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Urban regeneration schemes are adopted by councils and governments globally to address some of the social and economic problems in 'under-achieving' communities. However, despite the large-scale change that such initiatives bring to communities, there is little research to date that focuses on the health and well-being impacts of such strategies. This project was developed to investigate the inter- and intra-group dynamics of residential diversification to enable us to develop a better understanding of the psychological processes involved in large-scale community change in the urban regeneration context. Across the breadth of this project, I explore the impact of urban regeneration on well-being and resilience and develop an understanding of the possible drivers of engagement within a community context. Firstly, in Chapter 3, I develop our understanding of the different inter- and intra-group dynamics of residential diversification through the perspective of those residents who live in a regenerated area. Overall, this study suggests that a lack of community-based identity leads to feelings of loneliness and segregation and further serves to undermine well-being and resilience. Next, In Chapter 5, I found that group-based identification is positively linked to increased reports of psychological well-being, resilience and a willingness to engage with, and pay back to the community. Furthermore, these results were tested longitudinally and support the idea of a cyclical, positive relationship between identification and outcomes of well-being, resilience and pay back. Finally, in Chapter 6, I demonstrate that group-based identification can be increased through a targeted intervention that focuses on identity building techniques and translate into positive outcomes of well-being, resilience, a willingness to pay back to the community, community-based aspirations and reduced feelings of loneliness. The research overall highlights the importance of understanding inter- and intra-group processes when addressing large-scale community change (i.e., through urban regeneration schemes). Furthermore, it is suggested that regeneration strategies adopt a theoretically grounded approach to community change that puts the well-being and engagement of residing community members at its core and, importantly, incorporates identity-building techniques to help develop a cohesive, adaptable, and sustainable community post-regeneration.

Introduction: Romantic relationships are a cornerstone of human nature. Today, the needs and benefits of romantic relationships have the potential to be fulfilled by virtual agents (VAs). Although previous psychological research has examined how human needs can be met by anthropomorphised agents, this research has not much considered virtual romantic relationships. Aims: This thesis therefore aims to introduce the concept of romantic anthropomorphism (i.e. giving a non-human agent human-like characteristics in a romantic context) to help understand virtual romance. Specifically, we explored the factors that might contribute to developing a romantic relationship with a VA. To examine virtual romance, we use romantic video games (RVGs) for our two online-based and three laboratory-based studies. RVGs provide people with the opportunity to select, build and enjoy a romantic relationship with a VA. Depending on the player's answers, the agent's responses and behaviours towards the player will change. Some people anthropomorphise and fall in love with virtual romantic partners in RVGs. This thesis sets out three major parts. First, this thesis employs social psychological research and theory to review anthropomorphism and romantic relationships. Specifically, we focus on how, why and when people come to anthropomorphise in the digital age. The definition of digital age is the era where computer and technology is largely and widely available to humans. Moving beyond static representations of VAs, we examine the dynamics of human-VA relationships and how they encroach on the closest of human relationships; virtual romance. Secondly, it explores what factors attract people to play RVGs (Study 1 and 2). Finally, it aimed to investigate how romantic anthropomorphism predicts relationship authenticity, desire for real-world relationships, mood and real-world behaviour (Study 3, 4 and 5). Method: In Study 1, 43 Japanese participants completed the online survey about their desire to play RVGs and the importance of voice and touch in RVGs. In Study 2, 281 Japanese participants replicated the results of Study 1 regarding the importance of voice and touch in RVGs. The study also examined the anticipated benefits of playing RVGs. In Study 3, 4 and 5, female participants (Study 5: heterosexual female participants) completed the survey before and after playing an RVG for 30 minutes in the laboratory. In Study 5, participants also participated in an interview with an attractive male confederate at the end of the experiment. Results: Two online studies (Study 1 and 2) revealed that a human-like voice and the use of touch were perceived as important factors in anthropomorphised relationships. Moreover, the subsequent studies found that a desire to develop social skills and alleviate negative emotions increases the desire to play RVGs. Three experimental results (Study 3, 4, and 5) and internal meta-analysis revealed and successfully replicated that the romantic anthropomorphism of a VA predicted the desire for a real-world virtual relationship, and that greater positive affect via feeling that the relationship built with the VA was authentic. However, playing RVGs did not predict real-world behaviour in a subsequent interaction with a human confederate. Discussion: The most important contribution of this thesis is to cultivate the new concept of 'romantic anthropomorphism' and provide the foundations to understand the psychological mechanism of building authentic relationships with a VA. Moreover, this thesis displays a new direction for the field of anthropomorphism for romance in the digital age.

Drawing from multiple research traditions, I investigated pro-social and pro-environmental behaviours and assessed potential of behaviour change strategies, focusing on addressing hunting as a practice. An immersive 14-month ethnographic study involving participant observations, interviews, and focus groups explored the cognitive, social, and spiritual histories of four rural communities in North Sulawesi, Indonesia. Particular attention was paid to the individualistic elements of attitudes, values, and beliefs, along with the social norms and perceived behavioural control governing these variables. My research revealed highly pro-social communities, with empathic tendencies and care-giving values, demonstrating latent potential for conservation advocacy. Expression of these values is dependent on several loci of control, particularly normative pressures of close communal living and religious doctrine. Land stewardship through participation in resource management initiatives generates responsibility toward wildlife and natural areas. I discovered the heterogenization of old and new belief systems toac have major implications for control and acceptance of behaviours and how likely people partake in practices related to the environment. Next, a strong affinity for nature was recorded, demonstrated by preferences for natural settings, awe and wonder of nature, human-animal relations including expression of empathic and compassionate predispositions. I noted a growing phenomenon of cultural erosion and loss of traditional ecological knowledge. A call for preservationism reflected the wish to avert breakdown of ancient cultural roots and identities, and the wisdom which connects people to the natural world. Finally, I experienced emergent environmental identities and openness to change, with a transition toward pride over exploitation of native wildlife, suggesting potential pathways to ecocentrism and thus more sustainable lifestyles. I distilled these insights into a strategic theory of change. This includes developing campaign messages which promote pro-sociality and environmental citizenship; working within the governing structures of societal control, particularly belief systems; and speaking to pre-existing communal values and social norms surrounding the acceptance of exploitative practices related to the natural world. Emergent from this research is a nuanced understanding of cultural dynamism and the links between pro-social and pro-environmental behaviours, which may help to normalise more harmonious relationships between people and nature.

Social identity prototypes refer to the quintessential representation of a particular social identity; prototypes define and prescribe the characteristics, behaviours and attitudes of a particular group, as distinguished from other groups (Hogg, 2001). For the most part, identity prototypicality is studied using self-reported methods used to assess perceptions of the prototypicality of self and others. However, in this thesis we provide behavioural evidence to demonstrate how linguistic style data can be used to measure identity-prototypical behaviour in real world contexts. Combining naturally-occurring online data with experimental data, the first chapter demonstrates that individuals behave in an identity-prototypical way regardless of the context in which they are communicating. Further, we show that this identity-prototypical style of communication is robust to topic, demographics, personality and platform, and moreover that the same identity-prototypical communication style can be detected in experimentally controlled conditions. In the second chapter, we demonstrate the small but statistically significant link between identity-prototypical communication and influence in real-world forum data. This finding provides insight into how group members respond to other ingroup members based on their prototypical communication style in real-world situations. Finally, in the third chapter, we use the group prototypical behaviour observed in naturally occurring online forum data to construct a typology of social identities, demonstrating the existence of five different types of social identity in line with the research of Deaux et al. (1995). We also demonstrate that it is possible to use this measurement of behavioural prototypicality to observe identity change over time. Using eight years' worth of forum data, we illustrate the slow movement of the transgender identity from being a stigmatised identity in 2012, to shifting towards a collective action identity in 2019. In sum, the findings outlined in this thesis provide evidence to support the idea that it is possible to use machine learning algorithms and naturally occurring online data to study behavioural prototypicality in real world environments. Moreover, this methodology enables us to study identities 'in the wild' thus transcending the limitations associated with using self-reported methodologies or experimental approaches to study how individuals express and enact their group memberships. Further, we also demonstrate the value in using naturally-occurring online behavioural data to test and extend the key components of social identity theory.

Research has shown that there are several relationship factors between therapists and their clients which are important to psychotherapy working better for people. Research has examined these factors in more detail in the hope that this can inform therapist training and improve people's outcomes in psychotherapy. Section one is a review of the existing research which has examined the influence of clients' interpersonal problems and interpersonal functioning on the therapeutic relationship, also termed the therapeutic alliance. Interpersonal problems are difficulties in interacting and communicating with others which can lead to distress for the person experiencing these difficulties. Nineteen studies were included, and the results suggested that interpersonal problems may influence the development of the therapeutic relationship. Some studies found this was more important for early relationship development. Other studies found it applied to specific interpersonal problems or specific parts of the therapeutic relationship. Quality of the studies was assessed, and most were deemed poor. The studies also used different approaches to examine this relationship. For these reasons, the findings are treated cautiously. Interpersonal problems may be important for therapists to consider when developing therapeutic relationships with their clients, but more research is needed to examine these factors. Section two examined another relationship factor which has been found to be important for improving people's outcomes in psychotherapy, called Facilitative Interpersonal Skills (FIS). FIS are the interpersonal communications of therapists which help clients to address their problems in therapy. There are eight FIS which capture the therapists' ability to approach their client with warm, expressive, understanding, and collaborative communication. FIS also captures the therapists' ability to instil hope in the client and persuade them to consider things from different perspectives which might help them with their problems. Therapists' FIS are rated by observers and traditionally this has been done using simulated video clips of clients presenting with difficulties, which therapists are asked to respond to. Little research has examined therapists' FIS in actual therapy sessions. The current study examined FIS in therapy sessions which were deemed to be "not on track" for achieving a positive outcome for the client. Therapy (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy; CBT or Person-Centred Experiential Therapy; PCET), therapist, and client variables were examined in relation to FIS. FIS was also examined in three sections of the session to consider if it varied over time. Results found no relationship between therapy, therapist and client variables and therapists' overall FIS score. However, there were relationships between specific FIS and the therapy model used by the therapist. Higher hope scores were found for CBT compared to higher emotional expression, warmth, and empathy scores for PCET. In CBT, the more a therapist aligned themselves with their therapy model the higher their FIS scores. FIS scores were also lower at the start of the therapy session. In conclusion, specific FIS may differ between therapy models and FIS may vary across a session. More research is needed to examine this further. Findings could have implications for therapist training and supervision.

