Our paper draws attention to a neglected channel of corruption—the bribe payments by state-owned enterprises. This is an important phenomenon as bribe payments by SOEs fruitlessly waste national resources, compromising public welfare and national prosperity. Using a large dataset of 30,249 firms from 50 countries, we show that, in general, SOEs are less likely to pay bribes for achieving organizational objectives owing to their political connectivity. However, in deteriorated institutional environments, SOEs may be subjected to potential managerial rent-seeking behaviors, which (...) disproportionately increase SOE bribe propensity relative to privately owned enterprises. Specifically, our findings highlight the importance of fostering democracy and rule of law, reducing prevalence of corruption and shortening power distance in reducing the incidence of SOE bribery. (shrink)

Word order variation in Mandarin Chinese results in two constructions consisting of a noun phrase, a cluster of a demonstrative and a classifier, and a relative clause : the OMN with the RC+DM+NP order and the IMN with DM+RC+NP order. This study used corpus data to show correlational patterns of constructional choices. Specifically, OMN is associated with new and inanimate NPs serving the grammatical role of object in the relative clause that serves the discourse function of identification. By contrast, for (...) IMN, the head NP tends to carry given information, tends to be an animate entity, tends to serve the grammatical role of subject in the relative clause, and tends to have an RC that serves the discourse function of characterization. We suggest that the usage patterns can be interpreted in terms of the cognitive and communicative principles of relevance. (shrink)

Drawing from the grounded theory of work engagement, this research aims to explore three essential yet previously unexamined pathways—work meaningfulness, emotion regulation, and job competence in simultaneously transmitting the effects of mindfulness training to employee experience of work engagement. We employed a six-wave quasi-experimental design and recruited 129 employees to participate in the quasi-experiment, and tested our simultaneous mediating models using the structural equation modeling. Results showed that mindfulness facilitated employees’ work meaningfulness, emotion regulation, and job competence, which in turn (...) enhanced employee work engagement. By doing so, we add to the mindfulness literature by showing that the three essential psychological states are important machanims that link mindfulness to work engagement. Practicially, this research reveals that mindfulness training is an effective tool to influence employees’ psychological states, which ultimately develop their work engagement in the workplace. (shrink)

Companies take project-based management as their organizational strategy, and project quality assurance plays a vital role in improving customer satisfaction and enhancing corporate image. Starting from the perspective of optimizing project quality, this paper assigns different quality influencing factors to each project and each task of the project, divides the labor resources shared by multiple projects in the enterprise according to the skill level, and transforms the problem of project quality optimization. The problem of the highest skill level of labor (...) resources allocated to all projects of the enterprise is designed, and algorithms are designed to achieve the optimization of project quality through the optimal allocation of labor resources. The various links in this article are closely related to form a comprehensive, scientific, and systematic research system for optimal human resource allocation, human resource management, and development. Finally, case analysis is used to confirm the usability of the model and provide a quantitative method and perspective for project-oriented companies to allocate workforce. (shrink)

This study examines the degree of state ownership on corporate bribery. Integrating the theories of state ownership and corporate corruption, we propose that state ownership influences bribery propensity and bribery intensity in different ways; it lowers a firm’s tendency to pay bribes but increases the relative amount of bribery payment. Building on the control rights/bargaining hypotheses, we demonstrate that state ownership shields firms from bribery demands by reducing administrative hurdles that include bureaucratic requirements of obtaining licenses or settling taxes in (...) business operations. However, state ownership elevates the level of bribes by weakening their capital mobility. Using a sample of 23,018 firms from 54 countries covering 2006 to 2013, we find evidence to support our hypotheses. This article contributes to corruption research by drawing attention to an important channel of corruption and by highlighting the importance of considering not only the propensity but also the intensity of bribe payments. (shrink)

The whale optimization algorithm is a powerful swarm intelligence method which has been widely used in various fields such as parameter identification of solar cells and PV modules. In order to better balance the exploration and exploitation of WOA, we propose a novel modified WOA in which both the mutation strategy based on Levy flight and a local search mechanism of pattern search are introduced. On the one hand, Levy flight can make the algorithm get rid of the local optimum (...) and avoid stagnation; thus, it is able to prevent the algorithm from losing diversity and to increase the global search capability. On the other hand, pattern search, a direct search method, has not only high convergence rate but also good stability, which can boost the local optimization ability of the WOA. Therefore, the combination of these two mechanisms can greatly improve the capability of WOA to obtain the best solution. In addition, MWOA may be employed to estimate parameters in single diode model, double diode model, and PV modules and to identify unknown parameters of two different types of PV modules under diverse light irradiance and temperature conditions. The analytical results demonstrate the validity and the practicality of MWOA for estimating parameters of solar cells and PV modules. (shrink)

