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This thesis is a collection of three studies that contribute to the area of survey methodology. The primary aim is to contribute to questionnaire design in political surveys. The research focus is on examining the interaction of questionnaire design characteristics and respondents' background on survey response. I focus on questions that were included in political surveys and experimentally randomised (American National Election Study 2008 and 2012). I use as dependent variables questions that evaluate Presidential candidates (first and third study) and self-reported ability on understanding politics (second study). I examine whether and how question order, response scale direction, response scale type and interviewers' background (partisanship) interact with respondents' background (partisanship or political knowledge) affecting response. I use regression analysis to examine the effect of the interaction terms on survey response. The findings are mixed but there are trends across the three studies. The questionnaire design characteristics usually do not affect response, but some of the interactions between questionnaire design characteristics and respondents' background do affect response. The results suggest that 1) response can be skewed by the interaction between questionnaire design characteristics and respondents' background, 2) the statistically significant findings are concentrated on specific groups of respondents and question topics, and, 3) overall direction of response is not affected by the interaction. The thesis discusses the importance of considering respondents' background when designing questionnaires and the implications for political researchers when using data from a survey study where randomisations were applied.

This work offers a significant contribution to the ongoing endeavours in monitoring the effects of internet censorship. It can be freely accessed online by anyone who lives in a censorship free society where limitations on academic texts are not in effect. However, there are numerous places across the globe where this would be highly impractical-due to censorship mechanisms-and potentially illegal. A universal catalogue containing censored pieces of online content, online services and websites does not exist. This thesis discusses new approaches for monitoring internet censorship and the insights gained from experimental analysis with the results. Key contributions of this work are: firstly, a method for determining if a website is censored in particular country from a remote vantage point; secondly, new approaches for constructing lists of censored domains via a recursive discovery strategy; thirdly, a first look into the relationships between newly discovered censored websites from the perspective of network topology and linguistics. A number of experiments were conducted to evaluate newly designed frameworks for monitoring censored websites. Using a set of known censored websites from existing lists resulted in the discovery of an order of magnitude more censored material than was previously published. Furthermore, the discovery process yielded useful data and insight into how these censored websites exhibit a multitude of hard and soft connections between them. These results improve the perspicacity of analysis into how online material is censored and give new ways of identifying the motivations and intent of censorship regimes. These new methods for monitoring internet censorship are significantly more effective than those previously in use, whilst maintaining a strong stance in regard to ethical issues with taking measurements for censorship research.

In this doctoral thesis, I reflect on methods to leverage non-representative samples to measure and forecast public opinion in the run-up to an election. The thesis is made up of three separate papers, dealing with a number of issues around the topic of convenience samples; these issues include a) how and where to collect non-representative data, and how to enhance them with external, auxiliary sources; b) how to construct reliable and deep stratification weights, when these are not immediately available from the census, and when no single dataset contains an exhaustive set of the desired post-stratification information; c) how to optimise learning models to automate variable selection, produce accurate out-of-sample predictions, and improve fitting speed. Findings from this thesis suggest unrepresentative samples can be used to obtain real-time readings of public opinion, at a fraction of the cost of traditional survey methods, provided a number of non-trivial and computationally demanding model adjustments are implemented to smooth and re-weight the samples.

This thesis examines the influence that leaders can have on follower identification and engagement through the medium of indirect contact. Drawing upon a theoretical integration of the Social Identity Theory of Leadership and Intergroup Contact Theory, I tested whether and how leaders, through on-line, text-based and imagined forms of contact, can promote a shared identity and instil greater organizational identification. In Chapter 3, four experiments examined the impact of indirect contact on organizational identification by observing a video message of a leader either alone, or in the presence of other followers. In Chapter 4, three experiments tested whether leaders who communicated through emails, using either individualistic or collectivistic rhetoric, elicited different levels of organizational identification and turnover intention. Finally, in Chapter 5, I investigated whether or not imagined contact can be used as a pre-contact tool within the organizational context to enhance organizational identification via an imagined interaction with the leader, with or without other followers present. Here, additional variables such as interactional justice and trust were examined. Overall, the findings from these ten experiments did not reveal clear support for the tested hypotheses; however, a review of findings enabled the development of a new theoretical approach. Specifically, in Chapter 6, I propose that followers have a need for leader distinctiveness under certain conditions, and that under such conditions attempts to elicit greater closeness between leaders and followers will backfire. Predictions derived from this theory are discussed.

A growing interest in the social psychology of identifying leadership potential has followed a significant body of work to identify the best predictors of it. This thesis builds on research which examined contexts in which leadership potential is preferred over objective leadership performance, with a focus on disadvantageous outcomes for women. In this thesis I take a step backwards to examine not when leadership potential is preferred but how it is perceived. With respect to talent management in practice, organisations face two major issues: low success rates for high-potential individuals fulfilling their leadership potential and low representation of women in talent pipelines and leadership positions. I treat these problems as two sides of the same coin; organisations fall short of effectively identifying leadership potential due to social psychological biases in the methods that they use to identify it. Applying the social identity approach, I test the role of social identity processes in driving subjective perceptions of leadership potential. To better understand the role of unequal outcomes for women, I examine how target and evaluator gender interact with social identity processes to hold women to higher standards of recognising their potential to lead. Across eight studies, I demonstrate that social identity processes drive perceptions of leadership potential. Results show that social identity processes and gender interact in such a way that women's leadership potential is recognised through different processes than men's when evaluators are men. In a further two studies, I examine how social psychological processes may explain how individuals self-rate their own leadership potential. Social stereotypes may provide more explanation for this process than social identity processes. Overall, this thesis contributes to the literature on leadership potential by highlighting the biases that can ultimately lead to the misidentification of leadership potential. The thesis is concluded with implications and recommendations for practice.

Learning and applying learning are considered to be vital activities for the success of senior executives in their jobs and, in turn, for the success of the organisations they lead. That connection between learning, applying learning, and personal and organisational effectiveness has been posited by observers and supported by research. However, few studies have closely examined the specific ways in which senior executives learn and apply their learning. This study was conducted through qualitative analysis of interviews with 24 experienced senior executives from three broad fields. Eight of the interviewees were from educational institutions, eight were from publicly-traded for-profit companies and eight were from private for-profit enterprises. Thirteen were men and 11 women. All had at least five years of experience at a senior organisational level. Twenty-one of the participating senior executives were interviewed once, and three of them-one from each of the three fields-were interviewed twice, with the second interview taking place at least six months after the initial interview. Twenty ways in which more than half of the senior executives reported that they learn were identified, and those were placed into four primary categories. Three of those primary categories-learning from experience, from reflection, and from guidance by others-were supported by a fourth category of practices and attitudes that prompted and furthered their learning. Eleven ways in which more than half of the senior executives reported that they applied learning were identified, and those were also placed into four primary categories: to advance the organisation's effectiveness, to create constructive change, to support the growth and success of others, and to personally improve. The findings are presented and discussed in the context of expectations in the research and theoretical literature regarding learning and application of learning by executives, and suggested subjects for further study are presented.

Policy-making and service development tends to what has been called the 'ideal of impartiality' whereby difference between different population groups is reduced to unity. At the same time, inherent within equality law is an understanding that the population is heterogeneous, experiencing complex forms of injustice which require the opportunity for legal redress. The Equality Act 2010 includes a general duty on public authorities, the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED), to have due regard to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between different groups in relation to nine protected characteristics. Secondary legislation in Scotland has added significant additional requirements with the potential to transform the way that public authorities think and act about equality including duties to report progress on mainstreaming the equality duty, to publish equality outcomes and report progress and to assess and review policies and practices. The way that this secondary legislation has been conceptualised, interpreted and how it has informed planning and practice within public authorities has not previously been the subject of a body of research. This thesis has sought to contribute to greater understanding about the potential of the PSED in Scotland by applying interpretive policy analysis to the application of the duty in one city, Glasgow. Interpretive approaches to policy focus on meanings that shape actions and institutions and draw on a range of methods to follow the objects, the language, the relevant actors and the acts associated with the policy. Within this context, an assumption has been made that a compound narrative about injustice, equality as constitutive of social justice and institutional change within the city can be derived by investigating meaning and action associated with the PSED from a number of different perspectives. Firstly, the framing and the discourses associated with formal texts required for compliance produced by five key institutions with responsibility for different facets of city life have been investigated critically. These five institutions are the Scottish Government, Glasgow City Council, the Glasgow Health and Social Care Partnership, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and the City of Glasgow College, selected for both their relationship to social structures which determine equality and for their responsibilities for its different dimensions. Secondly, the perspectives of three communities of meaning - those directly responsible for compliance, those indirectly responsible for compliance and advocates for social groups - have been gathered through the use of semi-structured interviews in order to compare and contrast their interpretations with the formal texts. Lastly, the meaning and actions associated with the mainstreaming requirement of the secondary duties have been considered in order to ascertain whether and how equality aspirations have shaped the strategic and operational responsibilities of Glasgow City Council, health and social care provision and further education in the city in relation to theories of urban justice. The PSED was largely viewed as an important and beneficial piece of law, that there was no room for discrimination within the city and that equality across different social groups was an acceptable ideal. The duty was also viewed as a means of exerting pressure on public institutions both from within and from the outside to reflect on the meaning of equality and to consider the way that organisations both perpetuated and resolved inequality. At the same time, the opportunities afforded by the secondary duties to transform social systems and dimensions of equality were not met and as a consequence the potential for Glasgow to be a more just city for its heterogeneous population not realised.

