bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Mediation in International Conflicts
Authors: Beardsley Kyle , Danneman Nathan
Published: May 2015

Scholars of international conflict mediation have made strides in the last two decades in understanding when mediation occurs and when it is successful. The rationalist framework has allowed theorists to sharpen and expand on early insights, and research using quantitative methods continues to be an important part of the field. Gaining a sense of when disputants might use mediation disingenuously and expanding the scope and comparability of data sets on mediation will push both the study and practice of mediation onto useful new ground.
Memory Gaps and Memory Errors
Authors: Neuschatz Jeffrey S. , Wetmore Stacy A. , Gronlund Scott D.
Published: May 2015

Memory is a reconstructive process, relying on pre‐existing shared knowledge to help us comprehend and interpret what we experience. A reliance on prior knowledge is a vital aid to communication and comprehension, but, as a consequence, results in the modification of some details in an event, the addition of other details, or even the fabrication of entire new events. We review classic research that first demonstrated the phenomenon of reconstructive memory and the capability of prior knowledge to influence what people remember. We next discuss cutting‐edge research involving memory gaps and memory errors, including autobiographical memories, distinguishing true from false memories, memory conformity, and potential adaptive reasons for memory errors. Finally, we point to directions for the future research.
Mental Models
Authors: Byrne Ruth M. J.
Published: May 2015

People construct small‐scale models of reality to understand the world and descriptions of it. Their iconic mental representations capture structural aspects of the elements simulated. They think about alternative possibilities that are consistent with assertions that contain logical connectives such as “if” and “or,” quantifiers such as “all” or “some,” and relational terms such as “in front of” or “before.” They reason and make decisions by combining mental models, and they search for counterexamples to their conclusions. People construct mental models when they make deductive inferences and when they make inferences about probability and risk, as well as when they form concepts, solve problems, make moral judgments, or create alternatives to reality in their counterfactual thoughts.
Micro‐Cultures
Authors: Fine Gary Alan
Published: May 2015

Although understanding the dynamics of culture through the examination of large‐scale social systems is important, culture is embedded in smaller systems as well. The exploration of micro‐cultures—also termed small group cultures or idiocultures—helps us to recognize that culture is cemented through the interaction of individuals with long‐term, ongoing relationships. Structure alone does not create social order, but requires a set of stable collective interpretations. But just as we examine how culture is organized through societies or institutions, we should see the role of culture in smaller units, including families, clubs, workgroups, and other gatherings. As a result, culture and meaning‐building emerges within group life and is spread through networks. Seeing culture as resulting from interaction emphasizes the role of talk and action as guarantors of social order and as building collective understanding. By focusing on micro‐cultures, social scientists emphasize the importance of the middle level of analysis between the self and structure: what has been termed the meso‐level of analysis. Micro‐cultures recognize that groups produce a self‐reflexive basis for the interaction order. Ultimately, social actors act in concert, producing shared lines of action and creating a tiny public that can then permit individuals to fit into larger social systems, including creating citizens within nation‐states.
Migrant Networks
Authors: Garip Filiz , Asad Asad L.
Published: May 2015

Migrant networks—webs of social ties between individuals in origin and migrants in destination—are a key determinant of the magnitude and direction of migration flows, as well as migrants' adaptation outcomes. The increasing emphasis on migrant networks represents a new approach to migration research, which, until the late 1980s, had been dominated by economic or political explanations of migration. This entry summarizes findings on migrant networks from relevant areas of research in anthropology, sociology, demography, and economics; identifies the promising lines of inquiry recently undertaken; and points to key issues for future research, such as understanding how migrant networks impact migration behavior and migrants' experiences. Such research into the specific mechanisms of social transmission will need to engage with the ongoing discussions on network effects and their identification in the social science literature at large, which will require the interdisciplinary collaboration of researchers.
Migration and Globalization
Authors: Peters Margaret E.
Published: May 2015

Scholarship on globalization since the 1970s has focused on the increasing integration of world markets for goods, services, and capital. International migration, by comparison, has received relatively little attention. As recent scholarship has shown, the absence of migration from studies on globalization has made our understanding of other aspects of globalization incomplete. Immigration policy interacts with trade and capital policy. All three policies affect firms' production strategies and their support for openness in the other policy areas. Migration, trade, and capital flows also interact. For instance, increased migration can increase trade and investment as well as help states maintain fixed exchange rates. This entry discusses these effects in greater detail and discusses paths for future research.
Misinformation and How to Correct It
Authors: Cook John , Ecker Ullrich , Lewandowsky Stephan
Published: May 2015

The increasing prevalence of misinformation in society may adversely affect democratic decision making, which depends on a well‐informed public. False information can originate from a number of sources including rumors, literary fiction, mainstream media, corporate‐vested interests, governments, and nongovernmental organizations. The rise of the Internet and user‐driven content has provided a venue for quick and broad dissemination of information, not all of which is accurate. Consequently, a large body of research spanning a number of disciplines has sought to understand misinformation and determine which interventions are most effective in reducing its influence. This essay summarizes research into misinformation, bringing together studies from psychology, political science, education, and computer science.

