Saturday, February 16, 2013
Fight club
A Winning Smile? Smile Intensity, Physical Dominance, and Fighter Performance
Michael Kraus & Teh-Way David Chen
Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
The smile is perhaps the most widely studied facial expression of emotion, and in this article we examine its status as a sign of physical dominance. We reason, on the basis of prior research, that prior to a physical confrontation, smiles are a nonverbal sign of reduced hostility and aggression, and thereby unintentionally communicate reduced physical dominance. Two studies provide evidence in support of this prediction: Study 1 found that professional fighters who smiled more in a prefight photograph taken facing their opponent performed more poorly during the fight in relation to their less intensely smiling counterparts. In Study 2, untrained observers judged a fighter as less hostile and aggressive, and thereby less physically dominant when the fighters' facial expression was manipulated to show a smiling expression in relation to the same fighter displaying a neutral expression. Discussion focused on the reasons why smiles are associated with decreased physical dominance.
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The Effect of Conjugal Visitation on Sexual Violence in Prison
Stewart D'Alessio, Jamie Flexon & Lisa Stolzenberg
American Journal of Criminal Justice, March 2013, Pages 13-26
Abstract:
Using yearly state-level data drawn from a variety of different sources and a pooled cross-sectional time-series research design, we examine whether conjugal visitation attenuates sexual violence in prison. The determination of whether sexual violence in prison is less apt to transpire in states that allow conjugal visitation is theoretically relevant. Feminist theory argues that conjugal visitation has little if any influence on the occurrence of rape and other sexual offenses in prison, notwithstanding the gender of the offender and victim, because such offenses are crimes of power that are employed by the offender as an instrument to dominate and humiliate the victim. On the other hand, sexual gratification theory postulates that conjugal visitation provides inmates with a means of sexual release. Therefore, conjugal visitation should reduce sexual offending in prison. Results support sexual gratification theory by showing that states permitting conjugal visitation have significantly fewer instances of reported rape and other sexual offenses in their prisons. The policy implications of these findings are discussed.
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Claire Coyne et al.
Development and Psychopathology, February 2013, Pages 17-35
Abstract:
Teenage childbirth is a risk factor for poor offspring outcomes, particularly offspring antisocial behavior. It is not clear, however, if maternal age at first birth (MAFB) is causally associated with offspring antisocial behavior or if this association is due to selection factors that influence both the likelihood that a young woman gives birth early and that her offspring engage in antisocial behavior. The current study addresses the limitations of previous research by using longitudinal data from Swedish national registries and children of siblings and children of twins comparisons to identify the extent to which the association between MAFB and offspring criminal convictions is consistent with a causal influence and confounded by genetic or environmental factors that make cousins similar. We found offspring born to mothers who began childbearing earlier were more likely to be convicted of a crime than offspring born to mothers who delayed childbearing. The results from comparisons of differentially exposed cousins, especially born to discordant monozygotic twin sisters, provide support for a causal association between MAFB and offspring criminal convictions. The analyses also found little evidence for genetic confounding due to passive gene-environment correlation. Future studies are needed to replicate these findings and to identify environmental risk factors that mediate this causal association.
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David Yeager et al.
Child Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
Past research has shown that hostile schemas and adverse experiences predict the hostile attributional bias. This research proposes that seemingly nonhostile beliefs (implicit theories about the malleability of personality) may also play a role in shaping it. Study 1 meta-analytically summarized 11 original tests of this hypothesis (N = 1,659), and showed that among diverse adolescents aged 13-16 a fixed or entity theory about personality traits predicted greater hostile attributional biases, which mediated an effect on aggressive desires. Study 2 experimentally changed adolescents' implicit theories toward a malleable or incremental view and showed a reduction in hostile intent attributions. Study 3 delivered an incremental theory intervention that reduced hostile intent attributions and aggressive desires over an 8-month period.
