bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Neighborhood Disadvantage, Social Comparisons, and the Subjective Assessment of Ambient Problems Among Older Adults
Authors: Schieman Scott , Pearlin Leonard I.
Published: January 2010

Using data from adults age 65 and older in the District of Columbia and two adjoining counties in Maryland, we examine the association between community-level structural disadvantage and individuals' subjective assessments of neighborhood problems. In addition, we test whether or not perceptions of relative financial equality or inequality with neighbors moderate those effects. Results show an overall positive relationship between community-level disadvantage and perceived neighborhood problems, regardless of social comparisons. That positive association, however, is weakest among people who feel relatively similar to neighbors; it is strongest among individuals who feel relatively advantaged and those who do not know their relative financial standing. We discuss the implications of these findings with respect to stress and status homology processes in neighborhoods.
Does Trust Beget Trustworthiness? Trust and Trustworthiness in Two Games and Two Cultures: A Research Note
Authors: Kiyonari Toko , Yamagishi Toshio , Cook Karen S. , Cheshire Coye
Published: January 2010

An important unanswered question in the empirical literature on trust is whether trusting begets trustworthiness. In two experimental games, with Japanese and American participants, respectively, we compared trust and trustworthiness to provide an answer to this question. The trustee in the standard Trust Game knows that he or she is trusted, whereas the trustee in the Faith Game does not know whether or not this is the case. Except for this fact, the trustee faces the same choice in both situations. If the simple fact that one is trusted by someone else makes a person more trustworthy to the truster, then the trustee in the Trust Game should behave in a more trustworthy manner. Our results indicate that trust does not beget trustworthiness, at least in one-shot games. The results also indicate that trust and trustworthiness are two sides of the same coin but are quite distinct, partially replicating the recent findings of Buchan, Croson, and Dawes. American trusters were more trusting than their Japanese counterparts in the Trust Game, whereas American trustees were less trustworthy. The nationality difference in trust and trustworthiness is less pronounced in the Faith Game. We conclude that trust researchers should consider the limitations of one-shot games in studying the determinants of trust and trustworthiness.
Gendered Patterns in Adolescents' School Attachment
Authors: Johnson Monica Kirkpatrick , Crosnoe Robert , Thaden Lyssa L.
Published: January 2010

A substantial literature documents a gender reversal in many aspects of social psychological functioning during adolescence, in which girls fall below boys in domains in which they once enjoyed advantages. This study elaborates upon recent research from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health suggesting that this phenomenon may occur in school attachment, an aspect of educational adjustment. Our analysis of grade 7 through 12 students revealed a gender reversal in school attachment only among whites; although gender differences at each grade level were quite small, the larger differences among girls produced the reversal pattern. Self-esteem, depressive symptoms, and relationships with parents appear to be key factors tied to this reversal but ultimately do not account for grade level differences among girls. We also found that the paradoxical coupling of girls' higher achievement with lower attachment in the upper grades resulted from a weaker association between attachment and achievement among girls than among boys, especially in the upper grades.
Accentuate The Positive: Positive Sentiments And Status In Task Groups
Authors: Bianchi Alison J. , Lancianese Donna A.
Published: January 2010

We explore the capacity of positive sentiments, those enduring affective states one achieves when one likes another, to impact status structures. Do positive sentiments combine with existing aspects of interaction to create status hierarchies and potentially change the social order, or do they moderate the effects of extant structure by dampening the magnitude of status differences? Using the theoretical framework of Status Characteristics Theory (SCT) and the Camilleri-Berger model of decision-making, we designed an experiment to adjudicate between these two potentialities. Participation in the study consisted of 168 students. Results found support for the notion that positive sentiments moderate the effects of structural factors on indicators of social status; interestingly, this moderation effect varies by gender. We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings, and new directions for research concerning sentiment and status processes.
Socioeconomic Status and Financial Coping Strategies: The Mediating Role of Perceived Control
Authors: Caplan Leslie J. , Schooler Carmi
Published: January 2010

We examine the relations among socioeconomic status, control beliefs, and two coping styles (problem-focused vs. emotion-focused) in the context of financial stress. Findings indicate that low socioeconomic status (SES) is linked to greater use of emotion-focused financial coping and lesser use of problem-focused financial coping. The effects of SES on the use of problem-focused financial coping appear to be entirely mediated by two measures of perceived control: self-confidence and fatalism. In contrast, the effects of SES on emotion-focused financial coping are not mediated in this way. Results also indicated that problem-focused and emotion-focused financial coping are differentially related to financial stress and to general psychosocial distress. These results suggest that low SES may decrease one's control beliefs, which in turn decrease the likelihood of choosing effective financial coping processes, resulting in double disadvantage.
Perceived Discrimination and Interracial Contact: Predicting Interracial Closeness among Black and White Americans
Authors: Tropp Linda R.
Published: January 2010