The developmental trajectory of speechreading skills is poorly understood, and existing research has revealed rather inconsistent results. In this study, 209 Chinese students with hearing impairment between 7 and 20 years old were asked to complete the Chinese Speechreading Test targeting three linguistics levels. Both response time and accuracy data were collected and analyzed. Results revealed no developmental change in speechreading accuracy between ages 7 and 14 after which the accuracy rate either stagnates or drops; no significant developmental pattern in (...) speed of speechreading across all ages. Results also showed that across all age groups, speechreading accuracy was higher for phrases than words and sentences, and overall levels of speechreading speed fell for phrases, words, and sentences. These findings suggest that the development of speechreading in Chinese is not a continuous, linear process. (shrink)

Depression is a common mental health illness worldwide that affects our quality of life and ability to work. Although prior research has used EEG signals to increase the accuracy to identify depression, the rates of underdiagnosis remain high, and novel methods are required to identify depression. In this study, we built a model based on single-channel, dry-electrode EEG sensor technology to detect state depression, which measures the intensity of depressive feelings and cognitions at a particular time. To test the accuracy (...) of our model, we compared the results of our model with other commonly used methods for depression diagnosis, including the PHQ-9, Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, and House-Tree-Person drawing test, in three different studies. In study 1, we compared the results of our model with PHQ-9 in a sample of 158 senior high students. The results showed that the consistency rate of the two methods was 61.4%. In study 2, the results of our model were compared with HAM-D among 71 adults. We found that the consistency rate of state-depression identification by the two methods was 63.38% when a HAM-D score above 7 was considered depression, while the consistency rate increased to 83.10% when subjects showed at least one depressive symptom. In study 3, 68 adults participated in the study, and the results revealed that the consistency rate of our model and HTP drawing test was 91.2%. The results showed that our model is an effective means to identify state depression. Our study demonstrates that using our model, people with state depression could be identified in a timely manner and receive interventions or treatments, which may be helpful for the early detection of depression. (shrink)

Food safety risk is becoming a vital issue for public health, and improving public awareness of FSR through social media is necessary. This study aims to explore specific mechanisms of FSR perception; it first categorizes 19 risk characteristics into two variables, dread and efficacy, and then examines how social media use affects perceived FSR through both variables. Additionally, the study explores the moderating effects of source credibility and science literacy on the mechanisms of FSR perception. Based on a nationwide online (...) survey of more than six salient food safety issues in China, the study found that exposure to food safety risk information on social media can help improve perceived FSR based on the proposed “dread–efficacy processing model”, where dread stimulates perceived risk, while efficacy suppresses risk perception. Moreover, source credibility intensifies the effect of social media use on efficacy appraisal, whereas science literacy exerts a “double-weakening” influence on dread appraisal. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

Antibiotic resistance in bacteria has become a great threat to global public health. Tigecycline is a next‐generation tetracycline that is the final line of defense against severe infections by pan‐drug‐resistant bacterial pathogens. Unfortunately, this last‐resort antibiotic has been challenged by the recent emergence of the mobile Tet(X) orthologs that can confer high‐level tigecycline resistance. As it is reviewed here, these novel tetracycline destructases represent a growing threat to the next‐generation tetracyclines, and a basic framework for understanding the molecular epidemiology and (...) resistance mechanisms of them is presented. However, further large‐scale epidemiological and functional studies are urgently needed to better understand the prevalence and dissemination of these newly discovered Tet(X) orthologs among Gram‐negative bacteria in both human and veterinary medicine. (shrink)

The dynamic models are proposed to investigate the influence node activity has on rumor spreading process in both homogeneous and heterogeneous networks. Different from previous studies, we believe that the activity of nodes in complex networks affects the process of rumor spreading. An active node can have contact with all the nodes it directly links to, while an inactive node could only interact with its active neighbors. We explore the joint effort of activity rate, spreading rate and network topology on (...) rumor spreading process by mean-field equations and numerical simulations, which reveals that there exists a critical curve consisting of critical activity rate and spreading rate; meanwhile, activity rate and spreading rate both have influence on the final rumor spreading scale. (shrink)

