X. Wang

Background: Trait self-esteem reflects stable self-evaluation, and it affects social interaction patterns. However, whether and how trait self-esteem can be expressed through behaviors are controversial. Considering that facial expressions can effectively convey information related to personal traits, the present study investigated the three-dimensional facial movements related to self-esteem level and the sex differences therein. Methods: The sample comprised 238 participants. Their levels of trait self-esteem were evaluated by employing the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. During self-introductions, their facial movements in 3D space were recorded by Microsoft Kinect. Two-way ANOVA was performed to analyze the effect of self-esteem and gender on 3D facial movements. Additionally, Logistic regression models were established to describe the relationship between 3D facial movements and self-esteem levels in both genders. Results: The results of two-way ANOVA revealed a main effect of trait self-esteem level for cheeks and lips’ movements. Meanwhile, there was a significant interaction between trait self-esteem and gender on the variability of lips’ movements. In addition, the combination of facial movements can effectively identify trait self-esteem in men and women, with 75.5 and 68% accuracy, respectively. Conclusion: The present results suggest that the 3D facial expressions of individuals with different trait self-esteem levels were different, and such difference is affected by gender. Our study explores a possible way in which trait self-esteem plays a role in social interaction and also provides the basis for automatic self-esteem recognition.

Public education finance in China plays an important role in education equality. This study investigated two mediation effects with a generalized structural equation model that comprised the mediation effect of shadow education at the school, family, and individual levels and the moderating role of education finance. There was a strong association among heterogeneity factors, shadow education, and educational results, with shadow education playing a mediating role in math and English courses. Individual heterogeneity differences had a negative impact on equality in educational results through access to additional shadow education opportunities, while heterogeneous factors were mediated through shadow education, causing financial moderation effects, in turn affecting inequality in educational results. Finally, the moderation degree and direction of education finance varied significantly, with a greater moderation effect on household-level factors that lead to unequal educational results. Targeted efforts are required to regulate shadow education, which is key to the development of the education system.

I, too, belong to the "old three classes."* At the age when I should have been in college, I went to Yunnan to dig ditches. This was bad for me; but worse, still, it caused my parents great anxiety. It has been said that worrying about their children took years off the lives of the parents of educated youth who were sent to the countryside, and that is how it was in my family. Parents always try to protect their growing children, and to be powerless to do so during that exceptional decade meant they had a lot of worry. As an adult, I have had pangs of conscience about this, and especially so when my father passed away. When I think about the details, of course, it was not my fault; but those feelings never go away

The aim of the study was to use an clustering analysis method to classify and identify native and foreign basketball players into similar groups based on game-related statistics; use the Pearson’s Chi-square test to identify the key clusters that affect whether a team enters the playoffs; and use the classification tree analysis to stimulate the prediction of team ability and the construction of the team roster. The sample consisted of 422 foreign players and 1,775 native players across 9 seasons from 2011 to 2019. The clustering process allowed for the identification of nine native and six foreign player performance profiles. In addition, two clusters of native players and one cluster of foreign players were identified that had a significant impact on team ability. These results provide alternative references for basketball staff concerning the process of evaluating native and foreign player performance in the Chinese Basketball Association.

Unlike other creatures, humans developed the ability to cooperate with genetically unrelated strangers and a tendency to comply with social norms. However, humans deviate from social norms in various situations. This study used the modified ultimatum game to explore why humans deviate from social norms and how their prosocial behavior can be promoted. In Study 1, participants were asked to imagine working with an anonymous counterpart to complete a task and obtain a certain amount of money (e.g., ¥10). The computer divided the money randomly in favor of the participant (e.g., 9:1 or 8:2). Participants should decide whether to accept or reject such a self-benefiting division. In the non-risk condition, an absolutely fair redivision of money would take place if participants reject self-benefiting division (e.g. 5:5 or 6:4). By contrast, in the risk condition, other-benefiting redivision of money (e.g., 1:9 or 2:8) would take place if participants rejected the self-benefiting division. Results involving 40 college students showed the main effect of condition. The frequency of accepting self-benefiting division in the risk condition was higher than that in the non-risk condition. As such, compliance with social norms is based on the preservation of material resources. In Study 2, we used economic or moral rewards to compensate for economic loss following compliance with the norm. Results involving 28 college students revealed a significant effect of compensation. The rewards, including moral praise, effectively decreased selfish choices. These findings extend previous studies on social norm compliance by emphasizing the importance of internal, fairness-based balance between material and moral needs, as well as the role of moral praise in promoting prosocial behavior.