This research examines whether perceptions of discrimination moderate relationships between interracial contact and feelings of interracial closeness among black and white Americans, using survey responses gathered by the National Conference for Community and Justice (2000). Results indicate that the general association between contact and interracial closeness is significantly weaker among black respondents than among white respondents. Moreover, while contact relates consistently to greater interracial closeness among white respondents, perceived discrimination moderates this relationship among black respondents, such that significant contact effects are not observed for those who perceive considerable discrimination against their racial group. At the same time, other results suggest that contact in the form of interracial friendships may help to augment black Americans' reports of interracial closeness, and diminish the role of perceived discrimination. Implications of these findings for future studies of contact between members of racial minority and majority groups are discussed.
Selective Incentives and Generalized Information Exchange
Authors: Cheshire Coye
Published: January 2010

The goal of this research is to understand how generalized exchange systems emerge when information, as the object of exchange, produces a collective good. When individuals contribute information for a collective benefit, it can create a group-generalized exchange system that involves a social dilemma. I argue that two properties of information, replication and high jointness of supply, are crucial for understanding the nature of the social dilemma in these exchange systems. Combined with low-cost contributions, these special features of information can allow social psychological selective incentives to significantly encourage cooperation. Experiments were conducted to examine the independent effects of two social psychological selective incentives (social approval and observational cooperation) on sharing behavior in a generalized information exchange system. The results indicate that observing high levels of cooperative behavior is beneficial in the short run, but ultimately it only leads to moderately higher levels of cooperation than when individuals cannot observe cooperative behavior. On the other hand, when individuals receive either high or low levels of social approval, it has a very positive, significant impact on cooperative behavior. This research has implications for real-world generalized information exchange systems such as those found on the Internet. In addition, the theory and results in this study can also be extended to public goods that share the features of low-costs contributions, replication, and high jointness of supply.
The Strength of Weak Identities: Social Structural Sources of Self, Situation and Emotional Experience
Authors: Smith-Lovin Lynn
Published: January 2010

Modern societies are highly differentiated, with relatively uncorrelated socially salient dimensions and a preponderance of weak, unidimensional (as opposed to strong, multiplex) ties. What are the implications of a society with fewer strong ties and more weak ties for the self? What do these changes mean for our emotional experience in everyday life? I outline a structural view of self, situated identity, and emotion. It is an ecological theory in which interpersonal encounters are the link between the macro-level community structure and the micro-level experience of self-conception, identity performance, and emotion. In this ecology of encounters, multiple-identity enactments (especially of salient self-identities) are quite rare. But where they occur, they are important indicators of potential social change.
Between Deference and Distinction: Interaction Ritual Through Symbolic Power in an Educational Institution
Authors: Hallett Tim
Published: January 2010

In this article I provide a meso-level account of the interactional-institutional link by revisiting Goffman's analysis of deference and demeanor in light of Bourdieu's discussion of institutional fields, cultural capital, and symbolic power. To acquire deference, one must exhibit the appropriate demeanor towards others, and one must be equipped with the cultural capital that fits the institutional context. Once acquired, deference is a kind of credit that can be deployed as the symbolic power to frame (define) actions, situations, and events in ways that induce compliance and shape the social order. I also consider how these dynamics are gendered in particular contexts. Data from a two-year ethnographic study of “Costen Elementary School” brings the emergent theory to life. The theory helps explain interactions at the school and the efforts of administrators who tried to change the institutional order from autonomy to accountability. By analyzing how deference and symbolic power operate in an institutional context, I advance the “negotiated order” branch of symbolic interaction. Because social psychologists have long held that actions are informed by the definition of the situation, I argue that symbolic power is central to the field.
How do We Learn to Trust? A Confirmatory Tetrad Analysis of the Sources of Generalized Trust
Authors: Glanville Jennifer L. , Paxton Pamela
Published: January 2010

In this paper we ask whether individuals decide that people are generally trustworthy or untrustworthy by extrapolating from their experiences in localized interactions or whether a more fixed predisposition drives assessments of trustworthiness. These two contrasting theoretical perspectives on generalized trust can be translated into empirically testable models and adjudicated using confirmatory tetrad analysis. This paper is among the first substantive applications of confirmatory tetrad analysis and illustrates an important advantage of this technique—the ability to distinguish between causal and reflective indicators of a latent variable. We find that individuals develop a generalized expectation of trustworthiness based on their experiences with different groups of people in localized settings. We demonstrate the robustness of our results across disparate samples and spatially dissimilar survey sites.
Are Immigrants Healthier? The Case of Depression among Filipino Americans
Authors: Mossakowski Krysia N.
Published: January 2010