Adolescence, defined as 10-24 years, is a time of heightened sensitivity to the negative effects of social rejection. Avoiding social risks - decisions or actions that could lead to social rejection - may therefore be important for adolescents, for whom social status and acceptance predicts future mental and physical health. In this thesis, I describe a series of studies that investigated the relationship between social risk and adolescence. In my first study, I developed a novel self-report measure of concern for health and social risk behaviours. I assessed age-related differences in concern for health and social risk between adolescence and adulthood, and whether these were related to rejection sensitivity and depressive symptomatology. In my second study, I explored the degree to which adolescents' engagement in health risks and illegal behaviours was related to whether or not they perceived these behaviours to increase their likability. I also investigated how this relationship is impacted by adolescents' experience of victimisation. In my third study, I used network analysis to explore the link between sexual minority status, depression, interpersonal relationships and health risk behaviours in a large cohort study of adolescents. In my fourth study, I designed an experiment to measure the extent to which adolescents versus adults show a preference for social versus non-social stimuli within an academic diligence task. I discuss how my findings suggest adolescence to be a period of heightened sensitivity to social risk, and how this impacts decisions to engage in risk taking behaviour. I consider how my findings relate to legal and policy issues around the minimum age of criminal responsibility, joint enterprise convictions and the use of peer-led approaches for behaviour change.

In the age of puberty suppression and social media, how do UK parents negotiate the intricacies of gender healthcare, and address their children's needs and desires? This thesis attends to a gap in scholarship relating to online trans/-critical activism of parents, and the provision of Internet-based gender healthcare services, whilst adopting a post-qualitative STS-inspired approach to provide a novel reframing of polarised and reductive debate around the figure of the trans child. Working with a diverse archive of materials, the thesis is structured to simultaneously mimic and subvert a linear 'transition' narrative. Notions of bounded personhood are demonstratively queered through the fricative fusion of research participants' accounts, which feature in a series of vignettes, including a mise en abyme, television script and agony aunt column. Interviews with UK parents, parent-authored blogs, webpages of trans medical service providers, and written material from support organisations, are handled with a poststructuralist sensibility, eschewing accuracy, representation, and coding in favour of novelty, interference, and diffraction. Contributing to trans studies, feminist theory, and the social study of science, technology and medicine, I aim to open up questions of care, responsibility and blame, whilst providing new ways to theorise and understand the complexities that parents of trans children currently face.

This thesis proposes the existence of a 'hunchback heuristic' (HBH): a tendency to associate members of low status social groups with anger and related behaviours, and members of high status social groups with calmness. A series of experiments were conducted to investigate the existence, boundary conditions, effects and interactions of this novel construct. Chapter 3 presents three experiments aimed at demonstrating the existence of the HBH, using both direct and indirect measures. The results of this series of experiments provide strong evidence of the expression of the HBH on both the explicit and implicit levels. The second experiment (Chapter 3, Study 1) further demonstrates that the HBH occurs at both inter-group and intra-group levels, and the third (Chapter 3, Study 2) highlights the cumulative effect of multiple co-occurring status hierarchies on the HBH's expression. Chapter 4 reports two experiments which explore the effect of social identity motives and system legitimacy on the HBH, using a novel minimal groups paradigm through which participants are assigned positions in a constructed status hierarchy. The findings of these two experiments (Chapter 4, Studies 1-2) show that social identity motives have only a limited effect on the HBH, which is further constrained by system legitimacy. Both experiments also demonstrate the independence of the HBH from other biases with clear evidence of its expression under minimal conditions. Chapter 5 describes a single cross-cultural experiment (Chapter 5, Study 1) which examines the possibilities of a) a cultural component to the HBH and b) frustration playing a role in mediating its activation and expression. The results of this study indicate that the HBH is not affected by cultural differences, and also showcases preliminary evidence that frustration may mediate the relationship(s) between status, anger, and calmness in the HBH. The overall findings of this thesis point to a real and robust HBH effect, such that low status social groups are consistently associated with anger, and high status social groups with calmness, on both explicit and implicit levels of association. The HBH holds true across intergroup and intragroup status hierarchies, as well as across cultures; however, it appears constrained by system legitimacy, following Spears et al.'s (2001) social reality constraint model. The findings also indicate that the HBH may be mediated by frustration.

Social participation has a wide variety of benefits affecting health and social outcomes at individual, community, and national levels. This, along with concerns that levels of participation are in decline, have led to the expansion of interest in the factors that motivate and restrict social participation from both researchers and policy makers; with encouraging participation at all lifecourse stages a particular policy aim. This research develops understandings of how social participation varies across the lifecourse using a longitudinal cohort study and its qualitative sub-study. Previous studies largely used cross-sectional and short-term panel data and so were unable to track the development of social participation and social relationships across the lifecourse. The relationships between social participation, social class, gender, and employment and family characteristics are also investigated. Social class and previous participation experience are shown to have a consistent relationship with social participation, while the relationship between social participation, employment and the family shifts across the lifecourse. The gendered nature of social participation and responsibilities towards the family and employment are highlighted. The qualitative analysis indicated social participation is potentially underreported in quantitative data and identified novel themes that provided insight into the class-based patterns of social participation by showing it is valued widely, albeit in different ways. These findings are discussed in relation to Bourdieu’s concept of habitus as it is argued that the experiences of those of a higher social class during their childhood develops the dispositions, or habitus, that encourages social participation behaviours across the lifecourse. Efforts aimed at increasing social participation must consider the diversity, or current lack thereof, of participants. This research showcases the strength of using longitudinal data, with both qualitative and quantitative analyses in depicting the relationships and nuances in lifecourse social participation behaviours.

Today the ubiquitous guidance, warnings and protocols of risk management construct possible futures as risks to be managed. How is this need to manage risk transforming the contemporary visual language? Are its rhetorics of danger, reassurance or rationality effectively convincing us that we are prepared? Can art reconcile us with these issues and be a safe space for constructing resilience? This dissertation focusses on the rhetorics of risk from the perspective of art and visual culture, examining warnings, instructions, drills and data visualisations across risk and art.

Drawing from research and theory (outlined in Chapter 1) emphasising the underlying cognitive-processes of utopian thinking and its potential to instigate motivations for criticism of the status quo, this thesis investigated different psychological concomitants of utopianism, including psychological distance, system justification, and violence. Three studies (Chapter 2) provide evidence that utopias are perceived as more psychologically distant than dystopias. Studies 2 and 3 reveal that this asymmetry in distance is driven by a higher prevalence of dystopian (vs. utopian) representations in society and tends to be more prevalent among individuals low in system justification. Study 4 (Chapter 3) suggests that the effect of utopian thinking on system justification depends on political orientation. Liberal participants rejected, while conservatives supported the overarching socio-political system when imagining ideal (vs. realistic) possible worlds. Studies 5 - 6 (Chapter 3), conducted prior to 2016 US Presidential and 2017 UK General elections, respectively, suggest that the moderating role of political orientation may subside in the context of system change. Participants envisaging ideal possible worlds prior to elections reported lower system justification levels, irrespective of political orientation. These results suggest that political orientation and the social context may influence whether utopian thinking instigates motivation to criticise the status quo. Studies 7 - 11 (Chapter 4) examine the influence of utopian thinking on two forms of non-normative collective action (i.e., radical action and violence). Studies 7 and 8 suggest that idealistic beliefs about change encourage support for verbal and physical forms of collective violence against out-groups, while realistic beliefs about social change tend to dampen such justifications. Studies 9 - 11(Chapter 4) provided only partial experimental support of these effects. In Chapter 5, I discuss the implications of these findings 2 for the emerging field of research into utopian thinking as well as propose avenues for future research into this topic.

This research developed a novel synthesis of four theories using connections discovered through a literature-review: this synthesis was called the Modulated Liminoid Group Learning Synthesis (MLGLS). A mixed-method exploratory experiment was developed to collect and analyse participants’ experience in problem-solving teams in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Hong Kong. This study found that problem-solving groups experienced a cyclic process of group development, personal investment, and liminoid or flow-related engrossment within liminoid communitas. This cyclic process occurred while the group worked together to develop enough understanding of an activity to solve it. After this group process, a direct debrief produced transferrable relational learning during a postliminoid state. This study confirmed the occurrence of Liminoid Group Learning processes. The findings of this study concluded that participants in problem-solving groups build temporary communities that result in powerful relational learning. The development of these temporary communities allowed participants to reflect on how they wanted their current group to function, developing their conclusions about how future groups should operate. Participants’ reflective conclusions about current and future groups, called relational learning, is a powerful learning outcome for practitioners to employ because it provides a framework for producing inter-relational growth. Another finding of this research underscores the importance for participants to personally invest themselves in group activities because it jump-starts a group’s development. Personally investing in a group activity is a critical aspect that leads to a group’s formation, ability to solve a problem, and resultant relational learning. The findings of this study provide applicational tools for both the group dynamics facilitator as well as the group participant that produce improved relational abilities in future group dynamics scenarios.

This thesis challenges the dominance of critical thinking and social constructivism (“critical social constructivism”, or CSC) in Western-dominated academia, especially in the UK. The thesis attributes CSC to Western individualism and challenges it with Eastern collectivism. Instead of the typical critical approach, it employs a problematised critical approach. It revolves around self-reflection and self-reflexivity of dominant (critical) practices in academia. Using CSC’s arguments about anti-generalisation and knowledge being socially constructed, this thesis argues that the construction of knowledge is also socially constructed and non-generalisable. It also deconstructs Vygotsky’s social constructivism as individualistically interpreted. This forms an argumentative thesis that is critical of being critical: “critical of critical”. This thesis presents philosophical research, which is illustrated through a linguistic study on the discursive constructions of metrosexualities in the UK and Malaysia. It challenges dominant research practices, from literature review and theoretical framework to research methods and presentation of findings. This includes comparing British and Malaysian research on metrosexuality, and deconstructing dominant theories in discourse and gender studies. Thus, it presents research on research: “research of research”. This thesis calls for the awareness of culture in one’s thinking: “thinking of thinking”. It highlights Vygotsky’s cognitive substructures (a neglected concept from his theory on social constructivism) and presents East-West perspectives like cognitive substructures throughout the thesis. Also, it claims that social or cultural research not only involves the studied culture(s), but also the researcher’s culture: “culture of culture”. This thesis concludes with self-reflection and self-reflexivity of the thesis that is also built on self-reflection and self-reflexivity: “self-reflection of self-reflection” and “self-reflexivity of self-reflexivity”. The individualistic-collectivistic themes reiterated throughout the thesis are: individual vs collective, independent vs (inter)dependent, existentialism vs essentialism, anti-generalisation vs generalisation, active vs passive, autonomous vs heteronomous, and inductive/explorative vs deductive/confirmatory. If diversity is justified by knowledge as socially constructed, cultural differences justify how knowledge is socially constructed.

