The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant negative effect on university students’ mental health worldwide. The pandemic has resulted in individuals experiencing increased levels of anxiety and stress as well as intensified concerns about the future due to a rise in uncertainty. To eliminate the anxiety and stress caused by uncertainty, individuals who have high cognitive closure needs are strongly motivated to achieve certainty and seek answers, even if the decisions they make in the process are inappropriate or even irrational. (...) This study attempts to analyze the influence of anxiety and stress on university students’ academic involution behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic through the mediating effect of the need for cognitive closure. Analyzing the survey data collected from 402 university students from 3 different universities through the mediating effect model and path analysis with latent variable, our results indicate that: The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly increased the levels of anxiety and stress experienced by university students. The path coefficient of the perceived risk of contracting COVID-19 to perceived emotions was 0.352, anxiety and stress significantly and positively affect academic involution behavior. For each unit of increase in the scores of anxiety and stress, the scores of academic involution behavior increased by 0.408 and 0.398 units, respectively, and The need for cognitive closure had a complete and partial mediating effect on the relationship between the perceived risk of contracting COVID-19 and academic involution behavior, as well as anxiety and academic involution behavior, respectively. The results of PA-LV showed that the mediating effect values were 0.106 and 0.044, respectively. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has not yet come to an end and so clarifying the relationship between anxiety and academic involution behavior will assist university students to optimize the relationship in their own subjective situations, to establish good learning habits, and reduce psychological distress. (shrink)

Friendship establishment was analyzed using constructs from social cognitive theory and social network theory. In further studies, we investigated the effect of personality traits, interpersonal self-efficacy, and network structure on the establishment of friendships. In this study, we used social network analysis method and exponential random graph model. The following findings are reported. First, the friendship network of college students had small group characteristics, and the formation of this small group was more based on personality complementarity than similarity. The homogeneity (...) hypothesis of personality was not tenable. Secondly, individuals with dominance or influence personality traits and high interpersonal self-efficacy were more likely to be in the center of the friendship network. Furthermore, personality traits and interpersonal self-efficacy may have interactive effects on the formation of friendship networks. Popularity and activity effects existed in friendship networks, but the reciprocal relationship based on personality traits was not verified. The balance structure can easily explain the agglomeration of friendships in a small range, indicating that small groups of friendships prefer a two-way circular close relationship. Finally, the formation of a friendship network includes the comprehensive process of individual characteristics and endogenous tie formation, which helps us to understand the social population structure and its process over a wider range. (shrink)

Social behavior is closely linked to self-efficacy, which is the individual’s confidence or belief that they can successfully complete a task in a given situation. The advent of social media classified social behavior as online and offline sociality, and has cultivated inconsistency in online and offline social behavior of university students, an issue that has come to prominence in scholarly research. However, the relationship between this inconsistency and self-efficacy is worthy of investigation because this particular confluence of behavioral concepts has (...) been rarely been researched. In this paper, online and offline social behavior is integrated, a typology for university student social activities established, and the correlation between different types of social activity and student self-efficacy investigated, with a specific focus on those with notable inconsistencies in their social performance. The following findings are reported. First, as online social networking has become the dominant form of social interaction, the types of social activity have increased, with one-third of university students showing inconsistent online and offline social behavior. However, different types of social activities have varied effects on the self-efficacy of university students, with differences between general self-efficacy, which is significantly above academic self-efficacy, and social self-efficacy. These effects are also different for students with inconsistent online and offline social performance; those who are active online show higher self-efficacy than those who are active offline. This study shows online social network interactions to be more closely related to student self-efficacy than offline interactions. (shrink)

Literature and the soul.--Literature and light.--Literature and beauty.--Literature and the Word.