The present thesis aims to understand the ways that political leaders craft a sense of 'us' and 'them' as part of their identity entrepreneurship process. The social psychological literature of entrepreneurial identity is underpinned by some problematic assumptions that limit understanding of the meaning, formation and influence of social identity in action. Political leaders as entrepreneurs are presented or treated as a homogeneous group in terms of the embodied properties and powers related to the entire nation, which they govern or aim to do so, rather than as representatives of a uniquely embodied political group. Therefore, findings of the present thesis build on the literature of social identity approach to political leadership in two ways: First, by suggesting concrete hypotheses about how leaders with different amounts of political support might define in various ways, as identity entrepreneurs, who 'we' are and who 'we' are not in democratic contexts marked by stability or crisis. Second, by considering different temporal accounts, in the form of who 'we' or 'they' were (past), are (present) or can become (future), as social identity maintenance strategies employed by political leaders. In Chapter 1, I introduce the thesis, set the scene, list the research questions that this thesis aims to answer and provide a chapter-by-chapter break down framework. In Chapter 2, I summarise previous work on commemoration practice alongside research on social identity approach to political leadership and studies beyond the social identity approach to leadership that focus on group identities and discourses of 'we' and 'they'. In Chapter 3, I present the methodological framework of analysis of commemorative political speeches. Chapters 4 (content analysis), 5 (discourse analysis of 'we' and 'they') and 6 (temporal positioning of 'we' and 'they') present the findings of analysis of the speeches. I conclude, in this thesis, with a discussion, where I summarise findings, address implications of the current research and propose directions for future research.

Using survey data and a multi-level time-lagged linear regression, we show that cultural values are primal in the human development sequence. The spread of advantageous cultural values - like respect for individual rights - predicts future economic development and democracy. The World and European Values Surveys (WEVS) are administered in 109 countries representing over 90% of the world's population. They are designed to quantify cultural values and facilitate comparative analysis on a global scale. We found nine underlying cultural factors in the WEVS that can be compressed into three orthogonal cultural value components: Secular-Rationality, Openness and Institutional Support. Furthermore, the 109 countries fall into one of four clusters representing different cultural-histories: African-Islamic, Catholic, Western and Communist-Confucian. We find two independent modes of cultural value dynamics that have very different characters: generational and opinion change. Generational change is persistent and steady and shows strong links to human development. Opinion change, conversely, is rapid and transient and shows weak links to human development. Opinion change dominates short run cultural value variation, but generational change dominates in the long run. Generational changes in cultural values precede those in human development. This makes it unlikely that human development causes cultural values to change. Even though analysis using the standard WEVS cross-sectional samples show that cultural values weakly predict human development, cross-sectional dynamics are dominated by transient opinion change. Human development is unaffected in the long run. We show that cultural-history is not needed to explain human development inequalities once past cultural values have been controlled for. However, cultural-history still influences the spread of cultural values themselves. Finally, the surprising recent decline in Support for Institutions is predicted by past increases in Secular-Rationality; meaning it could be a side-effect of human development.

This thesis contains four chapters presenting theory and empirical evidence for two distinct aspects of human behaviour: social learning and motivated beliefs. I develop a simple theory to revisit the classical social learning models by challenging the assumption of freely available information. My model suggests that when it is costly to acquire information, social learning (herding) is prevalent, and people do not have incentives to acquire private information (e.g. to form their own judgements). Classical information cascade models suggest that although herding is observed, information aggregation is still possible with communication channels (e.g. a survey); however, my model indicates that information aggregation is unattainable because people in the herd do not acquire private information. We then test my model in a laboratory and find that, as predicted, subjects can learn from others successfully. Also, individual heterogeneity exists in: there are herd animals biased against private information, lone wolves who are biased toward it and subjects who behave optimally. In aggregate, there is no overall bias for or against private information. We also document a new cognitive bias involved in processing social information. Individual characteristics, especially the cognitive ability, seems to be a very good indicator of subjects' behaviour. Subjects with higher cognitive scores choose optimal information more frequently and follow information more frequently. Overconfidence can be driven by the consumption motive (e.g. savouring future payoff/self-image) and the instrumental motive (e.g. being optimistic about the outcome of effort for motivation). I develop a simple model incorporating these two motives and suggest that individuals hold a dynamic pattern of overconfidence. Then I conduct an online field experiment with students to test the theory. The experimental findings indicate that students are likely to adopt overconfident beliefs as a commitment device to deal with their self-control problem. However, I do not find evidence for the consumption motive of overconfidence.

Taking as a starting point the belief that Western societies live a period of normality/stability with regard to their general understanding of justice (based on consensual ideas of equal liberty, communal/national responsibility and democracy), the present thesis appeals to a reinterpretation of Rawlsian reflective equilibrium as the approach to improve justice in Brazil. An ideal-non-ideal equilibrium is outlined by this thesis; in addition, the developments of certain knowledge about civic virtues and how to cultivate them through formal education serve as important tools to favour the theoretical-practical equilibrium, only achieved in the public sphere. The debate on justice is structured upon the idea of (non-idealised) hypothetical social contract. Through appealing to economic, cultural and decision-making dimensions, this debate outlines an equilibrium between philosophical ideals of justices and historic, biological, economic and sociological empirical observations (as on human natural and cultural developments, as on specificities of Brazilian society). From this, a feasible theory of how to improve justice in Brazil is proposed, and seven important civic virtues to be cultivated in Brazilian people are suggested. Then, a new ideal-non-ideal equilibrium between philosophical ideals of how to develop five different levels of citizenship curriculum and empirical observations about how this curriculum is actually carried out in three different Brazilian schools is also outlined.

Behavioural scientists argue that ‘social learning' provides the link between biological phenomena and cultural phenomena because of its role in the ‘cultural transmission' of knowledge among individuals within and across generations. However, leading authors within the social sciences have proposed alternative ways of thinking about social life not founded on the Modern oppositions including nature-culture, biology-culture, body-mind, and individual-society. Similarly, the distinction between a domain of nature and a domain of nurture has also been extensively criticized within biology. Finally, advocates of ‘radical embodied cognitive science' offer an alternative to the representational-computational view of the mind which supports the conventional notion of culture and cultural information. This thesis attempts to integrate developmental systems theory, radical embodied cognitive science, and relational thinking, with the goal to bring the field of social learning closer to these critical theoretical developments. In Chapter 2, I find no justification for the claim that the genome carries information in the sense of specification of biological form. Chapter 3 presents a view of ontogeny as a historical, relational, constructive and contingent process. Chapter 4 uses the notions of environmental information, abilities, affordances, and intentions to make sense of behaviour and learning. In Chapter 5, I argue that the notion of social learning can be understood in terms of relational histories of development rather than in terms of transmission of information. I then report empirical studies investigating behavioural coordination and social learning consistent with this theoretical framework. Chapter 6 presents evidence that dyads in a joint making activity synchronize their attention constrained by their changing situation and that coordination of attention is predictive of implicit and explicit learning. Chapter 7 presents evidence that joint attention does not require gaze following and that attentional coordination is predictive of learning a manual task. Together, these theoretical and empirical studies suggest a new way of thinking about how humans and other animals live and learn socially, one that is consistent with critical theoretical and philosophical developments that are currently neglected in the literature on social learning.

In September 2011, over 2000 people set up a protest camp in Zuccotti Park, New York, to contest the increasing inequality and social injustices, they argued to have been brought about by the few, at the expense of the many. This camp along with thousands of other camps worldwide, that would emerge thereafter, would come to be known as the Occupy movement. This thesis offers an examination of the Occupy movement by way of considering this phenomenon through a neo-Marxist framework, concerning, in particular the matter of class struggle. The research contained within, offers a series of elucidations regarding key theoretical and conceptual concerns, pertaining to matters of state power, in the context of the war of position in the advanced capitalist state and the neoliberal conjuncture. Presented within this specific depiction of the convoluted process that is class struggle, there is also a consideration of potential strategies for alliance. These strategies for alliance are by way of seeking to realise the making of a social class force of 'the people', on the terms of the exploited classes, that would bring with it, a material change within the state, and to that end, greater forms of equality and social justice.