Immigration has fundamentally changed American society by increasing racial and ethnic diversity. Yet, our knowledge of the relationship between immigrant status and mental health remains limited. This study provides evidence that Filipino American immigrants have significantly lower levels of depressive symptoms than Filipinos born in the United States, net of gender, age, marital status, socioeconomic status, and place of residence. I also examine the mediating effects of individualism, collectivism, ethnic identification, and perceived racial/ethnic discrimination to understand why immigrants are healthier. Furthermore, my results suggest that age at immigration warrants more attention. Immigrating during childhood predicts significantly higher levels of depressive symptoms in adulthood than immigrating after childhood, independent of the duration of residence in the United States. Although this study is specific to Filipino Americans, it has implications for theories about selective migration and the social psychological ramifications of adapting to American culture as a racial/ethnic minority.
The Affective Regulation of Social Interaction
Authors: Clore Gerald L. , Pappas Jesse
Published: January 2010

The recent publication of David Heise's Expressive Order (2007) provides an occasion for discussing some of the key ideas in Affect Control Theory. The theory proposes that a few dimensions of affective meaning provide a common basis for interrelating personal identities and social actions. It holds that during interpersonal interactions, social behavior is continually regulated to maintain an affective tone compatible with whatever social roles or identities define the situation. We outline the intellectual history of the proposed dimensions and of the idea that each social action invites an action from the other that has a particular location along these dimensions. We also relate these ideas to the Affect-as-Information hypothesis, an approach that often guides research in psychology on the role of affect in regulating judgment and thought.
Mastery and the Fulfillment of Occupational Expectations by Midlife
Authors: Reynolds John R. , Burge Stephanie Woodham , Robbins Cheryl L. , Boyd Emily M. , Harris Brandy
Published: January 2010

This paper tests the central tenet of social psychology and the life-course perspective that broader contexts of opportunity and constraint moderate the ability of individuals to act on their plans and ambitions. We use the 1972 National Longitudinal Study to assess the impact of mastery on achieving one's occupational expectations and to determine if the benefits of mastery are contingent on structural contexts. Three types of structural constraints are examined: local employment conditions, marriage and family, and the credentialing of upper-status occupations. In general, mastery is associated with more ambitious and stable expectations over time. Results from discrete-time event history models show that personal mastery is positively associated with achieving one's occupational expectations, and the association is contingent on some, but not all, structural constraints. Marriage increases the effect of mastery on the odds of achieving one's occupational expectations, but having children decreases mastery's effect. Mastery is more beneficial to those pursuing training-intensive occupations, partly due to the acquisition of post-secondary credentials. Lastly, women receive less of a benefit from mastery than men do, likely due to the structural barriers women face in the workplace. Contrary to expectations, poor local employment conditions do not weaken mastery's influence on goal attainment.
Becoming American: Stereotype Threat Effects in Afro-Caribbean Immigrant Groups
Authors: Deaux Kay , Bikmen Nida , Gilkes Alwyn , Ventuneac Ana , Joseph Yvanne , Payne Yasser A. , Steele Claude M.
Published: January 2010

Educational and occupational data suggest that second-generation West Indian immigrants have less favorable outcomes than their first-generation counterparts, who are typically shown to outperform comparison groups of African Americans. In two studies, we explore the social psychological process of stereotype threat as it differentially affects the performance of first-and second-generation West Indian students. An initial questionnaire study of 270 West Indian students provided data on perceived favorability of African American and West Indian stereotypes, ethnic identification, and perceptions of discrimination. An experimental study of stereotype threat showed a significant interaction between generation and stereotype threat condition: first-and second-generation West Indian students performed equally in neutral conditions, but differed significantly when stereotype threat was present. While first-generation students increased their performance in the threat condition, second-generation students showed the performance decrements characteristic of African American students. Effects due to the race of the experimenter were also found, suggesting the importance of context in testing situations. Overall, the findings argue for the relevance of psychological processes in understanding broader demographic patterns of immigration and change.
Are Racial Identities of Multiracials Stable? Changing Self-Identification Among Single and Multiple Race Individuals
Authors: Mihoko Doyle Jamie , Kao Grace
Published: January 2010

Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we estimate the determinants and direction of change in individual racial identification among multiracial and monoracial adolescents as they transition to young adulthood. We find that while many multiracials subsequently identify as monoracials, sizable numbers of monoracials also subsequently become multiracials. Native American-whites appear to have the least stable identification. We find strong support that socioeconomic status, gender, and physical appearance shape the direction of change for multiracials, and that black biracials are especially compelled to identify as monoracial blacks.
Questioning Children: Interactional Evidence of Implicit Bias in Medical Interviews
Authors: Stivers Tanya , Majid Asifa
Published: January 2010