While many publications have reported brain hemodynamic responses to decision-making under various conditions of risk, no inventory management scenarios, such as the newsvendor problem, have been investigated in conjunction with neuroimaging. In this study, we hypothesized that NP stimulates the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the orbitofrontal cortex joined with frontal polar area significantly in the human brain, and that local brain network properties are increased when a person transits from rest to the NP decision-making phase. A 77-channel functional near infrared spectroscopy system with wide field-of-view was employed to measure frontal cerebral hemodynamics in response to NP in 27 healthy human subjects. NP-induced changes in oxy-hemoglobin concentration, Δ[HbO], were investigated using a general linear model and graph theory analysis. Significant activation induced by NP was shown in both DLPFC and OFC+FPA across all subjects. Specifically, higher risk NP with low-profit margins activated left-DLPFC but deactivated right-DLPFC in 14 subjects, while lower risk NP with high-profit margins stimulated both DLPFC and OFC+FPA in 13 subjects. The local efficiency, clustering coefficient, and path length of the network metrics were significantly enhanced under NP decision making. In summary, multi-channel fNIRS enabled us to identify DLPFC and OFC+FPA as key cortical regions of brain activations when subjects were making inventory-management risk decisions. We demonstrated that challenging NP resulted in the deactivation within right-DLPFC due to higher levels of stress. Also, local brain network properties were increased when a person transitioned from the rest phase to the NP decision-making phase.

The long-term success of organizations is mainly attributable to employees’ psychological health. Organizations focusing on promoting and managing the flow may enhance employees’ well-being and performance to an optimum level. Surprisingly, the literature representing the role of HRM practices for their effect on work-related flow is very sparse. Accordingly, by drawing primarily on the job demands-resources model and HRM specific attribution theory, this paper develops a theoretical framework that unravels the effectiveness of specific organizational level High Involvement HRM practices in activating the individual level work-related flow with beneficial effect and mediating role of affective commitment. In addition to highlighting the underlying mechanisms that may cause HIHRM practices to be regarded as resources and sometimes as demands, this paper especially proposes that these practices implemented with a focus to promote employee well-being are perceived as job resources and may positively influence affective commitment and flow, whereas these practices used as a demand to increase performance are perceived as job demands and may hinder affective commitment and flow. It is further significant to understand the possible moderating effects of emotional intelligence on the relationships among HIHRM practices, affective commitment, and flow. The paper augments the knowledge and understanding of the impact process of HIHRM practices, in particular how the HIHRM effect is sensed by the workers and thus, influences their succeeding job attitude and work experience. Finally, this work, as the first paper to link HIHRM practices with work-related flow, promotes the concept of positive psychology in the workplace.

As human consumption is one of the key contributors to environmental problems, it is increasingly urgent to promote sustainable consumption. Drawing on the agentic-communal model of power, this research explores how the psychological feeling of power influences consumers’ preference for green products. We show that low power increases consumers’ preference for green products compared to high power. Importantly, we identify two factors moderating the main effect of power on green consumption. Specifically, we find that the effect of power on green consumption is more salient among those with high green consumption values. In addition, the effects of power are dynamic as a function of power distance belief, such that low power promotes green consumption in the low-PDB context while high power promotes green consumption in the high-PDB context. Taken together, these findings provide novel insights into understanding green consumption from the perspectives of social power, green values, and PDB. Besides contributing to the literature, the findings have significant implications for marketers and policy-makers in promoting green campaigns, bridging the attitude-behavior gap, and building a more sustainable society.

Due to the close relationship among intrinsic/extrinsic motivation, regulatory focus, and creativity revealed by previous literature, intrinsic/extrinsic motivation may play a mediating role between regulatory focus and creativity. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the relationship between regulatory focus and creativity by combining intrinsic/extrinsic motivation. In this study, senior high school students completed the Regulatory Focus Questionnaire, the Working Preference Inventory, the Williams Creativity Assessment Packet, and the Kirton Adaption–Innovation Inventory. The correlation analysis showed that both promotion and prevention focus positively correlated with intrinsic motivation; intrinsic motivation and promotion focus positively correlated with creativity personality and innovative-adaptive cognitive style; and extrinsic motivation and prevention focus negatively correlated with innovative–adaptive cognitive style. Furthermore, a path model showed that promotion focus positively predicted creativity through the mediation of intrinsic motivation. In general, our study suggests that intrinsic motivation plays a mediating role between promotion focus and creativity. Our results complement those of previous studies and serve as inspiration for the cultivation of creativity in classroom or enterprise settings.