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Thomas McNulty, Paul Bellair & Stephen Watts
Crime & Delinquency, February 2013, Pages 140-160
Abstract:
This article develops a multilevel model that integrates individual difference and sociological explanations of the Black-White difference in adolescent violence. Our basic premise is that low verbal ability is a criminogenic risk factor that is in part an outcome of exposure to neighborhood and family disadvantages. Analysis of the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth reveals that verbal ability has direct and indirect effects (through school achievement) on violence, provides a partial explanation for the racial disparity, and mediates the effect of socioeconomic disadvantage at the neighborhood level. Results support the view that neighborhood and family disadvantages have repercussions for the acquisition of verbal ability, which, in turn, serves as a protective factor against violence. We conclude that explanation of the race difference is best conceived as originating from the segregation of Blacks in disadvantaged contexts.
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Jih-Hsuan Lin
Computers in Human Behavior, May 2013, Pages 535-543
Abstract:
This study investigated whether media interactivity would influence the short-term effects of violent content on audience aggression. The general aggression model, social cognitive theory, and character identification offered the theoretical framework. A random sample of 102 male college students were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: video game playing, recorded game-play watching, or movie watching. The results indicated that video game players (mediated enactive experience) experienced greater increases in aggressive affect, aggressive cognition, and physiological arousal than participants who watched recorded game play or comparable movie scenes (mediated observational experience). The study indicated that media interactivity in video game exacerbated the violent effect on short-term, aggressive responses. Character identification did not mediate the effect of media interactivity on aggression. Future studies should incorporate more comprehensive measures of character identification to investigate inconsistent findings regarding media interactivity and identification.
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Daniel Linton & Jacqueline Power
Personality and Individual Differences, April 2013, Pages 738-743
Abstract:
In this exploratory study, we examined the extent to which both workplace bullies and victims possess bully-typifying traits, using a 22-item scale that simultaneously measures perpetrators and targets of negative workplace acts. Participants were 224 Canadian university students aged 18-47 with prior work experience. Bivariate correlational analyses determined that bullying others was positively associated with measures of Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychoticism, aggression, and disinhibition. Being a victim was positively associated with the same Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychoticism, and aggression measures. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that an "alternative dark triad" of Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychoticism related significantly to bullying scores; while psychoticism and Machiavellianism related significantly to victim scores. Aggression and sensation seeking measures failed to account for significant variance in bully or victim scores beyond the triad variables. The vast majority of bullies (89.7%) and many victims (41.7%) were bully/victims, operationally defined as being both perpetrators and targets at least once per week in the last 6 months. Researchers and employers would do well to recognize the presence of bully/victims in their efforts to understand and reduce workplace bullying.
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David Henry et al.
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, February 2013, Pages 433-445
Abstract:
This study tested five hypotheses related to the accuracy of students' perceptions of school norms for aggression and nonviolent problem-solving strategies with two cohorts (ns = 852 and 968) of 6th-grade students in 12 schools. Students consistently overestimated peer normative support for aggression and underestimated peer normative support for nonviolent problem-solving strategies. This effect remained significant in tests of moderation by gender, ethnicity, and aggression level. Tests for moderation by the degree of provocation (e.g., if a student was hit first) and a test measuring actual norms from eighth graders and perceived norms from seventh graders suggested that the discrepancy was not due to self-serving bias or social desirability. Longitudinal analysis found that the discrepancy remained through 8th grade. The discrepancy between actual and perceived norms has implications for risk and violence prevention, which are discussed.