Social psychologists have shown experimentally that implicit race bias can influence an individual's behavior. Implicit bias has been suggested to be more subtle and less subject to cognitive control than more explicit forms of racial prejudice. Little is known about how implicit bias is manifest in naturally occurring social interaction. This study examines the factors associated with physicians selecting children rather than parents to answer questions in pediatric interviews about routine childhood illnesses. Analysis of the data using a Generalized Linear Latent and Mixed Model demonstrates a significant effect of parent race and education on whether physicians select children to answer questions. Black children and Latino children of low-education parents are less likely to be selected to answer questions than their same aged white peers irrespective of education. One way that implicit bias manifests itself in naturally occurring interaction may be through the process of speaker selection during questioning.
Culture, Identity, and Structure in Social Exchange: A Web-based Trust Experiment in the United States and Japan
Authors: Kuwabara Ko , Willer Robb , Macy Michael W. , Mashima Rie , Terai Shigeru , Yamagishi Toshio
Published: January 2010

Cross-cultural trust and cooperation are important concerns for international markets, political cooperation, and cultural exchange. Until recently, this problem was difficult to study under controlled conditions due to the inability to conduct experiments involving interaction between participants located in physically distant locations. We report results of an experiment using a Web-based “virtual lab” to study trust and trustworthiness between Japanese and Americans in real-time interaction. Participants played a variation of the Trust Game in two different experimental conditions: a “flags-on” condition in which everyone's nationality was publicly identified during the session, and a “flags-off” condition in which participants did not know who was Japanese or American. The findings most strongly support Yamagishi's structural theory of trust, which predicts that Japanese will form more durable exchange relations compared to Americans. We found less support for explanations that focus on cultural differences in trust and trustworthiness, and for cognitive explanations that point to the effects of a shared social identity between participants and partners with common nationality.
Calibrating Prejudice in Milliseconds
Authors: Tetlock Philip E. , Mitchell Gregory
Published: January 2010

Psychological social psychologists have devoted great effort to measuring the elusive construct of unconscious prejudice. However, recent work underscores both the psychometric flaws of these measures and the weaknesses in claims that they predict behavior in realistic organizational settings. Before accepting unconscious prejudice as an inevitable source of individual-level disparate treatment and endorsing structural solutions such as quotas, sociological social psychologists need to explore the relative efficacy of institutional norms and accountability systems widely used for checking both conscious and unconscious forms of individual-level bias.
Majority, Minority, and Parity: Effects of Gender and Group Size on Perceived Group Variability
Authors: Voci Alberto , Hewstone Miles , Crisp Richard J. , Rubin Mark
Published: January 2010

We investigated the effects of gender and group size on perceptions of group variability, using groups of students taking different majors that varied in the proportion of men and women (female-majority, parity, and male-majority). We found that both group size and gender had consistent effects on perceived out-group variability, even when potentially confounded alternative explanations were assessed. Men showed a stronger out-group homogeneity effect than women, except when women were in the majority (Studies One and Two), and women showed no in-group homogeneity effect. There was an association between out-group homogeneity and the tendency to generate more subgroups for the in-group than out-group (Study Two), but perceived variability was not associated with familiarity, distinctiveness, perceived group size, or perceived group status. These consistent effects qualify the conclusions of prior research in important ways, and cannot be explained in terms of differences in stereotype accuracy (Study Three), or a confound between the gender majority of a major and its perceived status (Study Four). We discuss our findings in terms of theoretical explanations for gender and size effects on out-group homogeneity, and methodological considerations.
Privileged Emotion Managers: The Case of Actors
Authors: Orzechowicz David
Published: January 2010

Theatre1 provides a unique set of conditions for the management of emotions. Drawing on participant observation from one repertory theater, three university productions, and interviews with stage actors, directors, and acting instructors, I conceptualize actors as privileged emotion managers. Actors access structural resources that enable their ability to manage feelings onstage. Theatre's division of labor, the rehearsal process, and formal training give actors important advantages in managing emotions compared to many other social settings, and demonstrate structural recognition of and support for feeling management. These structures outsource some of an actor's emotion management and provide a set of institutionally prescribed strategies that actors use to manage feelings during a production.
Exploring the Role of Diagnosis in the Modified Labeling Theory of Mental Illness
Authors: Kroska Amy , Harkness Sarah K.
Published: January 2010