Cognitive psychology investigates why individuals struggle with correcting misinformation and inaccurate beliefs, and why myths are so difficult to dislodge. Two important findings involve (i) various “backfire effects,” which arise when refutations ironically reinforce misconceptions, and (ii) the role of worldviews in accentuating the persistence of misinformation. Computer scientists simulate the spread of misinformation through social networks and develop algorithms to automatically detect or neutralize myths. We draw together various research threads to provide guidelines on how to effectively refute misconceptions without risking backfire effects.
Models of Nonlinear Growth
Authors: Coulombe Patrick , Selig James P.
Published: May 2015

Models for nonlinear growth are not new, but have not been widely applied in the social and behavioral sciences. In this essay, we describe the fundamental issues relevant to choosing and using a nonlinear growth model. We discuss how researchers can go about choosing a model and then focus on the application of two specific nonlinear models: the fractional polynomial model and the piecewise model. We highlight recent work in reparameterization that allows researchers to choose models with parameters tailored specifically to research questions. We also review recent work on the topic of growth rates in nonlinear models that will allow researchers to obtain richer information from the application of nonlinear models. We conclude by pointing out some of the unresolved issues in the use of nonlinear growth models.
Models of Revealed Preference
Authors: Adams Abi , Crawford Ian
Published: May 2015

Revealed preference theory is concerned with what we can learn about the process by which economic agents make decisions using simply the features of the world that we observe: choices. Different economic models place different restrictions on these choices. The revealed preference literature derives these restrictions and then puts them to use. Research effort has recently been extended far beyond the axiomatic characterization of neoclassical models of choice to consider data‐consistency and preference‐recoverability for a wide class of models. This essay places these recent developments in context, giving a brief introduction to the revealed preference approach before elaborating on recent research that has dramatically extended the domain and ambition of the discipline. We address the widening of the scope of revealed preference theory to new classes of models, which have introduced novel techniques, and challenges, to the discipline, before charting emerging trends within the areas of identification and power, which have arisen as revealed preference has emerged as an empirical method.
Money in Politics
Authors: Milyo Jeffrey
Published: May 2015

There is a disconnect between the popular understanding of the role of money in American politics and the lessons from social science research. The foundational research in this field finds that campaign spending has at best negligible impacts on election outcomes. Similarly, decades of research reveal very little evidence that campaign contributions or even lobbying has significant effects on the content of public policy. These findings are corroborated by cutting edge research on the effects of campaign finance reforms both at the federal level and in the states.
Moral Identity
Authors: Hardy Sam A. , Carlo Gustavo
Published: May 2015

This essay reviews theory and research on moral identity. The construct emerged roughly three decades ago in moral psychology as a possible motivational factor that could link moral judgments to moral actions. Moral identity is, generally speaking, the extent to which being a moral person is important to a person's identity. However, it has been conceptualized and measured in various ways. In this essay, conceptualizations of moral identity, as well as foundational empirical research on moral identity development and links between moral identity and behavior, are reviewed. Little is known about moral identity development, but moral identity has fairly consistently been found predictive of moral action using a variety of research methods. In addition, cutting‐edge research on new areas of theory is highlighted, and promising directions for future research are outlined. Cutting‐edge work deals with new ways to conceptualize and measure moral identity, mechanisms of influence, links to broader outcomes, situational variation in moral identity, and implicit aspects of moral identity. Promising future directions are expanding on these emerging directions, as well as looking at developmental processes, cultural variability, and the role of relationships.
Mysticism
Authors: Markovsky Barry , Frederick Jake
Published: May 2015