In this thesis, I focus on two broad research questions derived from a theory proposed by Henrich and Gil-White: (i) the use of prestige cues for social learning (Chapters 2-4) and (ii) dominance and prestige as two strategies to acquire high social rank and social influence in human groups (Chapters 5-6). In Chapter 2, I review the literature on the adaptive value and actual use of prestige-biased social learning, finding mixed support. Chapter 3 tests whether information provided by high prestige sources of information is better transmitted than information provided by a low prestige source using a transmission chain experiment, finding no evidence to support this prediction. Chapter 4 presents another transmission chain experiment testing whether dominance and prestige cues are better transmitted than medium social rank cues. I find better transmission of dominance and prestige cues than medium social rank cues, but no reliable differences in the transmission of dominance and prestige cues. Chapter 5 reviews the literature on the dominance-prestige distinction and related areas of research. It proposes an integrated model to accommodate conflicting findings and extend its application to large-scale societies/groups with formal hierarchies. In Chapter 6, I find that economic uncertainty and intergroup conflict both predict preferences for both dominant and prestigious leaders using data from the World Values Survey. I also find that liberal ideology is positively related to perceptions of Donald Trump as dominant and Hillary Clinton as prestigious and negatively related to perceptions of Hillary Clinton as dominant and Donald Trump as prestigious, using survey data collected prior the 2016 US Presidential Election. Finally, Chapter 7 presents an overview of the thesis, discuss its implications for further research on prestige-biased social learning and social hierarchy and outlines new avenues for research.

This thesis starts from the intuition that it is possible to oppress oneself. On an initial description, self-oppression is a form of agency in which the agent, though exercising self-control, compromises her own choices in doing so. But, as such, self-oppression seems paradoxical and thus impossible: how can an agent be both the oppressor and the oppressed? And how can she compromise her own choices? The headline aim of the thesis is to offer a conceptualisation of self-oppression, thus establishing it as a possible as well as a distinct form of agency. The strategy of the thesis is rather unusual. In the first chapter, drawing on Aristotle’s philosophy of action, I devise the category of hyperkrasia, designed to capture the phenomenon of self-oppression. I propose that, in hyperkrasia, an agent’s practical reason becomes authoritarian. This category is then further developed throughout the thesis, drawing on Augustine, Foucault, and Merleau-Ponty. Augustine’s notion of a corrupted will provides an account of how choice can be compromised without agency being bypassed: the agent with a corrupted will chooses to φ, but cannot but choose φ. Foucault’s notion of domination provides an explanation of how an agent’s will can be corrupted by factors influencing her perception of opportunities. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological account of action shows how our perception of opportunities can draw us toward action. Bringing these elements together, I propose that practical reason can influence an agent’s perception of certain opportunities, drawing her so strongly toward them that she cannot but act on them. As such, she makes a choice; but it is compromised, and this by her own practical reason. This resolves the paradox of self-oppression: it is practical reason which becomes the oppressor, and it compromises the agent’s choices by influencing the way she perceives certain opportunities.

This thesis examines the complex relationship between social capital and the welfare state. Focusing on the measurement of both social capital and the welfare state, it highlights the importance of accounting for dimensionality in explaining the role of the welfare state in effecting social capital outcomes. It draws attention to how conflicting evidence for the welfare states influence on social capital relates to theoretical and methodological choices. Building on existing theory and evidence, it provides a workable framework for social capital that is theoretical and empirically substantiated. The framing of the debate for the welfare state's role in effecting social capital outcomes is primarily within the context of the 'crowding-out' debate, which reflects the broader ideological narratives of the relationship between the individual, market and state. Here I draw attention to two limiting assumptions; i) that the welfare state 'crowds-in' or 'crowds-out' ii) that it affects everyone equally. These two issues form the basis for the first two research questions, where we aim to understand in what circumstances 'crowding-out' occurs and whether this varies according to socioeconomic factors. In the final analytical, I consider how the established dimensions of social capital relate to one another, highlighting the central role of trust in social capital formation and implications for welfare state policy. The analyses combine European Quality of Life Survey data and contextual information using a range of quantitative methods, including multilevel modelling, structural equation modelling and path analysis. The findings show that generous and universal welfare provision is important for social capital outcomes but is limited in alleviating the inequalities between socioeconomic groups.

Impairments in social cognition after traumatic brain injury (TBI) are well documented but poorly understood (McDonald, 2013). Deficits in emotion perception, particularly facial affect recognition, are frequently reported in the literature (Babbage et al., 2011; Knox & Douglas, 2009), as well as mentalizing impairments and difficulty in understanding sincere and sarcastic exchanges (Channon, Pellijeff & Rule, 2005). To fully understand social impairments, both low-level and high-level processes must be explored. Few studies have focused on low-level perceptual processes in regards to facial affect recognition after TBI, and those that do typically use static social stimuli which lack ecological validity (Alves, 2013). This thesis employed eyetracking technology to explore the visual strategies underpinning the processing of contemporary static and dynamic social cognition tasks in a group of 18 TBI participants and 18 age, gender and education matched controls. The group affected by TBI scored significantly lower on the Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition (MASC; Dziobek, et al., 2006), the Amsterdam Dynamic Facial Expression Set (ADFES; van der Schalk, Hawk, Fischer & Doosje, 2009), and The Assessment of Social Inference Test (McDonald et al., 2003). These findings suggest that, across a range of reliable assessments, individuals with TBI displayed significant social cognition deficits, including emotion perception and theory of mind, thus presenting strong evidence that social cognition is altered post-TBI. Impairments were not related to low-level visual processing as measured through eye-tracking metrics. This important insight suggests that social cognition changes post-TBI is likely associated with impairments in higher-level cognitive functioning. Interestingly, the group with TBI did display some aberrant fixation patterns in response to one static and one dynamic task but gaze patterns were similar between the groups on the remaining tasks. These non-uniform results warrant further exploration of low-level alterations post-TBI. Findings are discussed in reference to academic and clinical implications.

The notion of limit has been explored in anthropology mainly from the point of view of liminality. The original focus of my investigation is to look at it through movement. The research stems from my passion for running marathons, where I encountered the limit of the ʻwall of the marathonerʼ. This experience takes the individual into a 'no man's land' to cross a desert and face emptiness, and possibly opens to a new sense of life. Since I discovered it, my intention has been to investigate it further and to invent practices following its inspiration to share with others. In this research the limit of the wall of the marathoner has been taken as a generative idea to imagine three projects in different contexts: Running walls (Peterhead prison, northeast Scotland), Running north (the Shetland Islands) and Whiteout (several educational institutions in Italy and the UK). These are three experiments in the sense not of testing a hypothesis or exactly reproducing 'the wall' but of practices of care where the limit is a condition to make possible existentially relevant experiences, opening exploratory paths of inquiry in human life. They consisted of educational courses, workshops and performances investigating the possibility of leading groups of people through creative processes where body and movement are both the core of the experience and a source of knowledge. Aiming for an inquiry in the first person, they combine marathon running with the Feldenkrais method and autobiography. Looking at other fields of knowledge (education, ecology, evolutionary biology and mathematics), the research shows how the limit, rather than being a border or a separating line, is a space with high educational potential, which allows one to become exposed and to ʻcut through the worldʼ. It is suggested that its notion can overcome the idea of a linear progression between statuses, and highlight a movement in-between, foregrounding presence rather than identity. Contributing to the current debate over anthropology and/as education, through the work of Ingold and Masschelein, the research explores a different way of knowing, an epistemology of attention through an encounter between anthropology, art and education.

Wealth inequality is a social issue that is exacerbated by the practices of the super-rich. Extremely wealthy people have limited social visibility as they can use their wealth to live separately from other groups. Some theoretical approaches such as individual differences do not acknowledge how inequality is socially constructed. As a result, there is a lack of recognition of the individualistic ideology underlining psychological approaches that legitimise wealth inequality in society. In this thesis, I explore how the super-rich account for their extreme wealth using discourse about psychological concepts in television programming. Forty-one and a half hours of non-subscription terrestrial UK television data was gathered throughout 2016 that included the term, ‘super-rich’ in the title, programme summary or subtitling transcript. Discursive Psychology was used to analyse the corpus which allowed for the exploration of how individuals draw upon lived ideology in their talk to manage their accountability for their wealth acquisition and expenditure. This research demonstrated how a discursive and rhetorical approach can be used to analyse television documentaries. It was found that super-rich individuals legitimise their wealth acquisition and spending by presenting themselves as psychologically superior to the less affluent and as a result, deserving of their extreme wealth. By drawing upon meritocratic ideology, individuals managed their moral identity as their wealth and consumption is warranted as earned. The presentation of wealth as earned extends to wealth gained as a result of inheritance as heirs present their privilege as earned due to their enhanced work ethic. Super-rich people present their ostentatious consumption as normal and construct themselves as reticent to discuss costs to comply with societal norms. The presentation of the super-rich on television uses talk about psychological concepts that presents wealth distribution as an individual issue indirectly resulting in the collective effect of wealth inequality being ignored. Consequentially, psychology is used to provide an individualistic rationale to sustain wealth inequality in society.

The overall aim of this thesis is to describe the exceptional intersubjective capacities we find in cases of twin-twin social interaction. Phenomenological approaches to intersubjectivity and empathy provide rich, varying and often competing conceptual resources for such a project, however, the chief focus of these accounts up until this point has been to describe the intersubjective capacities found in the social interactions between single-born persons. Thus, there is a lack of phenomenological literature that is explicitly concerned with outlining intersubjectivity in twins. Yet, recent literature in the sciences of mind as well as first person accounts from twins and their observers, point to important and unique variances in the manifestation of intersubjectivity between twins when compared to the intersubjective capacities of singletons. In essence, I contend prior phenomenological accounts are underpinned by a concept of passive synthesis or operative intentionality that is too narrow. Instead, I argue that if we are to fully appreciate twins and their social interactions without pathologising twinship, we need to expand these concepts to account for cases of exceptional mutual understanding (EMU) we find between them. In short, I argue that in twins (particularly in monozygotic twins), a more robust passive synthesis or a novel operative intentionality enables the kinds of EMU we find in their relations. Put differently, twins are highly attuned to one another's contextualised expressive bodily phenomena, which means they can directly experience greater aspects of their co-twin's mental and emotional life. This novel operative intentionality initially manifests in gestation as a result of a reciprocal and transformative influencing or coupling of each twin's body schema, and continues to develop and form the basis of their interactions throughout their respective lives. This means the primary and secondary intersubjective capacities of twins are highly developed when compared to single-born persons, and this allows them to rapidly exploit the implicit and nuanced narratives they have about each other to immediately grasp one another in the here and now.

This thesis studies significant literary and visual-media responses to the flooding of New Orleans after the passage of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. At one level, it discusses how representations of New Orleans in 'Katrina culture' either radically refashion or embody alternatives to historical paradigms of New Orleans exceptionalism, of New Orleans as a sui generis enclave. More than that, it argues that practices of 'representing the city' illuminate and participate in Katrina culture's overarching project, as theorized here, of 'recovering the victim': reinvesting Katrina victims with the voice, dignity, and agency they were denied in mass popular and media responses to Katrina. The thesis analyses texts' representational and recovery practices, both separately and in terms of how they interrelate, across narrative non-fictional Katrina culture (section 1) and original creative Katrina culture (section 2). Within narrative non-fictional Katrina culture, Section 1 identifies two 'Dorian' and 'Locrian' sets of practices, each comprising a 'mode' of representation and a 'manner' of recovery. Within original creative Katrina culture, Section 2 identifies four 'ordinary', 'microcosmic', 'globalist', and 'neoclassical' sets of practices, each comprising a 'school' of representation and a 'manner' of recovery. Navigating widely yet always relative to a conceptual lodestar of New Orleans exceptionalism, the thesis works not only to extensively map out practices of representing the city in Katrina culture, but also to establish recovering the victim as the fundamental impulse, and de facto governing project, of the cultural response to Hurricane Katrina.

