bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Regime Type and Terrorist Attacks
Authors: Kingma Kara , Cramer Bryan , Chenoweth Erica
Published: May 2015

We review the current literature on why democracies experience terrorist attacks. Noting that most of these studies were based on data that ended in 2004, we update the data and analyze regime type and terrorist attacks through 2012. We identify a key trend: 2009 appears to have been a watershed year, where terrorist attacks began to occur more often in failed states and countries under military occupation than in democratic ones. Most strikingly, we find that autocratic regimes have experienced a modest increase in terrorist attacks, whereas democracies have experienced a generalized decrease. We then review the literature on terrorism in autocratic regimes, which is mainly focused on explaining variation in terrorist attack patterns across autocratic regimes with different capacities for coercion and co‐optation and different sensitivities to audience costs. We conclude by highlighting some of the research and policy implications on regime type and terrorism.
Remote Sensing with Satellite Technology
Authors: Parcak Sarah
Published: May 2015

This essay discusses the current capabilities in the field of remote sensing in multiple social and behavioral science fields (Anthropology, History, Government, Psychology, Sociology, and Social work), and shows how remote sensing is playing an increasingly important role in social and behavioral science research. Why social and behavioral scientists apply satellite data, or should apply remote sensing data, is reviewed and evaluated, especially in connection to nonsatellite datasets (including US census data). This study clarifies how high resolution satellite data will impact research in the social and behavioral sciences, especially considering the release of additional sensors in 2014 and later, including new potential application of data collected from drones. Social and behavioral scientists will also need to develop research methodologies appropriate to their subfields. Last, coverage is given to present capabilities and emerging trends for remote sensing research, with an emphasis on, future possibilities for applying satellite data in the social and behavioral sciences.
Rent, Rent‐Seeking, and Social Inequality
Authors: Bird Beth Red , Grusky David B.
Published: May 2015

The compensation paid out to workers reflects (i) the value of their contribution to their firm or organization and (ii) a possible premium because of restrictions on competition. The latter restrictions, which may take the form of corruption or monopolies that preclude labor from freely flowing throughout the economy, allow for various types of rent to be extracted. This essay addresses the way in which rents may arise, the sectors of the labor market that are gaining new opportunities to extract rent, and the sectors of the labor market that are losing the capacity to extract rent. Although it is typically argued that all forms of rent are gradually withering away, the available evidence suggests, to the contrary, that rent destruction is mainly occurring at the bottom of the class structure. At the top of the class structure, new opportunities to collect rent appear to be emerging, opportunities that raise earnings among the already privileged and thus increase income inequality. The foregoing characterization of the evidence, although not without support, is necessarily controversial because of intrinsic difficulties in distinguishing the true marginal contribution of workers from returns that are attributable to market failure.
Resilience
Authors: Diminich Erica D. , Bonanno George A.
Published: May 2015

Research on resilience is still evolving. For decades, developmental researchers have documented resilient outcomes in children exposed to chronic maltreatment who nonetheless thrived. Relatively more recently the study of resilience has migrated to the investigation of acute and potentially traumatic life events (PTE) in adults. We first consider some of the key differences in the conceptualization of resilience following chronic adversity versus resilience following single‐incident traumas, and then describe some of the misunderstandings that have developed about these constructs. We describe the termsemergent resilienceandminimal‐impact resilience(Bonanno & Diminich, 2013) to represent trajectories of positive adjustment in these two domains, respectively. In particular, we focus on minimal‐impact resilience, and review recent advances in the literature. We then briefly discuss the most widely researched factors (e.g., age, gender, personality) suggested to influence resilient outcomes following exposure to PTEs. In closing, we suggest future areas of research to further expand the study of resilience within the social sciences.
Restoring Racial Justice
Authors: Davis Fania E. , Lyubansky Mikhail , Schiff Mara
Published: May 2015

Despite important overlapping interests, until recently, few racial justice advocates have embraced restorative justice (RJ), and the RJ community has largely failed to explicitly address race. Suggesting a convergence of the two movements, this essay presents an overview of RJ principles, history, and methods. We review the evidence for racial bias in criminal justice and school discipline and then note emerging restorative initiatives to ameliorate historical and contemporary racial inequities. We conclude by touching on gaps and challenges characterizing research and applied work in the field while suggesting strategies to move toward a racially‐conscious restorative movement as both an effective alternative to state‐imposed punishment and a powerful force for racial justice.
The Role of School‐Related Peers and Social Networks in Human Development
Authors: Muller Chandra
Published: May 2015