Body ownership concerns what it is like to feel a body part or a full body as mine, and has become a prominent area of study. We propose that there is a closely related type of bodily self-consciousness largely neglected by researchers—experiential ownership. It refers to the sense that I am the one who is having a conscious experience. Are body ownership and experiential ownership actually the same phenomenon or are they genuinely different? In our experiments, the participant watched a (...) rubber hand or someone else’s body from the first-person perspective and was touched either synchronously or asynchronously. The main findings: (1) The sense of body ownership was hindered in the asynchronous conditions of both the body-part and the full-body experiments. However, a strong sense of experiential ownership was observed in those conditions. (2) We found the opposite when the participants’ responses were measured after tactile stimulations had ceased for 5 s. In the synchronous conditions of another set of body-part and full-body experiments, only experiential ownership was blocked but not body ownership. These results demonstrate for the first time the double dissociation between body ownership and experiential ownership. Experiential ownership is indeed a distinct type of bodily self-consciousness. (shrink)

We examine the effect of the cross-border merger and acquisition (M&A) activities of Chinese firms on their corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance. We find that Chinese acquirers significantly increase CSR performance and CSR spending following cross-border M&As. The legal origins and social norms of host countries are found to positively affect the acquirers’ CSR performance and CSR spending in the post-M&A period. The results are consistent with Chinese acquirers signaling their commitment toward CSR through cross-border M&As to respond to diverse (...) stakeholder demands and strengthen corporate reputation. We also provide evidence that Chinese firms’ knowledge acquisition through cross-border M&As boosts green innovation. In addition, we show that the financial performance of Chinese acquirers does not suffer in the long term, indicating that strategic CSR investments can be integrated with other corporate investment activities. Our study demonstrates how cross-border M&As affect stakeholder value beyond value for shareholders. (shrink)

There is considerable evidence that the experience of justice is associated with perceived legitimacy of authority, but there has been no research about this association when considering past rather than current fairness. Based on the fairness heuristic theory, we tested the hypothesis that interpersonal justice trajectories positively affect perceived legitimacy of the authority; we also tested whether social class moderated this effect. Community residents rated the authority's fairness on 16 consecutive weeks and rated perceived legitimacy on the 16th week. The (...) results of latent growth modeling showed that the trajectory of interpersonal justice scores leading up to the final week significantly predicted perceived legitimacy, regardless of the current experience of interpersonal fairness. Tests of moderation showed that the legitimacy perceptions of individuals of lower subjective social class were significantly affected by interpersonal justice trajectories, whereas this was not the case among individuals of higher subjective social class. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for research on perceived legitimacy and justice, as well as their implications for understanding social class. (shrink)

We investigate two issues about the subjective experience of one's body: first, is the experience of owning a full-body fundamentally different from the experience of owning a body-part?Second, when I experience a bodily sensation, does it guarantee that I cannot be wrong about whether it is me who feels it? To address these issues, we conducted a series of experiments that combined the rubber hand illusion (RHI) and the “body swap illusion.” The subject wore a head mounted display (HMD) connected (...) with a stereo camera set on the experimenter's head. Sitting face to face, they used their right hand holding a paintbrush to brush each other's left hand. Through the HMD, the subject adopted the experimenter's first-person perspective (1PP) as if it was his/her own 1PP: the subject watched either the experimenter's hand from the adopted 1PP, and/or the subject's own hand from the adopted third-person perspective (3PP) in the opposite direction (180°), or the subject's full body from the adopted 3PP (180°, with or without face). The synchronous full-body conditions generate a “self-touching illusion”: many participants felt that “I was brushing my own hand!” We found that (1) the sense of body-part ownership and the sense of full-body ownership are not fundamentally different from each other; and (2) our data present a strong case against the mainstream philosophical view called the immunity principle (IEM). We argue that it is possible for misrepresentation to occur in the subject's sense of “experiential ownership” (the sense that I am the one who is having this bodily experience). We discuss these findings and conclude that not only the sense of body ownership but also the sense of experiential ownership call for further interdisciplinary studies. (shrink)