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Youths' displaced aggression against in- and out-group peers: An experimental examination
Albert Reijntjes et al.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
People often displace their anger and aggression against innocent targets, sometimes called scapegoats. Tragic historic events suggest that members of ethnic minority out-groups may be especially likely to be innocent targets. The current experiment examined displaced aggression of Dutch youths against Dutch in-group peers versus Moroccan out-group peers. Participants (N = 137, Mage = 11.6 years) completed a personal profile that was allegedly evaluated by Dutch peer judges. After randomly receiving negative or neutral feedback from these peers, participants were given the opportunity to aggress against other innocent Dutch and Moroccan peers by taking money earned away from them. Results showed that in response to negative feedback, participants displaced aggression disproportionally against innocent Moroccan out-group targets. This effect was not driven by ethnic prejudice; in both conditions, participants holding more negative attitudes of Moroccans engaged in higher levels of aggression regardless of the ethnicity of the target.
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Tobias Hecker et al.
Journal of Traumatic Stress, forthcoming
Abstract:
As a consequence of the ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), combatants are constantly involved in various forms of violence. Findings concerning the impact of perpetrating violence on mental health are contradictory, ranging from increasing to buffering the risk for mental ill health. The present study investigated the impact of perpetrating violence on mental health. In total, 204 forcibly recruited and voluntary male combatants (mean age = 24.61 years) from different armed groups in the eastern DRC took part in the study. In a semistructured interview, respondents were questioned about appetitive aggression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as well as self-experienced violence and self-perpetrated violent offending. A multivariate analysis of variance (η2 = .23) revealed that voluntary combatants perpetrated more violent acts (η2 = .06) and showed higher appetitive aggression η2 = .03). A moderated multiple regression analysis (R2 = .20) showed that perpetrating violence was positively related to PTSD in forcibly recruited combatants, but not in voluntary combatants. Thus, perpetrating violence may not necessarily qualify as a traumatic stressor. Further studies might consider assessing the combatant's perception of committing violent acts.
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Constructing Physical Fights: An Interactionist Analysis of Violence among Affluent, Suburban Youth
Curtis Jackson-Jacobs
Qualitative Sociology, March 2013, Pages 23-52
Abstract:
Based on more than four years of ethnographic fieldwork and a dataset of 189 violent encounters, this article explores the social phenomenology of physical fights in a novel setting. Although American sociologists have traditionally depicted violence as a distinctively "ghetto" phenomenon, the members of this sample were overwhelmingly white and affluent. Since the usual explanatory background factors - race, poverty, and neighborhood - cannot adequately account for their violent experiences, the dataset is especially valuable for analyzing the generic interactional processes through which physical fights unfold. Furthermore, the article suggests a model that runs counter to the prevailing sociological perspective that violence is universally motivated by independent, preexisting conflicts. Oftentimes, the sample members set out to "get into" fights for their perceived experiential rewards and only later instigated disputes as a means to motivate and justify violent action. Using the method of analytic induction, the article presents a generalizable theory of how fights unfold in interaction. Three stages were necessary for achieving a fight: (1) agreeing to fight as a solution to a challenge to "interpersonal sovereignty," (2) transcending the ordinary fear of violence, and (3) using competitive techniques of violence.
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Shawna Lee, Inna Altschul & Elizabeth Gershoff
Developmental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study examines whether maternal warmth moderates the association between maternal use of spanking and increased child aggression between ages 1 and 5. Participants were 3,279 pairs of mothers and their children from a cohort study of urban families from 20 U.S. cities. Maternal spanking was assessed when the child was 1 year, 3 years, and 5 years of age. Maternal warmth and child aggressive behavior were measured at 3 years and 5 years of age. Models controlled for demographic characteristics (measured at the child's birth), child emotionality (measured at age 1), and maternal psychosocial risk factors (measured when children were 3 years old). Cross-lagged path models examined the within-time and longitudinal associations between spanking and child aggression. Results indicated that maternal spanking at age 1 was associated with higher levels of child aggression at age 3; similarly, maternal spanking at age 3 predicted increases in child aggression by age 5. Maternal warmth when children were 3 years old did not predict changes in child aggression between 3 and 5 years old. Furthermore, maternal warmth did not moderate the association between spanking and increased child aggression over time. Beginning as early as age 1, maternal spanking is predictive of child behavior problems, and maternal warmth does not counteract the negative consequences of the use of spanking.