This essay describes the foundational research on peers within schools, the recent advances in the field, and new challenges and opportunities for future research. Schools bring together children and youths for many hours of the day over many years. The intensity of interaction and judgment within of peers within the school setting heightens the potential impact on human development during the crucial adolescent years. Extant research on the effects of peers in school cuts across disciplinary lines and is of interest to developmental psychologists, economists, sociologists, and anthropologists, who observe the potential for peers to structure and reinforce status hierarchies and opportunities to learn, contribute to the development of personality, identity, interests, and motivation, and shape the cultures that emerge in schools, all of which may impact students' learning, educational attainment, and adult earnings. Social network methods combined with more readily available data on students' course taking in schools provides rich and promising new opportunities for future research.
Rulemaking Pursuing a Policy Agenda
Authors: Waterman Richard W.
Published: May 2015

Rulemaking is a difficult process that involves interpreting legislation, often vaguely written, by legislators into formal rules of action for bureaucratic implementation. The process is highly political and often confrontational, with varied interests attempting to influence the behavior of the bureaucratic experts involved in writing rules, regulations, and setting standards. The end result is often delay, during which time the bureaucracy gets the blame. Even under the best of circumstances, however, rulemaking is a difficult process.
Sensational Jurisprudence: Visual Culture and Human Rights
Authors: Renteln Alison Dundes
Published: May 2015

Sensational jurisprudence is a new branch of sociolegal studies that deals with the five senses and public policy. Because the law privileges the visual, this essay examines social science research about images of suffering and the implications of these findings. The interdisciplinary scholarship about visual culture emphasizes the negative aspects of humanitarian appeals for funding to aid the distant sufferer, and it suggests that bombarding the public with graphic depictions of pitiable individuals is counterproductive. Instead, researchers ought to develop methodologies to ascertain which emotions motivate individuals to engage in global civic action.
Sexual Behavior
Authors: Emery Thompson Melissa
Published: May 2015

Research on human sexual behavior is a multidisciplinary pursuit that seeks to understand one of the most vital and complex aspects of our biology. Foundations for this study include the basic principles of sexual selection, including differential reproductive roles of male and female, and the processes of sexual differentiation. Study of human sexual behavior is made vastly more complex by emotional involvements and the diversity of sexual behaviors exhibited by our species. Historically, sex researchers have struggled to overcome the methodological challenges involved with objective study of behavior in our own species and with the ethical and political implications of their work. Early research focused on merely quantifying the spectrum of human sexual behaviors and on understanding the physiological and psychological processes of sexual response. Subsequent work developed the concept of gender and began to address how behavioral and corporeal manifestations of sex can diverge from one another. Modern studies incorporate a variety of advanced scientific techniques to investigate mechanistic and functional hypotheses for specific behaviors. This review highlights four prominent research topics, highlighting current understanding, cutting edge work, and key issues for future research: mate preferences, concealed ovulation, sexual coercion, and homosexuality. In each of these areas of research, there is strong evidence for biological influences on behavior. It is also clear that known biological mechanisms only partly explain actual behavioral patterns, suggesting strong mediation by cultural, environmental, and developmental processes.
Emerging Trends: Shaping Age By Technology and Social Bonds
Authors: Spellerberg Annette , Schelisch Lynn
Published: May 2015

Global ageing is a challenge, particularly with the high speed of the ageing process. As the orientation toward nuclear families without extended family members is growing and the number of children is decreasing, fewer senior citizens in developed countries live under the same roof with their children as in past decades. Families are less and less able to provide support and comfort for older people. Social communities are expected to secure the quality of life of senior citizens as well as their ability to lead a self‐reliant, autonomous life. Social policies emphasize ageing in place and therefore the enhancement of neighborhoods and community resources. Digital technologies can contribute to the welfare of the elderly, as they offer communication opportunities, safety functions or health support. More and more the question of enabling contacts and service provision is increasingly based on access to broadband and ICT.

