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2016: A Year Of Looking To The Future, David Chan Dec 2016

2016: A Year Of Looking To The Future, David Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Six major events caused Singaporeans to ponder over the future and what it will bring. As 2016 comes to a close, it is timely to reflect on the past 12 months, which I would summarise as "a future-focused year" - one filled with events and issues that made people ponder about their own future and that of the country. It is useful to revisit the way we approached the key events and issues. After all, when it comes to thinking about the future, how we think is as important as what we think.


Differential Parental Investment, Jose C. Yong, Norman P. Li Dec 2016

Differential Parental Investment, Jose C. Yong, Norman P. Li

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Differences in minimum obligatory parental investment contributed by men and women lead the sexes to diverge in their sexual strategies and affective experiences, although under certain conditions, men’s mating preferences converge with women’s. This chapter first describes necessary or obligatory parental investment, examines the origins of sex differences in obligatory parental investment, describes examples of such differences across a range of species, and highlights the consequences of these differences in terms of human sexual strategies, conflicts, and affective experiences.


The Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions Over The Earth (Acre) Initiative Acre China Workshop: Recovery, Digitization, And Analysis Of Pre-Mid-Twentieth Century Climate Observational Data In East Asia Workshop On 23-24 August, Beijing, China, Fiona Williamson, Guoyu Ren, Rob Allan Dec 2016

The Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions Over The Earth (Acre) Initiative Acre China Workshop: Recovery, Digitization, And Analysis Of Pre-Mid-Twentieth Century Climate Observational Data In East Asia Workshop On 23-24 August, Beijing, China, Fiona Williamson, Guoyu Ren, Rob Allan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This commentary discusses a recent workshop designed to explore the extant historic instrumental record of weather observations for China, East Asia, and the China Seas region; to uncover new sources of observations; and to work on joint initiatives for their recovery and inclusion in open access data sets. The workshop was funded by the UK Newton Fund's Climate Science for Service Partnership China. It was organized by the Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth China, the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), the Beijing Climate Centre, and the China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) and held at CMA offices in Beijing.


A Tale Of Three Bishops: Ideologies Of Chineseness And Global Cities In Vancouver's Anglican Realignment, Justin Kh Tse Dec 2016

A Tale Of Three Bishops: Ideologies Of Chineseness And Global Cities In Vancouver's Anglican Realignment, Justin Kh Tse

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Most accounts of the 2002 departure of some conservative Anglican parishes from Vancouver’s Diocese of New Westminster (DoNW) over same-sex blessings seemed to fit the narrative of a battle over sexuality in the global realignment of the Anglican Communion. However, attention to the consecration of two new Chinese Anglican bishops—Silas Ng Tak-yin and Stephen Leung Wing-hong, both from Hong Kong—reveals that their split from the DoNW’s Bishop Michael Ingham had more to do with an ideology of cultural pluralization deploying “Asian values.” I, therefore, argue that the schism in Vancouver was a division over the three bishops’ imaginations of global …


Violation Of Long-Term Mate Preferences, M. L. W. Long, Norman P. Li Dec 2016

Violation Of Long-Term Mate Preferences, M. L. W. Long, Norman P. Li

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Violations of short-term mate preferences refer to instances in which a person in a short-term, casual sexual relationship has mate preferences that were in place when the relationship commenced but subsequently are not being met.


The Cultural Pragmatics Of Political Apology, Hiro Saito Dec 2016

The Cultural Pragmatics Of Political Apology, Hiro Saito

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In recent decades, research on ‘political apology’, wherein the state apologizes to victims of its past wrongs, has multiplied, as redress movements based on human rights have proliferated around the world. Since most of this research has been conducted by political philosophers, however, analyses of political apologies tend to adopt formal and normative perspectives. To propose an alternative, empirically-grounded approach, in this paper, I develop the ‘cultural pragmatics’ of political apology. To this end, I first conceptualize political apology as a social performance aimed to ‘re-fuse’ an impaired relationship between the perpetrator state and the victim individual. This conceptual move …


Providing Rural Public Services Through Land Commodification: Policy Innovations And Rural-Urban Integration In Chengdu, Qian Forrest Zhang, Jianling Wu Dec 2016

Providing Rural Public Services Through Land Commodification: Policy Innovations And Rural-Urban Integration In Chengdu, Qian Forrest Zhang, Jianling Wu

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Zhang and Wu offer a detailed account of the innovative local policies in Chengdu, China, where a national land-use policy that has created widespread problems in other trial areas has been turned into a positive, transformative force in rural reconstruction. There are three key innovations in this so-called ‘Chengdu model’: First, leveraging on the most important resource in rural area, land, and through the commodification of land development rights, creating a financial source that can fund rural public services provision; second, transforming traditional rural residential patterns and concentrating the rural population in newly built residential communities; and, finally, using both …


Violation Of Short-Term Mate Preferences, Jose C. Yong, Norman P. Li Dec 2016

Violation Of Short-Term Mate Preferences, Jose C. Yong, Norman P. Li

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Violations of short-term mate preferences refer to instances in which a person in a short-term, casual sexual relationship has mate preferences that were in place when the relationship commenced but subsequently are not being met.