Although most schoolchildren can dispose of their own litter, they are typically not sensitive to environmental issues in the school’s public areas. How do we improve children’s sensitivity to public environments and cultivate pro-environmental behaviours? Based on Bandura’s social learning theory, this study explored the effects of various role models on the pro-environmental behaviours of children aged 7–13. A field study was conducted in which examples of postprandial garbage disposal behaviours were provided using role models and the subsequent behaviours of (...) the children were observed. We located the experiment in a real educational context and manipulated the type of role model and the behaviour being modelled. The results showed that different role models had different effects on the subjects’ pro-environmental behaviours. Only positive demonstration by teachers significantly improved the subjects’ pro-environmental behaviours, that is, teachers’ picking up of garbage in front of children significantly improved the children’s attention to the environment and their adoption of pro-environmental behaviours. Positive demonstration by peers, negative demonstration by teachers and negative demonstration by peers had no impact on the children’s pro-environmental behaviours. The results demonstrate that teachers must be mindful of their role as role models in the educational environment and facilitate students’ development of pro-environmental behaviours. (shrink)

Resolving the challenge of flight delays caused by air traffic congestion renders it necessary to explore the mode of congestion propagation. By applying complex network theory, this article establishes a complex network structure where airspace sectors act as nodes, and the edges represent traffic flow relationships between sectors. In addition, a cascading failure model is proposed to analyze the airspace sector network’s invulnerability. The critical threshold and the sector abnormality rate are determined according to the cascading failure measurement indexes. Based (...) on the remaining capacity of sector nodes, two optimization strategies are proposed: adjacent load redistribution strategy and local load redistribution strategy. The simulation results demonstrate that the local load redistribution strategy greatly improves the airspace sector network’s invulnerability to cascading failure. (shrink)

One of the central issues in cognitive science is the nature of human representations. We argue that symbolic representations are essential for capturing human cognitive capabilities. We start by examining some common misconceptions found in discussions of representations and models. Next we examine evidence that symbolic representations are essential for capturing human cognitive capabilities, drawing on the analogy literature. Then we examine fundamental limitations of feature vectors and other distributed representations that, despite their recent successes on various practical problems, suggest (...) that they are insufficient to capture many aspects of human cognition. After that, we describe the implications for cognitive architecture of our view that analogy is central, and we speculate on roles for hybrid approaches. We close with an analogy that might help bridge the gap. (shrink)

Liver transplantation (LT) activities during the COVID-19 pandemic have been curtailed in many countries. The impact of various policies restricting LT on outcomes of potential LT candidates is unclear. We studied all patients on the nationwide LT waitlists in Hong Kong and Singapore between January 2016 and May 2020. We used continuous time Markov chains to model the effects of different scenarios and varying durations of disruption on LT candidates.

Industry reputation crises trigger producers and consumers to switch to certification as a signal of quality, especially in a weak institutional environment. In this paper, we posit that firm certification as a signaling mechanism involves the co-evolution of firms and consumers. We investigate the impact of industry reputation crises on firm certification as a response strategy. Feedback between producers and consumers causes producers to seek more certifications over time to differentiate themselves from competitors. However, the proliferation of certifications may dilute (...) their credibility and reduce the effectiveness of the signal. Competition from imports that command higher trust from consumers exacerbates the problem in developing countries. We conduct empirical tests using firms in China’s dairy industry after an industry reputation crisis. The findings support our hypotheses. This study provides insights on the certification mechanisms through which producers and consumers interact and the effect of institutional environments on this interaction. It also offers implications for managers on how to better respond to industry crises and for policymakers on how to manage the certification market. (shrink)

In a recent study (Chen et al., 2018), we conducted a series of experiments that induced the “four-hand illusion”: using a head-mounted display (HMD), the participant adopted the experimenter’s first-person perspective (1PP) as if it was his/her own 1PP. The participant saw four hands via the HMD: the experimenter’s two hands from the adopted 1PP and the subject’s own two hands from the adopted third-person perspective (3PP). In the active four-hand condition, the participant tapped his/her index fingers, imitated by (...) the experimenter. Once all four hands acted synchronously and received synchronous tactile stimulations at the same time, many participants felt as if they owned two more hands. In this paper, we argue that there is a philosophical implication of this novel illusion. According to Merleau-Ponty (1945/1962) and Legrand (2010), one can experience one’s own body or body-part either as-object or as-subject but cannot experience it as both simultaneously, i.e., these two experiences are mutually exclusive. Call this view the Experiential Exclusion Thesis. We contend that a key component of the four-hand illusion—the subjective experience of the 1PP-hands that involved both “kinesthetic sense of movement” and “visual sense of movement” (the movement that the participant sees via the HMD)—provides an important counter-example against this thesis. We argue that it is possible for a healthy subject to experience the same body-part both as-subject and as-object simultaneously. Our goal is not to annihilate the distinction between body-as-object and body-as-subject, but to show that it is not as rigid as suggested by the phenomenologists. (shrink)

