Do agile managed information systems projects fail due to a lack of emotional intelligence?

YesAgile development methodologies (ADM) have become a widely implemented project management approach in Information Systems (IS). Yet, along with its growing popularity, the amount of concerns raised in regard to human related challenges caused by applyingADMare rapidly increasing. Nevertheless, the extant scholarly literature has neglected to identify the primary origins and reasons of these challenges. The purpose of this study is therefore to examine if these human related challenges are related to a lack of Emotional Intelligence (EI) by means of a quantitative approach. Froma sample of 194 agile practitioners, EI was found to be significantly correlated to human related challenges in agile teams in terms of anxiety, motivation, mutual trust and communication competence. Hence, these findings offer important new knowledge for IS-scholars, project managers and human resource practitioners, about the vital role of EI for staffing and training of agile managed IS-projects

Mood and the Market: Can Press Reports of Investors’ Mood Predict Stock Prices?

We examined whether press reports on the collective mood of investors can predict changes in stock prices. We collected data on the use of emotion words in newspaper reports on traders’ affect, coded these emotion words according to their location on an affective circumplex in terms of pleasantness and activation level, and created indices of collective mood for each trading day. Then, by using time series analyses, we examined whether these mood indices, depicting investors’ emotion on a given trading day, could predict the next day’s opening price of the stock market. The strongest findings showed that activated pleasant mood predicted increases in NASDAQ prices, while activated unpleasant mood predicted decreases in NASDAQ prices. We conclude that both valence and activation levels of collective mood are important in predicting trend continuation in stock prices

Ideological diversity of media consumption predicts COVID-19 vaccination.

This study examines the relationship between respondents' vaccine hesitancy, reported media consumption patterns, ideological leanings, and trust in science. A large-scale survey conducted in the US in 2022 (N = 1,646) assessed self-reported COVID-19 vaccination, trust in science, and reported media consumption. Findings show that, regardless of personal ideology, individuals who consumed less conservative media and had a more ideologically diverse media diet were more likely to be fully vaccinated and boosted. Additionally, consuming more conservative media was negatively associated with trust in science, but this relationship was weaker among those with a more ideologically diverse media diet. By incorporating data from an earlier wave of the survey in the summer of 2020, before COVID-19 vaccines were available, we found that a less conservative and more ideologically diverse media diet in 2022 predicted vaccination behavior in 2022, controlling for prior vaccine intentions and media consumption in 2020. A similar survey conducted in the UK in the summer of 2020 paralleled patterns in the US regarding vaccine intentions and media consumption. These results suggest that an ideologically diverse media diet is associated with reduced vaccine hesitancy. Public health initiatives might benefit from encouraging ideologically diverse media consumption

Mental Imagery, Impact, and Affect: A Mediation Model for Charitable Giving

One of the puzzling phenomena in philanthropy is that people can show strong compassion for identified individual victims but remain unmoved by catastrophes that affect large numbers of victims. Two prominent findings in research on charitable giving reflect this idiosyncrasy: The (1) identified victim and (2) victim number effects. The first of these suggests that identifying victims increases donations and the second refers to the finding that people's willingness to donate often decreases as the number of victims increases. While these effects have been documented in the literature, their underlying psychological processes need further study. We propose a model in which identified victim and victim number effects operate through different cognitive and affective mechanisms. In two experiments we present empirical evidence for such a model and show that different affective motivations (donor-focused vs. victim-focused feelings) are related to the cognitive processes of impact judgments and mental imagery. Moreover, we argue that different mediation pathways exist for identifiability and victim number effects

Role of Heme Oxygenase and Bilirubin in Oxidative Stress in Preterm Infants

In a previous study, it was found that the decrease in the total plasma bilirubin level (Btot) in preterm infants was associated with the decrease in oxidative stress. We hypothesized that this occurs as a result of a pro-oxidant effect of heme oxygenase (HO), which outcompetes with the antioxidant properties of bilirubin. In this study we studied 12 preterm infants in whom the plasma levels of Btot, total hydroperoxide (TH), protein SH groups, HO activity, non-transferrin-bound iron (NTBI), and erythrocyte CuZn superoxide dismutase (CuZn SOD) activity were concurrently measured when the Btot was >220 microM and after a Btot drop of >34 microM. The Btot decrease was concurrent with the TH decrease, protein SH groups increase, and the HO and CuZn SOD activity increase and was not associated with an NTBI increase. We concluded that 1) Btot does not exert a meaningful antioxidant effect in vivo; 2) HO does not exert a pro-oxidant effect involving an NTBI increase and that, on the contrary, it could exert an antioxidant effect; and 3) the concurrent HO and CuZn SOD activity increase could indicate a synergic antioxidant effect of the two enzymes