Category Archives: Human Behavior

Human Behavior

Organizational Behavior Explained: Definition, Importance …

Organizational Behavior researchers study the behavior of individuals primarily in their organizational roles.

One of the main goals of organizational behavior is to revitalize organizational theory and develop a better conceptualization of organizational life.

As a multidisciplinary field, organizational behavior has been influenced by developments in a number of allied disciplines including sociology, psychology, economics, and engineering as well as by the experience of practitioners.

Origin of Organisational Behaviour can trace its roots back to Max Weber and earlier organizational studies.

The Industrial Revolution is the period from approximately 1760 when new technologies resulted in the adoption of new manufacturing techniques, including increased mechanization.

The industrial revolution led to significant social and cultural change, including new forms of organization.

Analyzing these new organizational forms, sociologist Max Weber described bureaucracy as an ideal type of organization that rested on rational-legal principles and maximized technical efficiency.

In the 1890s; with the arrival of scientific management andTaylorism, Organizational Behavior Studies was forming it as an academic discipline.

Failure of scientific management gave birth to the human relations movement which is characterized by a heavy emphasis on employee cooperation and morale.

Human Relations Movement from the 1930s to 1950s contributed to shaping the Organizational Behavior studies.

Works of scholars like Elton Mayo, Chester Barnard, Henri Fayol, Mary Parker Follett, Frederick Herzberg, Abraham Mas low, David Mc Cellan and Victor Vroom contributed to the growth of Organisational Behaviour as a discipline.

Works of scholars like Elton Mayo, Chester Barnard, Henri Fayol, Mary Parker Follett, Frederick Herzberg, Abraham Maslow, David Mc Cellan and Victor Vroom contributed to the growth of Organisational Behaviour as a discipline.

Herbert Simons Administrative Behavior introduced a number of important concepts to the study of organizational behavior, most notably decision making.

Simon along with Chester Barnard; argued that people make decisions differently in organizations than outside of them. Simon was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on organizational decision making.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the field became more quantitative and produced such ideas as the informal organization, and resource dependence. Contingency theory, institutional theory, and organizational ecology also enraged.

Starting in the 1980s, cultural explanations of organizations and organizational change became areas of study.

Informed by anthropology, psychology, and sociology, qualitative research became more acceptable in OB.

Organizational behavior is directly concerned with the understanding, prediction, and control of human behavior in organizations. Fred Luthans.

Organizational behavior is the study of both group and individual performance and activity within an organization.

This area of study examines human behavior in a work environment and determines its impact on job structure, performance, communication, motivation, leadership, etc.

It is the systematic study and application of knowledge about how individuals and groups act within the organizations where they work. OB draws from other disciplines to create a unique field.

For example, when we review topics such as personality and motivation, we will again review studies from the field of psychology. The topic of team processes relies heavily on the field of sociology.

When we study power and influence in organizations, we borrow heavily from political sciences.

Even medical science contributes to the field of Organizational Behavior, particularly in the study of stress and its effects on individuals.

There is increasing agreement as to the components or topics that constitute the subject area of OB.

Although there is still considerable debate as to the relative importance of change, there appears to be general agreement that OB includes the core topics of motivation, leader behavior, and power, interpersonal communication, group structure and processes, learning, attitude development, and perception, change processes, conflict, work design, and work stress.

Organizational Behavior is the study and application of knowledge about how people, individuals, and groups act in organizations. It does this by taking a system approach.

That is, it interprets people-organization relationships in terms of the whole person, the whole group, the whole organization, and the whole social system.

Its purpose is to build better relationships by achieving human objectives, organizational objectives, and social objectives.

Organizational Behavior is;

These 6 features or characteristics show the nature of Organizational Behavior that is the study of understanding and control behavior within the organization.

The organizations in which people work have an effect on their thoughts, feelings, and actions. These thoughts, feelings, and actions, in turn, affect the organization itself.

Organizational behavior studies the mechanisms governing these interactions, seeking to identify and foster behaviors conducive to the survival and effectiveness of the organization.

These 8 objectives of organizational behavior show thatOB is concerned with people within the organization, how they are interacting, what is the level of their satisfaction, the level of motivation, and find ways to improve it in a way the yields most productivity.

Organization Behavior is based on a few fundamental concepts which revolve around the nature of people and organizations.

Challenges and opportunities of organizational behavior are massive and rapidly changing for improving productivity and meeting business goals.

Read more about 13 Challenges and Opportunities of Organizational Behavior.

Recognize the limitations of organizational behavior. Organizational Behavior will not abolish conflict and frustration; it can only reduce them. It is a way to improve, not an absolute answer to problems.

Furthermore, it is but part of the whole cloth of an organization.

We can discuss organizational behavior as a separate subject, but to apply it, we must tie it to the whole reality. Improved organizational behavior will not solve unemployment.

Organizational Behavior will not make up for our deficiencies, cannot substitute for poor planning, inept organizing, or inadequate controls. It is only one of the many systems operating within a larger social system.

3major limitations of OB are;

Learn how these organizational behavior limitations work.

The OB model Shows the 3 levels, Individual-level, Group level, and Organization System-level and how they impact the elements of human output.

The above figure presents the skeleton on which constructed the OB model.

It proposes that there are three levels of analysis in OB and that, as we move from the individual level to the organization systems level, we add systematically to our understanding of behavior in organizations.