Cross Cultural Regularities In The Cognitive Architecture Of Pride, Daniel Sznycer, Laith Al-Shawaf, Yoella Bereby-Meyer, Oliver Scott Curry, Delphine De Smet, Elsa Ermer, Sangin Kim, Sunhwa Kim, Norman P. Li, Maria Florencia Lopez Seal, Jennifer Mcclung, Jiaqing O, Yohsuke Ohtsubo, Tadeg Quillien, Max Schaub, Aaron Sell, Florian Van Leeuwen, Leda Cosmide, John Tooby Dec 2016

Cross Cultural Regularities In The Cognitive Architecture Of Pride, Daniel Sznycer, Laith Al-Shawaf, Yoella Bereby-Meyer, Oliver Scott Curry, Delphine De Smet, Elsa Ermer, Sangin Kim, Sunhwa Kim, Norman P. Li, Maria Florencia Lopez Seal, Jennifer Mcclung, Jiaqing O, Yohsuke Ohtsubo, Tadeg Quillien, Max Schaub, Aaron Sell, Florian Van Leeuwen, Leda Cosmide, John Tooby

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Pride occurs in every known culture, appears early in development, is reliably triggered by achievements and formidability, and causes a characteristic display that is recognized everywhere. Here, we evaluatethe theory that pride evolved to guide decisions relevant to pursuing actions that enhance valuation and respect for a person in the minds of others. By hypothesis, pride is a neurocomputational program tailored by selection to orchestrate cognition and behavior in the service of: (i) motivating the costeffective pursuit of courses of action that would increase others’ valuations and respect of the individual, (ii) motivating the advertisement of acts or characteristics whose …


Advertising, Jose C. Yong, Norman P. Li Dec 2016

Advertising, Jose C. Yong, Norman P. Li

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Advertisements, which are widely available, can provide insights into the evolved preferences of target audiences and serve as a useful supplement to other methods in evolutionary psychology research. This chapter discusses how advertisers create content that strategically exploits consumers’ values and preferences and how advertising content can provide insights into various aspects of our evolved psychology.


Review: Scholar, Courtier, Magician: The Lost Library Of John Dee [Exhibition At Royal College Of Physicians Museum, London, 18 January - 28 July 2016], Emily Soon Dec 2016

Review: Scholar, Courtier, Magician: The Lost Library Of John Dee [Exhibition At Royal College Of Physicians Museum, London, 18 January - 28 July 2016], Emily Soon

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In the mural the acclaimed illustrator Quentin Blake created to commemorate Cambridge University’s 800th anniversary (2009), the Cambridge alumnus and polymath John Dee (1527 – 1609) comes across as a delightfully demented figure. Cloaked in black and surrounded by books and odd objects, Dee looks intent on conjuring up visions from within a large crystal ball. Blake’s watercolour encapsulates the popular image of Dee as a dabbler in the dark arts, one whose quest for the philosopher’s stone represents the equally dark state of learning thought to exist before the emergence of modern science. Indeed, the contemporary cultural fascination with …


The History Problem: The Politics Of War Commemoration In East Asia, Hiro Saito Dec 2016

The History Problem: The Politics Of War Commemoration In East Asia, Hiro Saito

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Seventy years have passed since the end of the Asia-Pacific War, yet Japan remains embroiled in controversy with its neighbors over the war’s commemoration. Among the many points of contention between Japan, China, and South Korea are interpretations of the Tokyo War Crimes Trial, apologies and compensation for foreign victims of Japanese aggression, prime ministerial visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, and the war’s portrayal in textbooks. Collectively, these controversies have come to be called the “history problem.” But why has the problem become so intractable? Can it ever be resolved, and if so, how? To answer these questions, the author …


Cultural Threats In Culturally Mixed Encounters Hamper Creative Performance For Individuals With Lower Openness To Experience, Xia Chen, Angela K. Y. Leung, Daniel Y. J. Yang, Chi-Yue Chiu, Zhong-Quan Li, Shirley Y. Y. Cheng Nov 2016