This chapter presents an essay by W. E. B. Du Bois that deals with the issue of race. He raises questions such as: What is the real meaning of race. What has, in the past, been the law of race development? What lessons has the past history of race development to teach the rising Negro people? He describes the American Negro Academy, which aims at once to be the epitome and expression of the intellect of the black-blooded people of America, (...) the exponent of the race ideals of one of the world's great races. He concludes by outlining a proposed creed for the Academy. (shrink)

'The problem of the twentieth-century is the problem of the color-line.' Originally published in 1903, The Souls of Black Folk is a classic study of race, culture, and education at the turn of the twentieth century. With its singular combination of essays, memoir, and fiction, this book vaulted W. E. B. Du Bois to the forefront of American political commentary and civil rights activism. The Souls of Black Folk is an impassioned, at times searing account of the situation of African (...) Americans in the United States. Du Bois makes a forceful case for the access of African Americans to higher education, memorably extols the achievements of black culture (above all the spirituals or 'sorrow songs'), and advances the provocative and influential argument that due to the inequalities and pressures of the 'race problem', African American identity is characterized by 'double consciousness'. This edition includes a valuable appendix of other writing by Du Bois, which sheds light on his attitudes and intentions. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. (shrink)

This book offers a critical feminist perspective on the widely debated topic of transitional justice and forgiveness. Louise Du Toit examines the phenomenon of rape with a feminist philosophical discourse concerning women’s or ‘feminine’ subjectivity and selfhood. She demonstrates how the hierarchical dichotomy of male active versus female passive sexuality – which obscures the true nature of rape – is embedded in the dominant western symbolic frame. Through a Hegelian and phenomenological reading of first-person accounts by rape victims, she excavates (...) an understanding of rape that also starts to open up a way out of the denial and destruction of female sexual subjectivity. (shrink)

Housed in one volume for the first time are several of the seminal essays on Du Bois's contributions to sociology and critical social theory: from DuBois as inventor of the sociology of race to Du Bois as the first sociologist of American religion; from Du Bois as a pioneer of urban and rural sociology to Du Bois as innovator of the sociology of gender and culture; and finally from Du Bois as groundbreaking sociologist of education and cultural criminologist to Du (...) Bois as critic of the disciplinary decadence of the discipline of sociology. Unlike any other anthology or critical reader on Du Bois, this new volume offers an excellent overview of the critical commentary on arguably one of the most imaginative and innovative, perceptive and prolific founders of the discipline of sociology. (shrink)

This research investigates the interplay between leadership styles and institutional corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. A large-scale field survey of managers reveals that firms with greater transformational leadership are more likely to engage in institutional CSR practices, whereas transactional leadership is not associated with such practices. Furthermore, stakeholder-oriented marketing reinforces the positive link between transformational leadership and institutional CSR practices. Finally, transactional leadership enhances, whereas transformational leadership diminishes, the positive relationship between institutional CSR practices and organizational outcomes. This research highlights (...) the differential roles that transformational and transactional leadership styles play for a firm’s institutional CSR practices and has significant implications for theory and practice. (shrink)

Gender roles are anti-dichotomous and malleable social constructs that should theoretically be constructed independently from biological sex. However, it is unclear whether and how the factor of sex is related to neural mechanisms involved in social constructions of gender roles. Thus, the present study aimed to investigate sex specificity in gender role constructions and the corresponding underlying neural mechanisms. We measured gender role orientation using the Bem Sex-Role Inventory, used a voxel-based global brain connectivity method based on resting-state functional magnetic (...) resonance imaging to characterize the within-network connectivity in the brain reward network, and analyzed how the integration of the reward network is related to gender role scores between sex groups. An omnibus analysis of voxel-wise global brain connectivity values within a two-level linear mixed model revealed that in female participants, femininity scores were positively associated with integration in the posterior orbitofrontal cortex and subcallosal cortex, whereas masculinity scores were positively associated with integration in the frontal pole. By contrast, in male participants, masculinity was negatively correlated with integration in the nucleus accumbens and subcallosal cortex. For the first time, the present study revealed the sex-specific neural mechanisms underlying distinct gender roles, which elucidates the process of gender construction from the perspective of the interaction between reward sensitivity and social reinforcement. (shrink)