This thesis puts forward a strong argument for why more up-to-date interactional research is needed into disputes and why disciplines, methodological approaches and theories should come second to the phenomenon. This thesis investigates how people behave in disputes. Disputes are a ubiquitous part of everyday life - we know a great a deal about disputes in particular contexts, how people disagree, and how disputes can be resolved. However, little is known about the specific interactional features of public disputes. Public disputes are disputes which occur in a public place where there are onlookers - for instance, on public transport, on the radio, or during protests, for instance. These are activities which regularly occur throughout everyday life as our opinions, beliefs, views, identity and/or knowledge etc. clash. This research examines actual, naturally-occurring disputes between strangers in public. The focus is on the ways that people challenge those contestations, resist those challenges, and manage their relationship with their co-disputant. The data comprises a corpus of over 100 recordings of disputes between members of the public. The data were collected, transcribed, and analysed within an ethnomethodological framework using a combination of conversation analysis, membership categorisation analysis, and discursive psychology in order to demonstrate how the phenomenon is handled sequentially and rhetorically. This combination of approaches centres the phenomena rather than focusing on the application of methods. The three analytic chapters are organised around different features of disputes and address the overall structural organisation of a dispute. The first analytic chapter inspects enticing sequences, which is a way that a challenge can be produced that reverses the logic of the other's argument. This chapter (Chapter 3) builds on previous research, and lays the groundwork for the other chapters, to show the sequential placement and forms of resistance to challenges. This illustrates resistance as a solution to the practical problem of being trapped in a challenge with nowhere to go. The second analytic chapter investigates how people do partitioning, that is, how they exploit the boundaries of their situated identity, or category (i.e. from radio caller to father). This chapter (Chapter 4) shows how people reconfigure their relationship with their co-disputant(s), and how certain actions (i.e. requests, directives, instructions) trade on the relevance of this new relationship. The final analytic chapter examines how people work to appear 'reasonable' in a dispute. People seek to win a dispute and one way of accomplishing that is to be the 'reasonable' person relative to the other's unreasonable behaviour. In this chapter (Chapter 5), I unpack this to show how, through meta-talk, people present their behaviour as reasonable, or the other's behaviour as unreasonable, to produce a purportedly-rational argument. I reveal that whilst participants rarely express reasonableness, they do respond to transgressions of conversational norms (i.e. turn-taking, sequence). Consequently, this accomplishes a turn-at-talk and a chance to control the direction of the dispute. The thesis presents a state-of-the-art examination of disputative interactions and contributes significantly to our understanding of the structural organisation of disputes and how people behave in public places. Throughout the course of the thesis, I establish frameworks for future research that combine ethnomethodological approaches, deals with the 'messiness' and difficulty of public video-recordings, and develops an understanding of what a dispute actually is.

In recent years, an interest in measuring and increasing citizens’ happiness has characterised many Western democracies, including the UK. At the same time, the new scientific discipline of positive psychology has produced a set of knowledges, techniques and instruments that encourage people to work on and understand themselves in specific ways. While there is a substantial body of work critiquing this turn to happiness, there is a lack of empirical research that examines what it looks like at an everyday level, and how it may inform ideas about successful citizenship. To address this gap, this thesis takes a critical discursive psychological approach to analysing two datasets – four best-selling books, and interviews with 30 UK residents on the subject of happiness. It was found that the books worked to generate a public health-style narrative around happiness, positioning it as “threatened” due to a mismatch between humans’ “fallible” brains and the challenges of the modern world, such as consumerism. To counter this universalised danger, individualised solutions of working on one’s habits, thoughts and choices were proposed, with happiness constructed as an ongoing practice. There were considerable similarities in the interview data, with participants forming affective-discursive practices of cultivating appreciation, being mindful and making ‘good’ choices. However, participants took up a range of complex and shifting subject positions during the interviews, and their talk was dilemmatic, argumentative and occasionally troubled, particularly when they mobilised taken-for-granted, culturally dominant ideas about happiness in personal narratives. The thesis concludes that engaging with the rhetoric of positive psychology risks living out unresolvable contradictions. However, there were also resistances to the idea of being responsible for one’s happiness and to the habit of individualism, suggesting that alternatives are possible to the apparent dominance of neoliberal models of selfhood.

Social psychology has a long tradition of studying the personality traits associated with subjective well-being (SWB). However, research often depends on a priori but unempirical assumptions about how to (a) measure the constructs, and (b) mitigate confounded associations. These assumptions have caused profligate and often contradictory findings. To remedy, I demonstrate how a computational psychology paradigm-predicated on large online data and iterative analyses-might help isolate more robust personality trait associations. At the outset, I focussed on univariate measurement. In the first set of studies, I evaluated the extent researchers could measure psychological characteristics at scale from online behaviour. Specifically, I used a combination of simulated and real-world data to determine whether predicted constructs like big five personality were accurate for specific individuals. I found that it was usually more effective to simply assume everyone was average for the characteristic, and that imprecision was not remedied by collapsing predicted scores into buckets (e.g. low, medium, high). Overall, I concluded that predictions were unlikely to yield precise individual-level insights, but could still be used to examine normative group-based tendencies. In the second set of studies, I evaluated the construct validity of a novel SWB scale. Specifically, I repurposed the balanced measure of psychological needs (BMPN), which was originally designed to capture the substrates of intrinsic motivation. I found that the BMPN robustly captured (a) dissociable experiences of suffering and flourishing, (b) more transitive SWB than the existing criterion measure, and (c) unique variation in real-world outcomes. Thus, I used it as my primary outcome. Then, I focussed on bivariate associations. The third set of studies extracted pairs of participants with similar patterns of covarying personality traits-and differing target traits-to isolate less-confounded SWB correlations. I found my extraction method-an adapted version of propensity score matching-outperformed even advanced machine learning alternatives. The final set of studies isolated the subset of facets that had the most robust associations with SWB. It combined real-world surveys with a total of eight billion simulated participants to find the traits most prevalent in extreme suffering and flourishing. For validation purposes, I first found that depression and cheerfulness-the trait components of SWB-were highly implicated in both suffering and flourishing. Then, I found that self-discipline was the only other trait implicated in both forms of SWB. However, there were also domain-specific effects: anxiety, vulnerability and cooperation were implicated in just suffering; and, assertiveness, altruism and self-efficacy were implicated in just flourishing. These seven traits were most likely to be the definitive, stable, drivers of SWB because their effects were totally consistent across the full range of intrapersonal contexts.

This dissertation examines the discourses of local print and internet media in the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk “People’s Republics” (DNR and LNR) in eastern Ukraine, paying particular attention to the role of these discourses in the construction of group identity. Drawing on nationalism studies, identity studies and social psychology, I trace how authorities and media actors in these two unrecognised territories sought to build legal legitimacy and public support, and to shape collective identity between 2014 and 2017. To do so, I analyse both primary and secondary source material, including speeches, statements and writings by local officials, legislative documents, internal communications, and a large corpus of news articles published in local newspapers and internet media. After tracing the development of the DNR and LNR’s political and media landscapes, as well as the legislation passed by the authorities to regulate the mass media, I use Natural Language Processing methods to examine what narratives predominated in DNR and LNR newspaper and internet media coverage, with an abiding focus on attempts to shape and develop group identity. I demonstrate that DNR and LNR authorities prioritised building and projecting internal and external legitimacy from the beginning by controlling the information space through media capture and by passing restrictive legislation. Despite the fact that this legislation created conditions for the pursuit of an ideological identity project, I argue that this project remained unrealised and incoherent, founded more on representations of the ‘they’ of the outgroup rather than the ‘we’ of the ingroup. Understanding the semiotic impoverishment of this project can offer insight into the nature and future of Europe’s “forgotten war”.

One of the most robust interventions for reducing prejudice is intergroup contact. Whilst the affective processes involved in prejudice reduction via intergroup contact are becoming well understood, this thesis explores novel social-cognitive factors surrounding intergroup contact. Two strands of research explore how people look back at past contact and look forward to future interactions with unfamiliar group members. Experiments 1 to 4 examine how experiences of fluency in recalling past contact may influence people's perceptions of their intergroup contact, and in turn influence outgroup attitudes and future contact intentions. Utilising two different paradigms in Chapter 2 and 3, no effect of the manipulation of contact retrieval fluency was found on any of the outcome variables. Potential reasons for this null-effect are discussed, including memory biases, inference processes regarding the contact-attitude relationship, and affective and normative components of prejudice. The second strand of research described in Chapter 4 and 5 moves focus from the past to the future, to examine generalisation of intergroup contact to trust behaviour towards novel group members. This process of member-to-member generalisation was examined within a Trust Game paradigm, where group membership and interaction valence were manipulated. Experiments 5 to 8 demonstrate that people use their experiences with group members to inform decisions to trust unknown individuals in the future. Member-to-member generalisation was enhanced for negative compared to positive experiences, but was particularly attuned to violations of previous group-based beliefs. Together, this thesis highlights the importance of social-cognitive processes involved in intergroup contact generalisation to attitudes and behaviour, and shows the potential of using laboratory-based behavioural measures to examine intergroup contact.

This thesis investigates the contribution made by networks of social capital to the resilience of self-help settlements (settlements self-produced by low-income groups lacking adequate infrastructures and services, often occupying areas of high risk) at the municipal scale. Self-help settlements are considered intrinsically vulnerable to the effects of climate change, and are foreseen to be the predominant form of urbanisation in the Global South for the 21st century. The UN's recent adoption of the 'Sustainable Development Goals' placed the resilience (the continued adjustment in the face of environmental uncertainties) of self-help settlements at the top of the global development agenda. Central to urban resilience is the concept of social capital, which refers to the relations of trust and reciprocity embedded in social networks that enable them to act collectively. In the context of urban resilience, social capital can explain how social groups organise from the bottom to forward community development goals to overcome the sources of their vulnerability. This investigation takes as a case-study the social network involved in the achievement of the collective goals (municipal independence, land tenure rights, water supply, drainage, public transport, and paved streets ) that allowed Nezahualcóyotl, a self-help settlement in the metropolitan area of Mexico City, to over-come its vulnerabilities (the settlement is located on the drained bed of a salty lake, prone to flooding and sand storms, and lacked an adequate institutional framework). Nezahualcóyotl is considered as a successful example in which citizen participation was key in forwarding the development of the settlement. This thesis uses a mixed-method approach (Social Network Analysis and thematic analysis), and tracks longitudinally the evolution of the case-study (1953-1986). The main finding of this research is that net-works of social capital contribute to the resilience of self-help settlements through the engagement of their members in monitoring the challenges faced by the settlement, and producing pertinent adjustments relying on collective action. This is made possible by the capacity of the members of networks of social capital to remain active for long periods of time, and to make productive use of different configurations of social capital within the network, in response to emerging threats and changing circumstances.

