This chapter continues to study social media platforms but with a focus on the relationship between citizens and companies, particularly the co-production of data that serves as an important company instrument in the state–company partnership. It reveals inequalities in data production among citizens, systematically varying in terms of geographical distribution, privacy concerns, motivations, and choice. It differentiates different types of user behavior – discussing (producing political content and metadata) and lurking (producing metadata). Based on the China Internet Survey (CIS) 2018, it finds that Chinese users have similar motivations to users in other contexts, thus contributing to data production as privacy concerns remain less important compared to other motivations. This conceptualization of co-production rests not only on user participation on platforms, but also on the role of platform architecture and technological infrastructure that afford users’ choices. Through examining the role of the Great Chinese Firewall, the chapter finds that only about 12 percent of internet users jump the firewall to seek political information. A comparison of the three most popular platforms regarding their technological design show that Weibo and Baidu Tieba facilitate the production of political content more effectively compared to WeChat.

The German army invaded the Soviet Union in hopes of destroying it in a blitz campaign in 1941. Its professional and experienced officer corps utilized Auftragstaktik to achieve early victories on the battlefield. The men they led were well-motivated, generally well-trained, loyal to the Nazi regime, and confident in victory. The emphasis on tactical flexibility and independence helped balance out the army’s numerical inferiority in weapons and equipment. The enormous casualties suffered in 1941 and early 1942, however, ensured that the army’s qualitative edge soon dulled, leading to complete defeat.

When do artists feel that first intense pull toward creation? Some artists know early in their lives what they want to do with their lives. Sometimes, artists feel like their specific art choice has always been a key part of their identities. Other times, there is a sudden jolt of insight in which they realize their life path, whether from a gift, a moment of creation, or working on an artistic project in tandem with a friend or sibling. Peer support and approval can be a powerful reinforcement to pursue one’s artistic passion.

Mass rather than skill formed the basis of the Red Army’s victory primarily because inadequate training, weak motivation, and low morale plagued the army for the duration of the war, though after the Battle of Kursk, soldier motivation and morale improved. Often poorly led, inadequately fed, ill-trained, and under-supplied, Red Army soldiers faced daunting prospects just to survive. The dire need to replace losses led to abbreviated training; troops were thrown into battle with little preparation, leading combat effectiveness to suffer; fearful and feeling unprepared, soldiers deserted, shirked, straggled, and showed cowardice and committed many acts of indiscipline, crimes, and violations of regulations on a wide scale. When given the right equipment and weaponry, and properly trained to use it, and led by competent leaders, most soldiers fought well and with determination. These conditions, however, did not present themselves very often. Officers were often in positions for which they were unprepared. The ability of the Red Army to fight well improved in 1943 with defense production at full capacity and American Lend-Lease delivering vital supplies.

Moral feelings (e.g., guilt, pity) and values (e.g., honesty, generosity) motivate humans to act on other people’s needs. Research over the last two decades has suggested that these complex constructs can be decomposed into specific cognitive-affective and neuroanatomical components. This chapter gives operational definitions of what distinguishes moral from other forms of social and emotional functions. The cognitive components that distinguish different moral feelings (e.g., guilt being related to self-agency and indignation to another person being the agent) are elucidated. An overview of evidence from brain lesion and functional imaging studies on moral judgement and feeling in general is presented, with a focus more specifically on recent evidence that links particular brain networks to specific moral feelings (in particular, guilt and sympathy). The implications of this evidence for understanding psychopathology are addressed. The chapter also discusses the implications of opposing models of frontal cortical function for the understanding of moral cognition. Suggestions for future avenues of research in this area are provided. The cognitive neuroscience of moral emotions and motivations may provide novel and powerful ways to gauge complex aspects of adaptive and maladaptive human social behaviour.

Emotionally or motivationally significant stimuli tend to attract, divert, or hold attention more readily than neutral stimuli. These effects arise during numerous tasks, varying as a function of stimulus type or emotional cue. Their neural substrates involve enhanced activity of sensory cortices under direct influence of emotional or reward processing systems, including the amygdala, in combination with other top-down or bottom-up biases that together serve to prioritize behaviorally relevant information for access to conscious awareness. Other indirect influences act through interactions of emotional and motivational systems, with cortical or subcortical networks controlling attention, including executive functions and neuromodulatory pathways. These data reveal that attentional processes encompass multiple biasing signals that can modulate stimulus processing, based not only on space or object representations, as traditionally considered, but also value-based representations. Such mechanisms of emotional attention or affect-driven biases may operate preattentively, involuntarily, or non-consciously, yet nonetheless be regulated by current goals or context.

In this chapter we extend that discussion by considering classroom management in relation to creating engaging and motivating learning environments. Engagement and motivation are essential to young people’s success in various educational contexts, including early years, primary and secondary settings, and they can only occur in positive teaching and learning environments. Establishing and fostering such environments through effective classroom management is a source of concern for many preservice teachers, and this will continue to be the case as teachers progress throughout their career. This chapter provides an overview of various proactive strategies that serve to promote positive teaching and learning environments along with strategies for responding to student disengagement or off-task behaviour. Positive student–teacher relationships will also be described as an essential component for engaging and motivating students’ learning.

