Juri Lotman’s well-known distinction of primary modeling system versus secondary modeling system is a lasting legacy of his that has been adhered to, modified, and refuted by semioticians of culture and nature. Adherence aside, modifications and refutations have focused on the issue whether or not language is a primary modeling system, and, if not, what alternatives can be made available to replace it. As Sebeok would concur, for both biosemiosis and anthroposemiosis, language can only be a secondary modeling system on (...) top of the biological experience of Umwelt or human sensory system. This paper proposes to explore the possibility of a “preverbal” modeling system suggested by Lotman’s spatial concept of semiosphere, and discuss its implications in cross-cultural dialogue. (shrink)

The study of natural disaster and its discursive dimensions from a semiotic perspective can provide a theoretical frame for the scientific communication of global catastrophes. In this paper I will suggest two models; one is a semiotic model on the natural catastrophic events and the other is a hexagon model composed of semiotic dimensions of natural disaster discourse. The six main modules include narration, description, explication, visualization, prevention, and recovery action.

Like other sciences, biosemiotics also has its time-honoured archive, consisting, among other things, of writings by those who have been invented and revered as ancestors of the discipline. One such example is Jakob von Uexküll who has been hailed as a precursor of semiotics, developing his theory of “sign” and “meaning” independently of Saussure and Peirce. The juxtaposition of “sign” and “meaning” is revelatory because one can equally legitimately claim Uexküll as a hermeneutician in the same way as others having (...) claimed him as a semiotician. Such a novel temptation can be justified by Uexküll’s prolonged obsession with Sinn and Bedeutung since his first book in 1909. This paper attempts to reconstruct the immediate intellectual horizon of Uexküll’s historicity, a discursive space traversed by his contemporaries Frege and Husserl, in order to see how Uexküll’s discussions of Zeichen and Gegenstand, Sinn and Bedeutung, were informedby other philosophers of language, and to establish Uexküll as a phenomenological hermeneutician in the tradition of Husserl, Heidegger and Gadamer. To forestall and counter possible criticism that hermeneutics is primarily concerned with textual interpretation, while Uexküll is at most an interpreter of animal life, the paper will discuss his unfinished parody of the Platonic dialogue Meno, which is entitled Die ewige Frage: Biologische Variationen über einen platonischen Dialog (1943). It is through such textual practice that one witnesses the emergence of an Uexküll who embodies at once the addressee exercising his understanding of ancient texts as well as the second addresser recoding his explanation to another group of targeted addressees. This textual practice already goes beyond the confines of biology and in fact involves the linguistic pragmatics of rhetoric and speech act. (shrink)

In traditional Chinese literary criticism, textual strategies comparable to intertextuality have governed Chinese critics’ and poets’ reading and writing aboutliterature throughout the dynasties. Drawing on the intertextual theories of Kristeva and Riffaterre, the paper probes into the phenomenon of sign system-mutations in two highly influential ancient texts: the Confucian Classic of Changes of the fifth century B.C.E. and Liu Xie’s The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, an ars poetica in the third century. The transformation of sign systems from (...) nonverbal to verbal, in the case of the Changes, and from literate to literary or “creative” to “theoretical”, in the case of the Dragons, bears witness to the Hjelmslevian reciprocity of object-semiotic and meta-semiotic. (shrink)

