Hierarchical disjoint principal component analysis

AStA Advances in Statistical Analysis - Dimension reduction, by means of Principal Component Analysis (PCA), is often employed to obtain a reduced set of components preserving the largest possible...     

Ferry quarantine: The pandemic as a pretext to deny healthcare access to undocumented migrants and asylum seekers in Italy

The outbreak of COVID-19 forced national governments and health authorities worldwide to adopt measures aimed at protecting population health, most of which resulted in prolonged restrictions to individual freedom(s) and fundamental rights. In some cases, the pandemic represented a pretext for macroscopic and unjustified human rights violations, as in the case of the “ferry quarantine,” that is the use of commercial boats by the Italian Government to forcibly isolate migrants and asylum seekers from the rest of the population. Such a measure does not have any rationale at the epidemiological level and poses serious obstacles to the provision of adequate care to vulnerable people such as migrants and asylum seekers. The pandemic has been used as a pretext to implement discriminatory and disproportionate measures whose effect has been denying healthcare access to undocumented migrants and asylum seekers.     

Cognitive reappraisal and need to belong predict prosociality in Mexican-origin adolescents

This 2-year longitudinal study examined Mexican-origin adolescents’ need to belong and cognitive reappraisal as predictors of multiple forms of prosocial behavior (i.e., general, emotional, and public prosocial behaviors). Prosocial behaviors, which are actions intended to benefit others, are hallmarks of social proficiency in adolescence and are influenced by intrapersonal abilities and motivations that typically develop during adolescence. Yet, few studies of Mexican-origin or other U.S. Latinx youths have examined whether such individual difference characteristics, specifically social motivation and emotion regulation skills, support prosocial behavior. In a sample of 229 Mexican-origin youth (M_age = 17.18 years, SD = .42, 110 girls), need to belong, cognitive reappraisal, and general prosocial behaviors were assessed at ages 17 and 19. Emotional and public forms of prosociality also were assessed at age 19. Cognitive reappraisal was positively associated with concurrent general prosociality at age 17, whereas need to belong was positively associated with concurrent public prosociality at age 19. Moderation analyses revealed that general and emotional types of prosocial behaviors at age 19 were lowest for youth with both lower need to belong and less use of cognitive reappraisal at 19 years. Greater cognitive reappraisal skills and need to belong may reflect distinct motivations for engaging in varying forms of prosocial behavior in late adolescence.     

Is the majority always right? Young children's normative interpretations of majority and dissenting peer behavior

The present study investigates the social-cognitive underpinnings of young children's bias to follow the majority. More specifically, we focus on the question of whether children not only copy the behavior of a majority of peers, but whether they also understand this majority behavior as a social norm that everyone needs to follow. Additionally, we investigated whether seeing a unanimous majority or a majority and dissenting peer makes a difference for children's normative understanding. Participants included 180 preschool-age children (4-to-5 years old) who engaged in a conformity paradigm, where they either saw the behavior of a unanimous majority of peers, or additionally the behavior of a single dissenting peer, or only the behavior of two individual peers behaving differently (Control). Afterward, children mostly copied the unanimous majority and protested against others, when they deviated from this majority, thus indeed interpreting the behavior of a unanimous majority as a norm that others need to follow. However, when they had seen a majority as well as a dissenter, children's protest and copying in favor of the majority dropped. Overall, our findings show that preschool children interpret the behavior of a unanimous majority as normative. However, when children additionally see a dissenter's behavior, this normative interpretation is weakened.