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Evelien Platje et al.
Biological Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although several studies have associated antisocial behavior with decreased Cortisol Awakening Responses (CAR), studies in adolescent samples yielded inconsistent results. In adolescence however, the CAR develops and antisocial behavior is heterogeneous in type and persistence. Therefore this longitudinal study compared persistent aggressive and rule-breaking adolescents to low aggressive and rule-breaking adolescents on the development of the CAR from ages 15 to 17 (N = 390). Persistently high aggressive adolescents showed decreased cortisol levels at awakening consistently over the years (Δχ2(1) = 6.655, p = .01) as compared to low aggressive adolescents. No differences between adolescents showing persistent high rule-breaking and low rule-breaking were found. This longitudinal study is the first to show that persistent aggression, but not rule-breaking behavior, is related to neurobiological alterations. Moreover, despite development of the CAR over adolescence, the decrease in cortisol is consistent over time in persistent high aggressive adolescents, which is an important prerequisite for the prediction of persistent aggression.
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Annie Lang et al.
Journal of Media Psychology, Fall 2012, Pages 154-165
Abstract:
This paper reports a study designed to investigate whether playing violent video games elicits the psychological conditions theoretically required for media use to cause aggressive behavior. Specifically, the study was designed to examine whether these games elicit desensitization, facilitation, and disinhibition. Thus, does physiological arousal in response to violent activity decrease over time during game play, and is there a difference between novice and experienced game players (as would be expected if desensitization had occurred)? Do players experience positive emotional states when actively engaged in virtual violent behavior (fighting and killing opponents) - a necessary condition for disinhibition? Do game players frame their motivations in terms of self-defense and game success, as would be necessary for facilitation to occur? The results showed that playing first-person shooters did elicit these requisite patterns of cognitive, physiological, and emotional states. Violent game play is a positive, arousing, present, dominant experience, as required for disinhibition and facilitation. Experienced game players are less aroused than less experienced game players (as required for desensitization). Further, during a game-playing session, exploring and searching for enemies become less arousing, while fighting and killing become more arousing over time (as required by desensitization and facilitation).
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Jorge Gómez-Valdés et al.
PLoS ONE, January 2013
Abstract:
Antisocial and criminal behaviors are multifactorial traits whose interpretation relies on multiple disciplines. Since these interpretations may have social, moral and legal implications, a constant review of the evidence is necessary before any scientific claim is considered as truth. A recent study proposed that men with wider faces relative to facial height (fWHR) are more likely to develop unethical behaviour mediated by a psychological sense of power. This research was based on reports suggesting that sexual dimorphism and selection would be responsible for a correlation between fWHR and aggression. Here we show that 4,960 individuals from 94 modern human populations belonging to a vast array of genetic and cultural contexts do not display significant amounts of fWHR sexual dimorphism. Further analyses using populations with associated ethnographical records as well as samples of male prisoners of the Mexico City Federal Penitentiary condemned by crimes of variable level of inter-personal aggression (homicide, robbery, and minor faults) did not show significant evidence, suggesting that populations/individuals with higher levels of bellicosity, aggressive behaviour, or power-mediated behaviour display greater fWHR. Finally, a regression analysis of fWHR on individual's fitness showed no significant correlation between this facial trait and reproductive success. Overall, our results suggest that facial attributes are poor predictors of aggressive behaviour, or at least, that sexual selection was weak enough to leave a signal on patterns of between- and within-sex and population facial variation.
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Karen Bierman et al.
