Lei Zhang

Consumers may sense hypocrisy in corporate social responsibility if they note inconsistency in enterprises’ words and deeds related to CSR. This inconsistency originates from the intentional selfish actions and unintentional actions of enterprises. Studies have revealed that consumers’ perception of hypocrisy has a negative influence on enterprise operation. However, studies have not examined how corporate responses to consumers’ hypocrisy perception affect consumers’ attitude and behavior. Therefore, the present study attempted to determine the measures that should be undertaken by enterprises to reduce consumers’ negative response to them when consumers perceive them to be hypocritical. We conducted a situational simulation experiment to explore the effect of the match between corporate hypocrisy manifestation and the corporate response strategy on consumers’ negative behaviors toward an enterprise and to test the mechanism influencing this effect. The results indicated that the interaction between the type of corporate hypocrisy and the corporate response strategy has a significant effect on consumers’ negative behaviors toward an enterprise. Consumers’ negative emotions have a mediating influence on the aforementioned effect. This study explored the response strategies of enterprises during a corporate hypocrisy crisis, classified corporate hypocrisy crises into two types according to the different manifestations of corporate hypocrisy, and introduced situational crisis communication theory into research on corporate hypocrisy. The present results help expand knowledge on corporate hypocrisy.

Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are characterized by attenuated pulmonary function and are frequently reported with cognitive impairments, especially memory impairments. The mechanism underlying the memory impairments still remains unclear. We applied resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare the brain local activities with static and dynamic amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations among patients with COPD and healthy controls. Compared with HC, COPD patients exhibited decreased sALFF in the right basal ganglia and increased dALFF in the bilateral parahippocampal/hippocampal gyrus. The reduced the left basal ganglia was associated with lower oxygen partial pressure. Besides, the increased dALFF in the left hippocampal/parahippocampal cortex was associated with poor semantic-memory performance and the increased dALFF in the left hippocampal/parahippocampal cortex was associated the forced vital capacity. The present study revealed the abnormal static and dynamic local-neural activities in the basal ganglia and parahippocampal/hippocampal cortex in COPD patient and its relationship with poor lung function and semantic-memory impairments.

Anxious major depressive disorder is a common subtype of major depressive disorder; however, its unique neural mechanism is not well-understood currently. Using multimodal MRI data, this study examined common and specific alterations of amygdala subregions between patients with and without anxiety. No alterations were observed in the gray matter volume or intra-region functional integration in either patient group. Compared with the controls, both patient groups showed decreased functional connectivity between the left superficial amygdala and the left putamen, and between the right superficial amygdala and the bilateral anterior cingulate cortex and medial orbitofrontal cortex, while only patients with anxiety exhibited decreased activity in the bilateral laterobasal and superficial amygdala. Moreover, the decreased activity correlated negatively with the Hamilton depression scale scores in the patients with anxiety. These findings provided insights into the pathophysiologic processes of anxious major depressive disorder and may help to develop new and effective treatment programs.

BackgroundIndividuals who use methamphetamine for a long period of time may experience decreased inhibition and increased impulsivity. In order to reduce impulsivity or improve inhibitory control ability, high-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation has attracted much attention of researchers. Recent studies on addiction have shown that rTMS can stimulate different brain regions to produce different therapeutic effects. Recent work also suggests that HF-rTMS over right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex does not affect the impulsivity of patients with alcohol use disorder; while HF-rTMS over left DLPFC could improve the impulsivity of patients with alcohol use disorder and cigarette smokers. However, it should be noted that empirical studies applying HF-rTMS over left DLPFC of patients with MA use disorders are still lacking.MethodsTwenty-nine patients with MAUD underwent five sessions of HF-rTMS on the left DLPFC per week for 4 consecutive weeks. The cue-induced craving and stop-signal and NoGo task were assessed pre-rTMS and post-rTMS. In addition, 29 healthy controls were recruited. There was no rTMS intervention for the controls, the performance of the stop-signal and NoGo task was evaluated on them.ResultsIn total, HF-rTMS of the left DLPFC significantly decreased MA-dependent patients’ cue-induced craving and stop-signal reaction time. For SSRT, the pre-test of experimental group was significantly higher than the score of control group. In the experimental group, the pre-test score was significantly higher than the post-test score. For Go and stop-signal delay, the pre-test scores of the experimental group was significantly lower than the scores of the control group. No significant difference was found between the pre-test and the post-test scores of the experimental group.ConclusionAdd-on HF-rTMS of left DLPFC may be an effective intervention for reducing impulsivity and cue-induced craving of patients with MAUD. Future research with a control group of MAUD that does not undergo the treatment is needed to confirm the effectiveness.

