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04 May ' 11:51
Friday, May 4, 2012
Grease
Does it matter who pays for bond ratings? Historical evidence
John (Xuefeng) Jiang, Mary Harris Stanford & Yuan Xie Journal of Financial Economics
We test whether Standard and Poor's (S&P) assigns higher bond ratings after it switches from investor-pay to issuer-pay fees in 1974. Using Moody's rating for the same bond as a benchmark, we find that when S&P charges investors and Moody's charges issuers, S&P's ratings are lower than Moody's. Once S&P adopts issuer-pay, its ratings increase and no longer differ from Moody's. More importantly, S&P only assigns higher ratings for bonds that are subject to greater conflicts of interest, measured by higher expected rating fees or lower credit quality. These findings suggest that the issuer-pay model leads to higher ratings.
A Field Experiment on Legislators' Home Styles: Service versus Policy
Daniel Butler, Christopher Karpowitz & Jeremy Pope Journal of Politics, April 2012, Pages 474-486
We conducted a field experiment involving roughly 1,000 letters sent by actual individuals to nearly 500 different legislative offices in order to test whether legislative offices prioritize service over policy in their home style. We find strong evidence that both state and federal legislative offices are more responsive to service requests than they are to policy requests. This pattern is consistent with the desire of legislators to gain leeway with their constituents in order to pursue their own policy goals. We also find that at the federal level Democrats prioritize service over policy more than Republicans and at the state level legislators who won by larger margins are more likely to prioritize service over policy. Finally, our results suggest that the decision to prioritize service occurs in how the office is structured. Among other things this suggests that legislators may be microtargeting less than is often supposed.
David Steinberg & Victor ShihComparative Political Studies
Why do countries keep their exchange rates weak and undervalued? This article argues that domestic politics is more important than systemic factors, but existing domestic political explanations do not fully explain how interest group preferences and political institutions influence exchange rate policy. The authors argue that tradable industries do not always demand an undervalued exchange rate, but do so only when they are unable to receive other compensatory policies. In addition, interest groups have a larger impact on exchange rate policy in nondemocratic regimes than is often recognized: Autocrats select exchange rate policies that correspond to the preferences of the most powerful interest groups because lobby groups have access to the political process and leaders are sensitive to their preferences. A case study of exchange rate policy in China supports these arguments. The major decisions to maintain an undervalued exchange rate in China were taken in response to demands for undervaluation from tradable industries. Second, the case study shows that exporters' preferences for undervaluation ebb and flow with the policy mix: Tradable firms lobbied for an undervalued exchange rate when no other compensatory policies were implemented, but they did not insist on undervaluation in periods when they benefited from other state policies. The authors conclude that China keeps its exchange rate undervalued because the interest groups that support undervaluation are more powerful than those that oppose undervaluation. These findings indicate that interest groups influence exchange rate policy in authoritarian regimes, but their preferences for undervalued exchange rates are quite malleable.
Individual political contributions and firm performance
Alexei Ovtchinnikov & Eva PantaleoniJournal of Financial Economics
We present evidence that individuals make political contributions strategically by targeting politicians with power to affect their economic well-being. Individuals in Congressional districts with greater industry clustering choose to support politicians with jurisdiction over the industry. Importantly, individual political contributions are associated with improvements in operating performance of firms in industry clusters. The relation between contributions and firm performance is strongest for poorly performing firms, firms closer to financial distress, and for contributions in close elections. The results imply that individual political contributions are valuable to firms, especially during bad economic times.
The Distortion Gap: Policymaking under Federalism and Interest Group Capture
Ryan Moore & Christopher GiovinazzoPublius, Spring 2012, Pages 189-210
Which should be preferred in a federal system, state- or national-level policymaking? Though theory suggests that more voters are satisfied by local control, we identify new conditions under which national policymaking is preferred based solely on the distorting influence of interest groups. Even when interest groups capture state policymaking at the same rate as states' national representatives, a "distortion gap" exists between the two regimes. We find that national policymaking provides more aggregate welfare when voters widely disagree with moderately prevalent strong interest groups, refining Madison's prescription for national policymaking to counter local factions. We show that other justifications for national policymaking (such as avoiding spillovers and overcoming interest groups' easier capture of state than national politics) are not necessary to prefer national policies.
What makes a critic tick? Connected authors and the determinants of book reviews
Loretti Dobrescu, Michael Luca & Alberto Motta Harvard Working Paper, March 2012
This paper investigates the determinants of expert reviews in the book industry. Reviews are determined not only by the quality of the product, but also by the incentives of the media outlet providing the review. For example, a media outlet may have the incentive to provide favorable coverage to certain authors or to slant reviews toward the horizontal preferences of certain readers. Empirically, we find that an author's connection to the media outlet is related to the outcome of the review decision. When a book's author also writes for a media outlet, that outlet is 25% more likely to review the book relative to other media outlets, and the resulting ratings are roughly 5% higher. Prima facie, it is unclear whether media outlets are favoring their own authors because these are the authors that their readers prefer or simply because they are trying to collude. We provide a test to distinguish between these two potential mechanisms, and present evidence that this is because of tastes rather than collusion -- the effect of connections is present both for authors who began writing for a media outlet before and after the book release. We then investigate other determinants of expert reviews. Relative to consumer reviews, we find that professional critics are less favorable to first time authors and more favorable to authors who have garnered other attention in the press (as measured by number of media mentions outside of the review) and who have won book prizes.
Alan Freed still casts a long shadow: The persistence of payola and the ambiguous value of music
Charles FairchildMedia, Culture & Society, April 2012, Pages 328-342
Despite the enormous changes in the music industry in recent years, some things have persisted. Payola, the exchange of money or promotional consideration for radio airplay, has persisted if not increased over the past decade in the United States. This is due to the corresponding persistence of a series of contradictory social relationships between broadcasters, their sponsors and the audiences they seek to construct and maintain through the targeted deployment of music. I show here that payola, and its more legitimate cousin deregulation, are forms of ‘inter-elite communication' designed to make the market in music more manageable and stable.
The Iceberg Theory of Campaign Contributions: Political Threats and Interest Group Behavior
Marcos Chamon & Ethan KaplanAmerican Economic Journal: Economic Policy
We present a model of campaign contributions where special interest groups condition contributions on the receiving candidate's support and also her opponent's. This allows interest groups to obtain support contributions as well as from threats of contributing. Out-of-equilibrium contributions help explain the missing money puzzle. Our framework contradicts standard models in predicting that interest groups give to only one side of a race. We also predict that special interest groups will mainly target lop-sided winners whereas general interest groups will contribute mainly to candidates in close races. We verify these predictions in FEC data for U.S. House Elections from 1984-1990.
Yan Leung Cheung, Raghavendra Rau & Aris Stouraitis
We analyze a hand-collected sample of 166 prominent bribery cases, involving 107 publicly listed firms from 20 stock markets that have been reported to have bribed government officials in 52 countries worldwide during 1971-2007. We focus on the initial date of award of the contract for which the bribe was paid (rather than of the revelation of the bribery). Our data enable us to describe in detail the mechanisms through which bribes affect firm value. We find that firm performance, the rank of the politicians bribed, as well as bribe-paying and bribe-taking country characteristics affect the magnitude of the bribes and the benefits that firms derive from them.
Nadia Vanteeva & Charles HicksonComparative Economic Studies, March 2012, Pages 173-201
Using firm-level information obtained from the Russian Trading System stock exchange from 1998 through 2006, we estimate growth performance of the Russian corporate sector. We find consistently improving growth, and note that higher growth performance is correlated with greater partial state re-acquisition and state corporate governance presence. We argue that the latter served, not only to safeguard against misappropriation of firm assets and government subsidies, but also to discourage managers from opting for shorter than optimal investment durations. Thus state corporate-governance strategy may serve as a second best policy to a more developed property rights system.
Who bribes? Evidence from the United Nations' Oil-for-Food program
Yujin Jeong & Robert WeinerStrategic Management Journal
How do managers react in an environment where bribery is likely to bring high rewards, but also presents high risks? We examine the supply side (firms' illicit payments) of bribery in a global setting using the United Nations' (UN) Oil-for-Food Program, part of UN sanctions on Iraq. Some companies helped Iraq circumvent UN sanctions through bribe payments in the form of illicit surcharges. Our transaction-level analysis of factors affecting bribe payments draws on the economic theory of crime, agency theory, and home country institutions. Results suggest that firms pay larger bribes when there are stronger financial and managerial incentives, but pay less when their home-countries have implemented the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention. We find little relationship between a widely used country-level corruption perception index and firms' actual bribery.
Mediated Density: The Indirect Relationship between U.S. State Public Policy and PACs
Jennifer Benz et al., December 2011, Pages 440-459
How does the demand for lobbying reflected by government policy activity influence the use of lobbying strategies and tactics? The authors examine this question by assessing how the complexity of the policy space affects the political action committee (PAC) system. They hypothesize that the complexity of the policy space indirectly affects the size and activity of the PAC system through its direct effect on interest organization density. The authors test this hypothesis within the health sector using a unique data set that connects individual interest organizations registered to lobby U.S. state legislatures with active PACs in the state. It appears that social, economic, and political measures of policy space complexity influence the size of the lobbying community, which in turn influences the size and activity of the PAC community.
Sweetening the Deal? Political Connections and Sugar Mills in India
Sandip Sukhtankar
Political control of firms is prevalent across the world. Evidence suggests that firms profit from political connections, and politicians derive benefit from control over firms. This paper investigates an alternative mechanism through which politicians may benefit electorally from connected firms, examining sugar mills in India. I find evidence of embezzlement in politically controlled mills during election years, reflected in lower prices paid to farmers for cane. This result complements the literature on political cycles by demonstrating how campaign funds are raised rather than used. Politicians may recompense farmers upon getting elected, possibly explaining how they can get away with pilferage.
Lobbying Coalitions and Government Policy Change: An Analysis of Federal Agency Rulemaking
David Nelson & Susan Webb YackeeJournal of Politics, April 2012, Pages 339-353
Coalition lobbying is one of the most frequently employed influence tactics used by interest groups today. Yet, surprisingly, the existing literature measuring its policy effects finds either no relationship or a negative association between coalition lobbying and policy change. We theorize the conditions under which coalition lobbying will influence policy and then test for its policy effects. We expect greater influence when there is consensus across the messages sent from coalitions and when coalitions are larger and mobilize new participants. Using a multilevel model, we assess the argument with survey data from lobbying entities and a content analysis of regulations promulgated by seven U.S. federal agencies. In contrast to the existing literature measuring policy effects, we find evidence that coalition participants hold important influence during regulatory policymaking. We also demonstrate that both consensus and coalition makeup are critical factors for policy change. These findings suggest that groups employing coalition lobbying - under certain conditions - can, and do, affect the content of government policy outputs.
Claudine Desrieux, Eshien Chong & Stéphane Saussier
French municipalities often contract out the provision of local public services to private companies, and regularly choose the same private operator for a range of different services. We develop a model of relational contracts that shows how this strategy may lead to better performance at lower cost for public authorities. We test the implication of our model using an original database of the contractual choices made by 5000 French local public authorities in the years 2001, 2004 and 2008.
School choice with Chinese characteristics
Xiaoxin WuComparative Education
This paper explores the major characteristics of school choice in the Chinese context. It highlights the involvement of cultural and economic capital, such as choice fees, donations, prize-winning certificates and awards in gaining school admission, as well as the use of social capital in the form of guanxi. The requirement for these resources in order to be successful in the positional competition for admission to key schools has greatly advantaged children from middle class families. Schools and local governments cash in on school choice fever in order to obtain significant economic returns. The current school choice process creates winners among some of the parties involved: school places for selected students, and additional funds for schools and local governments. However, the practice exacerbates the educational inequality that already exists in society.
Between Party, Parents and Peers: The quandaries of two young Chinese Party members in Beijing
Susanne BregnbaekThird World Quarterly, April 2012, Pages 735-750
This article explores the lived contradictions entailed in being a young member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) today. The focus is on how political and existential issues intersect. It explores party membership as a strategy for personal mobility among Beijing elite university students by providing an ethnographic account of the quandaries of two young CCP members. Even though one student is of rural origin and the other has an urban elite background, in both cases party membership has been pursued as a strategy for opening paths to the future and tied to a quest for self-development rather than a matter of wishing to make sacrifices for the country. The article focuses on how the two students' efforts play out differently. At the same time it is argued that a sense of moral and existential ambiguity goes hand in hand with both of their party membership strategies, leading to an experience of division.
Bureaucratic Effectiveness and Influence in the Legislature
Jill Nicholson-Crotty & Susan MillerJournal of Public Administration Research and Theory, April 2012, Pages 347-371
An extensive literature explores the correlates of bureaucratic influence in the implementation of public policy. Considerably less work, however, has investigated the conditions under which bureaucratic actors influence legislative outcomes. In this article, we develop the argument that effectiveness should be a key determinant of bureaucratic influence in the legislative process and identify a set of institutional characteristics that may facilitate or constrain this relationship. We test these expectations in an analysis of legislator perceptions of bureaucratic influence over legislative outcomes in the 50 US states. The results suggest that the impact of bureaucratic effectiveness on the influence of the bureaucracy over legislative outcomes is greater in states with legislative term limits, united governments, and fragmented executive branches.
Form of Government Still Matters: Fostering Innovation in U.S. Municipal Governments
Kimberly Nelson & James SvaraAmerican Review of Public Administration, May 2012, Pages 257-281
Using data on the adoption of e-government, reinventing government, and strategic practices, and the Nelson and Svara (2010) typology of municipal government form, the authors investigate the characteristics of municipal governments that are related to the implementation of innovative practices. The authors find that higher innovation rates are associated with council-manager governments - both with and without an elected mayor, higher population, greater growth, lower unemployment, sunbelt location, and higher population density. Controlling for all other variables, form of government (and variations within form) account for the greatest explanation of the adoption of innovative practices in municipalities. The authors conclude that form of government remains an important variable to consider when investigating local government management and performance.
Eric WelchInternational Review of Administrative Sciences, March 2012, Pages 93-115
The relationship between transparency and participation of government is not well articulated in the literature. Transparency provides stakeholders with knowledge about the processes, structures and products of government. Participation refers to the quantity, quality and diversity of input of stakeholders into government decision-making. Greater transparency and participation are often considered to operate side by side. However, in the Internet age the change in the magnitude of information disclosure may outweigh the change in the level of participative government. This article uses data from a 2010 national survey of five US local government agencies to test hypotheses about the relationship between transparency and participation and the factors that affect them. Findings show that participation is positively associated with transparency, but transparency does not lead to participation. In addition, organizations that are under stronger influence from external stakeholders report higher levels of participation but in some cases higher levels of external influence dampen transparency.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Profound
Analytic Thinking Promotes Religious Disbelief
Will Gervais & Ara NorenzayanScience, 27 April 2012, Pages 493-496
Scientific interest in the cognitive underpinnings of religious belief has grown in recent years. However, to date, little experimental research has focused on the cognitive processes that may promote religious disbelief. The present studies apply a dual-process model of cognitive processing to this problem, testing the hypothesis that analytic processing promotes religious disbelief. Individual differences in the tendency to analytically override initially flawed intuitions in reasoning were associated with increased religious disbelief. Four additional experiments provided evidence of causation, as subtle manipulations known to trigger analytic processing also encouraged religious disbelief. Combined, these studies indicate that analytic processing is one factor (presumably among several) that promotes religious disbelief. Although these findings do not speak directly to conversations about the inherent rationality, value, or truth of religious beliefs, they illuminate one cognitive factor that may influence such discussions.
Reminders of Secular Authority Reduce Believers' Distrust of Atheists
Will Gervais & Ara Norenzayan
Atheists have long been distrusted, in part because they do not believe that a watchful, judging god monitors their behavior. However, in many parts of the world, secular institutions such as police, judges, and courts are also potent sources of social monitoring that encourage prosocial behavior. Reminders of such secular authority could therefore reduce believers' distrust of atheists. In our experiments, participants who watched a video about police effectiveness (Experiment 1) or were subtly primed with secular-authority concepts (Experiments 2-3) expressed less distrust of atheists than did participants who watched a control video or were not primed, respectively. We tested three distinct alternative explanations for these findings. Compared with control participants, participants primed with secular-authority concepts did not exhibit reduced general prejudice against out-groups (Experiment 1), prejudice reactions associated with functional threats that particular out-groups are perceived to pose (specifically, viewing gays with disgust; Experiment 2), or general distrust of out-groups (Experiment 3). These findings contribute to theory regarding both the psychological bases of prejudices and the psychological functions served by gods and governments.
Michael McCullough et al.
Men are typically stronger, riskier, "showier," and more impulsive than women. According to sexual selection theory, such behaviors may have enhanced reproductive fitness for ancestral human males. However, such behaviors are facultative, and the mechanisms that cause them respond to social and environmental cues that indicate whether outlays of strength, risk-taking, showing off, or impulsivity are likely to lead to payoffs in any given instance. Recent research based on the Reproductive Religiosity Model suggests that, in contemporary Western societies, religious beliefs and institutions are differentially espoused and promulgated by restricted sexual strategists (whose reproductive strategies focus on high fertility, monogamy, and high parental care) to limit the exercise of unrestricted sexuality, which threatens the viability of restricted sexual strategies (e.g., by reducing paternity certainty and male parental investment). On this basis, we hypothesized that experimental manipulations of religious cognition would reduce men's impulsivity and motivation to demonstrate their physical prowess. Supporting this hypothesis, three experiments revealed that priming participants with religious concepts (i.e., participants wrote essays about religion, read an essay supporting the existence of an afterlife, or were implicitly exposed to religious words) reduced men's (but not women's) impulsivity with money and their physical endurance on a hand grip task. The primes affected men's behaviors irrespectively of men's scores on a self-report measure of religious commitment.
Jochen Gebauer, Delroy Paulhus & Wiebke Neberich
How are the Big Two personality dimensions of agency (e.g., competence, uniqueness, ambition) and communion (e.g., warmth, relatedness, morality) related to religiosity? A standard view assumes that communion encourages religiosity, whereas agency is independent of religiosity. Our model is more nuanced, taking into account the Big Two's motivational base as well as culture: Because communal individuals seek assimilation with their ambient culture, they should be most religious in religious cultures and least religious in nonreligious cultures. Conversely, because agentic individuals seek differentiation from their ambient culture, they should be most religious in nonreligious cultures and least religious in religious cultures. Data from 187,957 individuals across 11 cultures supported this model. Thus, direct relations between the Big Two and religiosity are not culturally universal. Instead, communal individuals are religious conformists, whereas agentic individuals are religious contrarians. In this sense, the patterns are culturally universal.
A monetary valuation of individual religious behaviour: The case of prayer
Timothy Tyler Brown, Spring 2012, Pages 2031-2037
The majority of the US population is religious. The value of a fundamental religious behaviour, prayer, is determined using the well-being valuation method. Theoretically appropriate Instrumental Variables (IV) are used to avoid bias in estimating the effects of household income and the frequency of prayer on well-being. The marginal value of an additional weekly prayer session for individuals already at the national mean is estimated to be $6550 per annum (2004 dollars). Praying at the frequency of the national mean of 8.1 prayer sessions weekly is valued at $53 055 (2004 dollars) per annum. This is larger than the median household income in the US in 2004: $44 684. This suggests that the perception of communion with God is highly valued by religious individuals.
David Barker & David BearcePolitical Research Quarterly
The authors examine U.S. public attitudes regarding global climate change, addressing the puzzle of why support for governmental action on this front is tepid relative to what existing theories predict. Introducing the theoretical concept of relative sociotropic time horizons, the authors show that believers in Christian end-times theology are less likely to support policies designed to curb global warming than are other Americans. They then provide robustness checks by analyzing other policy attitudes. In so doing, the authors provide empirical evidence to suggest that citizens possessing shorter "shadows of the future" often resist policies trading short-term costs for hypothetical long-term benefits.
Coming into One's Own: John Locke's Theory of Property, God, and Politics
Stanley Brubaker, March 2012, Pages 207-232
In the three centuries since the publication of the Two Treatises, a trail set down by Locke, although scarcely concealed, has gone unremarked - as has its final destination. If we miss this trail, we miss the work's coherence. If we follow this trail, we find a compelling, even shocking, case against Revelation as an independent source of authority. And we find a theory of property so powerful - certainly in Locke's own estimation - it compels the reconstitution of the relation between children and parents, wives and husbands, servants and masters, persons and polities, and ultimately between man and God. Indeed, Locke's story of the right of property is also the story of man's coming into his own, his coming into his own mind, freed from the irrational claims of Revelation. Thus, Locke's theory of property is nothing less than a story of man's Enlightenment.
Spiritual Liberals and Religious Conservatives
Jacob Hirsh, Megan Walberg & Jordan Peterson
While church and state are officially separated in many Western nations, there is nonetheless a great deal of overlap between the religious beliefs and political orientations of individual citizens. Religious individuals tend to be more conservative, placing a greater emphasis on order, obedience, and tradition. While many religious movements emphasize conservative values, there also exists a tradition of religious thought associated with equality, universalism, and transcendence - values more in line with political liberalism. The current study examined whether these divergent political orientations relate to the distinction between religiousness and spirituality. Political orientation, spirituality, and religiousness were assessed in two large community samples (Study 1: N = 590; Study 2: N = 703). Although spirituality and religiousness were positively correlated, they displayed divergent associations with political orientation: conservatives tended to be more religious, while liberals tend to be more spiritual. Experimentally inducing spiritual experiences similarly resulted in more liberal political attitudes.
Muslim Integration into Western Cultures: Between Origins and Destinations
Pippa Norris & Ronald InglehartPolitical Studies, June 2012, Pages 228-251
To what extent do migrants carry their culture with them, and to what extent do they acquire the culture of their new home? The answer not only has important political implications; it also helps us understand the extent to which basic cultural values are enduring or malleable, and whether cultural values are traits of individuals or are attributes of a given society. The first part of this article considers theories about the impact of growing social diversity in Western nations. We classify two categories of society: Origins (defined as Islamic Countries of Origin for Muslim migrants, including twenty nations with plurality Muslim populations) and Destinations (defined as Western Countries of Destination for Muslim migrants, including 22 OECD member states with Protestant or Roman Catholic majority populations). Using this framework, we demonstrate that, on average, the basic social values of Muslim migrants fall roughly midway between those prevailing in their country of origin and their country of destination. We conclude that Muslim migrants do not move to Western countries with rigidly fixed attitudes; instead, they gradually absorb much of the host culture, as assimilation theories suggest.
Belonging, Believing, and Group Behavior: Religiosity and Voting in American Presidential Elections
Lauren Smith & Lee Demetrius WalkerPolitical Research Quarterly
The authors examine the effect of religiosity on intended and recalled voter turnout in presidential elections. They argue that the trade-off between time spent in worship and time spent in political activities, specifically voter turnout, is strongest for mainline Protestants, weaker for Catholics, and nonexistent for evangelical Protestants. Evangelical Protestants increasingly recognize the connection between their religious beliefs and politics, with the result that they have formed a habit of voting. This argument has important implications for American voting behavior literature. Going beyond partisan voting patterns, the findings demonstrate that evangelical Protestants manifest unique patterns as they relate to turnout patterns.
Courting Christians: How Political Candidates Prime Religious Considerations in Campaign Ads
Christopher Weber & Matthew ThorntonJournal of Politics, April 2012, Pages 400-413
Religion occupies a central role in American politics. From being an impetus behind numerous political movements, to shaping how political candidates are considered, scholars and pundits alike have emphasized the role of religion for political behavior and attitudes. Yet, there has been a scarcity of empirical work examining the consequences of religious appeals in campaigns. Drawing on recent work that contends views about religious traditionalism have replaced many interdenominational differences in vote choice and issue attitudes, we argue that religious cues activate religious traditionalism, which subsequently influences how political candidates are considered. In a priming experiment administered to a representative cross-section of adults, we examine whether religious priming occurs. By manipulating the participant's information environment, we also examine whether there are limits to priming. We find strong evidence religious traditionalism is activated when religious cues are embedded in campaign ads, but we find priming effects are reduced when participants are provided information about the candidate. While religious cues have the potential to shape how candidates are evaluated, we argue the consequences of religious cues are dampened among those who learn more about political issues and candidates.
My Brother's Keeper? Compassion Predicts Generosity More Among Less Religious Individuals
Laura Saslow et al.Social Psychological and Personality Science
Past research argues that religious commitments shape individuals' prosocial sentiments, including their generosity and solidarity. But what drives the prosociality of less religious people? Three studies tested the hypothesis that, with fewer religious expectations of prosociality, less religious individuals' levels of compassion will play a larger role in their prosocial tendencies. In Study 1, religiosity moderated the relationship between trait compassion and prosocial behavior such that compassion was more critical to the generosity of less religious people. In Study 2, a compassion induction increased generosity among less religious individuals but not among more religious individuals. In Study 3, state feelings of compassion predicted increased generosity across a variety of economic tasks for less religious individuals but not among more religious individuals. These results suggest that the prosociality of less religious individuals is driven to a greater extent by levels of compassion than is the prosociality of the more religious.
Jacob Cheadle & Philip Schwadel
Longitudinal social network data on adolescents in seven schools are analyzed to reach a new understanding about how the personal and interpersonal social dimensions of adolescent religion intertwine together in small school settings. We primarily address two issues relevant to the sociology of religion and sociology in general: (1) social selection as a source of religious homophily and (2) friend socialization of religion. Analysis results are consistent with Collins' interaction ritual chain theory, which stresses the social dimensions of religion, since network-religion autocorrelations are relatively substantial in magnitude and both selection and socialization mechanisms play key roles in generating them. Results suggest that socialization plays a stronger role than social selection in four of six religious outcomes, and that more religious youth are more cliquish. Implications for our understanding of the social context of religion, religious homophily, and the ways we model religious influence, as well as limitations and considerations for future research, are discussed.
It Takes Two for a Culture War
Guy Ben-Porat & Yariv Feniger
This article examines the tense relations between religious and secular in Israel and the prospects for what has been described by different observers as a "culture war." Specifically, the consequences and implication of the challenges to church-state arrangements by social, economic, and demographic changes, and growing religious-secular tensions are studied. The empirical investigation of these issues relies on a survey (n = 508) of a representative, random sample of the adult Jewish population in Israel. Research findings indicate that the culture war scenario exaggerates the actual state of affairs because secularism in Israel is lacking coherence and commitment and alternatives that circumvent conflict are available. Rather than a culture war between the religious and secular camps in Israel, different battles are taking place, waged in different realms with different constituencies, tactics, strategies, and levels of commitment whose combined outcome is yet to be determined.
The Coexistence of Natural and Supernatural Explanations Across Cultures and Development
Cristine Legare et al., May/June 2012, Pages 779-793
Although often conceptualized in contradictory terms, the common assumption that natural and supernatural explanations are incompatible is psychologically inaccurate. Instead, there is considerable evidence that the same individuals use both natural and supernatural explanations to interpret the very same events and that there are multiple ways in which both kinds of explanations coexist in individual minds. Converging developmental research from diverse cultural contexts in 3 areas of biological thought (i.e., the origin of species, illness, and death) is reviewed to support this claim. Contrary to traditional accounts of cognitive development, new evidence indicates that supernatural explanations often increase rather than decrease with age and supports the proposal that reasoning about supernatural phenomena is an integral and enduring aspect of human cognition.
Predictors of God Concept and God Control After Hurricane Katrina
Jamie Aten et al.Psychology of Religion and Spirituality
This study examined demographic and hurricane-related resource loss predictors on God concepts and God control among Hurricane Katrina survivors (N = 142) from Mississippi Gulf Coast communities approximately five months after the storm. The findings from this study of Katrina survivors suggest that significant loss from natural disasters has an impact on one's conception of and beliefs about God. It was found that increased levels of resource loss predicted a more negative conceptual portrayal of God. Greater object resource loss predicted perceptions of less God control over the outcome of events. Further, it was found that the strongest individual predictor of a God concept that was more negative and in less control of event outcomes was the loss of food and water, suggesting the importance of critical resource loss on how one conceives of God. Overall, the findings suggest that, for many people who self-identify as spiritual and/or religious, spiritual resources may be the one explanatory system that is uniquely capable of helping disaster survivors to understand traumatic events, to have a sense of control of such events, and, in the process, to still maintain a healthy picture of one's self.
Preaching to the Choir? Religious Leaders and American Opinion on Immigration Reform
Tatishe Nteta & Kevin Wallsten
Objective: Do the public declarations of religious leaders concerning immigration influence American public opinion on immigration reform?
Methods: In answering this question, we use the 2004 National Politics Study and employ ordered logistic regression techniques to test hypotheses derived from elite opinion theory.
Results: We find that exposure to elite messages from religious leaders on immigration leads respondents to more strongly support increasing immigration to the United States, allowing immigrants to serve in the military, and allowing immigrants who serve in the military to gain citizenship.
Conclusion: Taken together, these results provide evidence that members of America's largest religious denominations are communicating support for liberal immigration reforms to their parishioners and, more importantly, that these signals subsequently influence the preferences of the parishioners exposed to these messages.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Dead or Alive
President Al Gore and the 2003 Iraq War: A Counterfactual Test of Conventional "W"isdom
Frank HarveyCanadian Journal of Political Science, March 2012, Pages 1-32
The almost universally accepted explanation for the Iraq war is very clear and consistent, namely, the US decision to attack Saddam Hussein's regime on March 19, 2003 was a product of the ideological agenda, misguided priorities, intentional deceptions and grand strategies of President George W. Bush and prominent "neoconservatives" and "unilateralists" on his national security team. Notwithstanding the widespread appeal of this version of history, however, the Bush-neocon war thesis (which I have labelled neoconism) remains an unsubstantiated assertion, a "theory" without theoretical content or historical context, a position lacking perspective and a seriously underdeveloped argument absent a clearly articulated logical foundation. Neoconism is, in essence, a popular historical account that overlooks a substantial collection of historical facts and relevant causal mechanisms that, when combined, represent a serious challenge to the core premises of accepted wisdom. This article corrects these errors, in part, by providing a much stronger account of events and strategies that pushed the US-UK coalition closer to war. The analysis is based on both factual and counterfactual evidence, combines causal mechanisms derived from multiple levels of analysis and ultimately confirms the role of path dependence and momentum as a much stronger explanation for the sequence of decisions that led to war.
COIN and civilian collaterals: Patterns of violence in Afghanistan, 2004-2009
Lisa HultmanSmall Wars & Insurgencies, Spring 2012, Pages 245-263
Theories and counterinsurgency doctrines emphasize the importance of avoiding civilian casualties. Yet, many operations produce large numbers of so-called collateral civilian deaths. I present two competing arguments for when collateral deaths occur. One the one hand, they could be the unintentional result of offensives when trying to maintain force protection; on the other hand, they could be the result of a deliberate choice of relying on indiscriminate violence when pressured on the battlefield. I use new data on violence in Afghanistan 2004-2009, disaggregated by province and month, to examine what type of battlefield dynamics are more likely to produce high levels of collateral civilian casualties. The results show that civilian casualties are particularly high after counterinsurgency forces suffer losses in combat.
Can International Election Monitoring Harm Governance?
Alberto Simpser & Daniela DonnoJournal of Politics, April 2012, Pages 501-513
The monitoring of elections by international groups has become widespread. But can it have unintended negative consequences for governance? We argue that high-quality election monitoring, by preventing certain forms of manipulation such as stuffing ballot boxes, can unwittingly induce incumbents to resort to tactics of election manipulation that are more damaging to domestic institutions, governance, and freedoms. These tactics include rigging courts and administrative bodies and repressing the media. We use an original-panel dataset of 144 countries in 1990-2007 to test our argument. We find that, on average, high-quality election monitoring has a measurably negative effect on the rule of law, administrative performance, and media freedom. We employ various strategies to guard against endogeneity, including instrumenting for election monitoring.
Stepping Into It: Lessons Learned from Entering the History You're Writing
Jennifer MittelstadtJournal of Policy History, Winter 2012, Pages 135-154
"While social welfare has been thoroughly stigmatized through its racialization and feminization, the military has taken a more opposite trajectory. Defying its recent demographics of disproportionate numbers of nonwhites and record-high numbers of women, the military remains coded as a national institution that is essentially male and white...From a historical perspective, the image of the soldier as deserving - much less extra deserving - has only occasionally been accepted, and it has never dominated discourse about the rights of citizens. If we consider a long history of the United States, the elevation of soldiers as civic paragons may stand as the exception rather than the rule. The legitimacy and honor soldiers and veterans have achieved has been hard fought, entailing rhetorical, ideological, and political work."
The Reciprocal Relationship between Military Conflict and Democracy
Hyung Min Kim & David RousseauDefence and Peace Economics
Does democracy cause peace, or is democracy a consequence of peace? The burgeoning democratic peace literature has provided strong empirical evidence for the claim that democracies are a cause of peace. However, several skeptics of the democratic peace have suggested that the statistical findings are spurious. We test these competing claims using a simultaneous equation model. Using a unique data-set of all international disputes from 1960 to 1988, we find strong support for reciprocal causation. As the democratic peace theorists claim, democracy causes peace even after controlling for military conflict in the system and region. Conversely, peace in the region appears to encourage the development of democratic polities.
Horsemen of the apocalypse? Jihadist strategy and nuclear instability in South Asia
Andrew PhillipsInternational Politics, May 2012, Pages 297-317
Since 9/11, counter-terrorism officials have fretted over the possibility of jihadist terrorists obtaining and deploying a nuclear weapon. Although acknowledging that such anxieties are well grounded, I offer here a reconceptualisation of the jihadist terrorist nuclear threat that focuses alternatively upon the remote but real possibility that jihadist terrorists may seek to advance their goals by trying to provoke an Indo-Pakistani nuclear confrontation. Such a confrontation would serve jihadist goals by aggravating religious polarisation on the sub-continent while dramatically weakening the Pakistani state. The system-destabilising consequences of such a catastrophe would likely also offer the jihadists their best opportunity to revive their faltering movement, which otherwise appears fated to terminal decline. In the light of this assessment, I argue that a higher priority must be accorded towards strengthening Indo-Pakistani crisis stability and advancing regional reconciliation if the risk of a jihadist-provoked nuclear exchange is to be minimised.
Cognitive-Affective Styles Associated With Position on War
Jo Ann AbeJournal of Language and Social Psychology, June 2012, Pages 212-222
This study examined cognitive-affective styles associated with position on the Iraq war by analyzing responses posted on an online discussion forum using a computerized text-analysis program (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count). Overall, the results were consistent with those obtained in narrative-coding studies. The pro-war group was associated with an external focus and a simplistic style of information processing. The anti-war group was associated with an internal focus and high levels of cognitive processing and negative emotion words. The "neither" group scored the highest on cognitive complexity and positive emotion words, and it was also the most balanced in terms of internal and external focus.
Cooking the Books: Strategic Inflation of Casualty Reports by Extremists in the Afghanistan Conflict
Chris Lundry et al.Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, May 2012, Pages 369-381
Islamist extremists in Afghanistan and elsewhere are exaggerating their successes in inflicting casualties on American and other International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) forces. This article quantifies the exaggeration for the month of November 2010, putting the claimed casualty rate at approximately one-half battalion per month. It provides an analysis of how and why this is occurring, and links this extremist strategic communication effort to dominant historical master narratives in the region that may produce sympathy among intended recipients of the messages. The authors argue that these measures undertaken by the extremists can be countered successfully through the use of similar story forms, more timely reporting, use of side-by-side comparisons, and use of similar reporting venues. These steps could challenge the credibility of the Taliban reports, reduce sympathy, and diminish potential recruitment.
J.A. Giesecke et al., April 2012, Pages 583-600
We investigate the regional economic consequences of a hypothetical catastrophic event - attack via radiological dispersal device (RDD) - centered on the downtown Los Angeles area. We distinguish two routes via which such an event might affect regional economic activity: (i) reduction in effective resource supply (the resource loss effect) and (ii) shifts in the perceptions of economic agents (the behavioral effect). The resource loss effect relates to the physical destructiveness of the event, while the behavioral effect relates to changes in fear and risk perception. Both affect the size of the regional economy. RDD detonation causes little capital damage and few casualties, but generates substantial short-run resource loss via business interruption. Changes in fear and risk perception increase the supply cost of resources to the affected region, while simultaneously reducing demand for goods produced in the region. We use results from a nationwide survey, tailored to our RDD scenario, to inform our model values for behavioral effects. Survey results, supplemented by findings from previous research on stigmatized asset values, suggest that in the region affected by the RDD, households may require higher wages, investors may require higher returns, and customers may require price discounts. We show that because behavioral effects may have lingering long-term deleterious impacts on both the supply-cost of resources to a region and willingness to pay for regional output, they can generate changes in regional gross domestic product (GDP) much greater than those generated by resource loss effects. Implications for policies that have the potential to mitigate these effects are discussed.
The Defence-Debt Nexus: Evidence from the High-Income Members Of NATO
Robert AlexanderDefence and Peace Economics
The literature in defence economics has tended to focus on the relationship between defence spending and economic growth. Studies examining the linkage between defence spending and government debt have been relatively rare. Given the recent Global Financial Crisis, originating in the developed economies, and the changed international security picture since 9/11, it is timely to reconsider the defence-debt nexus in the rich economies. This study pays particular attention to developing an empirical strategy which is both soundly based on economic theory concerning the evolution of public debt and which uses econometric methods that are welladapted to the dynamic aspects of the relationship. From the standpoint of economic theory, if a government seeks to minimize the distortionary costs of taxation, then taxation will follow a random walk. Unexpected shocks (war and recession) will cause debt. Other idiosyncratic national-level political considerations that affect the evolution of debt can be factored out by the use of a dynamic panel estimation method. Employing the Arellano-Bond dynamic panel model to the data available from members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and North Atlantic Treaty Organization over the periods 1988-2009 and 1999-2009, this study finds that the defence burden is a statistically significant and economically important determinant of public debt.
Can states buy peace? Social welfare spending and civil conflicts
Zeynep Taydas & Dursun PeksenJournal of Peace Research
This study examines whether the state's ability to provide social welfare services has any major effect on the probability of civil conflict onset. We argue that welfare spending contributes to sustaining peace because the provision of social services reduces grievances by offsetting the effects of poverty and inequality in society. Welfare spending serves as an indication of the commitment of the government to social services and reflects its priorities and dedication to citizens. By enacting welfare policies that improve the living standards of citizens, governments can co-opt the political opposition and decrease the incentives for organizing a rebellion. Utilizing time-series, cross-national data for the 1975-2005 period, the results indicate that as the level of the government investment in welfare policies (i.e. education, health, and social security) increases, the likelihood of civil conflict onset declines significantly, controlling for several other covariates of internal conflict. Additional data analysis shows that general public spending and military expenditures are unlikely to increase or decrease the probability of civil unrest. Overall, these findings suggest that certain types of public spending, such as welfare spending, might have a strong pacifying effect on civil conflict, and therefore the state's welfare efforts are vital for the maintenance of peace.
Resource Curse in Reverse: How Civil Wars Influence Natural Resource Production
Sara McLaughlin Mitchell & Cameron Thies International Interactions, Spring 2012, Pages 218-242
Conflict scholars have argued that natural resources, such as oil, diamonds, and gemstones, may increase the chances for civil wars because rebels can sustain their organizations by looting resources and because certain types of resources, such as oil, create weaker state governments that are less capable of putting down insurgencies. Natural resources like oil also raise the value of capturing the state through war. However, empirical studies typically treat natural resources as exogenous variables, failing to consider the possibility that war alters the production levels of various natural resources. This endogenous relationship may help to explain the inconsistent empirical results linking natural resources and civil war onset. This article examines the two-way relationship between natural resources and civil war, focusing on oil, diamonds, and fisheries. The empirical findings suggest that most of the relationships run in the direction from war to resources, with no significant effects of resources on the onset of civil war. States with civil wars experience lower oil and diamond production, while marine fisheries production recovers in civil war-torn states.
Trade Concentration and Interstate Conflict
Katja Kleinberg, Gregory Robinson & Stewart French Journal of Politics, April 2012, Pages 529-540
Existing studies of the trade-conflict relationship focus primarily on dyadic trade and its implications for the opportunity cost of conflict. Most states maintain economic relations with numerous partners, yet few studies have examined the effects of extradyadic trade on dyadic conflict. In an influential discussion of economic interdependence, Albert Hirschman ([1945] 1980) draws attention to the importance of both direct trade ties and the extent to which a state's total trade is monopolized by any one trading partner. Building on this notion, we present and test a theoretical argument about the conflict-reducing implications of third-party trade. The findings provide support for our prediction that greater concentration of trade outside the dyad is associated with a reduced risk of interstate hostility and violent disputes.
Ideology as a Factor in Deterrence
Peter Vincent PryComparative Strategy, Spring 2012, Pages 111-146
History is replete with examples of deterrence failure and war occurring unexpectedly, taking nations by surprise, because of failure to comprehend an adversary's ideology. The modern world has been shaped by failure to comprehend the ideologically driven aggression of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Soviet communism, and Islamic jihadism. The Soviet "war scare" during NATO's nuclear exercise ABLE ARCHER-83 exemplifies how ideology could cause deterrence failure and even nuclear war. Understanding the ideology of potential adversaries must be part of any informed deterrence strategy. U.S. overconfidence in deterrence theory, which is itself an ideological belief system, could contribute to deterrence failure.
‘Winston has gone mad': Churchill, the British Admiralty, and the Rise of Japanese Naval Power
John MaurerJournal of Strategic Studies
As Chancellor of the Exchequer during the late 1920s, Winston Churchill was at the center of British strategic decision making about how to respond to the naval challenge posed by Japan's rise as a rival sea power. Churchill downplayed the likelihood of war with Japan. The leadership of the Royal Navy disagreed: they saw Japan as a dangerous threat to the security of the British Empire. Examining this dispute between Churchill and the Admiralty highlights the awkward political, economic, and strategic tradeoffs confronting British leaders between the world wars.
Defence Spending and Economic Growth in the EU15
John Paul Dunne & Eftychia NikolaidouDefence and Peace Economics
Over the last 30 years, there has been an impressive amount of empirical work on the defence-growth nexus, using different methodologies, models and econometric techniques and focusing on individual case studies, cross-country studies or panel data studies. Despite the number and the variety of studies, the evidence on the defence-growth relationship is still far from conclusive. Rather surprisingly, very limited work has been published in the relevant literature for the European Union despite the continuous discussions for a Common European Defence Policy that would require an assessment of the economic effects of defence in this region. To fill in the gap in the literature, this paper employs an augmented Solow-Swan model and estimates it both with panel and time series methods to provide empirical evidence on the economic effects of defence spending in the EU15 over the period 1961-2007. Overall, evidence derived from both panel and time series methods is consistent and suggests that military burden does not promote economic growth in this region.
Sparrow Mission: A US Intelligence Failure during World War II
Zoltan PetereczIntelligence and National Security, March/April 2012, Pages 241-260
The article presents an intelligence case gone bad during the Second World War, when the United States decided to drop a three-man OSS group into Hungary. Hungary, a close ally of Germany, after seeing that the war was not going to end with an Axis victory, wished to seek contact with the Western Allies in order to try to find a way out of its precarious situation. The study, based mainly on archival research, shows the evolution of the Sparrow Mission, whose goals are still unclear today. Both the preparations and the timing of the mission seem to indicate that the plan had some influence on the German decision of occupying Hungary in March 1944, and such a German move helped the Normandy landing of the Allies a few months later.
When and how many: The effects of third party joining on casualties and duration in interstate wars
Zachary ShirkeyJournal of Peace Research, March 2012, Pages 321-334
What makes some wars longer and more severe than others is an important question in international relations scholarship. One underexplored answer to this question is the role that third party joiners play in lengthening conflicts, especially those states that intervene militarily after a war's initial stages. This article argues that late joining complicates bargaining by adding new issues to the war and increases uncertainty about the relative balance of forces. Thus, more information will be needed to resolve the bargaining impasse. This means additional fighting and a longer war. This lengthening in turn increases the number of casualties. This is a distinct process from simply having more participants in a war from the outset as those participants would not add uncertainty in the same way that late joiners do since questions about how those participants affect the relative balances of forces would be answered just as quickly as if there were only two participants at the outset. These claims are supported by a non-proportional hazards model regression, a Cox proportional hazards regression, and an ordinary least squares regression using the Correlates of War interstate war dataset.
Military Expenditures and Inequality in the Middle East and North Africa: A Panel Analysis
Hamid AliDefence and Peace Economics
Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries have been characterized by the preponderant role of their military forces in economic matters, as demonstrated by the high levels of military spending and the growing industrial complex. While extensive research examines the relationship between military expenditure and economic growth, little attention has been paid to the effect of military expenditure on economic inequality. Studying inequality in MENA countries provides an opportunity to assess factors that shape the countries' level of economic well-being, which has greater public policy implications in terms of how society allocates its scarce resources among competing needs. This paper examines two important issues. In the first part of the paper, we examine the relationship between military spending and inequality in MENA countries using a panel regression for country-level observations over the period 1987-2005. The empirical results indicate that military spending has a strong and negative effect on inequality. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, in MENA countries a systematic increase in military spending could reduce the level of inequality. In the second part of this paper, we examine the demand for military expenditure; we find that factors such as inequality level and per capita income negatively affect military expenditure.
Inequality and conflict in federations
Christa Deiwiks, Lars-Erik Cederman & Kristian Skrede Gleditsch Journal of Peace Research, March 2012, Pages 289-304
Case study evidence suggests that inequality between regions in federations affects the risk of secessionist conflict. However, the conventional quantitative literature on civil war has found little support for a link between economic inequality and civil war. We argue that this seeming discrepancy in part stems from differences in the conceptualization of inequality and its operationalization, which has focused on individual-level wealth differences. In contrast, we investigate regional-level inequality, which is more readily applicable to understanding possible incentives for internal conflict. We adopt a spatial approach, based on new geo-coded data on administrative units in 31 federal states between 1991 and 2005, economic wealth, and ethnic settlements, and demonstrate strong evidence that regional inequality affects the risk of secessionist conflict. The results indicate that in highly unequal federations, both relatively developed and underdeveloped regions are indeed more likely to be involved in secessionist conflict than regions close to the country average. In addition, we provide evidence that exclusion from central state power as well as ethnic groups' access to regional institutions are associated with an increased risk for secessionist conflict. The findings on inequality remain robust even when controlling for other confounding factors such as country GDP, population and war history.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
New Kids on the Block
Selection against small males in utero: A test of the Wells hypothesis
R. Catalano et al.Human Reproduction, April 2012, Pages 1202-1208
Background: The argument that women in stressful environments spontaneously abort their least fit fetuses enjoys wide dissemination despite the fact that several of its most intuitive predictions remain untested. The literature includes no tests, for example, of the hypothesis that these mechanisms select against small for gestational age (SGA) males.
Methods: We apply time-series modeling to 4.9 million California male term births to test the hypothesis that the rate of SGA infants in 1096 weekly birth cohorts varies inversely with labor market contraction, a known stressor of contemporary populations.
Results: We find support for the hypothesis that small size becomes less frequent among term male infants when the labor market contracts.
Conclusions: Our findings contribute to the evidence supporting selection in utero. They also suggest that research into the association between maternal stress and adverse birth outcomes should acknowledge the possibility that fetal loss may affect findings and their interpretation. Strengths of our analyses include the large number and size of our birth cohorts and our control for autocorrelation. Weaknesses include that we, like nearly all researchers in the field, have no direct measure of fetal loss.
Why is the Teen Birth Rate in the United States so High and Why Does it Matter?
Melissa Schettini Kearney & Phillip Levine
This paper examines two aspects of teen childbearing in the United States. First, it reviews and synthesizes the evidence on the reasons why teen birth rates are so uniquely high in the United States and especially in some states. Second, it considers why and how it matters. We argue that economists' typical explanations are unable to account for any sizable share of the geographic variation. We describe some recent analysis indicating that the combination of being poor and living in a more unequal (and less mobile) location, like the United States, leads young women to choose early, non-marital childbearing at elevated rates, potentially because of their lower expectations of future economic success. Consistent with this view, the most rigorous studies on the topic find that teen childbearing has very little, if any, direct negative economic consequence. If it is explained by the low economic trajectory that some young women face, then it makes sense that having a child as a teen would not be an additional cause of poor economic outcomes. These findings lead us to conclude that the high rate of teen childbearing in the United States matters mostly because it is a marker of larger, underlying social problems.
World War II, Missing Men, and Out-Of-Wedlock Childbearing
Dirk Bethmann & Michael KvasnickaEconomic Journal
Drawing upon county-level census data for the German state of Bavaria in 1939 and 1946, we use World War II as a natural experiment to study the effects of changes in the adult sex ratio on out- of-wedlock fertility. Our findings show that war-induced shortfalls of men significantly increased the nonmarital fertility ratio in the middle of the century. Furthermore, we find that the regional magnitude of this effect varies with the county-level share of prisoners of war in an inverse manner. Unlike military casualties and soldiers missing in action, prisoners of war had a sizeable positive probability of returning home from the war. It appears therefore that both current marriage market conditions and foreseeable improvements in the future marriage market prospects of women influenced fertility behavior in the immediate aftermath of World War II.
Facial attractiveness and fertility in populations with low levels of modern birth control
Antonio Silva et al.
Evolutionary models of human mate choice generally assume that physical attractiveness has evolved through sexual selection, i.e., it has been associated with higher mating opportunities and subsequent reproductive success across our evolutionary history. Here we investigate whether facial attractiveness is related to fertility in order to understand the extent to which selection can operate on attractive traits in modern populations. We used data from two populations where the prevalence of modern birth control methods is low and thus unlikely to disconnect mating opportunities from reproductive success: men and women from contemporary rural Senegal and men from the West Point Military Academy in the USA who graduated in 1950. We found that facial attractiveness negatively predicts age-specific reproduction in both sexes in Senegal and is independent from lifetime reproductive success in men from the USA. Overall, the results suggest that facial attractiveness is not under positive selection and raise questions about methodological approaches currently used to assess attractiveness.
Seasonal Distribution of Psychiatric Births in England
Giulio Disanto et al.
There is general consensus that season of birth influences the risk of developing psychiatric conditions later in life. We aimed to investigate whether the risk of schizophrenia (SC), bipolar affective disorder (BAD) and recurrent depressive disorder (RDD) is influenced by month of birth in England to a similar extent as other countries using the largest cohort of English patients collected to date (n=57,971). When cases were compared to the general English population (n=29,183,034) all diseases showed a seasonal distribution of births (SC p=2.48E-05; BAD p=0.019; RDD p=0.015). This data has implications for future strategies of disease prevention.
Gert Stulp et al.American Journal of Human Biology
Objective: In this article we examine the association between female height and reproductive success in a US sample and present a review of previous studies on this association. We also outline possible biological explanations for our findings.
Methods: We used data from a long-term study of 5,326 female Wisconsin high school graduates to examine the association between female height and reproductive success. Twenty-one samples on this association were covered by our literature review.
Results: Shorter women had more children surviving to age 18 than taller women, despite increased child mortality in shorter women. Taller women had a higher age at first birth and age at first marriage and reached a higher social status, but the negative effect of height on reproductive success persisted after controlling for these variables. However, while these effects were quite consistent in Western populations, they were not consistently present in non-Western populations. Our review also indicated that child mortality was almost universally higher among shorter women.
Conclusions: We conclude that shorter women have a higher number of live births but that final reproductive success depends on the positive effect of height on child survival.
Orlando SotomayorEconomics & Human Biology
A natural experiment is employed to analyze the relationship between living standards, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Results show that shocks generated by two powerful tropical storms striking Puerto Rico during the late 1920s and early 1930s had long-term consequences consistent with the fetal origins hypothesis. Individuals in the womb or early infancy in the aftermath of the storms are more likely to report a diagnosis of hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes, and are considerably more likely to have no formal schooling.