Mysticismand related concepts have appeared in a variety of academic and nonacademic contexts. We begin by narrowing our focus to several general definitions that emphasize properties that have proved to be of interest to social and behavioral scientists. In such contexts, mystical knowledge typically refers to a special kind of positive, life‐changing sense of comprehending the universe, and a mystical experience is the physical and psychological state in which such knowledge is acquired, and during which the experiencer feels “at one” with the universe and/or a higher power. We review some of the earliest work on mysticism in psychology and sociology, primarily attributable to William James and Max Weber, respectively. More recent work in psychology has focused mainly on the development of mysticism scales, and research in neuropsychology is focusing on, among other topics, how structures and processes in the human brain produce mystical experiences. Sociological research has been relatively meager; however, we do note the potential contributions that sociological perspectives might offer. We close with a discussion of some methodological and theoretical issues that seem to hinder progress in the area, and note several promising lines for future research.
Natural Resources and Development
Authors: Morrison Kevin M.
Published: May 2015

The idea that there is a “resource curse”—that countries with more natural resources tend to do poorly economically and politically—has gained widespread currency in the popular press and elsewhere. Despite the paradoxical nature of the hypothesis, in some ways it seems intuitive because one can look around the world and see many resource‐rich countries that are authoritarian or seem to have squandered their wealth. Nevertheless, recent research has cast doubts on whether there is actually a relationship between natural resources and economic growth or democracy, once one has controlled for other factors. And an alternative line of research argues that natural resources do affect these economic and political outcomes, but whether they do so in a positive or negative way depends on the institutions a country has in place. That is, countries with poor economic and political institutions will suffer a “curse,” but countries with better institutions will not. In this entry, I review the foundational works on natural resources and development as well as these more recent responses, analyzing the trajectory of the literature and key issues for future research. Despite two decades of intensive research, we still have much to learn about whether developing countries will suffer or benefit in an era of increasing commodity prices and resource exploration.
Neighborhoods and Cognitive Development
Authors: Chen Jondou , Brooks‐Gunn Jeanne
Published: May 2015

Research on neighborhoods and individual well‐being has produced a substantive body of knowledge over the past quarter century. Neighborhood conditions—especially socioeconomic status (SES), which is based on income and education and to a lesser extent on residential stability—are predictive of cognitive development. The strongest evidence controls for individual and family‐level characteristics or examines individuals clustered within neighborhoods in order to obtain estimates of within‐ and between‐neighborhood variance. Another line of research has focused on housing mobility projects, which allow for the experimental assignment of residents to more advantaged neighborhoods. Future research on neighborhoods will continue to blend methods and data from an increasing number of disciplines to better understand human development in context.
Neuroeconomics
Authors: Levy Ifat
Published: May 2015

In recent years, researchers in economics, psychology, and neuroscience have joined forces in the study of decision‐making processes to form the new discipline of neuroeconomics. Neuroscientists turned to theories in economics and psychology to make sense of the increasing amounts of neurobiological data. At the same time, economists and psychologists turned to neuroscience for mechanistic constraints on their theories. Neuroeconomics studies tackle a host of topics, from financial choices through reinforcement learning to social decision making. Combining behavioral techniques with brain imaging in humans and electrophysiological recordings in animals, as well as complementary techniques, this interdisciplinary research has already generated new insights about the neural architecture of decision making. The neural mechanisms of some of the behavioral decision processes are increasingly understood, but many challenges remain. Extending neuroeconomics research to psychiatric disorders and incorporating new research tools are promising avenues for future studies.
Educational Testing: Measuring and Remedying Achievement Gaps
Authors: Lee Jaekyung
Published: May 2015

Achievement gaps, as measured by standardized tests, are inextricably related to educational goals, standards, norms, and benchmarks for student learning outcomes. I revisit conventional approaches to educational testing to measure achievement gaps—norm‐referenced, criterion‐referenced, and potential‐referenced tests. I explore and discuss a paradigm shift from “passive” tests to “responsive” tests that promotes the diagnosis and remediation of achievement gaps. Particularly, I propose an environment‐referenced approach to testing with the specification of desired learning opportunities and environment conditions that enable students to meet upgraded achievement norms, standards, and benchmarks.
Parenting with Digital Devices
Authors: Davis‐Kean Pamela E. , Tang Sandra
Published: May 2015