Cultural Threats In Culturally Mixed Encounters Hamper Creative Performance For Individuals With Lower Openness To Experience, Xia Chen, Angela K. Y. Leung, Daniel Y. J. Yang, Chi-Yue Chiu, Zhong-Quan Li, Shirley Y. Y. Cheng

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Past research has examined independently how openness to experience, as a personality trait, and the situational threat triggered by a foreign cultural encounter affect the emergence of creative benefits from a culture-mixing experience. The present research provides the first evidence for the interactive effect of openness to experience and cultural threat following culturally mixed encounters on creative performance. In Study 1, under heightened perceptions of cultural threat, exposing to the mixing of Chinese and American cultures (vs. a non-mixed situation) made close-minded Chinese participants to perform more poorly in a creative generation task. In Study 2, inducing cultural threat by …


Inventing The ‘Authentic’ Self: American Television And Chinese Audiences In Global Beijing, Yang Gao Nov 2016

Inventing The ‘Authentic’ Self: American Television And Chinese Audiences In Global Beijing, Yang Gao

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article examines the ways educated urban Chinese youths engage American television fiction as part of their identity work. Drawing on theories of modern reflexive identity, and based on 29 interviews with US TV fans among university students in Beijing, I found these youths are drawn to this television primarily because they perceive the American way of life portrayed on it as more ‘authentic’. This perception of authenticity must be examined within the socio-cultural milieu these students inhabit. Specifically, torn between China’s ingrained collectivist culture and its recent neoliberal emphasis on the individual self, my respondents glean from US TV …


Validating A Measure Of Beliefs In Health Prevention Screenings Among Old Adults In China, H. Xu, Paulin Tay Straughan, W. Pan, Z. Zhen, B. Wu Nov 2016

Validating A Measure Of Beliefs In Health Prevention Screenings Among Old Adults In China, H. Xu, Paulin Tay Straughan, W. Pan, Z. Zhen, B. Wu

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

We aimed to examine the psychometric properties of a modified 16-item Attitudinal Index (AI), a measure of health beliefs in health prevention screenings among Chinese older adults. We used the 2013 Shanghai Longitudinal Survey of Elderly Life and Opinion data including 3418 respondents aged 60 and above. We examined the validity and reliability of the modified AI. Psychometric evaluation of the modified AI revealed good response patterns. The overall scale had good reliability (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.835) with four distinct dimensions: barriers, fatalism, unnecessary, and detects (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.815 to 0.908). Confirmatory factor analysis of the modified AI’s factor …


The New Global Energy Governance, Ann Florini Nov 2016

The New Global Energy Governance, Ann Florini

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Until recently, global energy policy - to the degree there was any meaningful globally coordinated energy policy – dealt overwhelmingly with oil. Now, a new agenda and new set of actors is coming into play. The world needs a fundamental change in energy systems to meet the challenges of the 21st century. The task is to provide more energy to more people without fostering runaway climate change or going to war over resources. With formal global agreement in 2015 on the need to move rapidly toward decarbonisation of the energy system, while simultaneously providing energy access to the billions who …


Urban Adaptation To Mega-Drought: Anticipatory Water Modeling, Policy, And Planning For The Urban Southwest, Patricia Gober, David A. Sampson, Ray Quay, Dave D. White, Winston T. L. Chow Nov 2016

Urban Adaptation To Mega-Drought: Anticipatory Water Modeling, Policy, And Planning For The Urban Southwest, Patricia Gober, David A. Sampson, Ray Quay, Dave D. White, Winston T. L. Chow

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper uses ‘Medieval’ drought conditions from the 12th Century to simulate the implications of severe and persistent drought for the future of water resource management in metropolitan Phoenix, one of the largest and fastest growing urban areas in the southwestern USA. WaterSim 5, an anticipatory water policy and planning model, was used to explore groundwater sustainability outcomes for mega-drought conditions across a range of policies, including population growth management, water conservation, water banking, direct reuse of RO reclaimed water, and water augmentation. Results revealed that business-as-usual population growth, per capita use trends, and management strategies are not sustainable over …


Country Roads, Take Me Home ... To My Friends: How Intelligence, Population Density, And Friendship Affect Modern Happiness, Norman P. Li, Satoshi Kanazawa Nov 2016

Country Roads, Take Me Home ... To My Friends: How Intelligence, Population Density, And Friendship Affect Modern Happiness, Norman P. Li, Satoshi Kanazawa