In this essay the question is pursued as to which extent new intelligent devices in senior households, often referred to asAmbient Assisted Living(AAL), increase comfort and safety, provide support and facilitate social contact for elderly people in their homes. Already by now, older people are able to use assistive technologies on a regular basis and in very different ways. Modern user interfaces empower senior citizens, ensuring information and entertainment of the Internet. AAL technologies do not diminish direct social contact, but strengthen the sense of belonging by offering new possibilities of getting and keeping in contact.
Sibling Relationships and Development
Authors: Campione‐Barr Nicole , Killoren Sarah
Published: May 2015

Although research on sibling relationships has been far less frequent than research on other close relationships such as parent–child, peer, and romantic partner relationships, researchers have found siblings to be important for the development of social competence as well as positive and negative adjustment. In addition, the sibling relationship is considered the longest lasting relationship across the life span and it serves unique developmental functions. This essay briefly describes foundational research on the influence of dyadic structural variables, relationship dynamics, and sibling influences on adjustment; outlines cutting‐edge research within the field on the contexts of family ethnicity, developmental period, and important processes and influences on relationship dynamics; and discusses key issues for future research such as expanding to under‐studied ethnic groups (e.g., Native American and Asian‐American families), family structures and contexts (e.g., adoption, single‐parents by choice, gay/lesbian parents), and mechanisms for relationship influence. Expanding the field to incorporate such research questions will likely require sibling researchers to examine findings from research on other important, close relationships, as well as collaboration of researchers from a variety of psychological disciplines as well as in the fields of sociology, neuroscience, genetics, anthropology, and human development and family studies.
Social Aspects of Memory
Authors: Hirst William , Stone Charles B.
Published: May 2015

No one doubts that memories are shaped by the social context in which they are formed or later remembered. In this essay we focus on how the social context of remembering and memorizing with others shapes the way both the speaker and listener remember the past, what we refer to as collaborative remembering. In addressing the mnemonic consequences of collaborative remembering, we discuss 1) how it shapes what is occurrently remembered in the group and 2) how it affects both what the speaker and listener subsequently remember. In terms of the former, we discuss the robust collaborative inhibition literature; in terms of the latter, we discuss the social contagion, retrieval induced‐forgetting and socially shared retrieval‐induced forgetting literature. In conclusion, we highlight areas in need of future research within the area of “social aspects of memory”: 1) whether the mnemonic effects of collaborative remember propagate across a group, that is, to move beyond dyadic interactions and examine larger groups; 2) examining the evolutionary advantages of human memory being susceptible to the influence of others; and, in turn, 3) how this mnemonic susceptibility may help foster social bonds.
Social Class and Parental Investment in Children
Authors: Gauthier Anne H.
Published: May 2015

This essay critically reviews the literature on social class differences in parental investment in children including differences in (i) parenting practices or behavior; (ii) parenting styles, logics, and strategies; and (iii) parenting values and ideologies. The essay reveals how structural and cultural barriers contribute to creating social class differences in the ways parents interact with their children, as well as in the way they protect and promote their children's development and well‐being. This essay covers some of the foundational research in the field as well as newer research which has started to question the strict social class divide in parental investment. In particular, this essay discusses recent research on the resistance to the dominant ideology of good parenting, and studies of the complex interactions between social class, race and ethnicity, and gender. This essay concludes with a discussion of future research avenues including a call for a better empirical operationalization of the concept of parental investment.
Social Neuroendocrine Approaches to Relationships
Authors: van Anders Sari M. , Gray Peter B.
Published: May 2015

Social neuroendocrinology is the study of social behaviors and hormones, using ultimate (evolutionary) and proximate (mechanistic) considerations, alongside social context. In this entry, two scholars from psychology and anthropology focus on social relationships (e.g., parenting, romantic relationships, sexual contacts) and both peptide (e.g., oxytocin, vasopressin) and steroid hormones (e.g., testosterone, estradiol, cortisol). Basic theoretical underpinnings of social neuroendocrinology are discussed, along with classic and cutting edge scholarship alongside newer theories. The challenges and promises of social neuroendocrine approaches to relationships are detailed, with an eye to the future of the discipline.
Social, Psychological, and Physiological Reactions to Stress
Authors: McEwen Bruce S. , McEwen Craig A.
Published: May 2015

Emerging research examines biological processes not as primary causes of social outcomes but rather as mechanisms that themselves depend on social environments. In particular, environments that produce toxic stress help shape brain development and brain and body function throughout the lifespan. Early life stress, in particular, has serious consequences for life‐long health and affects cognitive performance, emotional intelligence, and self‐regulation. Because the brain is plastic, social as well as individual behavioral interventions can alter some of these developmental paths, modifying brain function and individual life trajectories—but with increasing difficulty as children become adolescents and adults. Now reflecting the new era of “epigenetics” and a life course perspective, this new view of stress, the brain, and social environments highlights the importance of the social, psychological, and biological sciences working together to elucidate underlying mechanisms both to expand knowledge and help promote a better society.
Speech Perception
Authors: Vouloumanos Athena
Published: May 2015