The three basic levels are analogous to building blocks; each level is constructed on the previous level.

Group concepts grow out of the foundation laid in the individual section; we overlay constraints on the individual and group in order to arrive at organizational behavior.

There is a complex set of key forces that affect organizational behavior today. These key forces are classified into four areas;

There is an interaction between people, structure, and technology and these elements are influenced by the environment. 4 key forces affecting Organizational Behavior and it is applied.

There are some important disciplines in the organizational behavior field which developed it extensively.

Due to the increase in organizational complexity, various types of knowledge are required and help in many ways.

The major disciplines are;

Learn more about theContributing Disciplines to the Organizational Behavior field.

Organizational behavior approaches are a result of the research done by experts in this field.

These experts studied and attempted to quantify research done about the actions and reactions of employees, with regard to their work environments.

Learn how the4 Approaches to Organizational Behavior studies work.

The understanding and effective application of organizational behavior depend on a rigorous research methodology.

The search for the truth of why people behave the way they do is a very delicate and complicated process.

In fact, the problems are so great that many scholars, Chiefly from the physical and engineering sciences, argue that there can be no precise science of behavior.

The research method of organizational behavior start with Theory, use of research designs, and checking the validity of studies

Organizational Behavioris concerned with the study of what people do in an organization and how that behavior affects the performance of the organization.

OB studies put the focus on motivation, leader behavior and power, interpersonal communication, group structure and processes, learning, attitude development and perception, change processes, conflict, work design, and work stress.

OB draws heavily from behavioral and social sciences, most importantly from psychology.

There are several practical reasons, why we study Organizational Behavior;

Organizational Behavior is the study and application of knowledge about how people, individuals, and groups act in organizations. It does this by taking a system approach.

That is, it interprets people-organization relationships in terms of the whole person, the whole group, the whole organization, and the whole social system.

Its purpose is to build better relationships by achieving human objectives, organizational objectives, and social objectives.OB encompasses a wide range of topics, such as human behavior, change, leadership, teams, etc.

Organizational behavior has a great impact on individuals and also in organizations that cannot be ignored. In order to run the businesses effectively and efficiently, the study of organizational behavior is very essential.

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Organizational Behavior Explained: Definition, Importance ...

Human Behavior

(PDF) Psychological patterns of human behavior.

seems to be immature to their surrounding but in turn it is suppose to be

the serious and then to these types of person, who know the reality and

make them see the things, what the person wants to show them.

At the same time there are quite a few sets of people who act as they are

fun loving and cool but they are the one who have their life style depending

upon the surrounding they are leaving in.

Their decision can be observed as they seem to be confused, at the same

time in a situation in which they face an unexpected result.

The person who seem to be very serious are the one, who are meant to be

serious not because the person had a rough night everyday or a rough past.

Mostly the reason to be like this is that they are the one who know the true

value of things around them. These kind of persons make their decision in a

calm way, mostly they have all the things sorted out and just they have to

do is, place them in order and it's done.

Their every decision is made upon a practical experience they have in their

life, for example a hardworking racer knows how important his every

decision is as his every small mistakes will pull him down the hill and also he

had paid the price of doing such mistakes in his past which is practical

experience as a reference for not doing the mistake again.

Facial expressions.

The face, the most important part of our human body that expresses all our

feeling, thinking and every sense that we have or feel. Just by seeing

someone's face some people are able to say about them specifically.

The expression that we have on our face is a different kind of language and

people among our surrounding understand them well and react to it. One

need to understand the person emotionally and sensitively to read and

understand one's facial expressions. The most broken person to the most

happiest person on the land can be understood for being the way they are

through their faces and their expressions.

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(PDF) Psychological patterns of human behavior.

Human Behavior

Human Behavior and the Designed Environment Qpractice

Interior design requires a deep knowledge of human behaviorphysical, psychological, and cultural. The ability to understand and communicate with clients is very important. Designed spaces must support the individual lifestyle and functional needs of our clients.

Any interior space directs human behavior. This is especially true for educational, medical, business facilities, or spaces where there is social interaction.

The designer's knowledge of the human factors relating to interior space affects even private spaces, such as residences.

Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye is the epitome of his design theory, Form follows function

Consider the sensory considerations of how the principles and elements of design work together withacoustics, lighting, visual stimuli, color theory, scent,and tactile qualities to create a design solution.Special populations including children and the elderly may experience these qualities differently.

Dont confuse design theory with a design style. Style is an aesthetic, such as French provincial. Design theory is a designers unique approach to a creative problem solving process based on one or more of the following:

Both the elements and principles of design theoryare visual building blocks common to all design practices.

This Japanese interior is an example of design regionalism

The design of the built environment relies not only on theory, but also the temperament of whats happening outside of the immediate confines of the project. While more subjective and ever-changing, some not so obviousinfluences include:

Economic conditions frequently resonate in interior and architectural design. In times of financial hardship, designs are often more streamlined and subdued.

A more stable, prosperouseconomy will oftensubstantiate more luxuriousdesigns.

Ergonomics studies the relationships between the human body and the physical environment. It uses anthropometric data as a base, but focuses more on the interaction with specific objects and tasks, such as a stove top for cooking or office workstations

Anthropometrics focuses on the size, proportion and range of motions of the body.

Findings are statistically grouped by sex, age and percentile ratios.