Explaining Recent Trends in the U.S. Teen Birth Rate
Melissa Schettini Kearney & Phillip Levine
We investigate possible explanations for the large decline in U.S. teen childbearing that occurred in the twenty years following the 1991 peak. Our review of previous evidence and the results of new analyses presented here leads to the following main set of observations. First, the observed decline in teen childbearing is even more surprising given the increasing share of Hispanic teens, who have higher birth rates. Second, we find that a reduction in sexual activity and an increase in contraceptive use contributed to the decline roughly equally. Third, we are able to identify a statistically discernible impact of declining welfare benefits and expanded access to family planning services through Medicaid, but combined they can only account for 12 percent of the observed decline in teen childbearing between 1991 and 2008. We are unable to find any impact of other policies (including abstinence only or mandatory sex education) or labor market conditions. In the end we conclude that the standard factors which are claimed to be related to the rate at which teens give birth appear to explain little of the recent trend.
Hormonal evidence supports the theory of selection in utero
R.A. Catalano et al.American Journal of Human Biology
Objectives: Antagonists in the debate over whether the maternal stress response during pregnancy damages or culls fetuses have invoked the theory of selection in utero to support opposing positions. We describe how these opposing arguments arise from the same theory and offer a novel test to discriminate between them. Our test, rooted in reports from population endocrinology that human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) signals fetal fitness, contributes not only to the debate over the fetal origins of illness, but also to the more basic literature concerned with whether and how natural selection in utero affects contemporary human populations.
Methods: We linked maternal serum hCG measurements from prenatal screening tests with data from the California Department of Public Health birth registry for the years 2001-2007. We used time series analysis to test the association between the number of live-born male singletons and median hCG concentration among males in monthly gestational cohorts.
Results: Among the 1.56 million gestations in our analysis, we find that median hCG levels among male survivors of monthly conception cohorts rise as the number of male survivors falls.
Conclusions: Elevated median hCG among relatively small male birth cohorts supports the theory of selection in utero and suggests that the maternal stress response culls cohorts in gestation by raising the fitness criterion for survival to birth.
Brennan Peterson et al.Human Reproduction, May 2012, Pages 1375-1382
Background: In the USA, the postponement of childbearing reflects contemporary social norms of delaying marriage, pursing educational goals and securing economic stability prior to attempting conception. Although university students are more likely to delay childbearing, it is unclear to what extent they are aware of age-related fertility decline. The current study is the first of its kind to assess fertility awareness and parenting attitudes of American undergraduate university students.
Methods: Two-hundred forty-six randomly selected undergraduate university students (138 females and 108 males) completed an online self-report survey adapted from the Swedish Fertility Awareness Questionnaire. Students were evenly distributed between the freshman, sophomore, junior and senior classes with a mean age of 20.4 years.
Results: Participants wanted to have their first and last child within the window of a woman's fertility. However, participants demonstrated a lack of fertility awareness by vastly overestimating the age at which women experience declines in fertility, the likelihood of pregnancy following unprotected intercourse and the chances that IVF treatments would be successful in the case of infertility. Nearly 9 in 10 participants want to have children in the future and viewed parenthood as a highly important aspect of their future lives.
Conclusions: Delaying childbearing based on incorrect perceptions of female fertility could lead to involuntary childlessness. Education regarding fertility issues is necessary to help men and women make informed reproductive decisions that are based on accurate information rather than incorrect perceptions.
Piotr Sorokowski, Agnieszka Sorokowska & Dariusz Danel Economics & Human Biology
Many studies have investigated how different variables influence the reproductive success (RS) in the populations of natural birth control. Here, we tested hypotheses about positive relationship between wealth, height and several measures of RS in an indigenous, traditional society from West Papua. The study was conducted among the Yali tribe in a few small, isolated mountain villages. In this tribe, a man's wealth is measured by the number of pigs he possesses. We found that wealth was related to fertility and number of living children, but not to child mortality in both men and women. Additionally, child mortality increased with the number of children in a family. Finally, we did not observe any relationship between height and reproductive success measures or wealth. We provide several possible explanations of our results and also put forward hypothetical background for further studies of indigenous populations.
Prepared social learning about dangerous animals in children
Clark Barrett & James Broesch
Natural selection is likely to have shaped developmental systems for rapid acquisition of knowledge about environmental dangers, including dangerous animals. However, learning about dangerous animals through direct encounters can be costly and potentially fatal. In social species such as humans, the presence of stored information about danger in the minds of conspecifics might favor the evolution of prepared social learning mechanisms that cause children to preferentially attend to and remember culturally transmitted information about danger. Here we use an experimental learning task to show that children from two very different cultures exhibit prepared social learning about dangerous animals: city-dwelling children from Los Angeles, who face relatively little danger from animals, and Shuar children from the Amazon region of Ecuador, to whom dangerous animals pose a much greater threat. Both populations exhibited similar prepared learning effects. Danger information was learned in a single trial without feedback, immediately entered long-term memory, and was recalled with only minor attenuation a week later, while other information presented at the same time (animal names and diets) was immediately forgotten. We discuss the significance of these design features of prepared learning in light of the phylogeny and function of danger learning systems.
Ability transmission, endogenous fertility and educational subsidy
Kazumasa Oguro, Takashi Oshio & Junichiro Takahata , Spring 2012, Pages 2469-2479
In this study, we attempt to investigate how educational subsidy, childcare allowance and family allowance affect economic growth and income distribution on the basis of simulation models which incorporate intergenerational ability transmission and endogenous fertility. The simulation results show that financial support for higher education can both increase economic growth and reduce income inequality, especially if the abilities of parent and child are closely correlated. In contrast with educational subsidy, raising childcare allowance or family allowance has limited impacts on growth and income inequality.
Advancing Maternal Age Is Associated With Increasing Risk for Autism: A Review and Meta-Analysis
Sven Sandin et al.Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, May 2012, Pages 477-486
Objective: We conducted a meta-analysis of epidemiological studies investigating the association between maternal age and autism.
Method: Using recommended guidelines for performing meta-analyses, we systematically selected, and extracted results from, epidemiological scientific studies reported before January 2012. We calculated pooled risk estimates comparing categories of advancing maternal age with and without adjusting for possible confounding factors. We investigated the influence of gender ratio among cases, ratio of infantile autism to autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and median year of diagnosis as effect moderators in mixed-effect meta-regression.
Results: We found 16 epidemiological papers fulfilling the a priori search criteria. The meta-analysis included 25,687 ASD cases and 8,655,576 control subjects. Comparing mothers ≥35 years with mothers 25 to 29 years old, the crude relative risk (RR) for autism in the offspring was 1.52 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.12-1.92). Comparing mothers ≥35 with mothers 25 to 29, the adjusted relative risk (RR) for autism in the offspring was 1.52 (95% CI = 1.12-1.92). For mothers <20 compared with mothers 25 to 29 years old, there was a statistically significant decrease in risk (RR = 0.76; 95% confidence interval = 0.60-0.97). Almost all studies showed a dose-response effect of maternal age on risk of autism. The meta-regression suggested a stronger maternal age effect in the studies with more male offspring and for children diagnosed in later years.
Conclusions: The results of this meta-analysis support an association between advancing maternal age and risk of autism. The RR increased monotonically with increasing maternal age. The association persisted after the effects of paternal age and other potential confounders had been considered, supporting an independent relation between higher maternal age and autism.
Saving Babies: The Contribution of Sheppard-Towner to the Decline in Infant Mortality in the 1920s
Carolyn Moehling & Melissa ThomassonNBER Working Paper, April 2012
From 1922 to 1929, the Sheppard-Towner Act provided matching grants to states to fund maternal and infant care education initiatives. We examine the effects of this public health program on infant mortality. States engaged in different types of activities, allowing us to examine whether different interventions had differential effects on mortality. Interventions that provided one-on-one contact and opportunities for follow-up care, such as home visits by public health nurses, reduced infant deaths more than classes and conferences. Overall, we estimate that Sheppard-Towner activities can account for 9 to 21 percent of the decline in infant mortality over the period.
Ethnic differences in growth in early childhood: An investigation of two potential mechanisms
Amanda Sacker & Yvonne Kelly, April 2012, Pages 197-203
Background: There are clear ethnic differences in birthweight. This study examines whether and how these disparities are replicated in a later marker of physical development, height at 5 years.
Methods: Observational data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study, constructed to over-represent ethnic minority (Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Black African, Black Caribbean and Other) children.
Results: Mean birthweight of ethnic minority children was lower than that of the ethnic majority (3.06-3.34 kg vs. 3.41 kg), but ethnic minority children were not shorter at 5 years. Pakistani, Caribbean and African children were actually taller on average (by 0.5 cm, 1.4 cm and 3.5 cm). Controlling for parental height and birthweight did not affect height differentials. Two mechanisms were hypothesized: (i) a cramped intrauterine environment given the short stature of some minority children's mothers resulted in catch-up growth; and (ii) conditions during the parents' childhood led to a reduced capacity to reach their height potential. A reparameterization of parent heights showed that mother's height contributed more to predicting child height than joint parental height alone. Birthweight was positively related to height and attenuated the extra contribution from mothers' heights. Decomposing the effects into their constituent parts found some support for both hypotheses.
Conclusions: These results suggest that children from ethnic minority backgrounds are not disadvantaged with respect to height growth compared with the ethnic majority. However, if adiposity is more likely when children are tall for their age, then ethnic inequalities in adult health could increase as the current generation of children mature.
Claudia Buss et al.
Stress-related variation in the intrauterine milieu may impact brain development and emergent function, with long-term implications in terms of susceptibility for affective disorders. Studies in animals suggest limbic regions in the developing brain are particularly sensitive to exposure to the stress hormone cortisol. However, the nature, magnitude, and time course of these effects have not yet been adequately characterized in humans. A prospective, longitudinal study was conducted in 65 normal, healthy mother-child dyads to examine the association of maternal cortisol in early, mid-, and late gestation with subsequent measures at approximately 7 y age of child amygdala and hippocampus volume and affective problems. After accounting for the effects of potential confounding pre- and postnatal factors, higher maternal cortisol levels in earlier but not later gestation was associated with a larger right amygdala volume in girls (a 1 SD increase in cortisol was associated with a 6.4% increase in right amygdala volume), but not in boys. Moreover, higher maternal cortisol levels in early gestation was associated with more affective problems in girls, and this association was mediated, in part, by amygdala volume. No association between maternal cortisol in pregnancy and child hippocampus volume was observed in either sex. The current findings represent, to the best of our knowledge, the first report linking maternal stress hormone levels in human pregnancy with subsequent child amygdala volume and affect. The results underscore the importance of the intrauterine environment and suggest the origins of neuropsychiatric disorders may have their foundations early in life.
A possible link between the pubertal growth of girls and prostate cancer in their sons
David Barker et al.American Journal of Human Biology
Objectives: Among women attending antenatal clinics during 1934-1944 a large intercristal diameter, the maximum distance between the pelvic iliac crests, was associated with a raised incidence of breast and ovarian cancer in the daughters in later life. At puberty, the intercristal diameter of girls enlarges rapidly under the influence of estrogen. We speculated that high maternal estrogen concentrations during pregnancy initiate hormonal cancers in their daughters. Here, we examine the association between the mothers' intercristal diameters and prostate cancer in their sons.
Methods: Using the national cancer registry we identified 221 cases of prostate cancer among 6,975 men born during 1934-1944 in Helsinki, Finland. Four thousand four hundred and one of these men had their mother's bony pelvic measurements recorded: there were 149 cases among them.
Results: Hazard ratios for prostate cancer rose as the mother's intercristal diameter increased; but this association was restricted to men who were born before 40 weeks of gestation. Among these men the hazard ratio was 1.27 (95% CI 1.09-1.48; P = 0.002). The hazard ratio was 2.2 (1.3-3.7; P < 0.001) in men whose mothers weighed more than 80 kg in late pregnancy compared with those whose mothers weighed 60 kg or less.
Conclusions: These findings are consistent with a conceptual framework for the origins of hormonally dependent cancers that invokes exposure of embryonic tissue to maternal sex hormones followed by resetting of the fetal hypothalamic-gonadotropin axis in late gestation. We hypothesize that compensatory prepubertal growth among girls is associated with hormonal cancers in the next generation.
Early-Life Socioeconomic Status and the Prevalence of Breast Cancer in Later Life
Tetyana Pudrovska, Andriy Anishkin & Yifang Shen Research on Aging, May 2012, Pages 302-320
Knowledge of mechanisms linking early-life social environment and breast cancer remains limited. The authors explore direct and indirect effects of early-life socioeconomic status (SES) on breast cancer prevalence in later life. Using 50-year data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (N = 4,275) and structural equation modeling, the authors found a negative direct effect of early-life SES, indicating that women from higher SES family backgrounds had lower breast cancer prevalence than women from lower SES families. Additionally, early-life SES has a positive indirect effect on breast cancer via women's adult SES and age at first birth. Were it not for their higher SES in adulthood and delayed childbearing, women from higher SES families of origin would have had lower breast cancer prevalence than women from lower SES families. Yet early-life SES is associated positively with adult SES and age at first birth, and women's higher adult SES and delayed childbearing are related to higher breast cancer prevalence.
Contradictions of value: Between use and exchange in cord blood bioeconomy
Nik Brown
Umbilical cord blood (CB) has become established as an increasingly viable clinical alternative to bone marrow in the treatment of leukaemia leading to the construction of a global network of CB banks promoted through a moral ethos of gift. Additionally, some banks offer the opportunity to retain stem cells privately. CB is discursively presented as clinical ‘waste', a ‘by-product' of birthing. In this way CB units are made available to a global exchange-based bioeconomy. Crucially, CB collection has developed in parallel with several necessary obstetric practices, especially the immediate clamping of the cord following delivery, essential to high volume collection. However, this article strongly suggests the promotional basis of CB banking (such as by gift, waste or donation) is in tension with the growing preference of new parents to delay cord clamping. Based on focus groups with expectant parents, the promotion of CB banking can in fact be seen to feed into critical reflection on the value of CB for newborn infants, potentially reinvigorating a tradition of delayed umbilical cord clamping. Theoretically, these contradictory systems of valuing are conceptualised through recent literature on bioeconomy and Marx's writings on the contrasting tensions between use and exchange value.
Alison Sanders et al.
Exposure to toxic metals during the prenatal period carries the potential for adverse developmental effects to the fetus, yet such exposure remains largely unmonitored in the United States. The aim of this study was to assess maternal exposure to four toxic metals (arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), mercury (Hg), and lead (Pb)) in a cohort of pregnant women in North Carolina. We analyzed blood samples submitted to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services for blood typing to assess toxic metal levels in pregnant women (n = 211) across six North Carolina counties. Whole blood metal concentrations were measured by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. The association between maternal characteristics, including county of residence, age, and race, and metal exposure was analyzed using multiple linear regression analysis. A large fraction of the blood samples showed detectable levels for each of the four metals. Specifically, As (65.7%), Cd (57.3%), Hg (63.8%), and Pb (100%) were detected in blood samples. Moreover, compared with adult females participating in the Fourth National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals and guidelines for pregnant women, some women in the sample population exceeded benchmark levels of Cd, Hg, and Pb. Evidence from this pilot study indicates that pregnant women in North Carolina are exposed to As, Cd, Hg, and Pb and suggests that factors related to maternal county of residence and race may impact maternal exposure levels. As increased levels of one or more of these metals in utero have been associated with detrimental developmental and reproductive outcomes, further study is clearly warranted to establish the impacts to newborns.
Dante Cicchetti & Fred RogoschDevelopment and Psychopathology, May 2012, Pages 411-427
In this investigation, gene-environment interaction effects in predicting resilience in adaptive functioning among maltreated and nonmaltreated low-income children (N = 595) were examined. A multicomponent index of resilient functioning was derived and levels of resilient functioning were identified. Variants in four genes (serotonin transporter linked polymorphic region, corticotropin releasing hormone receptor 1, dopamine receptor D4-521C/T, and oxytocin receptor) were investigated. In a series of analyses of covariance, child maltreatment demonstrated a strong negative main effect on children's resilient functioning, whereas no main effects for any of the genotypes of the respective genes were found. However, gene-environment interactions involving genotypes of each of the respective genes and maltreatment status were obtained. For each respective gene, among children with a specific genotype, the relative advantage in resilient functioning of nonmaltreated compared to maltreated children was stronger than was the case for nonmaltreated and maltreated children with other genotypes of the respective gene. Across the four genes, a composite of the genotypes that more strongly differentiated resilient functioning between nonmaltreated and maltreated children provided further evidence of genetic variations influencing resilient functioning in nonmaltreated children, whereas genetic variation had a negligible effect on promoting resilience among maltreated children. Additional effects were observed for children based on the number of subtypes of maltreatment children experienced, as well as for abuse and neglect subgroups. Finally, maltreated and nonmaltreated children with high levels of resilience differed in their average number of differentiating genotypes. These results suggest that differential resilient outcomes are based on the interaction between genes and developmental experiences.
Monday, April 30, 2012
From the Street
Neighborhood stressors and cardiovascular health: Crime and C-reactive protein in Dallas, USA
Christopher Browning, Kathleen Cagney & James Iveniuk
We apply neighborhood-based theories of social organization and environmental stress to examine variation in a key indicator of inflammation-related cardiovascular risk - C-reactive protein (CRP). Specifically, we emphasize the potentially health-compromising role of rapid increases in the crime rate or "crime spikes" (focusing on a particularly fear-inducing crime - burglary). We also consider the extent to which the magnitude and significance of the association between burglary rate change and inflammatory processes varies by gender. Data on CRP, neighborhood of residence, and individual level characteristics for adult women and men ages 30-65 are drawn from the 2000-2002 Dallas Heart Study. Results from a neighborhood fixed effects model using piecewise linear splines to estimate short-term burglary rate change offers support for the hypothesis that crime spikes are associated with CRP. Specifically, we find that short-term burglary rate change is independently associated with CRP for men. Short-term burglary rate change was not associated with CRP for women. These findings shed light on the contextual processes that influence cardiovascular health and point to the potentially important role of short-term changes in environmental stressors in shaping health outcomes.
More inequality, more crime? A panel cointegration analysis for the United States
Pandej Chintrakarn & Dierk Herzer
This study employs state-level panel data to examine the effect of income inequality on crime in the United States. Using panel cointegration techniques, we find a significant negative effect of inequality on crime.
The Political Economy of Neighbourhood Homicide in Chicago: The Role of Bank Investment
María Vélez & Kelly RichardsonBritish Journal of Criminology, May 2012, Pages 490-513
The urban political-economy perspective contends that the actions of elites have made certain neighbourhoods susceptible to deleterious conditions. We draw on this logic to argue neighbourhoods that are winners of the political economy of place are rewarded with relatively higher levels of home mortgage lending and thus enjoy lower levels of homicide. Neighbourhoods that are the losers of the political economy receive relatively little bank lending and have relatively higher levels of homicide. We find that Chicago neighbourhoods during the mid-1990s experience lower homicide per capita rates if banks have awarded them relatively higher home mortgage loan dollars and they are surrounded by relatively higher infusions of home mortgage loan dollars. Results underscore the importance of economic elites in providing resources like home mortgage lending capital to neighbourhoods.
Elisabeth DettbarnInternational Journal of Law and Psychiatry, May 2012, Pages 236-239
Several studies have been conducted on the effects of long-term imprisonment on mental health but only few with a longitudinal study design. Those with longitudinal design often have a very short observation period. In this study the data of 87 long-term prisoners have been compared over an average period of 14.6 years. A statistical comparison of two expert assessments of two experts at the beginning and the end of incarceration was made. Changes of mental disorders, of personality and intelligence tests and of physical diseases amongst others have been included in the analysis. The overall rate of psychological disorders decreased. Adjustment disorder had been initially identified in 25.2%. Personality test results described a stabilization of traits like depressive attitude, emotional instability and a decrease of hostility. Neither significant changes on the outcomes of the intelligence test nor significant changes of physical health were found. Though a decrease of psychological morbidity is described, the overall numbers of psychological disorders remain high compared to the non-incarcerated population. A damaging effect of long-term imprisonment could not be proven by this study.
Differential Susceptibility? Immigrant Youth and Peer Influence
Stephanie Dipietro & Jean Marie McgloinCriminology
There is reason to suspect that lower levels of exposure to criminogenic peer-based risks help explain why immigrant youth are less involved in crime and violence. However, it also is possible that if and when they do encounter these risks, immigrant youth are more vulnerable to them than are native-born youth. Drawing from literature on the adaptation experiences of immigrant adolescents, we hypothesize that immigrant youth will be relatively more susceptible to the effects of both 1) exposure to deviant peers and 2) unstructured and unsupervised socializing with peers when compared with their nonimmigrant counterparts. Using a sample of approximately 1,800 adolescents from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) study, we find support for our first hypothesis but not the second. Specifically, in both cross-sectional and longitudinal models, we find that exposure to deviant peers has a greater impact on violence among immigrant youth than it does for native-born youth. Furthermore, this pattern of results is supported with supplemental, sensitivity analysis using the AddHealth data. In contrast, there are no statistically significant differences across immigrant generation status with regard to the effect of informal socializing with peers on violence.
Can Wages Buy Honesty? The Relationship between Relative Wages and Employee Theft
Clara Xiaoling Chen & Tatiana SandinoJournal of Accounting Research
In this study we examine whether, for a sample of retail chains, high levels of employee compensation can deter employee theft, an increasingly common type of fraudulent behavior. Specifically, we examine the extent to which relative wages (i.e., employee wages relative to the wages paid to comparable employees in competing stores) affect employee theft as measured by inventory shrinkage and cash shortage. Using two store-level datasets from the convenience store industry, we find that relative wages are negatively associated with employee theft after we control for each store's employee characteristics, monitoring environment, and socio-economic environment. Moreover, we find that relatively higher wages also promote social norms such that coworkers are less (more) likely to collude to steal inventory from their company when relative wages are higher (lower). Our research contributes to an emerging literature in management control that explores the effect of efficiency wages on employee behavior and social norms.
Prosecution Associations in Industrial Revolution England: Private Providers of Public Goods?
Mark KoyamaJournal of Legal Studies, January 2012, Pages 95-130
In early nineteenth-century England, there was no professional police force and most prosecutions were private. This paper examines how associations for the prosecution of felons arose to internalize the positive externalities produced by private prosecutions. Drawing upon new historical evidence, it examines how the internal governance and incentive structures of prosecution associations enabled them to provide public goods. Consistent with the reasoning of Demsetz (1970), I find that prosecution associations were economic clubs that bundled the private good of insurance with the public good of deterrence. Associations used local newspapers to advertise rewards and attract new members. Price discrimination was employed in order to elicit contributions from individuals with different security demands. Selective incentives helped to overcome free-rider problems between members.
Paul KnepperCriminology
Despite increasing concern about the threat of global crime, it remains difficult to measure. During the 1920s and 1930s, the League of Nations conducted the first social-scientific study of global crime in two studies of the worldwide traffic in women. The first study included 112 cities and 28 countries; researchers carried out 6,500 interviews in 14 languages, including 5,000 with figures in the international underworld. By drawing on archival materials in Geneva and New York, this article examines the role of ethnography in developing a social-science measure of global crime threats. The discussion covers the Rockefeller grand jury and formation of the Bureau of Social Hygiene; the League's research in Europe, the Americas, and the Mediterranean; controversy concerning the use of undercover researchers; the League's research in Asia; and the end of the Bureau. The League's experience demonstrates the promise of multisite ethnography in research about global crime as well as the difficulty of mapping crime on a global scale.
Murder in Black: A Media Distortion Analysis of Homicides in Baltimore in 2010
Jaclyn Schildkraut & Amy Donley, May 2012, Pages 175-196
Crime stories, particularly homicide, are extremely prevalent in the media. The current study builds on previous literature by examining a nearly homogenous victim population (N = 223) to identify salient predictors of newsworthiness, particularly celebrated coverage, using The Baltimore Sun, the city's largest newspaper. Contrary to prior research, in this analysis, neither race nor gender were found to be consistent significant factors in receiving media coverage. Various factors, including females, older victims, White victims, and homicides by stabbings, asphyxiation, or other circumstances, were found to be indicators of several types of celebrated coverage.
Reducing Violence by Transforming Neighborhoods: A Natural Experiment in Medellín, Colombia
Magdalena Cerdá et al.
Neighborhood-level interventions provide an opportunity to better understand the impact that neighborhoods have on health. In 2004, municipal authorities in Medellín, Colombia, built a public transit system to connect isolated low-income neighborhoods to the city's urban center. Transit-oriented development was accompanied by municipal investment in neighborhood infrastructure. In this study, the authors examined the effects of this exogenous change in the built environment on violence. Neighborhood conditions and violence were assessed in intervention neighborhoods (n = 25) and comparable control neighborhoods (n = 23) before (2003) and after (2008) completion of the transit project, using a longitudinal sample of 466 residents and homicide records from the Office of the Public Prosecutor. Baseline differences between these groups were of the same magnitude as random assignment of neighborhoods would have generated, and differences that remained after propensity score matching closely resembled imbalances produced by paired randomization. Permutation tests were used to estimate differential change in the outcomes of interest in intervention neighborhoods versus control neighborhoods. The decline in the homicide rate was 66% greater in intervention neighborhoods than in control neighborhoods (rate ratio = 0.33, 95% confidence interval: 0.18, 0.61), and resident reports of violence decreased 75% more in intervention neighborhoods (odds ratio = 0.25, 95% confidence interval 0.11, 0.67). These results show that interventions in neighborhood physical infrastructure can reduce violence.
A contemporary study of the decision to incarcerate white‐collar and street property offenders
Shanna Van Slyke & William BalesPunishment & Society, April 2012, Pages 217-246
Conventional wisdom holds that white‐collar offenders operate with relative impunity because of widespread public and governmental apathy. The present study, however, examines whether public tolerance and governmental leniency toward white‐collar offenders have endured the series of national white‐collar crime scandals emerging in 2001-2002. This study analyzes sentencing guidelines data from Florida for the period 1994 to 2004, modeling legal and extra-legal factors related to the decision to incarcerate white‐collar and street property offenders. In/out incarceration sentences imposed upon white‐collar offenders are compared with those imposed upon burglars and thieves to determine whether 21st‐century white‐collar offenders are treated more leniently than street‐level property offenders. Additional analyses consider the roles of social status and of recent corporate scandals in influencing sentencing disparities. Findings indicate that, despite operating under sentencing guidelines designed to reduce disparities, white‐collar offenders are afforded greater leniency, though this relationship varies by the type of white‐collar crime considered, the offender's social status, and whether the sentencing occurred before or after the Enron scandal. Conclusions emphasize the salience of the definition of white‐collar crime when discussing punitiveness disparities and the relationship between white‐collar crime scandals and punishment.
Travis Taniguchi & Christopher Salvatore Security Journal, April 2012, Pages 95-115
Siting of drug and alcohol treatment facilities is often met with negative reactions because of the assumption that these facilities increase crime by attracting drug users (and possibly dealers) to an area. This assumption, however, rests on weak empirical footings that have not been subjected to strong empirical analyses. Using census block groups from Philadelphia, PA, it was found that the criminogenic impact of treatment facilities in and near a neighborhood on its violent and property crime rates may be contingent on the socioeconomic status (SES) of the neighborhood. Paying attention to both the density and proximity of facilities in and around neighborhoods, results showed that the criminogenic impact of treatment facilities depended largely on neighborhood SES. Under some conditions more treatment facilities nearby was associated with lower crime. Reasons why the presumed criminogenic impact of treatment facilities appears only under some conditions were suggested.
Prevalence of ADHD and Its Subtypes in Male and Female Adult Prison Inmates
Brian Cahill et al.Behavioral Sciences & the Law, March/April 2012, Pages 154-166
There are few published studies of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in adult inmates, and even fewer studies that have considered ADHD in adult inmates by gender. The present study examined the prevalence of ADHD, its subtypes, and associated psychological and neuropsychological comorbidity as a function of gender in a sample of 3,962 inmates (3,439 men and 523 women; mean age = 33.6 years, range 17-73) who had completed the 250-item, self-report, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (Text Revision) (DSM-IV-TR)-aligned Coolidge Correctional Inventory (CCI). The overall ADHD prevalence rate found was 10.5%, which is substantially higher than the rate among adults in the general population (2-5%). The female inmate ADHD prevalence rate (15.1%) was higher than the male inmate ADHD rate (9.8%), consistent with some previous studies. The most prevalent ADHD subtype for both genders was the hyperactive-impulsive subtype. The combined and inattentive ADHD subtypes had higher levels of comorbid psychopathology than the hyperactive-impulsive ADHD subtype. As the presence of ADHD and associated gender differentials may impact the success of rehabilitation and educative programs with inmates, the assessment of ADHD and comorbid psychopathology should be a priority in initial inmate screening and evaluation.
Michael Vaughn et al.Journal of Criminal Justice, May-June 2012, Pages 165-173
Objective: This study explicitly articulates a criminal justice epidemiology by examining the behavioral and physical health of probationers and parolees derived from a nationally representative sample of adults in the United States.
Methods: Using public-use data from the 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), this study employed binary logistic regression with adjustments for complex survey sampling and compared probationers and parolees to the general population with respect to past-year substance use, risk perception, treatment experiences, and health.
Results: After controlling for the effects of age, gender, race, income, and education probationers and parolees are far more likely to report using alcohol and drugs in the past year, have reduced risk perception, and are far more likely to have had some kind of treatment for substance abuse or dependence. Probationers and parolees are also significantly more likely to experience anxiety and depression, asthma, and sexually transmitted diseases.
Conclusions: This criminal justice epidemiology study indicates that the behavioral health of probationers and parolees hamper efforts to increase public safety goals. Forging closer ties between criminal justice and public health systems is necessary to reach these goals.
Indirect Effects of a Policy Altering Criminal Behavior: Evidence from the Italian Prison Experiment
Francesco Drago & Roberto Galbiati, April 2012, Pages 199-218
We exploit the 2006 Italian prison pardon to evaluate peer effects in criminal behavior. The pardon randomly commutes actual sentences to expected sentences for 40 percent of the Italian prison population. Using prison and geographical origin to construct reference groups for former inmates, we find large indirect effects of this policy. In particular, we find that the reduction in the individuals' recidivism due to an increase in their peers' residual sentence is at least as large as their response to an increase in their own residual sentence. From this result we estimate a social multiplier in crime of two.
Dewey Cornell, Korrie Allen & Xitao FanSchool Psychology Review, Winter 2012, Pages 100-115
This randomized controlled study examined disciplinary outcomes for 201 students who made threats of violence at school. The students attended 40 schools randomly assigned to use the Virginia Student Threat Assessment Guidelines or follow a business-as-usual disciplinary approach in a control group. Logistic regression analyses found, after controlling for student gender, race, school level, and threat severity, that the 100 students in the threat assessment group schools were more likely to receive counseling services (odds ratio [OR] = 3.98) and a parent conference (OR = 2.57), and less likely to receive a long-term suspension (OR = 0.35) or alternative school placement (OR = 0.13) than the 101 students in the control group schools. Implementation fidelity was associated with decreased long-term suspension (OR = 0.73). These results provide strong empirical support for the use of student threat assessment in primary and secondary schools.
Kathleen Custers & Jan Van den BulckCommunication Research
Even though sexual violence has become more prevalent on television and is the crime women fear most in real life, the association between viewing and fear of sexual violence has received scant attention. Structural equation modeling of data from a random sample of 546 Flemish women supported a model in which fear of sexual violence was predicted by perceived risk, perceived control, and perceived seriousness. Flemish crime drama viewing predicted higher perceived risk. This relationship was stronger in women with high socioeconomic status and in those with no direct experience with crime. This suggests that identification may be an important mediator. News viewing predicted lower perceived risk. It is hypothesized that the relative lack of exemplars in news and victim blaming gives viewers the impression that the risk of sexual victimization does not apply to them.
Ronald Burns, Patrick Kinkade & Michael Bachmann Social Science Journal
The present study examines the applicability of routine activities theory to petty theft. Using an experimental field research design, the researchers tested the frequency with which apparently uncounted smaller currency was stolen during full-service car wash cycles. Experimental conditions were varied so that one condition suggested a more deviant driver. A considerable amount of money was removed in thirty percent of all car washes. The number of total thefts and amount of money stolen were higher in the experimental condition in which the driver appeared to be more deviant. Findings suggest that the mere appearance of the victim as more deviant triggers the perception of targets as more suitable, and provide support for social proximity as a suitability criterion.
Kathleen Fox, Katrina Rufino & Glen Kercher Victims & Offenders, Spring 2012, Pages 208-225
The current study examines whether the relationship between gang membership and crime victimization exists among a sample of prison inmates, and if perceptions of social disorganization influences this relationship. More specifically, we examine whether (1) gang members are more likely to be victimized compared to nongang members, (2) perceptions of social disorganization are associated with victimization, and (3) accounting for inmates' offending mediates the relationship between social disorganization and victimization. A sample of gang and nongang members incarcerated in prison were interviewed about their involvement in crime, experiences with victimization, and perceptions of neighborhood disorganization. Results indicate that gang members are significantly more likely to be victimized compared to nongang members and perceptions of social disorganization explain the likelihood of victimization among gang members only. Crime perpetration mediates the relationship between perceptions of social disorganization and victimization among gang members.
Improving Firearm Storage in Alaska Native Villages: A Randomized Trial of Household Gun Cabinets
David Grossman et al., May 2012, Pages S291-S297
Objectives: We determined if the installation of gun cabinets improved household firearm storage practices.
Methods: We used a wait list, randomized trial design with 2 groups. The "early" group received the intervention at baseline, and the "late" group received it at 12 months. Up to 2 gun cabinets were installed in each enrolled home, along with safety messages. In-person surveys were conducted at 12 and 18 months to determine the proportion of households reporting unlocked guns or ammunition. Direct observations of unlocked guns were also compared.
Results: At baseline, 93% of homes reported having at least 1 unlocked gun in the home, and 89% reported unlocked ammunition. At 12 months, 35% of homes in the early group reported unlocked guns compared with 89% in the late group (P < .001). Thirty-six percent of the early homes reported unlocked ammunition compared with 84% of late homes (P < .001). The prevalence of these storage practices was maintained at 18 months. Observations of unlocked guns decreased significantly (from 20% to 8%) between groups (P < .03).
Conclusions: Gun cabinet installation in rural Alaskan households improved the storage of guns and ammunition. If these gains are sustained over time, it may lead to a reduction in gun-related injuries and deaths in this population.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Caring and Sharing
Disposable Ties and the Urban Poor
Matthew DesmondAmerican Journal of Sociology, March 2012, Pages 1295-1335
Sociologists long have observed that the urban poor rely on kinship networks to survive economic destitution. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among evicted tenants in high-poverty neighborhoods, this article presents a new explanation for urban survival, one that emphasizes the importance of disposable ties formed between strangers. To meet their most pressing needs, evicted families often relied more on new acquaintances than on kin. Disposable ties facilitated the flow of various resources, but often bonds were brittle and fleeting. The strategy of forming, using, and burning disposable ties allowed families caught in desperate situations to make it from one day to the next, but it also bred instability and fostered misgivings among peers.
Charity as a substitute for reputation: Evidence from an online marketplace
Daniel Elfenbein, Ray Fisman & Brian McManus Review of Economic Studies
Consumers respond positively to products tied to charity, particularly from sellers that are relatively new and hence have limited alternative means for assuring quality. We establish this result using data from a diverse group of eBay sellers who "experiment" with charity by varying the presence of a donation in a set of otherwise matched product listings. Most of charity's benefits accrue to sellers without extensive eBay histories. Consistent with charity serving as a quality signal, we find fewer customer complaints among charity-intensive sellers.
Reciprocity by Proxy: A Novel Influence Strategy for Stimulating Cooperation
Noah Goldstein, Vladas Griskevicius & Robert Cialdini , September 2011, Pages 441-473
We explored a novel reciprocity-based influence strategy to stimulate cooperation called the reciprocity-by-proxy strategy. Unlike in traditional reciprocity, in which benefactors provide direct benefits to target individuals to elicit reciprocity, the reciprocity-by-proxy strategy elicits in the target a sense of indebtedness to benefactors by providing benefits to a valued third party on behalf of the target (e.g., first making a donation to a charity on behalf of one's employees and then later asking employees to comply with a request). We hypothesize that this strategy should be more effective than the widely used incentive-by-proxy strategy, in which one makes a request of a target, promising to provide aid to a valued third party if the target first complies with the request (e.g., offering to make a donation to charity for every employee who complies with a request). We found that hotel guests were more likely to reuse their towels when the hotel's environmental conservation program used a reciprocity-by-proxy strategy than when it used an incentive-by-proxy or standard environmental strategy. Four additional experiments replicate this finding, rule out alternative explanations, and reveal that the reciprocity-by-proxy approach can backfire when the target audience does not support the beneficiary of the aid.
Michèlle Bal & Kees van den Bos
People are often encouraged to focus on the future and strive for long-term goals. This noted, the authors argue that this future orientation is associated with intolerance of personal uncertainty, as people usually cannot be certain that their efforts will pay off. To be able to tolerate personal uncertainty, people adhere strongly to the belief in a just world, paradoxically resulting in harsher reactions toward innocent victims. In three experiments, the authors show that a future orientation indeed leads to more negative evaluations of an innocent victim (Study 1), enhances intolerance of personal uncertainty (Study 2), and that experiencing personal uncertainty leads to more negative evaluations of a victim (Study 3). So, while a future orientation enables people to strive for long-term goals, it also leads them to be harsher toward innocent victims. One underlying mechanism causing these reactions is intolerance of personal uncertainty, associated with a future orientation.
Annemarie Loseman & Kees van den BosSocial Justice Research, March 2012, Pages 1-13
People have a need to Belief in a Just World (BJW) in which people get what they deserve. When people are confronted with an event which threatens this BJW (e.g. when they witness a girl falling victim to rape), people try to maintain their existing beliefs, for example, by blaming the innocent victim for her ill fate. We argue that this defensive process of blaming innocent victims in essence stems from self-regulatory failure. In accordance with this line of reasoning, our first experiment shows that when self-regulatory resources were depleted (i.e. in the case of high ego-depletion) before BJW threatening information describing an innocent victim of a rape crime, the effect of BJW threat on victim blaming amplified. Study 2 shows that when self-regulation was facilitated by means of self-affirmation after the BJW threatening information, the effect of BJW threat on victim blaming vanished. Taken together, our findings suggest that coping with BJW threats involve self-regulatory processes leading to more or less defensive reactions (like blaming innocent victims). When people's self-regulatory resources are depleted, they react more negatively to innocent victims when they constitute a stronger threat to the BJW. Facilitating self-regulation, by means of self-affirmation, enables people to cope with BJW threatening information, thereby inhibiting the urge to blame innocent victims.
How Can Bill and Melinda Gates Increase Other People's Donations to Fund Public Goods?
Dean Karlan & John List
We develop a simple theory which formally describes how charities can resolve the information asymmetry problems faced by small donors by working with large donors to generate quality signals. To test the model, we conducted two large-scale natural field experiments. In the first experiment, a charity focusing on poverty reduction solicited donations from prior donors and either announced a matching grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, or made no mention of a match. In the second field experiment, the same charity sent direct mail solicitations to individuals who had not previously donated to the charity, and tested whether naming the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as the matching donor was more effective than not identifying the name of the matching donor. The first experiment demonstrates that the matching grant condition generates more and larger donations relative to no match. The second experiment shows that providing a credible quality signal by identifying the matching donor generates even more and larger donations than not naming the matching donor. Importantly, the treatment effects persist long after the matching period, and the quality signal is quite heterogeneous-the Gates' effect is much larger for prospective donors who had a record of giving to "poverty-oriented" charities. These two pieces of evidence support our model of quality signals as a key mechanism through which matching gifts inspire donors to give.
Paul Conway & Johanna Peetz
According to the moral licensing literature, moral self-perceptions induce compensatory behavior: People who feel moral act less prosocially than those who feel immoral. Conversely, work on moral identity indicates that moral self-perceptions motivate behavioral consistency: People who feel moral act more prosocially than those who feel less so. In three studies, the authors reconcile these propositions by demonstrating the moderating role of conceptual abstraction. In Study 1, participants who recalled performing recent (concrete) moral or immoral behavior demonstrated compensatory behavior, whereas participants who considered temporally distant (abstract) moral behavior demonstrated behavioral consistency. Study 2 confirmed that this effect was unique to moral self-perceptions. Study 3 manipulated whether participants recalled moral or immoral actions concretely or abstractly, and replicated the moderation pattern with willingness to donate real money to charity. Together, these findings suggest that concrete moral self-perceptions activate self-regulatory behavior, and abstract moral self-perceptions activate identity concerns.
Social Identification Structures Effects of Perspective Taking
Mark Tarrant, Raff Calitri & Dale Weston
Research on perspective taking is generally optimistic about the potential for interventions to improve intergroup perceptions. The current research provides new insight into the conditions that frame the intergroup outcomes of perspective taking. It is shown that the effects of perspective taking are not always positive but, instead, depend upon perspective takers' degree of identification with the in-group. In two experiments we demonstrate that adopting the perspective of an out-group member can have damaging effects on intergroup perceptions for highly identified in-group members. Specifically, compared to less committed members, high identifiers used a greater number of negative traits to describe the out-group following perspective taking. Perspective taking also led high identifiers to judge the out-group less favorably. Understanding the social identity implications of perspective taking is crucial to its effective employment in intergroup relations programs.
Social Justice, Genomic Justice and the Veil of Ignorance: Harsanyi Meets Mendel
Samir OkashaEconomics and Philosophy, March 2012, Pages 43-71
John Harsanyi and John Rawls both used the veil of ignorance thought experiment to study the problem of choosing between alternative social arrangements. With his 'impartial observer theorem', Harsanyi tried to show that the veil of ignorance argument leads inevitably to utilitarianism, an argument criticized by Sen, Weymark and others. A quite different use of the veil-of-ignorance concept is found in evolutionary biology. In the cell-division process called meiosis, in which sexually reproducing organisms produce gametes, the chromosome number is halved; when meiosis is fair, each gene has only a fifty percent chance of making it into any gamete. This creates a Mendelian veil of ignorance, which has the effect of aligning the interests of all the genes in an organism. This paper shows how Harsanyi's version of the veil-of-ignorance argument can shed light on Mendelian genetics. There turns out to be an intriguing biological analogue of the impartial observer theorem that is immune from the Sen/Weymark objections to Harsanyi's original.
Bart WilsonAmerican Journal of Economics and Sociology, April 2012, Pages 407-435
This article attempts to clarify our understanding of the everyday use of the word "fair" as we apply it to economic behavior. I first examine the decomposition of fair into its semantic primitives and discuss implications of recent research that indicates that the word is one-to-one untranslatable into any other language, that is, the concept of fair is distinctly Anglo. I also make a Wittgensteinian appeal to context and human sociality as an indispensable tether for what we mean by a fair experience and what we know, epistemologically speaking, about fairness. The principal implication of this is that rules that guide fair behavior are not located in an individual's private utility function but instead reside in the connections that the individual has to his cultural environs.
Lara Aknin, Elizabeth Dunn & Michael Norton Journal of Happiness Studies, April 2012, Pages 347-355
We examine whether a positive feedback loop exists between spending money on others (i.e. prosocial spending) and happiness. Participants recalled a previous purchase made for either themselves or someone else and then reported their happiness. Afterward, participants chose whether to spend a monetary windfall on themselves or someone else. Participants assigned to recall a purchase made for someone else reported feeling significantly happier immediately after this recollection; most importantly, the happier participants felt, the more likely they were to choose to spend a windfall on someone else in the near future. Thus, by providing initial evidence for a positive feedback loop between prosocial spending and well-being, these data offer one potential path to sustainable happiness: prosocial spending increases happiness which in turn encourages prosocial spending.
Meghan Meyer et al.Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
Humans observe various peoples' social suffering throughout their lives, but it is unknown whether the same brain mechanisms respond to people we are close to and strangers' social suffering. To address this question, we had participants complete functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while observing a friend and stranger experience social exclusion. Observing a friend's exclusion activated affective pain regions associated with the direct (i.e. firsthand) experience of exclusion (dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and insula), and this activation correlated with self-reported self-other overlap with the friend. Alternatively, observing a stranger's exclusion activated regions associated with thinking about the traits, mental states, and intentions of others ('mentalizing'; dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC), precuneus, and temporal pole). Comparing activation from observing friend's vs. stranger's exclusion showed increased activation in brain regions associated with the firsthand experience of exclusion (dACC and anterior insula) and with thinking about the self (medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC)). Finally, functional connectivity analyses demonstrated that MPFC and affective pain regions activated in concert during empathy for friends, but not strangers. These results suggest empathy for friends' social suffering relies on emotion sharing and self-processing mechanisms, whereas empathy for strangers' social suffering may rely more heavily on mentalizing systems.
For love or money? What motivates people to know the minds of others?
Kate Harkness et al.Cognition & Emotion, April 2012, Pages 541-549
Mood affects social cognition and "theory of mind", such that people in a persistent negative mood (i.e., dysphoria) have enhanced abilities at making subtle judgements about others' mental states. Theorists have argued that this hypersensitivity to subtle social cues may have adaptive significance in terms of solving interpersonal problems and/or minimising social risk. We tested whether increasing the social salience of a theory of mind task would preferentially increase dyspshoric individuals' performance on the task. Forty-four dysphoric and 51 non-dysphoric undergraduate women participated in a theory of mind decoding task following one of three motivational manipulations: (i) social motivation (ii) monetary motivation, or (iii) no motivation. Social motivation was associated with the greatest accuracy of mental state decoding for the dysphoric group, whereas the non-dysphoric group showed the highest accuracy in the monetary motivation condition. These results suggest that dysphoric individuals may be especially, and preferentially, motivated to understand the mental states of others.
Hypnotic ingroup-outgroup suggestion influences economic decision-making in an Ultimatum Game
Martin Brüne et al.Consciousness and Cognition
Studies in economic decision-making have demonstrated that individuals appreciate social values supporting equity and disapprove unfairness when distributing goods between two or more parties. However, this seems to critically depend on psychological mechanisms partly pertaining to the ingroup-outgroup distinction. Little is known as to what extent economic bargaining can be manipulated by means of psychological interventions such has hypnosis. Here we show that a hypnotic ingroup versus outgroup suggestion impacts the tolerance of unfairness in an Ultimatum Game. Specifically, the ingroup suggestion was associated with significantly greater acceptance rates of unfair offers than the outgroup suggestion, whereas hypnosis alone exerted only small effects on unfairness tolerance. These findings indicate that psychological interventions such as hypnotic suggestion can contribute to ingroup favoritism and outgroup rejection.
Are Dictators Averse to Inequality?
Oleg Korenok, Edward Millner & Laura Razzolini Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization
We present the results of an experiment designed to identify more clearly the motivation underlying dictators' behavior. In the typical dictator game, recipients are given no endowment. We give an endowment to the recipient as well as the dictator. This new dimension allows us to test directly for inequality aversion. Our results confirm that the inequality between dictator's and recipient's endowment is a key determinant of the dictator's giving. As we increase the recipient's endowment from 0 to an amount equal to the dictator's endowment, the mean amount passed drops from 30% to less than 12% of the dictator's endowment, and the proportion of dictators who pass positive amounts falls from 75% to 26%. Thus the majority of dictators exhibit behavior consistent with inequality averse preferences. On the other hand, only 24% of dictators split payoffs equally suggesting that maximin preferences are less important drivers of dictators' giving.
When Common Identities Reduce Between-Group Helping
Esther van Leeuwen & Ali MashuriSocial Psychological and Personality Science, May 2012, Pages 259-265
Emphasizing a common group identity is often suggested as a way to promote between-group helping. But recently, researchers have identified a set of strategic motives for helping other groups, including the desire to present the own group as warm and generous. When the motive for helping is strategic, a salient common identity should reduce the willingness to help another group, because the help no longer communicates a quality of the ingroup (only of the common group). The authors tested this hypothesis in two experiments, in which they assessed beliefs about helping (Study 1) and actual helping through behavioral observation (Study 2). The results fully supported the predictions, demonstrating that a common identity is not a universal tool for the promotion of prosocial behavior. The studies also illustrate the strategic nature of between-group helping, in which acts that appear prosocial on the surface are in fact intended to enhance the ingroup's image.
US Public Support for Vaccine Donation to Poorer Countries in the 2009 H1N1 Pandemic
Supriya Kumar et al.
Background: During the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, the global health community sought to make vaccine available "in developing nations in the same timeframe as developed nations." However, richer nations placed advance orders with manufacturers, leaving poorer nations dependent on the quantity and timing of vaccine donations by manufacturers and rich nations. Knowledge of public support for timely donations could be important to policy makers during the next pandemic. We explored what the United States (US) public believes about vaccine donation by its country to poorer countries.
Methods and Findings: We surveyed 2079 US adults between January 22nd and February 1st 2010 about their beliefs regarding vaccine donation to poorer countries. Income (p = 0.014), objective priority status (p = 0.005), nativity, party affiliation, and political ideology (p<0.001) were significantly related to views on the amount of vaccine to be donated. Though party affiliation and political ideology were related to willingness to donate vaccine (p<0.001), there was bipartisan support for timely donations of 10% of the US vaccine supply so that those "at risk in poorer countries can get the vaccine at the same time" as those at risk in the US.
Conclusions: We suggest that the US and other developed nations would do well to bolster support with education and public discussion on this issue prior to an emerging pandemic when emotional reactions could potentially influence support for donation. We conclude that given our evidence for bipartisan support for timely donations, it may be necessary to design multiple arguments, from utilitarian to moral, to strengthen public and policy makers' support for donations.
Neural basis of egalitarian behavior
Christopher Dawes et al.
Individuals are willing to sacrifice their own resources to promote equality in groups. These costly choices promote equality and are associated with behavior that supports cooperation in humans, but little is known about the brain processes involved. We use functional MRI to study egalitarian preferences based on behavior observed in the "random income game." In this game, subjects decide whether to pay a cost to alter group members' randomly allocated incomes. We specifically examine whether egalitarian behavior is associated with neural activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the insular cortex, two regions that have been shown to be related to social preferences. Consistent with previous studies, we find significant activation in both regions; however, only the insular cortex activations are significantly associated with measures of revealed and expressed egalitarian preferences elicited outside the scanner. These results are consistent with the notion that brain mechanisms involved in experiencing the emotional states of others underlie egalitarian behavior in humans.
Neural correlates of fair behavior in interpersonal bargaining
Silvia Weiland et al.Social Neuroscience
Research findings show that proposers make surprisingly fair offers in the ultimatum and dictator games, an observation that contradicts predictions of classical game theory. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study examines brain activities of proposers that contribute to fair and unfair behaviors. We hypothesized that egoistic and altruistic motives of proposers affect fairness differentially in the two games. fMRI analysis revealed that the 28% of fair offers in the present ultimatum game were related to enhanced activity in prefrontal areas, in particular, in regions involved in reward and theory of mind. This corroborates the idea that egoistic motives are primarily responsible for fair offers in this game, which we denote as strategic fairness. Fair offers in the dictator game, however, were related to increased activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex. This supports the idea that altruistic motives primarily drive fair offers in the dictator game, denoted here as altruistic fairness.
What Is It like to Feel Another's Pain?