Speech perception is the process by which listeners presented with a distribution of audible frequencies modulated in amplitude (loudness) and spectral (the frequency set) content across time turn this sound into a coherent unit of perception that is interpreted as language. Classic studies established that speech is not perceived by simply mapping sets of invariant acoustic properties onto different speech sounds. In fact, speech perception is robust even when the acoustic signal has been dramatically distorted. Current approaches focus on understanding how we perceive speech by investigating the neural basis of processing different physical aspects of the speech signal, the encoding of acoustic information in the speech signal at different time scales, the developmental of speech perception, and the multimodal representation of speech. Understanding how humans perceive speech will require the expertise of psychologists, neuroscientists, and engineers.
State of the Art in Competition Research
Authors: Fülöp Márta , Orosz Gábor
Published: May 2015

Until the 1990s in psychology, competition was conceived as a unidimensional concept which is opposed to cooperation. Since then, the competition–cooperation dichotomy has shifted and competition is conceptualized as a multifaceted concept that is not in mutually exclusive relationship with cooperation. Constructive and destructive forms of competition have been distinguished regarding their motivational, strategic, and behavioral consequences. Personality psychologists identified different competitive attitudes and research on the psychology of winning and losing, and differentiated specific patterns of emotional and behavioral coping with winning and losing. More recently, psychophysiological, genetic, and neuroimaging studies enrich the understanding of competition. The warrior and worrier genes, the psychology and physiology of challenge and threat, and the neurohormonal changes open up new dimensions of interpretation of competitive encounters and winning and losing. The new challenge of the field is the integration of the accumulated knowledge in a new bio‐psycho‐socio‐cultural model of competition.
Statistical Power Analysis
Authors: Aberson Christopher L.
Published: May 2015

Statistical power refers to the probability of rejecting a false null hypothesis (i.e., finding what the researcher wants to find). Power analysis allows researchers to determine adequate sample size for designing studies with an optimal probability for rejecting false null hypotheses. When conducted correctly, power analysis helps researchers make informed decisions about sample size selection. Statistical power analysis most commonly involves specifying statistic test criteria (type I error rate), desired level of power, and the effect size expected in the population. This article outlines the basic concepts relevant to statistical power, factors that influence power, how to establish the different parameters for power analysis, and determination and interpretation of the effect size estimates for power. I also address innovative work such as the continued development of software resources for power analysis and protocols for designing for precision of confidence intervals (aka, accuracy in parameter estimation). Finally, I outline understudied areas such as power analysis for designs with multiple predictors, reporting and interpreting power analyses in published work, designing for meaningfully sized effects, and power to detect multiple effects in the same study.
Stratification in Hard Times
Authors: Gangl Markus
Published: May 2015

This essay reviews current research on the relationship between economic inequality and social stratification. Stratification, that is, the intergenerational reproduction of the distribution of incomes and socioeconomic advantage, is likely to be related to the level of economic inequality because parental incomes and wealth are important resources in families' investment in children's earnings capacity. The relationship is likely to be moderated, however, by the fact that monetary resources are not the sole family resource of importance, and by counterbalancing effects of progressive policy, notably as far as educational policy is concerned. Also, the relationship between inequality and stratification is likely to exhibit considerable time lags, and empirical analyses of contemporaneous correlations are unlikely to be informative in consequence. Owing to the substantial data requirements, few convincing empirical studies on the inequality–stratification relationship are available at present. More reliable evidence is available from studies of the relationship between inequality and educational attainment, arguably the key interim process in stratification. Here, empirical results suggest rising inequality to cause rising inequality of educational achievement, notably because well‐off families are able to increase children's attainment in the face of rising economic incentives, whereas lower income families are less able to do so. The essay concludes by suggesting key areas of future research, likely to be spurred by the increasing sophistication of analytical models and the increasing quality of available intergenerational data on earnings, incomes and socioeconomic standing.
Taking Personality to the Next Level: What Does It Mean to Know a Person?
Authors: Wilson Robert , Vazire Simine
Published: May 2015

What does it mean to know a person? In his famous article, McAdams (1995) addresses this question from the perspective of personality psychology and concludes that personality traits are “the psychology of the stranger.” To really know someone, you need to know more than just how they typically think, feel, and behave on average (a common definition of traits). You need to know how their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors change depending on their role and context, why those fluctuations occur (the underlying motives and causes of those patterns), and how they make sense of their own patterns over time (their life narrative). In this essay, we argue that although there has been little empirical work on within‐person fluctuations in personality, the time is ripe to examine these patterns. New technology has made it possible to quantify momentary thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and to track the contextual factors that underlie these fluctuations (i.e., “personality signatures”). By capturing individual differences at this dynamic level, we can gain a better understanding of how people differ from one another. This will also open the door to new research questions, such as investigating the amount of insight people have into their own and others' personality signatures.
Technology Diffusion
Authors: Jaffe Adam B.
Published: May 2015

