game-changing during the emerging of a new variant of concern.

Mind-stimulating leisure activities: Prospective associations with health, wellbeing, and longevity.

Introduction: This study examines prospective associations within a 6-year perspective between three mind-stimulating leisure activities (relaxed and solitary: reading; serious and solitary: doing number and word games; serious and social: playing cards and games) and 21 outcomes in (1) physical health, (2) wellbeing, (3) daily life functioning, (4) cognitive impairment, and (5) longevity domains. Methods: Data were obtained from 19,821 middle-aged and older adults from 15 countries participating in the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Temporal associations were obtained using generalized estimating equations. All models were controlled for prior sociodemographic, personality, lifestyle factors, health behaviors, and pre-baseline leisure activity values and all outcome variables. The Bonferroni correction was used to correct for multiple testing. E-values were calculated to examine the sensitivity of the associations to unmeasured confounding. Secondary analyses (1) under the complete case scenario, (2) after excluding respondents with health conditions, and (3) using a limited set of covariates were conducted to provide evidence for the robustness of the results. Results: The relaxed solitary activity of reading almost daily was prospectively associated with a lower risk of depression, experiencing pain, daily functioning limitations, cognitive impairment, lower loneliness scores, and more favorable wellbeing outcomes. Engaging in serious solitary leisure activities almost daily was prospectively associated with a lower risk of depression, feeling full of energy, and a lower risk of death by any cause. Occasionally engaging in these activities was prospectively associated with greater optimism and a lower risk of cognitive impairment. Engaging in serious social activities was prospectively associated with greater happiness, lower scores on the loneliness scale, a lower risk of Alzheimer's disease, and an increased risk of cancer. Additionally, occasionally engaging in serious social activities was associated with greater optimism and lower risk of depression, pain, and mobility limitations. These associations were independent of demographics, socioeconomic status, personality, history of diseases, and prior lifestyle. The sensitivity analyses provided substantial evidence for the robustness of these associations. Discussion: Mind-engaging leisure activities can be considered a health and wellbeing resource. Practitioners may consider them tools that help middle-aged and older adults maintain their health and quality of life.

An arts-literacy intervention for adolescent depression and anxiety symptoms: outcomes of a randomised controlled trial of Pre-Texts with Kenyan adolescents.

Background: Mental health problems are prevalent among youth in low-resource countries and are further compounded by stigma and limited access to traditional treatments. The need for scalable, accessible, and stigma-free mental health interventions is urgent. We developed and tested Pre-Texts, an arts-literacy intervention that targets adolescent depression and anxiety, in Kenya. Methods: We conducted a universal RCT (Randomized Controlled Trial). Students from Kenyan high schools (N = 235, ages 13-19, 53.19% female) were randomized to either Pre-Texts or a study skills control intervention. Pre-Texts involves the use of a text-such an excerpt from a novel, a physics lesson, or a technical manual-to inspire art-making that is followed by collective reflection on the process of interpretation through artmaking. Participants met daily for a week in groups of 6-12 youths for 1-h sessions. Groups were facilitated by high school graduates trained as lay-providers. This study was pre-registered at the Pan African Clinical Trials Registry (PACTR; registration number: PACTR202111497122432). The trial took place between August 11th 2021 and December 18th 2021. Findings: Pre-Texts produced a greater reduction in depression (d = 0.52, 95% CI [0.19, 0.84]) and anxiety (d = 0.51, 95% CI [0.20, 0.81]) symptoms from baseline to 1-month follow-up compared to the control group. Similarly, in a sub-sample of participants with elevated depression and anxiety symptoms, Pre-Texts produced a greater reduction in depression (d = 1.10, 95% CI [0.46, 1.75]) and anxiety (d = 0.54, 95% CI [-0.07, 1.45]) symptoms. Interpretation: Our findings suggest that a brief arts-literacy intervention with challenging school material in a group setting, implemented as an afterschool program, can reduce depression and anxiety symptoms in adolescents in Sub-Saharan Africa. Future replication trials with larger sample sizes with extended follow-ups will help assess the strength and sustainability of these effects. Funding: The study was funded by grants from the Mind, Brain, and Behaviour (MBB) Initiative at Harvard University and the Center for African Studies at Harvard University.