This article conceptualizes contemporary geopolitical violence in the Arctic through a semiotic register. Different living beings perceive different things, and these differences amount to different worlds, not merely different worldviews. Building on Eduardo Kohn’s reading of the semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce, and theorists of biosemiotics and ecosemiotics, the article analyses how signs in and between living organisms and their environments are political matters of life and death. Via the themes of invisibility, colors, and snow, the article traces semiotic relations (...) between different living beings and their Arctic ecologies to weave a semiotic understanding of contemporary geopolitical violence in the Arctic and the role of climate change therein. The article defines the violence of climate change as a violence of not being able to recognize oneself, and builds on Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s concept of multinaturalism to explain what it means that one world ruins other worlds. (shrink)

The study aims to explore the psychology and behavior of employees in organizations in enterprise innovation. Based on the human resource management system, organizational psychological ownership, and other related theories, the transformational leaders and their advice behavior in start-ups are taken as the research object. The data obtained from the questionnaire as the research samples. Second, the influence and intermediary effect of employees’ organizational psychological ownership on colleagues, leaders, and the whole enterprise are discussed, and the corresponding conclusions are drawn. (...) The results show that the path coefficients of transformational leaders of start-up enterprises for employees’ advice to their superiors and their peers are 0.28 and 0.31, respectively, and p < 0.01. Therefore, transformational leadership has a positive impact on both elements. In the relationship between organizational psychological ownership and employee creativity, the r value is 0.34 and p < 0.01. This shows that organizational psychological ownership positively correlates with employees’ creativity. In addition, corporate support can mediate employees’ behavior and psychological ownership in the organization and has a positive correlation in support, identity, and care. Therefore, the impact of organization-employees relations on employees’ innovation behavior is discussed based on organizational psychology and culture, which can improve employees’ subjective initiative for work and provides ideas for the management and development of start-ups. (shrink)

The distinguished American civil rights leader, W. E. B. Du Bois first published these fiery essays, sketches, and poems individually nearly 80 years ago in the Atlantic, the Journal of Race Development, and other periodicals. This volume has long inspired readers with its militant cry for social, political, and economic reforms for black Americans.

The text of the treatise “The Propositional Logic of Boethius” was finished in 1939. Prof. Jan Lukasiewicz wished at that time to issue it in the second volume of “Collectanea Logica”; as a result of political events, he was not able to carry out his plan. In 1938, I published an article in “Erkenntnis” entitled “AUS- sagenlogik im Mittelalter”; this article included the contents of a paper which I read to the International Congress for the Unity of Science in Cambridge, (...) England, in 1938 (Cf. Erkenntnis, vol. 7, pp. 160-168). The subject matter of this paper touched upon that of the above-mentioned treatise. Recently an article of Mr. Rend van den Driessche, “Sur le ‘de syllogismo hypothetico’ de Boece”, was published in the journal “methodos” (vol. I, no. 3). Mr. van den Driessche referred in this article to the article on propositional logic in the middle ages, which had appeared in “Erkenntnis”. This reminded me of my yet-unpublished treatise on the propositional logic of Boethius. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility reporting is becoming mainstream, yet there is limited research on whether and how CSR reports communicate value relevant information. We examine the effects of CSR report readability and tone on future CSR performance and the market reaction around the release of CSR reports. Using a hand-collected dataset of Fortune 500 companies that published stand-alone CSR reports from 2002 to 2014, we find that 1-year-ahead CSR performance is positively associated with the changes in both CSR report readability and (...) tone, suggesting that more readable text and more optimistic tone in a firm’s CSR report are indicative of better future CSR performance. Furthermore, consistent with the view that CSR reports communicate important value relevant information to the market, we document significant market reactions to report readability and tone around the release of CSR reports. Additional analyses suggest that CSR report readability enhances the association between the abnormal returns and the change in CSR report tone, and that the market reaction to CSR report readability is more pronounced for firms with lower analyst following and higher financial opacity. Taken together, our results substantiate the important roles of CSR report readability and tone in communicating future CSR performance and imparting value relevant information to the market. (shrink)