The apparent adaptive value of culture was once assumed to be an explanation for the evolution of social learning. The original argument was that obtaining information from others, even if it was just by unbiased imitation, would save social learners the costs and risks of finding solutions as individual learners or instinctive actuators. These assumptions have been challenged by existing theoretical work where the evolution of social learning and the consequent emergence of culture are shown to require more than just unbiased imitation. The consensus is that an extra source of selection, apart from natural selection, is required for social learning to evolve. This consensus is based on two basic problems of unbiased imitation in the context of existing models. The first problem is that, when only natural selection is considered, unbiased imitation breaks the relation between phenotypic fitness and the frequency of phenotypic replication. The second problem is that perfect imitation can cause phenotypic stagnation as populations with a large proportion of social learners maintain low phenotypic variance, which in turn prevents the fixation of social learners under any rate of environmental change. Subsequently, researchers in the field have developed models that necessitate individual learners (i.e., individuals with the ability to improve on innate behaviours) and different forms of decision-making processes, like biases towards imitating fitter strategies or the ability to improve on the strategies already acquired, in order to explain the evolution of social learners and the emergence of cultural evolutionary systems. Here we claim individual learning and decision-making processes are unnecessary for the emergence of cultural evolutionary systems. These systems can be explained because, when allowed to explore an extended strategy space, they are faster problem solvers than genetic evolutionary systems. We base this conclusion on the results of a series of individual based simulations, which show that under strong survival selection and while imitation error rates are higher than genetic mutation, culture can find solutions to environmental problems faster than genetic systems. Our work shows that unbiased horizontal imitation - a particular form of social learning that is generally considered a hindrance in classical models of the origin of culture - can also be adaptive under certain conditions of selection pressures and error rates. Furthermore, we show moderate environmental change increases the chances of culture emerging in a population of pure social learners; a process previously thought to require a mixed strategy of social and individual learning. Compared to existing models our approach makes fewer and more plausible assumptions, as it does not involve additional sources of selection in the form of individual learning or decision making processes. This broadens the range of species for which culture could evolve as it reduces individual-level requirements for its evolution.

Hacking and politically motivated hacking, so-called hacktivism, are two phenomena that have received increased attention in the last years. Both are mentioned in news headlines, political speeches and academic publications; however, ambiguity remains concerning what the concepts actually encompass. Hacking and hacktivism are frequently entangled with debates on technological security and insecurity and portrayed as the epitome of cybersecurity threats. Due to this perception, and building upon the notion that such (in)securities are consequence of an (in)security construction, this thesis analyses the emerging (in)securitisation of hacking and hacktivism. The focus is on the European Union. To achieve this, the thesis makes use of a Bourdieusian framework and the International Political Sociology of the Paris School approach. Based on this analytical foundation, the ‘meta-field of cybersecurity’ is analysed. The thesis considers this meta-field to be set together through three distinct fields, including the field of (a) politics and bureaucracy within the EU; (b) the commercial cybersecurity sector; and (c) hackers and hacktivists. Using document analyses and interviews, the thesis investigates each social space individually and answers the following question: What characterises the (in)securitised discourses and practices of hacking and hacktivism in the meta-field of cybersecurity and how are they resisted and/or instrumentalised? The thesis uncovers each field’s perception of hacking and hacktivism and their discursive and non-discursive (in)security practices, comparing and contrasting the results. The findings confirm the ambiguity of the concepts. Yet, contrary my anticipation, more diverse and fragmented discourses and practices were identified. Hackers and hacktivists feel excluded and need to counter their (in) securitisation in some realms, but there is evidence of a more reflective engagement. This manifests itself in the repurposing of the term hacker in the field of politics and bureaucracy or the (am)bivalence of hackers and hacktivists identity in the commercial sector. Nonetheless, according to the interviewed hackers and hacktivists their (in)securitisation remains prevalent and is a major factor that justifies their discourses and practices. The diversity in perceptions and (in)security routines highlights the Importance of revealing these tensions, shifts, and (dis) continuities and enables a more informed engagement with these phenomena.

Climate compatible development (CCD) is gaining traction as a conceptual framework for mainstreaming climate change mitigation and adaptation within development efforts. So far, the social justice implications of pursuing CCD goals in different settings have not been comprehensively considered. Social justice research can facilitate understanding of whether and how development, mitigation and adaptation are prioritised, balanced and experienced through CCD. It can also uncover CCD ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ across governance levels and (spatial and temporal) scales. This thesis develops a conceptual model to guide social justice evaluations that considers both issues of procedure (participation and recognition) and distribution. It is used to guide analysis of two projects in Malawi that pursue CCD triple-wins across development, mitigation and adaptation. A mixed methods research design enabled exploration of the social justice implications of project design, implementation and project outcome distributions. Overlap existed between stakeholders’ ‘revealed’ priorities for CCD, but donor power over project design processes encouraged some stakeholders to suppress their preferences. Donor recognition patterns were assimilated within design processes, with other stakeholders’ participation constrained. Poor alignment with contextual power meant implementation processes had only limited success in facilitating procedural justice for local people, especially the most vulnerable households. Findings show that CCD must understand, manage and challenge visible, hidden and invisible forms of power in order to facilitate widespread procedural justice opportunities during design and implementation. Projects achieve CCD triple-wins, but auxiliary benefits and negative side-effects have also been experienced by professional stakeholders and local people, respectively. Outcomes have been experienced unevenly within and between stakeholder groups and serve to worsen inequalities in target villages. Depending on its design and implementation, CCD can create multi-level, cross-scalar patterns of interrelated social justices and injustices. Recommendations are presented to encourage the former and avoid the latter.

In this thesis, I explore sex differences in adult human social learning, and how these sex differences might be underpinned by differences in risk-taking and confidence. The capacity for high-fidelity social learning is fundamental to the complex culture observed in humans. Examining when we choose to learn socially rather than asocially and the factors that influence these choices is valuable for understanding broader patterns of cultural evolution. In Chapter 1, I give an overview of the literature on sex differences in social learning, particularly how individual differences in risk-taking and confidence impact upon social information use. I introduce stereotype threat as a possible factor affecting women's confidence. I then use the stereotype threat literature as an example of the replication crisis in psychology, and discuss how improved methods of statistical analysis could help to elucidate the ambiguity in this literature. Chapter 2 provides an experimental investigation into when adult humans choose to use social or asocial information to solve a virtual construction task. I found that when the asocial information was made to be risky, women, but not men, preferred to learn socially. In Chapter 3, I present experimental data exploring the links between confidence and conformity. I found that lower confidence led to a greater likelihood of conforming, although I was unable to reliably alter confidence levels experimentally. In Chapter 4, I present a model of the stereotype threat literature by simulating numerous datasets and analysing them using four different statistical methods. I found that using informative priors in a Bayesian framework provided greater certainty about the presence or absence of an effect in a population. Finally, in Chapter 5 I conclude that studying the factors that lead to sex differences in social learning provides researchers with a greater understanding of the dynamics of cultural evolution.

This thesis examines how the occupations people hold, and the social classes in which they are situated, affect the way in which they form and express opinions. At a theoretical level, it unites the 'deep-structure' macroanalysis of social theory with the individualised microanalysis of how subjects form and express opinions in opinion research, reviving an approach that has not been pursued since early-20th-century social research. At a practical level, it responds to several recent and prominent failures of prediction by the opinion polling industry, and asks whether a broader understanding of 'mass opinion' can help avert such failures in future. The thesis argues that opinions are subjects' judgments about their social conditions, based on mental pictures they have of these conditions that combine the values and attitudes they hold with the information they have about their environment. Subjects form opinions based on these pictures via three 'means of thinking'-personality-traits, emotions, and reason-and express them using two kinds of 'means of articulation'-bodily organs and media. The thesis shows how the variety of occupations subjects hold, and the extremity of class differentials between them, introduce substantial plurality into their values and attitudes, the way they acquire information, how they think, and how they articulate themselves. In particular, it highlights the considerable asymmetries between higher- and lower-class subjects regarding: which parts of their social conditions they are experts about, and how far they are influenced by others; whether they think about their conditions more emotionally or with reasoning; and how great a range and quality of opportunities they have to articulate their views. The thesis closes by suggesting that these findings offer opinion researchers and social theorists clear directions for measuring 'mass opinion' in new ways, and potentially emancipating the voices of subjects whose opinions are suppressed in late-modern society.

Culture is a hugely important process in the evolution of humans and many non-human animals. Through the formation of long lasting traditions, culture provides an extragenetic inheritance mechanism that can facilitate rapid behavioural adaptation to novel environments. This can ultimately alter the selection pressures acting on different phenotypes including those that underlie cultural transmission itself, i.e. the mechanisms of social learning. Understanding culture poses many challenges for researchers due to the complex nature of interacting biological processes at multiple organisational and temporal scales. In this thesis I investigate some of these complexities through the integration of different theoretical and statistical modelling approaches, and argue that rich models are particularly important for the study of culture. In chapters 3 & 4 I use an evolutionary agent-based model to study the functional value and cultural significance of strategically copying from other individuals based on particular cues, such as age or payoff. I find that a bias to copy the successful can provide substantial adaptive advantages, potentially outweighing other strategic considerations such as when to engage in social learning. I also demonstrate that the strength of selection on social learning strategies is closely linked to the cultural diversity within a population. In chapters 5 & 6 I study the mechanisms of learning and how social influences can impact decision making. In chapter 5 I model the behaviour of nursery children and chimpanzee groups when solving a complex task and identify clear species differences in the importance of different forms of learning on decision making. Finally, in chapter 6 I use an agent-based model to examine the influence of population structure on the spread of novel behaviour. I demonstrate that, contrary to infectious disease type models, when learning occurs through operant conditioning, highly clustered network structures promote cultural transmission rather than hinder it.