Experts vs. policymakers in the COVID-19 policy response.

We build an evolutionary game-theoretic model of the interaction between policymakers and experts in shaping the policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Players' decisions concern two alternative strategies of pandemic management: a "hard" approach, enforcing potentially unpopular measures such as strict confinement orders, and a "soft" approach, based upon voluntary and short-lived social distancing. Policymakers' decisions may also rely upon expert advice. Unlike experts, policymakers are sensitive to a public consensus incentive that makes lifting restrictions as soon as possible especially desirable. This incentive may conflict with the overall goal of mitigating the effects of the pandemic, leading to a typical policy dilemma. We show that the selection of strategies may be path-dependent, as their initial distribution is a crucial driver of players' choices. Contingent on cultural factors and the epidemiological conditions, steady states in which both types of players unanimously endorse the strict strategy can coexist with others where experts and policymakers agree on the soft strategy, depending on the initial conditions. The model can also lead to attractive asymmetric equilibria where experts and policymakers endorse different strategies, or to cyclical dynamics where the shares of adoption of strategies oscillate indefinitely around a mixed strategy equilibrium. This multiplicity of equilibria can explain the coexistence of contrasting pandemic countermeasures observed across countries in the first wave of the outbreak. Our results suggest that cross-country differences in the COVID-19 policy response need not be the effect of poor decision making. Instead, they can endogenously result from the interplay between policymakers and experts incentives under the local social, cultural and epidemiological conditions.

The Role of Stress and Cognitive Absorption in Predicting Social Network Addiction.

Nowadays, the use of social networks (SNs) is pervasive and ubiquitous. Among other things, SNs have become a key resource for establishing and maintaining personal relationships, as further demonstrated by the emergence of the pandemic. However, easy access to SNs may be a source of addictive behaviour, especially among the younger population. The literature highlights various psychological and physiological factors as possible predictors of vulnerability to SN addiction. This paper explores the joint effects of stress level and cognitive absorption, in the form of temporal dissociation while on SNs, on the addiction of university students to SNs. Here, 312 participants were involved in an online survey. About 14% of the sample presented a risk for SN addiction. Moreover, it was found that stress level predicted SN addiction both directly and indirectly through the effect of individual temporal dissociation, as experienced during SN usage. These results suggest a significant role of perceived stress level on addiction risk, while also pointing out additional vulnerability to SN addiction for cognitive profiles that are relatively more prone to temporal dissociation while online.

The vaccine equity crisis is a stress test for all future major environmental challenges.

The vaccine equity crisis has an extra element that makes it crucial for our capacity to tackle future major societal challenges. Unlike most of these, including the climate one, the current pandemic causes major damage that is directly observable in the very short term, that is, within the political cycle of the incumbent policymakers. If not even this kind of crisis with directly observable damage is able to influence the incentive structure of policymakers and lead to the adoption of timely and effective measures, there is no reason to expect that this would ever happen for crises whose effects largely materialize in future political cycles. As a consequence, if we fail to tackle this particular crisis effectively now, we are creating an enormous credibility problem for future crises that could seriously undermine our capacity to reach binding agreements in the future.

Preying on beauty? The complex social dynamics of overtourism.

Overtourism is an increasingly relevant problem for tourist destinations, and some cities are starting to take extreme measures to counter it. In this paper, we introduce a simple mathematical model that analyzes the dynamics of the populations of residents and tourists when there is a competition for the access to local services and resources, since the needs of the two populations are partly mutually incompatible. We study under what conditions a stable equilibrium where residents and tourists coexist is reached, and what are the conditions for tourists to take over the city and to expel residents, among others. Even small changes in key parameters may bring about very different outcomes. Policymakers should be aware that a sound knowledge of the structural properties of the dynamics is important when taking measures, whose effect could otherwise be different than expected and even counterproductive.