Aggressive Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
A multi-gate screening process identified 891 children with aggressive-disruptive behavior problems at school entry. Fast Track provided a multi-component preventive intervention in the context of a randomized-controlled design. In addition to psychosocial support and skill training for parents and children, the intervention included intensive reading tutoring in first grade, behavioral management consultation with teachers, and the provision of homework support (as needed) through tenth grade. This study examined the impact of the intervention, as well as the impact of the child's initial aggressive-disruptive behaviors and associated school readiness skills (cognitive ability, reading readiness, attention problems) on academic progress and educational placements during elementary school (Grades 1-4) and during the secondary school years (Grades 7-10), as well as high school graduation. Child behavior problems and skills at school entry predicted school difficulties (low grades, grade retention, placement in a self-contained classroom, behavior disorder classification, and failure to graduate). Disappointingly, intervention did not significantly improve these long-term school outcomes.
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Age Differences in the Impact of Employment on Antisocial Behavior
Kathryn Monahan, Laurence Steinberg & Elizabeth Cauffman
Child Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
While research suggests that working more than 20 hr weekly is associated with greater antisocial behavior among middle- and upper-class youth, some have argued that employment benefits at-risk youth and leads to desistance from crime among youthful offenders. This study investigates the relation between hours worked, school attendance, and employment characteristics on antisocial behavior in a sample of approximately 1,300 juvenile offenders (ages 14-17 at baseline) tracked over 5 years. The combinations of high-intensity employment and irregular school attendance, unemployment and irregular school attendance, and unemployment and not being enrolled in school are associated with significantly greater antisocial behavior, particularly during early adolescence. High-intensity employment diminishes antisocial behavior only when accompanied by attending school.
Friday, February 15, 2013
Advantage
Affirmative Action Bans and the "Chilling Effect"
Kate Antonovics & Richard Sander
American Law and Economics Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines whether California's Proposition 209, which led to the 1998 ban on the use of racial preferences in admissions at the University of California (UC) system, lowered the value that underrepresented minorities placed on attending UC schools. In particular, we look for evidence of a chilling effect in minority yield rates (the probability of enrolling in a UC school conditional on being accepted) after Proposition 209. Using individual-level data on every freshman applicant to the UC system from 1995 to 2000, we find no evidence that yield rates fell for minorities relative to other students after Proposition 209, even after controlling for changes in student characteristics and changes in the set of UC schools to which students were admitted. In fact, our analysis suggests Proposition 209 had a modest "warming effect". We investigate and rule out the possibility that this warming effect was driven by changes in the selection of students who applied to the UC, changes in financial aid or changes in minorities' college opportunities outside the UC system. Instead, we present evidence consistent with the idea that Proposition 209 increased the signaling value of attending UC schools for minorities.
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The Allocation of Talent and U.S. Economic Growth
Chang-Tai Hsieh et al.
NBER Working Paper, January 2013
Abstract:
Over the last 50 years, there has been a remarkable convergence in the occupational distribution between white men, women, and blacks. We measure the macroeconomic consequences of this convergence through the prism of a Roy model of occupational choice in which women and blacks face frictions in the labor market and in the accumulation of human capital. The changing frictions implied by the observed occupational convergence account for 15 to 20 percent of growth in aggregate output per worker since 1960.
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A Stereotype Threat Account of Boys' Academic Underachievement
Bonny Hartley & Robbie Sutton
Child Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
Three studies examined the role of stereotype threat in boys' academic underachievement. Study 1 (children aged 4-10, n = 238) showed that girls from age 4 years and boys from age 7 years believed, and thought adults believed, that boys are academically inferior to girls. Study 2 manipulated stereotype threat, informing children aged 7-8 years (n = 162) that boys tend to do worse than girls at school. This manipulation hindered boys' performance on a reading, writing, and math test, but did not affect girls' performance. Study 3 counteracted stereotype threat, informing children aged 6-9 years (n = 184) that boys and girls were expected to perform similarly. This improved the performance of boys and did not affect that of girls.
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An Examination of Stereotype Threat Effects on Girls' Mathematics Performance
Colleen Ganley et al.