According to the modified labeling theory of mental illness, when an individual is diagnosed with a mental illness, cultural ideas associated with the mentally ill become personally relevant and foster negative self-feelings. We explore the way that psychiatric diagnosis shapes this process. Specifically, we examine if and how psychiatric patients' diagnostic category (adjustment, affective, or schizophrenic) moderates the relationship between stigma sentiments and the meanings associated with self-identities (“myself as I really am”) and reflected appraisals (“myself as others see me”). Stigma sentiments are the evaluation, potency, and activity associated with the cultural category “a mentally ill person.” We find that diagnosis moderates several of these relationships and that the results among patients with an affective diagnosis best match the stigma sentiment hypotheses derived from the modified labeling theory. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for the stigma sentiment hypotheses. We also highlight several avenues for future research.
Social Psychology, Social Science, and Economics: Twentieth Century Progress and Problems, Twenty-first Century Prospects
Authors: House James S.
Published: January 2010

Stimulated by social scientists' and especially social psychologists' contributions during World War II, as well as by America's post-war economic and population growth, the period from 1945 to 1970 was widely viewed as a “Golden Age” for American social science. Interdisciplinary social psychology arguably was in the vanguard of these developments. Progress since then have been variable and in some ways negative for social psychology, not only as an interdisciplinary field, but also within its parent disciplines of psychology and especially sociology, where social psychology could plausibly become extinct within twenty-five years. The decline of social psychology as a field and a broad influence on the social sciences, society, and public policy has coincided with a rise of economics to an analogous vanguard position. Understanding the reasons for and implications of these trends has been limited, with a focus on analyses of developments within particular disciplines. However, developments across the social sciences, and society more broadly, are equally or more important to understanding these trends. Future prospects also depend heavily on these broader societal forces, but the inertial tendencies of trajectories since 1970 within and between social science disciplines and fields will necessarily play a major role. The twenty-first century offers the prospect of renewed importance of social psychology in a more interdisciplinary and integrated set of social and policy sciences, if social psychologists and the parent disciplines of sociology and psychology are prepared to capitalize on and take leadership of emerging opportunities.
Racial-Ethnic Self-Schemas and Segmented Assimilation: Identity and the Academic Achievement of Hispanic Youth
Authors: Altschul Inna , Oyserman Daphna , Bybee Deborah
Published: January 2010

How are racial-ethnic identity and acculturation processes linked, and when do they have positive consequences for academic achievement and assimilation trajectory? To address these issues this study integrates two frameworks—segmented assimilation (Portes and Rumbaut 2001) and racial-ethnic self-schema (Oyserman et al. 2003)—that focus on how immigrant and minority youth identify with their in-group and American society at large and link these patterns of racial-ethnic identity with academic outcomes. Segmented assimilation describes how context influences identity and subsequently assimilation trajectory, while racial-ethnic self-schema theory relates differences in identity content to academic achievement. Integration of the two frameworks provides a more robust model of identity influences across contexts. Predicted relationships within inhospitable contexts were tested using structural equation models connecting three measures of acculturation—immigrant generation in the United States, Spanish-use, and identity—to academic achievement of Hispanic youth (n = 185) living in low-income, urban neighborhoods. “Thick” in-group focused identities, and “thin” aschematic identities were associated with lower achievement, while bridging identities linking connection to one's in-group with overcoming obstacles in broader society were associated with positive outcomes. Endorsement of aschematic identities increased with generation in the U.S., suggesting that downward mobility is facilitated by “thin” rather than “thick” identities. Content of identity was the most important predictor of achievement.
Sympathy and Social Order
Authors: Irwin Kyle , Mcgrimmon Tucker , Simpson Brent
Published: January 2010

Social order is possible only if individuals forgo the narrow pursuit of self-interest for the greater good. For over a century, social scientists have argued that sympathy mitigates self-interest and recent empirical work supports this claim. Much less is known about why actors experience sympathy in the first place, particularly in fleeting interactions with strangers, where cooperation is especially uncertain. We argue that perceived interdependence increases sympathy towards strangers. Results from our first study, a vignette experiment, support this claim and suggests a situational solution to social dilemmas. Meanwhile, previous work points to two strong individual-level predictors of cooperation: generalized trust and social values. In Study Two we address the intersection of situational and individual-level explanations to ask: does situational sympathy mediate these individual-level predictors of cooperation? Results from the second study, a laboratory experiment, support our hypotheses that sympathy mediates the generalized trust-cooperation link and the relationship between social values and cooperation. The paper concludes with a discussion of limitations of the present work and directions for future research.
National Identification And Anti-Immigrant Prejudice: Individual And Contextual Effects Of National Definitions
Authors: Pehrson Samuel , Vignoles Vivian L. , Brown Rupert
Published: January 2010