Technology diffusion is the process by which new technologies are adopted for use across individual firms or households in a given market, and across different markets. The most salient facts about this process are that it always plays out over time, and the time before adoption is widespread varies greatly across technologies. The dominant explanations for gradual adoption are the time needed for information about the technology to diffuse, and heterogeneity among adopters, such that those for whom the benefits of the new technologies adopt first, while those for whom the benefits are less wait until the technology has improved and/or its cost has fallen. Research has focused on the nature of the information diffusion process, and the attributes of firms and households that affect their adoption decisions. Promising areas for new research include the application of insights ad methods from behavioral economics, the linking of formal models to empirical research, the diffusion of technology to less developed countries and its role in economic development, and public policy issues related to technology diffusion in important sectors such as health care and global climate change.
Text Analysis
Authors: Roberts Carl W.
Published: May 2015

Even once words have been counted, or their themes and semantics quantitatively rendered as networks or grammars, it remains unclear what they reveal. Are the texts windows into historical facts that the analyst cannot experience in person, or are they windows into their authors' perspectives? A choice is needed here, because authors' perspectives may alter their renderings of “the facts” and, conversely, changes in an author's surroundings may prompt changes in her or his perspective. Next, is the researcher a novice who strives for fidelity to authors' perspectives, or is the researcher an expert whose perspective affords insights unknown to the authors? With contemporary growth in both world population and communication technologies, increasing contacts among peoples with disparate perspectives afford the social sciences an opportunity both to improve our understanding of these perspectives (or cultures) and to discontinue mining words for evidence consistent with theoretical perspectives of our own choosing. Modality analysis is a promising method for performing historical‐comparative analyses of political cultures based on the volumes of texts only recently available to us.
Genetic and Environmental Approaches to Political Science
Authors: Fazekas Zoltán , Hatemi Peter K.
Published: May 2015

Over the past decade, a growing interest in the possibility that biological factors, including genes, might contribute to individual differences in political and social behaviors has emerged. Behavioral genetic techniques have provided a variety of approaches to quantify the effects of genetic and nongenetic inheritance. However, until quite recently, these methods were largely unknown to political scientists. In this essay, we review the general approaches to modeling genetic and social influences on differences in complex human social traits. In so doing, we focus on the “genetics of politics,” including attitudes, ideologies, voting, and partisanship. The emergence of this research reflects a paradigm shift in the study of social traits necessitating the inclusion of biological influences, and recognizing the interdependence of genetic, social, and environmental factors in the development of political behaviors over the life course.
The Role of Cultural, Social, and Psychological Factors in Disease and Illness
Authors: Scott Robert A.
Published: May 2015

Understanding the effects of social, psychological, and cultural processes on the body raises age‐old questions that remain perplexing puzzles still today. Research by biomedical, social, and behavioral scientists on the role played by these factors in causing disease and people's subjective experience of it promises to advance understanding of issues about the connections between mind and body. This essay summarizes findings from relevant areas of research, identifies the most promising lines of inquiry to date, poses questions that remain to be investigated going forward, and concludes with speculation about possible applications of existing and prospective new knowledge in health‐related and other arenas of social practice.

Among the various avenues of research relevant to this topic, three in particular stand out. They are (i) studies of the connections between stress and sickness, (ii) studies of persons' subjective experiences of physical symptoms, and (iii) studies of expectancy effects. Studies of stress document the physical effects of long‐term exposure to adverse social, psychological, and environmental conditions, the role these play in causing disease, their effects on people's experiences of sickness, and on their ability to recover. Studies of symptom perception focus on people's subjective experiences of being ill, investigating ways in which aspects of culture, social environment, traits of personality, and psychological states affect our awareness of bodily symptoms, and how we interpret and experience them subjectively. Studies of expectancy effects, commonly referred to asthe placeboorthe healing response, aim to learn if beliefs alone can have physiologically measurable effects on bodily symptoms and on our perceptions of them, on how we feel and on how we respond to the treatments we are given.