Frédérique de Vignemont & Pierre JacobPhilosophy of Science, April 2012, Pages 295-316
We offer an account of empathetic pain that preserves the distinctions among standard pain, contagious pain, empathetic pain, sympathy for pain, and standard pain ascription. Vicarious experiences of both contagious and empathetic pain resemble to some extent experiences of standard pain. But there are also crucial dissimilarities. As neuroscientific results show, standard pain involves a sensorimotor and an affective component. According to our account, contagious pain consists in imagining the former, whereas empathetic pain consists in imagining the latter. We further argue that awareness of another's standard pain is part of empathetic pain, but empathetic awareness of another's standard pain differs from believing that another is in standard pain.
Humility: A consistent and robust predictor of generosity
Julie Exline & Peter HillJournal of Positive Psychology, May/June 2012, Pages 208-218
Does humility predict generous motives and behaviors? Although earlier studies have suggested a positive connection, it has remained unclear whether another trait might better account for the humility/generosity link. Three studies examined associations between a self-report measure of humility, related traits, and generosity. In Study 1 (197 adults in a community sample), humility predicted greater generosity on two behavioral measures: Charitable donations and mailing back an extra survey. In Study 2 (286 undergraduates), humility predicted giving more money to an anonymous future participant. In Study 3 (217 undergraduates), humility was associated with greater self-reported motives to be kind to others, including benefactors, close others, strangers, and enemies. Across all three studies, the role of humility was not better explained by the Big Five, self-esteem, entitlement, religiosity, gratitude, or social desirability. These studies complement prior work by demonstrating that the link between humility and generosity is both consistent and robust.
Does status affect intergroup perceptions of humanity?
Dora Capozza et al., May 2012, Pages 363-377
Across three studies, we examined whether ingroup status may affect intergroup perceptions of humanity. In Studies 1 and 2, we considered real groups: Northern versus Southern Italians; in Study 3, we manipulated the socioeconomic status of two minimal groups. In all studies, members of higher status groups perceived the ingroup as more human than the outgroup, while members of lower status groups did not assign a privileged human status to the ingroup. Such findings were obtained using different implicit techniques: the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and the Go/No-go Association Task (GNAT). Further, results suggest that the different perceptions of humanity may depend on the stereotypic traits generally ascribed to higher and lower status groups. The implications of results for infrahumanization research are discussed.
The roots of modern justice: Cognitive and neural foundations of social norms and their enforcement
Joshua Buckholtz & René MaroisNature Neuroscience, May 2012, Pages 655-661
Among animals, Homo sapiens is unique in its capacity for widespread cooperation and prosocial behavior among large and genetically heterogeneous groups of individuals. This ultra-sociality figures largely in our success as a species. It is also an enduring evolutionary mystery. There is considerable support for the hypothesis that this facility is a function of our ability to establish, and enforce through sanctions, social norms. Third-party punishment of norm violations ("I punish you because you harmed him") seems especially crucial for the evolutionary stability of cooperation and is the cornerstone of modern systems of criminal justice. In this commentary, we outline some potential cognitive and neural processes that may underlie the ability to learn norms, to follow norms and to enforce norms through third-party punishment. We propose that such processes depend on several domain-general cognitive functions that have been repurposed, through evolution's thrift, to perform these roles.
The Effect of Media on Charitable Giving and Volunteering: Evidence from the "Give Five" Campaign
Barış Yörük
Fundraising campaigns advertised via mass media are common. To what extent such campaigns affect charitable behavior is mostly unknown, however. Using giving and volunteering surveys conducted biennially from 1988 to 1996, I investigate the effect of a national fundraising campaign, "Give Five," on charitable giving and volunteering patterns. The widely advertised Give Five campaign was aimed to encourage people to give 5 percent of their income and volunteer 5 hours a week. After controlling for selection into being informed about the Give Five, I find that people who were informed about the campaign increased their weekly volunteering activity on average by almost half an hour, but their giving behavior was not significantly affected. I discuss the policy implications associated with this result and argue that although the Give Five campaign did not achieve its goal, its impact on volunteering was considerable.
Asset Legitimacy and Distributive Justice in the Dictator Game: An Experimental Analysis
Luigi Mittone & Matteo PlonerJournal of Behavioral Decision Making, April 2012, Pages 135-142
Distributive justice seems to guide behavior in reward allocation tasks in which subjects in a group jointly produce an endowment that is then allocated by a member of the group. It has been shown that allocators aim to preserve the proportionality between inputs (e.g., effort) and outputs (e.g., monetary rewards) of those in the group, even when this comes at a cost to themselves. We experimentally investigated whether justice considerations of this kind play a role in a double-blind dictator game when the assets to be allocated are generated exclusively through the effort of the decision maker. The experiment shows that distributive justice is an important source of motivation in highly demanding social environments in which reputational concerns and reciprocity are absent. This finding has been corroborated by an independent validity check and may have important implications for previous experimental findings and for the economics of charity.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Calculating
Eric Schwitzgebel & Fiery CushmanMind & Language, April 2012, Pages 135-153
We examined the effects of order of presentation on the moral judgments of professional philosophers and two comparison groups. All groups showed similar-sized order effects on their judgments about hypothetical moral scenarios targeting the doctrine of the double effect, the action-omission distinction, and the principle of moral luck. Philosophers' endorsements of related general moral principles were also substantially influenced by the order in which the hypothetical scenarios had previously been presented. Thus, philosophical expertise does not appear to enhance the stability of moral judgments against this presumably unwanted source of bias, even given familiar types of cases and principles.
The Foreign-Language Effect: Thinking in a Foreign Tongue Reduces Decision Biases
Boaz Keysar, Sayuri Hayakawa & Sun Gyu An
Would you make the same decisions in a foreign language as you would in your native tongue? It may be intuitive that people would make the same choices regardless of the language they are using, or that the difficulty of using a foreign language would make decisions less systematic. We discovered, however, that the opposite is true: Using a foreign language reduces decision-making biases. Four experiments show that the framing effect disappears when choices are presented in a foreign tongue. Whereas people were risk averse for gains and risk seeking for losses when choices were presented in their native tongue, they were not influenced by this framing manipulation in a foreign language. Two additional experiments show that using a foreign language reduces loss aversion, increasing the acceptance of both hypothetical and real bets with positive expected value. We propose that these effects arise because a foreign language provides greater cognitive and emotional distance than a native tongue does.
How Near-Miss Events Amplify or Attenuate Risky Decision Making
Catherine Tinsley, Robin Dillon & Matthew Cronin
In the aftermath of many natural and man-made disasters, people often wonder why those affected were underprepared, especially when the disaster was the result of known or regularly occurring hazards (e.g., hurricanes). We study one contributing factor: prior near-miss experiences. Near misses are events that have some nontrivial expectation of ending in disaster but, by chance, do not. We demonstrate that when near misses are interpreted as disasters that did not occur, people illegitimately underestimate the danger of subsequent hazardous situations and make riskier decisions (e.g., choosing not to engage in mitigation activities for the potential hazard). On the other hand, if near misses can be recognized and interpreted as disasters that almost happened, this will counter the basic "near-miss" effect and encourage more mitigation. We illustrate the robustness of this pattern across populations with varying levels of real expertise with hazards and different hazard contexts (household evacuation for a hurricane, Caribbean cruises during hurricane season, and deep-water oil drilling). We conclude with ideas to help people manage and communicate about risk.
Gordon Wright, Christopher Berry & Geoffrey Bird Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, April 2012
Both the ability to deceive others, and the ability to detect deception, has long been proposed to confer an evolutionary advantage. Deception detection has been studied extensively, and the finding that typical individuals fare little better than chance in detecting deception is one of the more robust in the behavioral sciences. Surprisingly, little research has examined individual differences in lie production ability. As a consequence, as far as we are aware, no previous study has investigated whether there exists an association between the ability to lie successfully and the ability to detect lies. Furthermore, only a minority of studies have examined deception as it naturally occurs; in a social, interactive setting. The present study, therefore, explored the relationship between these two facets of deceptive behavior by employing a novel competitive interactive deception task (DeceIT). For the first time, signal detection theory (SDT) was used to measure performance in both the detection and production of deception. A significant relationship was found between the deception-related abilities; those who could accurately detect a lie were able to produce statements that others found difficult to classify as deceptive or truthful. Furthermore, neither ability was related to measures of intelligence or emotional ability. We, therefore, suggest the existence of an underlying deception-general ability that varies across individuals.
Beliefs about the "hot hand" in basketball across the adult life span
Alan Castel, Aimee Drolet Rossi & Shannon McGillivray Psychology and Aging
Many people believe in streaks. In basketball, belief in the "hot hand" occurs when people think a player is more likely to make a shot if they have made previous shots. However, research has shown that players' successive shots are independent events. To determine how age would impact belief in the hot hand, we examined this effect across the adult life span. Older adults were more likely to believe in the hot hand, relative to younger and middle-aged adults, suggesting that older adults use heuristics and potentially adaptive processing based on highly accessible information to predict future events.
Brain structural complexity and life course cognitive change
Nazahah Mustafa et al.NeuroImage
Fractal measures such as fractal dimension (FD) can quantify the structural complexity of the brain. These have been used in clinical neuroscience to investigate brain development, ageing and in studies of psychiatric and neurological disorders. Here, we examined associations between the FD of white matter and cognitive changes across the life course in the absence of detectable brain disease. The FD was calculated from segmented cerebral white matter MR images in 217 subjects aged about 68 years, in whom archived intelligence scores from age 11 years were available. Cognitive test scores of fluid and crystallised intelligence were obtained at the time of MR imaging. Significant differences were found (intracranial volume, brain volume, white matter volume and Raven's Progressive Matrices score) between men and women at age 68 years and novel associations were found between FD and measures of cognitive change over the life course from age 11 to 68 years. Those with greater FD were found to have greater than expected fluid abilities at age 68 years than predicted by their childhood intelligence and less cognitive decline from age 11 to 68 years. These results are consistent with other reports that FD measures of cortical structural complexity increase across the early life course during maturation of the cerebral cortex and add new data to support an association between FD and cognitive ageing.
Cognitive skill and technology diffusion: An empirical test
Garett JonesEconomic Systems
Cognitive skills are robustly associated with good national economic performance. How much of this is due to high-skill countries doing a better job of absorbing total factor productivity from the world's technology leader? Following Benhabib and Spiegel (Handbook of Economic Growth, 2005), who estimated the Nelson-Phelps technology diffusion model, I...find a robust relationship between national average IQ and total factor productivity growth. Controlling for IQ, years of education is of modest statistical significance. If IQ gaps between countries persist and model parameters remain stable, TFP levels are forecasted to sharply diverge, creating a "twin peaks" result. After controlling for IQ, few other growth variables are statistically significant.
Do Psychological Shocks Affect Financial Risk Taking Behavior? A Study of U.S. Veterans
Vicki Bogan, David Just & Brian WansinkContemporary Economic Policy
Traditional economic theories assume that individuals are endowed with certain risk preferences that are unaltered by experiences. However, recent evidence indicates that macroeconomic shocks do have an effect on an individual's willingness to take financial risks. In the context of investment decisions, we examine empirically whether individual's risk preferences are affected by other types of traumatic life experiences. Using a unique proprietary data set, we investigate whether personal traumatic experiences - such as the combat experiences of veterans - have long-term effects on financial risk taking behavior. We find that having experienced combat decreases the probability of investing in risky assets. Key policy implications are noted.
Can Diversification be Learned?
Ann Marie Hibbert, Edward Lawrence & Arun Prakash Journal of Behavioral Finance, Winter 2012, Pages 38-50
We investigate the role of financial education in household portfolio allocation decisions using data from a survey of 1,382 professors at universities across the United States. The results suggest that knowledge of diversification increases the likelihood that investors will efficiently allocate their investments across the major asset classes as well as invest in foreign assets. However, we find that investors with advanced knowledge of finance still tend to hold undiversified equity portfolios.
Bettina von Helversen & Rui MataPsychology and Aging
We investigated the contribution of cognitive ability and affect to age differences in sequential decision making by asking younger and older adults to shop for items in a computerized sequential decision-making task. Older adults performed poorly compared to younger adults partly due to searching too few options. An analysis of the decision process with a formal model suggested that older adults set lower thresholds for accepting an option than younger participants. Further analyses suggested that positive affect, but not fluid abilities, was related to search in the sequential decision task. A second study that manipulated affect in younger adults supported the causal role of affect: Increased positive affect lowered the initial threshold for accepting an attractive option. In sum, our results suggest that positive affect is a key factor determining search in sequential decision making. Consequently, increased positive affect in older age may contribute to poorer sequential decisions by leading to insufficient search.
The role of intuition and deliberative thinking in experts' superior tactical decision-making
Jerad Moxley et al.Cognition
Current theories argue that human decision making is largely based on quick, automatic, and intuitive processes that are occasionally supplemented by slow controlled deliberation. Researchers, therefore, predominantly studied the heuristics of the automatic system in everyday decision making. Our study examines the role of slow deliberation for experts who exhibit superior decision-making outcomes in tactical chess problems with clear best moves. Our study uses advanced computer software to measure the objective value of actions preferred at the start versus the conclusion of decision making. It finds that both experts and less skilled individuals benefit significantly from extra deliberation regardless of whether the problem is easy or difficult. Our findings have important implications for the role of training for increasing decision making accuracy in many domains of expertise.
Deliberation Versus Intuition: Decomposing the Role of Expertise in Judgment and Decision Making
Koen Dijkstra, Joop van der Pligt & Gerben van Kleef Journal of Behavioral Decision Making
What produces better judgments: deliberating or relying on intuition? Past research is inconclusive. We focus on the role of expertise to increase understanding of the effects of judgment mode. We propose a framework in which expertise depends on a person's experience with and knowledge about a domain. Individuals who are relatively experienced but have modest knowledge about the subject matter ("intermediates") are expected to suffer from deliberation and to benefit from a more intuitive approach, because they lack the formal knowledge to understand the reasons underlying their preferences. Individuals who are high ("experts") or low ("novices") on both experience and knowledge are expected to do well or poorly, respectively, regardless of decision mode. We tested these predictions in the domain of art. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that intermediates performed better when relying on intuition than after deliberation. Judgments of experts and novices were unaffected. In line with previous research relating processing style to judgment mode, Experiment 3 showed that the effect of processing style (global versus local) on judgment quality is similarly moderated by expertise.
Gambling on the Lottery: Sociodemographic Correlates Across the Lifespan
Grace Barnes et al.Journal of Gambling Studies, December 2011, Pages 575-586
Two representative U.S. telephone surveys of gambling were conducted - an adult survey of adults aged 18 years and older (n = 2,631) and a youth survey of young people aged 14-21 years old (n = 2,274). Because the questions and methods were the same or similar in both surveys, the data from these two surveys were combined into a single dataset to examine the prevalence and sociodemographic correlates of gambling and problem gambling across the lifespan. The present work focused specifically on gambling on the lottery which is the most prevalent form of gambling in the U.S. The frequency of gambling on the lottery increased sharply from mid adolescence to age 18 which is the legal age to purchase lottery tickets in most states; lottery play continued to increase into the thirties when it leveled off and remained high through the sixties and then decreased among those 70 years and older. Considering multiple sociodemographic factors together in a negative binomial regression, the average number of days of lottery gambling was significantly predicted by male gender, age, neighborhood disadvantage and whether or not lottery was legal in the state where the respondent lived. These findings can be used to inform policies regarding lotteries in the U.S.
John Beshears et al.Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization
The daunting complexity of important financial decisions can lead to procrastination. We evaluate a low-cost intervention that substantially simplifies the retirement savings plan participation decision. Individuals received an opportunity to enroll in a retirement savings plan at a pre-selected contribution rate and asset allocation, allowing them to collapse a multidimensional problem into a binary choice between the status quo and the pre-selected alternative. The intervention increases plan enrollment rates by 10 to 20 percentage points. We find that a similar intervention can be used to increase contribution rates among employees who are already participating in a savings plan.
Eyal Peer & Lidor SolomonJudgment and Decision Making, March 2012, pp. 165-172
People make systematic and predictable mistakes regarding estimations of average speed and journey time. In addition, people have been shown to commit a time-saving bias by underestimating the time that can be saved when increasing from a low speed and overestimating the time that can be saved when increasing from a relatively high speed. These misestimations have been shown to relate to biases in judgments of the speed required to arrive at a specific time and to choosing unduly high speed. Professional drivers, such as taxi drivers, might be less susceptible to these biases due to their increased driving experience. In the current study, we interviewed taxi drivers about a journey they were currently making and examined their estimations of journey time, average speed and time savings. Compared to a group of non-professional car drivers, taxi drivers showed the same considerable misestimations of driving speed, journey time and time savings as non-professionals. However, overestimations of time savings among taxi drivers were smaller than those made by car drivers. We discuss the practical significance of these findings.
What we say and what we do: The relationship between real and hypothetical moral choices
Oriel FeldmanHall et al.Cognition, June 2012, Pages 434-441
Moral ideals are strongly ingrained within society and individuals alike, but actual moral choices are profoundly influenced by tangible rewards and consequences. Across two studies we show that real moral decisions can dramatically contradict moral choices made in hypothetical scenarios (Study 1). However, by systematically enhancing the contextual information available to subjects when addressing a hypothetical moral problem - thereby reducing the opportunity for mental simulation - we were able to incrementally bring subjects' responses in line with their moral behaviour in real situations (Study 2). These results imply that previous work relying mainly on decontextualized hypothetical scenarios may not accurately reflect moral decisions in everyday life. The findings also shed light on contextual factors that can alter how moral decisions are made, such as the salience of a personal gain.
Ilan Yaniv & Shoham Choshen-Hillel
We investigated how perspective-taking might be used to overcome bias and improve advice-based judgments. Decision makers often tend to underweight the opinions of others relative to their own, and thus fail to exploit the wisdom of others. We tested the idea that decision makers taking the perspective of another person engage a less egocentric mode of processing of advisory opinions and thereby improve their accuracy. In Studies 1-2, participants gave their initial opinions and then considered a sample of advisory opinions in two conditions. In one condition (self-perspective), they were asked to give their best advice-based estimates. In the second (other-perspective), they were asked to give advice-based estimates from the perspective of another judge. The dependent variables were the participants' accuracy and indices that traced their judgmental policy. In the self-perspective condition participants adhered to their initial opinions, whereas in the other-perspective condition they were far less egocentric, weighted the available opinions more equally and produced more accurate estimates. In Study 3, initial estimates were not elicited, yet the data patterns were consistent with these conclusions. All studies suggest that switching perspectives allows decision makers to generate advice-based judgments that are superior to those they would otherwise have produced. We discuss the merits of perspective-taking as a procedure for correcting bias, suggesting that it is theoretically justifiable, practicable, and effective.
Improving the Past and the Future: A Temporal Asymmetry in Hypothetical Thinking
Donatella Ferrante et al.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
Current views of hypothetical thinking implicitly assume that the content of imaginary thoughts about the past and future should be the same. Two experiments show that, given the same experienced facts of reality, future imagination may differ from past reconstruction. When participants failed a task, their counterfactual thoughts focused on uncontrollable features of their attempt (e.g., "Things would have been better if the allocated time were longer/if I had better logic skills"). But their prefactual thoughts focused on controllable features of their ensuing endeavor (e.g., "Things will be better next time if I concentrate more/if I use another strategy"). This finding suggests that compared with prefactual thinking, counterfactual thinking may be less subject to reality checks and less likely to serve preparatory goals.
Quentin Huys et al.PLoS Computational Biology, March 2012, e1002410
When planning a series of actions, it is usually infeasible to consider all potential future sequences; instead, one must prune the decision tree. Provably optimal pruning is, however, still computationally ruinous and the specific approximations humans employ remain unknown. We designed a new sequential reinforcement-based task and showed that human subjects adopted a simple pruning strategy: during mental evaluation of a sequence of choices, they curtailed any further evaluation of a sequence as soon as they encountered a large loss. This pruning strategy was Pavlovian: it was reflexively evoked by large losses and persisted even when overwhelmingly counterproductive. It was also evident above and beyond loss aversion. We found that the tendency towards Pavlovian pruning was selectively predicted by the degree to which subjects exhibited sub-clinical mood disturbance, in accordance with theories that ascribe Pavlovian behavioural inhibition, via serotonin, a role in mood disorders. We conclude that Pavlovian behavioural inhibition shapes highly flexible, goal-directed choices in a manner that may be important for theories of decision-making in mood disorders.
Somatic markers mediate the effect of serotonin transporter gene polymorphisms on Iowa Gambling Task
Andrei Miu et al.Genes, Brain and Behavior
This study investigated whether somatic markers mediate the effect of serotonin transporter genotype on Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) performance. Participants (N = 135) were genotyped for the insertion/deletion and single-nucleotide (rs25531) polymorphisms in the promoter region of the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR). The results of mediation analyses indicated that skin conductance responses that anticipated IGT card selections partially (i.e., 42% of the total effect) mediated the effect of genotype on IGT performance. In comparison to high-functioning 5-HTTLPR genotypes, the low-functioning genotypes were associated with higher total IGT scores. This suggests that the higher synaptic availability of serotonin, associated with the low-functioning 5-HTTLPR genotypes, may confer differential susceptibility to decision making under risk, and that almost half of this effect is explained by facilitated somatic markers during IGT.
The Impact of Visiting Team Travel on Game Outcome and Biases in NFL Betting Markets
Mark NicholsJournal of Sports Economics
Using data on regular season National Football League games from 1981-2004, this study examines the impact that travel has on game outcome and whether betting markets fully incorporate this information. A visiting team travelling west to east and crossing at least one time zone is shown to significantly increase the probability of the home team winning. This impact increases with distance, but at a decreasing rate. Evidence on whether betting markets fully account for this travel effect is mixed. While there is evidence that markets do not fully account for the impact of travel and that bettors underestimate the home team's score whenever the visitor crosses a time zone, the model does not provide a profitable betting strategy out of sample. Thus, any bias is likely too small to profitably exploit.
Decision theory as an aid to private choice
Rex BrownJudgment and Decision Making, March 2012, Pages 207-223
A wise decider D uses the contents of his mind fully, accurately and efficiently. D's ideal decisions, i.e., those that best serve his interests, would be embedded in a comprehensive set of totally coherent judgments lodged in his mind. They would conform to the norms of statistical decision theory, which extracts quantitative judgments of fact and value from D's mind contents and checks them for coherence. However, the most practical way for D to approximate his ideal may not be with models that embody those norms, i.e., with applied decision theory (ADT). In practice, ADT can represent only some of D's judgments and those imperfectly. Quite different decision aid, including intuition, pattern recognition and cognitive vigilance (especially combined), typically outperform feasible ADT models - with some notable exceptions. However, decision theory training benefits D's informal decisions. ADT, both formal and informal, should become increasingly useful and widespread, as technical, cultural and institutional impediments are overcome.
Baler Bilgin
Losses loom larger than gains. The typical interpretation of loss aversion involves a subjective value-based asymmetry between gains and losses, with individuals expecting losses to be more painful than gains of equal size to be pleasurable. This paper reveals a novel, subjective probability-based asymmetry between gains and losses that may contribute to loss aversion in risky choice. Results from five experiments suggest that losses may loom not only larger, but also more likely than gains. The propensity of losses to attract attention and to be subsequently imagined appears to underlie the proposed asymmetry. The effect translates into changes in predicted behavior, with subjective probability mediating the impact of imagination on the predicted likelihood to accept to play an equal-probability gamble. The implications of our findings for loss aversion, the negativity bias, and the imagination literature are discussed.
Friday, April 27, 2012
Master and Commander
Marisa Abrajano & Craig BurnettPresidential Studies Quarterly, June 2012, Pages 363-375
Recent presidential approval trends have led many pollsters to conclude that a "racial gap" exists in President Barack Obama's job approval ratings. Pollsters have focused disproportionately on the substantial gap between Blacks and Whites. Some political commentators and media outlets attribute this divergence to the fact that Obama is the first ethnic/racial minority to occupy the White House. The existence of a White-Black gap, however, could merely reflect the differences in the political preferences of White and Black Americans. In this article, we assess these two competing arguments by analyzing CNN polling data spanning President Obama's inauguration in January 2009 to June 2011. For comparative purposes, we examine Time/CNN polling data that begins with President Bill Clinton's inauguration in January 1993 to June 1995. Our findings suggest that the gap in Black support for President Obama is significantly larger than it is for President Clinton, providing evidence that racial group pride and solidarity appear to play an important role in Blacks' evaluations of Obama.
David LubanPhilosophy & Public Affairs, Fall 2011, Pages 299-330
"Until recently, rulers routinely treated the punishment of affronts as a legitimate reason to make war. Today, warmaking to punish misbehaving princes may seem no better than warmaking to grab land, tribute, or glory...[T]he punishment theory of just cause, which holds that states may justly fight wars as retribution for wrongdoing, has been a theme in Western just war theory since it began. Only in the last two centuries have theorists clearly broken with the punishment theory. Arguably, international law did not decisively reject the punishment theory until the end of World War II. During that war, we should recall, Winston Churchill made no apologies for launching the terror bombing of German cities as retaliation for the Nazi blitz, and Churchill emphasized that the aim was retribution, not mere inducement for the Germans to stop the blitz: 'if tonight the people of London were asked to cast their votes whether a convention should be entered into to stop the bombing of all cities, the overwhelming majority would cry, ‘No, we will mete out to the Germans the measure, and more than the measure, that they have meted out to us.''...I doubt matters have changed greatly in the last half century. No American who lived through the shock of 9/11 can forget how deeply and powerfully our retributive emotions ran. In his memoirs, President George W. Bush recollects, 'My blood was boiling. We were going to find out who did this, and kick their ass.'...I provisionally accept retributivism, but I shall argue that even for retributivists punishment through warmaking is morally unacceptable for at least five reasons: (1) It places punishment in the hands of a biased judge, namely the aggrieved party, which (2) makes it more likely to be vengeance than retributive justice. (3) Vengeance does not follow the fundamental condition of just retribution, namely proportionality between punishment and offense. (4) Furthermore, punishment through warmaking punishes the wrong people and (5) it employs the wrong methods. Regardless of the intuitive pull of the punishment theory, modern international law was right to reject it."
Anthony Little et al.
Facial appearance of candidates has been linked to real election outcomes. Here we extend these findings by examining the contributions of attractiveness and trustworthiness in male faces to perceived votability. We first use real faces to show that attractiveness and trustworthiness are positively and independently related to perceptions of good leadership (Rating study). We then show that computer graphic manipulations of attractiveness and trustworthiness influence choice of leader (Study 1 and 2). Finally, we show that changing context from war-time to peace-time can affect which face receives the most votes. Attractive faces were relatively more valued for war-time and trustworthy faces relatively more valued for peace-time (Study 1 and 2). This pattern suggests attractiveness, which may signal health and fitness, is perceived to be a useful attribute in war-time leaders whereas trustworthiness, which may signal pro-social traits, is perceived to be more important during peace-time. Our studies highlight the possible role of facial appearance in voting behaviour and the role of attributions of attractiveness and trust. We also show that there may be no general characteristics of faces that make them perceived as the best choice of leader; leaders may be chosen because of characteristics that are perceived as the best for leaders to possess in particular situations.
Bandit Heroes: Social, Mythical, or Rational?
Nicholas Curott & Alexander FinkAmerican Journal of Economics and Sociology, April 2012, Pages 470-497
Bandits steal from their fellow men. Yet they are regularly subjects of folksongs, novels, and movies. In these outlets they are presented as folk heroes despite their crimes. Sociological explanations for this phenomenon based upon Eric Hobsbawm's concept of the "social bandit" and psychological explanations based upon myth building have been brought forth to explain the seeming contradiction. We propose an alternative explanation for the bandit hero phenomenon. We argue that bandits, acting solely in their own self-interest, unintentionally provide valuable services to societies under the rule of a predatory government. We identify three separate mechanisms by which bandits benefit society that do not necessarily hinge upon class struggles or historical dialectics. The social benefits that bandits generate form the foundation for their positive reception.
Signing Statements as Bargaining Outcomes: Evidence from the Administration of George W. Bush
Andrew WhitfordPresidential Studies Quarterly, June 2012, Pages 343-362
Recent studies have documented how presidents issue signing statements. A president might try to bend policy closer to his own position through shaping how bureaucrats use their discretion to implement a law. Later in time, it may serve as a defense if it shapes how judges decide whether a particular interpretation is consistent with the Constitution. A president may construct more detailed and complex statements when his ideal point is distant from Congress. I test this hypothesis and others using data from the George W. Bush administration between 2001 and 2006. Both the number of objections applied to a given bill and their complexity increase when the president is distant from Congress.
Victor Shih, Christopher Adolph & Mingxing Liu American Political Science Review, February 2012, Pages 166-187
Spectacular economic growth in China suggests the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has somehow gotten it right. A key hypothesis in both economics and political science is that the CCP's cadre evaluation system, combined with China's geography-based governing logic, has motivated local administrators to compete with one another to generate high growth. We raise a number of theoretical and empirical challenges to this claim. Using a new biographical database of Central Committee members, a previously overlooked feature of CCP reporting, and a novel Bayesian method that can estimate individual-level correlates of partially observed ranks, we find no evidence that strong growth performance was rewarded with higher party ranks at any of the postreform party congresses. Instead, factional ties with various top leaders, educational qualifications, and provincial revenue collection played substantial roles in elite ranking, suggesting that promotion systems served the immediate needs of the regime and its leaders, rather than encompassing goals such as economic growth.
José Villalobos & Cigdem SirinInternational Journal of Public Opinion Research, Spring 2012, Pages 21-41
This study employs an experimental approach to isolate and directly test the extent to which presidents can affect public perceptions of issue importance and support for policy action, taking into consideration key factors that condition such effects. Our findings provide new empirical evidence that presidents can, in fact, positively influence public opinion through agenda setting, particularly by increasing the perceptual importance of low salience foreign policy issues. However, the results also indicate that such positive effects do not translate into public support for policy action; instead, presidential appeals actually decrease support. Last, our study offers new evidence that employing bipartisan cues can help presidents further increase public perceptions of issue importance, though such cues are unlikely to spur increased support.
Cigdem SirinArmed Forces & Society, April 2012, Pages 252-272
This study examines the effect of political information levels and intervention stages on the formation and continuity of public support for military interventions by analyzing survey data pertaining to the 2003 military intervention in Iraq. The results show that before and immediately after the launch of the intervention, politically uninformed individuals expressed higher support for the war compared to politically informed ones. However, as the intervention proceeded and casualties were incurred, higher rates of decrease in support were observed among the politically uninformed. Politically informed individuals, on the other hand, demonstrated more stable levels of support throughout the course of the intervention.
Kevin EvansPresidential Studies Quarterly, June 2012, Pages 390-405
How did the signing statements of the modern presidency before Watergate shape the development of the tool and contribute to its institutionalization? A content analysis of the 626 signing statements from 1933 to 1974 shows that the Eisenhower, Johnson, and Nixon administrations set important precedents for the modern constitutional use of the tool by protecting the institution from legislative vetoes and perceived encroachments in regard to foreign affairs and executive privilege. The results reveal that the constitutional logic required for the growth of challenges is rooted in this era and that Watergate served to amplify a trend that was already in motion.
Sophie Trawalter et al.Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, May 2012, Pages 333-345
This study examines physiological stress responses to the 2008 U.S. presidential election. The week before and after Election Day, participants provided three daily saliva samples, assayed for cortisol (a principal "stress hormone") and testosterone. Results revealed that, on Election Day, all participants on average and Republicans in particular exhibited stunted cortisol and testosterone rhythms, perhaps reflecting participants' anticipation. After Election Day, participants' political affiliation was not a strong predictor of physiological responses. Their social dominance orientation - that is, their tolerance of social inequalities - was predictive of responses. Those higher in social dominance orientation had higher cortisol and testosterone morning values. These changes suggest that individuals higher in social dominance orientation were distressed but ready to fight back. The present findings add to an emerging body of work showing that sociopolitical differences can influence biological systems relevant to health and behavior.
The Presidential Ranking Game: Critical Review and Some New Discoveries
Curt NicholsPresidential Studies Quarterly, June 2012, Pages 275-299
This study provides critical analysis of ranking surveys, leading to regression analysis that provides fresh insight into the factors that structure presidential rating scores. Results demonstrate that rating scores can be predicted with relative ease. Furthermore, new measures are found to be significant - two operationalizing the latest extension of Stephen Skowronek's "political time" thesis and one controlling for cultural level preferences favoring "progressive" presidents. This suggests that expert evaluators take note of presidential performance within context. It also suggests that experts of all political stripes are influenced by the milieu in which their evaluation takes place. In the end, while no claim is made that the popular expert surveys used in this study provide a true measure of presidential greatness, it is argued that ranking polls may tell us more than critics admit.
Folk Realism: Testing the Microfoundations of Realism in Ordinary Citizens
Joshua Kertzer & Kathleen McGrawInternational Studies Quarterly
International Relations scholars have long debated whether the American public is allergic to realism, which raises the question of how they would "contract" it in the first place. We argue that realism isn't just an IR paradigm, but a belief system, whose relationship with other ideological systems in public opinion has rarely been fully examined. Operationalizing this disposition in ordinary citizens as "folk realism," we investigate its relationship with a variety of personality traits, foreign policy orientations, and political knowledge. We then present the results of a laboratory experiment probing psychological microfoundations for realist theory, manipulating the amount of information subjects have about a foreign policy conflict to determine whether uncertainty leads individuals to adopt more realist views, and whether realists and idealists respond to uncertainty and fear differently. We find that many of realism's causal mechanisms are conditional on whether subjects already hold realist views, and suggest that emotions like fear may play a larger role in realist theory than many realists have assumed.
Amplifying Silence: Uncertainty and Control Parables in Contemporary China
Rachel Stern & Jonathan HassidComparative Political Studies
Well-known tools of state coercion, such as administrative punishment, imprisonment, and violence, affect far fewer than 1% of Chinese journalists and lawyers. What, then, keeps the other 99% in line? Building on work detailing control strategies in illiberal states, the authors suggest that the answer is more complicated than the usual story of heavy-handed repression. Instead, deep-rooted uncertainty about the boundaries of permissible political action magnifies the effect of each crackdown. Unsure of the limits of state tolerance, lawyers and journalists frequently self-censor, effectively controlling themselves. But self-censorship does not always mean total retreat from political concerns. Rather, didactic stories about transgression help the politically inclined map the gray zone between (relatively) safe and unacceptably risky choices. For all but the most optimistic risk takers, these stories - which we call control parables - harden limits on activism by illustrating a set of prescriptions designed to prevent future clashes with authority. The rules for daily behavior, in short, are not handed down from the pinnacle of the state but jointly written (and rewritten) by Chinese public professionals and their government overseers.
Executive Orders and Presidential Unilateralism
Andrew RudalevigePresidential Studies Quarterly, March 2012, Pages 138-160
How should we assess unilateral tactics and their contribution to presidential power in a less-than-unitary executive branch? To explore this question this article examines the provenance of nearly 300 executive orders from 1947 through 1987. Archival data show that executive orders are frequently a less-than-perfect representation of presidential preferences, despite the assumptions of recent work on unilateral power. That is, the issuance of executive orders often involves persuasion rather than simply command: it incorporates wide consultation across the executive branch and, frequently, White House ratification of what agencies wanted to do in the first place.
Sandra González-Bailón, Rafael Banchs & Andreas Kaltenbrunner Human Communication Research, April 2012, Pages 121-143
This article examines how emotional reactions to political events shape public opinion. We analyze political discussions in which people voluntarily engage online to approximate the public agenda: Online discussions offer a natural approach to the salience of political issues and the means to analyze emotional reactions as political events take place in real time. We measure shifts in emotions of the public over a period that includes 2 U.S. presidential elections, the 9/11 attacks, and the start of military action in Afghanistan and Iraq. Our findings show that emotional reactions to political events help explain approval rates for the same period, which casts novel light on the mechanisms that mediate the association between agenda setting and political evaluations.
Presidential Leverage and the Politics of Policy Formulation
Daniel PonderPresidential Studies Quarterly, June 2012, Pages 300-323
This article applies a concept of "presidential leverage" to the inner workings of the White House, specifically decisions regarding the location of policy formulation. The guiding question addresses how a president's leverage in the political system influences decisions regarding policy making. Findings support the propositions that (1) leverage has a systematic impact on presidential policy formation, (2) divided government has little or no impact on policy making location, and (3) presidents who are ideologically compatible with Congress are less likely to centralize. I conclude with some general thoughts on the current state of presidential leverage.
If You're Against Them You're With Us: The Effect of Expropriation on Autocratic Survival
Michael Albertus & Victor MenaldoComparative Political Studies
This article advances a theory of why some dictators weaken the elite through expropriation whereas others do not. When the organization that launches a new dictator into power is uncertain about whether he will remain loyal to them, a dictator's decision to expropriate the preexisting elite may contribute to political stability by signaling his exclusive reliance on this group. The authors corroborate this claim empirically. Using new data compiled on land, resource, and bank expropriations in Latin America from 1950 to 2002, the authors show that large-scale expropriation helps dictators survive in power. Furthermore, expropriation tends to occur early in a dictator's tenure, and its effect on leader survival decays over time, providing additional evidence for its signaling value. The history of autocracy in Mexico between 1911 and 2000 further illustrates the importance of expropriation in promoting autocratic survival as well as how the codification of new property rights can transform a dictator's launching organization into a new economic elite.
Jarret Crawford & Anuschka BhatiaAnalyses of Social Issues and Public Policy
Despite an abundance of evidence to the contrary, a substantial number of Americans believed that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States, even almost two years into his administration (CNN, 2010, July). Both anecdotal and polling evidence at the time suggested that Republicans and political conservatives were more likely to hold these inaccurate beliefs. This study demonstrated that across a variety of operationalizations of political orientation, both explicit and implicit beliefs that President Obama was foreign were related to political conservatism. Potential sources of these beliefs are considered.
To Change or Not to Change Horses: The World War II Elections
Helmut NorpothPresidential Studies Quarterly, June 2012, Pages 324-342
Folk wisdom counsels voters to stick with leaders in time of a war, though recent experience suggests otherwise. Taking advantage of largely unexplored polls from the 1940s (Gallup and National Opinion Research Center), this research probes vote choices in the World War II elections. Of particular interest is a counterfactual question that asked respondents how they would have voted if there was no war. In addition, the aggregate vote in presidential contests over time is used to estimate how the White House party fares in wartime elections. President Roosevelt received a special premium in electoral support from the wartime condition in both 1940 and 1944. This premium was earned through popular support for war-related issues. Hence, in wartime elections where such support is lacking voters may be inclined to change horses.
Weichun Zhu et al.Leadership, May 2012, Pages 109-124
This study examined the dynamic relationships among ethical political leadership, the public's confidence in political leaders, commitment to the nation, and the perception of being safe from a terrorist attack. Based on a U.S. national random sample (n = 1604), we found that the public's confidence in political leaders mediates the effect of ethical political leadership on the public's commitment to the nation and the perception of being safe from a terrorist attack. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
The Framers and Executive Prerogative: A Constitutional and Historical Rebuke
David Gray AdlerPresidential Studies Quarterly, June 2012, Pages 376-389
Continued assertions of a presidential prerogative power, broad enough, in the literary tradition of the Lockean Prerogative to permit the president in an emergency to act in the absence or violation of law, raises anew the question of the existence, source, and scope of such extraordinary authority. This article explains that the framers of the Constitution delivered a constitutional and historical rebuke to the concept of executive prerogative. As Justice Jackson observed in the Steel Seizure Case, the framers recognized that the possession of an emergency power would "tend to kindle emergencies." Presidential violation of the Constitution is illegal, and can be made legal only through congressional passage of retroactive ratification.
When Backing Down Is the Right Decision: Partisanship, New Information, and Audience Costs
Matthew Levendusky & Michael HorowitzJournal of Politics, April 2012, Pages 323-338
How do domestic political conditions shape when leaders get punished for backing down in international crises? We explore how three factors - the president's partisanship, the reaction of other elites, and whether the president justifies his decision on the basis of new information - influence the size of domestic audience costs. While standard theories in American politics suggest that partisanship should exert a large effect over voter behavior, we offer an alternative theory explaining why the president's unique informational advantage following a crisis will mute partisanship's effect on audience costs. We argue that the president's justification for why he backed down, however, will have a large effect on audience costs. Using a series of original survey experiments, we find strong support for our theoretical argument. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for the role of partisanship, framing, and the audience costs literature more broadly.
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26 Apr ' 23:10
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Strong enough for a man
Who Takes the Floor and Why: Gender, Power, and Volubility in Organizations
Victoria BrescollAdministrative Science Quarterly, December 2011, Pages 622-641
Although past research has noted the importance of both power and gender for understanding volubility - the total amount of time spent talking - in organizations, to date, identifying the unique contributions of power and gender to volubility has been somewhat elusive. Using both naturalistic data sets and experiments, the present studies indicate that while power has a strong, positive effect on volubility for men, no such effect exists for women. Study 1 uses archival data to examine the relationship between the relative power of United States senators and their talking behavior on the Senate floor. Results indicate a strong positive relationship between power and volubility for male senators, but a non-significant relationship for female senators. Study 2 replicates this effect in an experimental setting by priming the concept of power and shows that though men primed with power talk more, women show no effect of power on volubility. Mediation analyses indicate that this difference is explained by women's concern that being highly voluble will result in negative consequences (i.e., backlash). Study 3 shows that powerful women are in fact correct in assuming that they will incur backlash as a result of talking more than others - an effect that is observed among both male and female perceivers. Implications for the literatures on volubility, power, and previous studies of backlash are discussed.
Kristina Durante et al.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Although the ratio of males to females in a population is known to influence behavior in nonhuman animals, little is known about how sex ratio influences human behavior. We propose that sex ratio affects women's family planning and career choices. Using both historical data and experiments, we examined how sex ratio influences women's career aspirations. Findings showed that a scarcity of men led women to seek high-paying careers and to delay starting a family. This effect was driven by how sex ratio altered the mating market, not just the job market. Sex ratios involving a scarcity of men led women to seek lucrative careers because of the difficulty women have in finding an investing, long-term mate under such circumstances. Accordingly, this low-male sex ratio produced the strongest desire for lucrative careers in women who are least able to secure a mate. These findings demonstrate that sex ratio has far-reaching effects in humans, including whether women choose briefcase over baby.
Testosterone's Negative Relationship With Empathic Accuracy and Perceived Leadership Ability
Richard Ronay & Dana Carney
Two studies examine the relationship between naturally occurring levels of circulating testosterone and empathic accuracy. In Study 1, the authors find that higher endogenous levels of testosterone are negatively related to the accuracy with which people infer the thoughts and feelings of others. In Study 2, the authors use 360 data collected in the field to show that individuals with higher levels of endogenous testosterone are evaluated by their real-world professional colleagues as functioning with lower levels of empathic accuracy. Furthermore, the authors report evidence that this negative relationship between testosterone and perceived empathic accuracy has downstream consequences for perceptions of one's leadership skills and abilities.
The Importance of Physical Strength to Human Males
Aaron Sell, Liana Hone & Nicholas PoundHuman Nature, March 2012, Pages 30-44
Fighting ability, although recognized as fundamental to intrasexual competition in many nonhuman species, has received little attention as an explanatory variable in the social sciences. Multiple lines of evidence from archaeology, criminology, anthropology, physiology, and psychology suggest that fighting ability was a crucial aspect of intrasexual competition for ancestral human males, and this has contributed to the evolution of numerous physical and psychological sex differences. Because fighting ability was relevant to many domains of interaction, male psychology should have evolved such that a man's attitudes and behavioral responses are calibrated according to his formidability. Data are reviewed showing that better fighters feel entitled to better outcomes, set lower thresholds for anger/aggression, have self-favoring political attitudes, and believe more in the utility of warfare. New data are presented showing that among Hollywood actors, those selected for their physical strength (i.e., action stars) are more likely to believe in the utility of warfare.
Mental state attribution and body configuration in women
Jennifer Bremser & Gordon GallupFrontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience, January 2012
Body configuration is a sexually dimorphic trait. In humans, men tend to have high shoulder-to-hip ratios. Women in contrast, often have low waist-to-hip ratios (WHR); i.e., narrow waists and broad hips that approximate an hour-glass configuration. Women with low WHR's are rated as more attractive, healthier, and more fertile. They also tend to have more attractive voices, lose their virginity sooner, and have more sex partners. WHR has also been linked with general cognitive performance. In the present study we expand upon previous research examining the role of WHR in cognition. We hypothesized that more feminine body types, as indexed by a low WHR, would be associated with cognitive measures of the female "brain type," such as mental state attribution and empathy because both may depend upon the activational effects of estrogens at puberty. We found that women with low WHRs excel at identifying emotional states of other people and show a cognitive style that favors empathizing over systemizing. We suggest this relationship may be a byproduct of greater gluteofemoral fat stores which are high in the essential fatty acids needed to support brain development and cellular functioning. It is interesting to note that our findings suggest lower WHR females, who are more likely to be targeted for dishonest courtship, may be better at identifying disingenuous claims of commitment.
Male Pragmatism in Negotiators' Ethical Reasoning
Laura Kray & Michael HaselhuhnJournal of Experimental Social Psychology
Across four studies, we explored why a gender gap emerges in negotiator ethics, such that men set lower ethical standards than women. The male pragmatism hypothesis suggests men, more than women, are motivationally biased in setting ethical standards. Experiment 1 demonstrated how negotiations' masculinity implications underlie this gender gap in ethics. Experiment 2 demonstrated that, by viewing ethics from a self-interested perspective, men were more egocentric in their ethical reasoning than women. Experiment 3 demonstrated that, by granting themselves more leniency in ethics than others, men exhibited more moral hypocrisy than women. Experiment 4 examined how implicit negotiation beliefs affect the relation between gender and ethical standards. As hypothesized, fixed beliefs predicted lower ethical standards, particularly for men. These findings suggest a robust pattern by which men are more pragmatic in their ethical reasoning at the bargaining table than women.
Hormonal Mechanisms for Regulation of Aggression in Human Coalitions
Mark Flinn, Davide Ponzi & Michael Muehlenbein Human Nature, March 2012, Pages 68-88
Coalitions and alliances are core aspects of human behavior. All societies recognize alliances among communities, usually based in part on kinship and marriage. Aggression between groups is ubiquitous, often deadly, fueled by revenge, and can have devastating effects on general human welfare. Given its significance, it is surprising how little we know about the neurobiological and hormonal mechanisms that underpin human coalitionary behavior. Here we first briefly review a model of human coalitionary behavior based on a process of runaway social selection. We then present several exploratory analyses of neuroendocrine responses to coalitionary social events in a rural Dominican community, with the objective of understanding differences between in-group and out-group competition in adult and adolescent males. Our analyses indicate: (1) adult and adolescent males do not elevate testosterone when they defeat their friends, but they do elevate testosterone when they defeat outsiders; (2) pre-competition testosterone and cortisol levels are negatively associated with strength of coalitionary ties; and (3) adult males usually elevate testosterone when interacting with adult women who are potential mates, but in a striking reversal, they have lower testosterone if the woman is a conjugal partner of a close friend. These naturalistic studies hint that reciprocity, dampening of aggression, and competition among friends and allies may be biologically embedded in unique ways among humans.
Francine Blau, Peter Brummund & Albert Yung-Hsu Liu NBER Working Paper, April 2012
In this paper, we develop a gender-specific crosswalk based on dual-coded Current Population Survey data to bridge the change in the Census occupational coding system that occurred in 2000 and use it to provide the first analysis of the trends in occupational segregation by sex for the 1970-2009 period based on a consistent set of occupational codes and data sources. We show that our gender-specific crosswalk more accurately captures the trends in occupational segregation that are masked using the aggregate crosswalk (based on combined male and female employment) provided by the U.S. Census Bureau. Using the 2000 occupational codes, we find that segregation by sex declined over the period but at a diminished pace over the decades, falling by 6.1 percentage points over the 1970s, 4.3 percentage points over the 1980s, 2.1 percentage points over the 1990s, and only 1.1 percentage points (on a decadal basis) over the 2000s. A primary mechanism by which occupational segregation was reduced over the 1970-2009 period was through the entry of new cohorts of women, presumably better prepared than their predecessors and/or encountering less labor market discrimination; during the 1970s and 1980s, however, there were also decreases in occupational segregation within cohorts. Reductions in segregation were correlated with education, with the largest decrease among college graduates and very little change in segregation among high school dropouts.
Are Women Overinvesting in Education? Evidence from the Medical Profession
Keith Chen & Judith ChevalierJournal of Human Capital, forthcoming
Recent literature has documented that women earn significantly lower returns than men to investing in professional degrees. However, these papers have not addressed the question of whether this gap is large enough to render professional degrees poor financial investments for women. To study this, we examine whether becoming a physician is a positive net-present-value investment for women. We sidestep some selection issues associated with measuring the returns to education by comparing physicians to physician assistants, a similar profession with lower wages but much lower up-front training costs. We find that the median female (but not male) primary-care physician would have been financially better off becoming a physician assistant. This result is partially due to a gender-wage gap in medicine. However, it is mostly driven by the fact that the median female physician simply doesn't work enough hours to amortize her upfront investment in medical school. In contrast, the median male physician work many more hours, easily enough to amortize his up-front investment. We discuss the robustness of our results to other medical specialties and their relevance to gender-wage gaps more broadly. We discuss other sources of returns to education that rationalize these investments by women.
Arne Roets, Alain Van Hiel & Kristof Dhont European Journal of Personality, May/June 2012, Pages 350-359
The present research investigated the antecedents of ambivalent sexism (i.e., hostile and benevolent forms) in both men and women toward own and other gender. In two heterogeneous adult samples (Study 1: N = 179 and Study 2: N = 222), it was revealed that gender itself was only a minor predictor of sexist attitudes compared with the substantial impact of individual differences in general motivated cognition (i.e., need for closure). Analyses further showed that the relationship between need for closure and sexism was mediated by social attitudes (i.e., right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation), which were differently related to benevolent and hostile forms of sexism. In the discussion, it is argued that sexism primarily stems from individual differences in motivated cognitive style, which relates to peoples' perspective on the social world, rather than from group differences between men and women.
Alison Blodorn, Laurie O'Brien & Justin Kordys , May 2012, Pages 409-424
The present studies examine responses to individual and institutional sex-based discrimination and how these responses vary as a function of the perceiver's gender. In Study 1A, women perceived more sexism than men and the magnitude of the gender gap was significantly larger for institutional sexism as compared to individual sexism. Study 1B provided validation for the measures of perceptions of individual and institutional sexism. In Study 2, participants reached a verdict and determined remedies in a lawsuit where the plaintiff was a woman claiming to be a victim of individual or institutional sexism. Women were more likely than men to render a verdict in favor of the plaintiff. When the plaintiff was a victim of individual discrimination, men and women awarded comparable remedies but when the plaintiff was a victim of institutional sexism, women awarded significantly more remedies than men. Thus the present research suggests that gender moderates responses to institutional and individual forms of discrimination and these gender differences may have important implications for victims of discrimination.
"That's what a man is supposed to do": Compensatory Manhood Acts in an LGBT Christian Church
Edward SumerauGender & Society, forthcoming
In this article, I examine how gay Christian men constructed compensatory manhood acts. Based on more than 450 hours of fieldwork in a southeastern LGBT Christian organization, I analyze how a group of gay men, responding to sexist, heterosexist, and religious stigma, as well as the acquisition of a new pastor, constructed identities as gay Christian men by (1) emphasizing paternal stewardship, (2) stressing emotional control and inherent rationality, and (3) defining intimate relationships in a Christian manner. These subordinated men, regardless of their intentions, collaboratively drew on and reproduced cultural notions that facilitate and justify the subordination of women and sexual minorities. Specifically, their compensatory manhood acts symbolically positioned them as superior to supposedly promiscuous, self-centered, and effeminate others. In conclusion, I draw out implications for understanding how groups of gay Christian men engage in compensatory manhood acts, and the consequences these actions have for the reproduction of inequality.