Social distance ranges from 4 to 12 feet and is the distance at which most impersonal business, work and interaction takes place between strangers or in formal situations.

Some behavioral components include proxemics and territoriality.

Describes how people use a space based on circumstance and cultural aspects. Four different distances are identified in the theory of proxemics:

A non-verbal communication in claiming ownership to a space. You've likely seen a person sitting at a six-person sized table at coffee shop with their belongings strewn about, letting others know this is their space and their unwillingness to share.

I passed the IDFX!!!!I am hoping to take the IDPX and Prac 2.0 in October.

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Human Behavior and the Designed Environment Qpractice

Human Behavior

As summer driving season kicks off, it’s unclear just how many people will take to the road – CNBC

A customer gets ready to fill his car with gasoline at a Shell gas station in San Francisco, California.

Getty Images

This weekend's Memorial Day holiday could be a test for the gasoline market, depending on whether drivers in reopening states hit the road and then keep on driving.

Gasoline demand is about 30% below where it was before states shut down in March. As the economy reopens, analysts are looking at traditional measures of supply and demand, but also some newer metrics like Apple mobility data and GPS-generated traffic congestion data.

"After many of these states opened up in early May, we saw a pretty big surge or improvement in the congestion data. By mid that next week, we actually saw a regression in many cities U.S.-wide," said Michael Tran, global energy analyst at RBC. "When we look at the numbers, we saw a big surge then we saw a regression."

Tran said though he believes gas prices are eventually headed higher, and the market should show improvement in fits and starts as economic activity picks up across the U.S.

Retail gasoline data is showing that demand has been varying greatly by region, depending on state shutdown rules, or more normal factors like weather. The GasBuddy tracking firm, for instance, found that demand nationally last Friday was up 11.8% from the previous Friday, and in some states it was way higher.

Gasoline demand is important for a couple of reasons. For one, it is an economic indicator linked closely to employment. Second, U.S. gasoline demand is a factor in the calculation of global oil prices, since U.S. gas consumption equals about 10% of daily oil demand.

The summer driving season traditionally kicks off on Memorial Day weekend, but this year it will be far from normal. AAA said it will not issue a travel forecast for the first time in 20 years because of the impact of the coronavirus. Normally it estimates the number of people who would be traveling over the holiday weekend. Last year, 43 million people traveled, and the lowest point was during the financial crisis in 2009, when just 31 million traveled.

"I think Memorial Day is going to be the future litmus test for human behavior," said Tran. He said if people who have been at home go out and take part in activities, they may feel emboldened to go out more, if they are still healthy two weeks later, the period of incubation.

"There's improvement but over the past 10 days, 15 days, we've really flatlined. it's really societal behavior, not state level policies that are driving gasoline demand. After many of these states opened up, you go out for dinner that first weekend but you don't need to go out for dinner four nights in a week," he said.Commuting to and from work had accounted for as much as 28% of gasoline demand prior to the shutdowns.

Gasoline prices have been rising as more drivers leave their homes. The average price at the pump was $1.90 per gallon of unleaded nationally, up from $1.81 per gallon a month ago, according to AAA. AAA said gasoline hasn't been this cheap on Memorial Day since 2003.

Gasoline futures were nearly 2% higher Thursday, as oil rallied.

In Wednesday trading, gasoline futures surged early with oil prices. Traders have also been talking about how Apple mobility data this week showed a big jump in the U.S., back to just 5% under the baseline from before the shutdowns. It had been down as much as 60%. Apple data is based on the use of its maps.

But then gasoline futures plunged when government data showed the drop in demand for gasoline last week and an unexpected rise in supplies of 2.8 million barrels. RBOB futures erased all early gains and then traded lower on the day, ending down0.1% lower at $1.0438 a gallon.

Tom Kloza, head of global energy analysis at Oil Price Information Service, said the government data matches what he is seeing in terms of demand at the retail stations his service monitors. But the week earlier surge over 7 million barrels a day may have been overstated and included some numbers that should have been categorized differently.

He said demand is improving but the pace has slowed, and that demand is now down about 30% from pre-shutdown levels. "It was pretty quick to go from [down] 50% to 35%. ... I just don't think we're going to get the numbers we've become accustomed to," he said. "There's a lot of excitement about how the economy is kicking open and people are going to be traveling around more because of avoidance of air travel and mass transit. There's too many people out of jobs, and [Treasury Secretary Steven] Mnuchin said we haven't seen the peak in terms of job losses."

John Kilduff, partner with Again Capital, said he saw the same when he looked deeper into the Apple data, which showed a weekend spike in activity in some places and then a decline.

"I think there was pent up demand. People were cooped up and took those drives to nowhere, but as we looked at the mobility you see how it drops off during the week," he said. Kilduff said the jump in government demand data two weeks ago may be reflecting the same thing, a spike from pent up demand as drivers finally left their homes.

Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, said he's been seeing a gradual national pickup in retail sales every week since early April. He said drivers often fill up on Fridays, but the jump last week was big at 11.8%.

"So far, this week through the first three days, national demand is up 3.3%," De Haan said. But he said demand was up 6.2% Sunday from the previous week, then up just 1.6% on Monday.

"We're still running about 30% off normal," said De Haan. He said there are big differences between the states. In New Jersey, which has just opened up parks and beaches, gasoline demand last Friday rose 15.5%. In Pennsylvania, demand was up 24%. In Georgia, which began to reopen in late April, saw a jump of 16.7%, but Texas, which was reopened then, saw a drop in demand of 0.7%. Demand in Florida last Friday was only up 1.8% over the week earlier, and California was up 0.6%.