The link between reported cases of COVID-19 and the Infodemic Risk Index: A worldwide perspective.

In this brief report we followed the evolution of the COVID-19 Infodemic Risk Index during 2020 and clarified its connection with the epidemic waves, focusing specifically on their co-evolution in Europe, South America, and South-eastern Asia. Using 640 million tweets collected by the Infodemic Observatory and the open access dataset published by Our World in Data regarding COVID-19 worldwide reported cases, we analyze the COVID-19 infodemic vs. pandemic co-evolution from January 2020 to December 2020. We find that a characteristic pattern emerges at the global scale: a decrease in misinformation on Twitter as the number of COVID-19 confirmed cases increases. Similar local variations highlight how this pattern could be influenced both by the strong content moderation policy enforced by Twitter after the first pandemic wave and by the phenomenon of selective exposure that drives users to pick the most visible and reliable news sources available.

Emergence of knowledge communities and information centralization during the COVID-19 pandemic.

BACKGROUND: As COVID-19 spreads worldwide, an infodemic - i.e., an over-abundance of information, reliable or not - spreads across the physical and the digital worlds, triggering behavioral responses which cause public health concern. METHODS: We study 200 million interactions captured from Twitter during the early stage of the pandemic, from January to April 2020, to understand its socio-informational structure on a global scale. FINDINGS: The COVID-19 global communication network is characterized by knowledge groups, hierarchically organized in sub-groups with well-defined geo-political and ideological characteristics. Communication is mostly segregated within groups and driven by a small number of subjects: 0.1% of users account for up to 45% and 10% of activities and news shared, respectively, centralizing the information flow. INTERPRETATION: Contradicting the idea that digital social media favor active participation and co-creation of online content, our results imply that public health policy strategies to counter the effects of the infodemic must not only focus on information content, but also on the social articulation of its diffusion mechanisms, as a given community tends to be relatively impermeable to news generated by non-aligned sources.

Public health challenges and opportunities after COVID-19.

With hindsight, the main weakness behind the ineffective response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in some countries has been the failure to understand, and take account of, the multilayered systemic interdependencies that spread the effects of the pandemic across social, technological, economic and health-care dimensions. For example, to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, all people were required to rapidly adjust to social distancing and travel restrictions. Such a complex behavioural response entails adaptation to achieve a full recovery from the systemic shock. To capitalize on the positive effects of disruption to the status quo, much more complex socioeconomic modelling needs to be considered when designing and evaluating possible public health interventions that have major behavioural implications. We provide a simple example of how this reasoning may highlight generally unacknowledged connections and interdependencies and guide the construction of scenarios that can inform policy decisions to enhance the resilience of society and tackle existing societal challenges.

Avec le recul, le principal motif d'inefficacité dans la lutte contre la pandémie de maladie à coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) dans certains pays trouve son origine dans l'incapacité à comprendre les interdépendances systémiques à de multiples niveaux et à en tenir compte. Ces dernières répercutent les effets de la pandémie sur plusieurs dimensions: sociale, technologique, économique et sanitaire. Pour tenter de contenir la pandémie de COVID-19, la population a notamment été contrainte de se conformer rapidement aux mesures de distanciation physique et aux restrictions de voyage. Un changement de comportement aussi abrupt requiert un temps d'adaptation afin de se remettre totalement d'un tel choc structurel. Si l'on souhaite profiter de l'impact positif qu'exerce ce bouleversement de situation, des modèles socio-économiques bien plus complexes doivent être envisagés au moment de concevoir et d'évaluer les interventions de santé publique potentielles ayant des conséquences majeures sur le comportement. Dans le présent document, nous citons un exemple simple qui montre comment ce raisonnement pourrait mettre en lumière des connexions et interdépendances souvent méconnues, mais aussi guider l'élaboration de scénarios qui serviront à étayer les décisions politiques, accroître la résilience de la société et aborder les enjeux sociétaux actuels.