This thesis theoretically and critically examines the move towards people-centred approaches to development. It offers a critical examination of the work of Amartya Sen using theoretical resources emerging from Latin American traditions. Amartya Sen’s calls to understand Development as Freedom (1999) have significantly influenced mainstream development thinking and practice, constituting the clearest example of people-centred approaches to development today. Overcoming the limitations of previous state-centred notions of development articulated around ideas of economic growth, in Sen’s Capability Approach (CA) development is seen as a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy. In this understanding, the agency of development shifts from the state to individuals and the analytic focus moves from economic growth to individual capabilities. In this manner, this framework is structured towards the central goal of empowerment, wherein the expansion of capabilities is seen both as the means and end of development. Since its inception, the widespread support for the CA has allowed for the expansion of ethical considerations within mainstream development thinking. Even while the remarkable advances offered by Sen’s work should be praised, this thesis argues that these have come with new limitations. These limitations stem from, what is termed here, a “Paradox of Empowerment” that effectively encloses Sen’s approach within Western notions of development. While Sen’s approach is poised to provide a theoretical framework that is built on the expansion of freedom and individual agency, there is little agency here to move beyond the ideas of development fundamentally linked to liberal democracies and market economies. This thesis engages with several critical traditions from Latin America, recovering their often undervalued insights for development thinking. Crucially, this engagement provides the critical framework to illustrate the aforementioned paradox and explore multiple dimensions of empowerment central for contemporary development thinking and practice. In this, the thesis engages Sen’s work with the Liberation Theology of Gustavo Gutierrez, with Paulo Freire’s Critical Pedagogy and with the contemporary discussions of ‘Buen Vivir’ associated with Indigenous philosophies of the Andean region. Throughout its chapters,it uncovers the conceptual baggage within the Paradox of Empowerment in Sen’s work and examines the ethical challenges and boundaries of this approach in relation to the collective dimension of development processes, the possibilities for structural transformation and concerns for sustainability. Progressively engaging the different dimensions of this paradox, this thesis advances the recovery of the transformative potential of the ideas of empowerment for development.

This thesis looks at the connections between inequality and violence in Venezuela by exploring how people's relationships might mediate or mitigate these connections. It is often assumed that people's relationships can provide motivations for engaging in violence, or that they provide informal social controls that can keep them from violence. Venezuela is an interesting case study because traditional indicators suggest violence might not be related to inequality in this context, justifying a focus on lower-level mechanisms that might be responsible for the often found correlations in different contexts. This thesis shows that historical inequalities provide the distal conditions for the institutionalisation of el malandreo, a Venezuelan gangster identity. Nevertheless, violence between malandros –people that identify with el malandreo– itself is the proximate cause of the deadly violence that holds Venezuela in a venomous grip. The research is based on data collected during a year's fieldwork in the barrios, poorer areas of Venezuela's cities where the majority of violence occurs, of two different cities. I collected both qualitative observation and unstructured interview data, as well as more quantifiable personal network data that were analysed with E-net and SPSS. A large part of the thesis is also based on ethnographic observations as well as interviews with malandros. The findings show that many barrio residents feel disadvantaged and may be motivated to use violence, nevertheless, there is little evidence that there is a lack of informal social control in these areas. Instead, the absence of formal authorities and dense interaction networks open the barrio up to much more ambiguous forms of informal social control. Such observations emphasise that el malandreo can be seen to provide existential meaning as well as informal social control, through violence. Overall, the thesis argues for a relational understanding of the connections between inequality and violence and for seeing violence itself as a form of social control particularly in areas where authority is ambiguous and social networks are dense.

Based on a review of the servant leadership, well-being, and performance literatures, the first study develops a research model that examines how and under which conditions servant leadership is related to follower performance and well-being alike. Data was collected from 33 leaders and 86 of their followers working in six organizations. Multilevel moderated mediation analyses revealed that servant leadership was indeed related to eudaimonic well-being and lead-er-rated performance via followers’ positive psychological capital, but that the strength and di-rection of the examined relationships depended on organizational policies and practices promot-ing employee health, and in the case of follower performance on a developmental team climate, shedding light on the importance of the context in which servant leadership takes place. In addi-tion, two more research questions resulted from a review of the training literature, namely how and under which conditions servant leadership can be trained, and whether follower performance and well-being follow from servant leadership enhanced by training. We subsequently designed a servant leadership training and conducted a longitudinal field experiment to examine our sec-ond research question. Analyses were based on data from 38 leaders randomly assigned to a training or control condition, and 91 of their followers in 36 teams. Hierarchical linear modeling results showed that the training, which addressed the knowledge of, attitudes towards, and ability to apply servant leadership, positively affected leader and follower perceptions of servant leader-ship, but in the latter case only when leaders strongly identified with their team. These findings provide causal evidence as to how and when servant leadership can be effectively developed. Fi-nally, the research model of Study 1 was replicated in a third study based on 58 followers in 32 teams drawn from the same population used for Study 2, confirming that follower eudaimonic well-being and leader-rated performance follow from developing servant leadership via increases in psychological capital, and thus establishing the directionality of the examined relationships.

An observation of contrast between the flourishing practice of propaganda or mass persuasion, and how they are referred to as various things except “propaganda” has intrigued a question: “How should propaganda be perceived in the 21st century?” Drawing upon several theories from different disciplines, I present in this thesis propaganda logics theory, a three-tier analytical framework dedicated to approach propaganda as discourse. Guided by propaganda logics framework and assisted by critical discourse analysis as the main methodology, three cases of Chinese propaganda of the 21st century are chosen for analysis, in order to seek answers to the research question. Case 1 investigates the very core of Chinese propaganda, representing the repackaging facet: the campaigns to promote the party’s three National Congresses in the 21st century and to propagate their messages. This case represents the repackaging facet of Chinese propaganda, demonstrating how the most ideologically intensified therefore unappealing content was marketed in a new “wineskin”. Case 2 represents the transplanting facet, This case draws attention upon a unique feature of Chinse propaganda in the 21st century: adopting or transplanting Western communication theories, terminologies, styles and formats, and adapting or integrating them into the Chinese propaganda system, so that they can be utilised to suit the CCP’s interest. The propaganda logics framework will be applied upon one particular press conference, at which this public announcement of China redefining public diplomacy was staged. This case will show how Chinese propaganda is focusing on gaining more “discourse power” at the international stage. Case 3 examines how the top propaganda media builds up the propaganda discourse on social media, regarding the MH370 missing Malaysian plane, so that the general public’s reaction to it can be both monitored and “guided”, to suit the Chinese Communist Party’s best interest. This case represents the transforming facet. The conclusion of this research will summarise the application of the Propaganda logics theory.

There is something unique about human culture. Its complex technologies, customs, institutions, symbolisms and norms, which are shared and maintained and improved across countless generations, are what sets it apart from the ‘cultures' of other animals. The fundamental question that researchers are only just beginning to unravel is: How do we account for the gap between their ‘cultures' and ours? The answer lies in a deeper understanding of culture's complex constituent components: from the micro-level psychological mechanisms that guide and facilitate accurate social learning, to the macro-level cultural processes that unfold within large-scale cooperative groups. This thesis attempts to contribute to two broad themes that are of relevance to this question. The first theme involves the evolution of accurate and high-fidelity cultural transmission. In Chapter 2, a meta-analysis conducted across primate social learning studies finds support for the common assumption that imitative and/or emulative learning mechanisms are required for the high-fidelity transmission of complex instrumental cultural goals. Chapter 3, adopting an experimental study with young children, then questions the claim that mechanisms of high-fidelity copying have reached such heights in our own species that they will even lead us to blindly copy irrelevant, and potentially costly, information. The second theme involves investigations of the mutually reinforcing relationship predicted between cultural complexity and ultra-cooperativeness in humans, employing a series of laboratory-based experimental investigations with adults. Chapter 4 finds only limited support for a positive relationship between cooperative behaviour and behavioural imitation, which is believed to facilitate cultural group cohesion. Finally, Chapter 5 presents evidence suggesting that access to cultural information is positively associated with an individual's cooperative reputation, and argues that this dynamic might help to scaffold the evolution of increased cultural complexity and cooperation in a learning environment where cultural information carries high value.

Women all over the world are still having difficulties in occupying leadership positions. People perceive males as being highly qualified and likely to be considered as leaders. Females are less likely to be perceived as leaders and to be less effective in carrying it out. There are different leadership theories but the most studied and popular one nowadays is the transformational and transactional model. Female leaders are said to use a leadership behavior based on interpersonal relationships and sharing of power and information, the behavior which is usually associated with the style of leadership known as transformational. Male leaders have been found to influence performance by using rewards and punishment, the behavior mainly associated with the style of leaders known as transactional. The individuals, who work for leaders, are called followers. How followers view the magnitude of difference in power between themselves and their leaders is called a power distance orientation. The purpose of this study was to evaluate transformational and transactional leadership with a gendered and culturally appropriate lens, particularly, to extend the research on gender, leadership and culture area in an Arab Middle East context where little research has been done. This study was guided by two research questions; the first one examining the interaction effect of the participant’s power distance orientation and the leader’s gender on the participant’s perception of the transformational leader; the second one examining the interaction effect of the participant’s power distance orientation and the leader’s gender on the participant’s perception of the transactional leader. This research adopted the quantitative method; the use of vignettes and a questionnaire. 437 employees in an organization in Syria returned a complete and usable questionnaire. Data analyzed using ANOVA and hierarchical multiple regression revealed a significant interaction effect of the gender of the leader and the participant’s power distance orientation on evaluation of a transformational leader on three out of the five dimensions of transformational leadership. Also, results revealed no significant interaction effect of the gender of the leader and the participant’s power distance orientation on evaluation of a transactional leader on the three dimensions. This research makes an important contribution to theoretical understanding of gender by showing gender-role stereotyping may change over time and place. This study offers insight into the culture leadership research that means evaluation of performance for transformational leaders is influenced by the cultural value of a follower’s power distance orientation.