What's love got to do with it? Framing ‘JihadJane' in the US press
Maura Conway & Lisa McInerneyMedia, War & Conflict, April 2012, Pages 6-21
The purpose of this article is to compare and contrast the US press coverage accorded to female terrorist plotter, Colleen LaRose, with that of two male terrorist plotters in order to test whether assertions in the academic literature regarding media treatment of women terrorists stand up to empirical scrutiny. The authors employed TextSTAT software to generate frequency counts of all words contained in 150 newspaper reports on their three subjects and then slotted relevant terms into categories fitting the commonest female terrorist frames, as identified by Nacos's article in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism (2005). The authors' findings confirm that women involved in terrorism receive significantly more press coverage and are framed vastly differently in the US press than their male counterparts.
Is Meat Male? A Quantitative Multimethod Framework to Establish Metaphoric Relationships
Paul Rozin et al.Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Metaphors are increasingly recognized as influencing cognition and consumption. While these linkages typically have been qualitatively generated, this article presents a framework of convergent quantitative methodologies that can further document the validity of a metaphor. To illustrate this multimethod framework, the authors explore whether there is a metaphoric link between meat and maleness in Western cultures. The authors address this in six quantifiable studies that involve (1) implicit associations, (2) free associations, (3) indirect-scenario-based inferences, (4) direct measurement profiling, (5) preference and choice, and (6) linguistic analysis and conclude that there is a metaphoric relationship between mammal muscle meat and maleness.
Gendering the Self: Selective Magazine Reading and Reinforcement of Gender Conformity
Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick & Gregory Hoplamazian Communication Research, June 2012, Pages 358-384
Based on gender schema theory, social role theory, and social-cognitive theory, this study investigated whether biological sex and gender conformity (femininity and masculinity) predict selective exposure to gender-typed magazines and whether this exposure, in turn, reinforces gender conformity. Participants browsed full issues-three women's magazines, three associated with male readers, and three news magazines-while being taped. Before and after browsing, participants indicated their femininity and masculinity. Results show a strong impact of biological sex on selective magazine reading, resulting in gender-typed media use. However, gender conformity also influenced exposure. Moreover, mediation analyses showed that selective exposure to gender-typed magazines had a reinforcing effect on the gendered self-concept.
2D:4D in Men Is Related to Aggressive Dominance but Not to Sociable Dominance
Leander van der Meij et al.Aggressive Behavior, May / June 2012, Pages 208-212
It has been shown that a smaller ratio between the length of the second and fourth digit (2D:4D) is an indicator of the exposure to prenatal testosterone (T). This study measured the 2D:4D of men and assessed dominance as a personality trait to investigate indirectly if the exposure to prenatal T is related to a dominant personality later in life. Results showed that men had a more aggressive dominant personality when having a more masculine (lower) 2D:4D, while there was no relationship between sociable dominance and 2D:4D. Findings from this study indicate that it is important to distinguish different forms of dominance since other studies failed to find relationships between dominance and 2D:4D.
Emily Amanatullah & Catherine TinsleyOrganizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, forthcoming
We complement prior findings that self-advocating female negotiators are reluctant to assert their interests and subsequently suffer financial repercussions, relative to other-advocating females, self-advocating males, and other-advocating males, by showing that self-advocating female negotiators who do assert their interests suffer negative social judgments (i.e., backlash). We use nascent theory on societal norms for the behavior of each gender to explain why advocacy context moderates backlash. We show that assertive, self-advocating women suffer a social backlash (for example, decreased likability) because their behavior is associated with high negative masculine and low positive feminine characterizations. Non-assertive, other-advocating women suffer a leadership backlash (for example, lower presumed competency) because their behavior is associated with high negative feminine and low positive masculine characterizations. Interestingly, male negotiators do not suffer any backlash consequences despite being characterized in a fashion similar to that of the females in each condition.
Male academic performance in college: The possible role of study strategies
Heath Marrs & Ellen SiglerPsychology of Men & Masculinity, April 2012, Pages 227-241
There is growing concern among some commentators regarding the academic preparation and performance of male college students in the United States (Wilson, 2007). In this study, gender differences in approaches to learning and study strategies were examined in three samples of community college and university students (N = 650; 274 men, 376 women) utilizing two instruments. Significant multivariate effects for gender were found for both approaches to learning and study strategies. Women scored significantly higher than men did on Deep Approach, Achieving Approach, Motivation, Self-Testing, use of Study Aids, and Time Management. Effect sizes ranged from small to medium (Cohen, 1992). These findings may be indicative of the types of academics-related behaviors and attitudes with which college men may need to be remediated.
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School Context and the Gender Gap in Educational Achievement
Joscha Legewie & Thomas DiPrete
American Sociological Review, forthcomingAbstract:
Today, boys generally underperform relative to girls in schools throughout the industrialized world. Building on theories about gender identity and reports from prior ethnographic classroom observations, we argue that school environment channels conceptions of masculinity in peer culture, fostering or inhibiting boys' development of anti-school attitudes and behavior. Girls' peer groups, by contrast, vary less strongly with the social environment in the extent to which school engagement is stigmatized as un-feminine. As a consequence, boys are more sensitive than girls to school resources that create a learning-oriented environment. To evaluate this argument, we use a quasi-experimental research design and estimate the gender difference in the causal effect of peer socioeconomic status (SES) as an important school resource on test scores. Our design is based on the assumption that assignment to 5th-grade classrooms within Berlin's schools is as good as random, and we evaluate this selection process with an examination of Berlin's school regulations, a simulation analysis, and qualitative interviews with school principals. Estimates of the effect of SES composition on male and female performance strongly support our central hypothesis, and other analyses support our proposed mechanism as the likely explanation for gender differences in the causal effect.----------------------
Gender and Social Preferences in the US: An Experimental Study
Linda Kamas & Anne Preston
Feminist Economics, Winter 2012, Pages 135-160Abstract:
This contribution provides evidence that social preferences differ by gender among United States college students. Tracking within-person choices over ten dictator exercises in which individuals choose one of three allocations of money between themselves and two other participants, this study precisely maps social preference types and identifies consistency of preferences within groups of roughly two-thirds of participants. Contrary to previous studies that identify a dominant social preference, this study' rigorous identification system reveals that other-regarding individuals are heterogeneous and almost evenly split between inequity aversion and social surplus maximization. But, even among individuals raised in a culture that stresses equal opportunity, there are gender differences. Women are substantially more likely than men to be inequity averters and less likely to be social surplus maximizers. However, a large majority of participants, both men and women, choose allocations consistent with compassion for the least well off.----------------------
Gender Differences in Self-Conscious Emotional Experience: A Meta-Analysis
Nicole Else-Quest et al.
Psychological Bulletin, forthcomingAbstract:
The self-conscious emotions (SCE) of guilt, shame, pride, and embarrassment are moral emotions, which motivate adherence to social norms and personal standards and emerge in early childhood following the development of self-awareness. Gender stereotypes of emotion maintain that women experience more guilt, shame, and embarrassment but that men experience more pride. To estimate the magnitude of gender differences in SCE experience and to determine the circumstances under which these gender differences vary, we meta-analyzed 697 effect sizes representing 236,304 individual ratings of SCE states and traits from 382 journal articles, dissertations, and unpublished data sets. Guilt (d = -0.27) and shame (d = -0.29) displayed small gender differences, whereas embarrassment (d = -0.08), authentic pride (d = -0.01), and hubristic pride (d = 0.09) showed gender similarities. Similar to previous findings of ethnic variations in gender differences in other psychological variables, gender differences in shame and guilt were significant only for White samples or samples with unspecified ethnicity. We found larger gender gaps in shame with trait (vs. state) scales, and in guilt and shame with situation- and scenario-based (vs. adjective- and statement-based) items, consistent with predictions that such scales and items tend to tap into global, nonspecific assessments of the self and thus reflect self-stereotyping and gender role assimilative effects. Gender differences in SCE about domains such as the body, sex, and food or eating tended to be larger than gender differences in SCE about other domains. These findings contribute to the literature demonstrating that blanket stereotypes about women's greater emotionality are inaccurate.----------------------
Sex differences in brain activation to emotional stimuli: A meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies
Jennifer Strafford Stevens & Stephan Hamann
Neuropsychologia, forthcomingAbstract:
Substantial sex differences in emotional responses and perception have been reported in previous psychological and psychophysiological studies. For example, women have been found to respond more strongly to negative emotional stimuli, a sex difference that has been linked to an increased risk of depression and anxiety disorders. The extent to which such sex differences are reflected in corresponding differences in regional brain activation remains a largely unresolved issue, however, in part because relatively few neuroimaging studies have addressed this issue. Here, by conducting a quantitative meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies, we were able to substantially increase statistical power to detect sex differences relative to prior studies, by combining emotion studies which explicitly examined sex differences with the much larger number of studies that examined only women or men. We used an activation likelihood estimation approach to characterize sex differences in the likelihood of regional brain activation elicited by emotional stimuli relative to non-emotional stimuli. We examined sex differences separately for negative and positive emotions, in addition to examining all emotions combined. Sex differences varied markedly between negative and positive emotion studies. The majority of sex differences favoring women were observed for negative emotion, whereas the majority of the sex differences favoring men were observed for positive emotion. This valence-specificity was particularly evident for the amygdala. For negative emotion, women exhibited greater activation than men in the left amygdala, as well as in other regions including the left thalamus, hypothalamus, mammillary bodies, left caudate, and medial prefrontal cortex. In contrast, for positive emotion, men exhibited greater activation than women in the left amygdala, as well as greater activation in other regions including the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus and right fusiform gyrus. These meta-analysis findings indicate that the amygdala, a key region for emotion processing, exhibits valence-dependent sex differences in activation to emotional stimuli. The greater left amygdala response to negative emotion for women accords with previous reports that women respond more strongly to negative emotional stimuli, as well as with hypothesized links between increased neurobiological reactivity to negative emotion and increased prevalence of depression and anxiety disorders in women. The finding of greater left amygdala activation for positive emotional stimuli in men suggests that greater amygdala responses reported previously for men for specific types of positive stimuli may also extend to positive stimuli more generally. In summary, this study extends efforts to characterize sex differences in brain activation during emotion processing by providing the largest and most comprehensive quantitative meta-analysis to date, and for the first time examining sex differences as a function of positive vs. negative emotional valence. The current findings highlight the importance of considering sex as a potential factor modulating emotional processing and its underlying neural mechanisms, and more broadly, the need to consider individual differences in understanding the neurobiology of emotion.----------------------
Antoine Messiah et al.
American Journal of Public Health, May 2012, Pages S204-S206Abstract:
Prevention tools are challenged by risky behaviors that follow their adoption. Speed increase following helmet use adoption was analyzed among bicyclists enrolled in a controlled intervention trial. Speed and helmet use were assessed by video (2621 recordings, 587 participants). Speeds were similar among helmeted and nonhelmeted female cyclists (16.5 km/h and 16.1 km/h, respectively) but not among male cyclists (helmeted: 19.2 km/h, nonhelmeted: 16.8 km/h). Risk compensation, observed only among male cyclists, was moderate, thus unlikely to offset helmet preventive efficacy. -
25 Apr ' 18:48
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Take it up with management
The team scaling fallacy: Underestimating the declining efficiency of larger teams
Bradley Staats, Katherine Milkman & Craig Fox Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
The competitive survival of many organizations depends on delivering projects on time and on budget. These firms face decisions concerning how to scale the size of work teams. Larger teams can usually complete tasks more quickly, but the advantages associated with adding workers are often accompanied by various disadvantages (such as the increased burden of coordinating efforts). We note several reasons why managers may focus on process gains when they envision the consequences of making a team larger, and why they may underestimate or underweight process losses. We document a phenomenon that we term the team scaling fallacy - as team size increases, people increasingly underestimate the number of labor hours required to complete projects. Using data from two laboratory experiments, and archival data from projects executed at a software company, we find persistent evidence of the team scaling fallacy and explore a reason for its occurrence.
Adam GoldsteinAmerican Sociological Review, April 2012, Pages 268-294
Institutional changes associated with the rise of shareholder value capitalism have had seemingly contradictory effects on managers and managerialism in the United States economy. Financial critiques of inefficient corporate bureaucracies and the resulting wave of downsizing, mergers, and computerization subjected managers to unprecedented layoffs during the 1980s and 1990s as firms sought to become lean and mean. Yet the proportion of managers and their average compensation continued to increase during this period. How did the rise of anti-managerial investor ideologies and strategies oriented toward reducing companies' labor costs coincide with increasing numbers of ever more highly paid managerial employees? This article examines the paradoxical relationship between shareholder value and managerialism by analyzing the effects of shareholder value strategies on the growth of managerial employment and managerial earnings in 59 major industries in the U.S. private sector from 1984 to 2001. Results from industry-level dynamic panel models show that layoffs, mergers, computerization, deunionization, and the increasing predominance of publicly traded firms all contributed to broad-based increases in the number of managerial positions and the valuation of managerial labor. Results are generally consistent with David Gordon's (1996) fat and mean thesis.
Does Working from Home Work? Evidence from a Chinese Experiment
Nicholas Bloom et al.Stanford Working Paper, March 2012
The frequency of working from home has been rising rapidly in the US, with over 10% of the workforce now regularly work from home. But there is skepticism over the effectiveness of this, highlighted by phrases like "shirking from home". We report the results of the first randomized experiment on home-working in a 13,000 employee NASDAQ listed Chinese firm. Call center employees who volunteered to work from home were randomized by even/odd birth-date in a 9-month experiment of working at home or in the office. We find a 12% increase in performance from home-working, of which 8.5% is from working more minutes of per shift (fewer breaks and sick-days) and 3.5% from higher performance per minute (quieter working environment). We find no negative spillovers onto workers left in the office. Home workers also reported substantially higher work satisfaction and psychological attitude scores, and their job attrition rates fell by 50%. Despite this ex post success, the impact of home-working was ex ante unclear to the firm, which is why it ran the experiment. Employees were also ex ante uncertain, with one half of employees changing their minds on home working after the experiment. This highlights how the impact of new management practices are unclear to both firms and employees.
The Impact of Trade on Organization and Productivity
Lorenzo Caliendo & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg Quarterly Journal of Economics
A firm's productivity depends on how production is organized. To understand this relationship we develop a theory of an economy where firms with heterogeneous demands use labor and knowledge to produce. Entrepreneurs decide the number of layers of management and the knowledge and span of control of each agent. As a result, in the theory, heterogeneity in demand leads to heterogeneity in productivity and other firms' outcomes. We use the theory to analyze the impact of international trade on organization and calibrate the model to the U.S. economy. Our results indicate that, as a result of a bilateral trade liberalization, firms that export will increase the number of layers of management. The new organization of the average exporter results in higher productivity, although the responses of productivity are heterogeneous across these firms. Liberalizing trade from autarky to the level of openness in 2002 results in a 1% increase in productivity for the marginal exporter and a 1.8% increase in its revenue productivity. Endogenous organization increases the gains from trade by 41% relative to standard models.
Employer and Occupational Instability in Two Cohorts of the National Longitudinal Surveys
Matissa HollisterSociological Quarterly, Spring 2012, Pages 238-263
Previous research on trends in employer and occupational stability found evidence of declines in stability among men but contradictory results for women. I provide new insights into these patterns by simultaneously analyzing employer and occupation changes, and by examining a more detailed set of transition types. I show that the patterns for women are quite similar to those of men but are masked by declines in transitions from employment to out of the labor force. Finally, I find that while some of the changes may bring increased opportunities for wage increases, they bring even greater risks of wage losses.
Byron Lee & Sanford DeVoeIndustrial Relations, April 2012, Pages 298-316
Despite the well-documented benefits of flexible work schedules (flextime), generalizable assessments of how flextime influences organizational profitability have proven elusive. Using a unique data set representative of organizations in Canada, we examine the effect of flextime in combination with organizational strategies to predict profitability. Using fixed effects and controlling for prior profitability, we find that flextime increases profitability when implemented within a strategy centered on employees but decreases profitability when implemented within a strategy focused on cost reduction.
Paying More to Get Less: The Effects of External Hiring versus Internal Mobility
Matthew BidwellAdministrative Science Quarterly, September 2011, Pages 369-407
Individuals often enter similar jobs via two different routes: internal mobility and external hiring. I examine how the differences between these routes affect subsequent outcomes in those jobs. Drawing on theories of specific skills and incomplete information, I propose that external hires will initially perform worse than workers entering the job from inside the firm and have higher exit rates, yet they will be paid more and have stronger observable indicators of ability as measured by experience and education. I use the same theories to argue that the exact nature of internal mobility (promotions, lateral transfers, or combined promotions and transfers) will also affect workers' outcomes. Analyses of personnel data from the U.S. investment banking arm of a financial services company from 2003 to 2009 confirm strong effects on pay, performance, and mobility of how workers enter jobs. I find that workers promoted into jobs have significantly better performance for the first two years than workers hired into similar jobs and lower rates of voluntary and involuntary exit. Nonetheless, the external hires are initially paid around 18 percent more than the promoted workers and have higher levels of experience and education. The hires are also promoted faster. I further find that workers who are promoted and transferred at the same time have worse performance than other internal movers.
Flexibility for Whom? Control over Work Schedule Variability in the US
Elaine McCrateFeminist Economics, Winter 2012, Pages 39-72
According to the May Work Schedules and Work at Home Supplement of the Current Population Survey in 1997, 2001, and 2004, the proportion of employees in the United States with variable starting and/or stopping times who do not control their schedules has increased rapidly since the late 1990s. This category included one out of nine civilian employees ages 18-65 in 2004. These jobs have increased rapidly within industries and occupations. The incumbents of these jobs are more likely to be men, black, and immigrant; white, US-born women' chances of holding such jobs are greatly reduced by their responsibility for children. These findings identify a growing tendency to structure jobs so as to exacerbate the conflict between family work and paid employment, and to reinforce the gender division of labor between home and wage labor, especially in the most disadvantaged communities within the US.
Ian Larkin, Lamar Pierce & Francesca Gino Strategic Management Journal
Most research linking compensation to strategy relies on agency theory economics and focuses on executive pay. We instead focus on the strategic compensation of nonexecutive employees, arguing that while agency theory provides a useful framework for analyzing compensation, it fails to consider several psychological factors that increase costs from performance-based pay. We examine how psychological costs from social comparison and overconfidence reduce the efficacy of individual performance-based compensation, building a theoretical framework predicting more prominent use of team-based, seniority-based, and flatter compensation. We argue that compensation is strategic not only in motivating and attracting the worker being compensated but also in its impact on peer workers and the firm's complementary activities. The paper discusses empirical implications and possible theoretical extensions of the proposed integrated theory.
Graduating High School in a Recession: Work, Education, and Home Production
Brad HershbeinB.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, January 2012
This paper explores how high school graduate men and women vary in their behavioral responses to beginning labor market entry during a recession. In contrast with previous related literature that found a substantial negative wage impact but minimal employment impact in samples of highly educated men, the empirical evidence presented here suggests a different outcome for the less well educated, and between the sexes. Women, but not men, who graduate high school in an adverse labor market are less likely to be in the workforce for the next four years, but longer-term effects are minimal. Further, while men increase their enrollment as a short-run response to weak labor demand, women do not; instead, they appear temporarily to substitute into home production. Women's wages are less affected than men's, and both groups' wages are less affected than the college graduates previously studied.
The Cost of Job Loss in the Great Recession: How Bad Has it Been?
Henry FarberThe Economists' Voice, March 2012
Job losers in the Great Recession have had substantially more difficulty finding employment than in earlier recessions, according to Henry Farber of Princeton. Roughly fifty percent of those who lost jobs between 2007 and 2009 remained without work in 2010 and and even those full-time job losers who did find jobs are more likely to be part time than in past recessions.
Jone Pearce & Qiumei Jane XuOrganization Science, March/April 2012, Pages 373-385
We propose and test an argument in which the well-documented skew in supervisory performance appraisal ratings toward those with the same demography as themselves is better explained by the status contests than the reigning theory of homophily. We conduct the test in a field study of 358 supervisor-subordinate dyads in 10 organizations, using hierarchical linear modeling with various controls. We find that supervisors' ratings of subordinates' contextual and task performance only skew toward similar subordinates when supervisors' status is contested by a higher demographic status subordinate, as predicted by social dominance and status characteristics theories. None of the general homophily preference hypotheses is supported. This study provides a richer theory more consistent with the accumulating evidence about demography effects in organizations and demonstrates the value of head-to-head strong inference tests and status explanations for the field of organizational behavior.
David Wagner et al.Journal of Applied Psychology
The Internet is a powerful tool that has changed the way people work. However, the ubiquity of the Internet has led to a new workplace threat to productivity - cyberloafing. Building on the ego depletion model of self-regulation, we examine how lost and low-quality sleep influence employee cyberloafing behaviors and how individual differences in conscientiousness moderate these effects. We also demonstrate that the shift to Daylight Saving Time (DST) results in a dramatic increase in cyberloafing behavior at the national level. We first tested the DST-cyberloafing relation through a national quasi-experiment, then directly tested the relation between sleep and cyberloafing in a closely controlled laboratory setting. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory, practice, and future research.
Why do low-educated workers invest less in further training?
Didier Fouarge, Trudie Schils & Andries de Grip Applied Economics, Spring 2012, Pages 2587-2601
Abstract:Several studies document that low-educated workers participate less often in further training than high-educated workers. This article investigates two possible explanations: low-educated workers invest less in training because of (1) the lower economic returns to these investments or (2) their lower willingness to participate in training. Controlling for unobserved heterogeneity, we find that the economic returns to training for low-educated workers are positive and not significantly different from those for high-educated workers. However, low-educated workers are significantly less willing to participate in training. We show that this lesser willingness to train is driven by economic preferences, and personality traits.
The Lot of the Unemployed: A Time Use Perspective
Alan Krueger & Andreas MuellerJournal of the European Economic Association
Abstract:This paper provides new evidence on the time use of employed and unemployed individuals in 14 countries. We devote particular attention to characterizing and modeling job search intensity, measured by the amount of time devoted to searching for a new job. Job search intensity varies considerably across countries, and is higher in countries that have higher wage dispersion. We also examine the relationship between unemployment benefits and job search.
David Autor, Susan Houseman & Sari Pekkala Kerr NBER Working Paper, April 2012
Abstract:Federal and state employment programs for low-skilled workers typically emphasize rapid placement of participants into jobs and often place a large fraction of participants into temporary-help agency jobs. Using unique administrative data from Detroit's welfare-to-work program, we apply the Chernozhukov-Hansen instrumental variables quantile regression (IVQR) method to estimate the causal effects of welfare-to-work job placements on the distribution of participants' earnings. We find that neither direct-hire nor temporary-help job placements significantly affect the lower tail of the earnings distribution. Direct-hire placements, however, substantially raise the upper tail, yielding sizable earnings increases for more than fifty percent of participants over the medium-term (one to two years following placement). Conversely, temporary-help placements have zero or negative earnings impacts at all quantiles, and these effects are economically large and significant at higher quantiles. In net, we find that the widespread practice of placing disadvantaged workers into temporary-help jobs is an ineffective tool for improving earnings and, moreover, that programs focused solely on job placement fail to improve earnings among those who are hardest to serve. Methodologically, one surprising result is that a reduced-form quantile IV approach, akin to two-step instrumental variables, produces near-identical point estimates to the structural IVQR approach, which is based on much stronger assumptions.
Per Gustafsson et al.Psychoneuroendocrinology, June 2012, Pages 789-800
Abstract:Temporary employment is an increasingly common contract type, which has not been investigated in a psychoneuroendocrinological context despite previous observations of associations between adverse work and employment conditions and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis dysregulations. The present study aims to examine whether the 12-year accumulation of temporary employment is related to circadian cortisol levels, and if any association is independent of current employment conditions. Participants were drawn from the prospective Northern Swedish Cohort (n = 791, 74% of the original cohort). At age 43 years, retrospective reports of employments over the last 12 years and of current social conditions were collected by questionnaire, and one-day salivary cortisol profile was measured (at awakening, +15 min post-awakening, pre-lunch, bedtime). Results indicated a gradually higher magnitude of the cortisol awakening response (CAR) in subjects with no (0 months in temporary employment; mean CAR = 34%), moderate (1-25 months in temporary employment; mean CAR = 41%) and heavy (>25 months in temporary employment; mean CAR = 51%) exposure (p = .020), remaining after adjustment for potential confounders and for current employment conditions (p = .028). The higher CAR was explained by lower awakening rather than higher post-awakening cortisol levels. Cortisol levels at all times of the day except post-awakening displayed tendencies to negative relations to temporary employment; as indicated by a lower Area Under of Curve (regression coefficient = 5.0%, p = .038 after adjustment). This study thus suggests that the long-term exposure to temporary employment might confer HPA dysregulations in the form of increased dynamics of the CAR and circadian suppression.
Scouts versus Stats: The impact of Moneyball on the Major League Baseball draft
Tony Caporale & Trevor CollierApplied Economics, Spring 2012, Pages 1983-1990
Abstract:
Michael Lewis' influential book Moneyball (2003) discusses several sources of inefficiency in the Major League Baseball (MLB) labour market; one of these being the failure of baseball scouts to place a draft premium on college players. We test this implication of the Moneyball thesis - the superiority of college players - by measuring the productivity of players who were drafted in the first round of five MLB drafts covering the years 1995-1999. Employing a variety of specifications, we find that the performance of college draft choices is no better than those of high school picks and argue that this is consistent with Hayek's (1944) work on the economics of information and his emphasis on the importance of localized knowledge. Additionally, we utilize data on the first three rounds of the MLB draft from 1965 to 2010 to test whether Lewis' book had any impact on teams' draft strategies. We find no significant structural change in the draft following the publication of Moneyball.Casey Ichniowski & Anne Preston
NBER Working Paper, March 2012Abstract:
Using a detailed personally-assembled data set on the performance of collegiate and professional basketball players over the 1997-2010 period, we conduct a very direct test of two questions. Does performance in the NCAA "March Madness" college basketball tournament affect NBA teams' draft decisions? If so, is this effect the result of decision making biases which overweight player performance in these high-visibility college basketball games or rational judgments of how the players later perform in the NBA? The data provide very clear answers to these two questions. First, unexpected March Madness performance, in terms of unexpected team wins and unexpected player scoring, affects draft decisions. This result persists even when models control for a direct measure of the drafted players' unobserved counterfactual - various mock draft rankings of where the players were likely to be drafted just prior to any participation in the March Madness tournament. Second, NBA personnel who are making these draft decisions are certainly not irrationally overweighting this MM information. If anything, the unexpected performance in the March Madness tournament deserves more weight than it gets in the draft decisions. Finally, there is no evidence that players who played in the March Madness tournament comprise a pool of players with a lower variance in future NBA performance and who are therefore less likely to become NBA superstars than are players who do not play in MM. Players with positive draft bumps due to unexpectedly good performance in the March Madness tournament are in fact more likely than those without bumps from March Madness participation to become one of the rare NBA superstars in the league.Darren Treadway et al.
Journal of Management, forthcomingAbstract:
The recruitment and selection of human resources represent the most important activities in which organizations of all types engage. However, there is much scholars still need to know about the predictors of recruitment effectiveness. Using a sample of Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) university football coaches (N = 175) and their recruiting outcomes, the authors hypothesized that recruiting effectiveness is specifically affected by the individual qualities of the recruiters, in addition to the past performance of the team under the current head coach. The results supported the hypothesis, demonstrating that the interaction of recruiter political skill and head coach performance explained significant variance in recruitment effectiveness. Implications of these results and directions for future research are discussed----------------------
The Returns to Scarce Talent: Footedness and Player Remuneration in European Soccer
Alex Bryson, Bernd Frick & Rob Simmons
Journal of Sports Economics, forthcomingAbstract:
The authors investigate the salary returns to the ability to play football (soccer) with both feet. The majority of footballers are predominantly right footed. Using two data sets, a cross section of footballers in the five main European leagues and a panel of players in the German Bundesliga, the authors find robust evidence of a substantial salary premium for two-footed ability, even after controlling for available player performance measures. The authors assess how this premium varies across the salary distribution and by player position.----------------------
Speaking Up vs. Being Heard: The Disagreement Around and Outcomes of Employee Voice
Ethan Burris, James Detert & Alexander Romney
Organization Science, forthcomingAbstract:
This paper contributes to research on the outcomes of employee prosocial voice to managers by focusing on the relationships between voice and two managerially controlled outcomes: managerial performance ratings and involuntary turnover. Past research has considered voice from either the managerial or subordinate perspective individually and found that it can lead to positive outcomes because of its improvement-oriented nature. However, others have argued that voice can lead to unfavorable outcomes for employees. To begin resolving these competing perspectives, we examine agreement and disagreement between employees and their managers on the extent to which employees provide upward voice, proposing and demonstrating that considering either perspective alone does not fully capture how voice is related to employee outcomes. Findings from a study of 7,578 subordinates and their 335 general managers within a national restaurant chain indicate that agreement between employees and managers that employees display a high level of voice leads to favorable outcomes for employees. Our findings then extend existing research by showing that supervisor-subordinate disagreement around voice also helps explain employee outcomes - namely, how negative outcomes arise as a result of employees overestimating their voice relative to their managers' perspective and how positive outcomes result when employees underestimate their upward voice.----------------------
How Much Do Employers Learn from Referrals?
Joshua Pinkston
Industrial Relations, April 2012, Pages 317-341Abstract:
This paper tests the hypothesis that referrals from various sources provide employers with more information about job applicants than they would have with-out a referral. The study uses data that contain information on two workers in the same job, allowing the differences in job and firm characteristics to be canceled out and controlling for the possibility that workers with referrals from different sources (or no referral at all) sort into jobs that put different weights on individual performance. The estimation results are consistent with referrals from current employees providing employers with more information than they would have otherwise. Additionally, it appears as though hiring through friends or relatives of the employer may involve some favoritism that results in employers either collecting less information than they would otherwise or ignoring information when setting wages. The study finds weak evidence consistent with referrals from other firms or labor unions providing useful information, and no evidence that referrals from community organizations or other sources have any effect.----------------------
The Effect of Linkedin on Deception in Resumes
Jamie Guillory & Jeffrey Hancock
Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, March 2012, Pages 135-140Abstract:
This study explores how Linkedin shapes patterns of deception in resumes. The general self-presentation goal to appear favorably to others motivates deception when one's true characteristics are inconsistent with their desired impression. Because Linkedin makes resume claims public, deception patterns should be altered relative to traditional resumes. Participants (n=119) in a between-subjects experiment created resumes in one of three resume settings: a traditional (offline) resume, private Linkedin profiles, or publicly available Linkedin profiles. Findings suggest that the public nature of Linkedin resume claims affected the kinds of deception used to create positive impressions, but did not affect the overall frequency of deception. Compared with traditional resumes, Linkedin resumes were less deceptive about the kinds of information that count most to employers, namely an applicant's prior work experience and responsibilities, but more deceptive about interests and hobbies. The results stand in contrast to assumptions that Internet-based communication is more deceptive than traditional formats, and suggests that a framework that considers deception as a resource for self-presentation can account for the findings.----------------------
Employee Selection as a Control System
Dennis Campbell
Journal of Accounting Research, forthcomingAbstract:
Theories from the economics, management control, and organizational behavior literatures predict that when it is difficult to align incentives by contracting on output, aligning preferences via employee selection may provide a useful alternative. This study investigates this idea empirically using personnel and lending data from a financial services organization that implemented a highly decentralized business model. I exploit variation in this organization in whether or not employees are selected via channels that are likely to sort on the alignment of their preferences with organizational objectives. I find that employees selected through such channels are more likely to use decision-making authority in the granting and structuring of consumer loans than those who are not. Conditional on using decision-making authority, their decisions are also less risky ex post. These findings demonstrate employee selection as an important, but understudied, element of organizational control systems. -
25 Apr ' 03:20
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Under the Skin
Philippe Rushton & Donald Templer, July 2012, Pages 4-8
Pigmentation of the hair, skin, cuticle, feather and eye is one of the most salient and variable attributes of vertebrates. In many species, melanin-based coloration is found to be pleiotropically linked to behavior. We review animal studies that have found darker pigmented individuals average higher amounts of aggression and sexual activity than lighter pigmented individuals. We hypothesize that similar relationships between pigmentation, aggression, and sexuality occur in humans. We first review the literature on non-human animals and then review some of the correlates of melanin in people, including aggression and sexual activity. Both within human populations (e.g., siblings), and between populations (e.g., races, nations, states), studies find that darker pigmented people average higher levels of aggression and sexual activity (and also lower IQ). We conceptualize skin color as a multigenerational adaptation to differences in climate over the last 70,000 years as a result of "cold winters theory" and the "Out-of-Africa" model of human origins. We propose life history theory to explain the covariation found between human (and non-human) pigmentation and variables such as birth rate, infant mortality, longevity, rate of HIV/AIDS, and violent crime.
Racism leads to pushups: How racial discrimination threatens subordinate men's masculinity
Phillip Atiba Goff, Brooke Allison Lewis Di Leone & Kimberly Barsamian Kahn Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Two studies explored the gendered nature of racial discrimination for Black men, focusing on the relationship between race, discrimination, and masculinity threat. Specifically, we hypothesized that racial discrimination may also represent a threat to Black, but not White, men's masculinity. Both studies examined the target's perspective (i.e. Black and White men's perspectives) on the experience of racism and threat. Black men who experienced discrimination reported greater endorsement of male gender norms and were more vigilant to masculinity threat cues than were those who did not experience discrimination. Additionally, Black men engaged in masculine-typed behaviors - for our purposes, completing more pushups - in proportion to their experience of masculinity threat. Conversely, White men disengaged from the pushup task after experiencing discrimination. Study 2 suggests that White men's disengagement is mediated by affirming their social status. Our data suggest the importance of considering the gendered consequences of racial discrimination towards subordinate-group men.
Asian American male college students' perceptions of people's stereotypes about Asian American men
Joel Wong et al.Psychology of Men & Masculinity, January 2012, Pages 75-88
Although Asian American men are a heterogeneous group with diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, they are frequently depicted in rigid, stereotypical ways that assume few differences exist among them. Guided by social identity theory, the purpose of this study was to examine 158 Asian American male college students' perceptions of people's stereotypes about Asian American men. Based on a discovery-oriented exploratory analysis of participants' open-ended responses, the following categories of perceived stereotypes about Asian American men were identified: (a) interpersonal deficits, (b) intelligence, (c) intense diligence, (d) unflattering physical attributes, (e) physical ability distortions, (f) perpetual foreigner, and (g) sexual/romantic inadequacies. Next, a latent class cluster analysis was conducted to identify meaningful clusters of participants based on the foregoing categories of perceived stereotypes. The results revealed three clusters of participants; these clusters were labeled Body-Mind Stereotypes, Nerd Stereotypes, and Outsider Stereotypes. Participants in the Outsider Stereotypes cluster reported higher levels of depressive symptoms than those in the other two clusters, whereas those in the Nerd Stereotypes cluster reported the lowest levels of interdependent self-construal. These findings are discussed in terms of practical implications for addressing the deleterious nature of stereotypes about Asian American men.
Huxtables on the Brain: An fMRI Study of Race and Norm Violation
Darren Schreiber & Marco IacoboniPolitical Psychology
While a substantial body of work has been devoted to understanding the role of negative stereotypes in racial attitudes, far less is known about how we deal with contradictions of those stereotypes. This article uses functional brain imaging with contextually rich visual stimuli to explore the neural mechanisms that are involved in cognition about social norms and race. We present evidence that racial stereotypes are more about the stereotypes than about race per se. Amygdala activity (correlated with negative racial attitudes in other studies) appeared driven by norm violation, rather than race. Similarly, a pattern of deactivation in the medial prefrontal cortex (previously associated with the dehumanizing of social outcasts) was connected to norm violation, not race.
Jeff Stone, Keith Harrison & JaVonte Mottley Basic and Applied Social Psychology, March/April 2012, Pages 99-106
Academically engaged African American college athletes are most susceptible to stereotype threat in the classroom when the context links their unique status as both scholar and athlete. After completing a measure of academic engagement, African American and White college athletes completed a test of verbal reasoning. To vary stereotype threat, they first indicated their status as a scholar-athlete, an athlete, or as a research participant on the cover page. Compared to the other groups, academically engaged African American college athletes performed poorly on the difficult test items when primed for their athletic identity, but they performed worse on both the difficult and easy test items when primed for their identity as a scholar-athlete. The unique stereotype threat processes that affect the academic performance of minority college athletes are discussed.
The Plight of Mixed Race Adolescents
Roland Fryer et al.Review of Economics and Statistics
Since 1970, the fraction of mixed race black-white births has increased nearly nine-fold. This paper describes basic facts about the behaviors and outcomes of black-white mixed race individuals. Unsurprisingly, on a host of background and achievement characteristics as well as adult outcomes, mixed race individuals fall in between whites and blacks. When it comes to engaging in risky and anti-social adolescent behavior, however, mixed race adolescents are stark outliers compared to both blacks and whites. We argue that these behavioral patterns are most consistent with a two-sector Roy model, in which mixed race adolescents - not having a predetermined peer group - engage in more risky behaviors to be accepted.
Jessica Remedios, Alison Chasteen & Jeffrey Paek Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, March 2012, Pages 273-287
Research exploring the perspectives of stigmatized people has examined general processes related to experiencing prejudice. Past work, however, has invoked the assumption that prejudices against different group memberships are experienced in a similar manner. Across three studies we directly compare experiences of racism and sexism among female minorities and show, in contrast, that people respond to different forms of prejudice in distinct ways. In Study 1 we examined the attributions invoked by Asian women to explain prejudice and discovered that participants made stronger internal attributions to explain racism than sexism. In Study 2 we investigated emotional reactions to prejudice and found that Asian women report experiencing more depression following a race-based rejection than a gender-based rejection. In Study 3 we observed that Asian women reported perceiving more racism than sexism in their environments. Implications for advancing theories of prejudice experiences are discussed.
The Power of the Unsaid: The Influence of Nonverbal Cues on Implicit Attitudes
Luigi Castelli et al.Journal of Applied Social Psychology
Attitudes are often shaped through social influence processes. We examined how observation of nonverbal behaviors can impact on implicit and explicit racial attitudes. In Study 1, participants observed an interracial interaction in which a White actor expressed friendly or unfriendly nonverbal behaviors toward a Black target (e.g., low eye contact, large seating distance). The results show that newly formed implicit attitudes toward the Black actor were shaped accordingly. In Study 2, participants were required to read a passage containing stereotypical contents against Black people while a confederate either remained neutral or expressed her approval (e.g., nodding). Implicit attitudes toward Black people became more negative in the latter condition. The results confirm the power of nonverbal cues in shaping implicit attitudes.
Elena Stepanova & Michael StrubeJournal of Experimental Social Psychology
Previous research has not sufficiently addressed factors that define and moderate racial categorization judgments. This study independently manipulated skin color and facial physiognomy to determine their relative weighting in racial categorization. Participants (N = 250) judged faces varying on 10 levels of facial physiognomy (from Afrocentric to Eurocentric) and 10 levels of skin color (from dark to light) under either no time constraints, a modest time constraint, and under a stringent time constraint. Skin color was a powerful predictor of racial typicality ratings at all levels of facial physiognomy, but participants relied upon facial physiognomy more when rating faces of light than dark skin color. Skin color was a more important cue than facial physiognomy under no time constraints, but as time constraints became more severe, skin color's importance decreased, yet it remained a more important cue at extreme physiognomy levels. The relationship between skin color and racial typicality ratings was stronger for those with more negative implicit racial attitudes. These findings suggest the primary role of skin color in racial categorization and underscore the importance of implicit attitudes in explicit categorization judgments.
Rushton's contributions to the study of mental ability
Arthur JensenPersonality and Individual Differences
This essay describes Rushton's contribution to examining the nexus of intelligence, race, and genetics, specifically what I termed "Spearman's hypothesis". It states that Black-White differences are "most marked in just those [tests] which are known to be saturated with g". I (Jensen) had confirmed this hypothesis using large data sets in the 1970s and 1980s and also found that Black-White differences were most marked on the more heritable rather than the more cultural subtests. Rushton confirmed and extended these findings in many highly innovative ways and demonstrated Spearman's hypothesis applied among samples of Gypsy Roma in Serbia, and East Asian, European, South Asian, Colored and Black samples in South Africa. He has not only documented group differences in brain size, intelligence, life span, family structure, infant mortality, developmental precocity, personality, and temperament, and rates of two egg twinning, and crime among East Asians, Europeans, and Africans, but also provided a life history theory that explains them.
Stereotyping by Omission: Eliminate the Negative, Accentuate the Positive
Hilary Bergsieker et al.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Communicators, motivated by strategic self-presentation, selectively underreport negative content in describing their impressions of individuals and stereotypes of groups, particularly for targets whom they view ambivalently with respect to warmth and competence. Communicators avoid overtly inaccurate descriptions, preferring to omit negative information and emphasize positive information about mixed individual targets (Study 1). With more public audiences, communicators increasingly prefer negativity omission to complete accuracy (Study 2), a process driven by self-presentation concerns (Study 3) and moderated by bidimensional ambivalence. Similarly, in an extension of the Princeton Trilogy studies, reported stereotypes of ethnic and national outgroups systematically omitted negative dimensions over 75 years - as anti-prejudice norms intensified - while neutral and positive stereotype dimensions remained constant (Study 4). Multiple assessment methods confirm this stereotyping-by-omission phenomenon (Study 5). Implications of negativity omission for innuendo and stereotype stagnation are discussed.
Pamela Sawyer et al.American Journal of Public Health, May 2012, Pages 1020-1026
Objectives: We sought to demonstrate that individuals who anticipate interacting with a prejudiced cross-race/ethnicity partner show an exacerbated stress response, as measured through both self-report and hemodynamic and vascular responses, compared with individuals anticipating interacting with a nonprejudiced cross-race/ethnicity partner.
Methods: Through a questionnaire exchange with a White interaction partner (a confederate) Latina participants learned that their partner had racial/ethnic biased or egalitarian attitudes. Latina participants reported their cognitive and emotional states, and cardiovascular responses were measured while participants prepared and delivered a speech to the White confederate.
Results: Participants who believed that their interaction partner held prejudiced attitudes reported greater concern and more threat emotions before the interaction, and more stress after the interaction, and showed greater cardiovascular response than did participants who believed that their partner had egalitarian attitudes.
Conclusions: This study shows that merely anticipating prejudice leads to both psychological and cardiovascular stress responses. These results are consistent with the conceptualization of anticipated discrimination as a stressor and suggest that vigilance for prejudice may be a contributing factor to racial/ethnic health disparities in the United States.
The Cortisol Response to Anticipated Intergroup Interactions Predicts Self-Reported Prejudice
Erik Bijleveld, Daan Scheepers & Naomi Ellemers
Objectives: While prejudice has often been shown to be rooted in experiences of threat, the biological underpinnings of this threat-prejudice association have received less research attention. The present experiment aims to test whether activations of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, due to anticipated interactions with out-group members, predict self-reported prejudice. Moreover, we explore potential moderators of this relationship (i.e., interpersonal similarity; subtle vs. blatant prejudice).
Methodology/Principal findings: Participants anticipated an interaction with an out-group member who was similar or dissimilar to the self. To index HPA activation, cortisol responses to this event were measured. Then, subtle and blatant prejudices were measured via questionnaires. Findings indicated that only when people anticipated an interaction with an out-group member who was dissimilar to the self, their cortisol response to this event significantly predicted subtle (r = .50) and blatant (r = .53) prejudice.
Conclusions: These findings indicate that prejudicial attitudes are linked to HPA-axis activity. Furthermore, when intergroup interactions are interpreted to be about individuals (and not so much about groups), experienced threat (or its biological substrate) is less likely to relate to prejudice. This conclusion is discussed in terms of recent insights from social neuroscience.
Norwegian Physical Anthropology and the Idea of a Nordic Master Race
Jon Røyne KyllingstadCurrent Anthropology, April 2012, Pages S46-S56
Anthropologists used to consider Norway a homeland for the so-called Nordic - or Germanic - race, which many Europeans and Americans held to be a superior race. This paper deals with the rise and decline of the idea of a Nordic master race in Norwegian physical anthropology. In the 1890s this idea held a key position in anthropological research on the racial identity and origin of the Norwegian population. In the early 1930s, however, leading Norwegian anthropological authorities condemned it as pseudoscientific ideology. I show how Norwegian discussions over this issue were related to greater conflicts within the international eugenics movement, to changing relations between German and Norwegian racial anthropologists before and after the Nazi takeover in Germany, and to conflicting and changing ideas of Norwegian nationhood among Norwegian scholars.
Bitter Reproach or Sweet Revenge: Cultural Differences in Response to Racism
Elizabeth Lee, Janet Swim & Michael Bernstein Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Culture has been shown to influence response styles. The authors conducted two studies to test the notion that African Americans would be more likely to respond to racism directly, whereas Asian Americans would be more likely to respond indirectly and therefore more subtly. Study 1 showed that Black women subjected to a racist comment from a confederate during an online interaction were more likely than Asian women to verbally reproach the perpetrator. These group differences were not present when the outcome measure was indirect responding - administration of good/bad jellybeans. Study 2 used an online format to demonstrate that Asian women were more likely than Black women to say they would not respond directly to a racist comment. This group difference in unwillingness to confront was significantly mediated by a goal of maintaining peace with their interaction partner. Implications of these findings for the study of discrimination, coping, and well-being are discussed.
Keith Hutchison, Jessi Smith & Amber Ferris Social Psychological and Personality Science
Consensus is building that stereotype threat interferes with working memory, but how so? Grounded in the dual-process framework of Kane and Engle, the authors examined the extent to which stereotype threat interferes with one's ability to maintain task goals in working memory and one's ability to choose between conflicting responses. One hundred eighty-seven Montana State University (MSU) men were first given the Operation Span task (OSPAN) to assess working memory capacity, then engaged in the Stroop task under mostly incongruent or mostly congruent conditions. The Stroop task was presented as a measure of verbal processing skills (stereotype threat condition) or not (control condition). Stroop errors and reaction times were assessed. Results suggest that for people lower in working memory capacity, stereotype threat primarily interferes with internally maintaining task goals across trials. Implications for such stereotype threat-based distraction effects on performance in educational and workplace environments are discussed.
Stanley Gaines et al.Journal of Black Psychology, May 2012, Pages 135-152
The present study examines the impact of experiences with individual, institutional, cultural, and collective racism on susceptibility to stereotype among African-descent persons within the United Kingdom (n = 103). Results of hierarchical multiple regression analysis indicated that (contrary to hypotheses) experiences with individual, institutional, and cultural racism were not significantly or marginally related to susceptibility to stereotype threat when entered together in Model 1. However (consistent with hypotheses), experience with collective racism was a significant positive predictor of susceptibility to stereotype threat after controlling for the effects of experiences with individual, institutional, and cultural racism in Model 2. Moreover (and unexpectedly), once experience with collective racism was added, experience with cultural racism emerged as a marginal negative predictor of susceptibility to stereotype threat. Implications for the continuing relevance of Erving Goffman's symbolic interactionist theory and construct of stigma, along with Claude Steele's construct of stereotype threat, to the field of Black psychology is discussed.
My culture made me do it: Lay theories of responsibility for automatic prejudice
Eric Luis Uhlmann & Brian NosekSocial Psychology, Spring 2012, Pages 108-113
The present research examined the effects of egocentric motivations on individuals' explanations for how their automatic racial prejudices came into being. The majority of participants reported experiencing biased thoughts, feelings, and gut reactions toward minorities which they found difficult to consciously control, and they attributed such biases to cultural socialization. Of particular interest, ego-threatened participants were significantly more likely to attribute their automatic racial biases to their culture and significantly less likely to attribute such biases to themselves. Results suggest that attributing one's racial biases to cultural socialization can be a defensive, motivated process aimed at diminishing personal responsibility.
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Academic adjustment across middle school: The role of public regard and parenting
Rebecca Kang McGill et al.Developmental Psychology, forthcoming
In the current longitudinal study, we examined associations between Black and Latino youths' perceptions of the public's opinion of their racial/ethnic group (i.e., public regard) and changes in academic adjustment outcomes across middle school. We also tested combinations of racial/ethnic socialization and parent involvement in academic activities as moderators of this association. We used a 2nd-order latent trajectory model to test changes in academic adjustment outcomes in a sample of 345 Black and Latino urban youth across 6th, 7th, and 8th grades (51% female). Results revealed a significant average linear decline in academic adjustment from 6th to 8th grade, as well as significant variation around this decline. We found that parenting moderated the association between public regard and the latent trajectory of academic adjustment. Specifically, for youth who reported high racial/ethnic socialization and low parent academic involvement, lower public regard predicted lower academic adjustment in 6th grade. For youth who reported both low racial/ethnic socialization and low parent academic involvement, lower public regard predicted a steeper decline in academic adjustment over time. Finally, among youth who reported high racial/ethnic socialization and high parent academic involvement, public regard was not associated with either the intercept or the slope of academic adjustment. Thus, the combination of high racial/ethnic socialization and parent academic involvement may protect youths' academic motivation and performance from the negative effects of believing the public has low opinions of one's racial/ethnic group. Implications for protecting Black and Latino youths' academic outcomes from decline during middle school are discussed. -
23 Apr ' 23:38
Monday, April 23, 2012
Rules
Molly NiesenAdvertising & Society Review, Winter 2012
"In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Trade Commission Act into law, establishing the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as a permanent government agency responsible for regulating anti-competitive business practices. Amendments to the FTC Act during the 1930s strengthened the FTC's role in consumer protection by providing the agency with additional jurisdiction over deceptive and unfair advertising. With the exception of a few industries specifically regulated by other federal agencies, the FTC has broad authority to regulate the entire American economy. Despite these extensive powers, the FTC has been frequently regarded as an ineffective and inept agency throughout most of its existence. But in 1970, after its long period of hibernation, the FTC began to awaken. From the perspective of major businesses, the FTC during the early 1970s was by far the most formidable regulatory agency in Washington...This paper relies on hundreds of industry trade publications and a variety of other historical documents to explore the following developments: the FTC's regulatory renaissance from 1970-3; the initial response by advertisers and related industries; and the ways in which business interests came together to marshal resources and talent to defeat the FTC's aggressive policy agenda by 1980...[The FTC's agenda] changed in 1969 when consumer activist Ralph Nader and his 'Nader's Raiders' launched a scathing critique of the FTC, mocking the agency as the 'little old lady of Pennsylvania Avenue' because of its tendency to be asleep at the wheel when it came to consumer protections. The Nader Report fell on many sympathetic ears in Washington, and Congress immediately initiated hearings on the FTC. Congress encouraged President Nixon to ask the American Bar Association (ABA) to study the FTC, and Nixon complied with the ABA's recommendations to revive the agency...Nixon appointed Caspar Weinberger, a California lawyer and former aid to Governor Ronald Reagan. In a personal conversation at the White House, Nixon told Weinberger to 'go in there and clean it up, and you won't have any trouble from me.' Weinberger was well known for enthusiastically supporting Reagan's fiscal policies, and because of his pro-industry background many in the business community doubted that Weinberger would embody the characteristics of an effective leader as outlined by the ABA report. The confidence on behalf of businesses was shaken when Weinberger immediately began to 'clean up the agency' through zealous reorganization and re-staffing. A headline from an Advertising Age article in 1970 proclaimed, 'Marketers Who Staved Off Old FTC Now Find ‘Little Old Lady' Has Teeth.' The Wall Street Journal colorfully observed, 'The little old lady was languishing with a bad case of tired blood. But a recent transfusion has the old gal kicking up her heels like a liberated woman.' In addition to a complete re-staffing, Weinberger reorganized the FTC by creating two new divisions: the Bureau of Competition (to look into the ways in which industrial concentration affects pricing, competition, and advertising) and the Bureau of Consumer Protection (to study deceptive advertising)...After a mere five months of chairmanship, Nixon reappointed Weinberger as the deputy director of the new Office of Management and Budget...To the surprise of these skeptics and to the disappointment of many in the business community, Nixon replaced Weinberger with Miles W. Kirkpatrick, the same lawyer who had headed the ABA's study of the FTC two years prior."
