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1. Context dependent preferences in prestige bias learning about vaccination in rural Namibian pastoralists

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.117461  

   Prall, Sean; Scelza, Brooke; Davis, Helen Elizabeth (December 2024, Social Science & Medicine)

   Extensive work in the social sciences suggests that vaccination decisions are subject to incentives, biases, and social learning processes, including prestige bias transmission. High status figures, like doctors and public health officials, can be effective messengers for vaccination information and uptake under certain conditions. In communities where there is significant medical mistrust and less interaction with markets and formal medical systems, prestige bias social learning may operate through different channels. Here, we examine the role of prestige bias on vaccine decisions in two ethnic groups (Himba and Herero) with varying levels of market integration and experiences with formal healthcare systems. Participants completed a ranking task, comparing the influence of four prestigious individuals on vaccine decisions and a survey on medical mistrust. Using Plackett-Luce models, we compare the influence of location, ethnic affiliation, and other covariates on rankings. A multi-level model compared the influence of those within and outside one's ethnic group, as well as specialist (doctor/healer) and generalist (chief/governor) prestige figures. Results indicate changes in the rank of prestigious individuals across the rural-urban gradient. Our results demonstrate significant variability in prestige-biased social learning about vaccine decision making. Medical mistrust did not impact rankings. Contrary to previous work, we find that whether a prestigious individual is locally prominent is more important than their expertise in the relevant domain (health and healing). These findings emphasize the need for more context-specific studies of prestige bias, which can improve our understanding of healthcare decision-making and guide public health messaging across diverse contexts. 

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2. Uncovering Privacy and Security Challenges In K-12 Schools

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3580777  

   Chanenson, J.; Sloane, B.; Morrill, A.; Chee, J.; Rajan, N.; Huang, D.; Chetty, M. (January 2023, Human factors in computing systems)

   Increased use of technology in schools raises new privacy and security challenges for K-12 students---and harms such as commercialization of student data, exposure of student data in security breaches, and expanded tracking of students---but the extent of these challenges is unclear. In this paper, first, we interviewed 18 school officials and IT personnel to understand what educational technologies districts use and how they manage student privacy and security around these technologies. Second, to determine if these educational technologies are frequently endorsed across United States (US) public schools, we compiled a list of linked educational technology websites scraped from 15,573 K-12 public school/district domains and analyzed them for privacy risks. Our findings suggest that administrators lack resources to properly assess privacy and security issues around educational technologies even though they do pose potential privacy issues. Based on these findings, we make recommendations for policymakers, educators, and the CHI research community. 

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3. Moral Judgments Impact Perceived Risks From COVID-19 Exposure

   https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.74793  

   O’Connor, Cailin; Relihan, Daniel; Thomas, Ashley; Ditto, Peter H.; Stanford, P. Kyle; Weatherall, James O. (May 2023, Collabra: Psychology)

   The COVID-19 pandemic created enormously difficult decisions for individuals trying to navigate both the risks of the pandemic and the demands of everyday life. Good decision making in such scenarios can have life and death consequences. For this reason, it is important to understand what drives risk assessments during a pandemic, and to investigate the ways that these assessments might deviate from ideal risk assessments. In a preregistered online study of U.S. residents (N = 841) using two blocks of vignettes about potential COVID exposure scenarios, we investigated the effects of moral judgment, importance, and intentionality on COVID infection risk assessments. Results demonstrate that risk judgments are sensitive to factors unrelated to the objective risks of infection. Specifically, activities that are morally justified are perceived as safer while those that might subject people to blame or culpability, are seen as riskier, even when holding objective risk fixed. Similarly, unintentional COVID exposures are judged as safer than intentional COVID exposures. While the effect sizes are small, these findings may have implications for public health and risk communications, particularly if public health officials are themselves subject to these biases. 

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4. Transnational Affective Circuitry: Public Information Campaigns, Affective Governmentality, and Border Enforcement

   https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2023.2226193  

   Williams, Jill M; Coddington, Kate (November 2023, Annals of the American Association of Geographers)

   Geographers have been central to identifying and exploring the shifting spatialities of border enforcement and how different enforcement strategies alter the geography of state sovereignty. Migration-related public information campaigns (PICs) are one strategy that has received increasing attention from geographers and social scientists more broadly in recent years. While existing research examines the sites and spaces where PICs are distributed, as well as the affective content of their messaging, little research has examined the development of campaigns and the transnational connections that enable their deployment. This article draws on work in the fields of carceral circuitry and transnational enforcement networks in order to expand our understanding of affective governmentality as a transnational strategy of border governance. Based on data collected as part of a large-scale comparative study of the use of PICs by the US and Australian governments, we argue that this form of affective governmentality relies upon transnational circuits through which people, money, and knowledge move to enable the development and circulation of affective messaging. In doing so, we develop the concept of transnational affective circuitry to refer to the often contingent, temporary relations and connections that enable PICs to operate as a form of transnational affective governmentality aimed at hindering unauthorized migration. Our analysis illustrates the transnational connections that enable increasingly expansive and creative forms of border enforcement to emerge while also expanding the scope of examinations of affective governmentality to attend to the relations that undergird and enable this form of transnational governance. 

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5. The exchange between citizens and elected officials: a social psychological framework for citizen climate activists

   https://doi.org/10.1017/bpp.2020.41  

   SHERMAN, DAVID K.; SHTEYN, MICHELLE F.; HAN, HAHRIE; VAN BOVEN, LEAF (January 2020, Behavioural Public Policy)

   null (Ed.)

   Citizen activists play a role in translating public concern about the climate crisis to policymakers and elevating it on the political agenda. We consider the dynamic between citizen activists and the decision-makers they seek to influence and we review psychological research relevant to advocating for climate legislation. We conducted a study with citizen activists who lobby the US Congress for a carbon pricing policy to address climate change. The study assessed how activists think about four social psychological approaches: affirmation, social norms, legacy and immediacy. The findings provide a window into activists’ intuitions about which strategies to use, whom to use them with and their perceived effectiveness. A strategy of establishing shared values and common ground (affirmation) was used most frequently overall. A strategy emphasizing the long-term costs and benefits of addressing climate change (legacy) was employed less frequently than affirmation and seen as less effective by activists but it was the only strategy that was associated with perceived increases in Congressional Representatives’ support of the policy. Citizen activists and their interactions with elected officials provide an opportunity for social-behavioral scientists to understand and potentially overcome barriers to enacting climate policy. 

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