The life history approach to individual differences has become a major influence in evolutionary psychology, not least thanks to the contributions made by Jay Belsky and his collaborators over the last three decades. Today the approach is at a turning point, with a lively dialectic between proponents and critics and a menu of theoretical and empirical challenges to address. In this chapter, I follow up on previous work and continue to critically examine the concepts and assumptions of the “fast-slow paradigm” in evolutionary psychology. Specifically, I try to clarify some aspects of the interplay between the demographic and psychological levels of analysis, make an updated case for the centrality of the mating–parenting tradeoff in the organization of life history-related traits, describe the constellations formed by those traits, introduce the notion of multiple fast/slow profiles, and (re)consider the role of puberty timing in relation to human life history strategies. Preserving the value of the life history approach demands that we work to keep the foundations healthy – constantly revising our concepts and assumptions, in the spirit of Jay’s remarkable scientific career.

The details of the example of the ‘murderer at the door’ – as it is commonly, if inaccurately called – are more complicated than most interpreters assume. This chapter is dedicated to the details of the case, many of which surface only in the light of other eighteenth-century versions of the story. Does the would-be murderer know that the person hiding his intended victim knows about his murderous intentions? Why are the options of the person asked about the victim’s hiding place restricted to yes or no, and how would this restriction work in practice? What are the reasons or motives of someone who intends to lie to a would-be murderer? And what are Constant’s ‘intermediate principles’, which he introduces to defuse the problem case? The chapter also explores Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s discussion of the case in his 1798 System of Ethics. Fichte and Kant agree that lying is not a legitimate option; but Fichte is by far the more radical moralist of the two.

In this introduction, we describe the purpose for this book by addressing the question of why we should care about stories. We discuss how stories form "sticky" narratives that readers might more readily remember as they engage in a wide array of resources regarding career searching. We also discuss how the inspiration for this book – Studs Terkel’s Working (1974) – leads us to offer another perspective of work: specifically, the modern experience of starting a new job. We end with an overview of what to expect in the book and how to read it.

Chapter 8 draws on sociological literature in debating whether law – however drafted – is capable of solving the complex problem of discrimination against people who look different. It argues that, although we should not expect too much of law in tackling the complex social problem of appearance bias, strategically targeted laws can sometimes play a part in changing attitudes, norms and behaviours. While prohibitions on discrimination are important for remedial purposes, other types of legal and social reform may be better placed to create the conditions for greater inclusion of people with visible differences.

This chapter characterizes violent extremism as an ideology, and associated communication-based or overt behavior, that protects, promotes, advances, and defines a group’s social identity, and is implicitly or actually violent. It presents a social identity theory and, primarily, an uncertainty-identity theory account of how normal social identity-based group and intergroup behaviors can become violently extreme. Social identity processes are driven by people’s motivation to (a) secure a favorable sense of self though belonging to high status groups, and (b) reduce uncertainty about themselves and who they are through identification with distinctive groups with unambiguously defined identities. In the former case, people strive to protect or improve their group’s status relative to other groups, and when moderate nonviolent strategies are continuously thwarted, they can reconfigure their group’s identity to incorporate and promote violent extremism. In the latter case, people strive to resolve feelings of self-uncertainty by identifying with distinctive groups, and when intergroup distinctiveness is blurred and their group’s social identity becomes fuzzy they are attracted to ethnocentrism, populist ideology, autocratic leaders, and ultimately violent extremism. The chapter ends by identifying warning signs of radicalization and intervention principles.

In his Republic, Plato claims that we always do whatever we do in pursuit of the good. But in Book IV of the Republic, Plato shows that people can have attractions and aversive reactions at the same time toward the same objects or actions. In this essay, I argue that Plato’s recognition and use of aversion as a motivating response cannot be squared with what I call his ‘motivational monism’, that is, with the view that the pursuit of the good is the only thing that motivates us. Rather, as Plato’s own arguments show clearly, sometimes we don’t pursue what is good; instead, we act so as to avoid what is bad. I contend that this negative motivation cannot be wholly understood in terms of our positive interest in what is good.

As soon as Italy entered the war, mobilisation orders were issued, from which emigrants were not exempted. From May–December 1915, two-thirds of the 300,000 emigrant soldiers would depart from their adopted homelands. Their passage was paid by the Italian government, but transporting thousands of reservists across the Atlantic was a formidable logistical challenge. This chapter examines the initial mobilisation of the reservists, their motivations for enlisting and their journeys to Italy in 1915. Their decisions to depart rested on many factors, including country of emigration, family situation, economic considerations, the length of time a man had spent abroad, degree of adherence to a sense of Italian national identity and political beliefs. Youthful naivety and a desire for adventure were also common motivators and the dangers of submarine attack when crossing the Atlantic a significant deterrent. Despite the mobilisation orders to emigrants, the Italian government had limited power to compel them to return from abroad to serve. The main incentive was a negative one: if reservists did not respond to the draft, they would be subject to severe penalties at a later date if they were to return to Italy.