This thesis examines the responses of the county magistracy to social unrest in a period marked by a redefinition of social and governmental relationships. Drawing together approaches to governmental and protest histories, it answers calls for more detailed analyses of the actions and attitudes of authority through a more thorough account of judicial responses to popular protest. The approach adopted here, also offers new perspectives on the nature of social relations and governance at this point. This study privileges the structuring of county government in an analysis of social protest. Through two regional case studies, it recognises the autonomy and concomitant variation in the infrastructure of local government, and the ways in which these distinct governmental arrangements shaped the nature of popular resistance. Not only does this approach provide a more nuanced understanding of the actions of the authorities, but it posits social conflict as a lens through which to view the operation of government. Disorder laid bare many of the inadequacies of a system predicated on paternalist authority, but it also exposed the constellation of social relationships that underpinned it. Chapter one reviews the historiographical discussion regarding the form and function of the magistracy and differing perspectives on the decline of paternalist governance. The two original case studies of Norfolk and Somerset, pursued throughout this thesis, are introduced in chapter two, which details their respective structures of government. This provides the foundation for a reappraisal of the 'crisis of paternalism' during the subsistence crises of 1795 and 1800-01, in chapter three, and the challenges posed to the magistracy during the Swing disturbances of 1830, considered in chapters four and five. By viewing protest through the structures of government that mediated social relationships, the full complexity of these interactions is revealed and a more nuanced picture of social conflict is made visible.

This thesis has three aims. First, I propose that researchers should focus more on similarities between groups of people, because they are arguably at least as interesting and important as differences. I demonstrate that even effects that are usually labelled as large often still display more similarities than differences between groups. In Study 1, I modified and extended prior procedures for describing similarities and demonstrate the importance of this exercise by examining similarities between groups on 22 social variables (e.g., types of human values, trust, moral attitudes) within six commonly used social categories: gender, age, education, income, nation of residence, and religious denomination (N = 86,272). On average, the amount of similarity between two groups (e.g., high vs. low educated) was greater than 90%. Study 2 (N = 54,082) replicated these findings. Study 3 demonstrated the importance of presenting information about similarity, by showing that a research report led to more accurate perceptions when similarities were presented alongside differences. Secondly, I explored whether differences might emerge in relatively concrete variables. In particular, human values (e.g., freedom, creativity) measured in Studies 1 and 2 were very abstract, and people instantiate (that is to say, exemplify) human values differently. I directly examined these instantiations in Brazil, India, and the UK (Study 4). Although some meaningful differences in value instantiation emerged, within- country variability outweighed between-country differences. Studies 5-7 provided further support for this conclusion. Finally, I tested the implications of one provocative difference in value instantiation, namely a tendency to associate the value of creativity with art and not with science, particularly in the UK and not in Brazil (Study 8). Results indicated that the detection of this difference may depend on the ways in which art and science are iv presented to participants, and this finding has implications for attempts to engage more interest in science. To conclude, the final chapter of the thesis summarises the findings and discusses some limitations across the chapters. It then outlines a range of broad implications, including the benefits of a stronger focus on similarities, such as increased transparency in the reporting of scientific results.

The protests against the World Trade Organisation in Seattle in 1999 have been described, along with the development of World and European Social Forums (WSF/ESF), as the beginning of a new Global Movement for Social Justice (GMSJ). This movement has been argued to represent a ‘new type of politics’ with an unprecedented ideological and organisational character based on new fragmented power relationships that have undermined traditional class and national relationships and consequently have undermined the relevance of classical socialist theory. In place of nation state-based socialist strategies for delivering social justice, the GMSJ has been established on the principles of autonomy and an absence of representative structures of any kind. Often, these movements are described as (transnational) New Social Movements. This thesis challenges these concepts and argues they fall within a post-socialist orthodox approach to social science. It compares socialist concepts relating to power, class, nations and political organisation with post-socialist concepts, and in so doing, argues that post-socialist ideas have gained an orthodox status in a period when Stalinist models of (national) state planning have collapsed and social democratic parties have capitulated to the demands of globalised neo-liberal capitalism. Under such conditions, it has been possible for post-socialist theory to reflect observed failures of socialist movements and the thesis argues that underlying post-socialist theories of power, globalisation and a fragmentation of material power relations are often excessively abstract and unconvincing. These arguments are developed through the presentation of research into GMSJ activist organisations, part of the movements that affiliated to the London round of the ESF in 2004. In presenting analysis of in-depth interviews with participants and key organizational leaders, the thesis examines how the contemporary GMSJ remains sceptical that class based socialist theory can mobilise contemporary mass movements. However, it also develops a better understanding of how activists in this new global social movement reflect socialist theories relating to power, property relations and class in their conceptualisation of patterns of social injustice. Overall, the research suggests post-socialist theories have failed to provide a programme or strategy for building a mass movement for social justice. It argues that, contrary to often stated claims about its Marxist foundations, post-socialist ideology has not been able to outline the systemic foundations for another world. However, the research suggests that the central concepts of Marxist theory relating to power, property relations, class and political organisation nevertheless remain relevant to the GMSJ and that democratic socialist planning is the only coherent systemic alternative to capitalism that has been placed before the GMSJ. The thesis will argue that the GMSJ could help to develop an ideological alternative to global capitalism by engaging with a rich history of socialist theory.

Social learning is ubiquitous among animals and humans and is thought to be critical to the widespread success of humans and to the development and evolution of human culture. Evolutionary theory, however, suggests that social learning alone may not be adaptive but that individuals may need to be selective in who and how they copy others. One of the key findings of these evolutionary models (reviewed in Chapter 1) is that social information may be widely adaptive if individuals are able to combine social and asocial sources of information together strategically. However, up until this point the focus of theoretic models has been on the population level consequences of different social learning strategies, and not on how individuals combine social and asocial information on specific tasks. In Chapter 2 I carry out an analysis of how animal learners might incorporate social information into a reinforcement learning framework and find that even limited, low-fidelity copying of actions in an action sequence may combine with asocial learning to result in high fidelity transmission of entire action sequences. In Chapter 3 I describe a series of experiments that find that human learners flexibly use a conformity biased learning strategy to learn from multiple demonstrators depending on demonstrator accuracy, either indicated by environmental cues or past experience with these demonstrators. The chapter reveals close quantitative and qualitative matches between participant's performance and a Bayesian model of social learning. In both Chapters 2 and 3 I find, consistent with previous evolutionary findings, that by combining social and asocial sources of information together individuals are able to learn about the world effectively. Exploring how animals use social learning experimentally can be a substantially more difficult task than exploring human social learning. In Chapter 4, I develop and present a refined version of Network Based Diffusion analysis to provide a statistical framework for inferring social learning mechanisms from animal diffusion experiments. In Chapter 5 I move from examining the effects of social learning at an individual level to examining their population level outcomes and provide an analysis of how fine-grained population structure may alter the spread of novel behaviours through a population. I find that although a learner's social learning strategy and the learnability of a novel behaviour strongly impact how likely the behaviour is to spread through the population, fine grained population structure plays a much smaller role. In Chapter 6 I summarize the results of this thesis, and provide suggestions for future work to understand how individuals, humans and other animals alike, use social information.