Parents have always faced challenges in managing the family environment. Within the past decade, these challenges have increased as digital devices and media have become more ubiquitous in the home. The issues faced by families include the appropriate age for children to interact with these devices, whether children's cognitive and social skills may be negatively impacted by the use of devices, and the role of parents in setting limitations and rules regarding the use of digital devices in the home. The use of digital devices may also have a positive influence on family management. Parents are now able to stay in contact with their children during the day, which helps in managing the time of children and parents. Social interactions with extended family members as well as with other children can be enhanced with digital devices and allows for visual contact with others. Unfortunately, there is little research that helps in advising families on how to manage digital devices in the home and how to accommodate the constant changes that occur in technology. The research itself has antiquated methods for assessing the role of digital devices in the lives of families and children. Thus, newer methods will need to be created in order to track how families are using digital devices to organize and manage their lives. There is a clear demand for more research on how technology is changing the family environment and that will be the challenge for the next decade of research.
News Framing Effects and Emotions
Authors: Schuck Andreas R. T. , Feinholdt Alina
Published: May 2015

Framing research is thriving and has become ever more popular among researchers and students alike. This essay reviews some of the latest trends and developments in the field, explains key terms and concepts, identifies likely future research lines, and zooms in on one of these in particular, that is, the role ofemotionsin explaining news framing effects. We distinguish different theories on emotions and how they have been and can be used in the context of framing research. Furthermore, we present a basic model of how to investigate the role of emotions in framing effects research. Finally, we discuss some of the most promising future research lines with the potential for students or scholars to make their own contribution and present results of a small‐scale expert survey indicating what some prominent scholars consider to be the most important challenges and promising future trends in the field right now.
Objects of Urban Security, Part I: Background and Research Starts
Authors: Molotch Harvey , Coe Martha
Published: May 2015

Cities are populated by mechanisms of security. Notice the many intrusive devices and repertoires of control at airport departure gates, office reception, subways, and other sites of modern life. But the presence of security, at least more broadly construed to include infrastructures that channel, inhibit, and intrude, did not originate with 9/11 in America.

Indeed, the beginning of cities is virtually synonymous with the rise of apparatuses for exclusion and collective inclusion, the ancient city walls being the prominent exemplar. From the perspective of this essay, it is useful to think of security as an intrinsic part of urban life. To the famous Louis Wirth list of attributes of the city (1938)—numbers, density, and heterogeneity—we need to add instruments of security.

Urbanismentailssecurity; it is not a simple add‐on. Deliberately or by happenstance, the presence of large numbers of diverse people in small spaces opens the way for collision. People need to be allocated to particular spaces in specific ways, either by force or guidance through more genteel maneuver. Technological developments in building construction (e.g., high‐rise), transportation appliances (cars and buses), and the impersonality of urban life mean that threats, many arising internally, are omnipresent and nonspecific as to source.

This essay asks how this instrumentation works, how it “blends in” with social practices including larger political structures through which it operates. In addressing such questions, we approach important topics that have long occupied the agenda of urban studies and analyses of civic life more generally but most often in separation from one another. As remedy, we must traverse intellectual domains usually treated as discrete—things, cities, and security and find ways to present them as coherently linked. We also need to depart from common orientations that, while critiquing security, surveillance in particular, leave largely unexamined the materiality involved and the social practices of on‐the‐ground human–thing encounter.
Organizational Economics
Authors: Gibbons Robert , Roberts John
Published: May 2015

Organizational economics applies the theoretical and empirical methods of economics to study the nature, roles and performance of organizations, especially managed ones like business firms. In this essay we trace the development of this field, survey the questions it addresses, point to recent work that we find especially germane and offer suggestions for promising future directions.
Participatory Governance
Authors: McNulty Stephanie L. , Wampler Brian
Published: May 2015

Efforts to engage new actors in political decision‐making through innovative participatory programs have exploded around the world in the past 25 years. This trend, called participatory governance, involves state‐sanctioned institutional processes that allow citizens to exercise voice and vote in public policy decisions that produce real changes in citizens' lives. Billions of dollars are spent supporting these efforts around the world. The concept, which harks back to theorists such as Jean‐Jacques Rousseau and John Stuart Mill, has only recently become prominent in theories about democracy. After presenting the foundational research on participatory governance, the essay notes that newer research on this issues falls into three areas: (i) the broader impact of these experiments; (ii) new forms of engagement, with a focus on representation, deliberation, and intermediation; and (iii) scaling up and diffusion. The essay concludes with a research agenda for future work on this topic.
Patterns of Attachments across the Lifespan
Authors: Fivush Robyn , Waters Theodore E. A.
Published: May 2015