Recent studies of the rubber hand illusion (RHI) have shown that the sense of body ownership is constrained by several factors and yet is still very flexible. However, exactly how flexible is our sense of body ownership? In this study, we address this issue by investigating the following question: is it possible that one may have the illusory experience of owning four hands? Under visual manipulation, the participant adopted the experimenter’s first-person perspective (1PP) as if it was his/her own. Sitting (...) face to face, the participant saw four hands—the experimenter’s two hands from the adopted 1PP together with the subject’s own two hands from the adopted third-person perspective (3PP). We found that: (1) the four-hand illusion did not occur in the passive four-hand condition. (2) In the active four-hand condition, the participants tapped their index fingers, imitated by the experimenter. When tactile stimulations were not provided, the key illusion was not induced, either. (3) Strikingly, once all four hands began to act with the same pattern and received synchronous tactile stimulations at the same time, many participants felt as if they had two more hands. These results show that the sense of body ownership is much more flexible than most researchers have suggested. (shrink)

Facial emotional recognition is something used often in our daily lives. How does the brain process the face search? Can taste modify such a process? This study employed two tastes to investigate the cross-modal interaction between taste and emotional face recognition. The behavior responses and the event-related potential were applied to analyze the interaction between taste and face processing. Behavior data showed that when detecting a negative target face with a positive face as a distractor, the participants perform the task (...) faster with an acidic taste than with sweet. No interaction effect was observed with correct response ratio analysis. The early and mid-stage [early posterior negativity ] components have shown that sweet and acidic tastes modified the ERP components with the affective face search process in the ERP results. No interaction effect was observed in the late-stage component. Our data have extended the understanding of the cross-modal mechanism and provided electrophysiological evidence that affective facial processing could be influenced by sweet and acidic tastes. (shrink)

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English. “Bioethics: Cross-Cultural Explorations”一文主要是譚傑志(Joseph Tham)教授對他負責的關於推動跨文化對話的聯合國教科文組織專案的系統性報吿。文章詳盡闡述了該專案十餘年來宗教學術對話工作的模式、性質與目標，也對諸如普遍主義與多元主義、科學與信仰等經典問題在該項工作 中的重現提出了見解，並特別強調了宗教在增加生命倫理學討論的厚度方面的積極作用。(Tham 2022) (撮要取自內文首段) For religion to remain a guiding force in bioethics, it is important to maintain the sustainability of cross-cultural dialogue. In my opinion, these dialogues may encounter two difficulties. First, the high level of work that is required to create dialogues, combined with the modern phenomenon of “disenchantment,” make it difficult to find suitable successors. Second, if religious bioethics only considers pioneering positions of the (...) past without considering dynamic changes in social beliefs, it may not be able to carve out a place in the future of bioethics. (shrink)

ABSTRACTDeception has been reported to be influenced by task-relevant emotional information from an external stimulus. However, it remains unclear how task-irrelevant emotional information would influence deception. In the present study, facial expressions of different valence and emotion intensity were presented to participants, where they were asked to make either truthful or deceptive gender judgments according to the preceding cues. We observed the influence of facial expression intensity upon individuals’ cognitive cost of deceiving. Larger cost was observed for high intensity faces (...) compared to low intensity faces. These results provided insights on how automatic attraction of attention evoked by task-irrelevant emotional information in facial expressions influenced individuals’ cognitive cost of deceiving. (shrink)