Developmental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Stereotype threat has been proposed as 1 potential explanation for the gender difference in standardized mathematics test performance among high-performing students. At present, it is not entirely clear how susceptibility to stereotype threat develops, as empirical evidence for stereotype threat effects across the school years is inconsistent. In a series of 3 studies, with a total sample of 931 students, we investigated stereotype threat effects during childhood and adolescence. Three activation methods were used, ranging from implicit to explicit. Across studies, we found no evidence that the mathematics performance of school-age girls was impacted by stereotype threat. In 2 of the studies, there were gender differences on the mathematics assessment regardless of whether stereotype threat was activated. Potential reasons for these findings are discussed, including the possibility that stereotype threat effects only occur in very specific circumstances or that they are in fact occurring all the time. We also address the possibility that the literature regarding stereotype threat in children is subject to publication bias.
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Marcus Winters et al.
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
We utilize information from a rich administrative panel dataset following the universe of test-taking public school students in Florida over a period of five years to estimate the relationship between same-gender teacher assignment and student achievement. We estimate how a student's achievement changes as he/she is assigned to teachers of different genders throughout his/her academic career, holding constant both observed and unobserved factors related to academic outcomes. We also provide estimates from models that evaluate how the relative performance of male and female student assigned to the same teacher or in the same classroom relates to the gender of the teacher. We find no statistically distinguishable relationship between same-gender teacher assignments and student math or reading achievement in elementary school. We find a statistically significant relationship between being assigned to a female teacher and student achievement in middle and high school, however the magnitude of the effect is small.
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Christopher Cornwell, David Mustard & Jessica Van Parys
Journal of Human Resources, Winter 2013, Pages 236-264
Abstract:
Using data from the 1998-99 ECLS-K cohort, we show that the grades awarded by teachers are not aligned with test scores. Girls in every racial category outperform boys on reading tests, while boys score at least as well on math and science tests as girls. However, boys in all racial categories across all subject areas are not represented in grade distributions where their test scores would predict. Boys who perform equally as well as girls on reading, math, and science tests are graded less favorably by their teachers, but this less favorable treatment essentially vanishes when noncognitive skills are taken into account. For some specifications there is evidence of a grade "bonus" for boys with test scores and behavior like their girl counterparts.
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David Sherman et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
To the extent that stereotype and identity threat undermine academic performance, social psychological interventions that lessen threat could buffer threatened students and improve performance. Two studies, each featuring a longitudinal field experiment in a mixed-ethnicity middle school, examined whether a values affirmation writing exercise could attenuate the achievement gap between Latino American and European American students. In Study 1, students completed multiple self-affirmation (or control) activities as part of their regular class assignments. Latino American students, the identity threatened group, earned higher grades in the affirmation than control condition, whereas White students were unaffected. The effects persisted 3 years and, for many students, continued into high school by lifting their performance trajectory. Study 2 featured daily diaries to examine how the affirmation affected psychology under identity threat, with the expectation that it would shape students' narratives of their ongoing academic experience. By conferring a big-picture focus, affirmation was expected to broaden construals, prevent daily adversity from being experienced as identity threat, and insulate academic motivation from identity threat. Indeed, affirmed Latino American students not only earned higher grades than nonaffirmed Latino American students but also construed events at a more abstract than concrete level and were less likely to have their daily feelings of academic fit and motivation undermined by identity threat. Discussion centers on how social-psychological processes propagate themselves over time and how timely interventions targeting these processes can promote well-being and achievement.