The attachment relationship is a critical bond between infant and caregiver that, when secure, facilitates physical and psychological well‐being. Cutting‐edge research integrating attachment theory with cognitive theories of event representations indicates that both generalized event representations, or scripts, and specific autobiographical narratives provide continuity from implicit to explicit representations of attachment across development. Script‐like attachment representations are related to implicit behavioral measures in infancy, as well as to adult narrative measures of attachment, the emerging life story, and intimate partner behaviors, providing continuity across development in attachment representations and behaviors. Explicit attachment representations are at least partly developed within parentally guided narrative interactions in which mothers help their preschool children develop coherent and emotionally regulated representations of their past experiences. These representations are related to developing self‐concept and emotion‐regulation. Narrative representations of attachment extend beyond personal experience to include intergenerational narratives of the familial past, thus facilitating the intergenerational transmission of attachment. Additional longitudinal research is needed to flesh out these exciting new integrations of attachment theory and cognitive psychology.
Political Advertising
Authors: Fowler Erika Franklin
Published: May 2015

Political advertising provides a key link between the politician and the public. The concern over massive manipulation through political propaganda that drove early empirical research on the subject has subsided; however, newer research concludes that advertising can have nontrivial but short‐lived influence on voter preferences. Furthermore, increasing levels of negativity and concerns over the consequences of such negativity spawned a heated debate in the literature over whether negative ads stimulate or depress turnout at the polls with the most recent evidence suggesting that it is the timing of negativity that determines its effect. Although advertising is intended to persuade, research suggests the medium yields important informational benefits, especially for citizens who do not pay a lot of attention to politics, and there is little to suggest that negativity has large negative effects on the health of democracy. Although the 2012 election was a record‐shattering year for political advertising, campaigns are shifting to multi‐platform communication strategies, which will bring new challenges for researchers.
Political Conflict and Youth: A Long‐Term View
Authors: Barber Brian K.
Published: May 2015

Over the past two decades, the scientific study of youth experience with political conflict has come into its own as a recognized, vibrant field of scholarship. This essay briefly reviews the state of the research. It notes the upsurge in volume and increase in the sophistication of the research, including larger and more representative samples, inclusion of locally defined assessments of youth functioning, and the study of the broader social ecology of youth who experience political conflict. These elements of progress notwithstanding, the research remains overwhelming driven by psychopathology models and has yet to extend either to systematically explore a broader focus on youth social, civic, economic, and political functioning or to seriously consider youth's cognitive and behavioral engagements in political conflict.

The bulk of the essay focuses on a different and crucial need for research refinement: namely, adopting a longer term view in to youth's development and functioning. As the large majority of young people survive the violence of political conflict without serious dysfunction, the field needs to examine the degree to which the normative transitions of their onward lives are shaped by their experiences with political conflict. The essay invokes classic theory from sociology and developmental psychology in advocating for such a life course perspective and it details a methodology—event history calendaring—ideally suited to collect such data. The essay closes with a brief overview of an ongoing study of the adult functioning of Palestinian youth of the first intifada to illustrate the feasibility and utility of this methodology.
Political Inequality
Authors: Manza Jeff
Published: May 2015

In the classical model of democracy, governments are responsive to the mass public, making public policies favored by a majority of citizens while respecting the rights of minorities. In the real world, of course, no political system, democratic or otherwise, has ever fully realized this principle of political equality. The focus of this essay is an examination of research on how economic inequalities impact democratic politics. The question has become especially pressing as economic inequality has risen, in some countries quite dramatically, in recent decades. Political inequality may refer to either differentialinputsinto policymaking processes, in which some actors have more influence than others, or it can refer to policyoutputs, in particular those which encourage or sustain income and wealth inequality. In this essay, I review four contemporary theories of political inequality (elite and oligarchic models, power resources theories, globalization models, and participatory inequality models). Each throws light on some aspects of political inequality, but none provides a completely satisfactory account. I conclude with some suggestions for future directions for research.
Politics of Criminal Justice
Authors: Barker Vanessa
Published: May 2015

The apparent disjuncture between the reality of crime and government responses suggests that criminal justice is not simply a technical response to crime. If criminal justice were guided by technical choices, gun death would equal gun control, gun violence would be considered a public health crisis replete with public resources, and the political will to solve it. Instead what we know from the social sciences is that criminal justice tends to be caught up in morality plays about human nature and political competition over the distribution of public goods, including, but perhaps especially, security, where special interests rather than the public interest tend to hold sway. The significance of studying the politics of criminal justice lies in its capacity to account for and explain the disjuncture. Key issues for future research will be scholars' ability to close this gap.
The Politics of Disaster Relief
Authors: Oliver Alexander J. , Reeves Andrew
Published: May 2015