En retrospectiva, el principal punto débil de la ineficacia de la respuesta a la pandemia de la enfermedad por coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) en algunos países ha sido la incapacidad de comprender y tener en cuenta las interdependencias sistémicas de varios niveles que difundieron los efectos de la pandemia en las dimensiones social, tecnológica, económica y sanitaria. Por ejemplo, para responder a la pandemia de la COVID-19, todas las personas tuvieron que adaptarse rápidamente al distanciamiento social y a las restricciones de movilidad. Una respuesta conductual tan compleja conlleva la adaptación para lograr una recuperación total del choque sistémico. Para aprovechar los efectos positivos de la alteración del statu quo, es necesario tener en cuenta una modelización socioeconómica mucho más compleja a la hora de diseñar y evaluar posibles intervenciones de salud pública que tengan importantes implicaciones conductuales. Aportamos un ejemplo sencillo de cómo este razonamiento puede poner de manifiesto conexiones e interdependencias generalmente no reconocidas y guiar la construcción de escenarios que puedan informar las decisiones políticas para mejorar la resiliencia de la sociedad y abordar los retos sociales existentes.

Effectiveness of dismantling strategies on moderated vs. unmoderated online social platforms.

Online social networks are the perfect test bed to better understand large-scale human behavior in interacting contexts. Although they are broadly used and studied, little is known about how their terms of service and posting rules affect the way users interact and information spreads. Acknowledging the relation between network connectivity and functionality, we compare the robustness of two different online social platforms, Twitter and Gab, with respect to banning, or dismantling, strategies based on the recursive censor of users characterized by social prominence (degree) or intensity of inflammatory content (sentiment). We find that the moderated (Twitter) vs. unmoderated (Gab) character of the network is not a discriminating factor for intervention effectiveness. We find, however, that more complex strategies based upon the combination of topological and content features may be effective for network dismantling. Our results provide useful indications to design better strategies for countervailing the production and dissemination of anti-social content in online social platforms.

Jealousy Incarnate: Quiet Ego, Competitive Desire, and the Fictional Intelligence of Long-Term Mating in a Romantic K-Drama.

In this paper, we analyze a K-drama aired by the Korean TV network SBS in 2016, Jealousy Incarnate, as a case study of the application of the Tie-Up Theory to a romantic narrative as a form of simulation of human mating processes with social cognition valence. We find that this case provides us with an example of a mating process where the choice of the male partner by the female lead character does not privilege the one that should be preferable on the basis of the standard prediction of the experimental research on human mating. This discrepancy is a signal of a basic limitation of experimental research, that highlights the subjects' preferences for abstract potential partners but is not able to fully account for the mechanisms that lead to the choice of a specific partner in a specific mating interaction. We argue that the narrative simulation viewpoint provides insights that are complementary to those of experimental research, and that a more comprehensive theoretical approach, such as the one offered by the Tie-Up Theory, may be helpful to account for both perspectives.

Framework for Managing the COVID-19 Infodemic: Methods and Results of an Online, Crowdsourced WHO Technical Consultation.