This thesis presents a narrative study of leadership identity from a sociocultural perspective. Drawing on Bakhtinian, Vygotskian and Bourdieusian perspectives as a lens to conceptualise identity – Holland et al’s (1998) Agency and Identity in Cultural Worlds (figured worlds) – and argues that learning and development are intrinsically linked to identity construction as individuals, cultural forms, and social positions, come together in co-development, as identity in practice. A thematic analysis, presented as stories from practice, illuminates and explores the contexts of identity construction, as narrated through: early life, childhood and youth; formal study and training; ‘learning moments’ from organisational life reflecting tensions of power, discourse and policy; and the influence of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ leaders – as heroes and villains – of leadership worlds. Overall, a struggle between rhetorical discourses of leadership and organisational realities presented many contradictions to practice as identity work involved putting on ‘a professional mask’ to ‘act the part’ of a ‘tough’ invulnerable leader. Living life in the ‘gap’ between discourse and organisational realities was then often narrated as ‘a bit of a mess’ as stories of tension, resistance and negotiation featured alongside reflections on the complexity of organisational life and the ‘collision’ of professional and personal expectations. However, at times, leadership identity work also reflected a chance to ‘play the game’ and improvise new possibilities for practice narrated through stories of: ‘free-wheeling’, ‘winning’ and ‘rebelling’ against ‘bureaucratic’ cultures; ‘fighting for the underdog’ against ‘aggressive, self-interested’ autocrats; challenging gender positioning in a ‘man’s world’; and navigating ‘the dark side of leadership’ as a ‘good’ ethical leader authentically and emotionally ‘hidden’ behind the veil of identity performance. In offering life history accounts that highlight the tensions, and the possibilities, of leadership identity work in practice, this research presents insights and contributions to growing debates across leadership studies, leadership and management development research, and the educational leadership field. Overall this thesis argues that identity work is an integral aspect of leadership practice, learning and development.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the cognitive processes of social learning from the bottom up. In the field of comparative psychology, an overemphasis on understanding complex cognitive processes in nonhuman animals (e.g. empathy, imitation), may be detrimental to the study of simpler mechanisms. In this thesis, I report five studies of simple cognitive processes related to social learning. A series of experiments with human children and capuchin monkeys (Sapajus sp.), examined action imitation and identified a possible role for associative learning in the development of this ability. An analysis of observational data from captive capuchins explored a number of lesser-studied social learning phenomena, including behavioural synchrony, the neighbour effect, and group-size effects. The results of this study emphasise the importance of exploring behaviour at a number of levels to appreciate the dynamic nature of social influence. Two final experiments examined social contagion in capuchin monkeys, and highlight the importance of describing the relationship between behaviour and emotion to properly understand more complex social cognition. Together, these studies demonstrate how approaching human and nonhuman behaviour from the bottom up, as well as from the top down, can contribute to a better comparative science of social learning.

This dissertation examines the quality of opinion poll reporting by Irish newspapers. It analyses the reporting quality in two specific phases: accuracy and framing. It is a content analysis based on the principles of Berelson (1944, 1952), Bryman (2004) and Deacon et al (2002), that measures the accuracy of news media reporting of opinion polls and also measures bias in terms of the framing methods used to construct the opinion poll reports. The accuracy analysis is based on applying the work of Meyer (1991,2000), Broh (1980), Anderson (2000), Maier (2003, 2005), Sonck and Loosveldt (2008) and the AAPOR to the Irish print media during the years 2005 to 2011. The framing analysis uses the work of Druckman (2001, 2003, 2004, 2005 & 2007) and Entman. (1989, 1993 & 2007) to establish a definition of framing while applying the work of Tankard (2001), Nelson, Oxley and Clawson (1997) and de Vreese (2005, 2012) to create a basis for measuring framing effects. The work of Herman and Chomsky (1988), Patterson (2013), Bennett (2012). Deuz (2011) and Richardson (2007) is used to provide an ideological approach to analysing the media practices uncovered in the research. I conclude illat opinion poll reporting in Irish newspapers is endemically inaccurate and systematically biased and that a new set of reporting principles is needed.

Social power, or the ability to control resources and influence others’ outcomes, has been found to facilitate successful attainment of single goals by increasing attentional focus and the ability to inhibit irrelevant information. However, the relationship between power and multiple-goal pursuit has not yet been investigated. The current thesis first examined whether power influences strategies during multiple-goal pursuit. It was hypothesized that powerful individuals are more inclined to single-task (attend to tasks in a sequential manner) and powerless individuals tend to multitask (attend to tasks simultaneously or switch rapidly between them) when faced with multiple demands. Six studies were conducted and showed (in general) a effect of power on multitasking and prioritization tendencies. Specifically, reported tendency for multitasking and number of switches planned between various tasks decreased as a function of power (Chapter 2). This negative relationship between power and multitasking tendency was replicated by measuring how many times participants actually switched between multiple goals during goal striving (Chapter 3). Moreover, power was also found to increase prioritization tendency. Second, the thesis investigated the relationship between power and multitasking ability (Chapter 4). It was predicted that powerless participants will show lower multitasking ability than control and powerful participants. Three experiments found that powerless (compared to control and powerful) participants displayed lower performance in dual-tasking and task-switching paradigms, and reported lower abilities in the management of multiple-goals. However, the effect of power on multitasking ability may depend on the multitasking context. These results were found using experimentally manipulated power, individual differences in power, and real-world power roles. Potential mediating factors of power such as mood, confidence, anxiety, rumination, and motivation were also measured. Overall, the thesis established an ironic effect of power as powerless individuals had a higher multitasking tendency but underperformed during demanding multitasking situations.

Third Culture Kids are the children of people working outside their passport countries, and who are employed by international organisations as development experts, diplomats, missionaries, journalists, international NGO and humanitarian aid workers, or UN representatives. The “third culture” they possess is the temporary, nomadic multicultural space they inhabited as children, within an expatriate community and, in some cases, international school. This culture is distinct from their parents’ homeland culture (the first culture) and from that of the country in which they spend their formative years but of which they are not native members (the second culture). The “third culture” inhabited by Third Culture Kids does not unite the first and second cultures, but rather comprises a space for their unstable integration (Knörr, 2005). This thesis explores the following question: In what ways does being a Third Culture Kid affect notions of belonging, identity and place? Through analysis of both fieldwork in an international school, and exploratory life story interviews with adult TCKs from myriad backgrounds, this work contributes to a better understanding of the experience of growing up abroad, and tracks the long term effects of this experience on the ways in which TCKs orient themselves towards belonging, identity and place. Throughout the course of this research, findings coalesce to orient TCKs as cosmopolitans, rooted in the expatriate communities of their childhoods, continuing in mobility and self-conscious “otherness” into adulthood, and moving through place as “elite vagrants”.

This thesis aims to investigate how powerless and powerful individuals and groups perceive and experience social inequalities and how they are motivated to respond to them. By combining existing knowledge of the effects of interpersonal power on motivations and behaviour with an account of the structure of intergroup relations (social identity theory), I examine the socio-psychological processes underlying these responses in power structures. Across four experiments, I investigate the perspective of both powerful and powerless individuals and show that the motivations and behaviour elicited by their power (or lack of it) are not invariant, but can be modified by the perceived legitimacy of their power position. Additionally, I also show that the powerless' behaviour is responsive not only to perceptions of legitimacy but also to concerns regarding impression management. I then focus on the perspective of powerful group members and demonstrate how perceptions of legitimacy and individual differences in social dominance orientation (SDO) interact to predict their willingness to engage in positive behaviour (i.e., helping intentions towards the powerless). Additionally, I demonstrate across two experiments that the help-providers position in the power structure (internal power holders vs. external observer) moderate how the interplay between legitimacy and SDO shape helping intentions. In sum, the six experiments reported in this thesis illustrate how the effects of social power on individuals responses to power imbalances is modified by perceptions of legitimacy, and also how illegitimate power promotes strategic responses that are reflective of specific identify-related concerns. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

My aim in this thesis is to examine whether there are some mitigating factors, i.e. reasons to punish an offender less for his crime than an otherwise similar offender (other than that the offender suffered from mental disorder or disturbance or other forms of irrationality at the time of offence), that are more applicable to socially deprived offenders than to non-socially deprived offenders. I will answer the thesis question through a critical examination of twelve arguments for claiming that there is a mitigating factor that is more applicable to socially deprived offenders, each proposing a different mitigating factor. My conclusions are as follows: (1) Most of the arguments that I examine fail, i.e. they either fail to highlight a genuine mitigating factor, or we do not have much evidence that the mitigating factor highlighted by the argument has a greater applicability to socially deprived offenders than to non-socially deprived offenders. (2) However, one argument, which can be called the no violation of natural duties argument, is successful. (3) Moreover, the improvement of the worst off argument, an argument that is not often discussed in the literature, is particularly noteworthy. If my discussion about that argument is correct, then even if, as I will argue, the mitigating factor highlighted by that argument may not be more applicable to socially deprived offenders than to non-socially deprived offenders, the remaining parts of that argument would still have profound influence on punishment in our unjust societies.

In-group identification is a central aspect of human social behaviour. There is evidence of the effects of in-group identification on different aspects of cognition but it is still unclear how in-group identification might affect basic perceptual mechanisms. Relying on an interdisciplinary perspective, this work investigates the extent to which in-group identification affects perception. This thesis explores the issue under three main themes. The first theme deals with the effect of in-group identification on perception using behavioural paradigms and relies on the measures of accuracy and reaction time as well as questionnaire measures of the strength of in-group identification. In this case, individuals show enhanced perceptual matching performance for stimuli associated with an in-group as opposed to the stimuli associated to rival and neutral groups. Moreover, the enhanced performance for in-group associated stimuli correlated with the satisfaction subcomponent of an in-group identification measure. The second theme aimed to gain a better understanding of the effects of in-group identification on both automatic (prosaccade) and inhibitory (antisaccade) aspects of explicit attentional orienting. In this case, the results provide evidence on the effect of in-group identification on the inhibitory control of overt attention, as well as on pupillary responses. The third theme examined the neural underpinnings of in-group identification effects on perception. Neural correlates of in-group biases were found in brain networks previously associated with social saliency, emotion and attention, notably the posterior superior temporal sulcus, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior insula. Moreover, carrying out a perceptual matching task changed the functional connectivity between the anterior insula and the inferior frontal gyrus, and this change in connectivity was related to the magnitude of behavioural biases to the in-group. This suggests that such rapid changes in functional connectivity may provide a neural basis for the development of in-group favouritism. The overall findings across the different chapters confirm that in-group biases affect perceptual matching in a variety of ways and through a specific neural network. In general, the results are in line with the hypothesis that our perception favours stimuli linked to our in-group. The limitations and future possible lines of study are discussed.