The Effect of Regulatory Uncertainty on Investment: Evidence from Renewable Energy Generation
Kira FabrizioJournal of Law, Economics, and Organization
How are firms' investment decisions influenced by potential instability in the regulatory environment? Firms that anticipate regulatory change may alter their responses to current policies, potentially rendering those policies less effective. This article explores the pattern of investments in renewable generation assets in the US electricity industry following the implementation of Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) policies. Viewing these investments through the lens of transaction cost economics, the article investigates whether the likelihood of future regulatory change in a state dampened (or spurred) firm responses to RPS policies in that state. I find that firms invested less in new assets in states that had previously passed and repealed legislation to restructure the electricity industry, indicating that perceived regulatory instability reduces new investment and undermines policy goals.
The Health Impact of Mandatory Bicycle Helmet Laws
Piet de JongRisk Analysis
This article seeks to answer the question whether mandatory bicycle helmet laws deliver a net societal health benefit. The question is addressed using a simple model. The model recognizes a single health benefit - reduced head injuries - and a single health cost - increased morbidity due to foregone exercise from reduced cycling. Using estimates suggested in the literature on the effectiveness of helmets, the health benefits of cycling, head injury rates, and reductions in cycling leads to the following conclusions. In jurisdictions where cycling is safe, a helmet law is likely to have a large unintended negative health impact. In jurisdictions where cycling is relatively unsafe, helmets will do little to make it safer and a helmet law, under relatively extreme assumptions, may make a small positive contribution to net societal health. The model serves to focus the mandatory bicycle helmet law debate on overall health.
Optimization, path dependence and the law: Can judges promote efficiency?
Alain Marciano & Elias KhalilInternational Review of Law and Economics, March 2012, Pages 72-82
The thesis that judges could (voluntarily or not) promote efficiency through their decisions has largely been discussed since Posner put it forward in the early 1970s. There nonetheless remains a methodological aspect that has never (to our knowledge) been analyzed in relation to the judges-and-efficiency thesis. We thus show that both promoters and critics of the judges-and-efficiency thesis similarly use a definition of optimization in which history, constraints and path-dependency are viewed as obstacles that must be removed to reach the most efficient outcome. This is misleading. Efficiency cannot be defined in absolute terms, as a "global ideal" that would mean being free from any constraint, including historically deposited ones. That judges are obliged to refer to the past does not mean that they are unable to make the most efficient decision because constraints are part of the optimization process; or optimization is necessarily path-dependent. Thus, the output of legal systems cannot be efficient or inefficient per se. This is what we argue in this paper.
Securing Private Property: Formal versus Informal Institutions
Claudia Williamson & Carrie KerekesJournal of Law and Economics, August 2011, Pages 537-572
Property rights are one of the most fundamental and highly robust institutions supporting economic performance. However, the channels through which property rights are achieved are not adequately identified. This paper is a first step toward unbundling the black box of property rights into a formal and an informal component. We empirically determine the significance of both informal and formal rules in securing property rights. We find that when both components are included in the analysis, the impact of formal constraints is greatly diminished, while informal constraints are highly significant in explaining the security of property. These results are robust to a variety of model specifications, multiple instrumental variables, and a range of control variables.
Employment and Distribution Effects of the Minimum Wage
Fabian Slonimczyk & Peter Skott
This paper analyzes the effects of the minimum wage on wage inequality, relative employment and over-education. We show that over-education can be generated endogenously and that an increase in the minimum wage can raise both total and low-skill employment, and produce a fall in inequality. Evidence from the US suggests that these theoretical results are empirically relevant. The over-education rate has been increasing and our regression analysis suggests that the decrease in the minimum wage may have led to a deterioration of the employment and relative wage of low-skill workers.
David SchleiferBulletin of Science, Technology & Society, December 2011, Pages 460-471
Many scholars assume that industry meddles in scientific research in order to defend their products. But this article shows that industry meddling in science can have a variety of consequences. American food manufacturers long denied that trans fats were associated with disease. Academic scientists, government scientists, and activists in fact endorsed trans fats as a healthier alternative to saturated fats. But in 1990, a high-profile study showed that trans fats increased risk factors for heart disease more than saturated fats did. Industry funded a U.S. Department of Agriculture study that they hoped would exonerate trans fats. But the industry-funded U.S. Department of Agriculture study also indicated that trans fats increased risk factors for heart disease more than saturated fats. Industry quickly began developing trans fat alternatives. This confirms that corporations get involved in science in order to defend their products. But involvement in science can be the very means by which corporations persuade themselves to change their products.
Are bigger governments better providers of public goods? Evidence from air pollution
Thomas Bernauer & Vally Koubi
Theories explaining government size and its consequences are of two varieties. The first portrays government as a provider of public goods and a corrector of externalities. The second associates larger governments with bureaucratic inefficiency and special-interest-group influence. What distinguishes these alternatives is that only in the former is governmental expansion generally associated with an increase in social welfare. In the latter, the link between government size and public goods provision (or social welfare) is negative. We study the empirical significance of these competing claims by examining the relationship between government size and a particular public good, namely environmental quality (notably, air quality measured by SO2 concentrations), for 42 countries over the period 1971-1996. We find that the relationship is negative, even after accounting for the quality of government (quality of bureaucracy and the level of corruption). This result may not prove conclusively that the growth of government has been driven by factors other than concern for the public good, but it creates a presumption against the theory of government size that emphasizes public good provision.
Securitizing Environmental Risk and the Keystone XL Pipeline
Kerry SmithThe Economists' Voice, March 2012
When faced with irreversible decisions with significant uncertainty about the environmental costs of accidents, such as the Keystone XL Pipeline or hydro-fracking for natural gas, policymakers should use an environmental bond to securitize self insurance.
New-vehicle characteristics and the cost of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard
Thomas Klier & Joshua LinnRAND Journal of Economics, Spring 2012, Pages 186-213
By 2016, the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard will increase by 40%. This article focuses on the medium-run effects of fuel economy regulation. We estimate consumers' willingness to pay for vehicle characteristics. We employ a novel empirical strategy that accounts for the characteristics' endogeneity by using variation of engine models used in vehicle models. The results imply that consumers value an increase in power more than an increase in fuel economy. Simulations of the effects of an increase in the CAFE standard suggest that regulatory costs are significantly smaller in the medium run than in the short run.
Clunkers or Junkers? Adverse Selection in a Vehicle Retirement Program
Ryan SandlerAmerican Economics Journal: Economic Policy
Vehicle retirement programs have become popular tools of public policy for reducing pollution. The efficacy of these programs is difficult to measure, as it is difficult to tell how much a vehicle would have polluted otherwise. I estimate that counterfactual using data from a long-running local program in California. I utilize the universe of emissions inspections from California's Smog Check program to construct vehicle usage histories of retired cars and similar vehicles which did not retire early. I find that the program's cost-effectiveness steadily declined over time because of the depreciation of the vehicle fleet, and because of adverse selection.
The Anti-New Deal Progressive: Roscoe Pound's Alternative Administrative State
Joseph PostellReview of Politics, Winter 2012, Pages 53-85
Recent scholarship has linked the rise of the Progressive movement in America to the creation of an "administrative state" - a form of government where legislative, executive, and judicial powers are delegated into the hands of administrative agencies which compose a "headless fourth branch of government." This form of government was largely constructed during the New Deal period. The influential legal theorist Roscoe Pound provides the paradoxical example of a Progressive who balked at the New Deal. While many commentators have concluded that Pound's opposition to the New Deal was based on a departure from his earlier Progressive thought, his opposition was in fact based on a consistent Progressive philosophy. Pound therefore provided a vision of an alternative administrative state, which would achieve the ends of the Progressive vision but without the means of the administrative state.
Every shroud has a silver lining: The visible benefits of hidden surcharges
David de Meza & Diane ReyniersEconomics Letters, August 2012, Pages 151-153
Opportunities for shrouded pricing drive down upfront price as firms compete to capture new customers. Unless the surcharge is sufficiently high, consumers are worse off if the practice is banned, assuming Cournot-Nash equilibrium and isoelastic demand.
Competition and Illicit Quality
Victor Manuel Bennett et al.Harvard Working Paper, February 2012
Competition among firms can have many positive outcomes, including decreased prices and improved quality. Yet competition can have a darker side when firms can gain competitive advantage through illicit and corrupt activities. In this paper, we argue that competition can lead organizations to provide illicit quality that satisfies customer demand but violates laws and regulations and that this outcome is particularly likely when price competition is restricted. Using 28 million vehicle emissions tests from more than 11,000 facilities, we show that increased competition is associated with greater inspection leniency, a form of illicit quality that customers value but is illegal and socially costly. Firms with greater numbers of local competitors pass customers at considerably higher rates and are more likely to lose customers they fail to pass, suggesting that the alternatives that competition provides to customers intensify pressure to illegally provide leniency. We also show that, at least in contexts when pricing is restricted, firms use illicit quality as an entry strategy.
Cellular Service Demand: Biased Beliefs, Learning, and Bill Shock
Michael Grubb & Matthew OsborneMIT Working Paper, February 2012
By April 2013, the FCC's recent bill-shock agreement with cellular carriers requires consumers be notified when exceeding usage allowances. Will the agreement help or hurt consumers? To answer this question, we estimate a model of consumer plan choice, usage, and learning using a panel of cellular bills. Our model predicts that the agreement will lower average consumer welfare by $2 per year because firms will respond by raising monthly fees. Our approach is based on novel evidence that consumers are inattentive to past usage (meaning that bill-shock alerts are informative) and advances structural modeling of demand in situations where multipart tariffs induce marginal-price uncertainty. Additionally, our model estimates show that an average consumer underestimates both the mean and variance of future calling. These biases cost consumers $42 per year at existing prices. Moreover, absent bias, the bill-shock agreement would have little to no effect.
Accidental death and the rule of joint and several liability
Daniel Carvell, Janet Currie & Bentley MacLeod RAND Journal of Economics, Spring 2012, Pages 51-77
Most U.S. states have enacted JSL reform, the move from a regime of joint and several liability (JSL) that allows plaintiffs to claim full recovery from any one of multiple defendants to one where defendants are held liable only for the harm they cause. Contrary to previous theoretical work, we show that JSL reform can increase precaution by judgment proof agent by giving "deep pockets" an incentive to reduce their own liability by bringing judgment-proof agents into court. This result can help explain our empirical findings showing that JSL reform reduces death rates (and hence increase precaution) for many types of accidents. Together, these results highlight the role that litigation costs and judgment-proof agents play in the functioning of the American tort system.
The Impact of Federal Preemption of State Antipredatory Lending Laws on the Foreclosure Crisis
Lei Ding et al.Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Spring 2012, Pages 367-387
State antipredatory lending laws (APLs) are designed to protect borrowers against predatory lending that can increase the risk of default and deplete the home equity held by borrowers. Federal regulators instituted preemption that limited the scope and reach of state antipredatory lending regulations for certain lenders. Based on the variation in state laws and the variation in the regulatory environment among lenders, this paper identifies the effects of federal preemption of state APLs on the quality of mortgages originated by preempted lenders. The results provide evidence of a relatively higher increase in default risk among loans exempted from strong state antipredatory laws. These results are most robust among refinance mortgages with adjustable interest rates - a large and highly dynamic market in the period of analysis. The findings provide initial evidence that preemption of state mortgage lending regulations may result in an increase in mortgage default risk, thus limiting consumer protection in the residential mortgage market.
Paroma Sanyal & Suman GhoshReview of Economics and Statistics
This paper studies the innovation response of upstream technology suppliers when their downstream technology buyers transition from regulation to product market competition. By modeling the impact of US electricity deregulation in the 1990‟s on patenting, we find that after deregulation: (a) the net competition effect (comprised of the pure competition and the escape competition effect) decreased innovation by 18.3 percent after deregulation, and (b) the appropriation effect which has increased innovation by 19.6 percent after deregulation. Other factors associated of deregulation have led to a 20.6 percent decline in innovation. In aggregate we find that electric technology innovation by electric equipment manufacturers (who were the upstream innovators) has experienced a 19.3 percent decline due to deregulation. In addition, upstream innovation quality and generality have both declined after the introduction of downstream competition.
Experts Judging Experts: The Role of Expertise in Reviewing Agency Decision Making
Banks Miller & Brett CurryLaw & Social Inquiry
What role does judicial subject matter expertise play in the review of agency decisions? Using a data set of decisions in which the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) is reviewed by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, we investigate this question and find that greater subject matter expertise does make it more likely that a judge will vote to reverse an agency decision.
Tao Dumas & Stacia HaynieState Politics & Policy Quarterly
This study creates and empirically tests an integrated model of trial court decision making to explore the hypothesis that jury verdicts reflect the social, political, and economic attributes of the community in which the court resides. In addition, the analyses examine the influence of attorneys, litigants, case facts, and judges on trial outcomes. Using an original data set comprising all reported civil trial verdicts decided in the state of Alabama from 2002 to 2008, we uncover strong evidence that community composition influences both the dispute resolution and resource allocation functions of trial courts. This research improves our knowledge of trial court decision making and contributes to our theoretical understanding of the effect of extralegal factors on the performance of political institutions.
How the market responds to dynamically inconsistent preferences
Ben McQuillin & Robert SugdenSocial Choice and Welfare, April 2012, Pages 617-634
This paper responds to the ‘soft paternalist' argument that the findings of behavioural economics make traditional objections to paternalism incoherent. We show that there is a normatively significant sense in which, even if individuals lack coherent preferences, competitive markets are efficient in providing them with opportunities to get what they want. Extending earlier analysis by Sugden, we model a multi-period ‘storage economy' and explore the implications of dynamically inconsistent preferences. We show that, despite apparent conflicts of judgement between an individual's ‘selves', competitive markets provide maximal opportunity, and that they do so by facilitating voluntary exchanges between selves.
Judicial versus ‘natural' selection of legal rules with an application to accident law
Thomas MiceliJournal of Institutional Economics, June 2012, Pages 143-159
Law and economics scholars argue that the common law evolves toward efficiency. Invisible-hand theories suggest that the law is primarily driven by a selection process whereby inefficient laws are litigated more frequently than efficient laws, and hence are more likely to be overturned. However, the preferences of judges also necessarily affect legal change. This paper models the interaction of these two forces to evaluate the efficiency claim, and then applies the conclusions to the evolution of accident law in the United States beginning in the 19th century. Specifically, it attributes the persistence of negligence to its efficiency properties, despite its having been initially selected by judges for a different reason. The paper relates legal evolution to biological evolution by employing the concepts of natural and artificial selection, and the more recent concept of exaptation.
Deterrence, expected cost, uncertainty and voting: Experimental evidence
Gregory DeAngelo & Gary CharnessJournal of Risk and Uncertainty, February 2012, Pages 73-100
We conduct laboratory experiments to investigate the effects of deterrence mechanisms under controlled conditions. The effect of the expected cost of punishment of an individual's decision to engage in a proscribed activity and the effect of uncertainty on an individual's decision to commit a violation are very difficult to isolate in field data. We use a roadway speeding framing and find that (a) individuals respond considerably to increases in the expected cost of speeding, (b) uncertainty about the enforcement regime yields a significant reduction in violations committed, and (c) people are much more likely to speed when the punishment regime for which they voted is implemented. Our results have important implications for a behavioral theory of deterrence under uncertainty.
The triumph of regulatory politics: Benefit-cost analysis and political salience
Stuart Shapiro & John MorrallRegulation & Governance
While benefit-cost analysis (BCA) is now a permanent part of the regulatory process in the United States, and many other countries around the world as well as the European Union have adopted it or are moving toward it, there have been few empirical attempts to assess either whether its use improves regulations or how BCA interacts with the political environment. We use a unique US database of the costs and benefits of 109 economically significant regulations issued between 2000 and 2009 to examine whether the amount of information provided in the BCA or political factors surrounding the regulation better correlate with the net benefits of the regulation. We find that there is little correlation between the information provided by the analysis and the net benefits. However, we find that regulations that receive few public comments and are not issued at the end of an administration, have the highest net benefits. These are the regulations that are the least politically salient. This interaction between the political environment and the economic performance of a regulation has been under-examined and deserves further study.
Coming Clean and Cleaning Up: Does Voluntary Self-Reporting Indicate Effective Self-Policing?
Michael Toffel & Jodi ShortJournal of Law and Economics, August 2011, Pages 609-649
Regulatory agencies are increasingly establishing voluntary self-reporting programs both as an investigative tool and to encourage regulated firms to commit to policing themselves. We investigate whether voluntary self-reporting can reliably indicate effective self-policing efforts that might provide opportunities for enforcement efficiencies. We find that regulators used self-reports of legal violations as a heuristic for identifying firms that are effectively policing their own operations, shifting enforcement resources away from those that voluntarily disclose. We also find that these firms that voluntarily disclosed regulatory violations and committed to self-policing improved their regulatory compliance and environmental performance, which suggests that the enforcement relief they received was warranted. Collectively, our results suggest that self-reporting can be a useful tool for reliably identifying and leveraging the voluntary self-policing efforts of regulated companies.
Joshua Ozymy & Melissa JarrellEnvironmental Politics, May/June 2012, Pages 451-466
Upset events, emissions released to air due to accidental or unavoidable circumstances at industrial facilities, are often exempt from fines and enforcement actions by state regulators, even if state rules conflict with the Clean Air Act. State rules may allow upset events to become a substantial, yet little-studied source of emissions at large industrial complexes. Drawing from Jacob Hacker's theory of policy drift, upset events are framed theoretically as a problem of regulatory drift between state and federal environmental regulations. Supporting analysis is provided by a case study cataloguing the emissions generated during upset events at six petroleum refineries, 2003-2008. Findings demonstrate that upset events occurred routinely and released approximately 8.5 million pounds of air emissions. Future research should examine upset events at a variety of facilities in Texas. Regulators should enhance data accessibility to facilitate analysis in other states.
Hide and Seek: Costly Consumer Privacy in a Market with Repeat Purchases
Vincent Conitzer, Curtis Taylor & Liad Wagman Marketing Science, March/April 2012, Pages 277-292
When a firm can recognize its previous customers, it may use information about their past purchases to price discriminate. We study a model with a monopolist and a continuum of heterogeneous consumers, where consumers have the ability to maintain their anonymity and avoid being identified as past customers, possibly at a cost. When consumers can freely maintain their anonymity, they all individually choose to do so, which results in the highest profit for the monopolist. Increasing the cost of anonymity can benefit consumers but only up to a point, after which the effect is reversed. We show that if the monopolist or an independent third party controls the cost of anonymity, it often works to the detriment of consumers.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Trying
Working When No One Is Watching: Motivation, Test Scores, and Economic Success
Carmit SegalManagement Science
This paper provides evidence that scores on simple, low-stakes tests are associated with future economic success because the scores also reflect test takers' personality traits associated with their level of intrinsic motivation. To establish this, I use the coding speed test that was administered without incentives to participants in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). I show that, controlling for cognitive ability, the coding speed scores are correlated with future earnings of male NLSY participants. I provide evidence that the coding speed scores relate to intrinsic motivation. I show that the scores of a highly motivated, though less educated, group (potential recruits to the U.S. military) are higher than the NLSY participants' scores. I use controlled experiments to show directly that intrinsic motivation is an important component of the unincentivized coding speed scores and that it relates to test takers' personality traits.
Who Is Good at This Game? Linking an Activity to a Social Category Undermines Children's Achievement
Andrei Cimpian, Yan Mu & Lucy Erickson
Children's achievement-related theories have a profound impact on their academic success. Children who adopt entity theories believe that their ability to perform a task is dictated by the amount of natural talent they possess for that task - a belief that has well-documented adverse consequences for their achievement (e.g., lowered persistence, impaired performance). It is thus important to understand what leads children to adopt entity theories. In the experiments reported here, we hypothesized that the mere act of linking success at an unfamiliar, challenging activity to a social group gives rise to entity beliefs that are so powerful as to interfere with children's ability to perform the activity. Two experiments showed that, as predicted, the performance of 4- to 7-year-olds (N = 192) was impaired by exposure to information that associated success in the task at hand with membership in a certain social group (e.g., "boys are good at this game"), regardless of whether the children themselves belonged to that group.
Washing One's Hands After Failure Enhances Optimism but Hampers Future Performance
Kai KasparSocial Psychological and Personality Science
Previous studies showed that washing one's hand not only removes dirt from the body, it also weakens one's guilt after immoral behavior, makes moral judgment of others' misdeeds less severe, reduces post-decisional dissonance effects, and can help wash off bad luck. The present study broadens this scope by investigating the psychological impact of physical cleansing in a performance setting. The results show that physical cleansing enhances optimism after failure, but it hampers future performance in the same task domain. Hence, the influence of physical cleansing is neither limited to the moral domain nor to the decision-making processes which are metaphorically linked to the concept of cleanliness. Moreover, the impact of physical cleansing on higher cognitive processes does not seem to be always positive, but it helps close a matter. Starting points for future research are discussed.
Illusory Power Transference: The Vicarious Experience of Power
Noah Goldstein & Nicholas HaysAdministrative Science Quarterly, December 2011, Pages 593-621
We use two experiments to investigate "illusory power transference," in which individuals minimally associated with powerful others act as if they themselves are powerful outside the boundaries of the association. The experiments elicit this phenomenon through social comparison processes that result in individuals' perceptions of their own power assimilating toward the power of the powerful other, which is driven by the motivation to characterize oneself as powerful. We demonstrate that men who have a tenuous association with a powerful other (versus a powerless or equal-power other) felt more powerful and were more optimistic, confident, and risk seeking, even though they could not leverage the associate's power. Consistent with research suggesting that women are less motivated to characterize themselves as powerful, however, this effect did not emerge among women. A third experiment suggests that, besides underlying motivations, whether the association is cooperative or competitive determines if one's sense of power is likely to assimilate to, or contrast away from, the associate's level of power.
Evidence of Choking Under Pressure on the PGA Tour
Brett Wells & John SkowronskiBasic and Applied Social Psychology, March/April 2012, Pages 175-182
The authors examined whether there was evidence of choking under pressure (CUP) among professional golfers on the 2009 PGA Tour. Following the suggestion of Beilock and Gray (2007), choking was determined via within-golfer comparisons. Analyses yielded strong evidence of CUP in that evidence of performance decline was greatest when pressure was greatest. That is, across a span of 28 years, 4th-round tournament scores were significantly worse than 3rd-round tournament scores. Moreover, the magnitude of the choking effect was related to a player's position on the leaderboard: The closer a player was to a tournament lead, the larger his choking score. Finally, the nature of the analyses conducted makes it unlikely that the obtained effects can be solely attributed to statistical phenomena such as regression to the mean.
Searching for Momentum in the NFL
Michael Fry & Alan ShukairyJournal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, January 2012, Pages 1-18
We examine the question of whether or not momentum exists in an NFL football game. The concept of momentum is often cited by coaches, players, commentators and fans as a major factor in determining the outcome of the game and, consequently, in-game decision making. To examine the existence of momentum, we analyze particular game situations tied to what we consider to be "momentum-changing plays" (MCPs). These MCPs include fourth down conversions/stops, turnovers and scores allowed. We hypothesize that evidence of positive (negative) momentum would be characterized by increases (decreases) in yards gained, higher (lower) probability of converting a first down and greater (lesser) likelihood of scoring after a positive (negative) MCP. Our data set includes all plays from the 2002 to 2007 NFL seasons. We limit our analysis to game situations where the outcome of the game is still in doubt by removing plays that occur when a team is facing an insurmountable score differential. We use a pairwise matching comparison where we control for the game situations of home/away team, field position, time of game and score differential. We find little evidence for the existence of momentum in these events. Our results are in line with previous papers that find little empirical evidence of momentum in sports. While our findings cannot conclusively disprove the existence of momentum in the NFL, they further support the argument that momentum should not be a guiding factor for in-game decision making.
When thinking about goals undermines goal pursuit
Ayelet Fishbach & Jinhee ChoiOrganizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
We explore how attending to the goals an activity achieves (i.e., its instrumentality) impacts the motivation to pursue the activity. We propose that the focus on the activity's instrumentality renders the activity more valuable yet its experience less positive. Because experience is mainly salient while pursuing (vs. planning) an activity, attending to the activity's instrumentality increases the intention to pursue the activity but decreases how persistently individuals pursue it. We document this impact of attending to goals on increased intentions but decreased persistence on various activities, from a exercising on a treadmill (Study 1) and creating origami (Study 2) to dental flossing (Study 3) and practicing yoga (Study 4).
Talking loudly but lazing at work - Behavioral effects of stereotypes are context dependent
Florian Müller & Klaus RothermundEuropean Journal of Social Psychology
Recent research suggests that stereotype activation is context dependent. In the current research, we tested whether this context-dependence also generalizes to behavioral effects of stereotypes. Extending previous findings, we could show that activation of the category "Italians" in a work context (but not in an interaction context) resulted in slow behavior (Experiment 1), whereas it increased the loudness of speech in an interaction context (but not in a work context; Experiment 2). Our results further strengthen the notion of context-specific mental representations of stereotypes. Stereotypic attributes become activated and exert their influence on behavior in close correspondence with the current situation.
Motivation, Personal Beliefs, and Limited Resources All Contribute to Self-Control
Kathleen Vohs, Roy Baumeister & Brandon Schmeichel
What effects do motivation and beliefs have on self-control? We tested this question using a limited resource paradigm, which generally has found that people show poor self-control after prior exertions of self-control. Recent findings have suggested that motivation and even belief in unlimited willpower can render persons immune to ego depletion. We replicated those findings, but also showed they are limited to cases of mild depletion. When depletion is extensive, the effects of motivation and subjective belief vanished and in one case reversed. After performing only one self-control task, the typical pattern of self-regulation impairment was ameliorated among people who were encouraged to regard willpower as unlimited (Experiment 1) or motivated by task importance (Experiment 2). Those manipulations failed to improve performance among severely depleted persons who had done multiple self-control tasks. These findings integrate ideas of limited resources, motivation, and beliefs in understanding the nature of self-control over time.
"Shift-and-Persist" Strategies: Why Low Socioeconomic Status Isn't Always Bad for Health
Edith Chen & Gregory MillerPerspectives on Psychological Science, March 2012, Pages 135-158
Some individuals, despite facing recurrent, severe adversities in life such as low socioeconomic status (SES), are nonetheless able to maintain good physical health. This article explores why these individuals deviate from the expected association of low SES and poor health and outlines a "shift-and-persist" model to explain the psychobiological mechanisms involved. This model proposes that, in the midst of adversity, some children find role models who teach them to trust others, better regulate their emotions, and focus on their futures. Over a lifetime, these low-SES children develop an approach to life that prioritizes shifting oneself (accepting stress for what it is and adapting the self through reappraisals) in combination with persisting (enduring life with strength by holding on to meaning and optimism). This combination of shift-and-persist strategies mitigates sympathetic-nervous-system and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical responses to the barrage of stressors that low-SES individuals confront. This tendency vectors individuals off the trajectory to chronic disease by forestalling pathogenic sequelae of stress reactivity, like insulin resistance, high blood pressure, and systemic inflammation. We outline evidence for the model and argue that efforts to identify resilience-promoting processes are important in this economic climate, given limited resources for improving the financial circumstances of disadvantaged individuals.
When Death is Good for Life: Considering the Positive Trajectories of Terror Management
Kenneth Vail et al.Personality and Social Psychology Review, forthcoming
Research derived from terror management theory (TMT) has shown that people's efforts to manage the awareness of death often have deleterious consequences for the individual and society. The present article takes a closer look at the conceptual foundations of TMT and considers some of the more beneficial trajectories of the terror management process. The awareness of mortality can motivate people to enhance their physical health and prioritize growth-oriented goals; live up to positive standards and beliefs; build supportive relationships and encourage the development of peaceful, charitable communities; and foster open-minded and growth-oriented behaviors. The article also tentatively explores the potential enriching impact of direct encounters with death. Overall, the present analysis suggests that although death awareness can, at times, generate negative outcomes, it can also function to move people along more positive trajectories and contribute to the good life.
Piers Steel & Joseph FerrariEuropean Journal of Personality, forthcoming
Procrastination is a common form of self-regulatory failure with substantive connections to lower levels of health, wealth and well-being. Conducting an epidemiological study, we determined the characteristics of prototypical procrastinators from a global sample based on several relevant self-reported demographic variables. Using an internet sampling strategy, we surveyed 16 413 English-speaking adults (58.3% women; 41.7% men: M age = 38.3 years, SD = 14), specifically on the variables of sex, age, marital status, family size, education, community location, and national origin. Almost all the results were statistically significant because of our large sample size. However, procrastination tendencies were most prominently associated with sex, age, marital status, education and nationality. Procrastinators tended to be young, single men with less education, residing in countries with lower levels of self-discipline. Notably, procrastination mediated the relationship between sex and education, providing further support that men are lagging behind women academically because of lower self-regulatory skills. Given procrastination's connection with a variety of societal ailments (e.g. excessive debt, delayed medical treatment), identifying risk factors and at risk populations should be helpful for directing preventative public policy.
Value From Adversity: How We Deal With Adversity Matters
Tory Higgins, Janina Marguc & Abigail Scholer Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Participants in our study worked on an anagram task to win a prize while aversive noise played in the background. They were instructed to deal with the noise either by "opposing" it as an interference or by "coping" with the unpleasant feelings it created. The strength of attention to the opposing or coping response to adversity was measured by poorer recognition of the content of the background noise. For the "opposing" participants, it was predicted that the more they attended to opposing the interference, they stronger they would engage in solving the anagrams to win the prize, which would increase the prize's value. For the "coping" participants, it was predicted that the more they attended to coping with their unpleasant feelings, the weaker they would engage in solving the anagrams to win the prize, which would decrease the prize's value. The results supported both predictions.
Expressed Likelihood as Motivator: Creating Value through Engaging What's Real
Tory Higgins et al.Journal of Economic Psychology, forthcoming
Our research tested two predictions regarding how likelihood can have motivational effects as a function of how a probability is expressed. We predicted that describing the probability of a future event that could be either A or B using the language of high likelihood ("80% A") rather than low likelihood ("20% B"), i.e., high rather than low expressed likelihood, would make a present activity more real and engaging, as long as the future event had properties relevant to the present activity. We also predicted that strengthening engagement from the high (vs. low) expressed likelihood of a future event would intensify the value of present positive and negative objects (in opposite directions). Both predictions were supported. There was also evidence that this intensification effect from expressed likelihood was independent of the actual probability or valence of the future event. What mattered was whether high versus low likelihood language was used to describe the future event.
Learning from My Success and From Others' Failure: Evidence from Minimally Invasive Cardiac Surgery
Diwas KC, Bradley Staats & Francesca Gino
Learning from past experience is central to an organization's adaptation and survival. A key dimension of prior experience is whether the outcome was successful or unsuccessful. While empirical studies have investigated the effects of success and failure in organizational learning, to date the phenomenon has received little attention at the individual level. Drawing on attribution theory in psychology, we investigate how individuals learn from both failure and success from their own past experience as well as the experience of others. For our empirical analyses we use ten years of data from 71 cardiothoracic surgeons who completed over 6,500 procedures using a new technology for cardiac surgery. We find that individuals learn more from their own successes than from their own failures, while they learn more from the failures of others than they do from others' successes. We also find that individuals' prior successes and others' failures can help individuals to overcome their inability to learn from their own failures. Together, these findings offer both theoretical and practical insights into how individuals learn directly from their prior experience and indirectly from the experience of others.
Christina Sue-Chan, Robert Wood & Gary Latham Journal of Management, May 2012, Pages 809-835
Consistent with the arguments of regulatory focus theory, an experiment revealed that a promotion coaching orientation relative to a prevention coaching orientation had a more positive effect on the performance of recipients following coaching. Moreover, in support of regulatory fit theory, a prevention coaching orientation had a more positive effect on the performance of recipients with implicit fixed beliefs about ability than for those with implicit incremental beliefs. The robustness of these results was supported through replication in a lagged, correlation field study of employees in the production facility of a global company. In addition, in the field study, there was a significant additive component in the effects for promotion-oriented coaching, due to better regulatory fit for employees with incremental beliefs.
Does Power Magnify the Expression of Dispositions?
Ana Guinote, Mario Weick & Alice CaiPsychological Science, forthcoming
Conventional wisdom holds that power holders act more in line with their dispositions than do people who lack power. Drawing on principles of construct accessibility, we propose that this is the case only when no alternative constructs are activated. In three experiments, we assessed participants' chronic dispositions and subsequently manipulated participants' degree of power. Participants then either were or were not primed with alternative (i.e., inaccessible or counterdispositional) constructs. When no alternatives were activated, the responses of power holders - perceptions of other people (Experiment 1), preferences for charitable donations (Experiment 2), and strategies in an economic game (Experiment 3) - were more in line with their chronically accessible constructs than were the responses of low-power participants. However, when alternatives had been activated, power holders' responses were no longer more congruent with their dispositions than were the responses of low-power participants. We propose a single mechanism according to which power increases reliance on accessible constructs - that is, constructs that easily come to mind - regardless of whether these constructs are chronically or temporarily accessible.
Michelle vanDellen, Rick Hoyle & Rebecca Miller Personality and Individual Differences, June 2012, Pages 898-902
We present and test a theory in which self-control is distinguished from broader acts of self-regulation when it is both effortful and conscious. In two studies, we examined whether acts of behavioral management that do not require effort are exempt from resource depletion. In Study 1, we found that a self-regulation task only reduced subsequent self-control for participants who had previously indicated that completing the task would require effort. In Study 2, we found that participants who completed a self-regulation task for 2 min did not evidence the subsequent impairment in self-control evident for participants who had completed the task for 4 or more minutes. Our results support the notion that self-regulation without effort falls below the self-control threshold and has different downstream consequences than self-control.
Mental Contrasting Turns Positive Feedback on Creative Potential into Successful Performance
Gabriele Oettingen, Michael Marquardt & Peter Gollwitzer Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
In two studies employing a creativity test (i.e., solving insight problems), we hypothesized and observed that mental contrasting of a desired future with present reality (Oettingen, Pak, & Schnetter, 2001) transforms positive feedback into strong performance. Participants received positive or moderate bogus feedback on their creative potential and then engaged either in mental contrasting, indulging in the desired future, dwelling on present reality, or irrelevant contrasting with respect to taking a creativity test. Mental contrasting participants who received positive feedback performed better than those who received moderate feedback. They also performed better than indulging, dwelling, and irrelevant contrasting participants, regardless of the feedback received. By manipulating expectations of success through bogus feedback, the present research adjusts for confounding variables and validates previous findings showing that mental contrasting produces expectancy-dependent goal commitments and performance. Implications for designing interventions to enhance people's creativity are discussed.
Business ownership and attitudes towards risk
Sarah Brown et al.Applied Economics, Spring 2012, Pages 1731-1740
We explore the relationship between business ownership and attitudes towards financial risk using individual level data drawn from the US Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). The SCF includes a measure of individuals' attitudes towards risk allowing us to explore the implications of interpersonal differences in risk attitudes for the probability and success of business ownership. Our empirical findings suggest that willingness to take financial risk is positively associated with both the incidence and success of business ownership. We find that this relationship is particularly pronounced in cases where the individual actually started the business.
Benjamin Nagengast & Herbert MarshJournal of Educational Psychology, forthcoming
Being schooled with other high-achieving peers has a detrimental influence on students' self-perceptions: School-average and class-average achievement have a negative effect on academic self-concept and career aspirations - the big-fish-little-pond effect. Individual achievement, on the other hand, predicts academic self-concept and career aspirations positively. Research from Western and developed countries implies that the negative contextual effect on career aspirations is mediated by academic self-concept. Using data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2006 (a total of 398,750 15-year-old students from 57 countries), we test the generalizability of this mediation model in science using a general multilevel structural equation modeling framework. Individual achievement was positively related to academic self-concept (52 countries) and career aspirations (42 countries). The positive effect on career aspirations was mediated by self-concept in 54 countries. The negative effects of school-average achievement on self-concept (50 countries) and career aspirations (31 countries) also generalized well. After controlling for self-concept at both the individual and the school level, there were significant indirect contextual effects in 34 countries - evidence for mediation of the contextual effect of school-average achievement on career intentions by academic self-concept.
Shane Sanders & Bhavneet WaliaEconomics Letters, forthcoming
Significant empirical evidence exists within psychology and economics that greater incentives under pressure can lead to lower performance outcomes. However, standard economic theory does not account for this possibility. Efficiency wage models, for example, conclude a positive relationship between wage incentives and productivity. While efficiency wage models are shown to describe productivity behavior in numerous settings, said models do not describe labor markets featuring (counterproductive) performance pressure. We put forth a theoretical model of performance production in which performance incentives induce productive effects and counterproductive effects. The model treats explicit monitoring and distraction as distinct, counterproductive processes within a cohesive theory of performance production. In settings featuring performance pressure, we find that higher levels of performance-contingent compensation may decrease not only labor output (i.e., likelihood of task success) but also labor input (i.e., effort) if counterproductive processes decrease the marginal effectiveness of effort sufficiently. The latter finding challenges a common view that performance decrements under pressure occur despite greater effort levels.
Self-directed speech affects visual search performance
Gary Lupyan & Daniel SwingleyQuarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, forthcoming
People often talk to themselves, yet very little is known about the functions of this self-directed speech. We explore effects of self-directed speech on visual processing by using a visual search task. According to the label feedback hypothesis (Lupyan, 2007a), verbal labels can change ongoing perceptual processing - for example, actually hearing "chair" compared to simply thinking about a chair can temporarily make the visual system a better "chair detector". Participants searched for common objects, while being sometimes asked to speak the target's name aloud. Speaking facilitated search, particularly when there was a strong association between the name and the visual target. As the discrepancy between the name and the target increased, speaking began to impair performance. Together, these results speak to the power of words to modulate ongoing visual processing.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Chemistry Lesson
Judging romantic interest of others from thin slices is a cross-cultural ability
Skyler Place et al.Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
The ability to judge the romantic interest between others is an important aspect of mate choice for species living in social groups. Research has previously shown that humans can do this quickly - observers watching short clips of speed-dating videos can accurately predict the outcomes. Here we extend this work to show that observers from widely varying cultures can judge these same videos with roughly equal accuracy. Participants in the USA, China, and Germany perform similarly not only overall but also at the level of judging individual speed-daters: Some daters are easy to read by observers from all cultures, while others are consistently difficult. These cross-cultural performance similarities provide evidence for an adaptive mechanism useful for mate choice that could be resilient to cultural differences.
Ethnicity of Dating Partner, Pressure for Thinness, and Body Dissatisfaction
Alan Roberts, Michael Cunningham & Laura Dreher Journal of Applied Social Psychology, forthcoming
Two studies explored the relation between ethnicity, attitudes toward body weight, dating behavior, and female body satisfaction. Study 1 found that White men expressed a lighter female ideal weight, more resentment about their girlfriend's weight, and more pressure for their partner's thinness than did Black men. Study 2 found that regardless of their own ethnicity, women who dated White men had lower body mass index (BMI), lower ideal weights, and reported experiencing lower levels of body acceptance by their dating partners. This lack of acceptance was associated with lower levels of body satisfaction. These results support the view that the differing aesthetic preferences of Black and White men contribute to differing levels of body satisfaction among Black and White women.
Philippe Bernard et al.Psychological Science, forthcoming
"We tested the sexualized-body-inversion hypothesis in the present study: If sexualized women are viewed as objects and sexualized men are viewed as persons, then sexualized female bodies will be recognized equally well when inverted as when upright (object-like recognition), whereas sexualized male bodies will be recognized better when upright than when inverted (person-like recognition)...Consistent with our hypothesis, our results showed that people recognized upright males (M = .85, SD = .17) better than inverted males (M = .73, SD = .17), t(77) = 6.29, p < .001, but this pattern did not emerge for females, t(77) = 1.38, p = .17...Additionally, participants recognized inverted females (M = .83, SD = .16) better than inverted males (M = .73, SD = .17), t(77) = 5.42, p < .001. This effect was not found for upright males and females, t(77) = 0.54, p = .59."
Heather Flowe, Elizabeth Swords & James Rockey Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Previous research suggests that women may alter their behaviour during the fertile window of the menstrual cycle to attract a mate who has traits that indicate high-quality genes. We tested whether fertile women demonstrate greater behavioural engagement with a masculine compared to a less masculine male. The test was performed using a quiz show paradigm, in which a male host asked female participants general knowledge questions. The masculinity of the host was varied between participants. Women's performance on the quiz, as well as their romantic attraction to the host, was examined in relation to women's estimated cycle phase and host masculinity. Fertile compared to nonfertile women were more romantically attracted to the host and were faster to answer his questions, but only when he was portrayed as masculine. The results of the study are interpreted as being in keeping with Gangestad and Thornhill's cycle shift hypothesis (Menstrual cycle variation in women's preferences for the scent of symmetrical men. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 1998;265:727-733).
Meredith Chivers & Amanda TimmersArchives of Sexual Behavior, February 2012, Pages 185-197
Previous research suggests that heterosexual women's sexual arousal patterns are nonspecific; heterosexual women demonstrate genital arousal to both preferred and nonpreferred sexual stimuli. These patterns may, however, be related to the intense and impersonal nature of the audiovisual stimuli used. The current study investigated the gender specificity of heterosexual women's sexual arousal in response to less intense sexual stimuli, and also examined the role of relationship context on both women's and men's genital and subjective sexual responses. Assessments were made of 43 heterosexual women's and 9 heterosexual men's genital and subjective sexual arousal to audio narratives describing sexual or neutral encounters with female and male strangers, friends, or long-term relationship partners. Consistent with research employing audiovisual sexual stimuli, men demonstrated a category-specific pattern of genital and subjective arousal with respect to gender, while women showed a nonspecific pattern of genital arousal, yet reported a category-specific pattern of subjective arousal. Heterosexual women's nonspecific genital response to gender cues is not a function of stimulus intensity or relationship context. Relationship context did significantly affect women's genital sexual arousal - arousal to both female and male friends was significantly lower than to the stranger and long-term relationship contexts - but not men's. These results suggest that relationship context may be a more important factor in heterosexual women's physiological sexual response than gender cues.
Automatic attention towards face or body as a function of mating motivation
Hui Jing Lu & Lei ChangEvolutionary Psychology, Winter 2012, Pages 120-135
Abstract:Because women's faces and bodies carry different cues of reproductive value, men may attend to different perceptual cues as functions of their long-term versus short-term mating motivations. We tested this hypothesis in three experiments on 135 male and 132 female participants. When influenced by short-term rather than long-term mating motivations, men's attention was captured by (Study 1), was shifted to (Study 2), and was distracted by (Study 3) the waist/hip area rather than the face on photographs of attractive women. Similar effects were not found among the female participants in response to photographs of attractive men. These results support the evolutionary view that, similar to the attentional selectivity found in other domains of life, male perceptual attention has evolved to selectively capture and hold reproductive information about the opposite sex as a function of short-term versus long-term mating goals.
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Cash in hand, want better looking mate: Significant resource cues raise men's mating standards
Jose Yong & Norman Li
Personality and Individual Differences, July 2012, Pages 55-58Abstract:
Resources are a cardinal component of male mate value in the sexual exchange between men and women. Inspired by theories and research suggesting a link between mating and resource constructs as well as studies linking money and valuations of others, the current study tests the hypothesis that cues to resource availability may lead to higher mating standards for men, but not women. Participants were exposed to either stacks of paper, a small sum of money (104 Singapore dollars ∼USD$84), or a large sum of money (2600 Singapore dollars ∼USD$2100). Consistent with the hypothesis, after male - but not female - participants handled a large sum of money, they raised their minimum requirements for a date. We discuss how the results are consistent with an evolutionary perspective on mating and how future research can further investigate environmentally contingent self-assessments and strategies.----------------------
A Reexamination of Sex Differences in Sexuality: New Studies Reveal Old Truths
David Schmitt et al.
Current Directions in Psychological Science, April 2012, Pages 135-139Abstract:
Recent evidence seems to call into question long-established findings of sex differences in sexuality, such as differences in mate preferences and desires for casual sex. In this article, we place new findings in a broader evidence-based context and show that they confirm previous perspectives on human mating. A wealth of evidence from real-world studies of actual mate choice and marital dynamics supports evolutionary mate-preference predictions. Converging evidence from patterns of extradyadic sex, mate poaching, sexual fantasies, pornography consumption, postcoital regret, sociosexual attitudes, and willingness to engage in casual sex supports the view that men and women have distinct short-term mating psychologies. This article highlights the fact that good science requires a constant re-evaluation of old truths and the proper placement of new studies in broad evidentiary contexts.----------------------
Kelli Hall, Caroline Moreau & James Trussell
Journal of Sexual Medicine, forthcomingIntroduction: Sexuality is a component of health and well-being for all women, including adolescents. Yet relationships between young women's health perceptions and sexual behavior are unclear.
Aim: We examined associations between perceived health and lifetime sexual experiences among young U.S. women.
Methods: We used data from 4,413 young women ages 15-24 years in the National Survey of Family Growth, 2002-2008. Descriptive, bivariate, and multivariate statistics estimated relationships between categories of perceived health and types of lifetime sexual experience.
Main Outcome Measures: A self-rated health Likert item and sexual history questions were administered with a computer-assisted survey instrument.
Results: Young women reported excellent (30%), very good (41%), good (23%), and fair-poor (6%) health. Sexual experiences included vaginal (64%), oral (64%), and anal (20%) sex. Negative experiences included involuntary sex (11%) and sexually transmitted infection (STI) history (8%). In multivariate logistic regression models, lower perceived health ("good" rather than "excellent") was positively associated with vaginal (odds ratio [OR] 1.5, confidence interval [CI] 1.1-2.1, P = 0.02), oral (OR 1.5, CI 1.1-2.1, P = 0.005), and anal (OR 1.4, CI 1.0-2.0, P = 0.03) sex. In models stratified by age, point estimates for vaginal (OR 1.8, CI 1.2-2.6, P = 0.002) and oral (OR 1.9, CI 1.4-2.6, P < 0.001) sex were higher among adolescents ages 15-19 years, but associations were insignificant among young adults ages 20-24 years. When controlling for negative sexual experiences, point estimates were stable in models including STI history but statistically insignificant when including involuntary sexual experience. Other characteristics associated with sexual experiences varied by type of experience and included age, race/ethnicity, employment situation, poverty level, insurance status, childhood family situation, religious service participation, cohabitation/marital experience, and body mass index.
Conclusions: Further investigation is warranted to disentangle potentially negative relationships between perceived health (as well as response bias and more objective health outcomes), sociodemographic factors, and diverse sexual experiences among young women in the United States.
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Sexual Fantasies and Viewing Times Across the Menstrual Cycle: A Diary Study
Samantha Dawson, Kelly Suschinsky & Martin Lalumière
Archives of Sexual Behavior, February 2012, Pages 173-183Abstract:
Recent research has revealed that many aspects of female sexuality change across the menstrual cycle. In this study, we examined changes in sexual fantasies and visual sexual interests across the menstrual cycle. A total of 27 single, heterosexual women (M age = 21.5 years) not using hormonal contraceptives answered questions on a web-based diary every day for 30 days about their sexual fantasies and behaviors. Twenty-two of them also completed a viewing time task during three different menstrual cycle phases (follicular, ovulation, and luteal) to assess changes in visual sexual interest. Ovulation status was determined by a self-administered urine test. Results showed that the frequency and arousability of sexual fantasies increased significantly at ovulation. The number of males in the fantasies increased during the most fertile period, with no such change for the number of females. Fantasy content became more female-like during ovulation, focusing more on emotions rather than explicit sexual content. Women displayed a category non-specific pattern of viewing time with regard to target age and gender, regardless of fertility status. Results were discussed in the context of the ovulatory shift hypothesis of female sexuality.----------------------
Women's visual attention to variation in men's dance quality
Bettina Weege, Benjamin Lange & Bernhard Fink
Personality and Individual Differences, forthcomingAbstract:
Recent research shows that ‘good' male dancers display larger and more variable movements of their head, neck and trunk, and differ in certain personality characteristics from ‘bad' dancers. Here we elaborate on these findings by testing the hypothesis that ‘good' male dancers will also receive higher visual attention and will be judged as being more attractive by women. The eye-gaze of 46 women aged 19-33 years was tracked whilst they viewed pairs of video clips of male dancers in the form of avatars created using motion capture, each pair showing one ‘good' and one ‘bad' dancer together on the screen. In a subsequent rating task, women judged each dance avatar on perceived attractiveness and masculinity. Our data show that women viewed ‘good' dancers significantly longer and more often than ‘bad' dancers. In addition, visual attention was positively correlated with perceived attractiveness and masculinity, though the latter association failed to reach statistical significance. We conclude that (i) ‘good' male dancers receive higher visual attention from women as compared to ‘bad' dancers, and (ii) ‘good' dancers are being judged as more attractive. This suggests that in following mating-related motives, women are selectively processing male dynamic displays, such as dance movements.----------------------
Hair color and wages: Waitresses with blond hair have more fun
Nicolas Guéguen
Journal of Socio-Economics, forthcomingAbstract:
The effect of employees' hair color on wages was experimentally tested in a tipping context. Waitresses in several restaurants were instructed to wear blond, red, brown or dark colored wigs. The effect of hair color on tipping according to patron's gender was measured. It was found that waitresses wearing blond wigs received more tips but only with male patrons. Waitresses' hair color had no effect on females' tipping behavior.----------------------
Richard Lippa
Archives of Sexual Behavior, February 2012, Pages 149-160Abstract:
In a paradigm that asked participants to rate the sexual attractiveness of male and female swimsuit models, Lippa, Patterson, and Marelich (2010) showed that heterosexual men's category specificity exceeded heterosexual women's in two ways: (1) Heterosexual men showed much larger differences in their attraction and viewing times to male versus female photo models than heterosexual women, and (2) heterosexual men's attractions to female but not male models increased with model attractiveness whereas heterosexual women's attractions to both sexes increased with model attractiveness. The current study used the same paradigm to study category specificity in homosexual and heterosexual participants. In addition to replicating previous findings for heterosexual men and women, the results showed that homosexual men were high on category specificity, like heterosexual men, whereas lesbians showed lower levels of category specificity than men, but sometimes higher levels than heterosexual women.----------------------
Effectiveness of a National Media Campaign to Promote Parent-Child Communication About Sex
Kevin Davis, Douglas Evans & Kian Kamyab
Health Education & Behavior, forthcomingBackground: Although there is debate on the effectiveness of youth-focused abstinence education programs, research confirms that parents can influence their children's decisions about sexual behavior. To leverage parent-based approaches to adolescent sexual health, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services launched the Parents Speak Up National Campaign (PSUNC) to encourage parent-child communication about sex. Previous experimental studies have found the campaign to be efficacious in increasing parent-child communication. But to date, the actual reach of the campaign and its real-world effectiveness in promoting parent-child communication has not been established. The present study addresses this gap.
Method: The authors surveyed 1,804 parents of 10- to14-year-old children from the nationally representative Knowledge Networks online panel. The survey included questions about parents' awareness of PSUNC ads and parent-child communication behaviors. The authors also analyzed market-level data on campaign gross rating points, a measure of market-level intensity of PSUNC advertising in the United States. Multivariate regressions were used to examine the association between PSUNC exposure and a three-item scale for parent-child communication.