Tran said traffic congestion showed something similar in Texas. Activity there surged initially when the state reopened but has not kept up the pace.

Source: RBC

He said longer term, the U.S. may imitate some of the behavior in China, as it reopened. "Cleary China has rounded the corner," he said. In China, traffic congestion has risen in 12 of the 20 cities he monitors to levels above pre-virus shutdowns, as people appear to be abandoning public transportation.

"We're headed in a trajectory with the reopening of the economy," Tran added. "People are going to drive more as we go deeper into the summer. I think given a lot of work-at-home policies are going to remain in place."

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As summer driving season kicks off, it's unclear just how many people will take to the road - CNBC

Human Behavior

How the humanities can be part of the front-line response to the pandemic (opinion) – Inside Higher Ed

In times of crisis, when we face complex challenges like global pandemics, we need a collaborative response that transcends disciplinary boundaries and offers novel approaches to vexing problems. In the current moment, biologists, engineers and others in fields with established pipelines for translational research have sprung into action, working together to create life-saving diagnostics and therapeutics to help with the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet it isnt always so obvious how scholars in the humanities can contribute to the front-line response.

But Ive seen firsthand the valuable role that the humanities can play in public health. More than a decade after finishing my Ph.D. in American studies, I went back to school to pursue a master of public health degree. I was motivated by something I had observed through my own research: a huge gap between public health as an applied practice and public health as an object of historical and theoretical work in the humanities. Public health fieldworkers, for the most part, werent reading humanities research, and humanities scholars werent focused on the current demands of health communication. As a result, neither side was benefiting from the expertise of the other, and common causes were going unrecognized.

But something unexpected happened during my training. When I took the required epidemiology course, all of the students had to select and give presentations on a book that provided historical context for an important disease outbreak of the past. The professors explained that data without context is meaningless, and therefore, as students of epidemiology, we must learn how to construct meaningful narratives that link human behavior to data about disease. The list of books we could choose was full of humanities scholarship, including my own first book, much to my surprise. The professors did not know in advance that the author would be in the class, and I certainly had not written the book as an epidemiology textbook, or even as a history of a specific disease. Full disclosure: no one picked my book for their presentation. But the incident still convinced me that the connection between the humanities and public health was real. In this case, humanities scholarship was literally part of public health training.

That example points to one of the ways that humanities scholars can contribute to the current pandemic: by engaging in long-term, big-picture research that brings humanities questions to bear on public health. This kind of work provides critical historical and cultural context and can broaden the perspectives of public health and medical trainees.

A current open-source coronavirus syllabus contains a substantial bibliography of resources from the humanities and interpretive social sciences, demonstrating the relevant work that already exists in these fields. The list includes literary analysis of the stories that communities and governments tell in epidemics, explaining why their narrative form matters. It includes research showing how and why panics about contagion infect financial markets, as well as global health histories that illuminate the role of racism and xenophobia in making different parts of the world seem to be more or less vulnerable to outbreaks of infectious disease.

This kind of work is familiar to scholars in the humanities -- it is what many of us already do, and it can help improve our collective preparedness for the inevitable pandemics of the future. For public health officials who are out on the front lines telling governments and citizens what to do, this kind of research is invaluable, but it needs to be more readily accessible. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx cannot read a 200-page book before their next press briefing; they need concise, concrete guidance that is available right now.

Needed: Translational Humanities

This brings us to a second way that the humanities can be part of a pandemic response: through front-line, immediate translational work. The current outbreak has revealed some alarming weaknesses in our public health infrastructure, and we desperately need research to develop fast, cheap field test kits, ventilators and vaccines. But research in the medical humanities has long shown that health cannot be attained and illness cannot be vanquished through biomedical or technical interventions alone. This pandemic has made the human fragility of our response infrastructure abundantly clear, and we need to understand how our decisions about whose life matters will shape the future to come. Vaccines wont help if huge sections of the population believe they are part of a government or corporate conspiracy. Ventilators wont save the lives of patients who are unable to access health care due to systemic racism. We need translational humanities now to complete our technological and biomedical response.

What role can the humanities play in addressing such issues right now? Scholars in Asian American studies can identify and document xenophobia, and they can disseminate those findings in real time to legal advocates. Media scholars can draw on their knowledge of contagion films to alert health organizations to harmful visual iconographies and suggest alternatives. Literary scholars can identify how narratives are being used to spread misinformation, and they can advise health communicators how to create compelling counternarratives to challenge the fictions of conspiracy theorists. Creative writers can draw on their narrative expertise to craft compelling stories that help us imagine a path forward and the steps we could take to get there -- a science fiction prototyping for pandemic response.

Similarly, researchers in African American studies can bring their knowledge of community-based resistance and survival to the attention of city governments so as to intervene in racially discriminatory approaches to testing and referral for care. Artists can respond to the United Nations call for creatives to help stop the spread of COVID-19. Historians of medicine can distill their findings to inform public health practice, as participants in the World Health Organizations Global Health Histories translational seminars have done since 2004. The government of Germany has recognized the value of humanities' contributions to the pandemic, enlisting philosophers, historians, theologians and jurists to provide guidance during and after the crisis.

If humanities scholars want to be part of the response to the pandemic, we must also consider the needs of the front-line workers who could benefit from our research. This may require stylistic adaptation. By translating our scholarly work for broader publics, humanities authors can influence debates, right now, about what to do. When the governor of Louisiana formed a Health Equity Task Force in early April to investigate health disparities resulting from COVID-19 in his state, none of the participants were from humanities disciplines. Yet researchers working on the intersections of gender, race and class could have advised state leadership months earlier that women of color would be disproportionately affected by the crisis. Persistent, targeted op-eds and proactive engagement with government could direct policy makers to consider the needs of vulnerable communities at the outset of the next outbreak, not four months into the disaster.

Becoming part of the front-line response may also require expanding the scope of our research projects, as we reimagine the audience for the work. We should be training our students to do the same. Participating in the pandemic response requires robust, sustained, long-term dialogue with intended publics beyond the academy, and most critically, it demands that we incorporate their needs into the formulation of research topics. Humanities-trained scholars have shown the value of clinical engagement with visual art and literature for fostering empathy and tolerance for ambiguity in medical students. But many physicians working on COVID-19 wards feel unprepared for the human toll of so much suffering and uncertainty. Humanities researchers should reframe their interventions based on the accounts of health-care workers during this pandemic. Moreover, this effort should be extended to address other hard-hit workplaces, such as nursing homes, meatpacking plants and prisons. This shift in orientation may be the hardest but also the most impactful one we can make. Being of service does not require being subservient, but it does demand a realignment of priorities.

This effort must extend into our classrooms, so that undergraduate and graduate students learn to establish transdisciplinary collaborative relationships, frame their research questions and disseminate their findings in forms that will serve the needs of front-line responders when the next crisis breaks. This is true for many fields of humanities research, not just those related to health. The climate crisis poses similar challenges and must be met with adaptations to the ways we train future scholars to imagine the purpose of their research. Now and in the future, the humanities can help save lives, if we bring our work to the front lines, where it belongs.

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How the humanities can be part of the front-line response to the pandemic (opinion) - Inside Higher Ed

Human Behavior

Every Volvo model now comes with a 180 km/h speed limit and Care Key – Green Car Congress

Every new Volvo car now comes with a limited top speed of 180 km/h (112 mph), as Volvo Cars delivers on its promise made last year to introduce such a limitation and goes beyond regulation and legislation to help close the remaining gap to zero serious injuries and fatalities in traffic.

Apart from the speed cap, every Volvo car will now also come with a Care Key, which allows Volvo drivers to set additional limitations on the cars top speed, for example before lending their car to other family members or to younger and inexperienced drivers.

Volvo Cars introduces Care Key as standard on all cars for safe car sharing.

Together, the 180 km/h speed limitation and Care Key send a strong signal about the dangers of speeding, underlining Volvo Cars position as a worldwide leader in safety. Both features illustrate how car makers can take active responsibility for striving to achieve zero traffic fatalities by supporting better driver behavior.

We believe that a car maker has a responsibility to help improve traffic safety. Our speed limiting technology, and the dialogue that it initiated, fits that thinking. The speed cap and Care Key help people reflect and realise that speeding is dangerous, while also providing extra peace of mind and supporting better driver behavior.

Malin Ekholm, head of the Volvo Cars Safety Center

The top speed limit has proven to be controversial since it was announced, with some observers questioning the rights of car makers to impose such limitations through available technology.

Volvo Cars says it believes it has an obligation to continue its tradition of being a pioneer in the discussion around the rights and obligations of car makers to take action that can ultimately save lives, even if this means losing potential customers.

Above certain speeds, in-car safety technology and smart infrastructure design are no longer enough to avoid severe injuries and fatalities in the event of an accident. This is why speed limits are in place in most western countries, yet speeding remains ubiquitous and one of the most common reasons for fatalities in traffic. Millions of people still get speeding tickets every year.

Research shows that on average, people have poor understanding of the dangers around speeding. As a result, many people often drive too fast and have poor speed adaption in relation to the traffic situation.

Apart from speeding, intoxication and distraction are two other primary areas of concern for traffic safety and that constitue the remaining gap towards Volvo Cars vision of a future with zero traffic fatalities and serious injuries. It is taking action to address all three elements of human behavior in its safety work, with more features to be introduced in future cars.

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Every Volvo model now comes with a 180 km/h speed limit and Care Key - Green Car Congress

Human Behavior

COVID-19 and mixed population movements: emerging dynamics, risks and opportunities – A UNHCR/IOM discussion paper – World – ReliefWeb

1. Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the different measures States have taken to contain and respond to it, have the potential to shape human behavior at the individual, family or community level, and to impact the ways in which our societies function, in unprecedented and far-reaching ways. This paper explores the implications for human mobility drawing on the trends that IOM and UNHCR are already observing in our field operations, as well as data in the public domain. The focus is on the irregular flows of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers linking Africa and Europe, but the paper also notes some emerging trends in relation to population flows towards Europe from south-west Asia and the Middle East.

The purpose is to take stock of what we are already observing, and what we anticipate developing as the COVID-19 crisis evolves and hopefully subsides in countries of origin, countries hosting large refugee and migrant populations, countries of transit and countries of destination noting that in many cases, these categories overlap and change over time. In doing so, the paper seeks to shed light on how the COVID-19 crisis is interacting with the complex and fluid dynamics shaping mixed population movements, and how these might evolve.

What matters, of course, is what should be our collective response. As the two organizations dealing with population flows, we want to ensure that the potential impact of the crisis on refugee flows and human mobility is understood and factored into wider responses especially those addressing its socio-economic consequences through bilateral and multilateral recovery instruments and development cooperation. We want to draw attention to the risks and opportunities that are emerging, and the potential implications if these are overlooked.

Our aim is to provoke dialogue and early action. What key considerations should help shape responses by States, the African Union, the European Union, other regional entities, civil societies and other stakeholders? Can they find ways of leveraging existing Europe-Africa cooperation frameworks, and their interface with the two Global Compacts, to cope with the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on human mobility? And can governments steer away from stand-alone, introverted responses, and find ways of engaging based on solidarity and partnership, which address the broader drivers of population flows?

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COVID-19 and mixed population movements: emerging dynamics, risks and opportunities - A UNHCR/IOM discussion paper - World - ReliefWeb

Human Behavior

Pac-Man at 40: The eating icon that changed gaming history – kslnewsradio.com

(CNN) When Pac-Man debuted in Tokyo 40 years ago, no one could have predicted it would become the most successful arcade game of all time.

Though video games were a relatively new medium, the recipe for success at the time was already well-established: People wanted to shoot things.

But the creator of Pac-Man, a young game designer named Toru Iwatani, wanted to try something completely different.

When I started drafting up this project in the late 1970s, the arcades were filled with violent games all about killing aliens, said Iwatani, who was working for Japanese games firm Namco at the time. They were gloomy places where only boys went to hang out. What I wanted to do was make arcades into livelier places that women and couples might enjoy visiting, so I thought it best to design a game with women in mind.

Iwatani had little experience. He was just 25, and preferred working on pinball machines, not video games. His first title, 1978s Gee Bee, was essentially a digital version of pinball and wasnt particularly successful. There was little indication that his next project would change video game history forever.

And yet, when the first Pac-Man machine was placed in an arcade in Tokyos bustling Shibuya district on May 22, 1980, it did exactly that.

The game wasnt called Pac-Man back then, but rather PuckMan, which offers a glimpse into its origins. Paku paku taberu is a popular Japanese phrase for gobbling something up, with paku paku mimicking the sound of a snapping mouth and taberu meaning to eat.

I had started off assuming that themes like fashion and romance might be best suited for a female audience, said Iwatani. But then I thought and this may have been presumptuous of me that women also enjoy the act of eating, or taberu in Japanese, and thats how I found myself centered around this keyword and the act of eating as a concept.

While drawing up ideas for a game based around food, Iwatani grabbed a slice of pizza from a box and had an epiphany: The remaining pizza slices formed Pac-Mans shape, and the rest was history (or so the story goes, according to Iwatani).

When the game was imported into the US, however, the name PuckMan was deemed inappropriate. Although the titular character did somewhat resemble a hockey puck, the games American distributor, Midway, feared that kids would scrape off the marquee, changing the P to an F. After its name was changed, the game became an instant hit, with nearly 300,000 units sold worldwide from 1981 to 1987.

Pac-Man pioneered a number of innovations in gameplay and game design. It featured the first power-up the big pill that made ghosts vulnerable and the first cut scenes, the small animated sequences between one level and the next. It was also one of the very first games in the maze genre.

But most importantly, it had a defined main character, which was unheard of at the time according to Chris Melissinos, a video game historian and curator of the Smithsonian American Art Museums 2012 exhibition The Art of Video Games.

Here comes this game thats brightly colored and centered around a character that really doesnt have a gender, he said. And all of a sudden, we found a mascot the first character in video games that existed not just in the artwork, but in the game itself.

We started to see women coming into arcades, multiple generations playing in the same space. For the first time we had a game that was not about aggression, so it fundamentally changed the type of games that designers felt that they could create.

To honor its role as a pillar in the history of video games, Pac-Man was among the titles added to the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York in 2012.

We were not only enraptured by the masterful use of the flat landscape, but also the authors good intentions when it comes to the human behaviors that video games can engender and play with, said Paola Antonelli, a senior curator at MoMA. Toru Iwatani wanted to develop a nonviolent game for teenage couples, not only for boys. In creating Pac-Mans nemeses (colorful ghosts), Iwatani opted for cuteness over scariness.

The appeal of Pac-Man lies, perhaps, in its simplicity. Unusually, the game doesnt require players to press any buttons at all (except to start a one-player or two-player game), and the control system instead uses a single joystick. However, that doesnt mean that Pac-Man is an easy game: It is, in fact, fiendishly difficult in a way that only classic arcade games designed to gobble up quarters can be.

Thats why it took nearly 20 years for anyone to complete a perfect game of Pac-Man finishing with no lives lost and the maximum number of points from each level.

It took between five to six hours, said Billy Mitchell, who became the first person to achieve a perfect game in 1999, and still one of only a handful in the world to ever do so. The hardest part is to sit there and continually remain focused, not allowing distractions. You have a system down to play. If you go off of your system for even a second, it creates total chaos on the board.

Mitchell agrees that simplicity underpins the games enduring success. No matter how old you are or when you last played, everybody understands what Pac-Man is. Also, if youre watching from behind somebody, you can understand the drama thats unfolding.

Mitchells perfect game saw him reaching level 256 and scoring 3,333,360 points. At that stage, the game runs out of memory and can no longer draw a complete board, so half the screen was garbled, making it impossible to progress further. Doubting anyone would ever go that far, Iwatani and his team never even programmed a celebratory ending.

He did, however, spend months programming the ghosts behavior. Named Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde, they each have a personality determining their strategy.

We introduced an AI-like algorithm that sent the ghosts to surround Pac-Man from all sides, Iwatani said. Some other touches we added (included) restarting from a slightly easier difficulty after the player slips up and gets caught, or occasionally sending the pursuing ghosts off course, back to their positions to give the player some room to breathe. We had all sorts of tweaks to make sure we werent simply stressing the player out.

The inspiration for the ghosts appearance came from a Japanese manga called Little Ghost Q-Taro, which Iwatani read as a child, as well as the American cartoon Casper the Friendly Ghost.

The relationship between Pac-Man and the ghosts is one thats meant to pit them against each other but only in a very superficial sort of way, that stirs up no real hatred, Iwatani said. Its a relationship influenced by the ideas of the Tom & Jerry cartoons.

Pac-Man spawned countless sequels, the most popular of which was Ms. Pac-Man. It also paved the way for narrative-based titles such as Donkey Kong, offering games a way out from the shoot em up stereotype.

Its still tremendously addictive: When Google replaced its logo with a playable version of Pac Man in 2010, it cost the world almost 5 million man-hours and $120 million in lost productivity, a study concluded.

Iwatani last worked on a Pac-Man title in 2007, and he now teaches game design at Tokyo Polytechnic University. He is not too impressed with modern games, and says that in adapting to smartphones and other small screens, the ideas behind them have gotten small too.

When Pac-Man was first released, video games were still something new and unusual for everyone but game fanatics. For many people, I think it ended up being their very first experience with a video game, he said, speaking of the games legacy.

And now today, 40 years later, its still enjoyed by not only women, but men and women, young and old alike, all around the world. If we were to compare it to music, it might be something like a popular song that everyone knows and has heard before.

The-CNN-Wire & 2020 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

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Human Behavior

How experts say the COVID-19 pandemic will affect Utah births, deaths and demographics – KSL.com

SALT LAKE CITY Demographers believe the COVID-19 pandemic will have some noticeable effects on Utahs population makeup.

But they believe that when looking back at Utahs population growth history in 20 years, the pandemic will likely be just a blip on the timeline.

"Human behavior is incredibly unpredictable," said Mike Hollingshaus, a demographer with the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah.

He discussed how COVID-19 might affect Utahs demographic makeup at a Gardner institute panel May 13. Four others joined Hollingshaus for the discussion: Gardner institute director Natalie Gochnour, Gardner institute director of demographic research Pamela Perlich, U. associate professor Brian Shiozawa and Gardner institute researcher Mallory Bateman.

The panelists predicted the pandemic will lead to more deaths and fewer births in Utah.

However, Perlich noted that 150 years of data have shown Utah is a state that grows. So while the pandemic will hinder that growth in the short term, she predicted that Utah will lead out and be a "beacon of light" post-pandemic.

"Im sort of this eternal optimist about Utah," she said.

Overall, populations only change in three main ways: through births, deaths and migration, Hollingshaus said.

The pandemic is hindering migration significantly, since many areas have been under stay-at-home orders, and nonessential travel is mostly not recommended, he said.

Births have also been decreasing and deaths are increasing over the past few years, he added.

There were about 14,000 deaths in Utah in 2010 and that increased to about 18,000 last year. Demographers expect that to increase as the Baby Boomer generation continues to age, but deaths could decrease after that, Hollingshaus said.

The pandemic is creating more deaths directly from COVID-19.

It also creates deaths indirectly, since people who need health care for other reasons arent able to get it in pandemic times due to resources being allocated elsewhere, Hollingshaus added.

Additionally, people might not seek health care out of fear that by doing so they might get exposed to the disease, he said. Deaths of despair, such as deaths from suicide, may also increase due to the stressful health and economic conditions created by COVID-19.

Hollingshaus said people should be mindful of taking care of their friends and neighbors to counteract the increased likelihood of deaths.

"Each of these deaths is a person," he said.

The mortality rate is currently about 1% in Utah, which puts the state in the top five for lowest mortality rates, according to Shiozawa, who is a medical doctor, former Republican Utah state senator and regional director for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Thats about a sixth of the national average for COVID-19 mortality rates, Shiozawa said. However, he predicted that the state may see that rate go up, especially as social distancing restrictions are gradually loosened.

"Were going to see more deaths just because of the number of patients who have the infection," Shiozawa said.

In 2019, there were about 47,000 births in Utah, but that number has been going down for the past several years.

Hollingshaus doubts that there will be a large spike in births due to the pandemic. Since many couples are holed up, sheltering in place in their homes, some have suggested that the pandemic could lead to more conceptions.

After the northeast blackout of 2003, in which power was out in some parts of New York City and Toronto for two days, some suggested the same phenomenon was taking place. But that turned out to be a myth, and didnt really happen, Hollingshaus added.

Nothing about the pandemic suggests that will take place, he said. Highly effective contraception is readily available. There is also a lowered social stigma around postponing having children to later in life, he said.

"Its much more widely accepted, even in Utah," Hollingshaus added.

People also might still be wary of going to the hospital and being exposed to COVID-19 patients when their baby comes, he said.

Uncertain economic conditions created by the pandemic also may deter people from having children, the panelists said. Even outside of pandemic times, its more expensive to provide things for children, such as housing, child care and food, than it was for previous generations, Hollingshaus pointed out.

However, Utah has a diverse economy, a proactive education system and good health care institutions, Shiozawa said.

He predicts that Utah will recover from the pandemic and come out strong on the other side.

"It will affect us, and it will have interesting downstream effects as we look forward," Shiozawa said. "I think we can be very optimistic."

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Human Behavior

Commentary: CDC is a national treasure; it must be reformed – The Daily Herald

By Saad B. Omer / Special To The Washington Post

As the Covid-19 pandemic ravages communities, the federal agency responsible for outbreak control, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is conspicuously absent from leading the U.S. response. Theres now a cottage industry of plans for opening up America in the midst of the pandemic. But any plan that will keep us safe in the long run will have to include reforming the CDC.

The men and women at the CDC are some of the most well-trained and dedicated civil servants in the country. But even those of us who have been cheerleaders for the CDCs role in keeping America and the world safe recognize the need for fixing this venerable institution.

It is reasonable to ask why the CDC was unable to quickly develop and scale up testing for SARS-CoV-2. Why was there no backup plan? How come SARS-CoV-2 circulation in many parts of the United States remained undetected by the CDCs early warning systems for at least several weeks after January? Why did the CDC not take the lead in developing, or at least systematically collating, projection models for the pandemics spread, which would have decreased confusion among decision-makers and the public?

If we want to avoid asking similar questions again the next time a new virus appears, the CDC needs some changes.

Over the years, there has been a substantial expansion in the types of activities the CDC is involved with. The federal agency whose original name was the Communicable Disease Center now deals with issues ranging from birth defects to injury prevention. Critics have charged that this expanded focus has resulted in dilution of the CDCs outbreak response mission. The CDC should not ignore other health issues such as obesity and noncommunicable diseases. But it cannot afford to lose focus as the nations insurance policy against infectious disease threats.

Reform efforts should focus on increasing CDCs infectious disease laboratory capacity and enhancing its expertise in scaling-up testing during public health emergencies. One of the most effective ways to get ahead of outbreaks is to have a highly sensitive epidemiological surveillance system. CDC currently maintains several surveillance systems, but they were of limited utility as early warning systems for Covid-19. CDC will have to reassess the data it acquires, how fast these data get transmitted and what analytical tools it uses to detect signals. CDC will also have to modernize the types of data it routinely uses. For example, rapidly sequencing and analyzing genomes of circulating viruses can provide important information, such as where the virus was imported from. To better prepare for fast-spreading outbreaks, CDC will have to expand the use of genomic epidemiology and other modern tools for surveillance.

The CDC also badly needs more money, and Congress has to change the way it funds the agency. Public health investments yield very high returns: For every dollar spent on prevention, there is a five times return on investment within five years. Despite this, Congress has tried to fund public health on the cheap. As a result, the CDC has been chronically underresourced. For example, CDCs Public Health Emergency Preparedness (PHEP) program that supports states and local areas in their preparations for pandemics and other emergencies has had its funding shrunk from $940 million in 2002 to $675 million in 2020. PHEP funds can be used to develop laboratory and contact tracing capacity; which could have come in handy in this pandemic.

CDCs programs are micromanaged by Congress through detailed line-item budgeting, which means lawmakers and their aides have undue influence over CDC priorities. A stroll through the CDC campus can be illustrative: You arrive at the (Rep. Edward R.) Roybal campus to check in at the (Sen.) Tom Harkin communication center to walk to the (Sen.) Arlen Specter Emergency Operations Center. The instinct to appease political leadership was criticized by the National Academy of Sciences during another infectious disease emergency: the smallpox bioterrorism threat in 2005. A nimble, evidence-driven CDC would require flexibility in resource allocation based on scientific acumen and experience of public health professionals, rather than ideological leanings of vested interests.

The Epidemiological Intelligence Service (EIS), CDCs flagship training program for its staff, needs to be modernized. This postdoctoral program trains CDC scientists in epidemiologic field work through a combination of classroom training and experiential learning. Career CDC leaders usually come from this cadre of staff; it is rare for a non-EIS trained CDC staff to rise to the senior echelons.

EIS officers are trained in conventional methods for investigating and responding to outbreaks, such as fast-paced studies that compare exposures among those with illness labeled as cases and those without disease labeled as controls.

But the science of disease control has evolved substantially and now includes tools such as advanced mathematical modeling, genomic epidemiology, and high-end laboratory methods. CDC does employ scientists with expertise in these and other emerging subfields. These skills are increasingly so seminal to modern disease control approaches, though, that they should be a major part of the core EIS training requirements. Moreover, EIS officers should be well-versed in the science of behavioral interventions; designing a smart social-distancing strategy is as much about human behavior as it is about biological characteristics of the virus.

Just over a year ago in a U.S. Senate committee hearing, I was asked about the value of the CDC. Without hesitation, I described the CDC as a national treasure. I continue to believe this. And it is precisely because I have such faith in the abilities of the men and women of the CDC that I know we must reform this American institution of global significance. We need it to be as excellent as it can be.

Saad B. Omer is director of the Yale Institute for Global Health and a professor at the Yale University schools of medicine and public health.

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