This thesis investigates the social determinants of well-being, behind bars and beyond. Through a series of four papers, it empirically tests some of the theoretical claims made by the social identity approach to health (also known as The Social Cure; C. Haslam, Jetten, Cruwys, Dingle, & Haslam, 2018a) which proposes that our social connections and, in particular, our social identity, lies at the heart of our well-being; and advances its applications by investigating its applicability amongst criminal offenders. Although research has highlighted the importance of differentiating between different types of social ties (C. Haslam, Cruwys, Milne, Kan, & Haslam, 2016a), Chapter 2 extends this by demonstrating experimentally that group ties are especially beneficial because they are internalized as part of a person's social identity and, through this, provide a basis for beneficial forms of connectedness and self-worth. Furthermore, applied social cure research has demonstrated that group ties can protect people from adverse life experiences (C. Haslam et al., 2018a). Chapters 3, 4, and 5 provide the first investigation of the social cure amongst offenders. My findings make a novel contribution to the imprisonment and resettlement literatures that offer little insight into the impact that group ties have on adjustment, and the mechanisms through which group ties impact offender well-being. Chapter 3 demonstrates that strong prisoner ties and membership in groups are associated with greater prisoner well-being, and identifies psychological needs and group contact as explanatory mechanisms. Chapter 4 demonstrates that ex-prisoners have social stigma attached to them, and this can have negative consequences; but Chapter 5 shows that even in the case of stigmatized groups (prisoners), if the 'right' identities are part of these individuals' social worlds, groups can be curative. Theoretical and practical implications of my findings are discussed, which open up interesting avenues for future research.

This thesis models the importance of reputation in indefinite interactions using experimental and empirical evidence. In modern society reputation plays an important role in many everyday life situations. I analyse the resulting incentive structures through microeconomic modelling and econometric regression analysis. Thus, I gauge the impact of reputational considerations on individual decision making.

Accurately inferring the moral character of others is crucial for avoiding social threats. Putatively "bad" agents command more attention and are identified more quickly and accurately than benign or friendly agents. Such vigilance is adaptive but can also be costly in environments where people sometimes make mistakes, because incorrectly attributing bad character to good people damages existing relationships and discourages forming new ones. Evolutionary models demonstrate that responding to wrongdoers with probabilistic forgiveness can facilitate the evolution of cooperation, but the cognitive mechanisms that enable the implementation of forgiving strategies are unknown. In this dissertation, I explore these mechanisms using novel methods derived from computational science, social cognition, and behavioral economics. Part I of the dissertation demonstrates that moral inference is described by an asymmetric Bayesian updating mechanism, where beliefs about the morality of bad agents are more uncertain (and therefore more amenable to updating) than beliefs about the morality of good agents. The model and data reveal a cognitive mechanism that rapidly discounts prior expectations to permit flexible updating of beliefs about potentially threatening others, a mechanism that could facilitate forgiveness when initial bad impressions turn out to be inaccurate. Part II of the dissertation considers the consequences that ensue when these mechanisms break down. Disruptions in learning and decision-making lie at the heart of many populations characterized by maladaptive social functioning. Consequently, I examine moral inference in two populations associated with interpersonal disturbances: individuals exposed to community violence and patients with Borderline Personality Disorder. The data reveal novel cognitive processes that may explain the emergence of maladaptive behavior related to chronic exposure to violence and Borderline Personality Disorder. Collectively, the results in this dissertation provide insights into the computational mechanisms of moral inference and their role in adaptive and maladaptive social functioning.

Stigmatisation has been suggested to be partly framed within disease-avoidance functions that use disgust mechanisms to protect humans against potential sources of contamination. Furthermore, societal pressures regarding appearance cognitions also seem to contribute towards observers' responses towards individuals with facial disfigurements (FD). Despite a convincing body of research supporting the disabling impact of having a FD there seems to be a gap in the literature for studies addressing ways to reduce public stigma towards FD. This thesis aimed to investigate variables associated with stigma towards FD and to test the effect of anti-stigma strategies on responses towards facial differences. Study 1 investigated the correlations between disgust sensitivity, appearance cognition, and motivations to respond without prejudice on implicit and explicit attitudes towards FD. Findings suggested that stigma towards FD may operate as a dual-process, comprising innate disease-avoidance and societal individual predispositions. Gender differences were also found in relation to these variables and attitudes towards FD. Following findings of the first experiment, Studies 2 and 3 aimed to test whether education and contact-based strategies could be useful in reducing intended avoidance, intergroup anxiety (Study 2) and improve evaluations of a mock FD applicant (Study 3). Results from Study 2 found a significant effect of a written awareness education message and imagined contact (IC) in the reduction of intentions to avoid FD, but not in levels of intergroup anxiety. Study 3 aimed to replicate these findings using an anti-stigma strategy with a sample of British employees with recruitment duties. Findings failed to replicate the effect on avoidance detected on Study 2 but showed a significant effect of IC (compared to controls) in ratings of emotional strength towards a FD mock applicant. The findings indicated that innate factors, appearance cognitions and conscious efforts to respond in a non-stigmatising way seem to be associated with FD stigma. Education and imagined contact may be cost-effective strategies to encourage the inclusion of FD, particularly in scenarios where they are most hindered by their visible difference.

Understanding the actions of others is crucial for all social interactions. Despite a dynamic and complicated social world, humans can derive the goals, attitudes and beliefs that drive others' actions, imbuing them with meaning and understanding. While such abilities were traditionally accounted for by a direct matching of observed actions to actions within the observer's motor system, contemporary theories of social perception explain them within a predictive processing framework. They argue that perception of others' actions is shaped by prior assumptions about their goals and intentions and the behaviours that these mental states predict. This thesis aimed to resolve whether people make such predictions, whether they are represented perceptually, and on which information they rely. Ten experiments utilized a variant of the classical Representational Momentum paradigm. They presented participants with the initial stages of a goal-directed action and asked them to make spatial judgments of its last seen position prior to sudden offset. As expected, the results revealed the top-down expectations that guide action perception. The findings revealed (1) that social predictions follow the principle of efficient action, biasing perception towards efficient action expectations, such that hands seen to reach straight towards an obstacle were perceptually lifted over it. These predictions were (2) derived spontaneously, were (3) perceptually represented, and emerged (4) from attributions of intentionality to the observed actor, even (5) when the action was already underway, based on the match between action kinematics and available target objects. The current findings provide direct evidence for predictive models of social perception. They confirm that the perceptual representation of others' actions is biased by the intentions we assign to them and our predictions of how these intentions will be fulfilled, therefore providing new avenues to understand how action expectations can shape our understanding of other people's actions.

Systematic self-biases have been demonstrated across cognitive domains of perception, attention, memory, and decision making. However, it remains unclear how self-relevance is recognised and processed by the brain. This thesis examines the influence of social context on processes of self-prioritisation in social cognition. Using a perceptual matching paradigm (Sui, He, & Humphreys, 2012), the first series of experiments demonstrated that novel shape stimuli associated with the self are prioritised for perceptual processing over novel shape stimuli associated with other individuals present within, and absent from, the task environment. No processing advantage was found for stimuli associated with present others over absent others. A second series of experiments demonstrated that self-associated stimuli were prioritised for processing over stimuli associated with both liked and disliked others. Moreover, the size of the self-association benefit was not influenced by the 'likability' of the other individuals. Therefore, neither the ability to 'tag' information to a physical body, nor the likability of social stimuli can fully account for self-prioritisation in perceptual matching. A final series of experiments introduced a novel paradigm to investigate the extent to which people prioritise own-task-relevant information over information relevant to a nearby actor's task. The findings indicated that participants co-represented a partner's stimulus-response rules even when interpersonal coordination was not required. Such co-representation occurred within a binary choice task in which direct stimulus response mappings were not possible. This suggests that co-representation is an unintended consequence of a shared social environment and that people are unable to fully prioritise their own task over that of a nearby actor. Overall, the work extends and clarifies when and how self-biases are influenced by task demands, the context in which a task is performed, and the presence or absence of others within the environment.