Results: Overall, 59.4% of parents in the sample reported awareness of PSUNC. The authors found that higher market-level PSUNC gross rating points were associated with increased parent-child communication. Similar relationships were observed between self-reported awareness of PSUNC and increased frequency of communication and recommendations to wait. These associations were particularly strong among mothers.
Conclusions: This study provides the first field-based data on the real-world reach and effectiveness of PSUNC among parents. The data support earlier experimental trials of PSUNC, showing that the campaign is associated with greater parent-child communication, primarily among mothers. Further research may be needed to develop additional messages for fathers.
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Contraceptive Paths of Adolescent Women Undergoing an Abortion in France
Caroline Moreau, James Trussell & Nathalie Bajos
Journal of Adolescent Health, April 2012, Pages 389-394Purpose: Although more than 30,000 teenagers had an induced abortion in France in 2007 (14.3% of all abortions), little is known about their abortion experience. We explore young women's decisions related to their abortion and the patterns of abortion care among teenagers in France, and draw particular attention to the contraceptive circumstances surrounding the abortion.
Methods: The data are drawn from the French National Survey of Abortion Patients conducted in 2007, comprising 1,525 women aged 13-19 years.
Results: A majority of French teens (82%) reported their pregnancy was unplanned and took on the responsibility of having an abortion: 45% made the decision alone, 46% shared the decision with their family or partner, and 9% reported the decision was made on their family's or partner's request alone. Sixty-nine percent of teenagers were eligible for both medical and surgical abortions, but only 43% thought they were given a choice of methods. Two-thirds of pregnancies were caused by contraceptive misuse or failure, mostly due to condom slippage or breakage (26%) or inconsistent pill use (20%). In 68% of cases, teenagers were prescribed a more effective method than the one they were using before, although only 11% received a prescription for a long-acting method. One in five teenagers reported not receiving a prescription for contraception.
Conclusions: Our results reveal varying degrees of young women's autonomy in the decisions regarding their abortion. Although most teens switch to more effective methods of contraception after an abortion, only a minority receives a prescription for a long-acting method.
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Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair & Mons Bendixen
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcomingAbstract:
Sexual harassment and coercion have mainly been considered from a sex difference perspective. While traditional social science theories have explained harassment as male dominance of females, the evolutionary perspective has suggested that sex differences in the desire for sex are a better explanation. This study attempts to address individual differences associated with harassment from an evolutionary perspective. Considering previous research that has found links between sociosexual orientation inventory (SOI) and harassment, we consider whether this association can be replicated in a large, representative sample of high school students (N=1199) from a highly egalitarian culture. Expanding the previous studies which mainly focused on male perpetrators and female victims, we also examine females and males as both perpetrators and as victims. We believe that unrestricted sociosexuality motivates people to test whether others are interested in short-term sexual relations in ways that sometimes might be defined as harassment. Furthermore, unrestricted individuals signal their sociosexual orientation, and while they do not desire all individuals that react to these signals with sexual advances, they attract much more sexual advances than individuals with restricted sociosexual orientations, especially from other unrestricted members of the opposite sex. This more or less unconscious signaling thus makes them exploitable, i.e., harassable. We find that SOI is a predictor for sexual harassment and coercion among high school students. The paper concludes that, as expected, unrestricted sociosexuality predicts being both a perpetrator and a victim of both same-sex and opposite-sex harassment.----------------------
Małgorzata Skorek & Yarrow Dunham
Sex Roles, May 2012, Pages 655-667Abstract:
Viewing idealized body portrayals of men and women in advertising is known to have negative effects on men's self-esteem and body dissatisfaction, but little research investigates these effects across race/ethnicity. Racial minorities tend to idealize larger bodies than Whites and so might respond differently to advertising influences. We investigated whether exposure to idealized portrayals of male and female bodies in TV advertisements has different effects on men of different race/ethnicity. Additionally, we investigated whether implicit methods reveal different results than self-reports. One hundred and sixty Asian, Hispanic, and White American male undergraduates from a university in California (USA) were randomly assigned to watch TV advertisements portraying thin women, muscular men, or watched no ads. Their implicit self-esteem was measured using the Implicit Association Test, and a questionnaire assessed explicit self-esteem, actual-ideal body discrepancy, and perception of weight-related health-risks. Exposure to portrayals of muscular men decreased actual-ideal body discrepancy in all men. Exposure to portrayals of thin women increased men's implicit but not explicit self-esteem in Asian and Hispanic men only. Both these findings are consistent with a self-enhancing role of exposure to idealized male and female bodies in advertising, which is often referred to as a "fantasy effect". This study provides evidence that media exposure interacts with culturally local body ideals and so can produce varying effects in different racial/ethnic groups. This result could have important implications for interventions.----------------------
Kelli Stidham-Hall, Caroline Moreau & James Trussell
Journal of Adolescent Health, April 2012, Pages 410-413Purpose: To investigate patterns and correlates of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) communication among adolescent women in the United States between 2002 and 2008.
Methods: We used data with regard to adolescent women (aged 15-19 years) from the National Survey of Family Growth (between 2002 and 2006-2008, n = 2,326). Multivariate analyses focused on sociodemographic characteristics and SRH communication from parental and formal sources.
Results: Seventy-five percent of adolescent women had received parental communication on abstinence (60%), contraception (56%), sexually transmitted infections (53%), and condoms (29%); 9% received abstinence-only communication. Formal communication (92%) included abstinence (87%) and contraceptive (71%) information; 66% received both, whereas 21% received abstinence-only. Between 2002 and 2006-2008, parental (not formal) communication increased (7%, p < .001), including the abstinence communication (4%, p = .03). Age, sexual experience, education, mother's education, and poverty were positively associated with SRH communication.
Conclusions: Between 2002 and 2008, receipt of parental SRH communication, especially abstinence, was increasingly common among United States adolescents. Strategies to promote comprehensive communication may improve adolescents' SRH outcomes.
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Janelle Sobecki et al.
Journal of Sexual Medicine, forthcomingIntroduction: Sexuality is a key aspect of women's physical and psychological health. Research shows both patients and physicians face barriers to communication about sexuality. Given their expertise and training in addressing conditions of the female genital tract across the female life course, obstetrician/gynecologists (ob/gyns) are well positioned among all physicians to address sexuality issues with female patients. New practice guidelines for management of female sexual dysfunction and the importance of female sexual behavior and function to virtually all aspects of ob/gyn care, and to women's health more broadly, warrant up-to-date information regarding ob/gyns' sexual-history-taking routine.
Aims: To determine ob/gyns' practices of communication with patients about sexuality, and to examine the individual and practice-level correlates of such communication.
Method: A population-based sample of 1,154 practicing U.S. ob/gyns (53% male; mean age 48 years) was surveyed regarding their practices of communication with patients about sex.
Main Outcome Measures: Self-reported frequency measures of ob/gyns' communication practices with patients including whether or not ob/gyns discuss patients' sexual activities, sexual orientation, satisfaction with sexual life, pleasure with sexual activity, and sexual problems or dysfunction, as well as whether or not one ever expresses disapproval of or disagreement with patients' sexual practices. Multivariable analysis was used to correlate physicians' personal and practice characteristics with these communication practices.
Results: Survey response rate was 65.6%. Sixty-three percent of ob/gyns reported routinely assessing patients' sexual activities; 40% routinely asked about sexual problems. Fewer asked about sexual satisfaction (28.5%), sexual orientation/identity (27.7%), or pleasure with sexual activity (13.8%). A quarter of ob/gyns reported they had expressed disapproval of patients' sexual practices. Ob/gyns practicing predominately gynecology were significantly more likely than other ob/gyns to routinely ask about each of the five outcomes investigated.
Conclusion: The majority of U.S. ob/gyns report routinely asking patients about their sexual activities, but most other areas of patients' sexuality are not routinely discussed.
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Knowledge of Medication Abortion Among Adolescent Medicine Providers
Mandy Coles, Kevin Makino & Rachael Phelps
Journal of Adolescent Health, April 2012, Pages 383-388Purpose: Adolescents are at high risk for unintended pregnancy and abortion. The purpose of this study was to understand whether providers caring for adolescents have the knowledge to counsel accurately on medication abortion, a suitable option for many teenagers seeking to terminate a pregnancy.
Methods: Using an online questionnaire, a survey related to medication abortion was administered to U.S. providers in the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. We conducted χ2 analyses to evaluate the knowledge of medication abortion by reported adolescent medicine fellowship training, and to compare responses to specific knowledge questions by medication abortion counseling. Furthermore, we examined the relationship between providers' self-assessed and actual knowledge using ANOVA.
Results: We surveyed 797 providers, with a 54% response rate. Almost 25% of respondents incorrectly believed that medication abortion was not very safe, 40% misidentified that it was < 95% effective, and 32% did not select the correct maximum recommended gestational age (7-9 weeks). Providers had difficulty identifying that serious complications of medication abortion are rare. Those who counseled on medication abortion had more accurate information in all knowledge categories, except for expected outcomes. Medication abortion knowledge did not differ by adolescent medicine fellowship completion. Only 32% of respondents had very good knowledge, and self-assessed knowledge minimally predicted actual knowledge (r2 = .08).
Conclusions: Knowledge regarding medication abortion safety, effectiveness, expected outcomes, and complications is suboptimal even among adolescent medicine fellowship trained physicians, and self-assessment poorly predicts actual knowledge. To ensure pregnant teenagers receive accurate counseling on all options, adolescent medicine providers need better education on medication abortion.
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Marlene Makenzius et al.
Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, March 2012, Pages 211-216Background: Prevention of unintended pregnancies is a public health objective; however, the profiles of male partners of women who choose to abort are relatively unexplored.
Objective: To investigate risk factors among men who have repeated experience of being the partner of a woman electing an induced abortion.
Methods: A questionnaire was used to collect information from 590 men recruited through their pregnant partner who applied for an abortion in Sweden during 2009. A binary logistic regression model assessed risk factors associated with repeated experience of abortion.
Results: One-third of the men had previous experience of a pregnant partner electing an induced abortion. Univariate analysis indicated these men were older, had a lower educational level and less emotional support, and were more often tobacco users than men for whom it was the first experience of a partner choosing to abort. Independent risk factors were being a victim of physical, psychological, or sexual violence or abuse over the past year (OR 2.62, 95% CI 1.36-5.08), unemployment or sick leave (OR 2.58, 95% CI 1.57-4.25), and having children (OR 2.00, 95% CI 1.22-3.28). The men suggested improved sex and relationship education in school and lower unemployment rates could prevent unintended pregnancies and abortions.
Conclusions: Men with experience of repeat abortions present a picture of vulnerability that should be recognised in the prevention of unintended pregnancies. Increased work opportunities might be one important intervention to reduce the number of abortions.
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20 Apr ' 22:37
Friday, April 20, 2012
Cultural Narrative
Honor and The Performance of Roman State Identity
Vittorio Nicholas GalassoForeign Policy Analysis, April 2012, Pages 173-189
Are the personal identities of elite decision makers a domestic source of state identity? This article explores this question and reveals how state identity was produced in the Roman world system during the early Principate. The argument advanced proposes the Roman world was ensconced by a metavalue of honor that significantly shaped the personal identities of Rome's aristocratic decision-making classes. Competition for honor subsumed aristocratic life and shaped not only the personal identities of the elite, but also the persona of the Roman state. The Romans extrapolated their psychological framework, in which the stratification of domestic society rested on personal identities of honor, to their outlook on foreign policy. Akin to their domestic lives, those executing foreign policy conceptualized Rome as engaged in a status competition for honor with the polities existing its world system. Preserving and enhancing one's honor relative to others was fundamental in domestic life, and this was also the state's primary objective in relation to all others. The identity of the Roman state, therefore, was an aggressive status seeker.
Deborah Cai, Edward Fink & Xiaoying XieJournal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, May 2012, Pages 592-613
This study investigates the role that culture plays in the effect of intimacy, relationship type, and resources on obligations. Participants (n = 144 U.S. undergraduates and n = 122 Chinese undergraduate and graduate students) were asked about their obligations to another person. Chinese, as compared to Americans, reported greater obligation and greater likelihood to expend money to help another. Americans reported greater intimacy with others and greater likelihood of expending time talking. Chinese are willing to "spare a dime" (i.e., help with money), whereas Americans are willing to "spare some time" (i.e., help with time). Americans exhibited a greater degree of transitivity, as assessed by the extent to which obligations to a person known directly are transferred to the person known indirectly.
Tiffany Rinne, Daniel Steel & John Fairweather Cross-Cultural Research, May 2012, Pages 91-108
Hofstede's value dimensions offer a measure of one component of culture (cultural values) and are a means of gaining greater understanding of the role culture plays in national innovation success. Hofstede's (1980) cultural measures of individualism, uncertainty avoidance, and power distance, for example, have been shown to be correlated to the number (per capita) of trademarks (Shane, 1993). Via multivariate multiple linear regression, we assess the link between Hofstede's measures of cultural values and innovation as measured by the Global Innovation Index (GII). Our analyses show a strong negative relationship between Hofstede's dimensions of power distance and GII innovation scores as well as a strong positive relationship between individualism and GII innovation scores. No relationship was found for Hofstede's measure of uncertainty avoidance.
Chinese consumer ethnocentrism: A field experiment
Xiaogang Bi et al.Journal of Consumer Behaviour
Consumer ethnocentrism presents barriers for internationalising organisations. In China, evidence of a resurgent nationalism partly fuelled by rapid economic growth portends a shift in consumption away from foreign towards domestic products. On the other hand, rising consumer demand for branded and luxury products cannot be fully met domestically. However, much of the available evidence on Chinese consumer ethnocentrism is anecdotal and is based on attitudinal surveys that, as accurate measures of actual purchasing behaviour, suffer from certain methodological issues. In response, we report an experiment that measures the ethnocentrism of 447 Chinese consumers as their incentive-compatible choices between foreign and domestic products in a field setting. Our findings show little effect of foreign origin on subjects' choices that were only weakly related with attitudinal measures including the commonly used consumer ethnocentric tendencies scale (CETSCALE). Our results question the existence of ethnocentric consumer behaviour in China and the use of CETSCALE to gauge it generally.
Language Matters: Status Loss and Achieved Status Distinctions in Global Organizations
Tsedal NeeleyOrganization Science
How workers experience and express status loss in organizations has received little scholarly attention. I conducted a qualitative study of a French high-tech company that had instituted English as a lingua franca, or common language, as a context for examining this question. Results indicate that nonnative English-speaking employees experienced status loss regardless of their English fluency level. Yet variability in their self-assessed fluency - an achieved status marker - was associated with differences in language performance anxiety and job insecurity in a nonlinear fashion: those who believed they had medium-level fluency were the most anxious compared with their low- and high-fluency coworkers. In almost all cases where fluency ratings differed, self-assessed rather than objective fluency determined how speakers explained their feelings and actions. Although nonnative speakers shared a common attitude of resentment and distrust toward their native English-speaking coworkers, their behavioral responses-assertion, inhibition, or learning - to encounters with native speakers differed based on their self-perceived fluencies. No status differences materialized among nonnative speakers as a function of diverse linguistic and national backgrounds. I discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings for status, achieved characteristics, and language in organizations.
When the Transmission of Culture Is Child's Play
Mark Nielsen, Jessica Cucchiaro & Jumana Mohamedally
Background: Humans frequently engage in arbitrary, conventional behavior whose primary purpose is to identify with cultural in-groups. The propensity for doing so is established early in human ontogeny as children become progressively enmeshed in their own cultural milieu. This is exemplified by their habitual replication of causally redundant actions shown to them by adults. Yet children seemingly ignore such actions shown to them by peers. How then does culture get transmitted intra-generationally? Here we suggest the answer might be ‘in play'.
Principal Findings: Using a diffusion chain design preschoolers first watched an adult retrieve a toy from a novel apparatus using a series of actions, some of which were obviously redundant. These children could then show another child how to open the apparatus, who in turn could show a third child. When the adult modeled the actions in a playful manner they were retained down to the third child at higher rates than when the adult seeded them in a functionally oriented way.
Conclusions: Our results draw attention to the possibility that play might serve a critical function in the transmission of human culture by providing a mechanism for arbitrary ideas to spread between children.
Hugh Whitt & Grant TietjenHomicide Studies, May 2012, Pages 151-174
Contrary to what would be expected from Norbert Elias, whose theory of the civilizing process links criminal violence to impulsivity, data from the Comptes généraux de l'administration de la justice criminelle en France show that rates of homicide due to imprudence in controlling a horse or cart increased with modernization across départements early in the nineteenth century. Drawing on work by Elias and others, we suggest an interpretation based on traffic congestion and changes in the social construction of time as Western societies became more modernized and urbanized.
Predicting Societal Corruption Across Time: Values, Wealth, or Institutions?
Seini O'Connor & Ronald FischerJournal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, May 2012, Pages 644-659
Across cultures, corruption is widely thought to be a destructive social phenomenon. Despite considerable efforts to understand its causes, there are still gaps in our understanding of how country corruption levels change over time. This study provides new insights by comparing the influence of societal values, wealth and political institutions on corruption for 59 countries from 1980 to 2008. Results suggest that self-expression societal values, wealth, and government size separate those countries that are less corrupt from those that are more corrupt. However, within countries, only increasing wealth is related to decreasing corruption, and this relationship varies across countries. This finding suggests that cross-sectional analyses provide an inadequate understanding of the dynamics of corruption over time; and that attempting to import institutions or impose values from low-corruption countries onto high-corruption countries is unlikely to be an effective short-term corruption-reduction strategy.
Middle Eastern Impression-Management Communication
Rebecca MerkinCross-Cultural Research, May 2012, Pages 109-132
This study examines Israeli and Syrian impression management (facework), drawing on Hofstede's theory of cultural dimensions. Using a MANCOVA design while controlling for social desirability and gender, it measured the influence of country on direct, aggressive, competitive, and harmonious facework strategies from self-report questionnaires (n = 176) collected in Israel and Syria. Consistent with the hypotheses, Israelis exhibit more direct, aggressive, and competitive facework strategies than Syrians. Israeli facework strategies corresponded to cultural individualism and a low power distance, whereas Syrian facework corresponded to cultural collectivism and a high power distance. Contrary to expectation, Israeli facework is more harmonious. A unique contribution of the present study is the identification of changes in facework necessary for avoiding a loss of face among two populations whose previous diplomatic efforts have not succeeded.
Income Comparisons Among Neighbours and Satisfaction in East and West Germany
Gundi KniesSocial Indicators Research, May 2012, Pages 471-489
A series of studies have suggested that changes in others' income may be perceived differently in post-transition and capitalist societies. This paper draws on the German Socio-economic Panel Study (SOEP) matched with micro-marketing indicators of population characteristics in very tightly drawn neighbourhoods to investigate whether reactions to changes in their neighbours' income divide the German nation. We find that the neighbourhood income effect for West Germany is negative (which is in line with the ‘relative income' hypothesis) and slightly more marked in neighbourhoods that may be assumed to be places where social interactions between neighbours take place. In contrast, the coefficients on neighbourhood income in East Germany are positive (which is consistent with the ‘signalling' hypothesis), but statistically not significant. This suggests not only that there is a divide between East and West Germany, but also that neighbours may not be a relevant comparison group in societies that have comparatively low levels of neighbouring.
Body Dissatisfaction and Disordered Eating in Three Cultures: Argentina, Brazil, and the U.S.
Gordon Forbes et al.Sex Roles, May 2012, Pages 677-694
Body dissatisfaction and associated attitudes were studied in 18-24 years old women from universities in Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina (N = 118), João Pessoa, Paraíba, Brazil (N = 81), and mid-Atlantic U.S. (N = 102). Based on anecdotal reports, theoretical concerns, and empirical studies, we expected greater body dissatisfaction and negative body attitudes in our Argentine and Brazilian samples than in the U.S. sample. Body dissatisfaction was a significant problem in all samples, but we found few differences in levels of body dissatisfaction. The Argentine and Brazilian samples scored lower than the U.S. sample on measures associated with disordered eating, experienced less pressure to be thin, and were less likely to internalize the thin body ideal. Body shame was highest in the Brazilian sample and lowest in the Argentine sample. Cultural features in Argentina and Brazil that may offer some level of protection against the thin body ideal were discussed.
Warwick AndersonCurrent Anthropology, April 2012, Pages S95-S107
Abstract:In the 1920s and 1930s, U.S. physical anthropologists imagined Hawai‘i as a racial laboratory, a controllable site for the study of race mixing and the effects of migration on bodily form. Gradually a more dynamic and historical understanding of human populations came to substitute for older classificatory and typological approaches in the colonial laboratory, leading to the creation of the field of human biology and challenges to scientific racism. Elite U.S. institutions and philanthropic foundations competed for the authority to define Pacific bodies and mentalities during this period. The emergent scientific validation of liberal Hawaiian attitudes toward human difference and race amalgamation or formation exerted considerable influence on biological anthropology after World War II, but ultimately it would fail in Hawai‘i to resist the incoming tide of continental U.S. racial thought and practice.
Inferring the Emotions of Friends Versus Strangers: The Role of Culture and Self-Construal
Christine Ma-Kellams & Jim BlascovichPersonality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Abstract:Three studies examined cross-cultural differences in empathic accuracy (the ability to correctly infer another's emotional experience) within the context of different relationships. East-West cultural differences in self-construal were hypothesized to differentiate levels of empathic accuracy across relationship types. In contrast to the independent self prevalent among members of Western cultures, members of Eastern cultures generally view the self as interdependent with those with whom they have a relationship. Easterners, relative to Westerners, are more concerned with the thoughts or feelings of close others and less concerned with the thoughts or feelings of those with whom they have no relational link (i.e., strangers). Across three studies, the authors found that East Asians, compared with European Americans, made more accurate inferences regarding the emotions of close others (i.e., friends), but less accurate inferences regarding the emotions of strangers. Furthermore, individual differences in interdependent self-construal among East Asians predicted the degree of empathic accuracy.
Anne Janssen & Christian GeiserJournal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, May 2012, Pages 533-557
Abstract:Cultural differences in performance and solution strategies on the Mental Rotations Test (MRT; Peters et al., 1995; Vandenberg & Kuse, 1978) and the Cube Comparison Test (CCT; Amthauer, Brocke, Liepmann, & Beauducel, 2001) were studied in 656 Cambodian and German students. Germans outperformed Cambodians on both the MRT (d = 1.57) and CCT (d = 0.99). The large differences could be explained by Cambodian participants being more prone to analytic strategies, whereas most Germans preferred a holistic strategy. Sex differences on the MRT in favor of males were found in both Cambodia (d = 0.37) and Germany (d = 0.87). On the CCT, sex differences with males outperforming females were only found for the German sample (d = 0.43). In both samples, more females preferred an analytic solution strategy, whereas more males tended to use a holistic strategy. We argue that the huge differences between nations can partly be attributed to differences in the mathematics curriculum.
Young-Hoon Kim et al.Emotion
Abstract:Research in the past 2 decades has made great strides in understanding cross-cultural differences in the correlates and causes of subjective well-being. On the basis of past findings on the cross-cultural differences in temporal perspectives of the self, the present research examined a cross-cultural difference in individuals' subjective well-being as a function of how positively they viewed their present and past selves. Study 1 showed that both European and Asian Americans had higher subjective well-being when they viewed their present selves more positively. However, positive evaluations of the past self were accompanied by higher subjective well-being only among Asian Americans. Study 2 showed that when induced to think positively (vs. negatively) of the present self, both European and Asian Americans judged their current lives more favorably. However, when led to view the past self positively (vs. negatively), only Asian Americans made more favorable judgments about their current lives.
Paul Christesen
Significance, April 2012, Pages 37-39Abstract:
The date of the first-ever Olympic Games seems unimpeachable. But recent analysis shows that it is nothing more than a statistical approximation - one of the earliest ever made. The approximator - our proto-statistician - was Hippias of Elis. Before statisticians claim him as one of their own, they should know that he fudged his data.Christine Caldwell et al.
Journal of Comparative PsychologyAbstract:
It has been proposed that the uniqueness of human cumulative culture may be attributable to humans' greater orientation toward copying the process of behavior (imitation), as compared with the products (emulation), resulting in particularly high fidelity transmission. Following from previous work indicating that adult human participants can exhibit cumulative learning on the basis of product copying alone, we now investigate whether such learning involves high fidelity transmission. Eighty adult human (Homo sapiens) participants were presented with a task previously shown to elicit cumulative learning under experimental conditions, which involved building a tower from spaghetti and modeling clay. Each participant was shown two completed towers, ostensibly built by previous participants, but actually built to prespecified designs by the experimenter. This end state information was provided either in the form of photographs, or the presence of actual towers. High fidelity matching to these end states was apparent in both demonstration conditions, even for a design that was demonstrably suboptimal with regard to the goal of the task (maximizing tower height). We conclude that, although high fidelity transmission is likely to be implicated in cumulative culture, action copying is not always necessary for this to occur. Furthermore, since chimpanzees apparently copy behavioral processes and well as products, and also transmit behavior with high fidelity, the stark absence of unequivocal examples of cumulative culture in nonhumans may be attributable to factors other than imitative ability.Facial expressions of emotion are not culturally universal
Rachael Jack et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesAbstract:
Since Darwin's seminal works, the universality of facial expressions of emotion has remained one of the longest standing debates in the biological and social sciences. Briefly stated, the universality hypothesis claims that all humans communicate six basic internal emotional states (happy, surprise, fear, disgust, anger, and sad) using the same facial movements by virtue of their biological and evolutionary origins [Susskind JM, et al. (2008) Nat Neurosci 11:843-850]. Here, we refute this assumed universality. Using a unique computer graphics platform that combines generative grammars [Chomsky N (1965) MIT Press, Cambridge, MA] with visual perception, we accessed the mind's eye of 30 Western and Eastern culture individuals and reconstructed their mental representations of the six basic facial expressions of emotion. Cross-cultural comparisons of the mental representations challenge universality on two separate counts. First, whereas Westerners represent each of the six basic emotions with a distinct set of facial movements common to the group, Easterners do not. Second, Easterners represent emotional intensity with distinctive dynamic eye activity. By refuting the long-standing universality hypothesis, our data highlight the powerful influence of culture on shaping basic behaviors once considered biologically hardwired. Consequently, our data open a unique nature-nurture debate across broad fields from evolutionary psychology and social neuroscience to social networking via digital avatars.Ashleigh Shelby Rosette et al.
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, May 2012, Pages 628-643Abstract:
This research examines the extent to which the email medium exacerbates the aggressiveness of opening offers made by negotiators from two distinct cultures. Hypotheses derived from negotiation, communication, and culture research predict that Hong Kong Chinese negotiators using email would exhibit a reactance effect and consequently engage in more aggressive opening offers and claim higher distributive outcomes than similar negotiators in the United States. Study 1 examines intercultural email negotiations and results indicate that Hong Kong Chinese negotiators made more aggressive opening offers and attained higher distributive outcomes than their U.S. counterparts. Study 2 results replicate Study 1 findings in an intracultural negotiation setting and also show favorable outcomes for Hong Kong email negotiators when compared to both Hong Kong and U.S. face-to-face negotiators. Overall, the findings suggest that Hong Kong Chinese and U.S. negotiators vary substantially in how they negotiate via email and face to face, which results in differences in distributive outcomes.----------------------
Recognizing Leadership at a Distance: A Study of Leader Effectiveness Across Cultures
Peter Harms, Guohong Han & Huaiyu Chen
Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, May 2012, Pages 164-172Abstract:
The present study investigated whether personality and leadership evaluations based on photographs of Chinese CEOs made by Western raters were accurate at predicting organizational outcomes. Consistent with implicit leadership prototypes held by Westerners, perceived effectiveness was associated with higher levels of perceived intelligence, dominance, and positivity. However, actual organization performance was associated with the culturally appropriate leadership trait of risk taking. These findings suggest that although it is possible to use perceptions of personality based on photographs to predict objective leader effectiveness, individuals using a leadership paradigm suited to Western cultures are poor judges of potential success in Eastern cultures.----------------------
A study of surnames in China through isonymy
Yan Liu et al.
American Journal of Physical AnthropologyAbstract:
The isonymy structure of 1.28 billion people registered in China's National Citizen Identity Information System was studied at the provincial, prefectural, and county administrative division levels. The isonymy was 0.026 for China as a whole. The average value of isonymy was 0.033 for the 30 provinces, 0.035 for the 334 prefectures, and 0.040 for the 2811 counties. The isonymy in China was much higher than in other countries. This finding may be partly explained by the low number of surnames in the Chinese language. Two regional features can be identified from the geographic distributions of isonymy. One feature is that the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River had the lowest values of isonymy at both the provincial and county levels. The second feature is that most counties with the highest values of isonymy were distributed in the provinces with high proportions of ethnic minorities. According to the dendrogram of surname distances, several clusters could be identified. Most provinces in a cluster were conterminous with one another. The one exception could be explained by demic migration called "braving the journey to the northeast of China." Isolation by distance could be detected because the correlation coefficients between Nei's distance and the geographic distances at the provincial, prefectural, and county levels were 0.64, 0.43, and 0.37, respectively. Human behaviors in Chinese history that may have caused these results have been discussed, including cultural origin, migration, residential patterns, and ethnic distribution.----------------------
Toshie Imada
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, May 2012, Pages 576-591Abstract:
Besides teaching academic knowledge and skills, imparting cultural values and behavioral standard is also an important function of formal education. The present work examines stories sampled from American and Japanese school textbooks (Ns = 72 and 71, respectively) for their cultural values and characteristics. The study found that the stories in American textbooks highlighted themes of individualism such as self-direction and achievement, whereas the Japanese counterparts highlighted themes of collectivism such as conformity and group harmony. The study also found cultural differences in story characteristics (e.g., the narrator, attribution of the outcome, picture content) that are also related to individualism and collectivism. Implications and future directions are discussed.----------------------
Effects of Culture on Musical Pitch Perception
Patrick Wong et al.
, April 2012Abstract:
The strong association between music and speech has been supported by recent research focusing on musicians' superior abilities in second language learning and neural encoding of foreign speech sounds. However, evidence for a double association - the influence of linguistic background on music pitch processing and disorders - remains elusive. Because languages differ in their usage of elements (e.g., pitch) that are also essential for music, a unique opportunity for examining such language-to-music associations comes from a cross-cultural (linguistic) comparison of congenital amusia, a neurogenetic disorder affecting the music (pitch and rhythm) processing of about 5% of the Western population. In the present study, two populations (Hong Kong and Canada) were compared. One spoke a tone language in which differences in voice pitch correspond to differences in word meaning (in Hong Kong Cantonese, /si/ means ‘teacher' and ‘to try' when spoken in a high and mid pitch pattern, respectively). Using the On-line Identification Test of Congenital Amusia, we found Cantonese speakers as a group tend to show enhanced pitch perception ability compared to speakers of Canadian French and English (non-tone languages). This enhanced ability occurs in the absence of differences in rhythmic perception and persists even after relevant factors such as musical background and age were controlled. Following a common definition of amusia (5% of the population), we found Hong Kong pitch amusics also show enhanced pitch abilities relative to their Canadian counterparts. These findings not only provide critical evidence for a double association of music and speech, but also argue for the reconceptualization of communicative disorders within a cultural framework. Along with recent studies documenting cultural differences in visual perception, our auditory evidence challenges the common assumption of universality of basic mental processes and speaks to the domain generality of culture-to-perception influences. -
19 Apr ' 16:01
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Cloudy with a chance of...
Temperature Shocks and Economic Growth: Evidence from the Last Half Century
Melissa Dell, Benjamin Jones & Benjamin Olken American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics
This paper uses historical fluctuations in temperature within countries to identify its effects on aggregate economic outcomes. We find three primary results. First, higher temperatures substantially reduce economic growth in poor countries. Second, higher temperatures appear to reduce growth rates, not just the level of output. Third, higher temperatures have wide-ranging effects, reducing agricultural output, industrial output, and political stability. These findings inform debates over climate's role in economic development and suggest the possibility of substantial negative impacts of higher temperatures on poor countries.
Buy Coal! A Case for Supply-Side Environmental Policy
Bård HarstadJournal of Political Economy, February 2012, Pages 77-115
Free-riding is at the core of environmental problems. If a climate coalition reduces its emissions, world prices change and nonparticipants typically emit more; they may also extract the dirtiest type of fossil fuel and invest too little in green technology. The coalition's second-best policy distorts trade and is not time consistent. However, suppose that the countries can trade the rights to exploit fossil-fuel deposits: As soon as the market clears, the above-mentioned problems vanish and the first-best is implemented. In short, the coalition's best policy is to simply buy foreign deposits and conserve them.
Economic Policy in the Face of Severe Tail Events
William NordhausJournal of Public Economic Theory, March 2012, Pages 197-219
From time to time, something occurs which is outside the range of normal expectations. We will call these "tail events" in the sense that they are way out of the tail of a probability distribution. I consider the question of the implications of tail events for economic policy and climate-change economics. This issue has been analyzed by Martin Weitzman who proposed a Dismal Theorem. The general idea is that, under limited conditions concerning the structure of uncertainty and risk aversion, society has an indefinitely large expected loss from high-consequence, low-probability events. Under such conditions, standard economic tools such as cost-benefit analysis cannot be applied. The present study is intended to put the Dismal Theorem in context and examine the range of its relevance, with an application to catastrophic climate change. I conclude that tail events are sometimes of extreme importance, and we must be extremely careful to include them in situations of deep uncertainty. However, we conclude that no loaded gun of strong tail dominance has been uncovered to date.
Women's Status and Carbon Dioxide Emissions: A Quantitative Cross-National Analysis
Christina Ergas & Richard York
Global climate change is one of the most severe problems facing societies around the world. Very few assessments of the social forces that influence greenhouse gas emissions have examined gender inequality. Empirical research suggests that women are more likely than men to support environmental protection. Various strands of feminist theory suggest that this is due to women's traditional roles as caregivers, subsistence food producers, water and fuelwood collectors, and reproducers of human life. Other theorists argue that women's status and environmental protection are linked because the exploitation of women and the exploitation of nature are interconnected processes. For these theoretical and empirical reasons, we hypothesize that in societies with greater gender equality there will be relatively lower impacts on the environment, controlling for other factors. We test this hypothesis using quantitative analysis of cross-national data, focusing on the connection between women's political status and CO2 emissions per capita. We find that CO2 emissions per capita are lower in nations where women have higher political status, controlling for GDP per capita, urbanization, industrialization, militarization, world-system position, foreign direct investment, the age dependency ratio, and level of democracy. This finding suggests that efforts to improve gender equality around the world may work synergistically with efforts to curtail global climate change and environmental degradation more generally.
135 years of global ocean warming between the Challenger expedition and the Argo Programme
Dean Roemmich, John Gould & John GilsonNature Climate Change
Changing temperature throughout the oceans is a key indicator of climate change. Since the 1960s about 90% of the excess heat added to the Earth's climate system has been stored in the oceans. The ocean's dominant role over the atmosphere, land, or cryosphere comes from its high heat capacity and ability to remove heat from the sea surface by currents and mixing. The longest interval over which instrumental records of subsurface global-scale temperature can be compared is the 135 years between the voyage of HMS Challenger (1872-1876) and the modern data set of the Argo Programme (2004-2010). Argo's unprecedented global coverage permits its comparison with any earlier measurements. This, the first global-scale comparison of Challenger and modern data, shows spatial mean warming at the surface of 0.59 °C±0.12, consistent with previous estimates of globally averaged sea surface temperature increase. Below the surface the mean warming decreases to 0.39 °C±0.18 at 366 m (200 fathoms) and 0.12 °C±0.07 at 914 m (500 fathoms). The 0.33 °C±0.14 average temperature difference from 0 to 700 m is twice the value observed globally in that depth range over the past 50 years, implying a centennial timescale for the present rate of global warming. Warming in the Atlantic Ocean is stronger than in the Pacific. Systematic errors in the Challenger data mean that these temperature changes are a lower bound on the actual values. This study underlines the scientific significance of the Challenger expedition and the modern Argo Programme and indicates that globally the oceans have been warming at least since the late-nineteenth or early-twentieth century.
In the Wake of the Spill: Environmental Views Along the Gulf Coast
Lawrence Hamilton, Thomas Safford & Jessica Ulrich Social Science Quarterly
Objectives: We analyze patterns in environmental views of Gulf Coast residents, in the wake of the 2010 oil spill. To what extent do spill-related and other environmental views vary with individual characteristics, personal experience with the spill, or characteristics of place?
Methods: About 2,000 residents of selected coastal regions in Louisiana and Florida were interviewed by telephone in late summer 2010.
Results: One-quarter of the respondents said that their environmental views had changed as a result of the spill. Despite reporting more change, more spill effects, and greater threats from climate-induced sea-level rise, Louisiana respondents were less likely to support a deepwater moratorium, alternative energy, or resource conservation.
Conclusions: Results are consistent with real effects from the spill. Differences between Louisiana and Florida respondents are not explained by spill effects or individual characteristics, however. The patterns reflect biophysical differences of the coastlines that shaped their socioeconomic development.
Insights from past millennia into climatic impacts on human health and survival
Anthony McMichaelProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 27 March 2012, Pages 4730-4737
Climate change poses threats to human health, safety, and survival via weather extremes and climatic impacts on food yields, fresh water, infectious diseases, conflict, and displacement. Paradoxically, these risks to health are neither widely nor fully recognized. Historical experiences of diverse societies experiencing climatic changes, spanning multicentury to single-year duration, provide insights into population health vulnerability - even though most climatic changes were considerably less than those anticipated this century and beyond. Historical experience indicates the following. (i) Long-term climate changes have often destabilized civilizations, typically via food shortages, consequent hunger, disease, and unrest. (ii) Medium-term climatic adversity has frequently caused similar health, social, and sometimes political consequences. (iii) Infectious disease epidemics have often occurred in association with briefer episodes of temperature shifts, food shortages, impoverishment, and social disruption. (iv) Societies have often learnt to cope (despite hardship for some groups) with recurring shorter-term (decadal to multiyear) regional climatic cycles (e.g., El Niño Southern Oscillation) - except when extreme phases occur. (v) The drought-famine-starvation nexus has been the main, recurring, serious threat to health. Warming this century is not only likely to greatly exceed the Holocene's natural multidecadal temperature fluctuations but to occur faster. Along with greater climatic variability, models project an increased geographic range and severity of droughts. Modern societies, although larger, better resourced, and more interconnected than past societies, are less flexible, more infrastructure-dependent, densely populated, and hence are vulnerable. Adverse historical climate-related health experiences underscore the case for abating human-induced climate change.
J.T. Smith, N.J. Willey & J.T. HancockBiology Letters
It has been hypothesized that radiation-induced oxidative stress is the mechanism for a wide range of negative impacts on biota living in radioactively contaminated areas around Chernobyl. The present study tests this hypothesis mechanistically, for the first time, by modelling the impacts of radiolysis products within the cell resulting from radiations (low linear energy transfer β and γ), and dose rates appropriate to current contamination types and densities in the Chernobyl exclusion zone and at Fukushima. At 417 µGy h-1 (illustrative of the most contaminated areas at Chernobyl), generation of radiolysis products did not significantly impact cellular concentrations of reactive oxygen species, or cellular redox potential. This study does not support the hypothesis that direct oxidizing stress is a mechanism for damage to organisms exposed to chronic radiation at dose rates typical of contaminated environments.
On the inverse relationship between North American snow extent and North Atlantic hurricane activity
T. Yan et al.International Journal of Climatology
The statistically significant inverse relationship is examined between North American snow cover extent during January and North Atlantic hurricane activity during the following hurricane season. To better quantify this relationship the long-term trend and ENSO years were removed from the data. The lightest January snow-cover years (LSY) show sharp increases (40-90%) compared to the heaviest January snow-cover years (HSY) in nearly all measures of Atlantic hurricane activity, including the numbers and duration of hurricanes and major hurricanes, and the average seasonal accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) index. Approximately, half of the LSY events featured above-normal hurricane seasons and none were below-normal, while approximately half of the HSY featured below-normal hurricane seasons none were above-normal. Composite analyses indicate the anomalous wintertime snow-cover extent and Atlantic hurricane activity are linked through their common association with persistent and hemisphere-wide extratropical circulation anomalies tied to the Arctic Oscillation (AO). The LSY are associated with a positive phase of the AO, along with warmer surface temperatures in both North America and Eurasia, while the HSY are associated with a negative phase of the AO and below-average continental surface temperatures. One unresolved issue is the extent to which the anomalous snow extent feeds back onto the large-scale circulation so as to help maintain the wintertime AO patterns through the spring and summer. Another remaining issue is the process(es) by which the extratropical AO signals eventually penetrate into the tropics so as to influence Atlantic hurricane activity.
Richard HornbeckAmerican Economic Review
The 1930's American Dust Bowl was an environmental catastrophe that greatly eroded sections of the Plains. The Dust Bowl is estimated to have immediately, substantially, and persistently reduced agricultural land values and revenues in more-eroded counties relative to less-eroded counties. During the Depression and through at least the 1950's, there was limited relative adjustment of farmland away from activities that became relatively less productive in more-eroded areas. Agricultural adjustments recovered less than 25% of the initial difference in agricultural costs for more-eroded counties. The economy adjusted predominately through large relative population declines in more-eroded counties, both during the 1930's and through the 1950's.
Industry Influence in Stakeholder-Driven State Climate Change Planning Efforts
Elena Maggioni, Hal Nelson & Daniel Mazmanian Policy Studies Journal, May 2012, Pages 234-255
Drawing from the literature on public participation and stakeholder collaboratives, this article investigates the influence of power and wealth, as well as political and economic context on the output of stakeholders advisory committees convened to formulate state greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation policies. Using small sample regression techniques, we analyze the outputs of stakeholder groups in 18 states that have completed Climate Action Plans to reduce GHGs. We find that an increase of 1 percent in the number of energy industry representatives that participate in Climate Action Councils significantly predicts a 4 percent reduction of GHG mitigation targets for the energy sector. More surprisingly, the results also show that where the utilities represent a larger share of the state economy, the Climate Action Plans identify more aggressive GHG reduction goals for the energy sector. We also find that the political orientation of the executive of the state is not correlated with GHG mitigation requirements for the energy sector, suggesting that GHG mitigation is less partisan at the state level than in Washington, DC. We find no evidence that state wealth is associated with GHG mitigation requirements. Finally, we suggest additional research needed to clarify the role of stakeholder participation processes in the evolving arena of climate change policy.
Nicholas Smith & Anthony LeiserowitzRisk Analysis
This article explores how affective image associations to global warming have changed over time. Four nationally representative surveys of the American public were conducted between 2002 and 2010 to assess public global warming risk perceptions, policy preferences, and behavior. Affective images (positive or negative feelings and cognitive representations) were collected and content analyzed. The results demonstrate a large increase in "naysayer" associations, indicating extreme skepticism about the issue of climate change. Multiple regression analyses found that holistic affect and "naysayer" associations were more significant predictors of global warming risk perceptions than cultural worldviews or sociodemographic variables, including political party and ideology. The results demonstrate the important role affective imagery plays in judgment and decision-making processes, how these variables change over time, and how global warming is currently perceived by the American public.
Climate change and moral judgement
Ezra Markowitz & Azim ShariffNature Climate Change, April 2012, Pages 243-247
Converging evidence from the behavioural and brain sciences suggests that the human moral judgement system is not well equipped to identify climate change - a complex, large-scale and unintentionally caused phenomenon - as an important moral imperative. As climate change fails to generate strong moral intuitions, it does not motivate an urgent need for action in the way that other moral imperatives do. We review six reasons why climate change poses significant challenges to our moral judgement system and describe six strategies that communicators might use to confront these challenges. Enhancing moral intuitions about climate change may motivate greater support for ameliorative actions and policies.
Joëlle NoaillyEnergy Economics, May 2012, Pages 795-806
This paper investigates the impact of alternative environmental policy instruments on technological innovations aiming to improve energy efficiency in buildings. The empirical analysis focuses on three main types of policy instruments, namely regulatory energy standards in buildings codes, energy taxes as captured by energy prices and specific governmental energy R&D expenditures. Technological innovation is measured using patent counts for specific technologies related to energy efficiency in buildings (e.g. insulation, high-efficiency boilers, energy-saving lightings). The estimates for seven European countries over the 1989-2004 period imply that a strengthening of 10% of the minimum insulation standards for walls would increase the likelihood to file additional patents by about 3%. In contrast, energy prices have no significant effect on the likelihood to patent. Governmental energy R&D support has a small positive significant effect on patenting activities.
Economic impacts of climate change in Europe: Sea-level rise
Francesco Bosello et al.Climatic Change, May 2012, Pages 63-81
This paper uses two models to examine the direct and indirect costs of sea-level rise for Europe for a range of sea-level rise scenarios for the 2020s and 2080s: (1) the DIVA model to estimate the physical impacts of sea-level rise and the direct economic cost, including adaptation, and (2) the GTAP-EF model to assess the indirect economic implications. Without adaptation, impacts are quite significant with a large land loss and increase in the incidence of coastal flooding. By the end of the century Malta has the largest relative land loss at 12% of its total surface area, followed by Greece at 3.5% land loss. Economic losses are however larger in Poland and Germany (483 and391 million, respectively). Coastal protection is very effective in reducing these impacts and optimally undertaken leads to protection levels that are higher than 85% in the majority of European states. While the direct economic impact of sea-level rise is always negative, the final impact on countries' economic performances estimated with the GTAP-EF model may be positive or negative. This is because factor substitution, international trade, and changes in investment patterns interact with possible positive implications. The policy insights are (1) while sea-level rise has negative and huge direct economic effects, overall effects on GDP are quite small (max -0.046% in Poland); (2) the impact of sea-level rise is not confined to the coastal zone and sea-level rise indirectly affects landlocked countries as well (Austria for instance loses -0.003% of its GDP); and (3) adaptation is crucial to keep the negative impacts of sea-level rise at an acceptable level.
Greater focus needed on methane leakage from natural gas infrastructure
Ramón Alvarez et al.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Natural gas is seen by many as the future of American energy: a fuel that can provide energy independence and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the process. However, there has also been confusion about the climate implications of increased use of natural gas for electric power and transportation. We propose and illustrate the use of technology warming potentials as a robust and transparent way to compare the cumulative radiative forcing created by alternative technologies fueled by natural gas and oil or coal by using the best available estimates of greenhouse gas emissions from each fuel cycle (i.e., production, transportation and use). We find that a shift to compressed natural gas vehicles from gasoline or diesel vehicles leads to greater radiative forcing of the climate for 80 or 280 yr, respectively, before beginning to produce benefits. Compressed natural gas vehicles could produce climate benefits on all time frames if the well-to-wheels CH4 leakage were capped at a level 45-70% below current estimates. By contrast, using natural gas instead of coal for electric power plants can reduce radiative forcing immediately, and reducing CH4 losses from the production and transportation of natural gas would produce even greater benefits. There is a need for the natural gas industry and science community to help obtain better emissions data and for increased efforts to reduce methane leakage in order to minimize the climate footprint of natural gas.
Rational habits in gasoline demand
Rebecca ScottEnergy Economics
The dynamics of demand for energy goods such as gasoline are complicated by investment decisions and behavioral habits. Both types of complication can be captured by a habits model, in which past consumption enters into an agent's current utility function. If the agent is forward-looking, or ‘rational', then habits imply his consumption of the habit-forming good will be sensitive to his expectation of future market conditions, in particular future prices. This sensitivity implies, in turn, that traditional measures of price elasticity will underproject consumers' responsiveness to policy interventions. This paper examines the implications of rational habits on gasoline demand. Using a simple model encompassing myopic and rational habits, I demonstrate that an agent with rational habits will respond to anticipated future price changes and react more strongly to permanent than to temporary price changes, with this distinction increasing in the strength of the habit. I then estimate several habits models using panel data on U.S. states for the years 1989 through 2008. My preferred specification yields evidence of rational habits, and moreover I find consumers to be twice as responsive to tax-driven price changes as to market-driven price changes. Taxes and other policies that operate through the gasoline price are a more powerful policy instrument than traditional price elasticity would lead us to believe.
Gasoline Taxes and Consumer Behavior
Shanjun Li, Joshua Linn & Erich Muehlegger NBER Working Paper, March 2012
Gasoline taxes can be employed to correct externalities associated with automobile use, to reduce dependency on foreign oil, and to raise government revenue. Our understanding of the optimal gasoline tax and the efficacy of existing taxes is largely based on empirical analysis of consumer responses to gasoline price changes. In this paper, we directly examine how gasoline taxes affect consumer behavior as distinct from tax-exclusive gasoline prices. Our analysis shows that a 5-cent tax increase reduces gasoline consumption by 1.3 percent in the short-run, much larger than that from a 5-cent increase in the tax-exclusive gasoline price. This difference suggests that traditional analysis could significantly underestimate policy impacts of tax changes. We further investigate the differential effect from gasoline taxes and tax-exclusive gasoline prices on both the intensive and extensive margins of gasoline consumption. We discuss implications of our findings for the estimation of the implicit discount rate for vehicle purchases and for the fiscal benefits of raising taxes.
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Is there a case for carbon-based border tax adjustment? An applied general equilibrium analysis
Jean-Marc Burniaux, Jean Chateau & Romain Duval Applied Economics, Spring 2012, Pages 2231-2240
Concern that unilateral Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission reductions could foster carbon leakage and undermine the international competitiveness of domestic industry has led to growing calls for carbon-based Border-Tax Adjustments (BTAs). This article uses a global general equilibrium model to assess the economic effects of BTAs and comes to three main conclusions. First, BTAs can reduce carbon leakage if the coalition of countries taking action to reduce GHG emissions is small, because in this case leakage (while typically small) mainly occurs through international trade competitiveness losses rather than through declines in world fossil fuel prices. Second, even though the economic effects of BTAs vary somewhat depending on how they are implemented, their welfare impact is typically small, and slightly negative at the world level. Third, and perhaps more strikingly, BTAs do not necessarily curb the output losses incurred by the domestic Energy Intensive-Industries (EIIs) they are intended to protect in the first place. This is in part because EIIs in industrialized countries make important use of carbon-intensive intermediate inputs produced by EIIs in other geographical areas. Another, deeper explanation is that EIIs are ultimately more adversely affected by the existence of a carbon price itself than by any international competitiveness losses. These findings are shown to be robust to key model parameters, country coverage, targets and design features of BTAs.----------------------
Past extreme warming events linked to massive carbon release from thawing permafrost
Robert DeConto et al.