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Race and the Likelihood of Managing in Major League Baseball
Brian Volz
Journal of Labor Research, March 2013, Pages 30-51
Abstract:
The impact of race on the likelihood of former Major League Baseball players becoming managers is analyzed using data from 1975 to 2008. The multivariate probit model presented controls for the effects of race, performance, star status, education, coaching, minor league managing, and playing experience. Marginally significant evidence is found that black former players are 74 % less likely to become managers at the major league level than observationally equivalent white former players. It is also observed that former catchers and shortstops are the most likely to become coaches or managers. Historically, black players have been underrepresented at the catcher and shortstop positions and overrepresented at the outfield positions. This provides evidence that historical differences in position played may have contributed to the relatively small number of black managers in Major League Baseball. Significant evidence is found that Hispanic former players are 66 and 69 % less likely to coach in the major leagues and manage in the minor leagues than observationally equivalent white former players. Coaching and minor league managing experience increase the likelihood of managing in the major leagues. Therefore, discrimination at these levels may lead to a lower number of Hispanic major league managers. It should be noted that while this study does control for education it does not directly control for English language skills. If Hispanic players are less likely to speak English than white players this may contribute to the negative effect found in this analysis. It is also shown that all star status reduces the likelihood of coaching or managing while seasons spent in the majors increase the likelihood of coaching or managing. This implies that players with long but unexceptional careers are most likely to become managers. This finding may reflect the greater opportunities available to star players after retirement.
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Brinck Kerr et al.
Urban Affairs Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
We develop a revised theory of political influence that addresses the relationship between minority political representation and administrative-level municipal employment patterns among African-Americans and Latinos in U.S. cities. We conduct pooled time-series analysis on employment data from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for years 1987 through 2001. We find that the dynamics of political representation are different for African-Americans and Latinos. Cities with African-American mayors or city managers tend to have more African-Americans serving in administrative positions in municipal agencies. Although this mayoral/city manager effect is not found for Latino employment, more Latino council members lead to more Latino administrators. We also find that African-American employment gains resulting from political representation are more likely to occur in agencies that have the most policy relevance for African-Americans, yet this is not the case for Latino employment. Our results suggest strongly that political processes - conceptualized as the relationship between political leadership and administrative-level hiring and retention - work differently for African-Americans than they do for Latinos.
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Appeasement: Whites' Strategic Support for Affirmative Action
Rosalind Chow, Brian Lowery & Caitlin Hogan
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, March 2013, Pages 332-345
Abstract:
This article explores the possibility that dominant-group members will attempt to appease subordinate groups to protect the hierarchy. In four studies, we find that (a) prohierarchy Whites perceive more intergroup threat when they believe ethnic minorities hold Whites in low regard, (b) prohierarchy Whites respond to ethnic minorities' low regard for Whites by increasing their support for redistributive policies (e.g., affirmative action), (c) the increase in support only occurs when prohierarchy Whites perceive the hierarchy to be unstable, and (d) prohierarchy Whites perceive the hierarchy to be more stable if they believe Whites support redistributive policies. These results suggest that prohierarchy dominant-group members' support for redistributive policies can stem from a concern about maintaining the hierarchical status quo, and provides evidence that support for redistributive policies can be a hierarchy-enhancing strategy.
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Race, Secondary School Course of Study, and College Type
Elizabeth Stearns, Nandan Jha & Stephanie Potochnick
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Race shapes many aspects of students' high school experiences relevant to post-secondary educational attainment. We examine the racially-specific effects of high school course of study on type of college attended, whether two-year or four-year, using NELS 1988-2000 and a comprehensive measure of course intensity derived from students' patterns of course-taking. Results include the presence of racially-specific effects of high school course of study, with racial/ethnic minority students in the middle course intensity ranges more likely to attend four-year college than Whites with similar coursework. Using a theory of racialized meritocracy, we also find that educational expectations mediate the relationships among race, course of study, and post-secondary attendance differently for students of different racial groups, such that they play a larger role in mediating the relationship between course of study and post-secondary attendance for White students.