In this study, we examined the relationship between national identification and anti-immigrant prejudice in a multilevel analysis of ISSP survey data from 37,030 individuals in 31 countries. We argue that this relationship depends on how national groups are defined by their members. Across the 31 national samples, the correlation between national identification and prejudice ranged from weakly negative (-.06) to moderately positive (.37). The relationship was significantly stronger in countries where people on average endorsed a definition of national belonging based on language, and weaker where people on average defined the nation in terms of citizenship. These effects occurred at a national rather than individual level, supporting an explanation in terms of the construction of nationality that prevails in a given context. Endorsement of the ancestry-based criteria for nationality was positively associated with prejudice, but only at the individual level.
Justice and the Fate of Married and Cohabiting Couples
Authors: Joyner Kara
Published: January 2010

Are cohabiting couples more likely than married couples to break up in response to perceptions that their relationship is not fair? Based on social psychological perspectives on intimate relationship stability, in addition to empirical research contrasting cohabitation with marriage, I hypothesize that cohabiting couples will be more likely than married couples to separate in response to perceived breaches of justice. To test this hypothesis and others, I examine the influence of both male and female partners' perceptions of fairness on the stability of married and cohabiting couples using two waves of couple-level data from the National Survey of Families and Households. The results of Cox proportional hazards models suggest that cohabiting couples, but not married couples, are increasingly likely to separate as levels of male or female underbenefiting increase. The conclusion discusses the implications of these findings for social psychological perspectives and future studies on the role of distributive justice in the stability of intimate relationships.
Collective Forgetting And The Symbolic Power Of Oneness: The Strange Apotheosis Of Rosa Parks
Authors: Schwartz Barry
Published: January 2010

Oneness refers to the convention of recognizing a single individual's performance and ignoring others, including those who may have performed as well. Although oneness is an adaptation to cognitive deficits, it cannot be explained by them. If long-term and working memory were more capacious, society's need for ideals to establish realm-specific standards and meanings would tend to limit recognition and renown to one individual. The apotheosis of Rosa Parks is a case in point. Her celebrity and the obscurity of others who risked and accomplished more than she are two aspects of the same social process. Revealing oneness to be a social imperative, this case study leads to a broader understanding of collective forgetting.
Attributions of Agency and the Construction of Moral Order: Dementia, Death, and Dignity in Nursing-home Care
Authors: Rodriquez Jason
Published: January 2010

Using evidence gathered during 18 months of participant-observation in 2 nursing homes and 65 interviews with staff, this article examines how nursing-home staff use agency as a rhetorical resource to construct a dignified workplace. Staff attribute agency to dying residents, saying they choose the timing and conditions of their death. Staff equally insist that aggressive residents do not have agency. These two sets of attributions are used as counterpoints. Both go well beyond the available facts of the situation and reflect unspoken assumptions and interests of nursing-care workers. Through these attributions, the staff achieves a situated moral order in which compassionate care is provided to deserving residents in caring nursing homes. Staff attributions of agency are collectively shaped by professional philosophies, training and education, and regulatory guidelines. Finally, this article shows how it is analytically and theoretically productive to recast agency as a cultural object, whose use is subject to empirical investigation, rather than as a theoretical construct.
Formation and Stabilization of Vertical Hierarchies among Adolescents: Towards a Quantitative Ethology of Dominance among Humans
Authors: Levi Martin John
Published: January 2010

Social psychological investigations of hierarchy formation have been almost entirely confined to the case of task-oriented groups and hence have produced theories that turn on the existence of such a task. But other forms of vertical hierarchy may emerge in non-task groups. One form, orderings of dominance, has been studied among animals using systematic behavioral observations, but almost never among humans, despite many discussions of such structures existing among adolescent males. Using stochastic models, this paper examines change in vertical orderings for data on dominance encounters among same-sex adolescent campers. There seem to be different paths for stabilization of vertical hierarchies for boys and girls, both of which involve the emergence of special roles, the top boy or the bottom girl. Further, stabilization seems to be greatly facilitated (at least for boys) by members adopting Roger Gould's theory of dominance encounters and turning their attention to those close in rank.
Ritual and sincerity
Authors: Seligman Adam B.
Published: January 2010

In this article, I develop an understanding of ritual and of sincerity as two ideal-typical modes of framing human action. I focus on the dangers of what I term the sincere model because it is so strongly counter-intuitive to the way we usually understand the world, the moral imperatives of action and the framing of our intersubjective universe. I will begin, however, with some brief remarks on ritual — not as a discrete realm of human endeavor, usually identified with ‘religious’ ritual (though inclusive of religious ritual), but rather as a particular modality of understanding action that is essential to the constitution of both social and individual selves and without which a shared world would not be possible.
Does Intensive Rehabilitation Permit Early Return to Sport without Compromising the Clinical Outcome after Arthroscopic Autologous Chondrocyte Implantation in Highly Competitive Athletes?
Authors: Villa Stefano Della , Kon Elizaveta , Filardo Giuseppe , Ricci Margherita , Vincentelli Ferruccio , Delcogliano Marco , Marcacci Maurilio
Published: January 2010

Background

Despite improvement in treatment for articular cartilage lesions, prolonged recovery still precludes early return to competitive sports. The challenge of postoperative rehabilitation is to optimize return to preinjury activities without jeopardizing the graft.