When ancient Chinese philosophy culminated in the sixth to third centuries BCE, “hundreds of flowers [intellectual schools] were blooming”, yet not many theoreticians were particularly interested in questions regarding the relationship between animal and human life — despite their profuse discussion of, and heated debates about, both “nature” and “human nature” in their writings. This indifferent attitude towards creatures lower than humans is best illustrated by Confucius (551–479 BCE), who observed: “It is impossible to associate with birds and beasts, as (...) if they were the same as us.” Later, however, this condescending attitude of the Sage would be challenged by the Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi (370 to 301 BCE), who untiringly advocates the equity of all creatures in the universe — a place where both living and fabulous organisms cohabit and co-evolve with one another, as well as with their environments. Morever, even Confucius’s descendent Mencius (c.372–289 BCE) did not endorse his mentor’s position, for the latter’s own writings are likewise inhabited by all kinds of creatures which not only serve the passive role of poetic figuration, but actually also construct their respective Umwelten, paralleled by the umwelt-construction of human beings. Recent advances in biosemiotics and ecosemiotics have enabled us to reread some of these philosophical texts, and to shed new light on this obscure aspect of Chinese thinking. This paper will draw upon the sign reflections of C. S. Peirce (1839–1914) and Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944), and make use of a composite analytical method of text semiotics and dialogue studies, to examine a number of political and ethical allegories by Zhuangzi and Mencius. Acknowledging the necessarycircularity of interpretation and the homogeneity of observer and observed, the essay explores the ways in which ancient philosophical texts can be made compatible with contemporary biological and semiotic thinking. (shrink)

For all his profound interest in Secondness and its manifestation in various kinds of indices, including deictics, Peirce rarely addresses the inter-pronominalrelationships. Whilst the American founder of semiotics would designate language as a whole to Thirdness, only within the larger framework of which deictics can work, the German philosopher Cassirer observes that “what characterizes the very first spatial terms that we find in language is their embracing of a defi nite ‘deictic’ function”. For Cassirer the significance of pronominals, especially the (...) I-Thou relationship, lies in its impact on the development of spatial concept that lays the foundation of symbolic forms. It may look strange why the “designatives” of I, Thou, He, in Peirce’s own terms, so obvious in their categorial and empirical differentiation, should fail to be reduceable to the triad of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. It is interesting, however, that in his 1906 correspondence with Lady Welby, Peirce should refer to the strange “Communicational Interpretant”, or “the Cominterpretant, which is a determination of that mind into which the minds of utterer and interpreter have to be fused in order that any communication should take place”. Peirce asserts that this communication of a Form, say, being in love, is made possible by sign. This paper discusses Peirce’s and Cassirer’s references to deictics or indexical sign, in particular, inter-personal relationships, in light of Benveniste’s concept of discourse, and probes into a possible subtext underlying the Peirce-Welby correspondence. (shrink)

For all his profound interest in Secondness and its manifestation in various kinds of indices, including deictics, Peirce rarely addresses the inter-pronominalrelationships. Whilst the American founder of semiotics would designate language as a whole to Thirdness, only within the larger framework of which deictics can work, the German philosopher Cassirer observes that “what characterizes the very first spatial terms that we find in language is their embracing of a defi nite ‘deictic’ function”. For Cassirer the significance of pronominals, especially the (...) I-Thou relationship, lies in its impact on the development of spatial concept that lays the foundation of symbolic forms. It may look strange why the “designatives” of I, Thou, He, in Peirce’s own terms, so obvious in their categorial and empirical differentiation, should fail to be reduceable to the triad of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. It is interesting, however, that in his 1906 correspondence with Lady Welby, Peirce should refer to the strange “Communicational Interpretant”, or “the Cominterpretant, which is a determination of that mind into which the minds of utterer and interpreter have to be fused in order that any communication should take place”. Peirce asserts that this communication of a Form, say, being in love, is made possible by sign. This paper discusses Peirce’s and Cassirer’s references to deictics or indexical sign, in particular, inter-personal relationships, in light of Benveniste’s concept of discourse, and probes into a possible subtext underlying the Peirce-Welby correspondence. (shrink)

The study of natural disaster and its discursive dimensions from a semiotic perspective can provide a theoretical frame for the scientific communication of global catastrophes. In this paper I will suggest two models; one is a semiotic model on the natural catastrophic events and the other is a hexagon model composed of semiotic dimensions of natural disaster discourse. The six main modules include narration, description, explication, visualization, prevention, and recovery action.