Taken together, these areas of research support the conclusion that understanding sickness requires simultaneous knowledge of two factors: the biological conditions diagnosed on the basis of physical signs (disease) and an individual's subjective experiences of the physical symptoms that a disease manifests (illness).
The Role of Data in Research and Policy
Authors: Anderson Barbara A.
Published: May 2015

Data are essential for scientific research and policy planning. However, there needs to be attention to data quality and to the estimates and models based on those data. In addition, data need to be freely available for researchers to test new ideas and validate the work of others through replication, while respondents who provide data need to be protected. Three issues concerning data are addressed: (i) availability and accuracy of data for new research and reanalysis while protecting human subjects, (ii) problems with the estimation of indicators based on flawed or nongeneralizable data, and (iii) the use of data to develop models for projecting the future, the assumptions on which those models are based, and the assessment of the accuracy of past projections. In each of these areas, increased attention is necessary on how data are used, interpreted, and made available to the scholarly and policy community.
The Social Science of Sustainability
Authors: Urpelainen Johannes
Published: May 2015

The sustainability of socioeconomic systems is widely recognized as a key global challenge, and a social science of sustainable societies is now emerging. Social scientists have made commendable progress in quantifying the cost‐effectiveness of different environmental policy instruments, explaining their diffusion across nations, and documenting the phenomenon of historical and ongoing sustainability transitions. However, social scientists should pay much more attention to the political economy of environmental policy formulation, the challenge of building coalitions that support more ambitious policies to promote sustainability, and the development of analytical models and testable hypotheses about sustainability transitions. Owing to the inherently problem‐oriented nature of sustainability, the social science of sustainability must be strongly interdisciplinary, both among social sciences and with respect to the natural sciences. For the social science of sustainability to survive and thrive over time, academic researchers must both maintain the highest analytical standards and focus on research questions and answers that contribute to the solution of problems that practitioners face.
The Sociology of Religious Experience
Authors: Porpora Douglas
Published: May 2015

This essay examines the sociology of religious experience within the broader context of how other disciplines also study the same phenomenon. It explains the principle of methodological atheism sociologists have typically employed in the study of religion, which goes back to Peter Berger'sThe Sacred Canopy. The principle expressly excludes the possibility that subjects of religious experience may actually be experiencing something real that contributes to their experience. As a consequence, other disciplines and even some sociologists have recently departed from methodological atheism in favor of an approach that might be called methodological agnosticism. This essay examines that shift and the research agenda thereby opened up.
To Flop Is Human: Inventing Better Scientific Approaches to Anticipating Failure
Authors: Boruch Robert , Ruby Alan
Published: May 2015

Postmortems and autopsies, at the individual and hospital unit levels, are disciplined approaches to learning from medical failures. “Safety factors” that engineers use in designing structures and systems are based on past failures or trials and experiments to find points of failure.

The applied social sciences, including education sciences, labor economics, and criminology, have less clarity about failure. While a bridge collapse is usually plain and spectacular, failures of education innovations or attempts at crime control are often quieter, not spectacular, and often occur for no transparent reasons.

The applied social sciences lack disciplined, well‐developed, and explicit approaches to anticipating the failure to meet expectations in testing the effectiveness of programs, analyzing the failures, and building a cumulative knowledge base on the phenomenon. Our fields can, for instance, identify “what works” pretty well from randomized controlled trials.However, little serious attention has been dedicated to understanding “why” and “how” a particular intervention failed to meet expectations in well‐executed randomized controlled trials. This essay discusses a variety of research initiatives that are designed to better understand failure, especially in controlled trials.
A Social Psychological Approach to Racializing Wealth Inequality
Authors: Brown Joey
Published: May 2015

Since the Civil Rights' movements of the 1960s, some Blacks have advanced socioeconomically, resulting in a flourishing Black middle‐class. The Black middle‐class has experienced upward mobility as measured by traditional indicators of education and income. Cultural narratives promoting colorblindness and stressing the rise of a postracial, meritocratic America uphold Black advancement as a symbol of success. However, a focus on racial wealth inequality complicates the narrative of Black success and tells a different story regarding the life chances of Black Americans, even those who are middle‐class. This essay explicates foundational research on the increasing visibility of the Black middle‐class and racial wealth inequality. Secondly, it discusses advances in research on race and wealth inequality as well as recent social psychological theory on social class that may be useful in thinking about mechanisms and consequences of racial wealth inequality. Finally, the essay raises some key issues and questions for social psychologists interested in racial wealth inequality. By no means exhaustive, the goal is to begin a conversation on how social psychologists can contribute to understanding racial wealth inequality. In particular, social psychological work may help us understand continuing racial wealth inequality by considering the role of financial socialization, addressing tensions between objective and subjective social class identification, and thinking about the role of self and identity in wealth creation, accumulation, and dissemination.
Transformation of the Employment Relationship
Authors: Kalleberg Arne L. , Marsden Peter V.
Published: May 2015

