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How moral decision-making occurs, matures over time and relates to behaviour is complex. To develop a full picture of moral decision-making, moral development and moral behaviour it is necessary to understand: (a) how real-time moral decisions are made (including relevant social and contextual factors), (b) what processes are required to develop to enable mature moral decisions, (c) how these processes develop over time, and (d) how moral decisions relate to behaviour. In this paper, psychological and social neuroscience theories of moral decision-making and development are briefly reviewed, as is the development of relevant component processes. Various component processes and factors are seen as required for moral decision-making and development, yet there is no comprehensive framework incorporating these components into one explanation of how real-time moral decisions are made and mature. In this paper, we integrated these components into a new framework based on social information processing (SIP) theory. Situational factors, and how both cognitive and affective processes guide moral decisions was incorporated into the Social Information Processing-Moral Decision-Making (SIP-MDM) framework, drawing upon theories and findings from developmental psychology and social neuroscience. How this framework goes beyond previous SIP models was outlined, followed by a discussion of how it can explain both real-time moral decisions and moral development. We concluded with how the SIP-MDM framework could be used to guide future research and theory development in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Analytical sociology explains macro-level outcomes by referring to micro-level behaviors, and its hypotheses thus take macro-level entities (e.g. groups) as their units of analysis. The statistical analysis of these macro-level units is problematic, since macro units are often few in number, leading to low statistical power. Additionally, micro-level processes take place within macro units, but tests on macro-level units cannot adequately deal with these processes. Consequently, much analytical sociology focuses on testing micro-level predictions. We propose a better alternative; a method to test macro hypotheses on micro data, using randomization tests. The advantages of our method are (i) increased statistical power, (ii) possibilities to control for micro covariates, and (iii) the possibility to test macro hypotheses without macro units. We provide a heuristic description of our method and illustrate it with data from a published study. Data and R-scripts for this paper are available in the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/scfx3/). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the globally significant topic of gendered participation and socio-technical improvisation in technological systems hard set within deeply symbolic practices. The general belief in the anthropology of sub-Saharan Africa is that metallurgy (male domain) and pottery (female domain) are gendered technologies, regulated by strong taboos that exclude women from participating in male practices, and vice versa. This has promoted the untested generalisation that, in conformity with these gender dichotomies, taboos mandated that transformational stages of metallurgy such as smelting were always carried on outside settlements, without the participation of women. These ideas were empirically tested through a stylistic, petrographic and geochemical study of metallurgical crucibles from Mapungubwe, which at this site resemble pottery. It emerged that pottery and crucibles are one and the same. Since pottery was made by women, and men worked metal, the conclusion in this paper is that metallurgy was neither hermetically sealed nor accessible exclusively to men. Furthermore, depending on context, primary metal production was also practised within settlements. This demonstrates considerable fluidity and improvisation, with women and men participating in each other’s technological domains, although such participation may have been staggered so that they undertook different tasks of the same process, at potentially different times and in different spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a longstanding debate in anthropology and history regarding the extent to which the determinants of past economic change are similar in any specific ways to those that operate today. In this paper, we examine the extent to which increasing returns to settlement scale in material outputs, which are apparent in contemporary urban systems, also operated in the Late Pre-Hispanic Tarma and Mantaro drainages of the Peruvian Central Andes. Proxy measures for material outputs across settlements and households show that this region experienced a marked economic expansion following its incorporation into the Inka Empire ca. 1450 CE. We argue that these changes in living standards are consistent with expectations of an emerging framework known as settlement scaling theory that specifies relationships between human aggregation, social connectivity and material outputs. Our results suggest that intensification of human social connectivity and material flows—as measured through settlement size distributions—can be sufficient to raise living standards even in the absence of markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comprehensive land use plans and their corresponding regulations play a role in determining the nature of the built environment and community design, which are factors that influence population health and health disparities. To determine the level in which a plan addresses healthy living and active design, there is a need for a systematic, reliable and valid method of analyzing and scoring health-related content in plans and regulations. This paper describes the development and validation of a scoring tool designed to measure the strength and comprehensiveness of health-related content found in land use plans and the corresponding regulations. The measures are scored based on the presence of a specific item and the specificity and action-orientation of language. To establish reliability and validity, 42 land use plans and regulations from across the United States were scored January-April 2016. Results of the psychometric analysis indicate the scorecard is a reliable scoring tool for land use plans and regulations related to healthy living and active design. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) scores showed strong inter-rater reliability for total strength and comprehensiveness. ICC scores for total implementation scores showed acceptable consistency among scorers. Cronbach's alpha values for all focus areas were acceptable. Strong content validity was measured through a committee vetting process. The development of this tool has far-reaching implications, bringing standardization of measurement to the field of land use plan assessment, and paving the way for systematic inclusion of health-related design principles, policies, and requirements in land use plans and their corresponding regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]