ObjectivesSeveral studies have examined the effects of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) on associative memory (AM) but findings were inconsistent. Here, we aimed to test whether twice-daily rTMS could significantly improve AM.MethodsIn this single-blind, sham-controlled experiment, 40 participants were randomized to receive twice-daily sham or real rTMS sessions for five consecutive days (a total of 16,000 pulses). The stimulation target in left inferior parietal lobule (IPL) exhibiting peak functional connectivity to the left hippocampus was individually defined for each participant. Participants completed both a picture-cued word association task and Stroop test at baseline and 1 day after the final real or sham rTMS session. Effects of twice-daily rTMS on AM and Stroop test performance were compared using two-way repeated measures analysis of variance with main factors Group (real vs. sham) and Time (baseline vs. post-rTMS).ResultsThere was a significant Group × Time interaction effect. AM score was significantly enhanced in the twice-daily real group after rTMS, but this difference could not survive the post hoc analysis after multiple comparison correction. Further, AM improvement in the twice-daily real group was not superior to a previously reported once-daily rTMS group receiving 8,000 pulses. Then, we combined the twice- and once-daily real groups, and found a significant Group × Time interaction effect. Post hoc analysis indicated that the AM score was significantly enhanced in the real group after multiple comparisons correction.ConclusionOur prospective experiment did not show significant rTMS effect on AM, but this effect may become significant if more participants could be recruited as revealed by our retrospective analysis.

Women’s participation in physical activities has been discouraged for a variety of reasons, especially in Muslim countries. This study aims to highlight Pakistani women’s religious beliefs about sports. It focuses on whether their religion contradicts their participation in sporting activities, and it does so by using an adapted version of the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire in the theoretical context of feminism in sports. The snowball sampling method was used to select women from the Sindh province of Pakistan, who completed a questionnaire incorporating the SCSRFQ that was specially designed for the current study. The results were unexpected, revealing that religious beliefs have no negative impact on Pakistani women’s participation in sports. Few participants believe that religion is an obstacle to their participation in sports. The results of the study challenge the traditional view by most of the previous studies that Islam is against women’s sports. It also challenges cultural limitations, such as some unwritten rules in Pakistani culture according to which women cannot participate in sports. These efforts should lead to enhanced female sports participation in the Pakistani context.

In this study, we demonstrate a previously unknown finding that mindful learning can improve an individual’s spatial cognition without regard to gender differences. Thirty-two volunteers participated in the experiment. Baselines for spatial ability were first measured for the reaction time on the mental rotation task. Next, the participants were randomly assigned to either a mindful or mindless learning condition. After learning, the mental rotation task showed that those in the mindful learning condition responded faster than those in the mindless learning condition. This study provides promising evidence for applying mindful learning to education

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is becoming increasingly important in China. This paper investigates the implementation of instruments for dimensions of CSR that are relevant for the Chinese context and the challenges that Chinese companies face. Based on a survey among 109 Chinese companies, we find that formal instruments to implement CSR are rather common. Companies spend most effort in improving the economic aspects of CSR, such as competitiveness, product innovation and process innovation. Only a small minority of the companies set concrete targets and report the realization of these targets for social and environmental goals. This indicates that the attention to social and environmental aspects of CSR is still rather loose. The most important challenges for improving CSR are strong competitive pressure, insufficient support from the government and/or nongovernmental organizations and high costs of CSR implementation. Multiple regression analysis shows that the use of instruments is positively related to company size and foreign ownership and negatively related to lack of resources and support for CSR by investors and consumers

Cooperative innovation has become a critical method for freight logistics firms in supply chain management. The previous study has proved that relational embeddedness has a positive effect on service innovation performance. However, the influence of organizational learning capacity has been widely ignored. This study focuses on explaining the mechanism of OLC on the relationship between RE and innovation performance of freight logistics service. Firstly, a theoretical model is constructed based on Social Network Theory, and four research hypotheses are presented. Secondly, a sample of 236 respondents from freight logistics firms in China is analyzed to test the hypotheses. Finally, several management implications and recommendations are suggested. The research results demonstrate that both RE and OLC have positive effects on IPFLS. Meanwhile, OLC partially mediates the relationship between RE and IPFLS. The findings provide practical guidance for managers to strengthen the relationship with partners and enhance OLC.

Evidence supports predictive roles of non-social smartphone use for smartphone addiction, but the relationship of social smartphone use and smartphone addiction is unclear. This study explored whether social smartphone use has a double-edged impact on smartphone addiction. Using data from a sample of 909 Chinese undergraduates, we tested a parallel mediation model that considered online social support and realistic social support as mediators. As predicted, social smartphone use weakened smartphone addiction through realistic social support and contributed to smartphone addiction through online social support. Moreover, we tested the moderating role of agreeableness in the mediation path of online social support. Agreeableness only moderated the indirect effects. Specifically, the predictive effects of online social support on smartphone addiction was greater for lower rather than higher agreeableness. The results suggest that social needs play an important role in the formation of smartphone addiction. Several limitations and implications are also discussed herein.