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Social media platforms are too often understood as monoliths with clear priorities. Instead, we analyze them as complex organizations torn between starkly different justifications of their missions. Focusing on the case of Meta, we inductively analyze the company's public materials and identify three evaluative logics that shape the platform's decisions: an engagement logic, a public debate logic, and a wellbeing logic. There are clear trade-offs between these logics, which often result in internal conflicts between teams and departments in charge of these different priorities. We examine recent examples showing how Meta rotates between logics in its decision-making, though the goal of engagement dominates in internal negotiations. We outline how this framework can be applied to other social media platforms such as TikTok, Reddit, and X. We discuss the ramifications of our findings for the study of online harms, exclusion, and extraction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do people give to strangers? We propose that people trust and give more to those whose emotional expressions match how they ideally want to feel ("ideal affect match"). European Americans and Koreans played multiple trials of the Dictator Game with recipients who varied in emotional expression (excited, calm), race (White, Asian) and sex (male, female). Consistent with their culture's valued affect, European Americans trusted and gave more to excited than calm recipients, whereas Koreans trusted and gave more to calm than excited recipients. These findings held regardless of recipient race and sex. We then used fMRI to probe potential affective and mentalizing mechanisms. Increased activity in the nucleus accumbens (associated with reward anticipation) predicted giving, as did decreased activity in the right temporo-parietal junction (rTPJ; associated with reduced belief prediction error). Ideal affect match decreased rTPJ activity, suggesting that people may trust and give more to strangers whom they perceive to share their affective values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European Americans value excitement more and calm less than Chinese. Within cultures, European Americans value excited and calm states similarly, whereas Chinese value calm more than excited states. To examine how these cultural differences influence people's immediate responses to excited vs calm facial expressions, we combined a facial rating task with functional magnetic resonance imaging. During scanning, European American (n = 19) and Chinese (n = 19) females viewed and rated faces that varied by expression (excited, calm), ethnicity (White, Asian) and gender (male, female). As predicted, European Americans showed greater activity in circuits associated with affect and reward (bilateral ventral striatum, left caudate) while viewing excited vs calm expressions than did Chinese. Within cultures, European Americans responded to excited vs calm expressions similarly, whereas Chinese showed greater activity in these circuits in response to calm vs excited expressions regardless of targets' ethnicity or gender. Across cultural groups, greater ventral striatal activity while viewing excited vs. calm expressions predicted greater preference for excited vs calm expressions months later. These findings provide neural evidence that people find viewing the specific positive facial expressions valued by their cultures to be rewarding and relevant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents several abstracts of articles published in the Winter 2004 issue of the "Journal of Comparative Family Studies." "Taking Stock of America's Attitudes on Cultural Diversity: An Analysis of Public Deliberation on Multiculturalism, Assimilation and Intermarriage," by Douglas George and George Yancey; "Attachment Relationships Between Korean Young Adult Daughters and Their Mothers," by Gyesook Yoo; "International Migration and Men's Marriage in Western Mexico," by Emilio A. Parrado.

Presents several abstracts of articles published in the Winter 2004 issue of the "Journal of Comparative Family Studies." "Taking Stock of America's Attitudes on Cultural Diversity: An Analysis of Public Deliberation on Multiculturalism, Assimilation and Intermarriage," by Douglas George and George Yancey; "Attachment Relationships Between Korean Young Adult Daughters and Their Mothers," by Gyesook Yoo; "International Migration and Men's Marriage in Western Mexico," by Emilio A. Parrado.

Presents several abstracts of articles published in the Winter 2004 issue of the "Journal of Comparative Family Studies." "Taking Stock of America's Attitudes on Cultural Diversity: An Analysis of Public Deliberation on Multiculturalism, Assimilation and Intermarriage," by Douglas George and George Yancey; "Attachment Relationships Between Korean Young Adult Daughters and Their Mothers," by Gyesook Yoo; "International Migration and Men's Marriage in Western Mexico," by Emilio A. Parrado.

European Americans view high-intensity, open-mouthed 'excited' smiles more positively than Chinese because they value excitement and other high arousal positive states more. This difference is supported by reward-related neural activity, with European Americans showing greater Nucleus Accumbens (NAcc) activity to excited (vs calm) smiles than Chinese. But do these cultural differences generalize to all rewards, and are they related to real-world social behavior? European American (N = 26) and Chinese (N = 27) participants completed social and monetary incentive delay tasks that distinguished between the anticipation and receipt (outcome) of social and monetary rewards while undergoing Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI). The groups did not differ in NAcc activity when anticipating social or monetary rewards. However, as predicted, European Americans showed greater NAcc activity than Chinese when viewing excited smiles during outcome (the receipt of social reward). No cultural differences emerged when participants received monetary outcomes. Individuals who showed increased NAcc activity to excited smiles during outcome had friends with more intense smiles on social media. These findings suggest that culture plays a specific role in modulating reward-related neural responses to excited smiles during outcome, which are associated with real-world relationships., (© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press.)