Nature, 5 April 2012, Pages 87-91Abstract:
Between about 55.5 and 52 million years ago, Earth experienced a series of sudden and extreme global warming events (hyperthermals) superimposed on a long-term warming trend. The first and largest of these events, the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), is characterized by a massive input of carbon, ocean acidification and an increase in global temperature of about 5 °C within a few thousand years. Although various explanations for the PETM have been proposed, a satisfactory model that accounts for the source, magnitude and timing of carbon release at the PETM and successive hyperthermals remains elusive. Here we use a new astronomically calibrated cyclostratigraphic record from central Italy to show that the Early Eocene hyperthermals occurred during orbits with a combination of high eccentricity and high obliquity. Corresponding climate-ecosystem-soil simulations accounting for rising concentrations of background greenhouse gases and orbital forcing show that the magnitude and timing of the PETM and subsequent hyperthermals can be explained by the orbitally triggered decomposition of soil organic carbon in circum-Arctic and Antarctic terrestrial permafrost. This massive carbon reservoir had the potential to repeatedly release thousands of petagrams (1015 grams) of carbon to the atmosphere-ocean system, once a long-term warming threshold had been reached just before the PETM. Replenishment of permafrost soil carbon stocks following peak warming probably contributed to the rapid recovery from each event, while providing a sensitive carbon reservoir for the next hyperthermal. As background temperatures continued to rise following the PETM, the areal extent of permafrost steadily declined, resulting in an incrementally smaller available carbon pool and smaller hyperthermals at each successive orbital forcing maximum. A mechanism linking Earth's orbital properties with release of soil carbon from permafrost provides a unifying model accounting for the salient features of the hyperthermals.----------------------
Optimal global carbon management with ocean sequestration
Wilfried Rickels & Thomas Lontzek
Oxford Economic Papers, April 2012, Pages 323-349Abstract:
We investigate the socially optimal intervention in the global carbon cycle. Limiting factors are (i) increasing atmospheric carbon concentration due to fossil fuel-related carbon emissions, and (ii) the inertia of the global carbon cycle itself. Accordingly, we explicitly include the largest non-atmospheric carbon reservoir, the ocean, to achieve a better representation of the global carbon cycle than the proportional-decay assumption usually resorted to in economic models. We also investigate the option to directly inject CO2 into the deep ocean (a form of carbon sequestration), deriving from this a critical level for ocean sequestration costs. Above this level, ocean sequestration is merely a temporary option; below it, ocean sequestration is the long-term option permitting extended use of fossil fuels. The latter alternative involves higher atmospheric stabilization levels. In this connection it should be noted that the efficiency of ocean sequestration depends on the time-preference and the inertia of the carbon cycle.----------------------
Shunsuke Mori
Energy Economics, forthcomingAbstract:
This paper presents an evaluation of global warming mitigation options based on scenarios from the Asian Modeling Exercise. Using an extended version of the integrated assessment model MARIA-23 (Multiregional Approach for Resource and Industry Allocation), we analyze nuclear fuel recycling options, carbon capture and storage technologies (CCS), and biomass utilization. To assess the potential implications of decreased social acceptance of nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident, additional scenarios including a nuclear power expansion limitation, are analyzed. We also evaluate MARIA-23 model simulation estimates of long-term contributions and interrelationships among nuclear power, biomass, and CCS. Finally, potential costs of nuclear limitation under carbon control policies are assessed. The simulation results in this paper suggest the following: (1) under the reference scenario, global GDP losses in climate limitation scenarios range from 1.3% per year to 3.9% per year in 2060, rising to between 3.5% per year and 4.5% per year in 2100; (2) the use of nuclear fuel reprocessing technologies increase rapidly in all carbon control policy scenarios; (3) under a scenario where the price of CO2 is $30 and nuclear power expansion is strictly limited, GDP losses increase significantly - from 4.5% per year to 6.4% per year by 2100; (4) nuclear power and CCS are substitute mitigation technologies. With nuclear power technology available CCS deployment reaches approximately 15,000Mt-CO2 per year by 2010; without a nuclear power option, CCS deployment rises to more than 80,000 Mt-CO2 per year; and (5) biomass utilization cannot fully compensate for limitations to nuclear power expansion in policy scenarios. In addition to examining the role of these three technologies on global scales, we report results for several major Asian regions, namely Japan, China, and India. China tends to deploy nuclear power (if available) in response to rapidly growing power demands, in all scenarios while India tends to rely less on nuclear power. The potential cost of nuclear power limitation under global warming mitigation in Japan is estimated be significantly higher than in China or India.----------------------
Global trends in tropical cyclone risk
P. Peduzzi et al.
Nature Climate Change, April 2012, Pages 289-294Abstract:
The impact of tropical cyclones on humans depends on the number of people exposed and their vulnerability, as well as the frequency and intensity of storms. How will the cumulative effects of climate change, demography and vulnerability affect risk? Conventionally, reports assessing tropical cyclone risk trends are based on reported losses, but these figures are biased by improvements to information access. Here we present a new methodology based on thousands of physically observed events and related contextual parameters. We show that mortality risk depends on tropical cyclone intensity, exposure, levels of poverty and governance. Despite the projected reduction in the frequency of tropical cyclones, projected increases in both demographic pressure and tropical cyclone intensity over the next 20 years can be expected to greatly increase the number of people exposed per year and exacerbate disaster risk, despite potential progression in development and governance.----------------------
Externalities, Internalities, and the Targeting of Energy Policy
Hunt Allcott, Sendhil Mullainathan & Dmitry Taubinsky
NBER Working Paper, April 2012Abstract:
We show how the traditional logic of Pigouvian externality taxes changes if consumers under-value energy costs when buying energy-using durables such as cars and air conditioners. First, with undervaluation, there is an "Internality Dividend" from externality taxes: aside from reducing the provision of public bads, they also reduce allocative inefficiencies caused by consumers' underinvestment in energy efficient durables. Second, although Pigouvian taxes are clearly the preferred policy mechanism when externalities are the only market failure, undervaluation provides an "Internality Rationale" for alternative policies such as product subsidies that reduce the relative price of energy efficient durables. However, when some consumers misoptimize and others do not, a crucial quantity for policy analysis is the average marginal internality: the extent to which a policy preferentially targets misoptimizing consumers. As an example of the importance of the average marginal internality, we carry out a randomized field experiment to provide rebates for energy efficient lightbulbs and illustrate how the welfare effects of the rebate depend significantly on whether consumers that undervalue energy costs are more or less elastic.----------------------
Analysis of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extent using quantile regression
Reza Tareghian & Peter Rasmussen
International Journal of Climatology, forthcomingAbstract:
A number of recent studies have examined trends in sea ice cover using ordinary least squares regression. In this study, quantile regression is applied to analyse other aspects of the distribution of sea ice extent. More specifically, trends in the mean, maximum, and minimum sea ice extent in the Arctic and Antarctic are investigated. While there is a significant decreasing trend in mean Arctic sea ice extent of - 4.5% per decade from 1979 through 2010, the Antarctic results show a small positive trend of 2.3% per decade. In some cases such as the Antarctic minimum ice cover, selected quantile regressions yield slope estimates that differ from trends in the mean. It was also found that the variability in Antarctic sea ice extent is higher than that in the Arctic.----------------------
Aerosols implicated as a prime driver of twentieth-century North Atlantic climate variability
Ben Booth et al.
Nature, forthcomingAbstract:
Systematic climate shifts have been linked to multidecadal variability in observed sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic Ocean. These links are extensive, influencing a range of climate processes such as hurricane activity and African Sahel and Amazonian droughts. The variability is distinct from historical global-mean temperature changes and is commonly attributed to natural ocean oscillations. A number of studies have provided evidence that aerosols can influence long-term changes in sea surface temperatures, but climate models have so far failed to reproduce these interactions and the role of aerosols in decadal variability remains unclear. Here we use a state-of-the-art Earth system climate model to show that aerosol emissions and periods of volcanic activity explain 76 per cent of the simulated multidecadal variance in detrended 1860-2005 North Atlantic sea surface temperatures. After 1950, simulated variability is within observational estimates; our estimates for 1910-1940 capture twice the warming of previous generation models but do not explain the entire observed trend. Other processes, such as ocean circulation, may also have contributed to variability in the early twentieth century. Mechanistically, we find that inclusion of aerosol-cloud microphysical effects, which were included in few previous multimodel ensembles, dominates the magnitude (80 per cent) and the spatial pattern of the total surface aerosol forcing in the North Atlantic. Our findings suggest that anthropogenic aerosol emissions influenced a range of societally important historical climate events such as peaks in hurricane activity and Sahel drought. Decadal-scale model predictions of regional Atlantic climate will probably be improved by incorporating aerosol-cloud microphysical interactions and estimates of future concentrations of aerosols, emissions of which are directly addressable by policy actions.----------------------
Historical Temperature Variability Affects Coral Response to Heat Stress
Jessica Carilli, Simon Donner & Aaron Hartmann
PLoS ONE, March 2012Abstract:
Coral bleaching is the breakdown of symbiosis between coral animal hosts and their dinoflagellate algae symbionts in response to environmental stress. On large spatial scales, heat stress is the most common factor causing bleaching, which is predicted to increase in frequency and severity as the climate warms. There is evidence that the temperature threshold at which bleaching occurs varies with local environmental conditions and background climate conditions. We investigated the influence of past temperature variability on coral susceptibility to bleaching, using the natural gradient in peak temperature variability in the Gilbert Islands, Republic of Kiribati. The spatial pattern in skeletal growth rates and partial mortality scars found in massive Porites sp. across the central and northern islands suggests that corals subject to larger year-to-year fluctuations in maximum ocean temperature were more resistant to a 2004 warm-water event. In addition, a subsequent 2009 warm event had a disproportionately larger impact on those corals from the island with lower historical heat stress, as indicated by lower concentrations of triacylglycerol, a lipid utilized for energy, as well as thinner tissue in those corals. This study indicates that coral reefs in locations with more frequent warm events may be more resilient to future warming, and protection measures may be more effective in these regions.----------------------
Keith Smith et al.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 5 May 2012, Pages 1169-1174Abstract:
In earlier work, we compared the amount of newly fixed nitrogen (N, as synthetic fertilizer and biologically fixed N) entering agricultural systems globally to the total emission of nitrous oxide (N2O). We obtained an N2O emission factor (EF) of 3-5%, and applied it to biofuel production. For ‘first-generation' biofuels, e.g. biodiesel from rapeseed and bioethanol from corn (maize), that require N fertilizer, N2O from biofuel production could cause (depending on N uptake efficiency) as much or more global warming as that avoided by replacement of fossil fuel by the biofuel. Our subsequent calculations in a follow-up paper, using published life cycle analysis (LCA) models, led to broadly similar conclusions. The N2O EF applies to agricultural crops in general, not just to biofuel crops, and has made possible a top-down estimate of global emissions from agriculture. Independent modelling by another group using bottom-up IPCC inventory methodology has shown good agreement at the global scale with our top-down estimate. Work by Davidson showed that the rate of accumulation of N2O in the atmosphere in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries was greater than that predicted from agricultural inputs limited to fertilizer N and biologically fixed N (Davidson, E. A. 2009 Nat. Geosci. 2, 659-662.). However, by also including soil organic N mineralized following land-use change and NOx deposited from the atmosphere in our estimates of the reactive N entering the agricultural cycle, we have now obtained a good fit between the observed atmospheric N2O concentrations from 1860 to 2000 and those calculated on the basis of a 4 per cent EF for the reactive N.----------------------
Michael Taylor et al.
International Journal of Climatology, forthcomingAbstract:
Under global warming the Caribbean is projected to be significantly drier by century's end during its primary rainy season from May to November. The PRECIS regional model is used to simulate the end-of-century (2071-2100) manifestation of the Caribbean Low Level Jet (CLLJ) under two Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) global warming scenarios. The CLLJ is a feature of the Intra-American seas which during its July peak is dynamically linked to a brief mid-summer drying and interruption of the Caribbean rainy season. The regional model captures the CLLJ's present-day spatial and temporal characteristics reasonably well, simulating both the boreal winter (February) and summer (July) peaks. Under global warming there is an intensification of the CLLJ's core strength from May through November. The intensification is such that by October the CLLJ is of comparable core strength to its present-day peak in July. The persistence of the strong CLLJ beyond July and through November is linked to the perpetuation of a dry pattern in the Caribbean in the future. In contrast, the boreal winter manifestation of the CLLJ is largely unaltered in the future.----------------------
Ice-sheet collapse and sea-level rise at the Bølling warming 14,600 years ago
Pierre Deschamps et al.
Nature, 29 March 2012, Pages 559-564Abstract:
Past sea-level records provide invaluable information about the response of ice sheets to climate forcing. Some such records suggest that the last deglaciation was punctuated by a dramatic period of sea-level rise, of about 20 metres, in less than 500 years. Controversy about the amplitude and timing of this meltwater pulse (MWP-1A) has, however, led to uncertainty about the source of the melt water and its temporal and causal relationships with the abrupt climate changes of the deglaciation. Here we show that MWP-1A started no earlier than 14,650 years ago and ended before 14,310 years ago, making it coeval with the Bølling warming. Our results, based on corals drilled offshore from Tahiti during Integrated Ocean Drilling Project Expedition 310, reveal that the increase in sea level at Tahiti was between 12 and 22 metres, with a most probable value between 14 and 18 metres, establishing a significant meltwater contribution from the Southern Hemisphere. This implies that the rate of eustatic sea-level rise exceeded 40 millimetres per year during MWP-1A.----------------------
Global contraction of Antarctic Bottom Water between the 1980s and 2000s
Sarah Purkey & Gregory Johnson
Journal of Climate, forthcomingAbstract:
A statistically significant reduction in Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) volume is quantified between the 1980s and 2000s within the Southern Ocean and along the bottom-most, southern branches of the Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC). AABW has warmed globally during that time, contributing roughly 10% of the recent total ocean heat uptake. This warming implies a global-scale contraction of AABW. Rates of change in AABW-related circulation are estimated in most of the world's deep ocean basins by finding average rates of volume loss or gain below cold, deep potential temperature (θ) surfaces using all available repeated hydrographic sections. The Southern Ocean is losing water below θ = 0°C at a rate of -8.2 (±2.6) × 106 m3 s-1. This bottom water contraction causes a descent of potential isotherms throughout much of the water column until a near-surface recovery, apparently through a southward surge of Circumpolar Deep Water from the north. To the north, smaller losses of bottom waters are seen along three of the four main northward outflow routes of AABW. Volume and heat budgets below deep, cold θ surfaces within the Brazil and Pacific basins are not in steady state. The observed changes in volume and heat of the coldest waters within these basins could be accounted for by small decreases to the volume transport or small increases to θ of their inflows, or fractional increases in deep mixing. The budget calculations and global contraction pattern are consistent with a global scale slowdown of the bottom, southern limb of the MOC.----------------------
Christian Franzke
International Journal of Climatology, forthcomingAbstract:
This study examines the daily observed temperature at the Faraday/Vernadsky station in the Antarctic Peninsula for the period February 1947 through January 2011. Faraday/Vernadsky is experiencing a significant warming trend of about 0.6 °C/decade over the last few decades. Concurrently, the magnitude of extremely cold temperatures has reduced while there is no evidence for an increase of the annual maximum temperature. An empirical mode decomposition reveals that most of the temperature variability occurs on intraannual time scales and that changes in the magnitude of the annual cycle can be explained by a simple periodic stochastic process. Extremely cold temperatures below a threshold follow a generalised Pareto distribution (GPD) with a negative shape parameter and thus are bounded. We find that the extremely cold behaviour in the first half of the record is significantly different from the second half. At the same time there is no evident increase of warm temperatures or in the location of the maximum of the temperature probability distribution. These findings provide evidence that at Faraday/Vernadsky, it is the change in the shape of the temperature distribution that has substantially contributed to the observed warming over the last few decades. Furthermore, we find evidence for clustering of extreme cold events and show that they are predictable a few days in advance using a precursor-based prediction scheme. -
18 Apr ' 12:37
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Health Status
Sheldon Cohen & Denise Janicki-DevertsJournal of Applied Social Psychology
Psychological stress was assessed in 3 national surveys administered in 1983, 2006, and 2009. In all 3 surveys, stress was higher among women than men; and increased with decreasing age, education, and income. Unemployed persons reported high levels of stress, while the retired reported low levels. All associations were independent of one another and of race/ethnicity. Although minorities generally reported more stress than Whites, these differences lost significance when adjusted for the other demographics. Stress increased little in response to the 2008-2009 economic downturn, except among middle-aged, college-educated White men with full-time employment. These data suggest greater stress-related health risks among women, younger adults, those of lower socioeconomic status, and men potentially subject to substantial losses of income and wealth.
Bringing You More Than the Weekend: Union Membership and Self-rated Health in the United States
Megan Reynolds & David BradySocial Forces
Previous research suggests that higher incomes, safe workplaces, job security and healthcare access all contribute to favorable health. Reflecting the interest of economic and political sociologists in power relations and institutions, union membership has been linked with many such influences on health. Nevertheless, the potential relationship between union membership and health has received little attention. Using logistic regression and propensity score matching, this study examines the association between union membership and self-rated health generally and among select subgroups of the workforce with the General Social Survey from 1973 to 2006. Initial bivariate analyses suggest that union membership is actually associated with worse health. This association disappears when controlling for demographics, then reverses and becomes significant when controlling for labor market characteristics. In well-specified models, union membership has a significant positive effect on favorable self-rated health. The effect roughly offsets the effects of five years of aging or being divorced (as opposed to married). In addition, propensity score matching analyses demonstrate that union membership has a beneficial, significant average treatment effect for the treated. We show that much of union membership's effect in the overall sample is due to the mechanism of higher incomes, but that among men, the less educated, and those with lower incomes, the union-health advantage is not explained fully by income. The effect of union membership also appears to be stable over time. We conclude by encouraging further research on how power relations and institutions shape health.
Sharon Christ et al.Sociology of Health & Illness
The association between education or income and mortality has been explored in great detail. These measures capture both the effects of material disadvantage on health and the psychosocial impacts of a low socioeconomic position on health. When explored independently of educational attainment and income, occupational prestige - a purely perceptual measure - serves as a measure of the impact of a psychosocial phenomenon on health. For instance, a fire-fighter, academician or schoolteacher may carry the social benefits of a higher social status without actually having the income (in all cases) or the educational credentials (in the case of the fire-fighter) to match. We explored the independent influence of occupational prestige on mortality. We applied Cox proportional hazards models to a nationally representative sample of over 380,000 US workers who had worked at any time between 1986 and 1994 with mortality follow up through 2002. We found that occupational prestige is associated with a decrease in the risk of all-cause, cancer, cardiovascular and respiratory-related mortality after controlling for household income and educational attainment. We further investigated the question of whether the effects of prestige are moderated by sex and broader occupational groupings. Prestige effects operate in white-collar occupations for men only and within service occupations for all workers.
Socioeconomic status and cell aging in children
Belinda Needham et al.
Theory suggests that chronic stress associated with disadvantaged social status may lead to acceleration in the rate of decline in physiological functioning. The purpose of this study is to examine the association between parental socioeconomic status (SES) and leukocyte telomere length (LTL), a marker of cell aging, in children. We examined SES and LTL in 70 white and black US children aged 7-13 who participated in the community-based AMERICO (Admixture Mapping for Ethnic and Racial Insulin Complex Outcomes) study. LTL was assessed using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method. Parental education was positively associated with child LTL, net of controls for sex, age, race/ethnicity, and family income. Compared to children with at least one college-educated parent, children whose parents never attended college had telomeres shorter by 1,178 base pairs, which is roughly equivalent to 6 years of additional aging. Socioeconomic disparities in cell aging are evident in early life, long before the onset of age-related diseases.
Differential Associations of Job Control Components With Mortality: A Cohort Study, 1986-2005
Matti Joensuu et al.American Journal of Epidemiology, 1 April 2012, Pages 609-619
Inconsistent evidence of the hypothesized favorable effects of high job control on health may have resulted from a failure to treat job control as a multifactor concept. The authors studied whether the 2 components of job control, decision authority and skill discretion, were differentially associated with cause-specific mortality in 13,510 Finnish forest company employees with no history of severe illness. Surveys on work characteristics were carried out in 1986 and 1996, and the respondents were followed up until the end of 2005 by use of the Statistics Finland National Death Registry. During a mean follow-up of 15.5 years, 981 participants died. In the analyses adjusted for confounders, employees with high and intermediate levels of skill discretion had a lower all-cause mortality risk than those with low skill discretion, with hazard ratios of 0.84 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.69, 1.02) and 0.81 (95% CI: 0.69, 0.96), respectively. In contrast, high decision authority was associated with elevated risks of all-cause, cardiovascular, and alcohol-related mortality, with hazard ratios of 1.28 (95% CI: 1.06, 1.54), 1.49 (95% CI: 1.11, 2.02), and 2.03 (95% CI: 1.03, 4.00), respectively. The results suggest that job control is not an unequivocal concept in relation to mortality; decision authority and skill discretion show different and to some extent opposite associations.
Limited Life Expectancy, Human Capital and Health Investments: Evidence from Huntington Disease
Emily Oster, Ira Shoulson & Ray DorseyNBER Working Paper, March 2012
One of the most basic predictions of human capital theory is that life expectancy should impact human capital investment. Limited exogenous variation in life expectancy makes this difficult to test, especially in the contexts most relevant to the macroeconomic applications. We estimate the relationship between life expectancy and human capital investments using genetic variation in life expectancy driven by Huntington disease (HD), an inherited degenerative neurological disorder with large impacts on mortality. We compare investment levels for individuals who have ex ante identical risks of HD but learn (through early symptom development or genetic testing) that they do or do not carry the genetic mutation which causes the disease. We find strong qualitative support: individuals with more limited life expectancy complete less education and less job training. We estimate the elasticity of demand for college completion with respect to years of life expectancy of 0.40. This figure implies that differences in life expectancy explain about 10% of cross-country differences in college enrollment. Finally, we use smoking and cancer screening data to test the corollary that health capital is responsive to life expectancy.
Tse-Chuan Yang et al.Social Science & Medicine
The U.S. has experienced the resurgence of income inequality in the past decades. The evidence regarding the mortality implications of this phenomenon has been mixed. This study employs a rarely used method in mortality research, quantile regression (QR), to provide insight into the ongoing debate of whether income inequality is a determinant of mortality and to investigate the varying relationship between inequality and mortality throughout the mortality distribution. Analyzing a U.S. dataset where the five-year (1998-2002) average mortality rates were combined with other county-level covariates, we found that the association between inequality and mortality was not constant throughout the mortality distribution and the impact of inequality on mortality steadily increased until the 80th percentile. When accounting for all potential confounders, inequality was significantly and positively related to mortality; however, this inequality-mortality relationship did not hold across the mortality distribution. A series of Wald tests confirmed this varying inequality-mortality relationship, especially between the lower and upper tails. The large variation in the estimated coefficients of the Gini index suggested that inequality had the greatest influence on those counties with a mortality rate of roughly 9.95 deaths per 1,000 population (80th percentile) compared to any other counties. Furthermore, our results suggest that the traditional analytic methods that focus on mean or median value of the dependent variable can be, at most, applied to a narrow 20 percent of observations. This study demonstrates the value of QR. Our findings provide some insight as to why the existing evidence for the inequality-mortality relationship is mixed and suggest that analytical issues may play a role in clarifying whether inequality is a robust determinant of population health.
Mylène Riva & Sarah CurtisJournal of Epidemiology & Community Health
Background: Although long-term trends in local labour market conditions are likely to influence health, few studies have assessed whether this is so. This paper examines whether (1) trends in local employment rates have relevance for mortality and morbidity outcomes in England and (2) trends are stronger predictors of these outcomes than employment rates measured at one point in time.
Methods: Using latent class growth models, local areas were classified into eight groups following distinct trends in employment rates between 1981 and 2008. Areas were also categorised in ‘octile' groups by rank of employment rates in 2001. These area groupings were linked to a sample of 207 959 individuals from the Office of National Statistics Longitudinal Study. Associations between area groupings and risk of all-cause mortality and of reporting a limiting long-term illness at the end of the period were measured using logistic regression. Models were adjusted for individuals' socio-demographic characteristics measured in 1981 and for their residential mobility between 1981 and 2001.
Results: Compared to areas with continuously high employment rates over the period, risk of mortality and morbidity was higher in areas with persistently low or declining employment rates. Findings suggest that long-term trends in local employment rates are useful as predictors of mortality and morbidity differences. These are not so clearly distinguished by only considering employment rates at one point in time.
Conclusion: Poor health outcomes are associated with long-term economic disadvantage in some areas of England, reflected in employment rates, underlining the importance of efforts to improve health in areas with especially ‘deep-seated' deprivation.
Are recessions really good for your health? Evidence from Canada
Hideki Ariizumi & Tammy SchirleSocial Science & Medicine, April 2012, Pages 1224-1231
This study investigates the relationship between business cycle fluctuations and health in the Canadian context, given that a procyclical relationship between mortality rates and unemployment rates has already been well established in the U.S. literature. Using a fixed effects model and provincial data over the period 1977-2009, we estimate the effect of unemployment rates on Canadian age and gender specific mortality rates. Consistent with U.S. results, there is some evidence of a strong procyclical pattern in the mortality rates of middle-aged Canadians. We find that a one percentage point increase in the unemployment rate lowers the predicted mortality rate of individuals in their 30s by nearly 2 percent. In contrast to the U.S. data, we do not find a significant cyclical pattern in the mortality rates of infants and seniors.
Manoj MohananReview of Economics and Statistics
Endogeneity between health and wealth presents a challenge for estimating causal effects of health shocks. Using a quasi-experimental design, comprising exogenous shocks sustained as bus accident injuries in India, with "controls" drawn from travelers on the same bus routes one year later, I present new evidence of causal effects on consumption and debt. Using primary household survey data, I find that households faced with shock-related expenditures are able to smooth consumption on food, housing, and festivals, with small reductions in educational spending. Debt was the principal mitigating mechanism used by households, leading to significantly larger levels of indebtedness.
Mark Petticrew & George Davey Smith
Background: It is often suggested that psychosocial factors, such as stress, or one's social position, may play an important role in producing social gradients in human disease. Evidence in favour of this model of health inequalities has relied, in part, on studies of the health effects of the natural social hierarchies found among non-human primates. This study aimed to assess the strength of this evidence.
Methodology/Principal Findings: A systematic review was carried out to identify all studies of psychosocial factors and coronary artery disease (CAD) in non-human primates. We searched databases (MEDLINE, PsycInfo, EMBASE, and Primatelit from inception to November 2010) to identify experimental and observational studies of the impact of social reorganisation, social instability, and disruption of dominance hierarchies on primate CAD outcomes. We also handsearched bibliographies and examined the citations to those studies in public health articles. Fourteen studies were found which presented evidence on CAD and social status and/or psychosocial stress. These suggested that the association between social status and disease may be sex-specific: in female monkeys dominant status may be protective, with subordinate females having a greater extent of atherosclerosis. In male monkeys the reverse may be the case.
Conclusions/Significance: Overall, non-human primate studies present only limited evidence for an association between social status and CAD, Despite this, there is selective citation of individual non-human primate studies in reviews and commentaries relating to human disease aetiology. Such generalisation of data from monkey studies to human societies does not appear warranted.
Economic analysis of the use of facemasks during pandemic (H1N1) 2009
Samantha Tracht, Sara Del Valle & Brian Edwards Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7 May 2012, Pages 161-172
A large-scale pandemic could cause severe health, social, and economic impacts. The recent 2009 H1N1 pandemic confirmed the need for mitigation strategies that are cost-effective and easy to implement. Typically, in the early stages of a pandemic, as seen with pandemic (H1N1) 2009, vaccines and antivirals may be limited or non-existent, resulting in the need for non-pharmaceutical strategies to reduce the spread of disease and the economic impact. We construct and analyze a mathematical model for a population comprised of three different age groups and assume that some individuals wear facemasks. We then quantify the impact facemasks could have had on the spread of pandemic (H1N1) 2009 and examine their cost effectiveness. Our analyses show that an unmitigated pandemic could result in losses of nearly $832 billion in the United States during the length of the pandemic. Based on present value of future earnings, hospital costs, and lost income estimates due to illness, this study estimates that the use of facemasks by 10%, 25%, and 50% of the population could reduce economic losses by $478 billion, $570 billion, and $573 billion, respectively. The results show that facemasks can significantly reduce the number of influenza cases as well as the economic losses due to a pandemic.
Heidi Bauer, Glenn Wright & Joan ChowAmerican Journal of Public Health, May 2012, Pages 833-835
Because of the rapid development of genital warts (GW) after infection, monitoring GW trends may provide early evidence of population-level human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine effectiveness. Trends in GW diagnoses were assessed using public family planning administrative data. Between 2007 and 2010, among females younger than 21 years, these diagnoses decreased 35% from 0.94% to 0.61% (Ptrend < .001). Decreases were also observed among males younger than 21 years (19%); and among females and males ages 21-25 (10% and 11%, respectively). The diagnoses stabilized or increased among older age groups. HPV vaccine may be preventing GW among young people.
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A Group-based Wellness Intervention in the Laboratory
Gary Charness & Roger JahnkeB.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, March 2012
The enormous cost of health care in the United States has sparked increasing interest in innovative and alternative approaches to both physical and emotional wellness. We demonstrate the value of an easy-to-implement, stress-reducing and wellness-enhancing methodology. In our study, undergraduate students who participated in a weekly meeting over the course of two months had, relative to a control group, a significant decrease in the resting-pulse rate over time, as well as significant improvement in several measures of wellness. Our results suggest that simple lifestyle-oriented wellness-promotion interventions may have significant benefits in terms of increasing health and productivity, as well as diminished medical costs.----------------------
Chronic stress, glucocorticoid receptor resistance, inflammation, and disease risk
Sheldon Cohen et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 17 April 2012, Pages 5995-5999Abstract:
We propose a model wherein chronic stress results in glucocorticoid receptor resistance (GCR) that, in turn, results in failure to down-regulate inflammatory response. Here we test the model in two viral-challenge studies. In study 1, we assessed stressful life events, GCR, and control variables including baseline antibody to the challenge virus, age, body mass index (BMI), season, race, sex, education, and virus type in 276 healthy adult volunteers. The volunteers were subsequently quarantined, exposed to one of two rhinoviruses, and followed for 5 d with nasal washes for viral isolation and assessment of signs/symptoms of a common cold. In study 2, we assessed the same control variables and GCR in 79 subjects who were subsequently exposed to a rhinovirus and monitored at baseline and for 5 d after viral challenge for the production of local (in nasal secretions) proinflammatory cytokines (IL-1β, TNF-α, and IL-6). Study 1: After covarying the control variables, those with recent exposure to a long-term threatening stressful experience demonstrated GCR; and those with GCR were at higher risk of subsequently developing a cold. Study 2: With the same controls used in study 1, greater GCR predicted the production of more local proinflammatory cytokines among infected subjects. These data provide support for a model suggesting that prolonged stressors result in GCR, which, in turn, interferes with appropriate regulation of inflammation. Because inflammation plays an important role in the onset and progression of a wide range of diseases, this model may have broad implications for understanding the role of stress in health.----------------------
Education, Health and Mortality: Evidence from a Social Experiment
Costas Meghir, Mårten Palme & Emilia Simeonova
NBER Working Paper, March 2012Abstract:
We study the effect of a compulsory education reform in Sweden on adult health and mortality. The reform was implemented by municipalities between 1949 and 1962 as a social experiment and implied an extension of compulsory schooling from 7 or 8 years depending on municipality to 9 years nationally. We use detailed individual data on education, hospitalizations, labor force participation and mortality for Swedes born between 1946 and 1957. Individual level data allow us to study the effect of the education reform on three main groups of outcomes: (i) mortality until age 60 for different causes of death; (ii) hospitalization by cause and (iii) exit from the labor force primarily through the disability insurance program. The results show reduced male mortality up to age fifty for those assigned to the reform, but these gains were erased by increased mortality later on. We find similar patterns in the probability of being hospitalized and the average costs of inpatient care. Men who acquired more education due to the reform are less likely to retire early.----------------------
Robert Davis, Colleen Rossier & Kyle Enfield
PLoS ONE, March 2012Abstract:
The substantial winter influenza peak in temperate climates has lead to the hypothesis that cold and/or dry air is a causal factor in influenza variability. We examined the relationship between cold and/or dry air and daily influenza and pneumonia mortality in the cold season in the New York metropolitan area from 1975-2002. We conducted a retrospective study relating daily pneumonia and influenza mortality for New York City and surroundings from 1975-2002 to daily air temperature, dew point temperature (a measure of atmospheric humidity), and daily air mass type. We identified high mortality days and periods and employed temporal smoothers and lags to account for the latency period and the time between infection and death. Unpaired t-tests were used to compare high mortality events to non-events and nonparametric bootstrapped regression analysis was used to examine the characteristics of longer mortality episodes. We found a statistically significant (p = 0.003) association between periods of low dew point temperature and above normal pneumonia and influenza mortality 17 days later. The duration (r = -0.61) and severity (r = -0.56) of high mortality episodes was inversely correlated with morning dew point temperature prior to and during the episodes. Weeks in which moist polar air masses were common (air masses characterized by low dew point temperatures) were likewise followed by above normal mortality 17 days later (p = 0.019). This research supports the contention that cold, dry air may be related to influenza mortality and suggests that warning systems could provide enough lead time to be effective in mitigating the effects. -
17 Apr ' 11:35
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Familial
Dan Black et al.Review of Economics and Statistics
We examine Becker's (1960) contention that children are "normal." For the cross section of non-Hispanic white married couples in the U.S., we show that when we restrict comparisons to similarly-educated women living in similarly-expensive locations, completed fertility is positively correlated with the husband's income. The empirical evidence is consistent with children being "normal." In an effort to show causal effects, we analyze the localized impact on fertility of the mid-1970s increase in world energy prices -- an exogenous shock that substantially increased men's incomes in the Appalachian coal-mining region. Empirical evidence for that population indicates that fertility increases in men's income.
Soap Operas and Fertility: Evidence from Brazil
Eliana La Ferrara, Alberto Chong & Suzanne Duryea American Economic Journal: Applied Economics
This paper estimates the effect of television on fertility choices in Brazil, where soap operas portray families that are much smaller than in reality. We exploit differences in the timing of entry into different markets of Rede Globo, the main novela producer. Using Census data for 1970-1991, we find that women living in areas covered by Globo have significantly lower fertility. The effect is strongest for women of lower socioeconomic status and for women in the central and late phases of their fertility cycle, consistent with stopping behavior. The result is robust to placebo treatments and does not appear to be driven by selection in Globo entry. We provide suggestive evidence that novelas - and not just television - affected individual choices, based on children naming patterns and on novela content.
Tomas CvrcekExplorations in Economic History
The early 20th century was a period of rising marriage rate and falling age at marriage. This was due to two factors affecting men. First, men's improving labor market prospects made them more attractive as marriage partners. Second, immigration had a dynamic effect on search costs. In the short-run, it fragmented the marriage market, making it harder to find a partner of one's preferred background. The high search costs led to less marriage and later marriage in the 1890 s. In the long-run, as immigration declined, immigrants' descendants integrated with American society. This reduced search costs and increased the marriage rate.
Do Family Wealth Shocks Affect Fertility Choices? Evidence from the Housing Market
Michael Lovenheim & Kevin MumfordReview of Economics and Statistics
This paper uses wealth changes driven by housing market variation to estimate the effect of family resources on fertility decisions. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we show that a $100,000 increase in housing wealth among homeowners causes a 16-18 percent increase in the probability of having a child. There is no evidence of an effect of MSA-level housing price growth on the fertility of renters, however. We also present evidence that housing wealth growth increases total fertility and that the responsiveness of fertility to housing wealth has increased over time, commensurate with the recent housing boom.
Jennifer Manlove et al.Social Science Quarterly
Objectives: The objectives of this study were to examine whether and how characteristics of the relationship dyad are linked to nonmarital childbearing among young adult women, additionally distinguishing between cohabiting and nonunion births.
Methods: We used the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 Cohort and discrete time-event history methods to examine these objectives.
Results: Our analyses found that similarities and differences between women and their most recent sexual partner in educational attainment, disengagement from work or school, race/ethnicity, and age were linked to the risk and context of nonmarital childbearing. For example, partner disengagement (from school and work) was associated with increased odds of a nonmarital birth regardless of whether the woman herself was disengaged. Additionally, having a partner of a different race/ethnicity was associated with nonmarital childbearing for whites, but not for blacks and Hispanics.
Conclusions: We conclude that relationship characteristics are an important dimension of the lives of young adults that influence their odds of having a birth outside of marriage.
Gabriel Schlomer & Jay BelskyJournal of Family Psychology
Drawing on the evolutionary terminal investment hypothesis and Trivers' (1974) parent-offspring conflict theory, we advance and evaluate a mediational model specifying why and how maternal age, via mating effort and parental investment, affects mother-child conflict. Data from a longitudinal study of 757 families indicate that (a) older maternal age predicts lower mating effort during the child's first 5 years of life, and (b) thereby, higher maternal investment in middle childhood when the child is around 10 years old. (c) Higher maternal investment, in turn, forecasts less child-perceived mother-child conflict in adolescence (age 15). These results proved robust against theoretically relevant covariates (family resources, parity, maternal education, and maternal personality characteristics) and in the context of an autoregressive model. Study limitations are noted and results are discussed in terms of the unique contributions of an evolutionary perspective to the determinants-of-parenting literature.
Despair by Association? The Mental Health of Mothers With Children by Recently Incarcerated Fathers
Christopher Wildeman, Jason Schnittker & Kristin Turney American Sociological Review, April 2012, Pages 216-243
A burgeoning literature considers the consequences of mass imprisonment for the well-being of adult men and - albeit to a lesser degree - their children. Yet virtually no quantitative research considers the consequences of mass imprisonment for the well-being of the women who are the link between (former) prisoners and their children. This article extends research on the collateral consequences of mass imprisonment by considering the association between paternal incarceration and maternal mental health using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Results show that recent paternal incarceration increases a mother's risk of a major depressive episode and her level of life dissatisfaction, net of a variety of influences including prior mental health. The empirical design lends confidence to a causal interpretation: effects of recent incarceration persist even when the sample is limited to mothers attached to previously incarcerated men, which provides a rigorous counterfactual. In addition, the empirical design is comprehensive; after isolating key mechanisms anticipated in the literature, we reduce the relationship between recent paternal incarceration and maternal mental health to statistical insignificance. These results imply that the penal system may have important effects on poor women's well-being beyond increasing their economic insecurity, compromising their marriage markets, or magnifying their risk of divorce.
John Hagan & Holly FosterLaw & Society Review, March 2012, Pages 37-69
Formal equality and judicial neutrality can lead to substantive inequality for women and children, with social costs that extend beyond individuals and families and spill over into the larger social settings in which they are located. We consider the uniquely damaging effects of an "equality with a vengeance" (Chesney-Lind & Pollack 1995) that resulted from "tough on crime" policies and the 1980s federal and state sentencing guidelines that led to the incarceration of more women and mothers. We argue that legal equality norms of the kind embedded in the enforcement of sentencing guidelines can mask and punish differences in gendered role expectations. Paradoxically, although fathers are incarcerated in much greater numbers than are mothers, the effect threshold is lower and the scale of effect on educational outcomes tends to be greater for maternal incarceration. We demonstrate both student- and school-level effects of maternal incarceration: the damaging effects not only affect the children of imprisoned mothers but also spill over to children of nonincarcerated mothers in schools with elevated levels of maternal incarceration. We find a 15 percent reduction in college graduation rates in schools where as few as 10 percent of other students' mothers are incarcerated. The effects for imprisoned fathers are also notable, especially at the school level. Schools with higher father incarceration rates (25 percent) have college graduation rates as much as 50 percent lower than those of other schools. The effects of imprisoned mothers are particularly notable at the student level (i.e., with few children of imprisoned mothers graduating from college), while maternal imprisonment effects are found at both student and school levels across the three measured outcomes. We demonstrate these effects in a large, nationally representative longitudinal study of American children from the 1990s prison generation who were tracked into early adulthood.
A Model of Child Support and the Underground Economy
Jennifer Roff & Julieta Lugo-GilLabour Economics
We develop and estimate a model of the informal and formal employment decisions of American noncustodial fathers who have never married the mother of their child, as well as the paternity establishment decisions of the mothers. Fathers may evade child support payment through informal child support payments to induce the mother not to cooperate with the child support authorities or through underground work. To estimate the model, we use data drawn from the Fragile Families dataset and a discrete model of no work, part-time work and full-time work in both sectors, as well as paternal child support payment. Simulation results indicate that an increase in the order amount leads to small but statistically significant decreases in formal child support, as well as an increase in underground work.
Resemblance and investment in children
Barbara DolinskaInternational Journal of Psychology
According to evolutionary explanations men hardly ever are absolutely certain about their biological fatherhood therefore they must seek various sources of information to subjectively establish whether they are the genetic fathers of the children they raise. Apicella and Marlowe (2004) showed that fathers who perceived greater similarity between their children and themselves were willing to invest more resources (e.g., time, money, care) in their offspring presumably because the perceived resemblance indicated to the fathers their genetic relatedness with their children. The present study extended the design of Apicella and Marlowe's original study and included both fathers and mothers as participants. Parents were recruited by a female confederate at the airport and at the railway station in Wroclaw (Poland). Multiple regression analyses showed that perceived resemblance predicted parental investment in the child for both men and women. The fact that mothers' declarations of investment in their children also depended on the perceived resemblance factor is not consistent with evolutionary formulations delineated by Apicella and Marlowe (2004; 2007). Future studies must resolve the issue of whether the resemblance-investment relation in fathers results from men relaying on child's resemblance to themselves as an indicator of their own biological paternity, or whether it results from the more parsimonious phenomenon that people in general are attracted more to other people who are similar to them.
Marital Birth and Early Child Outcomes: The Moderating Influence of Marriage Propensity
Rebecca RyanChild Development
Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study, the present study tested whether the benefits of a marital birth for early child development diminish as parents' risk of having a nonmarital birth increases (N = 2,285). It was hypothesized that a child's likelihood of being born to unmarried parents is partly a function of father characteristics that predict his capacity to promote child development. Results partially supported hypothesis. A positive association emerged between parental marriage and cognitive outcomes at age 3 only for children whose parents were likely to be married at the child's birth, suggesting average differences between children in married and unmarried families may overestimate the benefit of marriage in subpopulations most impacted by nonmarital birth.
Industrialization and Fertility in the Nineteenth Century: Evidence from South Carolina
Marianne WanamakerJournal of Economic History, March 2012, Pages 168-196
Economists frequently hypothesize that industrialization contributed to the United States' nineteenth-century fertility decline. I exploit the circumstances surrounding industrialization in South Carolina between 1881 and 1900 to show that the establishment of textile mills coincided with a 6-10 percent fertility reduction. Migrating households are responsible for most of the observed decline. Higher rates of textile employment and child mortality for migrants can explain part of the result, and I conjecture that an increase in child-raising costs induced by the separation of migrant households from their extended families may explain the remaining gap in migrant-native fertility.
What Linear Estimators Miss: The Effects of Family Income on Child Outcomes
Katrine Løken, Magne Mogstad & Matthew Wiswall American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2012, Pages 1-35
We assess the implications of nonlinearity for IV and FE estimation when the estimated model is inappropriately assumed to be linear. Our application is the causal link between family income and child outcomes. Our nonlinear IV and FE estimates show an increasing, concave relationship between family income and children's outcomes. We find that the linear estimators miss the significant effects of family income because they assign little weight to the large marginal effects in the lower part of the income distribution. We also show that the linear IV and FE estimates differ primarily because of different weighting of marginal effects.
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Gene Brody et al.
Journal of Family Psychology, forthcomingAbstract:
The purpose of this study was to investigate interactions between exposure to supportive family environments and genetic characteristics, which were hypothesized to forecast variations in allostatic load (AL) in a representative sample of 315 rural African American youths. Data on family environments were gathered when youths were 11-13, and genetic data were collected when they were 16, years of age. Data on AL were obtained at the beginning of emerging adulthood, age 19 years. The data analyses revealed that, as predicted, emerging adults exposed to less supportive family environments across preadolescence manifested higher levels of AL when they carried the short (s) allele at the 5-HTTLPR and an allele of DRD4 with seven or more repeats. This is an E(family environment) × G(5-HTTLPR status) × G(DRD4 status) interaction. These data suggest that African American youths carrying genes that confer sensitivity who are exposed to less supportive family environments may be at greater risk for adverse physical health consequences that AL presages.----------------------
Does Being an Older Parent Attenuate the Intergenerational Transmission of Parenting?
Jay Belsky et al.
Developmental Psychology, forthcomingAbstract:
Evidence that the transition to parenthood is occurring at older ages in the Western world, that older parents provide more growth-facilitating care than do younger ones, and that most prospective studies of the intergenerational transmission of parenting have focused on relatively young parents led us to evaluate whether parental age might moderate-and attenuate-the intergenerational transmission of parenting. On the basis of the seemingly commonsensical assumption that as individuals age they often become more psychologically mature and have more opportunity to reflect upon and free themselves from the legacy of childhood experiences, we hypothesized that deferring parenting would weaken links between rearing experiences in the family of origin and parenting in the family of procreation. To test this proposition we repeated analyses reported by Belsky, Jaffee, Sligo, Woodward, and Silva (2005) on 227 parents averaging 23 years of age linking rearing experiences repeatedly measured from 3 to 15 years of age with observed parenting in adulthood; we added 273 participants who became parents at older ages than did those in the original sample. Although previously reported findings showing that rearing history predicted mothering but not fathering reemerged, parental age generally failed to moderate the intergenerational transmission of parenting. Other investigators prospectively following children and adults into adulthood and studying the intergenerational transmission process should determine whether these null results vis-à-vis the attenuation of transmission with age obtain when parents with older children are studied or when other methods are used.----------------------
Will you civil union me? Taxation and civil unions in France
Marion Leturcq
Journal of Public Economics, June 2012, Pages 541-552Abstract:
Although the tax system is not marriage neutral in many countries, it has been found to be only slightly significant in determining marriage decisions (Buffeteau and Echevin, 2003; Alm and Whittington, 1995). This paper tests whether the tax system can alter the decision to contract a civil union, which is less binding than a marital contract. In 1999, France introduced civil union (pacs) as an alternative legal union to marriage. I assess the impact of taxation on the decision to contract a pacs using a difference-in-differences evaluation of the 2005 income tax reform for newly pacsed couples. As the control group is contaminated by the reform, I propose an original estimation method based on a difference-in-differences-in-differences setting to estimate bounds to the impact of the reform. My results find a positive and increasing impact of taxation on pacs rates, but also a change in the timing of pacs unions suggesting that taxation alters the decision to contract a pacs. In addition, I find a slightly significant impact of taxation on the decision to terminate a pacs.----------------------
Breaks in the Breaks: An Analysis of Divorce Rates in Europe
Rafael González-Val & Miriam Marcén
International Review of Law and Economics, forthcomingAbstract:
This paper explores the frequency of permanent shocks in divorce rates for 16 European countries during the period 1930 to 2006. We examine whether the divorce rate is a stationary series, exhibits a unit root, or is stationary around a process subject to structural breaks. A clear finding from this analysis is that not all shocks have transitory effects on the divorce rate. Our results provide evidence of both stationarity around occasional shocks that have permanent effects, and of a unit root, where all shocks have a permanent effect on the divorce rate. All of the permanent shocks are positive, and most are grouped in the 1970s. These shocks can be related to major events that occurred throughout Europe at that time: the divorce law reforms, suggesting that those policies play an important role in the movement of European divorce rates.----------------------
A Demographic Explanation for the Recent Rise in European Fertility
John Bongaarts & Tomáš Sobotka
Population and Development Review, March 2012, Pages 83-120Abstract:
Between 1998 and 2008 European countries experienced the first continent-wide increase in the period total fertility rate (TFR) since the 1960s. After discussing period and cohort influences on fertility trends, we examine the role of tempo distortions of period fertility and different methods for removing them. We highlight the usefulness of a new indicator: the tempo- and parity-adjusted total fertility rate (TFRp*). This variant of the adjusted total fertility rate proposed by Bongaarts and Feeney also controls for the parity composition of the female population and provides more stable values than the indicators proposed in the past. Finally, we estimate levels and trends in tempo and parity distribution distortions in selected countries in Europe. Our analysis of period and cohort fertility indicators in the Czech Republic, Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden shows that the new adjusted measure gives a remarkable fit with the completed fertility of women in prime childbearing years in a given period, which suggests that it provides an accurate adjustment for tempo and parity composition distortions. Using an expanded dataset for ten countries, we demonstrate that adjusted fertility as measured by TFRp* remained nearly stable since the late 1990s. This finding implies that the recent upturns in the period TFR in Europe are largely explained by a decline in the pace of fertility postponement. Other tempo-adjusted fertility indicators have not indicated such a large role for the diminishing tempo effect in these TFR upturns. As countries proceed through their postponement transitions, tempo effects will decline further and eventually disappear, thus putting continued upward pressure on period fertility. However, such an upward trend may be obscured for a few years by the effects of economic recession.----------------------
Not my marriage: Third-person perception and the effects of legalizing same-sex marriage
Matthew Winslow & Rexéna Napier
Social Psychology, Spring 2012, Pages 92-97Abstract:
Third-person perception (TPP) refers to the belief that others are more influenced by the media than you yourself are. This theory was extended to people's perceptions of the effects of legalizing same-sex marriage (SSM). It was predicted that people might believe that legalizing SSM would affect others' marriages, but not their own. It was also predicted that high right-wing authoritarians (RWAs) would display TPP more than low RWAs. Participants (135 undergraduate heterosexual students) estimated the effect of legalizing SSM on their own as well as other people's attitudes about marriage and sexuality. Results indicated that participants displayed TPP. The hypothesis about a link between RWA and TPP was supported. Implications of these findings and future research directions are discussed.----------------------
Maria Iacovou & Almudena Sevilla
European Journal of Public Health, forthcomingBackground: Many popular childcare books recommend feeding babies to a schedule, but no large-scale study has ever examined the effects of schedule-feeding. Here, we examine the relationship between feeding infants to a schedule and two sets of outcomes: mothers' wellbeing, and children's longer-term cognitive and academic development.
Methods: We used a sample of 10 419 children from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, a cohort study of children born in the 1990s in Bristol, UK. Outcomes were compared by whether babies were fed to a schedule at 4 weeks. Maternal wellbeing indicators include measures of sleep sufficiency, maternal confidence and depression, collected when babies were between 8 weeks and 33 months. Children's outcomes were measured by standardized tests at ages 5, 7, 11 and 14, and by IQ tests at age 8.
Results: Mothers who fed to a schedule scored more favourably on all wellbeing measures except depression. However, schedule-fed babies went on to do less well academically than their demand-fed counterparts. After controlling for a wide range of confounders, schedule-fed babies performed around 17% of a standard deviation below demand-fed babies in standardized tests at all ages, and 4 points lower in IQ tests at age 8 years.
Conclusions: Feeding infants to a schedule is associated with higher levels of maternal wellbeing, but with poorer cognitive and academic outcomes for children.
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Maternal oxytocin response during mother-infant interaction: Associations with adult temperament
Lane Strathearn et al.
Hormones and Behavior, March 2012, Pages 429-435Abstract:
Oxytocin is a neuropeptide associated with social affiliation and maternal caregiving. However, its effects appear to be moderated by various contextual factors and stable individual characteristics. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship of self-reported state and trait measures (such as temperament, mood and affect) with peripheral oxytocin response in mothers. Fifty-five first-time mothers participated in a semi-structured procedure, during which time repeated peripheral oxytocin levels were measured before, during and after an episode of mother-infant interaction. The maternal oxytocin response was then calculated, based on the difference in oxytocin concentration between initial baseline and interaction phase. Mothers also completed state measures of positive and negative affect and depression, and trait measures of temperament, personality disturbance and depression across time. Regression analyses determined which factors were independently associated with maternal oxytocin response. The trait measure of adult temperament emerged as a significant predictor of oxytocin response. Two out of four Adult Temperament Questionnaire factor scales were independently associated with oxytocin response: Effortful Control was negatively associated, whereas Orienting Sensitivity was positively associated. No state measure significantly predicted oxytocin response. The results indicate that mothers who show an increased oxytocin response when interacting with their infants are more sensitive of moods, emotions and physical sensations; and less compulsive, schedule driven and task oriented. These findings link differences in individual temperament in new mothers with the peripheral oxytocin response, which may have implications in the pharmacologic treatment of disorders such as maternal neglect, post-partum depression and maternal addiction. -
16 Apr ' 07:05
Monday, April 16, 2012
Starting at the water's edge
Patrick JohnstonInternational Security, Spring 2012, Pages 47-79
Is killing or capturing insurgent leaders an effective tactic? Previous research on interstate war and counterterrorism has suggested that targeting enemy leaders does not work. Most studies of the efficacy of leadership decapitation, however, have relied on unsystematic evidence and poor research design. An analysis based on fresh evidence and a new research design indicates the opposite relationship and yields four key findings. First, campaigns are more likely to end quickly when counterinsurgents successfully target enemy leaders. Second, counterinsurgents who capture or kill insurgent leaders are significantly more likely to defeat insurgencies than those who fail to capture or kill such leaders. Third, the intensity of a conflict is likelier to decrease following the successful removal of an enemy leader than it is after a failed attempt. Fourth, insurgent attacks are more likely to decrease after successful leadership decapitations than after failed attempts. Additional analysis suggests that these findings are attributable to successful leadership decapitation, and that the relationship between decapitation and campaign success holds across different types of insurgencies.