Juri Lotman’s well-known distinction of primary modeling system versus secondary modeling system is a lasting legacy of his that has been adhered to, modified, and refuted by semioticians of culture and nature. Adherence aside, modifications and refutations have focused on the issue whether or not language is a primary modeling system, and, if not, what alternatives can be made available to replace it. As Sebeok would concur, for both biosemiosis and anthroposemiosis, language can only be a secondary modeling system on (...) top of the biological experience of Umwelt or human sensory system. This paper proposes to explore the possibility of a “preverbal” modeling system suggested by Lotman’s spatial concept of semiosphere, and discuss its implications in cross-cultural dialogue. (shrink)

Naming, according to Sebeok, constihttes the first stage of zoosemiotics. This special but common use of language acrually inaugurates more complicated procedures of human discourse on non-human kingdom, including classification of its members. Because of language's double articulation in sound and sense, as well as the grapheme's pleremic (meaning-full) rather than cenemic (meaning-empty) characteristic (according to Hjelmslev). Chinese script is capable of naming and grouping animals randomly but effectively. This paper attempts to describe the said scriptorial "necessity of naming" (Kripke) (...) in classical Chinese by citing all the creatures, real or fabulous, with a /ma/ (horse) radical. (shrink)

The metaphor of parasites or parasitism has dominated literary critical discourse since the 1970s, prominent examples being Michel Serres in France and J. Hillis Miller in America. In their writings the relationship between text and paratext, literature and criticism, is often likened to that between host and parasite, and can be therefore deconstructed. Their writings, along with those by Derrida, Barthes, and Thom, seem to be suggesting the possibility of a semiotics of parasitism. Unfortunately, none of these writers has drawn (...) enough on the biological foundation of parasitism. Curiously, even in biology, parasitism is already a metaphor through which the signified of an ecological phenomenon involving two organisms is expressed by the signifier of “[eating] food at another’s [side] table”. This paper will make some preliminary remarks on semiotics of parasitism, based on the notions of Umwelt (Jakob von Uexküll) and structural coupling (Maturana and Varela). It will look into the phenomenon of co-evolutionary process in community ecology. With reference to empirical history, the project will briefly surveythe literary and medical praxis of the 17th century England where large number of creative writings referred to the phenomenon of parasitism, which was deeply embedded in religious practice (e.g., the Eucharist) and political life (e.g., the courtier ecology in monarchy) of the times. Finally, it will touch upon the possible ‘parasitic’ relationship between language and biology. (shrink)

In his well-known essay, ‘What Is a Sign?’ (CP 2.281, 285) Peirce uses ‘likeness’ and ‘resemblance’ interchangeably in his definition of icon. The synonymity of the two words has rarely, if ever, been questioned. Curiously, a locus classicus of the pair, at least in F. M. Cornford’s English translation, can be found in a late dialogue of Plato, namely, the Sophist. In this dialogue on the myth and truth of the sophists’ profession, the mysterious ‘stranger’, who is most likely Socrates’ (...) persona, makes the famous distinction between eikon (likeness) and phantasma (semblance) (236a,b). For all his broad knowledge in ancient philosophy, Peirce never mentioned this parallel; nor has any Peircean scholar identified it. There seems to be little problem with eikon as likeness, but phantasma may give rise to a puzzle which this paper will attempt to solve. Plato uses two pairs of words: what eikon is to phantasma is eikastikén (the making of likeness [235d]) to phantastikén (semblance making [236c]). In other words, icons come into being because of the act of icon-making, which is none other than indexicality. Witness what Peirce says about the relationship between photographs and the objects they represent: “But this resemblance is due to the photographs having been produced under such circumstances that they were physically forced to correspond point by point to nature.” (Ibid.) Thus the iconicity which links the representamen (sign) and its object is made possible not only by an interpretant, but also by idexisation. Their possible etymological and epistemological links aside, the Peircean example of photographing and the Platonic discussion of painting and sculpturing in the Sophist, clearly show the physio-pragmatic aspect of iconicity. The paper will therefore reread the Peircean iconicity by closely analysing this relatively obscure Platonic text, and by so doing restore to the text its hidden semiotic dimension. (shrink)