This thesis contains two theoretical essays built upon the canonical models of social learning, and one that applies social learning theory to durable goods markets. The first chapter, "Non-Monotone Observational Learning", revisits the canonical social-learning model that rationalizes herding in the long run, to investigate the possibility of non-imitative behavior in the short run generated by non-monotone learning: ceteris paribus, when some predecessor(s) switch to actions revealing greater confidence in one state of the world, agents become less confident in that state. I characterize conditions on the underlying information structures that lead to non-monotone learning. In particular, in a general setting with continuous private signals, I provide a necessary condition for non-monotone learning with an argument for its plausibility, as well as two non-restrictive suffient conditions that do not rely on parametrization. The second chapter, "Does Public Information Disclosure Help Social Learning?", studies the effect of releasing exogenous public information in the canonical social-learning model that predicts incomplete learning. To improve social learning, I show that it is weakly better to postpone the disclosure of a public signal irrespective of its precision. However, such weak monotonicity no longer holds if the objective is to maximize the discounted sum of people's expected payoffs or if the model goes beyond the canonical binary setting. On the other hand, it is suboptimal to ever release a public signal less precise than people's private signals even if sophisticated releasing strategies are allowed. The last chapter, "Learning and Price Dynamics in Durable Goods Markets", is joint work with Francesco Palazzo. We study how markets for durable goods with unobservable and time-varying aggregate market conditions determine price dynamics with market participants constantly learning from public observations. We set up a dynamic auction model with two key features: first, agents enjoy heterogeneous private use values and later resell the asset; second, prices do not incorporate all available information dispersed in the economy. Informational frictions slow down learning and affect price movements asymmetrically across high and low aggregate demand states. Learning and the resale motive are the predominant force for durable goods with short resale horizons, slow time varying aggregate demand, and similar use values across agents.

This thesis introduces and explores a novel construct for studying human beliefs in social science: doxastic spaces. These flexible analytical devices are demonstrated as capturing three key properties of beliefs which are difficult to depict through other formats: the relational, relative, and reflexive properties of beliefs. The doxastic-space paradigm developed by this thesis is likewise shown to enable new and insightful theories about belief formation and change. Two such theories cultivated herein are quantized evidence theory (QET) and entropy-based social learning (EBSL). These theories prioritise not only the evidential bases of beliefs, but also the cognitive limitations on memory and attention that people face in constructing and updating beliefs about their worlds. Such bases and limitations underscore not only the role that context has to play in sculpting beliefs, but also the reciprocal function of beliefs in helping to determine and demarcate context. Part of that context is discussed as being other people relevant in social judgment and learning situations. And interplay between beliefs and context is used to aid explanation for unstable tendencies in neglectful cognition. The work mixes theoretical and empirical investigation of the doxastic-space framework, and suggests that it may serve social science by working to not only forge deeper comprehension of belief dynamics but also to operate as a platform for interdisciplinary exchange.

This thesis presents an investigation of sensemaking within emergency response command and control (C2) systems. Sensemaking is considered from a novel perspective – that of sensemaking as distributed cognition – which proposes that sensemaking is a technologically mediated and socially distributed cognitive activity. This qualitative study adopted a multi-method approach and used two case studies to examine sensemaking in response to ‘routine emergencies’ and multi-agency major incidents. During routine emergencies, agents within the C2 network appear to function as a distributed Community of Practice, making use of rapid, highly compact, formalised communications – mediated by formal (designed) and informal (adapted) artefacts – in order to frame the problem. In contrast, whilst multi-agency major incidents display many of the features of Exploration Networks, the responding agencies were initially found to maintain their individual Communities of Practice, with inter-agency collaboration apparently hampered by the lack of shared artefacts to represent the ‘problem space’. In addition to presenting a comprehensive description of emergency response C2, the thesis supports the assertion that – in this domain at least – sensemaking is a systems-level activity that is supported by artefacts and collaborative processes. The thesis also suggests future directions for sensemaking, distributed cognition and C2 research.

Human culture is unique in its scope and complexity and is underpinned by the social transmission of information. Successful individuals will use both social and asocial information effectively. Evolutionary theory suggests that social learning should be guided by evolved learning rules that dictate when individuals rely on social information, a literature which I review across Chapters 1 and 2, with the emphasis of chapter 2 being on conformist transmission. In this thesis I present experimental investigations of the existence and adaptive value of several such strategies in both adults (Chapter 3) and young children (Chapter 4). In all cases I find strong evidence for the existence of such biases and show that they act to increase the accuracy of decisions. In particular I show individuals are highly sensitive to even small majorities within a group of demonstrators. The youngest children (age 3) however, show little sensitivity to social information and do not use it effectively. In Chapter 5 I present an investigation into the role of social learning in the evolution of hominin lithic technology. I conclude that even the earliest hominin flaking technology is poorly transmitted through observation alone and so the widespread and longstanding persistence of such tools implies some form of teaching. Furthermore, I conclude that the stable transmission of more complex technologies would likely require teaching, and potentially symbolic communication. I also postulate a co-evolution of stone tools and complex communication and teaching. In Chapter 6 I conclude that the cultural evolutionary approach, focussing on the evolutionary consequences of social information use and treating culture as a system of inheritance partially independent of genes, seems successful in increasing our understanding of the evolution of social learning.

The relevance of places to people has been questioned in recent times, as the world has become increasingly globalised and people more mobile. The aim of this research was to explore the relationship between sense of place and people’s behaviour in ‘ordinary’, everyday places. This contrasts with much prior research, which has focused on ‘special’ places, such as national parks and impressive landscapes in order to investigate the components of sense of place. Most people do not live in such places, but inhabit ordinary places in (sub) urban contexts. The research questions were: How does sense of place manifest in an ordinary, everyday landscape? In what ways can social learning impact upon the dynamics of sense of place? Can a more salient sense of place affect people’s attitudes towards and behaviour within their local area? Using an action research approach, pre- and post-interviews and three workshops to create a sustainable future vision at a neighbourhood level of scale, and the town as a whole, were held with fourteen residents of East Bolton, in the North West of England. The activities were designed to facilitate interaction between the participants, so that meanings attributed to places could be shared and discussed. This approach allowed participants to see familiar places in new ways and to share perspectives. The key themes that emerged from this research were: the importance of childhood places; the impact of mobility – both physical and social mobility; the interdependence of places at various scales; and also self-efficacy and people’s ability to influence their surroundings. A key finding was that sense of place can be made more salient for people in ‘ordinary’ landscapes, particularly if people are given direct experience of their places and opportunities to share and reflect on their perceptions relating to place. Social learning, however, takes time and requires resources to create opportunities to influence the salience of sense of place. The findings point to the value of promoting social learning through engagement activities. Planners, regeneration project officers and citizen groups could utilise sense of place as an organising principle to explore place meanings and as a catalyst for stimulating local action. Participants found it more difficult to discuss sense of place at the neighbourhood level of scale than the town level of scale, partly owing to their differing conception of boundaries and lack of awareness of the neighbourhood beyond the home. This has implications for implementing the localism agenda, suggesting that local action and visioning needs to be situated within activities nested at a range of scales in order to be most effective. The drive towards localism may lead to more self-organising and activism emerging from outside of the formal planning system and becoming a force for collective place shaping. Thus, the benefits of developing a more salient sense of place may also have impacts in less formal ways, such as greater interest and involvement in neighbourhood affairs and increased capacity-building, from which community action could potentially emerge.

In recent decades the European Union has moved from a multilateral treaty to a distinctive social, political, and economic order among European states. During the same period political philosophers have increasingly turned their attention to questions of justice beyond the state. But their discussions have largely focused on global justice, and have paid relatively little attention to the distinctive moral and political questions raised by the emergence of a new type of order among European states. This thesis fills this lacuna, by developing a conception of ‘social democratic’ or ‘egalitarian’ social justice for the specific institutional arrangements of the EU. In Chapters one through three, I delineate a general conception of ‘pluralist egalitarianism’, the view that we have a variety of grounds for endorsing equality-inclined economic institutions domestically. Direct egalitarian arguments stress the internal requirements of institutional fairness to which basic economic institutions are subject. Indirect egalitarian arguments favour egalitarian economic outcomes based on concerns of social equality. I further differentiate between a transnationalist and an internationalist position. Direct transnationalist arguments stress the EU’s similarity to domestic institutions and derive egalitarian economic requirements for the EU as a whole. Indirect transnationalists argue that EU citizens stand in a distinctive kind of relationship such that the value of social equality has purchase amongst them, and social equality requires a limitation on economic inequalities at the EU level. By contrast, internationalists insist on the continuing importance of national self-determination. However, they endorse more substantive economic institutions at the EU level to protect existing social democratic welfare state arrangements. In chapter four to seven, I assess the extent to which each of these arguments can support a more egalitarian organisation of basic economic institutions at the EU level. Finally, I offer one practical proposal that would help the EU to realise the social democratic vision I have defended. This is the idea of an EU social minimum. I explain how such a social minimum would be conceived and implemented, and I demonstrate why transnationalists and internationalists should endorse such a policy.

