LDST 120 Midterm 1

Social influence

Process by which individuals adapt their opinions, beliefs, or behaviors as a result of social interactions

Social network analysis (SNA)

Explores connections and relationships using nodes and edges

Nodes

the actors: people, organizations, etc.

can include properties of nodes

Edges

the relations of the nodes: formal, affective, cognitive, etc.

can be nondirectional or directional, positive or negative

degree centrality

the node having the most connections

betweenness centrality

without that person, the network breaks down into groups that are isolated or much more disconnected

Task-oriented leadership

a management style that prioritizes achieving specific goals and completing tasks efficiently by focusing on clear processes, defined roles, and strict deadlines

Relationship-oriented leadership

leader prioritizes the well-being, motivation, and development of their team members, focusing on building positive and supportive relationships

Informed consent 

ethical guidelines for research with human subjects

key elements: research goals and content, risks and benefits, researcher contacts , voluntary nature of participation

Dominance

asserting authority and being decisive, using influence to control group behavior, often through fear or intimidation

Prestige

earning respect and admiration by demonstrating valued skills, expertise, and wisdom, leading to voluntary follower deference, rather than using force or intimidation

Strategies of solving collective action problems

Lower uncertainty by building trust and use selective incentives

Situational leadership

a flexible, adaptive approach where a leader changes their style based on the specific needs of individuals, tasks, and contexts to foster follower development

Institutional leadership

focuses on protecting and promoting core institutional values and character, involves setting the strategic vision, structural reforms, and overall direction for a large system or organization

Collective good

Non-excludable and non-rivalrous good

Collective action

cooperating to produce collective good

Collective action problems

free-riding and prisoners dilemma

Free-riding

having access to collective good without contributing so no incentive to contribute

Prisoner’s dilemma

when the immediate private benefits are too attractive

The tragedy of the commons

individuals, acting in their own self-interest, will exploit a shared, finite resource (a "commons") to the point of depletion, resulting in the destruction of the resource for the entire community

Selective incentives

benefits or rewards, both positive (like discounts) and negative (like fines), offered to specific individuals or groups to encourage their participation in a collective action or group

Leadership

involves facilitating group coordination acting to achieve a shared goal

Persuasion

your goal is now their goal too, they are moved to act independently according to it

Compliance

the person doesn’t care about/don’t share your goals – but will do what you’re asking

Obedience

they disagree with your goal but will obey because they recognize your right to order them

Formal leadership

A leader holds a designated position

Informal leadership

No designated position, spontaneous

Double-blind peer review

an evaluation method in academic publishing where the identities of both the authors and the reviewers are concealed from each other to prevent bias and promote objective assessment based solely on the manuscript's content

External validity

if data used in the study is a good representation of real groups or phenomena we wanted to study

Internal validity

how well we measured what we wanted to measure ◦ = how reliable our causal claim is

Scientific method

the proper process of creating scientific knowledge, and this process needs to be logical, confirmable, and scrutinizable

Expectation

tentative answer to a question

Descriptive research

seeks to determine if there is a cause-and-effect relationship between variables

Causal research

seeks to determine if there is a cause-and-effect relationship between variables

Variable

feature of the observed reality that we use to capture/measure our concept