Like other sciences, biosemiotics also has its time-honoured archive, consisting of writings by those who have been invented and revered as ancestors of the discipline. One such example is Jakob von Uexküll. As to the people who ‘invented’ him, they are either, to paraphrase a French cliché, ‘agents du cosmopolitisme sémiotique’ like Thomas Sebeok, or de jure and de facto progenitor like Thure von Uexküll. In the archive is the special issue of Semiotica 42. 1 (1982) edited by the late (...) Sebeok and introduced by Thure von Uexküll. It is in the opening essay that Thure von UexküIl tries to restore Jakob von Uexküll’s role as a precursor of semiotics by negotiating the Elder with Saussure and the linguistics-oriented ‘semiology’ in his wake. However, semiotic mapping, in the strictly ‘disciplinary’ sense, of Jakob von Uexküll is no easy task because he ‘knew neither Peirce nor Saussure and did not use their terminology’ (Thure von Uexküll 1982,2). Because Thure prefers to call the Elder’s science ‘general semiotics’ (Thure von Uexküll 1982), this paper begins by assessing Thure von Uexküll’s semiotic configuration of Jakob, probe into the force and limits of the linguistic analogy, revisit the already time-honoured debate on the primary and secondary modelling systems, which was made famous by the Moscow-Tartu semioticians in the early 1970s, but severely criticized by Sebeok and his followers. The paper engages Sebeok from several fronts, directed first at his relegation of the Saussurian linguistic model, then at his critique of the Primary Modelling System, and finally at his reservation about evolutionism in light of the current debate on gene/meme co-evolution. (shrink)

RNA editing is a major post-transcriptional mechanism that changes specific nucleotides at the RNA level. The most common RNA editing type in humans is adenosine to inosine editing, which is mediated by ADAR enzymes. RNA editing events can not only change amino acids in proteins, but also affect the functions of non-coding RNAs such as miRNAs. Recent studies have characterized thousands of miRNA RNA editing events across different cancer types. Importantly, individual cases of miRNA editing have been reported to play (...) a role in cancer development. In this review, we summarize the current knowledge of miRNA editing in cancer, and discuss the mechanisms on how miRNA-related editing events modulate the initiation and progression of human cancer. Finally, we discuss the challenges and future directions of studying miRNA editing in cancer. RNA editing is introduced by ADAR or APOBEC enzymes, leading to specific nucleotide changes, respectively. The interplays between RNA editing and miRNAs may play important roles in cancer. This graphical abstract shows four major mechanisms through which miRNAs interact with RNA editing to confer a functional impact on tumor development. (shrink)

ObjectiveLeveraging an integrative multimodal MRI paradigm to elaborate on the hippocampus-derived structural and functional changes in children and adolescents with juvenile idiopathic arthritis and to explore potential correlations within the “joint-inflammation-brain” axis during the period of central neural system development.MethodsTwenty-one patients with JIA all completed the multimodal MRI scanning, laboratory tests, and neuropsychological assessments; meanwhile, 23 matched controls were recruited. We then harnessed the spherical harmonics with a point distribution model and the ROI-to-voxel functional connectivity to measure the hippocampal shape (...) and hippocampo-cortical FC patterns. Correlation analysis was performed to explore the potential links in neuroimaging features with disease-related indices.ResultsCompared to controls, JIA patients only presented an atrophic tendency in the posterior part of the bilateral hippocampus. The hippocampo-cortical FC revealed the between-group divergences mainly located at the pain matrix, striatum, and temporal lobe. Remarkably, the enhanced FC between the right hippocampus and postcentral cortex is positively correlated with the disability index, while the weakened FC of right anterior hippocampus with right insula and that of left posterior hippocampus with left superior temporal gyrus was inversely related to the erythrocyte sedimentation rate and anxiety status, separately.ConclusionAs with macroscopic damages, the altered functional-connectome patterns of the hippocampus in JIA patients might be more sensitive to detect the early neuropathological changes. Moreover, the functional disturbances were demonstrated associated with the physical disability, inflammation, and emotional status. These findings may enlighten us on the underlying neuropathological mechanism of CNS comorbidities in JIA. (shrink)