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

We propose the savanna theory of happiness, which suggests that it is not only the current consequences of a given situation but also its ancestral consequences that affect individuals’ life satisfaction and explains why such influences of ancestral consequences might interact with intelligence. We choose two varied factors that characterize basic differences between ancestral and modern life – population density and frequency of socialization with friends – as empirical test cases. As predicted by the theory, population density is negatively, and frequency of socialization with friends is positively, associated with life satisfaction. More importantly, the main associations of life satisfaction …


Cross-Disciplinary Working In The Sciences And Humanities: Historical Data Rescue Activities In Southeast Asia And Beyond, Fiona Williamson Nov 2016

Cross-Disciplinary Working In The Sciences And Humanities: Historical Data Rescue Activities In Southeast Asia And Beyond, Fiona Williamson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper argues that more work is needed to facilitate cross-disciplinary collaborations by scholars across the physical sciences and humanities to improve Data Rescue Activities (DARE). Debate over the scale and potential impact of anthropogenic global warming is one of the dominant narratives of the twenty-first century. Predicting future climates and determining how environment and society might be affected by climate change are global issues of social, economic and political importance. They require responses from different research communities and necessitate closer inter-disciplinary working relationships for an integrated approach. Improving the datasets required for long-term climate models is an important part …


’A Beautiful Bridge’: Chinese Indonesian Associations, Social Capital And Strategic Identification In A New Era Of China Indonesia Relations, Charlotte Setijadi Nov 2016

’A Beautiful Bridge’: Chinese Indonesian Associations, Social Capital And Strategic Identification In A New Era Of China Indonesia Relations, Charlotte Setijadi

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In Indonesia, Chinese voluntary associations took on a new level of importance after the fall of Suharto’s New Order regime in 1998 that ushered in a revival of Chinese identity politics. At the same time, Sino-Indonesian relations are blossoming, and the rise of China as a global power means that Indonesia can only benefit from stronger ties with China in the future. In this new atmosphere of cooperation, I argue that Chinese Indonesian individuals and voluntary organizations play a crucial function as trade and cultural intermediaries. Drawing on both empirical and qualitative fieldwork data, in this paper, I examine how …


Parasite Stress And Pathogen Avoidance Relate To Distinct Dimensions Of Political Ideology Across 30 Nations, J.M. Tybur, Y. Inbar, L. Aaroe, P. Barclay, F.K. Barlow, M. De Barra, D.V. Becker, L. Borovoi, I. Choi, J.A. Choi, N.S. Consedine, A. Conway, J.R. Conway, Li, Norman P., Jose C. Yong, D.E. Demirci, A.M. Fernandez, D.C.S. Ferreira, K. Ishii, I. Jaksic Nov 2016

Parasite Stress And Pathogen Avoidance Relate To Distinct Dimensions Of Political Ideology Across 30 Nations, J.M. Tybur, Y. Inbar, L. Aaroe, P. Barclay, F.K. Barlow, M. De Barra, D.V. Becker, L. Borovoi, I. Choi, J.A. Choi, N.S. Consedine, A. Conway, J.R. Conway, Li, Norman P., Jose C. Yong, D.E. Demirci, A.M. Fernandez, D.C.S. Ferreira, K. Ishii, I. Jaksic

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

People who are more avoidant of pathogens are more politically conservative, as are nations with greater parasite stress. In the current research, we test two prominent hypotheses that have been proposed as explanations for these relationships. The first, which is an intragroup account, holds that these relationships between pathogens and politics are based on motivations to adhere to local norms, which are sometimes shaped by cultural evolution to have pathogenneutralizing properties. The second, which is an intergroup account, holds that these same relationships are based on motivations to avoid contact with outgroups, who might pose greater infectious disease threats than …


Is The Smartphone A Smart Choice? The Effect Of Smartphone Separation On Executive Functions, Andree Hartanto, Hwajin Yang Nov 2016

Is The Smartphone A Smart Choice? The Effect Of Smartphone Separation On Executive Functions, Andree Hartanto, Hwajin Yang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Despite a huge spike in smartphone overuse, the cognitive and emotional consequences of smartphone overuse have rarely been examined empirically. In two studies, we investigated whether separation from a smartphone influences state anxiety and impairs higher-order cognitive processes, such as executive functions. We found that smartphone separation causes heightened anxiety, which in turn mediates the adverse effect of smartphone separation on all core aspects of executive functions, including shifting (Experiment 1) and inhibitory control and working-memory capacity (Experiment 2). Interestingly, impaired mental shifting was evident regardless of the extent of smartphone addiction, whereas smartphone addiction significantly moderated the negative effect …


Small Infrastructure Has Big Impact In China, John A. Donaldson Nov 2016

Small Infrastructure Has Big Impact In China, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

It is a familiar dilemma to policymakers around Asia: How much infrastructure, and what kind, is enough? How should developing economies prioritize when the needs are so great? China’s experience offers a surprising answer. While large-scale infrastructure sometimes generates GDP growth (it often does not), smaller is often better for poverty reduction.


