Kornélia Lazányi

Investing in social support — Robots as perfect partners?

While social embeddedness is vital for humans, not only from a psychological, but also on a somato-physiological level, - and hence has been excessively researched - it is very hard to define, what is needed to dispel the feeling of loneliness. The present paper endeavours to present the preliminary results of a research on how various forms of social support are perceived among young adults from different social backgrounds. The aim is to discover, whether an artificial being, a robot could be a (perfect) partner, and what would be needed for it to happen. In order to do so, a questionnaire has been created and disseminated; in the first phase among university students. The results might not be generalizable for the whole population, but are intriguing and spotlight some thought-provoking correlations.

Dispositional trust — Do we trust autonomous cars?

The 21st century is the age of automatization. While before the millennium day-to-day applications were semi-autonomous since they necessitated human intervention in achieving their goals, now we are living in a society that expects trustworthy autonomous systems in the industrial and business life as well as in their private life that can attain goals independently without any human intervention [1]. The automatons might be on the verge of completion, but are the people ready for them, or will they hesitate to use them because of lack of trust? Present article endeavours the tackle the issue of trust in automatic systems on the basis of a primary research on attitudes toward (semi) automated vehicles.

Stressed Out by the Information and Communication Technologies of the 21 st Century

Human-computer relation and interaction have been areas of significant interest in the last decades. While computers are supposed to increase the physical, cognitive and communication capacities of their users their perception is still multifarious. For most of the users computers are either godsend helps that aid humans with difficult tasks, or mythical objects, which are to be obeyed and complied with. For the members of the latter group computers are a massive source of stress - technostress - in their daily life. Present paper, through the theories of stress, endeavours to search for the reasons of such attitude, and potential ways of amending or modulating it.

Reflections on the 11th International Conference on Human Resource Development Research and Practice across Europe, Pécs, Hungary: looking through the lens of global mobility

This article presents a review of the 11th International Conference on Human Resource Development Research and Practice across Europe through the lens of global mobility. The conference was held in Pécs, Hungary in June, 2010 and the four authors who participated in the conference present their own narratives as agents of global mobility, examine the theme of global mobility in the various aspects of the conference, and conclude with reflections on the factors that supported the learning environment at the conference.