Hypothesis

Intensive rehabilitation after second-generation arthroscopic autologous cartilage implantation (Hyalograft C) facilitates graft maturation and safely allows for early return to competition without jeopardizing clinical outcome at longer follow-up.

Study Design

Cohort study; Level of evidence, 3.

Methods

The outcome of 31 competitive male athletes with International Cartilage Repair Society grade III-IV cartilaginous lesions of the medial or lateral femoral condyle or trochlea were evaluated at 1-, 2-, and 5-year follow-up. The athletic cohort was compared with a similar control cohort of 34 nonathletic patients who were treated with autologous chondrocyte implantation. The athletic cohort followed a 4-phase intensive rehabilitation protocol. Eleven of the patients in this cohort were also treated with an isokinetic exercise program and on-field rehabilitation. The patients in the control cohort completed only phase 1 of rehabilitation.

Results

When comparing the 2 groups, a greater improvement in the group of athletes was achieved at 5-year follow-up (P = .037) in the self-assessment of quality of life and International Knee Documentation Committee subjective evaluation at 12 months and at 5 years of follow-up (P = .001 and P = .002, respectively). When analyzing the return to sports activity, 80.6% of the athletes returned to their previous activity level in 12.4 ± 1.6 months; athletes treated with the on-field rehabilitation and isokinetic exercise program had faster recovery and an even earlier return to competition (10.6 ± 2.0 months).

Conclusion

For optimal results, autologous chondrocyte implantation rehabilitation should not only follow but also facilitate the process of graft maturation. Intensive rehabilitation may safely allow a faster return to competition and also influence positively the clinical outcome at medium-term follow-up.
Agrarian Change and Social Mobility in Colonial Conditions
Authors: Bandopadhyay Arun
Published: January 2010

The article discusses the privileged ownership of land and its control over agriculture, popularly known as the mirasi system in Tamil Nadu, and the metamorphosis it underwent in the course of the nineteenth century. The full implications of the un-folding of the mirasi question and the significant changes that it experienced still remain to be comprehended.

The article begins with Lionel Place’s explanation of the mirasi rights, historically specific to Chingleput district in the late eighteenth century, and Francis Ellis’s more elaborate note on the mirasi rights in the early nineteenth century. The various forms of agricultural control produced complex agricultural relations. Consequently, the article argues that even the protest of the ‘privileged’ in the agrarian context might have diverse meanings. Lastly, mirasi question is addressed with a burning social question—the Paraiyan issue in connection with the distribution of the ‘waste’, which was admittedly a long contested right of the mirasidars. A debate between the reformist and conservative officials developed in the late nineteenth century Tamil Nadu, especially the links between the institution of mirasi landownership and the Paraiyan landlessness. Agrarian change and social mobility seem to have taken considerable, probably more complex part in the development.
Revaluation of Tradition in the Ideology of the Radical Adivasi Resistance in Colonial Eastern India, 1855–1932—Part I
Authors: Chaudhuri Binay Bhushan
Published: January 2010

The study has two parts, the rise of a radical ideology in the resistance, and cultural implications of this ideology for the adivasi world. This part (Part I) discusses the rise of a radical ideology in the adivasi resistance, taking the cases of Munda, Oraon, Santal and Ho tribes. The ideology of radical movements of the adivasi society necessitated an assessment which is partly a judgment on whether an effective mobilisation could be built on the basis of traditional institutions and culture, and hence a revaluation of the tradition. The rebel leadership assured the followers of the inevitability of the triumph of their cause, because a Supernatural Being had willed it. The leader also claimed that God directly conveyed to him His blessing for the rebel cause. After presenting the three elements of the radical adivasi movement and defining tradition and ideology, the present and first part of the article discusses the radical build-up and main features of the Santal, Munda, Oraon and the Ho movements, which believed in the supernatural intervention and reposed faith in their rebel leaders as redeemers.
Incompleteness and the Possibility of Making
Authors: Sassen Saskia
Published: January 2010