Recent reports of CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing in parasitic helminths open up new avenues for research on these dangerous pathogens. However, the complex morphology and life cycles inherent to these parasites present obstacles for the efficient application of CRISPR/Cas9‐targeted mutagenesis. This is especially true with the trematode flukes where only modest levels of gene mutation efficiency have been achieved. Current major challenges in the application of CRISPR/Cas9 for study of parasitic worms thus lie in enhancing gene mutation efficiency and overcoming issues (...) involved in host passage so that mutated parasites survive. Strategies developed for CRISPR/Cas9 studies on Caenorhabditis elegans, protozoa and mammalian cells, including novel delivery methods, the choice of selectable markers, and refining mutation precision represent novel tactics whereby these impediments can be overcome. Furthermore, employing CRISPR/Cas9‐mediated gene drive to interfere with vector transmission represents a novel approach for the control of parasitic worms that is worthy of further exploration. (shrink)

In this article, the co-editors of the corporate responsibility: quantitative issues section of the journal provide an overview of the quantitative CSR field and offer some new perspectives on where the field is going. They highlight key issues in developing impactful, theory-driven, and ethically grounded research and call for research that examines complex problems facing businesses and the society (e.g., big data and artificial intelligence, political polarization, and the role of CSR in generating social impact). By examining topics that are (...) under-researched, forward-looking, and socially oriented, scholars can expand the boundary of CSR’s substantive domain and produce research that helps businesses act in a long-term, socially responsible way in this quickly evolving, turbulent environment. They also discuss ways to enhance the methodological rigor of quantitative CSR research and encourage scholars to employ cutting-edge, innovative methods to shed light on the micro-level mechanisms of CSR and reveal patterns and relationships hidden in unstructured big data. (shrink)

The political environment has a significant impact on the sustainable development of enterprises. This manuscript aims to investigate the effect of policy uncertainty and official social capital on enterprises’ effective tax rate due to the change of officials. Based on the panel data from the Chinese Industrial Enterprise Database from 1998 to 2009, it is shown that the policy uncertainty caused by the change of local government officials significantly increases the ETR of enterprises. Meanwhile, municipal officials who have social ties (...) with provincial officials in their province also tend to raise the ETR of industrial enterprises, and this tendency is more evident when the officials take office. Further research shows that the effects vary in many aspects for policy uncertainty and social capital on the ETR of enterprises. The findings of this manuscript provide support for a deeper understanding of the change in local government fiscal policies and give suggestions to strengthen political environmental governance for the sustainable development of enterprises. (shrink)

The complexity of language is usually reflected in the complexity of sentences. At present, the research of sentence complexity mainly focuses on the analysis of syntactic complexity. In this paper, from the perspective of Leech's theory of sentence semantic structure, the predication structure is taken as the semantic unit to explore the sentence semantic complexity. The predication structures are extracted based on the result of sentence-based syntactic analysis, and then the linear expression sequence of a sentence is converted into a (...) semantic hierarchy based on predicate semantic frameworks; the universality of predicate semantic frameworks is obtained by using the spectral clustering algorithm; and the sentence semantic complexity depends on the universality of predicate semantic frameworks at various layers. The experimental results show that the measurement method of sentence sematic complexity based on predicate semantic frameworks is more effective by comparing with the method that only considers the semantic categories of words in the sentence. (shrink)

Der Glaube als existentieller Stabilitätsfaktor - dieses Bild macht dieses Buch zu seinem Thema. Es rekonstruiert, in welcher Weise religiöse Überzeugungen auch fragil und vor allem dynamisch und lernbereit zu denken sind. Glaube ist nicht selten mit Ideologieverdacht konfrontiert: Er liefert ein geschlossenes Weltbild, das determiniert, was wir wie beurteilen und für andere Standpunkte und Wahrnehmungen unsensibel macht. Dürnberger bringt dagegen die prinzipielle Dynamik des Glaubens ins Spiel; er legt (offenbarungs-)theologische und v. a. (sprach-)philosophische Möglichkeitsbedingungen eines lernenden Glaubens frei und (...) fragt, wie sich Glaube in der Erforschung der Zeichen der Zeit legitim zu dynamisieren vermag. Wichtigster Referenzdenker dafür ist der US-amerikanische Philosoph Robert B. Brandom, dessen inferentialistischer Pragmatismus zu den prominentesten Positionen der Gegenwartsphilosophie zählt. (shrink)