This study aims to investigate whether simple and convenient progressive relaxation training is effective in enhancing collegiate student athletes’ mental health and sports performance. An experimental group of 14 and a control group of 10 collegiate student athletes were recruited from among track and field athletes who were preparing for provincial competition. The experimental group was exposed to a PRT intervention in 30-min sessions conducted twice per week for a duration of one month. At baseline, the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2, (...) State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised Short Scale for Chinese were completed, while only the CSAI-2 was reassessed at one, two, and three weeks after initiation of the intervention. Additionally, within half a day after completing all one’s individual competition events, the CSAI-2 was again assessed in the two groups recalling their memory of their precompetition state anxiety. Then, the differences in the three dimensions of the CSAI-2 between the two groups at the five time points introduced above were compared. This study also explored whether PRT affected sports performance, defined by the athletes reaching their best records or not, by logistic regressive analysis. This study found significant between-group differences in the self-confidence dimension score at the second and third time points. Through logistic regression analysis, a positive effect of PRT was found for the enhancement of sports performance. In sum, PRT showed positive effects on precompetition state self-confidence and enhanced sports performance among collegiate student athletes. (shrink)

Research shows that social welfare crowdfunding is in the rising stage of development in China, showing a vigorous development trend. Social welfare crowdfunding owns advantages such as accuracy and efficiency that traditional social welfare forms do not have, but problems including imperfect relevant policies and regulations, lack of supervision of social welfare crowdfunding platform, and low process transparency still exist. From the perspective of PEST-SWOT model, this paper sums up the research trends and development status of social welfare crowdfunding, deconstructs (...) the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats faced by social welfare crowdfunding from the aspects of politics, economy, society, and technology, and puts forward a feasible analysis of relevant development strategies to provide a reference for its future sustainable development. (shrink)

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English. “Bioethics: Cross-Cultural Explorations”一文主要是譚傑志(Joseph Tham)教授對他負責的關於推動跨文化對話的聯合國教科文組織專案的系統性報吿。文章詳盡闡述了該專案十餘年來宗教學術對話工作的模式、性質與目標，也對諸如普遍主義與多元主義、科學與信仰等經典問題在該項工作 中的重現提出了見解，並特別強調了宗教在增加生命倫理學討論的厚度方面的積極作用。(Tham 2022) (撮要取自內文首段) For religion to remain a guiding force in bioethics, it is important to maintain the sustainability of cross-cultural dialogue. In my opinion, these dialogues may encounter two difficulties. First, the high level of work that is required to create dialogues, combined with the modern phenomenon of “disenchantment,” make it difficult to find suitable successors. Second, if religious bioethics only considers pioneering positions of the (...) past without considering dynamic changes in social beliefs, it may not be able to carve out a place in the future of bioethics. (shrink)

With the development of distributed networks, the remote controllability of the distributed energy objects and the vulnerability of user-side information security protection measures make distributed energy objects extremely vulnerable to malicious control by attackers. Hence, the large-scale loads may produce abnormal operation performance, such as load casting/dropping synchronously or frequent and synchronous casting and dropping, and hence, it can threaten the security and stable operation of the distribution networks. First, we analyze the security threats faced by industrial controllable load, civil (...) controllable load, and the gains and losses of attacks on the distribution networks. Considering the factors of cyber attacks, we propose a control model and cyber attack model in active distribution networks. And, three types of attacks that the target suffered are defined on the basis of “on” and “off” modes for control. Then, the controllable load was maliciously controlled as the research object, and a suitable scenario is selected. The impact of malicious control of the controllable load on the power supply reliability and power quality of the distribution networks are simulated and analyzed, and risk consequences for different types of attacks are provided. (shrink)

Governments have adopted strict home quarantine measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. A monotonous, barren, and under-stimulating environment can cause state boredom, and people often deal with boredom via novelty-seeking behavior. Novelty-seeking behavior can be divided into “novelty input” and “novelty output.” The former refers to obtaining novel information such as browsing the Web; the latter refers to engaging in creative behavior such as literary creation. This study explores the relationship between two types of novelty-seeking behavior and individual state boredom during (...) home quarantine, along with the moderation effect of trait creativity. The study sample consists of 582 Chinese college students who were quarantined at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants completed the Multidimensional State Boredom Scale, the Williams Creativity Aptitude Test, and self-compiled questionnaires of novelty input and novelty output. The results show that there is no significant relationship between novelty input or novelty output and boredom during the COVID-19 quarantine. Trait creativity is found to negatively moderate the relationship between the two means of novelty seeking and boredom. Specifically, novelty output negatively predicts the state boredom of individuals with high creativity, while novelty input positively predicts the state boredom of individuals with low creativity. Our findings suggest that different novelty-seeking behaviors may have different effects on the boredom level of individuals with high versus low creativity during quarantine. During a quarantine period, individuals should avoid excessively engaging in novelty input behaviors aimed at escaping boring situations. (shrink)