Severe weather events provide unexpected tests of political leadership. From the perspective of the social scientist, disaster relief provides an excellent vantage point to observe the responses of both elected officials and voters to these dramatic events that, though not caused by politics, require a distinctly political response. This essay provides an overview of the research on the politics of disaster relief in the United States. The topic is vast and we focus specifically on the response of voters and politicians in the aftermath of severe weather events. We review the foundational research, discuss more recent advances, and then address what we see as the most important issues for future research on this topic.
Politics of Immigration Policy
Authors: Money Jeannette
Published: May 2015

In this essay, I first describe the foundational research that focuses on host or receiving states and the policies that determine states' openness to immigration and to immigrant integration. This research privileges domestic actors and institutions in the choice of immigration policy. In the following section, I outline the research that disaggregates both dimensions of immigration policy into component parts. For immigration control, these include skilled migration, unskilled migration, undocumented migration, and border control. For immigrant integration, this includes labor market integration, family reunification, and access to citizenship, among other policies. The focus on receiving states remains strong but is now complemented by research on sending states' policies toward emigrants. I also outline significant efforts by scholars to construct datasets that would allow researchers to evaluate the hypotheses generated by case studies. In the final section, I argue that, despite advances in the research agenda, there is a continuing paucity of quantitative data that would allow researchers to adjudicate among plausible hypotheses. Moreover, even where data are available, the data are generated by wealthy Western democracies about Western democracies. We have little systematic, cross‐national time series data on the rest of the world. I offer a generic concept, “politicians' incentives,” that provides one way of bridging the gap between our understanding of the politics of immigration policy in wealthy Western democracies and other states in the international system that are implicated in global migration patterns and policies.
Positive Development among Diverse Youth
Authors: Lerner Richard M. , Buckingham Mary H. , Champine Robey B. , Greenman Kathleen N. , Warren Daniel J. A. , Weiner Michelle B.
Published: May 2015

The positive youth development (PYD) perspective is based on the notion that all young people possess strengths and the capacity for healthy growth. The key hypothesis within the PYD perspective is that thriving occurs when the strengths of youth are aligned across adolescence with ecological resources (or “assets”) that promote positive, healthy development (e.g., assets such as high‐quality parenting, mentoring, teaching, or coaching; effective youth development programs; or opportunities for youth to participate in and take leadership of valued family, school, and community activities). The 4‐H Study of PYD has sought to bring data to bear on these ideas about the individual and ecological bases of PYD. We discuss several findings derived from tests of the model of PYD forwarded by Lerner and Lerner, including the structure of PYD, its antecedents in youth strengths and ecological developmental assets, and both positive and problematic outcomes among youth. The results of the 4‐H Study of PYD provide important insights into how individual and contextual factors coalesce to promote adolescent thriving.
Problems Attract Problems: A Network Perspective on Mental Disorders
Authors: Cramer AngéLique O. J. , Borsboom Denny
Published: May 2015

What is the nature of mental disorders such as major depression and panic disorder? Are mental disorders analogous to tumors, in that they exist as separate entities somewhere in people's minds? Do mental disorders
cause
symptoms such as insomnia and fatigue? Until very recently, it was exactly this sort of thinking that (implicitly) permeated many, if not all, research paradigms in clinical psychology and psychiatry. However, in recent years, a novel approach has been advocated (i.e., the
network perspective
), in which mental disorders are not conceived of as entities that have a separate existence from their respective symptoms. Instead, mental disorders are hypothesized to be networks of symptoms that directly influence one another. So, for example, from a network perspective, insomnia and fatigue are not caused by the same underlying disorder (i.e., major depression) but causally influence one another (i.e., insomnia → fatigue). A disorder, then, develops because of such direct relations between symptoms in which positive feedback mechanisms (i.e., vicious circles) are present: for example, insomnia → fatigue → feelings of guilt → insomnia. These feedback mechanisms may propel the aggravation of one's condition and make a person end up in, for example, a full‐fledged depressive episode. In this contribution, we elaborate on network perspectives on the nature of mental disorders as well as their implications for our outlook on diagnosis and comorbidity.
Production of Culture
Authors: Schmutz Vaughn , Miller Candace N.
Published: May 2015