As teams of people increasingly incorporate robot members, it is essential to consider how a robot's actions may influence the team's social dynamics and interactions. In this work, we investigated the effects of verbal support from a robot on human team members' interactions related to psychological safety and inclusion. We conducted a between-subjects experiment where the robot team member either gave verbal support or did not give verbal support to the human team members of a human-robot team comprised of 2 (...) human ingroup members, 1 human outgroup member, and 1 robot. We found that targeted support from the robot had a positive effect on outgroup members, who increased their verbal participation after receiving targeted support from the robot. When comparing groups that did and did not have verbal support from the robot, we found that outgroup members received fewer verbal backchannels from ingroup members if their group had robot verbal support. These results suggest that verbal support from a robot may have some direct benefits to outgroup members but may also reduce the obligation ingroup members feel to support the verbal contributions of outgroup members. (shrink)

In this paper, the fixed-time practical bipartite tracking problem for the networked robotic systems with parametric uncertainties, input disturbances, and directed signed graphs is investigated. A new fixed-time estimator-based control algorithm for the NRSs is presented to address the abovementioned problem. By applying a sliding surface and the time base generator approach, a new stability analysis method is proposed to achieve the fixed-time practical bipartite tracking for the NRSs. We also derive the upper bound of the convergence time for employing (...) the presented control algorithm to solve the practical bipartite tracking problem and further demonstrate that the convergence time is independent of the initial value. Finally, the simulation examples are given to verify the effectiveness of the presented algorithms. (shrink)

This book contains an introduction to symbolic logic and a thorough discussion of mechanical theorem proving and its applications. The book consists of three major parts. Chapters 2 and 3 constitute an introduction to symbolic logic. Chapters 4–9 introduce several techniques in mechanical theorem proving, and Chapters 10 an 11 show how theorem proving can be applied to various areas such as question answering, problem solving, program analysis, and program synthesis.

『그래도 희망의 역사』. 이 책은 인간과 사회 그리고 세계를 바로 보기 위해 두 가지를 준거하고 있는데 사람과 사람 개인과 국가, 국가와 국가, 인간과 자연 등이 맺는 상호 '관계'이다. 다른 하나는 한사회와 세계가 사회와 세계가 장기 지속적으로 변화하는 과정에 주목하였다. 새로운 이론 틀을 만들어 보려고 시도하는 대신 역사 사실들을 예로 들어 독자 스스로 역사를 생각해 보도록 하였다.

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)

The paper examines the role of organizational commercial slack (OCS) in mediating the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and the effectiveness of knowledge transfer (KT) in universities. The paper identifies two types of commercial slack in the university setting: financial and promotional. Four research hypotheses are proposed. Pooled data, that is, a combination of a questionnaire survey of 110 Taiwanese universities with a data set of university KT effectiveness from the Ministry of Education, Taiwan, are collected to test the aforementioned (...) research hypotheses. The empirical results indicate that the EO of a university enables the university to provide appropriate OCS. Furthermore, the commercial slack of a university positively mediates the relationship between EO and KT effectiveness. The paper concludes that developing EO and OCS are crucial for improving the KT effectiveness of a university. Moreover, some managerial and policy implications for promoting EO and OCS in universities are suggested. (shrink)