This study extends regulatory capture theory to investigate how and to what extent a firm’s political and nonpolitical ties jointly influence corporate regulatory participation. In the context of regulatory standards setting, although firms with political ties are better able to promote firm standards into industry regulations, it remains unclear whether the coexistence of firms’ nonpolitical ties (i.e., university ties and interlocked firms in our study) is more or less likely to reduce the effect of political ties. Although corporate leaders with political and nonpolitical ties may provide complementary resources, they may follow different mechanisms to drive firm actions. We, thus, argue that nonpolitical ties likely reduce the effect of political ties on regulatory standards setting. Using a sample of public manufacturing firms in China, we find evidence that supports our predictions. Our study contributes to the regulatory capture literature by redirecting attention to the dynamics of political versus nonpolitical ties.

We present a population density and moment-based description of the stochastic dynamics of domain $${\text{Ca}}^{2+}$$ -mediated inactivation of L-type $${\text{Ca}}^{2+}$$ channels. Our approach accounts for the effect of heterogeneity of local $${\text{Ca}}^{2+}$$ signals on whole cell $${\text{Ca}}^{2+}$$ currents; however, in contrast with prior work, e.g., Sherman et al. :985–995, 1990), we do not assume that $${\text{Ca}}^{2+}$$ domain formation and collapse are fast compared to channel gating. We demonstrate the population density and moment-based modeling approaches using a 12-state Markov chain model of an L-type $${\text{Ca}}^{2+}$$ channel introduced by Greenstein and Winslow :2918–2945, 2002). Simulated whole cell voltage clamp responses yield an inactivation function for the whole cell $${\text{Ca}}^{2+}$$ current that agrees with the traditional approach when domain dynamics are fast. We analyze the voltage-dependence of $${\text{Ca}}^{2+}$$ inactivation that may occur via slow heterogeneous domain [ $${\text{Ca}}^{2+}$$ ]. Next, we find that when channel permeability is held constant, $${\text{Ca}}^{2+}$$ -mediated inactivation of L-type channels increases as the domain time constant increases, because a slow domain collapse rate leads to increased mean domain [ $${\text{Ca}}^{2+}$$ ] near open channels; conversely, when the maximum domain [ $${\text{Ca}}^{2+}$$ ] is held constant, inactivation decreases as the domain time constant increases. Comparison of simulation results using population densities and moment equations confirms the computational efficiency of the moment-based approach, and enables the validation of two distinct methods of truncating and closing the open system of moment equations. In general, a slow domain time constant requires higher order moment truncation for agreement between moment-based and population density simulations.

Transcranial direct current stimulation has been widely utilized in research settings and modulates brain activity. The application of anodal tDCS on the prefrontal cortex has indicated improvement in cognitive functioning. The cingulate cortex, situated in the medial aspect of the prefrontal cortex, has been identified as a core region performing cognitive functions. Most of the previous studies investigating the impact of stimulation on the prefrontal cortex stimulated the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, however, the impact of stimulation on cingulate has not been explored. The current study investigates the effect of stimulation on the resting-state functional connectivity of the anterior cingulate cortex with other regions of the brain and changes in behavioral results in a color-word Stroop task, which has repeatedly elicited activation in different regions of the cingulate. Twenty subjects were randomly assigned to the experimental and sham group, and their medial prefrontal area was stimulated using MRI compatible tDCS. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging and cognitive Stroop task were monitored before, during, and after the stimulation. Neuroimaging results indicated a significant decrease in resting-state functional connectivity in the experimental group during and after stimulation as compared to before stimulation in two clusters including right insular cortex, right central operculum cortex, right frontal operculum cortex and right planum polare with the left anterior cingulate cortex selected as the seed. The behavioral results indicated a significant decrease in reaction time following stimulation in the experimental group compared to the sham group. Moreover, the change in functional connectivity in subcortical regions with L-ACC as the seed and change in RT was positively correlated. The results demonstrated that ACC has a close functional relationship with the subcortical regions, and stimulation of ACC can modulate these connections, which subsequently improves behavioral performance, thus, providing another potential target of stimulation for cognitive enhancement.Clinical Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04318522.

The relationship between neuroticism and mobile phone use is a hot research topic in the academic community. The purpose of this study was to investigate the roles of self-emotional assessment and love status in the mechanism through which college students’ neuroticism influences mobile phone use.We construct a moderated mediation model, and taking 869 Chinese college students as the research object and testing the mediating role of self-emotional assessment and the moderating role of love status. The results show that: neuroticism was significantly positively related to mobile phone use and significantly negatively related to self-emotional assessment; self-emotional assessment was significantly positively related to mobile phone use; self-emotional assessment had a masking effect on the relationship between neuroticism and mobile phone use; love status not only moderated the relationship between self-emotional assessment and mobile phone use but also moderated the process through which self-emotional assessment masked the effect of neuroticism on mobile phone use. Our research expands the literature on the mechanisms underlying the effects of neuroticism on mobile phone use, enriches the understanding of the pertinent boundary conditions, and provides a better explanatory basis for the mobile phone use of college students.