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Evaluating the contributions of members of mixed-sex work teams: Race and gender matter
Monica Biernat & Amanda Sesko
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, May 2013, Pages 471-476
Abstract:
Gender- and race-bias have often been studied as separate phenomena, but examining intersections of race and gender is critical given that people always belong to many social categories simultaneously. In two studies, we focus on the evaluation of mixed-sex work teams, and examine how race and gender of team members affect the evaluations they receive. Participants read about a pair of employees assigned to work together on a "masculine" task on which they either succeeded (Study 1) or failed (Study 2). Mixed-sex teams included White pairs, Black pairs, or mixed race pairs (White woman-Black man; Black woman-White man). In both studies, pro-male gender bias was evident only in the White male-White female work pair. We suggest that rather than suffering the double jeopardy of dual subordinate identities, Black women were buffered from the effects of gender bias by virtue of their non-prototypicality or invisibility.
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"Don't Stigmatize": The Ironic Effects of Equal Opportunity Guidelines in Interviews
Juan Madera & Michelle Hebl
Basic and Applied Social Psychology, January/February 2013, Pages 123-130
Abstract:
The purpose of the current study was to examine how staffing policies (identity-conscious or identity-blind) and interview structure might lead to stigmatizing behavior, particularly subtle behavior that is not illegal. In a 2 (staffing policy: identity-conscious or identity-blind) × 2 (interview structure: structured or unstructured) factorial design, 87 participants interviewed a Black interviewee for an ostensible study on employment interviews and were led to believe they would interview a second Black interviewee. The results showed that participants guided by the identity-blind policy and using an unstructured interview format chose the largest social distance from Black interviewees in the subsequent interview.
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Colorism and School-to-Work and School-to-College Transitions of African American Adolescents
Igor Ryabov
Race and Social Problems, March 2013, Pages 15-27
Abstract:
Using multinomial logistic modeling, the current study estimated the impact of skin tone on school-to-work and school-to-college transitions of African American youths. The findings suggest that African American males with the lightest skin tone were more likely to find a job and to be in college than their co-racial peers with darker skin tones. The odds of finding a full-time job were also significantly higher for African American females with the lightest skin tone. Generally, the multivariate results reveal that among the effects examined in this study, the family background factors, marital status, prior achievement, and average school socioeconomic status matter the most.
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CEO gender and firm performance
Walayet Khan & João Paulo Vieito
Journal of Economics and Business, forthcoming
Abstract:
Based on a panel of US firms over the period of 1992 to 2004, we evaluated whether firms managed by female CEOs exhibit the same performance as firms managed by male CEOs. We also examined if the gender of the CEO affects the firm risk level, and if the compensation packages that boards give to female CEOs have less risky components than those given to male CEOs. Our results revealed new insights: on average, the gender of the CEO matters in terms of firm performance. When the CEO is a female, the firm risk level is smaller than when the CEO is a male. Another important finding is that boards are not attending to the risk aversion differences between male and female CEOs when they design the compensation packages, especially equity based compensation, which can be understood as an incentive to female CEOs to take risks.
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Geri Alumit Zeldes, Frederick Fico & Arvind Diddi
Mass Communication and Society, November/December 2012, Pages 831-851
Abstract:
TV evening news coverage of the 2008 presidential election by broadcast, cable, and public networks was predominately male and Caucasian in terms of reporters and sources. However, according to our content analysis of 888 campaign stories, viewers saw the least amount of source diversity if they watched the evening news on broadcast networks ABC, CBS, and NBC. Cable networks FOX and CNN, and the PBS evening news had more female and non-White sources. This pattern also holds true for reporter use of nonpartisan sources. Findings on the 2008 election for the traditional broadcast networks are not consistent with those for the 2000 and 2004 elections, when female reporters at these networks had more female and nonpartisan sources in their election coverage than did their male colleagues. Reporters at PBS provided the greatest overall source diversity, regardless of their race or gender, compared to what was observed on broadcast and cable networks. Differences in the way reporters used women and non-White sources to cover the 2008 presidential race may be attributable to organizational factors.
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Understanding the Impact of Affirmative Action Bans in Different Graduate Fields of Study
Liliana Garces
American Educational Research Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study examines the effects of affirmative action bans in four states (California, