Public transportation in California is not as polished as in Seoul. Buses are noisier, roads are bumpier, and fares are higher. Yet, I witnessed an impressive moment that highlights a difference: how a passenger with disabilities was treated.
On a bus in San Jose, a wheelchair user boarded. The driver stopped the bus, left his seat, and assisted the passenger in fastening the seatbelt securely. The process took over five minutes. In Seoul, such a scene would be rare.
This difference likely stems from policies and norms rather than individual kindness. In California, transportation policies seem to allow drivers to prioritize care over punctuality. Moreover, passengers appear to accept delays, fostering an environment where helping others is encouraged and expected. Similar to California’s policies and norms, I hope Korea implement measures that force drivers and citizens to empathize with and care for those in need.
During my visit to Sports Basement at Sunnyvale in California, I explored their Pre-Loved Section, where people share their used items with others.
This section is more than a collection of secondhand goods. It represents a community effort to extend the life of products.
The term “pre-loved” is appropriate. Unlike the utilitarian terms such as recycling, “pre-loved” speaks to the warmth and emotional bond we feel towards our belongings. This perspective resonates in today’s conscious consumerism. Each item in this section tells its own story.
Although Sports Basement operates as a company, it functions like a flea market, providing a platform where people can reliably pass along items. We often form emotional attachments to our possessions, which shape our decisions to resell them. Platforms that facilitate these exchanges play an important role in enabling such decisions, and Sports Basement’s Pre-Loved Section is an example of such a platform.
Our interpretive research treats meaningful possessions as vessels of public and private meanings. From this perspective, we unpack consumer disposition of meaningful possessions to strangers at garage sales and online auctions. We reveal how a range of valences of self-extension and self-references other than the ideal self shape a meaningful possession’s journey from self to other. We identify a new iconic transfer divestment ritual, deepen and reinterpret other divestment rituals, and uncover how a shared sense of self allows possessions to migrate across seller-buyer boundaries. We present and discuss the implications of a model depicting three paths to disposition.
It is Election Day, and these photos capture an intriguing scene for those who may wonder how American students engage in voting. Here, a line of students stretches out the door, each person waiting patiently to cast their vote—a sight that demonstrates just how seriously these young adults take their role in shaping the future.
Yet, some students saw the long queue ahead questioned: “Does my vote really matter?” and “Do I really make a difference?” These sentiments resonate with many, reflecting the common struggle between civic duty and individual doubt.
Ultimately, these snapshots remind me that, despite geographical and cultural differences, the act of voting holds a universal significance. Whether here in Stanford or in Korea, each vote really matters, which is why it is essential to inspire people to visit the voting centers and participate in the electoral process.
Human behaviour is thought to spread through face-to-face social networks, but it is difficult to identify social influence effects in observational studies, and it is unknown whether online social networks operate in the same way. Here we report results from a randomized controlled trial of political mobilization messages delivered to 61 million Facebook users during the 2010 US congressional elections. The results show that the messages directly influenced political self-expression, information seeking and real-world voting behaviour of millions of people. Furthermore, the messages not only influenced the users who received them but also the users’ friends, and friends of friends. The effect of social transmission on real-world voting was greater than the direct effect of the messages themselves, and nearly all the transmission occurred between ‘close friends’ who were more likely to have a face-to-face relationship. These results suggest that strong ties are instrumental for spreading both online and real-world behaviour in human social networks.
Crosswalk signals in Mountain View, California, have undergone an important upgrade. The old system required pedestrians and cyclists to press a button to activate the walk signal. For cyclists, this often meant stopping and dismounting, creating an inconvenience.
In contrast, the new system is a touchless design that allows pedestrians and cyclists to wave their hand to activate the signal. Regardless of whether it is Guardian Wave or nxtCycle Wave, this improvement makes it more convenient for everyone, especially cyclists who no longer need to stop and manually press a button.
This shift may also reflect changing attitudes towards physical touch in public spaces after the COVID-19 pandemic. Consumer researchers highlighted the importance of the “need for touch,” but this need may have diminished as people increasingly avoid touching shared surfaces. The new touch-less crosswalk system may be an adaptation to this evolving preference, signaling a broader trend toward touchless design in public spaces.
This research details the development of the “Need for Touch” (NFT) scale designed to measure individual differences in preference for haptic (touch) information. The 12-item NFT scale consists of autotelic and instrumental dimensions. Results are reported that support the scale’s hypothesized internal structure as well as its reliability, convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity. Individual differences in chronic accessibility to haptic information across groups varying in NFT were also found in two experiments. Additionally, NFT moderated the relationship between direct experience and confidence in judgment.