Pro-social acts are at the core of human relationships and proper functioning of society. Still, human pro-sociality is seen as unique, reaching beyond the kinship-based helping that is found in other species, such as primates. This uniqueness of human pro-sociality is recognised as closely related to another phenomenon specific to humans, and crucial for the maintenance of social relationships; namely, the presence of moral emotions. This thesis investigated emotional underpinnings of human pro-sociality after moral or social transgressions. The particular focus was placed on guilt – the emotion seen as most prototypical morally, and anger, its’ often under-studied relative. These two emotions have a unique standing in the context of the pro-sociality following from transgressions. They are associated with the perception of harm, injustice and norm violation that are core to transgression situations, and an action tendency to improve such situation, which behaving in a pro-social manner can be seen as. Nevertheless, only a few studies have examined guilt and anger jointly, in the context of pro-sociality, which stresses the need for an investigation of their relative influences. This thesis aimed to fill this gap in the literature. Chapter 1 introduces the topic of emotions and its role for pro-sociality, starting with the initial concept of emotions as the continuum of positive and negative affect, followed by more recent conceptualisation of emotions, in terms of their specificity and uniqueness. A particular emphasis is placed on the place of guilt and anger in the family of moral emotions, and their specific characteristics. Moreover, the role of pro-sociality as a mood-enhancing method is discussed, which might be used to suggest that guilt-based pro-sociality might not be so strongly relationship-focused, as presented in the literature. Chapter 2 presents a meta-analytical investigation of guilt and its role for pro-sociality. In this section, 112 studies were combined, providing an estimation of the medium effect size for the relationship between guilt and pro-sociality. Potential moderators were investigated as well, with a majority of them demonstrating no significant effects. Interestingly though, religiosity was found as a significant moderator of the guilt-pro-sociality relationship, with less religious countries showing a stronger effect size. The potential factors explaining this finding were presented. The link between guilt and self-punishment was also considered, providing more evidence that actions following from guilt might be seen as a mood enhancing strategy (at least when there is no option for repayment of one’s wrongdoing). Chapter 3 describes an experimental study investigating the association between moral transgression and subsequent pro-sociality. The charity dictator game was used as the opportunity for moral transgression. It was shown that moral transgression could lead to both increased and decreased pro-sociality, depending on the underlying emotional mechanism. Specifically, moral transgression via guilt led to increased pro-sociality, whereas via anger, to decreased pro-sociality. Some contextual factors (e.g., eyes prime, earning for oneself versus a charity) that could moderate which effect would prevail were examined. This result explains inconsistent findings reported previously in the literature. Additionally, it was shown that guilt does not always directly affect pro-sociality, as it might be followed by anger, and this sequential mechanism might negatively affect subsequent pro-sociality. Lastly, it was demonstrated that the effect of guilt and anger, following from a transgression, did not expand beyond the first pro-social opportunity, in line with the notion of pro-sociality as a mood-enhancing method. Chapter 4 introduces an experimental study aimed at the further exploration of the mechanism between guilt, anger, and subsequent pro-sociality. A context of failing one’s partner in a computer game was used to trigger moral emotions. The role of self-blame was also explored. Self-blame was predicted to act as the mechanism linking guilt with increased pro-sociality, whereas anger (a proxy of other-blame) was found to be the mechanism linking guilt with decreased pro-sociality. Some contextual factors, related to the perception of fairness, which could moderate which effect would prevail, were examined. Lastly, it was demonstrated that the effect of guilt did not expand beyond the first pro-social opportunity, in line with the notion of pro-sociality as a mood-enhancing method. Chapter 5 builds on the results in the previous section, by introducing manipulative intent as a factor determining the mechanism underlying the association between guilt, anger, and subsequent pro-sociality. A context of blood donation appeal was used to trigger moral emotions, making this study more applicable to the outside world. Contrary to the predictions, low rather than high manipulative intent in the appeal was shown to be the context where guilt led to decreased pro-sociality, via anger. The relationship between guilt and increased pro-sociality via responsibility (a proxy of self-blame) was significant under both levels of the manipulative intent present. Factors potentially explaining these findings are presented. This study provides evidence that the links between guilt and responsibility (self-blame) are not readily affected, whereas the connection between guilt and anger depends on situational context. Chapter 6 presents findings of the investigation into the lab-field correspondence in the pro-sociality domain, together with an examination of the possibility of a significant association of trait guilt and cost/risk perception of pro-social behaviours. Following from Piliavin’s cost-reward model, it was predicted that higher propensity of guilt-prone individuals to help might be based on their lowered appraisal of cost-risk of pro-social behaviours. Trait guilt was not related to cost-risk appraisals of pro-social behaviours though, suggesting that other mechanisms might be underlying the relationship between trait guilt and pro-sociality. Secondly, the issue of generalising findings from lab studies to real-life instances of pro-sociality was explored. The results have shown that pro-social behaviours used in labs were not equivalent (i.e., less costly and risky) to those in the real world. Pro-sociality appeared to be a non-unidimensional construct, which should be taken into account when investigating it in the future. Chapter 7 provides a general discussion of the results presented in this thesis, with the emphasis on their role in the field of emotions and human pro-sociality. Some implications of the present findings for charitable organisations and some avenues for future studies were presented as well. The findings presented in this thesis provide novel and exciting insight into the field of emotions and pro-sociality, in the context of transgression. The results suggest that even though guilt is widely studied in the context of pro-sociality, and has a robust effect on pro-sociality, anger should not be treated with less interest and attention in this regard. It was also shown that these two emotions are highly interrelated, co-occur in the context of transgression, and both have the potential to affect pro-sociality subsequent to transgression. The contextual factors, such as manipulative intent, appear to have a particular role in determining whether decreased or increased pro-sociality would occur after a violation, and which emotional mechanism would unfold. Therefore, neglecting one of these emotions in studies undermines the possibility of better understanding the emotional underpinnings of human pro-sociality. Thus, more research is warranted in the future. The similar research effort is needed for better understanding of the construct of pro-sociality itself, as human pro-sociality takes many forms which, as was shown, do not create a unidimensional construct. Thus, generalising findings from single instances of pro-social behaviour to general pro-sociality seems biased (especially to the high-cost behaviours), and this issue should be tackled in future research.

Chapter 1 introduces the work, providing an overview of the common themes underlying the research and outlining the focus and approach particular to each project. Chapter 2 proposes a game-theoretic model that shows how moral preferences can emerge endogenously to promote material outcomes and traces their relationships with the fundamentals of the environment. The analysis indicates that the instilling of moral values can act as a commitment mechanism that counteracts the detrimental effects of behavioural biases. The greater the effect of such biases on the agents’ decisions (and, thus, payoffs), the more expanded the scope for morality. The study in chapter 3 tests the performance of a leading account of social preferences, namely the model of inequality aversion proposed by Fehr and Schmidt (1999), in tracking behaviour. It does so through an appropriately designed experiment. The aim is to evaluate if the account can consistently anticipate people’s behaviour. The results suggest that the model performs well only with respect to people that exhibit either very high or very low aversion to advantageous payoff inequality. The study in chapter 4 repeats the exercise reported in chapter 3, this time with respect to an account of social preferences that builds on the idea of social norm compliance, in particular, the one proposed by Krupka and Weber (2013). The aim is again to evaluate if the model performs well in consistently tracking people’s behaviour. The results do not offer much support for the explanatory power of the model. The individuals that exhibit the least concern about adhering to social norms and are choosing the payoff-maximising options are the only ones the actions of whom match the model’s predictions. Chapter 5 summarises the findings of this thesis and concludes.

This dissertation reports a series of studies on social influences in decision making with wide ranging marketing implications in areas such as gamification initiatives, participative pricing mechanisms, and charity fundraising strategies. The body of this work comprises of three indepth, stand-alone studies. The first study, "Contagion of the Competitive Spirit: The Influence of a Competition on Non-Competitors", investigates the influence of a competition on noncompetitors who do not participate in it but are aware of it. In a series of experimental studies, the study shows that the mere awareness of a competition can affect a non-competitor's performance in similar tasks. These experiments provide confirmatory and process evidence for this contagion effect, showing that it is driven by heightened social comparison motivation due to mere awareness of the competition. In addition, the study finds evidence that the reward level for the competitors could moderate the contagion effect on the non-competitors. The second study, "The Negative Effects of Precommitment on Reciprocal Behaviour: Evidence from a Series of Voluntary Payment Experiments", examines the effects of precommitment on reciprocal behaviour towards a forthcoming benefit. Through a series of experiments in several countries, the study shows that precommitment often weakens reciprocal behaviour. In two field experiments, a laboratory and an online experiment, the study finds consistent evidence that voluntary payment amounts decrease for individuals who are asked to precommit their payment. The results from a final online trust-game experiment support the posited mental-accounting mechanism for the effect. The third study, "Hold-Up Induced by Demand for Fairness: Theory and Experimental Evidence", explores the domain of hold-up and fairness concerns. While recent research suggests that fairness concerns could mitigate hold-up problems, this study proposes a starkly opposite possibility: that fairness concerns can also induce hold-up problems and thus significant inefficiencies. The study reports theoretical analysis and experimental evidence of hold-up in scenarios in which it will not occur if agents are purely self-interested, but could occur if they care about fairness at ex post negotiation.

Researchers and lay people alike have long held an interest in understanding the antecedents, mechanisms, and consequences of prosocial behaviours: Acts people behave in ways that benefit others, such as cooperation, altruism, care-giving, empathy, sympathy, and compassion. Numerous lines of inquiry have now documented that acting prosocially carries many benefits for not only the recipient, but also the actor. For instance, acting prosocially attracts social capital, social support, and boosts interpersonal relationships; prosociality also increases one’s well-being, happiness, and has long-term physical and mental health benefits. While much of the past work has focused on the main effects of prosociality on various positive outcomes, one area that has received limited attention is understanding the contextual factors and individual differences that moderate these relationships. In the present thesis, I focus on understanding how socioeconomic status (SES) acts as a moderator of the link between prosociality and numerous positive outcomes. In particular, I examined how prosociality is related to building social networks through weak ties, coping with daily stress, and building interpersonal skills. Across these relationships, I examined how SES moderates the link between prosociality and each outcome. My research was guided by the SES-prosociality paradox: That while the rich have access to far greater resources – and thus the ability to act prosocially – it is the poor that tend to act most generously. I theorized that one reason for this paradox is that people across different SES strata benefit differently from acting prosocially. In particular, I reasoned that the people from lower SES backgrounds will tend to have stronger relationship between prosociality and various positive outcomes than people from higher SES backgrounds. To test this hypothesis, I conducted numerous empirical studies using multiple methods – analysing data from subjective reports via surveys and existing data from social media, running natural experiments, and conducting lab experiments using genetic and pharmacological challenge methods. In Chapters 2 and 3, I found that people who act prosocially tend to attract more weak social ties – this is only true for the relatively poor. In Chapter 4, I tested how empathic traits relate to better coping strategies for both lower and higher SES individuals, and found a complex pattern of differing benefits. Finally, in Chapter 5, I found that intranasal oxytocin improves emotional theory of mind, but only for the low SES individuals.

Social cognitive abilities are needed to process and understand social information in order to respond appropriately in everyday social interactions. While there are a number of tests that have been developed to measure social cognition in the literature, many have important limitations such as only assessing one ability, performance being predicted by measures of intelligence and exhibiting low ecological validity. To address some of these limitations, I developed a new test called the Edinburgh Social Cognition Test (ESCoT). The ESCoT is an animated test that assesses four domains of social cognition: cognitive Theory of Mind (ToM) (What is X thinking?); affective ToM (How does X feel at the end of the animation?); interpersonal understanding of social norms (Did X behave as other people should behave?); and intrapersonal understanding of social norms (Would you have acted the same as X in the animation?). The aims of this thesis were to examine the validity of the ESCoT as a test of social cognition and to further investigate social cognitive processes in healthy and neurological populations. The ESCoT was firstly administered to a healthy population of older, middle-aged and younger adults to examine the effects of ageing on social abilities. This study found that the ESCoT was sensitive to age; poorer performances on cognitive and affective ToM and also interpersonal but not intrapersonal understanding of social norms were predicted by older age. Furthermore unlike traditional tests used in the study, performance was not predicted by measures of intelligence. Instead, the sex of participants and autistic-like traits, in addition to age were found to be important for performance. The ESCoT was then validated in a sample of adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and performance was compared to performance on established social cognition tests. Convergent validity was demonstrated in the study and the ESCoT was sensitive to social cognitive difficulties found in ASD. This study also showed that the ESCoT was more effective than existing tests at differentiating ASD adults and neurotypical controls. The interplay of social anxiety and empathy on ESCoT performance in addition to further exploring sex and autistic-like traits were then examined in a younger adult population. Social anxiety and empathy were not significant predictors of performance on the ESCoT. Similar to the results of the ageing study, this study found that women were better than men on affective ToM. However, unlike the ageing study, better cognitive ToM performance was predicted by older age. Better performance on interpersonal understanding of social norms and ESCoT total scores were predicted by more years of education. The subsequent chapter then examined the clinical efficacy of the ESCoT in a patient population (Alzheimer's disease, behavioural-variant Frontotemporal dementia and amnestic mild cognitive impairment). Here performance on the ESCoT was compared between the patients and neurotypical controls. It was found that patients performed poorer than neurotypical controls on ESCoT total scores, affective ToM, inter-and intrapersonal understanding of social norms. The final chapter returned to healthy ageing to more closely investigate the consequences of healthy ageing on social cognitive processes, by examining the positivity bias (preference for positive over negative stimuli) found in older adults using an attention paradigm. There was no evidence of the positivity bias in older, middle-aged and younger adults in regards to reaction time or accuracy. However, older and middle-aged adults differed in accuracy across stimuli type compared to younger adults. This thesis offers novel insights into the social cognitive abilities of various populations. The ESCoT presents a new, informative and validated test of social cognition for researchers and clinicians to use, which has many advantages over established tests of social cognition.