BACKGROUND: An infodemic is an overabundance of information-some accurate and some not-that occurs during an epidemic. In a similar manner to an epidemic, it spreads between humans via digital and physical information systems. It makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it. OBJECTIVE: A World Health Organization (WHO) technical consultation on responding to the infodemic related to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic was held, entirely online, to crowdsource suggested actions for a framework for infodemic management. METHODS: A group of policy makers, public health professionals, researchers, students, and other concerned stakeholders was joined by representatives of the media, social media platforms, various private sector organizations, and civil society to suggest and discuss actions for all parts of society, and multiple related professional and scientific disciplines, methods, and technologies. A total of 594 ideas for actions were crowdsourced online during the discussions and consolidated into suggestions for an infodemic management framework. RESULTS: The analysis team distilled the suggestions into a set of 50 proposed actions for a framework for managing infodemics in health emergencies. The consultation revealed six policy implications to consider. First, interventions and messages must be based on science and evidence, and must reach citizens and enable them to make informed decisions on how to protect themselves and their communities in a health emergency. Second, knowledge should be translated into actionable behavior-change messages, presented in ways that are understood by and accessible to all individuals in all parts of all societies. Third, governments should reach out to key communities to ensure their concerns and information needs are understood, tailoring advice and messages to address the audiences they represent. Fourth, to strengthen the analysis and amplification of information impact, strategic partnerships should be formed across all sectors, including but not limited to the social media and technology sectors, academia, and civil society. Fifth, health authorities should ensure that these actions are informed by reliable information that helps them understand the circulating narratives and changes in the flow of information, questions, and misinformation in communities. Sixth, following experiences to date in responding to the COVID-19 infodemic and the lessons from other disease outbreaks, infodemic management approaches should be further developed to support preparedness and response, and to inform risk mitigation, and be enhanced through data science and sociobehavioral and other research. CONCLUSIONS: The first version of this framework proposes five action areas in which WHO Member States and actors within society can apply, according to their mandate, an infodemic management approach adapted to national contexts and practices. Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and the related infodemic require swift, regular, systematic, and coordinated action from multiple sectors of society and government. It remains crucial that we promote trusted information and fight misinformation, thereby helping save lives.

Well-Being in Life and Well-Being at Work: Which Comes First? Evidence From a Longitudinal Study.

Understanding reciprocal relationships between specific arenas in life and at work is critical for designing interventions to improve workplace health and safety. Most studies about the links between dimensions of well-being in life and at work have been cross-sectional and usually narrowly focused on one of the dimensions of the work-life well-being link. The issues of causality and feedback between life and work well-being have often not been addressed. We overcome these issues by measuring six aspects of well-being for both the work arena and life in general, using longitudinal data with a clear temporal sequence of cause and effect, and by explicitly accounting for feedback with potential effects in both directions. Nine hundred and fifty-four Mexican apparel factory workers at a major global brand participated in two waves of the Worker Well-Being Survey. Data on life satisfaction and job satisfaction, happiness and positive affect, meaning and purpose, health, and social relationships in life and at work were used. Lagged regression controlling for confounders and prior outcomes was employed. Sensitivity analysis was used to assess the robustness of the results to potential unmeasured confounding. For the relationships between life satisfaction and job satisfaction and between happiness in life and happiness at work effects in both directions were found. Nevertheless, indication of a larger effect of life satisfaction on job satisfaction than the reverse was obtained. For depression and meaning in life, there was evidence for an effect of life well-being on work-related well-being, but not for the reverse. For social relationships and purpose, there was evidence for an effect of work-related well-being on life well-being, but not the reverse. Relationships based on the longitudinal data were considerably weaker than their respective cross-sectional associations. This study contributes to our understanding of the nature of the relationship between aspects of well-being in the arenas of life and work. Findings from this study may facilitate the development of novel workplace programs promoting working conditions that enable lifelong flourishing in life and at work.

Participation to Leisure Activities and Well-Being in a Group of Residents of Naples-Italy: The Role of Resilience.

We explored the relationship between cultural and social participation, physical activity, and well-being in a group of residents of the metropolitan area of Naples, Italy and the role that resilience plays in this relationship. Naples offers a remarkable urban environment with the potentially beneficial psychological effects of outstanding natural beauty, and one of the world's most impressive repositories of tangible and intangible cultural heritage. However, Naples was also, and still is, heavily affected by the 2008 economic crisis, in addition to preexisting social and economic issues. The major finding of this study is that, despite this highly contrasting urban environment, the combination of physical activity and engagement in social and cultural activities has a positive effect on subjective (self-reported) psychological well-being (SPWB) in a group of residents, and that resilience mediates this relationship.