Employment relations are implicit or explicit contractual arrangements that specify the reciprocal expectations and obligations linking employers and employees. They encompass a wide range of phenomena, including work organization, governance, evaluation, and rewards. During the past quarter century, the standard employment relationship that was normative in much of the world during the twentieth century declined in favor of various nonstandard employment relations involving more tenuous employer–employee linkages. The transformation of employment relations has been associated with a wide range of phenomena including growth in economic and social inequality, shifting career patterns, and changes in the organization of work.
Trends in Street Crime and the Crime Drop
Authors: Rosenfeld Richard
Published: May 2015

After rising for nearly three decades, rates of street crime have declined in the United States since the early 1990s. Researchers have attributed the crime swings to changes in the economy, age structure, imprisonment, and drug markets. Recent studies also highlight the role of immigration, abortion policy, and policing. A major challenge for future research on crime trends is to explain why street crime did not increase during the Great Recession of 2008–2009. National research agencies should devote attention to the question of why and how crime rates change over time.
Two‐Systems View of Children's Theory‐of‐Mind Understanding
Authors: Low Jason
Published: May 2015

Theory‐of‐mind research reveals a puzzling pattern of young children showing implicit “mindreading” success in indirect false‐belief tasks well before they can pass explicit tasks where they are asked to make direct predictions about the mistaken agent's belief or behavior. Relevant theorizing has either boosted indirect responses (e.g., eye movements) as showcasing infants' and young children's innate psychological reasoning system or scoffed at indirect responses as reflecting only a shallow causal understanding of behavior. This essay describes new theorizing suggesting that we have not one but two mindreading systems—an implicit efficient system (shared by infants, children, and adults) that supports spontaneous responses such as eye gazing and an explicit flexible system (constructed from age 4 onward) that supports direct verbal responses. This view has inspired cutting‐edge research documenting signature limits on the kinds of input that the efficient mindreading system processes. New research shows that the efficient system is set to help young children and adults minimally track facts relating to agents and objects, but not relations between agents and propositions. The flexible system—supporting understanding of belief as such—guides children's direct verbal inferences in a wide range of perspective‐taking situations that include ascribing how people interpret a particular object. Future research into the question of how human beings mindread in fast‐moving situations will need insight into whether there are systematic patterns of limits on implicit understanding that converge across age groups, multiple paradigms, and diverse populations.
Household Wealth Effects and theUSMacroeconomy
Authors: Dynan Karen , Cooper Daniel
Published: May 2015

The effect of wealth on consumption is an issue of long‐standing interest to economists. Analysts believe that fluctuations in household wealth have driven major swings in economic activity. This essay considers the so‐called “wealth effects”—the impact of changes in wealth on household consumption and the overall macroeconomy. There is an extensive existing literature on wealth effects, but there are also many unanswered issues and questions. This essay reviews the important issues regarding the role wealth plays in the macroeconomy and argues that there is a need for much more wealth effect research as well as better data sources for conducting such analysis.
Why do States Pursue Nuclear Weapons (or Not)
Authors: Wan Wilfred , Solingen Etel
Published: May 2015

This essay traces the evolution of the literature on the rationale behind states' pursuit of nuclear weapons, from classical neorealist explanations focusing on relative power to neoliberal institutionalist ones underlining the deterrent power of institutions and constructivist work on the impact of norms, status, and identities. We call attention to their contributions as well as their conceptual and empirical deficiencies and introduce an approach that links both nuclear ambition and nuclear restraint to models of domestic political survival. The inclusion of this previously overlooked independent variable harnesses the utility of extant approaches, allowing more effective weighing of the impact of other causal variables, while accounting for variation over time, across and within states. We take stock of more recent work employing quantitative and qualitative approaches and identify an agenda for advancing causal theories explaining why some states pursue nuclear weapons whereas others do not.
Why Do States Sign Alliances?
Authors: Leeds Brett Ashley
Published: May 2015