This thesis investigates variation in human cooperative behaviour in naturally occurring contexts. I critically assess the prevailing consensus on human cooperation derived from laboratory games (such as the dictator and public goods games), by identifying real life analogues and conducting extensive field observation and experiments. My second chapter investigates the importance of context on social behaviour by taking a commonly used laboratory game, the dictator game, and studying analogous behaviour, giving to mendicants in the street. I conclude that individuals cooperate less in the wild than they do in the laboratory and that monetary pay-offs are important in cooperative decision-making. My third chapter examines how social cues influence peoples' likelihood of giving to mendicants. I conclude that increased group size and crowd density negatively affect donation behaviour. My fourth chapter investigates dog fouling in public parks to understand the causes of variation in cheating in a naturally occurring public goods game. I conclude that despite evidence that a social game is being played, the cues that influences decisions are unclear, and behaviour may depend on local social norms. My fifth chapter investigates social influences on red light jumping by cyclists at pedestrian crossings. I find that the probability of cheating is higher with fewer observers and when other cyclists also cheat.

The study described in this thesis represents one of the first attempts to explore belongingness as a practice among aid workers, and to contribute to our understanding of how people account for belonging in situ. In psychology, belongingness has predominantly been studied in laboratory settings, or among those who report not belonging in some way. This has led to concerns about ecological validity, and a neglect of ‘real world’ contexts in the development of belongingness theory. Through semi‐structured interviews with 25 international aid workers, using web‐based calling software (Skype), a discursive psychological approach was employed to rework belongingness as a discursive practice. Belonging was found to be an activity for which participants made themselves accountable, and in so doing worked to manage issues of blame and justification in their interactions. Aid workers constructed fitting in as necessary, but ultimately futile, formulating accounts around inherent and immutable differences with local people. The analysis also explored the ways in which participants constructed efforts to achieve belonging; much of which involved the manipulation of appearance, particularly the use of strategic dressing. Through analysis of participants’ treatment of belonging in interaction it was found that, in practice, belonging was formulated as a continuum rather than a dichotomy.

A longstanding sociological tradition conceives of city life as profoundly alienating and insular (Durkheim, 1897; Simmel, 1903). As UK cities continue to grow this could be detrimental for city dwellers as a vast amount of evidence underpins the notion that connecting with others is crucial for wellbeing (Aked, 2011). Although the link between social connectedness and wellbeing is well established, less is known about how connecting with different types of social ties is represented by lay people and what motivates this desire to connect. Using Social Representations Theory and Mattering theory, the aim is to examine the content and the underlying structure that shapes common-sense thinking about social connectedness in the contemporary British city and understand the social psychological complexities that shape motivations for connecting with others. To do this, three studies were conducted using the Grid Elaboration Method (GEM) (Joffe and Elsey, 2014), a novel free association and interview technique. All studies were conducted in Britain's two largest cities, London and Birmingham. In Study 1, city-dwellers' aspirations were examined to look at the importance of social connectedness compared to other aspirations. Thematic analysis of 96 interviews revealed that social connectedness is the most prevalent aspiration and includes connection with 'strong ties', such as friends and family, and 'weak ties', such as strangers and acquaintances at work, in the community and the city at-large. In Study 2 and Study 3, a deeper exploration of connectedness with friends and weak ties was conducted. Building on the first study, thematic analysis of the interviews from 52 city dwellers revealed that thinking about social connection is shaped by the 'self/other' thema, is motivated by a desire to 'matter' and shaped by city contextual factors such as time and technology. This work makes a unique contribution to the study of social connectedness in the city and could be applied to create more effective wellbeing interventions and policies.

The purpose of this thesis was to investigate if the integrity of object lifting and holding with one hand can be affected by the use of the other hand, by speaking out loud, or by watching a similar object being lifted by someone else. One chapter examined if the performance of one hand lifting and holding an object could be influenced by the other hand lifting another object or performing resource-heavy tasks. Results suggest that the fingertip forces of one hand experience no overflow from the other's. The other chapter investigated how auditory processing or production could affect fingertip forces. This series of studies explored (1) if sound cues such as objects impacting on a table surface, or (2) if lexical cues of manual or lifting action such as words with lifting-relevant context, could prime the planning component of object lifting and, additionally, (3) if the production of speech can affect online force control when holding an object. Neither of the priming experiments showed any effect on planning forces. Regarding articulation, participants applied more force on the held object while speaking than when they silently read words, but context of the word showed no effect. This chapter's findings echo those of the first's; no significant overflow of auditory input or output, on fingertip forces. This chapter also examined the consequences of watching another person lift a variety of object sizes whilst participants were holding a similar object. They gradually decreased their grip force on the object, both when watching videos or a real person lifting similar objects. The combined results suggest that the phenomenon of action observation does not extend to physically executing force-related motor commands. Overall, this thesis discusses the findings which suggest that fingertip forces are (1) impervious to direct influence from speaking, using the other hand, and watching object lifting, as well as (2) considerably more isolated in terms of overflow than kinematic systems are.

Background Limited past research has stated that selective exposure is negatively correlated with decision quality and has demonstrated that when participants where steered into making a poor preliminary decision they made a worse final decision. However, the effect of free choice concerning the relationship between selective exposure and decision quality has not been investigated before. Aim The aim of the PhD was to address the gap in literature, examine in depth and reveal the true nature of the relationship between decision quality and selective exposure. Based on the limited literature and unilateral methodological designs of previous research, it was hypothesized that decision quality is positively correlated with selective exposure. Methods To test this hypothesis six consecutive studies where conducted, were participants were allowed to freely make a preliminary decision as opposed to preceding research. Additionally, the impact of specific moderators was assessed for the first time according to their effect on selective exposure and consequently on decision quality. Additionally, two novel decision-making tasks were employed to measure selective exposure, a survival scenario paradigm and a nutrition value paradigm. Results The results of all studies revealed that the moderators examined significantly increased participants’ degree of selective search and that selective exposure was positively correlated to the decision quality they exhibited during the completion of the decision-making exercises. Conclusion In conclusion, the main contribution to the literature is that it was shown that when participants were allowed to choose freely their preliminary decision, selective exposure and decision quality were positively correlated. Such finding has not been found before. Finally, the knowledge acquired from this thesis can be applied in ultimately all areas were decision-making takes place. Such areas include minor importance contexts such as consumer behavior and spread out to more significant areas such as health practice or military action. It is essential for decision-makers to be allowed to choose freely between alternatives and not be restricted by non-flexible decision-making interests or policies.

Research has revealed that our moral dispositions and preferences are dynamic, not static. Our previous decisions, as well as the decisions of others like us, influence our subsequent moral activities. For example, the performance or recollection of past transgressions often compels us to compensate by engaging in good deeds, i.e., moral "cleansing". On the other hand, after performing or recalling our own good deeds - or those of in-group members - we may feel "licensed" to act immorally. These two separate but complimentary mechanisms (i.e., moral licensing and cleansing) form a model of moral behaviour termed moral compensation. The Moral compensation model allows us to entertain a "debits and credits" conceptualisation of moral behaviour but it cannot adequately account for the flexibility of our day-to-day moral behaviour. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate instances of moral transference, i.e., episodes where past (im)moral behaviour is displaced into the present, where past in-group behaviour is displaced onto us, and where moral imperatives are displaced onto other (e.g., supernatural) agents. The methods used in this research are varied and include self-report, memory recall, implicit association testing and perceptual judgement. Using a novel confession paradigm, Chapter 3 explores whether the performance of a false confession can alleviate guilt for an unrelated past transgression. Chapter 4 investigates whether the recollection of a past unethical behaviour can trigger increased sensitivity to cues of social surveillance. Chapter 5 probes the effect of surveillance cues on confessional behaviour and seeks to discover whether such cues trigger voluntary confession as a means of mitigating possible punishment. Chapter 6 considers the role of forgiving God concepts on people's endorsement of state-sanctioned punishment, in particular whether such concepts restrict the tendency for individuals to "outsource" the responsibility of punishment to God. Chapter 7 explores whether information about ingroup (im)morality triggers vicarious moral compensation effects. This thesis concludes that - contra the moral compensation model - our everyday moral behaviours are influenced by more than a process of moral self-regulation. I further conclude that religious affiliation and beliefs are important factors influencing the mechanism of moral transference.

Individuals experiencing social deprivation are deprived of social interaction so unable to participate in society (Brownlee, 2013; Myck, 2015). This is important because it is economically advantageous for individuals to be active in society and to positively contribute as this promotes resilient, cohesive communities and relationships (Knight, 2007). This deprivation of social interaction can occur for a number of different reasons, some of which are known such as: poverty; exclusion; unemployment; crime (Myck et al, 2015) and others relating to living conditions, abuse and health issues. All of which, can lead to a person being disconnected from the rest of society and therefore unable to contribute in a positive way. The research methodology encompassed a subjective ontology and the philosophical stance assumed for the research was interpretivism, placing the importance on the social world (Saunders and Lewis, 2012) and human beings as meaningful objects (Cassell and Symon, 2004). The aim of the research was to understand the root cause and impact of specific circumstances that cause individuals to experience social deprivation and was focused upon the historical nature of family issues (Sherrod, 2006), adopting a constructivist grounded theory approach. Semi structured interviews were held with a non-probability purposive homogenous sample of eleven participants, who were in prison custody. This sample was chosen specifically as it was felt that it would facilitate an understanding of the pathway that had led to offending behaviour and the circumstances that caused issues of social deprivation, which was of 'central importance to the purpose of the research' (Patton, p.169). What transpired from the literature review was the majority of the theoretical concepts associated with social deprivation have previously focused upon structural and behavioural explanations. However, this research proposes that there is an emotional facet associated with the root cause of social deprivation. The research highlighted that in most cases subjects experienced an emotional response caused by certain circumstances that occurred in their lives, such as parental separation and witnessing domestic abuse as a child. Subjects were not equipped with the emotional resilience or appropriate support to deal with the circumstances or life events which then had an impact on them in later life. Therefore, the outcome of this primary research is that the root cause of social deprivation in the majority of cases is associated with the emotional response and the feelings caused by a specific circumstances that occur in life and the inability to cope and deal with them. vii The research addresses a gap identified in the literature review of the need to conduct more qualitative research (Brown and Madge, 1982) and empirical studies (Wilson, 1985; Wilkinson and Pickett, 2007; Breheny and Stephens, 2008) in order to gain a greater understanding of social deprivation and this thesis develops this theoretical knowledge further. Tracing the circumstances back to the root cause has been effective, even though some of the issues identified were not new. The results of the research have been important and enabled the researcher to determine how local authorities could provide support to manage issues of social deprivation. During the course of undertaking the research for the thesis, in particular the data analysis, some of the findings have been utilised to inform a preventative project in schools in the Shire Borough. Although this was not part of the process of producing the thesis, this demonstrates how the research has contributed to praxis by demonstrating the applicability of the findings, and how it has already informed policy and practice.