The production of culture (POC) perspective emerged as a way to understand the external conditions that influence symbolic components of culture. Moving beyond a simple “reflection” theory of cultural production, this perspective directed attention to the processes by which culture is made. POC scholars have demonstrated how factors such as technology, law and regulation, organizational form, industry structure, careers, and markets influence the production, distribution, and reception of cultural products. First, we review foundational research that addresses the “six facets” associated with the POC perspective as well as related work on cultural industry and classification systems. Next, we address cutting‐edge work that offers new insights and methodological savvy to classic POC concerns with innovation and diversity, gatekeeping processes, and the consequences of categories in symbolic production. Finally, we discuss opportunities for future work that has the potential to move POC scholarship forward while addressing fundamental sociological questions about fields, networks, and processes of classification, valuation, and evaluation. The increasing conceptual and methodological diversity that characterizes production of culture research promises to keep it a vibrant area of inquiry for years to come.
Property Rights and Development
Authors: Frye Timothy
Published: May 2015

There is a strong consensus that secure property rights are critical for economic development, but tricky issues about the direction of causation and measurement have made it difficult to demonstrate this relationship empirically. In recent years, scholars have made progress on these issues. In the future, scholars can profitably turn their attention to four issues: (i) why privatization is so unpopular, (ii) how politics shapes property rights, (iii) the distributional consequences of property rights, and (iv) the impact of violence on property rights and economic development.
Public Opinion and International Conflict
Authors: Berinsky Adam J.
Published: May 2015

Should the opinions of citizens in a democracy matter in decisions of war and peace? The answer to this critical question depends on the stock we place in the ability of the mass public to come to meaningful decisions regarding the conduct of foreign affairs. In this essay, I examine public opinion about war over the past 75 years and make the case that our assessment of the mass public depends in large part on the nature of the information it receives from political leaders. Contrary to the conventional wisdom regarding public opinion and foreign policy that emerges from scholarly and journalistic accounts, events do not directly influence the public. Instead, citizens learn about wars largely from political leaders. Public opinion during times of war is therefore shaped by many of the same attachments and enmities that matter in domestic politics. As in other areas of politics, public opinion is primarily structured by the ebb and flow of partisan and group‐based political conflict.
Quasi‐Experiments
Authors: Reichardt Charles S.
Published: May 2015

Quasi‐experiments are research designs used to estimate treatment effects when treatments are not assigned at random. Research in quasi‐experimentation will advance on four fronts. First, researchers will elaborate the complete array of quasi‐experimental comparisons. Second, researchers will refine statistical methods for taking account of initial selection differences. Third, researchers will both improve sensitivity analyses to take account of biases and create empirically based theories of the degree to which biases are removed. And fourth, researchers will assess how well quasi‐experiments address the full panoply of complications that arise in practice.
Queer Theory
Authors: Manalansan Martin F.
Published: May 2015

Queer theory and ethnography have a productive relationship. Queer theory has questioned the stability of nonnormative sex and gender based identities particularly gay and lesbian. Emerging out of late twentieth century debates on the historicity and contextual nature of sex and gender, queer theory claims that important of power relationships in shaping normative meanings, practices and institutions around sex and gender. Ethnographic studies provide culturally particular illustrations of how nonnormative sex and gender identities are negotiated, evaluated, practiced, and transformed. Ethnographic studies on queer immigrants, uses of the internet and new media, queer activism and the role of race in sex and gender identities have enabled new cutting edge discussions that extend and complicate ideas from queer theory. More ethnographic research is needed to look into the roles of labor and class in sex and gender identities, and how new identity categories such as transgender circulate transnationally and cross‐culturally.
Race in Latin America
Authors: Telles Edward
Published: May 2015

Race has long been a primary cleavage in Latin American societies, where people of African, Indigenous, and European origin have been present in large numbers. Although they have promoted race mixture as central to their national identities and often denied racism and racial discrimination, racial hierarchies have also been prominent features up until the present. Today, most Latin American countries have declared themselves multiculturalist and have begun to recognize their black and indigenous populations, largely in response to minority social movements and as these societies have begun to democratize. At the same time, the academic literature on the subject has blossomed.
Racial Disenfranchisement
Authors: Hutchings Vincent L. , Phoenix Davin L.
Published: May 2015

Inquiries into racial disenfranchisement offer a crucial lens through which to critically assess the capacity of the US political system to sufficiently respond to the demands of an increasingly diverse society. Various social science disciplines have employed a range of theoretical frameworks and methodologies to explore the institutional, cultural, and psychological antecedents of disenfranchisement, as well as strategies to achieve racial equity. This essay reviews a small slice of the scholarly perspectives offered on racial inequity. It provides particular emphasis on theories of racial subjugation, racial attitudes, and the political behavior of racial minorities. The discussion of current and future trends in research on racial disenfranchisement explores the questions raised and insight offered by examinations of the distinct experiences of diverse racial and ethnic minority groups, as well as the potential impact of the “Obama era” on the state of race relations in the United States.
Regression Discontinuity Design
Authors: Meredith Marc , Perkoski Evan
Published: May 2015