Despite the fact that policy‐makers and scholars of international politics have often expressed skepticism about the efficacy of international agreements, formal military alliances have been an important feature of international politics for centuries. This essay first introduces the dominant explanation for why states sign alliance treaties: state leaders use formal alliances to convey credible information about their future intentions to partners and adversaries. It then considers empirical evidence in support of this perspective, particularly with regard to deterrence and compliance. Following this summary, I raise five puzzles that contemporary researchers are working to resolve, but which leave room for further analysis and development. First, I discuss the challenges faced by large n empirical studies of alliance formation. Next, I ask why strong states ally with weak states and consider some of the most compelling recent explanations. Third, I consider the complicated relationships between alliances and war. Fourth, I examine how alliances affect cooperation among member states. Finally, I encourage scholars to continue a recent focus on how alliances are designed. While we have seen significant progress in understanding military alliances over the last 20 years, primarily because of the development of game‐theoretic models that capture strategic interaction and the collection of new data that allow for nuanced tests of the hypothesized relationships, there is good reason to believe that we will continue to see significant innovation over the next decade.
Women Running for Office
Authors: Lawless Jennifer L.
Published: May 2015

When women run for office, they tend to fare at least as well as their male counterparts. From vote totals, to fund‐raising receipts, to media coverage, to voters' evaluations, male and female candidates have become increasingly indistinguishable from one another. This is not to suggest, however, that gender is irrelevant in US politics. It might not prevent women from winning their elections, but it substantially stunts their emergence as candidates in the first place. Women are less likely than similarly situated men to consider running for office and actually to emerge as candidates. This gender gap in political ambition can be traced to differences in the manner in which women and men perceive themselves as potential candidates, as well as how electoral gatekeepers view them. The extant scholarship, therefore, suggests that if we want to understand gender dynamics in contemporary US politics, then we must focus our efforts on the precandidacy stage of the process. More specifically, pinpointing the origins of the gender gap in political ambition and developing an understanding of how political ambition evolves are crucial next steps for the women and politics subfield.
World Trade Organization and Judicial Enforcement of International Trade Law
Authors: Pelc Krzysztof J.
Published: May 2015

The Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is an international court of unprecedented ambition. This essay examines why countries agreed to delegate as much power as they did to this international legal body, by looking to the rise of US unilateralism during the 1970s. I then offer an overview of the DSU's functioning, which concludes that its effectiveness derives more from the way it forces countries to negotiate in the shadow of the law than from the threat of material sanctions following noncompliance. Finally, I assess some widespread concerns about how developing countries fare in the system. I show that while there does exist a cleavage between rich and poor countries in dispute settlement, it does not lie where conventional wisdom often has it.
Youth Entrepreneurship
Authors: Damon William , Bronk Kendall Cotton , Porter Tenelle
Published: May 2015

Entrepreneurship is critical to job creation and economic growth in the United States and abroad; however, interest in pursuing entrepreneurial careers is on the decline among young people today. As a means of designing programs that effectively encourage and prepare young people to pursue entrepreneurial careers, this essay calls for increased focus on how entrepreneurs develop. An understanding of the experiences, opportunities, and interests that lead to successful entrepreneurship is needed. To that end, this essay, in addition to addressing leading process‐oriented definitions of entrepreneurship and briefly reviewing relevant empirical studies, outlines three promising areas of research on youth entrepreneurship. First, researchers have becoming increasingly interested in entrepreneurial purposes. Recent research finds that at least some young people seek out entrepreneurial careers as a means of applying their skills and talents to create organizations or businesses that solve personally meaningful problems in the broader world. This leads to the second emerging area of interest in youth entrepreneurship: the distinction between social and business entrepreneurship. The growth of new businesses and organizations that are at once highly profitable and at the same time exist to address social problems has blurred this distinction. Third, researchers are increasingly interested in identifying ways of effectively fostering entrepreneurial interests. This essay highlights key issues regarding the role that educational experiences and institutional support play in supporting the development of successful entrepreneurs.
Motherhood
Authors: Hinde Katie
Published: May 2015

Motherhood is fundamentally the state of being a mother. In mammals this manifests as behaviorally nurturing and physiologically nourishing one's young. The state of motherhood requires substantial and dramatic changes in the mother's behavior, brain, and body. Moreover among humans, motherhood occurs within a familial, socioeconomic, and cultural context. Among many animals, to become a mother marks the transition to a new stage of life, from a period dedicated to growth and development to a period of sexual maturity and productivity. Considering trade‐offs within and across the stages of the life course, known aslife history theory, is essential to understand motherhood. Moreover, the interests of the mother and the infant overlap, but are not identical, leading to conflicts of interest. Here we will consider established and emerging topics of investigation into motherhood—from the neuron to the society—and directions for the future.