The changing articulation of citizenship is traced, both in relation to the national and the global. Conceiving of citizenship as an incompletely theorized contract between the state and the citizen, and locating her inquiry at that point of incompleteness, the author opens up the discussion to the making of the political. The central thesis is that the incompleteness of the formal institution of citizenship makes it possible for the outsider to claim for expanded inclusions. It is the outsider, whether a minoritized citizen or an immigrant, who has kept changing the institution across time and space. Times of unsettlement make this particularly visible. The current period of globalization is one such period, even though this is a partial unsettlement. New types of political actors are taking shape, changing the relationship between the state and the individual, and remaking the political.
Habitus, Freedom, and Reflexivity
Authors: Hilgers Mathieu
Published: January 2010

The question of freedom is recurrent in the theory of habitus. In this paper I propose that the notion of freedom is an essential and necessary component for the coherence of the analyses which mobilize habitus both in terms of their theoretical articulation and in terms of their grounding in empirical reality. This argument can seem surprising considering that the theory of habitus has often been accused of being deterministic. Yet I show that, from an epistemological point of view, habitus theory is not deterministic. Bourdieu’s treatment of this concept implies at least three principles that exclude determinism: (1) the production of an infinite number of behaviors from a limited number of principles, (2) permanent mutation, and (3) the intensive and extensive limits of sociological understanding. After identifying and describing these principles, I show the reason for their incompatibility with a deterministic perspective and consider their implications for the corresponding model of action. I illustrate this analysis by a discussion of Loïc Wacquant’s carnal sociology of the pugilistic universe which reveals why it is essential to understand and explain the relation between habitus and freedom.
Subverting Theoretical Dualisms
Authors: Falmagne Rachel Joffe
Published: January 2010

This article interrogates dualistic theoretical polarization as an unproductive metatheoretical approach to knowledge production, addresses associated issues of cultural politics, and submits that theoretical tensions are, instead, productive grounds for transformative reformulations and for contingent, selective synthesis. In particular, the article takes issue with the polarization of discourse-theoretic and “cognitive” approaches to psychological phenomena, and it explores a reconstructed notion of the mental grounded in a discursive view of the subject that honors the inseparability of the psychological and the social. A reconceived “mental space” is posited, seen as continuous with the social yet consisting of a distinct functional space, as the anchor for (discursively produced) thought processes in a given moment. These ideas are briefly illustrated with respect to ongoing feminist research on reasoning and discussed with reference to a systemic model of the social that comprises macro-social, local, and personal processes of social constitution.
Three Models of Ethnographic Research
Authors: Manning Philip
Published: January 2010

Three versions of ethnographic research are presented. I call the first of these the “consensus model,” a widely accepted and standardized approach that combines the theoretical assumptions of Blumer’s formulation of symbolic interactionism and a set of data-gathering procedures. Mitchell Duneier’s work is an example of this model. The second approach, the “comparative model,” uses the consensus model while simultaneously developing an abstract, theoretical, conceptually innovative, comparative schema. Erving Goffman serves as an example. I call the third approach the “transferential model.” This approach also uses the consensus model but in addition requires ethnographers to examine the habitus of group members. To do this, ethnographers immerse themselves in the everyday world of their research participants to grasp the visceral, emotional, and unconscious aspects of group life and/or to discover discrediting aspects of the group. Here the ethnographer becomes loosely comparable to the psychoanalyst: both delve into the invisible and barely discursive elements of individual and group life. This approach was anticipated and developed by others, but in this paper I focus of Wacquant’s variant of this work. I conclude by suggesting that all ethnographic research rests wholly or partially on the assumptions of the consensus model. The other two approaches extend the consensus approach but in doing so employ very different—and very challenging—skill sets.
Habitus, Psychology, and Ethnography
Authors: Stam Henderikus J.
Published: January 2010

Habitus has become a conceptual anchor in work on the social study of the body in a range of disciplines, but also more generally in psychology proper. Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of habitus is one of a “structuring structure” or “system of dispositions” that generates practices by ensuring the presence of the past in experience. The papers in this section discuss issues arising from this notion, particularly its relevance to psychology, the problem of reductionism, and the possibility of freedom, as well as the methodological implications of Wacquant’s work for models of ethnography.
Multiple testing and its applications to microarrays
Authors: Yongchao Ge  , Sealfon Stuart C , Speed Terence P
Published: January 2010

The large-scale multiple testing problems resulting from the measurement of thousands of genes in microarray experiments have received increasing interest during the past several years. This article describes some commonly used criteria for controlling false positive errors, including familywise error rates, false discovery rates and false discovery proportion rates. Various statistical methods controlling these error rates are described. The advantages and disadvantages of these methods are discussed. These methods are applied to gene expression data from two microarray studies and the properties of these multiple testing procedures are compared.