Social scientists search for interventions in the real world that approximate the conditions of an experiment. One form of such natural experiments that is increasingly used in social science research is regression discontinuity (RD). RD designs are possible when there are thresholds that cause large changes in the assignment of treatments on the basis of small differences in a variable. For example, a high school junior in the state of Pennsylvania who scored 214 out of 240 on the 2012 PSAT test received the treatment of being a National Merit Semi‐Finalist, whereas a comparable student who scored 213 did not. The intuition behind a RD design is that we often can learn something about the effects of a treatment by comparing observations that barely receive a treatment (e.g., individuals with scores of 214 and just above on the PSAT) to observations that barely miss receiving a treatment (e.g., individuals who score 213 and just below on the PSAT). We discuss the assumptions under which the effects of treatment that are assigned based on a discontinuous threshold can be estimated using a RD design. We then illustrate how graphical analysis can be used to illustrate whether these assumptions are likely to hold. We conclude by discussing two examples of cutting‐edge research that employs RD designs and discussing areas of future research.
Regulatory Focus Theory
Authors: Tory Higgins E.
Published: May 2015

Regulatory focus theory was the child of self‐discrepancy theory and the parent of regulatory fit theory. Self‐discrepancy theory distinguishes between self‐regulation in relation to hopes and aspirations (ideals) versus self‐regulation in relation to duties and obligations (oughts). It proposes thatidealversusoughtself‐regulation aretwo different motivational systemsfor approaching pleasure and avoiding pain. In regulatory focus theory, promotion concerns with ideals (growth and advancement more generally) and prevention concerns with oughts (safety and security more generally) are motivational states that not only vary across individuals (personality) but also can be situationally induced. Regulatory focus theory proposes that the motivational state of being at “0” hasnegative valencein promotion (“0”as a nongain in relation to “+1”) butpositive valencein prevention (“0” as a nonloss in relation to “−1”). Finally, giving rise to regulatory fit theory, regulatory focus theory distinguishes between theeagerstrategies that fitpromotionand thevigilantstrategies that fitprevention. Foundational research supporting each of these proposals is reviewed, and then more recent cutting‐edge research is described, including how this distinction is revealed in the behavior of nonhuman animals and how different tactics (e.g., risky vs conservative) can serve either promotion‐eagerness or prevention‐vigilance under different circumstances. Finally, I discuss two key issues for future research: whether promotion and prevention are competing motivations or can work together as partners, and whether there is support for the promotion–prevention distinction in everyday life beyond the laboratory.
Religion
Authors: Purzycki Benjamin Grant , Kiper Jordan , Shaver John , Finkel Daniel N. , Sosis Richard
Published: May 2015

Religions are complex systems that can adapt to diverse environments because of the dynamic relationship of their internal parts. The most fundamental of these parts includes supernatural beliefs, rituals, and myths. The social scientific study of religion focuses on these parts and builds on previous generations of research to provide distal explanations for religion as a dynamic phenomenon. In recent years, interest in the social science of religion has turned to the cognitive and behavioral studies of religion. The cognitive science of religion documents the mental organization and structure of religious thought, while the behavioral science of religion focuses on ritual behavior as the building block of sociality. Key issues for future research include the ontogeny of religion, the cognitive and cross‐cultural representation of religious concepts, the relationship between religion and reproduction, and the evolution of religion. With these new frontiers have come a variety of novel methodologies but also an emphasis on the need for comparative ethnography.
The Organization of Schools and Classrooms
Authors: Diehl David , McFarland Daniel A.
Published: May 2015

Schools are complex organizations and their functioning involves far more than just the delivery of academic content. Existing research establishes the importance of taking such organizational features into account in examining how important school outcomes such as academic achievement are shaped by the relationships, interactions, and experiences of students and teachers. Standard approaches, however; tend to treat the organizational structures of schools as static and unchanging environments within which teachers teach and students learn. In contrast, we present the beginnings of a different conceptualization, one of schools as complex and dynamic social institutions constituted by multiple types of relations and defined at numerous levels. In this essay, we summarize existing research in order to elaborate such a view. To that end the essay is divided into four sections: major role relationships in the school; organizational levels of the school; current socio‐cultural changes shaping schools as organizations; and finally, suggestions for future work.