Theory of mind refers to the ability to attribute mental states to others and to predict their behaviour based on inferences about their mental states, for example their perception, desires, or beliefs. Forty years ago, research on theory of mind originated from the question of whether or not chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) have a theory of mind, a question that – after all this time – is still debated. In the present thesis, I investigate theory of mind and its precursors in birds of the crow family, specifically Eurasian jays (Garrulus glandarius), California scrub-jays (Aphelocoma californica), and carrion crows (Corvus corone corone). Corvids have been reported to possess theory of mind-like abilities. This qualification reflects the fact that most research on theory of mind in these birds has revolved around the ability to respond to perceptual and desire states of conspecifics, and so far has not produced evidence for or against an ability to also respond to others’ beliefs. Further, it is unclear which mechanisms could be the basis of corvids’ abilities. Thus, there are two open questions in regard to corvid theory of mind my thesis aims to address. To address these questions, first, I investigated the ability of Eurasian jays to respond to the false belief of a conspecific in a caching paradigm, where the knowledge of a conspecific observer about the accessibility of two caching sites was manipulated (Chapter 2). In Chapter 3 I explore which behavioural cues might present the basis of the jays’ ability to respond to the desire of a conspecific in a caching context. In Chapter 4, I report a study on biological motion perception in scrub-jays, a phenomenon suggested to be crucial for the detection of social agents. In Chapter 5, I assess scrub-jays’ sensitivity to gaze of a human and a conspecific. Finally, in Chapter 6, I report a study investigating the face inversion effect in carrion crows, an effect that is indicative of a ‘special’ relevance of faces. I conclude by discussing how the presented studies could help us inform our understanding of corvid theory of mind-like abilities.

This study sets out to explore how people who took part in mass protests in Russia produce and negotiate accounts of their protest involvement in talk. Although there has been a proliferation of research on protest in Russia, especially after the first mass demonstration in December 2011, the existing literature tends to prioritise the role of structural and demographic factors in mobilising dissent. However, there has been little investigation into how protesters themselves account for protest involvement and how they make such factors relevant. In addition, no in-depth social psychological exploration of protesters’ views has been conducted in Russia to date. This thesis addresses these gaps by offering a detailed empirical investigation of autobiographical accounts produced by Russian protesters regarding the reasons and motives for taking part in active protest and the subjective interpretations of what being a protester means. Semi-structured interviews with 48 Russian participants were collected, transcribed and translated. The data were analysed within the framework of discursive social psychology (DP). The analysis focused on how particular descriptions were used by protesters in talk to justify and contest certain versions of reality, and on the social actions thereby accomplished. The analysis led to novel insights into how protesters in Russia construct the causes and motives of their dissent, negotiate problematic identity categories and manage issues revolving around accountability and blame. For example, the analysis illustrated the potentially problematic nature of defining protesters’ interests and objectives as ‘political’. That is, when asked about their political attitudes, the interviewees actively justified these as not intentional. They mobilised various discursive resources to imply that they did not intend to become interested in politics and protest, but rather experienced situations that ‘naturally’ led to the acquisition of political interest. Similarly, when talking about motives for active protest participation, protesters tended to downplay explicitly political motivations. Instead, they portrayed their actions as a logical consequence of the deteriorating situation: some participants justified their involvement in terms of duty to defend their loved ones and the country in general, while others defended the appropriateness of active resistance through invoking powerful negative emotions. Such accounts functioned to protect protesters from being seen as motivated by personal or economic concerns, and warranted active protest as the only available means to address the unjust state of affairs in the country. Furthermore, I have shown that identifying with the label of ‘opposition’ is problematic for protesters, with oppositional membership being either denied or delimited in a number of ways. For example, the analysis demonstrated how respondents accomplished denials by making claims about the activities and attributes associated with the category of ‘member of the opposition’ and by invoking the negative connotations of the very term ‘opposition’. The instances of self-ascription of opposition membership further illustrated the sensitive nature of the topic: affirmation accounts were often modified to delimit the extent and nature of membership, with it being portrayed as a logical consequence of a speaker’s views, rather than in terms of emotional or psychological basis, such as shared identity or desire to belong. Finally, my study focused on the arguments relating to the people who do not protest. Interestingly, I found that, despite routinely warranting rationality and necessity of active protest, respondents portrayed the passive members of the public as not blameworthy. The behaviour of non-protesters was justified through attributing it to various practical hindrances and to specific cultural/generational mindsets, thereby placing it outside of peoples’ control. Overall, my thesis contributes to the social psychological literature on protest, by providing a complementary model of contention through the prism of protesters’ own orientations. The study demonstrated that, for protesters in Russia, protest experiences appear to be closely linked with interpersonal and normative considerations, with dissent being manufactured as a necessary and inherently moral act aimed at protecting Russia and its people. The study thus illustrated the utility of putting people’s accounts at the forefront of the analysis and treating them as valuable in their own right. In adopting a novel methodological approach to exploring protest realities as products of interaction, this thesis created an opportunity for a better understanding of the complexities and challenges of popular protest in Russia.

In the four decades since Stanley Cohen (1972) first theorised the ‘moral panic’, there has been immense technological change in the field of communications and media. Whilst Cohen’s original model relies on elite-driven mediated narratives, I argue that moral panics have taken on a memetic quality in the convergent and participatory mediascape. In other words: in an age of social media, moral panic discourses are increasingly open to contestation, reinterpretation, and recirculation by multiple actors and groups. In this thesis, I examine one such group – the web’s largest white nationalist (WN) forum, Stormfront. To do so, I trace three racialized media events as they circulate on and through the Forum. Here, I show how the mechanics of the moral panic have fundamentally shifted in the digital age. I explore the means by which Stormfront users exploit this semi-democratised mediascape in an attempt to ‘manage’ and exploit moral panics surrounding episodes of racialized violence. To this end, I explore the topologically entangled shuttling back and forth of ‘online’ and ‘offline’ lives and spaces to argue for a more-than-digital geography of computer mediated communication. Here, I show how the Forum’s ‘collective voice’ is often given expression through selective quotation by mainstream media surrounding racialized moral panics. This process of remediation, I argue, allows explicitly racist groups fugitive access to mainstream discourse, and turns mainstream media outlets into unwitting nodes in a white nationalist broadcast network. However, I argue that this public-facing process, opens WNs up to increased scrutiny, leading to strategic and contingent deployments of contradictory repertoires of race. In doing so, I examine repertoires of race in such WN interventions - highlighting their flexible and contingent construction of racialized categories in the negotiation of contemporary structures of feeling (Williams 1977; Anderson 2014). I contend that a digitally-inflected antiracism must attend to the contingent, translocal, and assembled nature of racism online if it is to be effective.

Appalachia can be both exquisitely breathtaking and socially tragic, it’s a place to which many Americans trace their ancestry, and yet also it often seems forgotten. In the 1960s, the region was a major target area of the US government’s War on Poverty. Once highly noted for its tremendous post-industrial era contributions to the world’s timber and coal industries, subsequent changing economic demands and industry closures in the region have left many still living in a state of unforgiving poverty. The prevalence of counties living at or below the poverty rate, as estimated by the Appalachian Regional Commission (2015), has dropped from 295 counties in the 1960s to 90 in a 2009-2013 report. Despite this drop the region still greatly suffers due to high concentrated poverty, inadequate health care access, and unemployment. Poverty still demands attention, and scholars must understand its persistence. Many note the consistent lack of access to resources, both economic and social, as primary factors (Saegert, Thompson and Warren 2001; Blakeney 2006). Therefore, I draw on social capital and its underlying relational, social engagements as my main theoretical frame. I explore some of the sociological dynamics underlying Appalachia’s persistent poverty. Through an artifact-based ethnography in a rural eastern Kentucky community, this thesis argues that the current understandings of social capital – as a mechanism to gain social or economic resources – is greatly influenced by the presence of stigma and this is most notably manifested through the readings of cultural artifacts. This thesis’ empirical data draws on ethnographic fieldwork that also included participant observation and 45 semi-structured interviews. I tried to understand the operation of social capital through the lenses of three key artifacts that seemed to me to capture elements of poverty dynamics in the region: home, ‘welfare check’, and glucose meter. These artifacts were chosen because they allowed me to understand how mobility, access, acquisition, utilization, boundaries, and the role in which stigma affects all of these areas is presented. The fieldwork and interview data was understood and supplemented by examining official statistics, government documents, and literature focusing on the emergence and maintenance of the artifacts. The thesis articulates the complicated notions surrounding social capital and how it is manifested through the usage and reading of these objects. Furthermore, this project illustrates how actors within and outside of the community affect the reading of the objects that results in the construct of physical and social boundaries. The findings for this thesis indicates the way in which individuals in communities and external agents understand resources and interact with potential resources for impoverished individuals in providing them access is negated by their reading of objects surrounding them and is affected by the stigma attached to such objects. Chapter 4 on the home examines the concept of rootedness and social mobility; how the strong kinship ties are both a response to and protection from the effects of poverty and stigma in the region. Chapter 5 on the ‘welfare check’ illustrates further the effect that strong bonding ties can have on impeding the development of bridging ties – most notably how fear or people’s reactions, are a response founded in stigma, potentially leads to the heavy reliance on an object which arguably perpetuates poverty. Lastly, Chapter 6 uses the glucose meter to examine the effect that stigma can have internally and externally to a community, thus resulting in inadequate access to health care. The thesis’ key theoretical contribution lies in an attempt to develop an understanding of some of the paradoxical ways in which social capital operates in an impoverished community, and more especially in a theorization of the role that stigma plays in our understanding of social capital. In order to explore this further, the thesis relies heavily upon the utilization of Robert Putnam’s understanding of social capital and loosely on Pierre Bourdieu’s understanding of inequality and its influence on social capital. Erving Goffman’s notion of stigma is used to contextualize the conceptual employment of social capital and its relationship with the artifacts. Current social capital literature uses the presence of, or lack of, bonding and bridging capital in order to illustrate the amount of social capital a community has. However, I illustrate that this is heavily influenced by the presence of stigma.