Background and aimDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, an Internet-Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program was delivered and may be better than an in-person approach. Our study evaluated the effects of iMBSR intervention on mental health, self-efficacy, and body image in women with breast cancer in Taiwan.Materials and methodsSixty-seven women with breast cancer were allocated to a 6-week iMBSR program or a waitlist control group, without heterogeneity between group characteristics. Patients from both groups were measured at baseline and postintervention using three scales: Depression, Anxiety, (...) and Stress Scale, General self-efficacy scale, and Body Image Scale. Descriptive dataset analysis, paired t-test, and Student’s t-test were used to evaluate the data.ResultsAlthough iMBSR did not significantly improve depression and stress between groups, iMBSR could improve anxiety with medium effect sizes. Significant benefits were found for body image and self-efficacy, with large effect sizes.ConclusionOur preliminary study supports iMBSR as a program that can improve mental health, body image, and self-efficacy in women with breast cancer. During the COVID-19 pandemic, medical professionals can use Internet-based clinical health education. (shrink)

Retailers like to use different colors to present the sale price and original price when they are presenting a promotion price. How does the inconsistent color presentation of the prices influence consumers’ purchase likelihood? The extant research does not consider this question. This article will address this question. Drawing on incongruence theory and the persuasion knowledge model, this article proposes that when the color of the sale price is inconsistent with that of the original price, consumers show less preference for (...) the sale price. The reason is that consumers perceive the price as being less trustworthy, which leads to a lower purchase likelihood. Furthermore, this effect is affected by the brand awareness of products. Specifically, when products are less-known brands, the inconsistent colors of the sale price and original price will lead to a lower purchase likelihood. In contrast, when products are well-known brands, the inconsistent colors of the sale price and original price will lead to a high purchase likelihood. In this article, four studies are used to verify these hypotheses, and implications of theory and practice of the present research are discussed. (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)

We have lost one of the giants of the twentieth century physics when Yoichiro Nambu passed away in July, 2015, at the age of 94. Today's Standard Model, though still incomplete in many respects, is the culmination of the most successful theory of the Universe to date, and it is built upon foundations provided by discoveries made by Nambu in the 1960s: the mechanism of spontaneously broken symmetry in Nature (with G Jona-Lasinio) and the hidden new SU(3) symmetry of quarks (...) and gluons (with M-Y Han). In this volume honoring Nambu's memory, World Scientific Publishing presents a unique collection of papers written by his former colleagues, collaborating researchers and former students and associates, not only citing Nambu's great contributions in physics but also many personal and private reminiscences, some never told before. This book is a volume for all who benefited not only from Nambu's contributions toward understanding the Universe but also his warm and kind persona. It is a great addition to the history of contemporary physics. (shrink)

According to the dual-system theories, the decisions in an ultimatum game are governed by the automatic System 1 and the controlled System 2. The former drives the preference for fairness, whereas the latter drives the self-interest motive. However, the association between the contributions of the two systems in UG and the cognitive process needs more direct evidence. In the present study, we used the process dissociation procedure to estimate the contributions of the two systems and recorded participants eye movements to (...) examine the cognitive processes underlying UG decisions. Results showed that the estimated contributions of the two systems are uncorrelated and that they demonstrate a dissociated pattern of associations with third variables, such as reaction time and mean fixation duration. Furthermore, the relative time advantage and the transitions between the two payoffs can predict the final UG decisions. Our findings provide evidence for the independent contributions of preference for fairness and self-interest maximizing inclinations to UG and shed light on the underlying processes. (shrink)

Previous research has mostly focused on Internet use behaviors, such as usage time of the Internet or social media after individuals experienced offline social exclusion. However, the extant literature has ignored online response behaviors, such as online review responses to social exclusion. To address this gap, drawing on self-protection and self-serving bias, we proposed three hypotheses that examine the effect of offline social exclusion on online reviews, which are verified by two studies using different simulating scenarios with 464 participants. The (...) results show that when individuals are socially excluded offline, regardless of where the exclusion comes from, they will be more likely to give negative online reviews. In addition, brand awareness moderates the effect of offline social exclusion on online reviews. Specifically, if the brand is less known, compared with social inclusion, offline social exclusion will lead individuals to give more negative online reviews; conversely, for well-known brands, no significant difference exists in the online reviews between social exclusion and inclusion. (shrink)