Anglo-American Primacy and the Global Spread of Democracy: An International Genealogy
Kevin NariznyWorld Politics, April 2012, Pages 341-373
For the past three centuries, Great Britain and the United States have stood in succession at the apex of the international hierarchy of power. They have been on the winning side of every systemic conflict in this period, from the War of the Spanish Succession to the Cold War. As a result, they have been able to influence the political and economic development of states around the world. In many of their colonies, conquests, and clients, they have propagated ideals and institutions conducive to democratization. At the same time, they have defeated numerous rivals whose success would have had ruinous consequences for democracy. The global spread of democracy, therefore, has been endogenous to the game of great power politics.
International Relations and the Psychology of Time Horizons
Ronald Krebs & Aaron RapportInternational Studies Quarterly
Theories of international relations have often incorporated assumptions about time horizons - a metaphor for how heavily actors value the future relative to the present. However, they have not built on a growing body of experimental research that studies how human beings actually make intertemporal tradeoffs. In this article, we present relevant findings from psychology and behavioral economics, notably those of "construal level theory" (CLT), and explore these findings' implications for three classic questions - international cooperation, preventive war, and coercion. We argue that experimental evidence regarding how people discount future value and construe future events challenges the conventional wisdom on international cooperation. We further maintain that CLT helps explain a longstanding puzzle about preventive wars - namely why they are often initiated too late by declining powers but too soon by rising competitors. Finally, we rely on these findings to explain who wins coercive contests and why compellence is often, but not always, harder than deterrence. Scholars of international relations often embed in their theories crucial assumptions about time horizons, and this article seeks to show what differences it makes if we ground these assumptions in what we know about actual human decision making.
Ivanka Barzashka & Ivan OelrichCambridge Review of International Affairs, Winter 2012, Pages 1-26
A comparison between Iran's current nuclear efforts and those of the pro-Western regime of Shah Reza Pahlavi shows that Iranian ambitions for a full-fledged civilian nuclear programme have remained relatively constant for nearly half a century. Today, fuel cycle technology provides Iran with a latent nuclear weapon's potential. However, US concerns about an Iranian bomb, which began in the early 1970s and aggravated after the Iranian Revolution, long predate Teheran's uranium enrichment programme. Thus, Iran is a specific case of the general problem presented by the inherent potential of nuclear technology to both civilian and military ends. Approaches to dealing with a long-term, ambiguous, latent nuclear weapon threat, whether Iranian or other, are suggested.
The Peaceful Conspiracy: Bond Markets and International Relations During the Pax Britannica
Marc Flandreau & Juan FloresInternational Organization, April 2012, Pages 211-241
This article provides foundations to Polanyi's famed argument that monopoly power in the global capital market served as an instrument of peace during the Pax Britannica (1815-1914). Our perspective is novel - we focus on the role of intermediaries and certification. We show that when information and enforcement are imperfect, there is scope for the endogenous emergence of "prestigious" intermediaries who enjoy a monopoly position and as a result, control government actions. They can implement conditional lending: they subject the distribution of credit to the adoption of peaceful policies. Prestigious intermediaries act that way because of their concern with maintaining an unblemished track record when wars increased risks of default. Our analysis, which brings together insights from different disciplines, provides a significant extension to, and departure from, recent research on how countries accumulate reputational capital.
Economic Performance And Terrorist Activity In Latin America
Daniel Meierrieks & Thomas GriesDefence and Peace Economics
We investigate the link between economic performance and terrorism for 18 Latin American countries from 1970 to 2007, taking into account the potentially complex nature of this link. Panel causality analysis findings indicate that during this period, terrorism had no causal effect on economic growth. By contrast, we find that growth reduced terrorism in the less developed but not in the higher developed Latin American economies. We argue that group-specific differences (linked to patterns of economic development) govern this causal heterogeneity. From a series of negative binomial regressions we gain additional support for our findings, while also identifying further determinants of terrorism.
Institutionalizing shame: The effect of Human Rights Committee rulings on abuse, 1981-2007
Wade ColeSocial Science Research, May 2012, Pages 539-554
What motivates compliance with "toothless" international human rights norms? This article analyzes the effectiveness of procedures that allow individuals to petition an international human rights body, the Human Rights Committee, alleging state abuse of their treaty-protected rights under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Using methodological tools that account for selection biases arising from a country's decision to authorize petitions and its subsequent propensity to be targeted by abuse claims, I find that basic civil rights and religious freedoms improved after states were found to have violated their human rights treaty obligations, whereas physical integrity abuses such as disappearances and extrajudicial killing were somewhat more impervious to change. These findings are interpreted with reference to the concept of "coupling" as borrowed from organizational sociology, and their implications for treaty design and enforcement are considered.
The History of Ethno-National Referendums 1791-2011
Matt QvortrupNationalism and Ethnic Politics, Winter 2012, Pages 129-150
This article presents an overview of the total number of ethno-national referendums since the French Revolution to the present day. After establishing a typology of referendums, the article goes on to present the trends in their use from the beginning of the eighteenth century to the present day. While referendums are said to be about democratic legitimacy and idealistic principles, the history suggest that short- and long-term political calculations have been the main motivations for holding them and that their overall number have grown, especially in times of geopolitical upheaval.
Thomas Carter & John SugdenInternational Relations, March 2012, Pages 101-121
When Beijing hosted the Olympic Games in 2008 we were reminded that almost four decades earlier the People's Republic of China's road back to international recognition and acceptance had begun with a chance sporting encounter between two members of the US and Chinese table tennis teams in Japan in 1971. It is less well known that not long after this successful 'ping pong' diplomatic episode, attempts were made by various parties to use baseball in a similar way to try and repair international ties between Cuba and the United States. In this article the circumstances through which the former succeeded whereas the latter failed miserably are subject to detailed examination. Drawing upon existing literature and unclassified material gleaned from the National Security Archive (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Archive we argue that for a number of historically specific reasons, and because of the different balances of interest and asymmetric power relations, 'ping pong' diplomacy was able to help broker rapprochement between the United States and China, whereas 'baseball diplomacy' could do little or nothing to stimulate diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana.
Confronting Soviet Power: U.S. Policy during the Early Cold War
Paul AveyInternational Security, Spring 2012, Pages 151-188
Many self-identified realist, liberal, and constructivist scholars contend that ideology played a critical role in generating and shaping the United States' decision to confront the Soviet Union in the early Cold War. A close look at the history reveals that these ideological arguments fail to explain key aspects of U.S. policy. Contrary to ideological explanations, the United States initially sought to cooperate with the Soviet Union, did not initially pressure communist groups outside the Soviet orbit, and later sought to engage communist groups that promised to undermine Soviet power. The U.S. decision to confront the Soviets stemmed instead from the distribution of power. U.S. policy shifted toward a confrontational approach as the balance of power in Eurasia tilted in favor of the Soviet Union. In addition, U.S. leaders tended to think and act in a manner consistent with balance of power logic. The primacy of power over ideology in U.S. policymaking - given the strong liberal tradition in the United States and the large differences between U.S. and Soviet ideology - suggests that relative power concerns are the most important factors in generating and shaping confrontational foreign policies.
Democracy as Justification for Waging War: The Role of Public Support
Juan Falomir-Pichastor et al.Social Psychological and Personality Science, May 2012, Pages 324-332
Democracy is positively valued. This positive evaluation extends to a democracy's actions, even if it is to wage war. The authors investigated whether the perceived legitimacy of military interventions depends on the political structure (democratic vs. nondemocratic) of the countries involved and on the aggressor country's popular support for the government's aggressive policy. Participants learned that an alleged country planned to attack another. The political structure of both countries was manipulated in the two experiments. The support of the aggressor's population toward military intervention was measured in Experiment 1 and manipulated in Experiment 2. Both experiments confirmed that military intervention was perceived as being less illegitimate when the population supported their democratic government's policy to attack a nondemocratic country.
The legitimacy of foreign intervention in elections: The Ukrainian response
Stephen Shulman & Stephen BloomReview of International Studies, April 2012, Pages 445-471
The empirical and theoretical study of the effect of foreign intervention in the electoral processes of states is exceedingly weak. Using insights from the nationalism literature, this article provides a theoretical argument on domestic reactions to foreign interference in a state's internal politics. It then tests the predictions generated by the argument using mass survey data in Ukraine. The article analyses the Ukrainian people's reaction to Western and Russian intervention in the 2004 presidential elections - the Orange Revolution. We find that efforts by Western governments, international organisations, and non-governmental organisations to shape Ukraine's electoral landscape appear to be unwelcome to average Ukrainians while electoral interference by a non-democratic state, Russia, is seen as less alienating. Our theoretical framework accounts for these potentially surprising results.
Trading on Preconceptions: Why World War I Was Not a Failure of Economic Interdependence
Erik Gartzke & Yonatan LupuInternational Security, Spring 2012, Pages 115-150
World War I is generally viewed by both advocates and critics of commercial liberal theory as the quintessential example of a failure of economic integration to maintain peace. Yet this consensus relies on both methodologically flawed inference and an incomplete accounting of the antecedents to the war. Crucially, World War I began in a weakly integrated portion of Europe with which highly integrated powers were entangld through the alliance system. Crises among the highly interdependent European powers in the decades leading up to the war were generally resolved without bloodshed. Among the less interdependent powers in Eastern Europe, however, crises regularly escalated to militarized violence. Moreover, the crises leading to the war created increased incentives for the integrated powers to strengthen commitments to their less interdependent partners. In attempting to make these alliances more credible, Western powers shifted foreign policy discretion to the very states that lacked strong economic disincentives to fght. Had globalization pervaded Eastern Europe, or if the rest of Europe had been less locked into events in the east, Europe might have avoided a "Great War."
Juan Falomir-Pichastor et al.Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, May 2012, Pages 347-362
This research examined the support for international military interventions as a function of the political system and the public opinion of the target country. In two experiments, we informed participants about a possible military intervention by the international community towards a sovereign country whose government planned to use military force against a secessionist region. They were then asked whether they would support this intervention whilst being reminded that it would cause civilian deaths. The democratic or nondemocratic political system of the target country was experimentally manipulated, and the population support for its belligerent government policy was either assessed (Experiment 1) or manipulated (Experiment 2). Results showed greater support for the intervention when the target country was nondemocratic, as compared to the democratic and the control conditions, but only when its population supported the belligerent government policy. Support for the external intervention was low when the target country was democratic, irrespective of national public opinion. These findings provide support for the democracy-as-value hypothesis applied to international military interventions, and suggest that civilian deaths (collateral damage) are more acceptable when nondemocratic populations support their government's belligerent policy.
Beyond the Cephalic Index: Negotiating Politics to Produce UNESCO's Scientific Statements on Race
Perrin SelcerCurrent Anthropology, April 2012, Pages S173-S184
This paper analyzes the production and reception of UNESCO's Statements on Race from 1950, 1951, and 1964 to track the consolidation of a scientific consensus on the biological significance of race. The race statements played a key role in the establishment of the postwar liberal antiracist orthodoxy, and their history illuminates broader dynamics in the production of scientific scripts intended to influence political debates. The consensus was rooted in the synthesis of physical anthropology and population biology but depended on a parallel strengthening of antiracist social norms in the international community. As much as race, conflicts over the race statements were disputes over scientific authority - over who, if anyone, should be authorized to speak for science. Because international civil servants and activist scientists had to negotiate disciplinary, national, and international politics to achieve an acceptable consensus, a close reading of this history reveals the importance of shifting political and social meanings of equality on scientific statements of biological facts. Two central ironies that emerge are the shifting association of bell curves from representations of liberal racial tolerance to icons of enduring racism and the importance of increasing racial and national diversity in the international scientific community to discrediting biological determinism.
Demographic Changes in North Korea: 1993-2008
Thomas Spoorenberg & Daniel Schwekendiek Population and Development Review, March 2012, Pages 133-158
Given the scarcity of population data, few demographic analyses have been conducted on population trends in North Korea. Using the 1993 and 2008 population and housing census data, we prospectively reconstruct population change in the country during the 15 intercensal years. Reconstruction of the population trends of North Korea enables us to assess the consistency of the available demographic evidence and to assess the demographic impact of the famine in the 1990s. According to the results of the population reconstruction and our counterfactual population projections, the famine caused between 240,000 and 420,000 total excess deaths - lower than the previous estimate of 600,000-1 million; and the human costs of the deteriorating living conditions between 1993 and 2008 may be estimated as 600,000 to 850,000 total excess deaths attributable to economic decline in the post-Cold war era. The reconstructed population trends mirror the continuing deterioration of the living conditions in North Korea since the early 1990s.
Beyond the Target State: Foreign Military Intervention and Neighboring State Stability
Dursun Peksen & Marie Olson LounsberyInternational Interactions
Despite the abundance of research on the consequences of foreign military intervention for target countries, scant research has been devoted to the possible regional externalities of intervention. This article examines whether large-scale armed operations affect the likelihood of civil conflict onset in countries neighboring the target of intervention. We posit that interventions against the target regime reduce the government's ability to maintain full control over the entire national territory by diminishing its coercive and administrative capacity. This might, in turn, result in safe haven possibilities for neighboring rival groups in the target and facilitate the transnational spread of arms and other illicit activities that increase the risk of civil conflict onset in the contiguous countries. Armed interventions supportive or neutral towards the target state, on the other hand, bolster the government's coercive capacity and mitigate ongoing crises in the target. Such armed intrusions might therefore undermine the likelihood of internal armed conflict in neighboring countries triggered by the factors associated with "bad neighborhoods": safe haven possibilities, transnational spread of arms, and refugee flows. To substantiate these claims, we use time-series, cross-national data for the 1951-2004 period. Results indicate that hostile interventions increase the probability of civil conflict onset in connected countries while supportive interventions have a regional pacifying effect, reducing the likelihood of domestic unrest in countries neighboring the target state. Neutral interventions, on the other hand, are unlikely to have any discernible effect on the regional stability. Further, the primary motive of intervention, whether for humanitarian or other purposes, has no statistically significant impact on the stability of neighboring countries.
Maoz Azaryahu & Arnon GolanIsrael Studies, Summer 2012, Pages 62-76
Much of the recent academic literature on the 1948 war portray it a one-sided - and thus simplistic - ethnic cleansing of the Arab population of Palestine. Referred to as the Naqba paradigm, it features the Jews/Zionists as villainous perpetrators and the Palestinian Arabs as feeble victims. Accordingly, the story of "the 1948 Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" excludes expulsion and massacres of Jews, the destruction of Jewish communities, and the erasure of the Jewish signifiers in the local landscape from the story. As made explicit in John Phillips' photo-reportage featuring the destruction of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine also involved the expulsion of Jews and the destruction of their communities - whenever and wherever military power relations were in favor of Arab forces.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Use and Abuse
Alcohol-Related Risk of Driver Fatalities: An Update Using 2007 Data
Robert Voas et al.Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, May 2012, Pages 341-350
Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine whether the relative risk of being involved in an alcohol-related crash has changed over the decade from 1996 to 2007, a period during which there has been little evidence of a reduction in the percentage of all fatal crashes involving alcohol.
Method: We compared blood-alcohol information for the 2006 and 2007 crash cases (N = 6,863, 22.8% of them women) drawn from the U.S. Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) with control blood-alcohol data from participants in the 2007 U.S. National Roadside Survey (N = 6,823). Risk estimates were computed and compared with those previously obtained from the 1996 FARS and roadside survey data.
Results: Although the adult relative risk of being involved in a fatal alcohol-related crash apparently did not change from 1996 to 2007, the risk for involvement in an alcohol-related crash for underage women has increased to the point where it has become the same as that for underage men. Further, the risk that sober underage men will become involved in a fatal crash has doubled over the 1996-2007 period.
Conclusions: Compared with estimates obtained from a decade earlier, young women in this study are at an increased risk of involvement in alcohol-related crashes. Similarly, underage sober drivers in this study are more at risk of involvement in a crash than they were a decade earlier.
Do angry women choose alcohol?
Pamela Morrison, Nora Noel & Richard Ogle Addictive Behaviors
Women's alcohol treatment usually includes anger management, predicated on the hypothesis that anger increases their drinking. Studies show strong association between anger and drinking but to date there is no laboratory support for this hypothesis. We examined effects of a "female-specific" anger provocation on young adult women's drinking behavior by randomly assigning 30 women (age 21 - 30) to one of two conditions: Provocation (n = 15) or Non-Provocation (n = 15). In the Provocation condition, a female confederate was both annoying and condescending to the participant for 8 minutes. A manipulation check showed heightened anger and hostility (but not anxiety or depression) in the Provocation participants. In a subsequent taste-task, all participants could drink placebo "beer" and ginger ale. When the data analysis controlled for participants' baseline negative emotions, Provocation participants consumed more "beer" (M = 172.33 ml, SD = 78.90) than did Non-Provocation participants (M = 118.60 ml, SD = 75.74) (p < .04), with no differences in ginger ale consumption. Results support a causal relationship between young women's anger and their specific choice to drink alcohol.
Race, Structural Disadvantage, and Illicit Drug Use Among Arrestees
Jonathon Cooper, Andrew Fox & Nancy Rodriguez Criminal Justice Policy Review, March 2012, Pages 18-39
Although structural disadvantage has been found to predict both crime and illicit drug use, its pattern relative to methamphetamine use is not clear. To gain further insight into the relationship between structural disadvantage and methamphetamine use, the current study examines how structural disadvantage, as a macro-level risk factor, predicts methamphetamine use relative to other illicit drug use among a national sample of male arrestees. The study also examines the interaction between race/ethnicity, structural disadvantage, and methamphetamine use, vis-à-vis that of other drugs. Findings reveal that Black and Latino arrestees were more likely than Whites to test positive for marijuana, cocaine, and opiates than methamphetamine. Also, Whites in less disadvantaged areas were more likely than similarly situated Blacks to test positive for methamphetamine than marijuana, cocaine, and opiates. Policy implications are discussed.
A family affair: Contextual accounts from addicted youth growing up in substance using families
Kristin HedgesJournal of Youth Studies, March 2012, Pages 257-272
There are currently over 8 million children in the USA living in households where at least one parent is dependent on or abusing substances. Research has shown a link between parental substance use and children initiating substance use. This article uses qualitative data to give a contextual understanding of the experience of growing up in substance using homes. Results found that the habitus of homes was so immersed in substances that children's initiation into substance use was expected and became a ‘rite of passage' into full acceptance as an adult member of the family. Furthermore, in many cases youth described a role reversal between child and parent roles or parentification in the family. The conclusion calls for early identification in treatment of youth who use substances with family members to target new norms and behaviors for the entire family posttreatment and to enhance successful recovery when returning to the family.
The political economy of tobacco control spending
Adam Hoffer & Adam PellilloApplied Economics Letters, Fall 2012, Pages 1793-1797
This article investigates why some US states spend so comparatively little on Tobacco Control Funding (TCF). We find that cross-state variation in spending on tobacco control is significantly driven by a tobacco special interest effect.
Bong Hits and Water Bottles: An Analysis of News Coverage of Athletes and Marijuana Use
Jonothan Lewis & Jennifer ProffittJournal of Sports Media, Spring 2012, Pages 1-21
This paper examines how sports media framed marijuana incidences involving athletes Michael Phelps, Michael Vick, Josh Howard, and Brad Miller. The analysis finds that Phelps' actions were generally downplayed, as his youth, his Olympic success, and the perceived irrationality of marijuana laws were frequently used as excuses not afforded to his athletic peers. It concludes that race does affect how media cover athletes and that onfield success can affect how media frame stories involving athletes.
Cheryl Cherpitel & Yu YeJournal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, May 2012, Pages 454-458
Objective: The purpose of this study was to update trends in alcohol- and drug-related emergency department and primary care visits over the last 15 years in the United States.
Method: A trend analysis was conducted on substance-related health services visits, based on self-reported alcohol or other drug use within 6 hours before an injury and/or illness event, from four National Alcohol Surveys: 1995, 2000, 2005, and 2010.
Results: A significant upward trend was found from 1995 to 2010 in alcohol-related emergency department visits but not in alcohol-related primary care visits. The odds of an alcohol-related emergency department visit doubled between 1995 and 2010 (odds ratio = 2.36). No significant trend was found in either drug-related emergency department or drug-related primary care visits between 1995 and 2010.
Conclusions: These data suggest that alcohol-related emergency department visits have increased significantly over the past 15 years, whereas drug-related emergency department visits may have stabilized. These findings underscore the opportunity provided by the emergency department for screening and brief intervention for alcohol-related problems and suggest that Healthy People 2010 objectives calling for a reduction in substance-related emergency department visits were not realized. Thus, it might be prudent to adjust Healthy People 2020 objectives accordingly.
Jason Purnell et al.American Journal of Public Health, May 2012, Pages 844-851
Objectives: We examined the association between perceived discrimination and smoking status and whether psychological distress mediated this relationship in a large, multiethnic sample.
Methods: We used 2004 through 2008 data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Reactions to Race module to conduct multivariate logistic regression analyses and tests of mediation examining associations between perceived discrimination in health care and workplace settings, psychological distress, and current smoking status.
Results: Regardless of race/ethnicity, perceived discrimination was associated with increased odds of current smoking. Psychological distress was also a significant mediator of the discrimination-smoking association.
Conclusions: Our results indicate that individuals who report discriminatory treatment in multiple domains may be more likely to smoke, in part, because of the psychological distress associated with such treatment.
Katherine Keyes et al.Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 1 April 2012, Pages 77-85
Introduction: Exposure to child maltreatment is associated with elevated risk for behavioral disorders in adulthood. One explanation for this life-course association is that child maltreatment increases vulnerability to the effects of subsequent stressors; however, the extent to which maltreatment increases sensitivity to social context has never been examined. We evaluated whether the association between neighborhood physical disorder and binge drinking was modified by child maltreatment exposure.
Methods: Data were drawn from the Detroit Neighborhood Health Study, a prospective representative sample of predominately African Americans in the Detroit population. Neighborhood physical disorder was measured via systematic neighborhood assessment. Child maltreatment indicators included self-reported physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. Incident binge drinking was defined as at least one episode of ≥5 drinks (men) or ≥4 drinks (women) in the past 30-day period among those with no binge drinking at baseline (N = 1013).
Results: Child maltreatment and neighborhood physical disorder interacted to predict incident binge drinking (B = 0.16, p = 0.02) and maximum number of past 30-day drinks (B = 0.15, p = 0.04), such that neighborhood physical disorder predicted problematic alcohol use only among individuals with high exposure to child maltreatment.
Conclusion: The results add to the growing literature that African Americans in the US are exposed to an array of stressors that have pernicious consequences for problematic alcohol use. Our results document the need for increased attention to the potential for at-risk alcohol use among populations with a high degree of stress exposure.
Joshua Hill, Willard Oliver & Nancy Marion Criminal Justice Policy Review, March 2012, Pages 90-107
This study explores the relationship between the president, public opinion, and the media in regard to drug abuse policy in America from 1969 through 2004. The theory of presidential influence over public opinion is used to test the hypothesis that presidents influence public opinion of drug abuse. Using vector auto regression time-series analysis, the study finds that while presidents do not appear to influence the public directly, they influence the media which influences public opinion. These findings are different from previous findings regarding crime control policy, but are similar to past findings for drug policy. Reasons for these findings are discussed and future research proposed.
Correlates of Alcohol-Related Regretted Sex Among College Students
Lindsay Orchowski, Nadine Mastroleo & Brian Borsari Psychology of Addictive Behaviors
The prevalence of alcohol-related regretted sex in college students warrants a better understanding of the characteristics of students who report such experiences. Therefore, the present study examined correlates of regretted sexual experiences involving alcohol use among 2 specific high-risk college student samples: students mandated to alcohol intervention (n = 522) and volunteer 1st-year students transitioning to college (n = 481). Results indicated that alcohol-related regretted sex occurred at similar rates in mandated and volunteer students, with approximately 25% of the students reporting at least 1 occurrence in the past month. Women were more likely to report alcohol-related regretted sex compared with men. The belief that alcohol use would result in "liquid courage" was associated with alcohol-related regretted sex among college students, even after accounting for greater alcohol use and problem alcohol use behaviors. These findings have significant implications for intervention efforts and future research.
Joel Swendsen et al.Archives of General Psychiatry, April 2012, Pages 390-398
Context: Comprehensive descriptions of substance use and abuse trajectories have been lacking in nationally representative samples of adolescents.
Objective: To examine the prevalence, age at onset, and sociodemographic correlates of alcohol and illicit drug use and abuse among US adolescents.
Design: Cross-sectional survey of adolescents using a modified version of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview.
Setting: Combined household and school adolescent samples.
Participants: Nationally representative sample of 10 123 adolescents aged 13 to 18 years.
Main Outcome Measures: Lifetime estimates of alcohol and illicit substance use and DSM-IV diagnoses of abuse, with or without dependence.
Results: By late adolescence, 78.2% of US adolescents had consumed alcohol, 47.1% had reached regular drinking levels defined by at least 12 drinks within a given year, and 15.1% met criteria for lifetime abuse. The opportunity to use illicit drugs was reported by 81.4% of the oldest adolescents, drug use by 42.5%, and drug abuse by 16.4%. The median age at onset was 14 years for alcohol abuse with or without dependence, 14 years for drug abuse with dependence, and 15 years for drug abuse without dependence. The associations observed by age, sex, and race/ethnicity often varied significantly by previous stage of use.
Conclusions: Alcohol and drug use is common in US adolescents, and the findings of this study indicate that most cases of abuse have their initial onset in this important period of development. Prevention and treatment efforts would benefit from careful attention to the correlates and risk factors that are specific to the stage of substance use in adolescents.
Darla Kendzor et al., May 2012, Pages 1394-1401
African Americans suffer disproportionately from the adverse health consequences of smoking, and also report substantially lower socioeconomic status than Whites and other racial/ethnic groups in the U.S. Although socioeconomic disadvantage is known to have a negative influence on smoking cessation rates and overall health, little is known about the influence of socioeconomic status on smoking cessation specifically among African Americans. Thus, the purpose of the current study was to characterize the impact of several individual- and area-level indicators of socioeconomic status on smoking cessation among African Americans. Data were collected as part of a smoking cessation intervention study for African American smokers (N = 379) recruited from the Houston, Texas, metropolitan area, who participated in the study between 2005 and 2007. The separate and combined influences of individual-level (insurance status, unemployment, education, and income) and area-level (neighborhood unemployment, education, income, and poverty) indicators of socioeconomic status on continuous smoking abstinence were examined across time intervals using continuation ratio logit modeling. Individual-level analyses indicated that unemployment was significantly associated with reduced odds of smoking abstinence, while higher income was associated with greater odds of abstinence. However, only unemployment remained a significant predictor of abstinence when unemployment and income were included in the model together. Area-level analyses indicated that greater neighborhood unemployment and poverty were associated with reduced odds of smoking abstinence, while greater neighborhood education was associated with higher odds of abstinence. However, only neighborhood unemployment remained significantly associated with abstinence status when individual-level income and unemployment were included in the model. Overall, findings suggest that individual- and area-level unemployment have a negative impact on smoking cessation among African Americans. Addressing unemployment through public policy and within smoking cessation interventions, and providing smoking cessation treatment for the unemployed may have a beneficial impact on tobacco-related health disparities.
Tobacco Branding, Plain Packaging, Pictorial Warnings, and Symbolic Consumption
Janet Hoek et al.Qualitative Health Research, May 2012, Pages 630-639
We use brand association and symbolic consumption theory to explore how plain cigarette packaging would influence the identities young adults cocreate with tobacco products. Group discussions and in-depth interviews with 86 young adult smokers and nonsmokers investigated how participants perceive tobacco branding and plain cigarette packaging with larger health warnings. We examined the transcript data using thematic analysis and explored how removing tobacco branding and replacing this with larger warnings would affect the symbolic status of tobacco brands and their social connotations. Smokers used tobacco brand imagery to define their social attributes and standing, and their connection with specific groups. Plain cigarette packaging usurped this process by undermining aspirational connotations and exposing tobacco products as toxic. Replacing tobacco branding with larger health warnings diminishes the cachet brand insignia creates, weakens the social benefits brands confer on users, and represents a potentially powerful policy measure.
Timothy Osberg et al.Addictive Behaviors
Does exposure to college drinking movies impact upon subsequent college student drinking? If so, what mechanisms mediate such an effect? In the first study to address these questions, we assessed college drinking movie exposure in a sample of 479 college freshmen early in their first semester and examined its relation to subsequent drinking and drinking consequences one month later. Hypothesized mediators of this effect included college alcohol beliefs (beliefs that drinking is central to college life), positive and negative alcohol expectancies, and descriptive and injunctive norms. Using bootstrapping procedures, results indicated that movie exposure exerted direct effects on both drinking and drinking consequences. Movie exposure also had significant indirect effects on drinking through all of the hypothesized mediators, with the exception of negative alcohol expectancies. All mediated movie exposure's effects on drinking consequences, with the exception of injunctive norms. Contrast analyses revealed that college alcohol beliefs had the strongest mediational effects in the relationship between movie exposure and both drinking and consequences. The implications of these findings for precollege alcohol education programs are discussed.
Lindsey Varvil-Weld et al.Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, May 2012, Pages 434-443
Objective: Previous research identified a high-risk subset of college students experiencing a disproportionate number of alcohol-related consequences at the end of their first year. With the goal of identifying pre-college predictors of membership in this high-risk subset, the present study used a prospective design to identify latent profiles of student-reported maternal and paternal parenting styles and alcohol-specific behaviors and to determine whether these profiles were associated with membership in the high-risk consequences subset.
Method: A sample of randomly selected 370 incoming first-year students at a large public university reported on their mothers' and fathers' communication quality, monitoring, approval of alcohol use, and modeling of drinking behaviors and on consequences experienced across the first year of college.
Results: Students in the high-risk subset comprised 15.5% of the sample but accounted for almost half (46.6%) of the total consequences reported by the entire sample. Latent profile analyses identified four parental profiles: positive pro-alcohol, positive anti-alcohol, negative mother, and negative father. Logistic regression analyses revealed that students in the negative-father profile were at greatest odds of being in the high-risk consequences subset at a follow-up assessment 1 year later, even after drinking at baseline was controlled for. Students in the positive pro-alcohol profile also were at increased odds of being in the high-risk subset, although this association was attenuated after baseline drinking was controlled for.
Conclusions: These findings have important implications for the improvement of existing parent- and individual-based college student drinking interventions designed to reduce alcohol-related consequences.
Lin Xiao et al.Psychology of Addictive Behaviors
The goal of this study was to investigate the neural correlates of affective decision making, as measured by the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), which are associated with adolescent binge drinking. Fourteen adolescent binge drinkers (16-18 years of age) and 14 age-matched adolescents who had never consumed alcohol - never drinkers - were recruited from local high schools in Chengdu, China. Questionnaires were used to assess academic performance, drinking experience, and urgency. Brain regions activated by the IGT performance were identified with functional magnetic resonance imaging. Results showed that, compared to never drinkers, binge drinkers performed worse on the IGT and showed higher activity in the subcomponents of the decision-making neural circuitry implicated in the execution of emotional and incentive-related behaviors, namely, the left amygdala and insula bilaterally. Moreover, measures of the severity of drinking problems in real life, as well as high urgency scores, were associated with increased activity within the insula, combined with decreased activity within the orbitofrontal cortex. These results suggest that hyperreactivity of a neural system implicated in the execution of emotional and incentive-related behaviors can be associated with socially undesirable behaviors, such as binge drinking, among adolescents. These findings have social implications because they potentially reveal underlying neural mechanisms for making poor decisions, which may increase an individual's risk and vulnerability for alcoholism.
Stephen Kulis et al.Journal of Early Adolescence, April 2012, Pages 165-199
This study examined interactive relationships among ethnic identity, gender, time in the US, and changes in substance use outcomes among a school-based sample of 1,731 Mexican-heritage preadolescents (ages 9-13). Residual change multilevel models adjusting for school clustering and using multiply imputed data assessed changes from beginning to end of fifth grade in use of alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana and inhalants, and four substance use antecedents. Effects of ethnic identity were conditional on time in the US, and in opposite directions by gender. Among males living longer in the US, stronger ethnic identity predicted desirable changes in all but one outcome (substance offers). Among females living longer in the US, stronger ethnic identity predicted undesirable changes in alcohol use, pro-drug norms, and peer substance use. Interpretations focus on differential exposure to substance use opportunities and the erosion of traditional gender role socialization among Mexican-heritage youth having lived longer in the US.
Do Peers' Parents Matter? A New Link Between Positive Parenting and Adolescent Substance Use
Michael Cleveland et al.Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, May 2012, Pages 423-433
Objective: Although studies have demonstrated that an adolescent's parents and friends both influence adolescent substance use, it is not known whether the parenting experienced by one's friends also affects one's own use. Drawing on conceptions of shared parenting and the tenets of coercion theory, we investigated the extent to which three domains of parenting behaviors (parental knowledge, inductive reasoning, and consistent discipline) influenced the alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use of not only their own adolescent children but also of members of their adolescents'friendship groups.
Method: Analyses of friendship nominations within each of two successive ninth-grade cohorts in 27 Iowa and Pennsylvania schools (N = 7,439 students, 53.6% female) were used to identify 897 friendship groups. Hierarchical logistic regression models were used to examine prospective associations between 9th-grade friendship group-level parenting behaviors and adolescent self-reported alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use in 10th grade.
Results: Adolescent substance use in 10th grade was significantly related to parenting behaviors of friends' parents, after controlling for adolescents' reports of their own substance use and their own parents' behaviors at the 9th grade level. These associations were particularly strong for parents' knowledge about their children and use of inconsistent discipline strategies. Significant interaction effects indicated that these relationships were strongest when adolescents received positive parenting at home. Some, but not all, of the main effects of friends' parents' parenting became nonsignificant after friends' substance use in ninth grade was included in the model.
Conclusions: The findings suggest that the parenting style in adolescents' friends' homes plays an important role in determining adolescent substance use. Implications of the joint contribution of parents and peers for prevention and intervention are discussed.
Macro-level gender equality and alcohol consumption: A multi-level analysis across U.S. states
Sarah Roberts
Higher levels of women's alcohol consumption have long been attributed to increases in gender equality. However, only limited research examines the relationship between gender equality and alcohol consumption. This study examined associations between five measures of state-level gender equality and five alcohol consumption measures in the United States. Survey data regarding men's and women's alcohol consumption from the 2005 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System were linked to state-level indicators of gender equality. Gender equality indicators included state-level women's socioeconomic status, gender equality in socioeconomic status, reproductive rights, policies relating to violence against women, and women's political participation. Alcohol consumption measures included past-30 day drinker status, drinking frequency, binge drinking, volume, and risky drinking. Other than drinker status, consumption is measured for drinkers only.Multilevel linear and logistic regression models adjusted for individual demographics as well as state-level income inequality, median income, and percent Evangelical Protestant/Mormon. All gender equality indicators were positively associated with both women's and men's drinker status in models adjusting only for individual-level covariates; associations were not significant in models adjusting for other state-level characteristics. All other associations between gender equality and alcohol consumption were either negative or non-significant for both women and men in models adjusting for other state-level factors. Findings do not support the hypothesis that higher levels of gender equality are associated with higher levels of alcohol consumption by women or by men. In fact, most significant findings suggest that higher levels of equality are associated with less alcohol consumption overall.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
State of Mind
Does Retirement Affect Cognitive Functioning?
Eric Bonsang, Stéphane Adam & Sergio Perelman Journal of Health Economics
This paper analyses the effect of retirement on cognitive functioning using a longitudinal survey among older Americans, which allows controlling for individual heterogeneity and endogeneity of the retirement decision by using the eligibility age for social security as an instrument. The results highlight a significant negative effect of retirement on cognitive functioning. Our findings suggest that reforms aimed at promoting labour force participation at an older age may not only ensure the sustainability of social security systems but may also create positive health externalities for older individuals.
Executive Functions Predict the Success of Top-Soccer Players
Torbjörn Vestberg et al., April 2012
While the importance of physical abilities and motor coordination is non-contested in sport, more focus has recently been turned toward cognitive processes important for different sports. However, this line of studies has often investigated sport-specific cognitive traits, while few studies have focused on general cognitive traits. We explored if measures of general executive functions can predict the success of a soccer player. The present study used standardized neuropsychological assessment tools assessing players' general executive functions including on-line multi-processing such as creativity, response inhibition, and cognitive flexibility. In a first cross-sectional part of the study we compared the results between High Division players (HD), Lower Division players (LD) and a standardized norm group. The result shows that both HD and LD players had significantly better measures of executive functions in comparison to the norm group for both men and women. Moreover, the HD players outperformed the LD players in these tests. In the second prospective part of the study, a partial correlation test showed a significant correlation between the result from the executive test and the numbers of goals and assists the players had scored two seasons later. The results from this study strongly suggest that results in cognitive function tests predict the success of ball sport players.
Socioeconomic status modifies interest-knowledge associations among adolescents
Elliot Tucker-Drob & Daniel BrileyPersonality and Individual Differences
Researchers have recently taken a renewed interest in examining the patterns by which noncognitive traits and cognitive traits relate to one another. Few researchers, however, have examined the possibility that such patterns might differ according to environmental context. Using data from a nationally representative sample of approximately 375,000 students from 1300 high schools in the United States, we examined the relations between socioeconomic status (SES), interests, and knowledge in eleven academic, vocational/professional, and recreational domains. We found little support for the hypothesis that SES-related differences in levels of interest mediate SES-related differences in levels of knowledge. In contrast, we found robust and consistent support for the hypothesis that SES moderates interest-knowledge associations. For 10 out of 11 of the knowledge domains examined, the interest-knowledge association was stronger for individuals living in higher SES contexts. Moderation persisted after controlling for an index of general intelligence. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that low SES inhibits individuals from selectively investing their time and attention in learning experiences that are consistent with their interests.
Is Noise Always Bad? Exploring the Effects of Ambient Noise on Creative Cognition
Ravi Mehta, Rui (Juliet) Zhu & Amar Cheema Journal of Consumer Research
This paper examines how ambient noise, an important environmental variable, can affect creativity. Results from five experiments demonstrate that a moderate (70 dB) versus low (50 dB) level of ambient noise enhances performance on creative tasks and increases the buying likelihood of innovative products. A high level of noise (85 dB), on the other hand, hurts creativity. Process measures reveal that a moderate (vs. low) level of noise increases processing difficulty, inducing a higher construal level and thus promoting abstract processing, which subsequently leads to higher creativity. A high level of noise, however, reduces the extent of information processing and thus impairs creativity.
R.T. Pivik et al.Physiology & Behavior
To determine the influence of a morning meal on complex mental functions in children (8-11 y), time-frequency analyses were applied to electroencephalographic (EEG) activity recorded while children solved simple addition problems after an overnight fast and again after having either eaten or skipped breakfast. Power of low frequency EEG activity [2 Hertz (Hz) bands in the 2-12 Hz range] was determined from recordings over frontal and parietal brain regions associated with mathematical thinking during mental calculation of correctly answered problems. Analyses were adjusted for background variables known to influence or reflect the development of mathematical skills, i.e., age and measures of math competence and math fluency. Relative to fed children, those who continued to fast showed greater power increases in upper theta (6-8 Hz) and both alpha bands (8-10 Hz; 10-12 Hz) across sites. Increased theta suggests greater demands on working memory. Increased alpha may facilitate task-essential activity by suppressing non-task-essential activity. Fasting children also had greater delta (2-4 Hz) and greater lower-theta (4-6 Hz) power in left frontal recordings-indicating a region-specific emphasis on both working memory for mental calculation (theta) and activation of processes that suppress interfering activity (delta). Fed children also showed a significant increase in correct responses while children who continued to fast did not. Taken together the findings suggest that neural network activity involved in processing numerical information is functionally enhanced and performance is improved in children who have eaten breakfast, whereas greater mental effort is required for this mathematical thinking in children who skip breakfast.
An increase of intelligence measured by the WPPSI in China, 1984-2006
Jianghong Liu et al., March-April 2012, Pages 139-144
Normative data for 5-6 year olds on the Chinese Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI) are reported for samples tested in 1984 and 2006. There was a significant increase in Full Scale IQ of 4.53 points over the 22 year period, representing a gain of 2.06 IQ points per decade. There were also significant increases in Verbal IQ of 4.27 points and in Performance IQ of 4.08 points.
Ageing, cognitive abilities and retirement
Fabrizio Mazzonna & Franco PeracchiEuropean Economic Review
We investigate the relationship between ageing, cognitive abilities and retirement using the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), a household panel that offers the possibility of comparing several European countries using nationally representative samples of the population aged 50+. The human capital framework suggests that retirement may cause an increase in cognitive decline, since after retirement individuals lose the market incentive to invest in cognitive repair activities. Our empirical results, based on an instrumental variable strategy to deal with the potential endogeneity of retirement, confirm this key prediction. They also indicate that education plays a fundamental role in explaining heterogeneity in the level of cognitive abilities.
The moderating role of executive functioning in older adults' responses to a reminder of mortality
Molly Maxfield et al.Psychology and Aging, March 2012, Pages 256-263
In previous research, older adults responded to mortality salience (MS) with increased tolerance, whereas younger persons responded with increased punitiveness. One possible explanation for this is that many older adults adapt to challenges of later life, such as the prospect of mortality, by becoming more flexible. Recent studies suggest that positively oriented adaptation is more likely for older adults with high levels of executive functioning. Thus, we hypothesized that the better an older adult's executive functioning, the more likely MS would result in increased tolerance. Older and younger adults were randomly assigned to MS or control conditions, and then evaluated moral transgressors. As in previous research, younger adults were more punitive after reminders of mortality; executive functioning did not affect their responses. Among older adults, high functioning individuals responded to MS with increased tolerance rather than intolerance, whereas those low in functioning became more punitive.
Rapidly Measuring the Speed of Unconscious Learning: Amnesics Learn Quickly and Happy People Slowly
Zoltan Dienes, Roland Baddeley & Ashok Jansari PLoS ONE
Background: We introduce a method for quickly determining the rate of implicit learning.
Methodology/Principal Findings: The task involves making a binary prediction for a probabilistic sequence over 10 minutes; from this it is possible to determine the influence of events of a different number of trials in the past on the current decision. This profile directly reflects the learning rate parameter of a large class of learning algorithms including the delta and Rescorla-Wagner rules. To illustrate the use of the method, we compare a person with amnesia with normal controls and we compare people with induced happy and sad moods.
Conclusions/Significance: Learning on the task is likely both associative and implicit. We argue theoretically and demonstrate empirically that both amnesia and also transient negative moods can be associated with an especially large learning rate: People with amnesia can learn quickly and happy people slowly.
IQ tests are not for machines, yet
David Dowe & José Hernández-OralloIntelligence, March-April 2012, Pages 77-81
Complex, but specific, tasks - such as chess or Jeopardy! - are popularly seen as milestones for artificial intelligence (AI). However, they are not appropriate for evaluating the intelligence of machines or measuring the progress in AI. Aware of this delusion, Detterman has recently raised a challenge prompting AI researchers to evaluate their artefacts against IQ tests. We agree that the philosophy behind (human) IQ tests is a much better approach to machine intelligence evaluation than these specific tasks, and also more practical and informative than the Turing test. However, we have first to recall some work on machine intelligence measurement which has shown that some IQ tests can be passed by relatively simple programs. This suggests that the challenge may not be so demanding and may just work as a sophisticated CAPTCHA, since some types of tests might be easier than others for the current state of AI. Second, we show that an alternative, formal derivation of intelligence tests for machines is possible, grounded in (algorithmic) information theory. In these tests, we have a proper mathematical definition of what is being measured. Third, we re-visit some research done in the past fifteen years for effectively measuring machine intelligence - since some assumptions about the subjects and their distribution no longer hold.
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Most Reported Genetic Associations with General Intelligence Are Probably False Positives
Christopher Chabris et al.
General intelligence (g) and virtually all other behavioral traits are heritable. Associations between g and specific single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in several candidate genes involved in brain function have been reported. We sought to replicate published associations between 12 specific genetic variants and g using three independent, longitudinal datasets of 5571, 1759, and 2441 well-characterized individuals. Of 32 independent tests across all three datasets, only one was nominally significant at the p < .05 level. By contrast, power analyses showed that we should have expected 10-15 significant associations, given reasonable assumptions for genotype effect sizes. As positive controls, we confirmed accepted genetic associations for Alzheimer disease and body mass index, and we used SNP-based relatedness calculations to replicate estimates that about half of the variance in g is accounted for by common genetic variation among individuals. We conclude that different approaches than candidate genes are needed in the molecular genetics of psychology and social science.
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Classical pattern recall tests and the prospective nature of expert performance
Adam Gorman, Bruce Abernethy & Damian Farrow Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
It is well established that experts are particularly adept at recalling and/or recognizing the key features of domain-relevant patterns. We compared the recall performance of expert and novice basketball players when viewing static and moving patterns. A novel method of analysis was used where the accuracy of the participants in recalling player positions was compared to actual player positions both at the final frame of pattern presentation and at 50 successive 40 ms increments thereafter. Experts encoded the locations of the players in both the static and moving patterns significantly further in advance of their actual finishing point than did nonexperts. Experts' use of an anticipatory encoding process, which was of a magnitude unmatched by nonexperts, suggests that many previous investigations may have underestimated the extent of the expert advantage in pattern recall.----------------------
The Power of Diversity over Large Solution Spaces
Marco LiCalzi & Oktay Surucu
Management Science
We consider a team of agents with limited problem-solving ability facing a disjunctive task over a large solution space. We provide sufficient conditions for the following four statements. First, two heads are better than one: a team of two agents will solve the problem even if neither agent alone would be able to. Second, teaming up does not guarantee success: if the agents are not sufficiently creative, even a team of arbitrary size may fail to solve the problem. Third, defendit numerus: when the agent's problem-solving ability is adversely affected by the complexity of the solution space, the solution of the problem requires only a mild increase in the size of the team. Fourth, groupthink impairs the power of diversity: if agents' abilities are positively correlated, a larger team is necessary to solve the problem.----------------------
Working memory training: Improving intelligence - Changing brain activity
Norbert Jaušovec & Ksenija Jaušovec
Brain and Cognition, July 2012, Pages 96-106
The main objectives of the study were: to investigate whether training on working memory (WM) could improve fluid intelligence, and to investigate the effects WM training had on neuroelectric (electroencephalography - EEG) and hemodynamic (near-infrared spectroscopy - NIRS) patterns of brain activity. In a parallel group experimental design, respondents of the working memory group after 30 h of training significantly increased performance on all tests of fluid intelligence. By contrast, respondents of the active control group (participating in a 30-h communication training course) showed no improvements in performance. The influence of WM training on patterns of neuroelectric brain activity was most pronounced in the theta and alpha bands. Theta and lower-1 alpha band synchronization was accompanied by increased lower-2 and upper alpha desynchronization. The hemodynamic patterns of brain activity after the training changed from higher right hemispheric activation to a balanced activity of both frontal areas. The neuroelectric as well as hemodynamic patterns of brain activity suggest that the training influenced WM maintenance functions as well as processes directed by the central executive. The changes in upper alpha band desynchronization could further indicate that processes related to long term memory were also influenced.----------------------
Anders Ericsson & Jerad Moxley
Applied Cognitive Psychology
In this issue Howard reported that the effect of chess study is surprisingly small among elite chess players, who continue playing more games in international chess tournaments. In contrast, we show that individual differences in chess study are the likely causes of both higher chess ratings and more chess games played in international tournaments, which is often very costly and includes airfare, hotel, and tournament registration fees. The low correlation between his estimates of study time and chess rating is shown to be a consequence of his methodology of relying on a couple of questions in an internet survey rather than the standard methodology in expert performance research involving a 30-minute interview tracing yearly engagement in many different practice activities.----------------------
Jessica Payne et al.
PLoS ONE, March 2012Abstract:
Numerous studies have examined sleep's influence on a range of hippocampus-dependent declarative memory tasks, from text learning to spatial navigation. In this study, we examined the impact of sleep, wake, and time-of-day influences on the processing of declarative information with strong semantic links (semantically related word pairs) and information requiring the formation of novel associations (unrelated word pairs). Participants encoded a set of related or unrelated word pairs at either 9am or 9pm, and were then tested after an interval of 30 min, 12 hr, or 24 hr. The time of day at which subjects were trained had no effect on training performance or initial memory of either word pair type. At 12 hr retest, memory overall was superior following a night of sleep compared to a day of wakefulness. However, this performance difference was a result of a pronounced deterioration in memory for unrelated word pairs across wake; there was no sleep-wake difference for related word pairs. At 24 hr retest, with all subjects having received both a full night of sleep and a full day of wakefulness, we found that memory was superior when sleep occurred shortly after learning rather than following a full day of wakefulness. Lastly, we present evidence that the rate of deterioration across wakefulness was significantly diminished when a night of sleep preceded the wake period compared to when no sleep preceded wake, suggesting that sleep served to stabilize the memories against the deleterious effects of subsequent wakefulness. Overall, our results demonstrate that 1) the impact of 12 hr of waking interference on memory retention is strongly determined by word-pair type, 2) sleep is most beneficial to memory 24 hr later if it occurs shortly after learning, and 3) sleep does in fact stabilize declarative memories, diminishing the negative impact of subsequent wakefulness.----------------------
Why Do People Move Their Eyes When They Think?
Howard Ehrlichman & Dragana Micic
Current Directions in Psychological Science, April 2012, Pages 96-100Abstract:
The saccadic eye movements that people make when thinking have been largely ignored in the eye-movement literature. Nevertheless, there is evidence that such eye movements are systematically related to internal thought processes. On average, people move their eyes about twice as often when searching through long-term memory as they do when engaged in tasks that do not require such search. This pattern occurs when people are in face-to-face situations, when they are in the dark, and when they have their eyes closed. Because these eye movements do not appear to serve visual processing, we refer to them as "nonvisual" eye movements and discuss why the eyes move during thinking that does not involve vision.----------------------
Gummed-up memory: Chewing gum impairs short-term recall
Michail Kozlov, Robert Hughes & Dylan Jones
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, March 2012, Pages 501-513Abstract:
Several studies have suggested that short-term memory is generally improved by chewing gum. However, we report the first studies to show that chewing gum impairs short-term memory for both item order and item identity. Experiment 1 showed that chewing gum reduces serial recall of letter lists. Experiment 2 indicated that chewing does not simply disrupt vocal-articulatory planning required for order retention: Chewing equally impairs a matched task that required retention of list item identity. Experiment 3 demonstrated that manual tapping produces a similar pattern of impairment to that of chewing gum. These results clearly qualify the assertion that chewing gum improves short-term memory. They also pose a problem for short-term memory theories asserting that forgetting is based on domain-specific interference given that chewing does not interfere with verbal memory any more than tapping. It is suggested that tapping and chewing reduce the general capacity to process sequences.
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