Guided by theory in both the trust and leadership domains, the overarching aim of this thesis was to answer a fundamental question. Namely, how and when does trust-building between leaders and followers enhance leader-member exchange (LMX) development and organisational trust? Although trust is considered to be at the crux of the leader-follower relationship, surprisingly little theoretical or empirical attention has been devoted to understanding the precise nature of this relationship. By integrating both a typology of trustworthy behaviour and a process model of trust development with LMX theory, study one developed and tested a new model of LMX development with leader-follower trust-building as the primary mechanism. In a three wave cross-lagged design, 294 student dyads in a business simulation completed measures of trust perceptions and LMX across the first 6 months of the LMX relationship. Trust-building was found to account for unexplained variance in the LMX construct over time, while controlling for initial relationship quality, thus confirming the critical role of the trust-building process in LMX development. The strongest evidence was found for the role of integrity-based trust-building behaviour, albeit only when such behaviour was not attributed to insincere motives. The results for ability and benevolence-based trustworthy behaviour revealed valued insights into the developmental nature of trustworthiness perceptions within LMX relationships. Thus, the pattern of results in study one provided a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the dynamic interplay between trust and LMX. In study two, leader trust-building was investigated cross-sectionally within an organisational sample of 201 employees. The central aim of this study was to investigate whether leader trust-building within leader-follower relationships could be leveraged for organisational trust. As expected, the trust-building process instigated by members in study one was replicated for leaders in study two. In addition, the results were most consistent for benevolence-based trust building, whereas both integrity- and ability-based trust-building were moderated by the position of the leader within the organisation’s hierarchy. Overall, the findings of this thesis shed considerable light on the richness of trusting perceptions in organisations, and the critical role of trust-building in LMX development and organisational trust.

The practice of making international dedications (of days, weeks or years) proliferated in the second half of the twentieth century with the rise of international institutions like the United Nations. The practice contrasts alternative dealings with time i.e. sacred time or dedication as commemoration. International dedications celebrate a concept of social or environmental importance, with a particular emphasis on awareness raising and inculcating change on a practical level. 1995 was the ‘United Nations International Year for Tolerance’. To the study of tolerance, the ‘Year’ marks the apex of tolerance as an object of modern international concern. This thesis is divided into two halves. The former undertakes a close analysis of the build-up to the UN ‘Year of Tolerance’ (Chapter One), the ‘Year’ itself and the subsequent follow-up (Chapter Two). It likewise provides a more general account of the rise and practice of international dedication making. The second half of this thesis addresses the broader theoretical debate on tolerance, 1945-2010. This thesis understands the UN ‘Year of Tolerance’ as a particular institutionalised expression of a specific theoretical mode of tolerance, taken from the theoretical debate on tolerance, and masked by the veneer of cultural universality. It uses 1995 as an artificial marker to gauge continuity and change in the debate on tolerance and to demarcate between Chapter Three-Chapter Four (pre-1995) and Chapter Five-Chapter Six (post-1995). The conclusion summarises the principal points of continuity and discontinuity and finally contextualises the UN ‘Year of Tolerance’ in the theoretical debate on tolerance i.e. as the institutional embodiment of a particular liberal-‘political’ mode of tolerance and an international attempt at final foreclosure of the controversy around tolerance. In seeking to critically account for the UN ‘Year of Tolerance’, and likewise to provide a general overview of continuity and change in the modern theoretical debate of tolerance, this thesis seeks to redress ‘a gap’ in current academic research.

Research in Sri Lanka suggests that many people experience a deep scepticism about the chances of achieving justice. This is true not only of those who had suffered the most gross forms of human rights violations in the country’s past conflicts but, surprisingly, also of those caught up in more ordinary forms of everyday disputes and grievances. The prevalence of this sentiment of pervasive ‘injustice’ – captured in one informant’s pithy statement that “only the powerful get justice in Sri Lanka” – compels closer scrutiny of the broader processes and politics of justice-seeking. This thesis, based on research carried out in 2008 and 2009 and on the analysis of detailed accounts from 110 informants in 3 geographical locations, studies this quotidian experience of justice-seeking and dispute settlement work in Sri Lanka. It provides insights into how the broader political and social environment shapes the possibilities of a just outcome for any of its citizens. The thesis reveals the overriding power of social and political factors in the justice-seeking process. Becoming ‘known’ in a way that establishes the credibility of disputants is important. This is an inherently social exercise in which dominant notions about credibility and legitimacy as defined by the state are reinforced. The thesis illustrates the crucial role of the state in everyday dispute management. The police are a key resource for mediators and disputants, who seem to rely most notably on the police’s acknowledged potential and actual capability for violence. Persons who are seen to be politically suspicious are especially vulnerable to such violence. Who constitutes a ‘suspicious’ person, however, is in flux. The thesis shows that attempts which focus narrowly on law reform and human rights advocacy will be in vain unless the social and political processes driving the implementation of justice are acknowledged and addressed.

This thesis examines the censorship of translated literature in the Soviet Union between the 1930s and the 1960s. Reconsidering traditional understandings of censorship, I employ a theoretical approach influenced by Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu in order to understand censorship as a set of inter-related practices enacted by multiple agents, occupying points on a continuum of censorship that ranges from external authoritarian intervention to internalised, unconscious norms. An analysis of literary texts translated from English into Russian in the literary journals Internatsional’naia literatura and Inostrannaia literatura is supplemented by examination of archival material from these journals and the censorship agency, Glavlit; I aim to reconstruct the various layers of censorship carried out by translator, editor or external agents. My analysis begins with a study of the publications patterns of the journals, examining the inclusion and exclusion of texts as an attempt to impose a canon of foreign literature. Employing internal reviews and records of editorial meetings, I demonstrate that ideological control of foreign literature was not completely repressive, and that a number of texts not conforming to Soviet standards found their way onto the pages of the journal. The next chapters study censorship on the textual level. A chapter on puritanical censorship discusses how sexual and vulgar language was removed from the texts, noting the relative easing of censorship in the post-Stalin era. Puritanical censorship was often incomplete, inviting the reader to reconstruct the original meaning. The chapter on political censorship shows how taboo topics were removed or entirely misrepresented in the Stalin era, but modified less drastically in the post-Stalin texts. The following study of the censorship of ideologically marked language examines how censorship aimed to erase unorthodox uses of certain terms, imposing an authoritative meaning on these texts, and ensuring the continued circulation of canonical symbols in a limited discursive framework. Ideological censorship also created intertextuality between the English texts and the Soviet context, attempting to make those texts a part of Soviet discourse. Through an examination of these intersecting censorship practices I problematise the phenomenon, highlighting ways in which the regulation of foreign texts could be incomplete, and ways in which censorial agents often sought to undermine censorship, even as they acted as censors.

The main thrust of this study argues that failure to account for the notion of power in considering learning in social contexts—like a working environment—inevitably presents an incomplete and unrealistic account of how learning actually is. Literature suggests that mainstream scholars and theorists have arguably pushed issues regarding the inter-connectedness of power and knowledge to the peripheral—resulting in both a paucity of theoretical coverage and empirical work on the subject. Through an interdisciplinary approach, this study takes inspiration from Foucault’s conceptualization of power—argued to provide a useful analytical framework for exploring power. Implications on how power impacts on learning in a contemporary workplace is viewed through the key ideas of ‘situated learning in communities of practice’ (Lave and Wenger). This study proposes that Foucault’s conceptualizations of power—regarding power as being relational and interconnected to knowledge—allows for a useful analytical framework that can sensitize our efforts towards understanding the power effects of knowledge with regards to learning at, and through, work practices, ultimately enabling us to re-work the concepts of ‘communities of practice’. The context of this study represents a professional knowledge-intensive workplace—Private Wealth Management (also referred to as Private Banking). Such contemporary work contexts—suggested to represent rather different environments vis-à-vis craft-like professions, for example—are argued to represent a more complex, conflicted and competitively-induced platform for learning. The wider regulatory environment was found to have strong influences in shaping the learning environment, representing both opportunities and restrictions for the bankers. Assessment based, compliant-driven and structured-training efforts were key drivers of the learning environment. Social interpersonal skills and professional relationships were observed as being integral and found to involve elements of power inequality, both within and across boundaries to which participants mediated, negotiated and often times obfuscated to effect power shifts through their discursive practices. Skills and perspectives, with regards to learning, evolved as the banker’s career trajectory progressed. Power punctuated not only the social network of relationships, but was also noted at the organizational level, via both explicit and implicit controls. Participants described purposeful thoughts and actions: mediating learning and strategizing outcomes in the respective environments with conflicted identity that requires balancing self, belongingness and directed efforts towards meeting the expectations of organization, respective clients and self.