What Do Chinese Really Think About Democracy And India?, Devin K. Joshi, Yizhe Xu Nov 2016

What Do Chinese Really Think About Democracy And India?, Devin K. Joshi, Yizhe Xu

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

There has been much speculation about whether China will democratize and avoid conflict with India in the twenty-first century. Yet, few studies have investigated how contemporary Chinese view India and its democracy. Addressing this gap in the literature, the authors examined Chinese media coverage of India’s two-month long April–May 2014 parliamentary election, the largest election in world history, through systematic analysis of over 500 articles from ten major mass media outlets and over 27,000 messages transmitted on Sina Weibo social media. As might be expected, Chinese mass media generally portrayed India and its elections in a condescending fashion while avoiding …


On David Miller On Immigration Control, Chandran Kukathas Oct 2016

On David Miller On Immigration Control, Chandran Kukathas

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

David Miller offers a liberal realist defence of immigration control grounded in cosmopolitan ideals of self-determination, fairness and integration. But a commitment to liberal values requires a commitment to more open borders than he admits. A part of the problem is that the notion of open borders Miller criticises is under-theorised. A deeper problem is that immigration control itself is inconsistent with important liberal values – notably the values of freedom and equality. This is a concern because it is the freedom and equality not only of immigrants but also of citizens that is threatened by the closing of borders.


Conceptual Representation Changes In Indonesian-English Bilinguals, Andree Hartanto, Lidia Suarez Oct 2016

Conceptual Representation Changes In Indonesian-English Bilinguals, Andree Hartanto, Lidia Suarez

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This study investigated conceptual representations changes in bilinguals. Participants were Indonesian-English bilinguals (dominant in Indonesian, with different levels of English proficiency) and a control group composed of English-dominant bilinguals. All completed a gender decision task, in which participants decided whether English words referred to a male or female person or animal. In order to explore conceptual representations, we divided the words into gender-specific and gender-ambiguous words. Gender-specific words were words in which conceptual representations contained gender as a defining feature, in both English and Indonesian (e.g., uncle). In contrast, gender-ambiguous words were words in which gender was a defining feature …


Are European Union Sanctions “Targeted”?, Clara Portela Oct 2016

Are European Union Sanctions “Targeted”?, Clara Portela

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The emergence of targeted sanctions in the mid-1990s was due to the humanitarian impact of embargoes, which were deemed unacceptable and compelled senders to shift to measures designed to affect only wrongdoers. Twenty years on, the present paper considers the extent to which autonomous sanctions are designed to affect those individuals and elites responsible for the behaviour the EU aims to condemn. How faithful has the EU remained to this concept in its sanctions policy? The enquiry scrutinizes diverse practices in three established sanctions strands of the EU, development aid suspensions, Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) sanctions and Generalised …


A Closer Look At The Hedonics Of Everyday Meaning And Satisfaction, William Tov, Huey Woon Lee Oct 2016

A Closer Look At The Hedonics Of Everyday Meaning And Satisfaction, William Tov, Huey Woon Lee

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Contrasts between eudaimonic well-being and hedonic well-being often compare meaning and happiness. Less work has examined the extent to which meaning and satisfaction can be distinguished. Across five diary studies (N = 923) and a large cross-sectional survey (N = 1471), we examined the affective profile of meaning and satisfaction in everyday life. Using response surface methodology, both judgments were modeled as a joint function of positive (PA) and negative (NA) affect. Affective discrepancy (preponderance of PA over NA) was more strongly associated with satisfaction than meaning. In general, meaning correlated less with affect than satisfaction, but the …


A Milestone On The Road To Independence? Singapore’S Catastrophic 1954 Floods, Fiona Williamson Oct 2016

A Milestone On The Road To Independence? Singapore’S Catastrophic 1954 Floods, Fiona Williamson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

A combination of torrential and prolonged rains, high tides, and insufficient flood control caused some of the worst flooding known in Singapore in the first two weeks of December 1954. Early 1950s Singapore was a British Crown Colony and part of the Federation of Malaya. It was a particularly tense time politically, with the rise of nationalist movements and an ongoing state of “emergency” declared by the British government in response to a perceived communist threat supported by some members of the Chinese community. The 1954 floods were a disaster that piled more pressure onto an already stressed community. More …


Chinese Christians For Trump, Justin Kh Tse Oct 2016

Chinese Christians For Trump, Justin Kh Tse

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

No abstract provided.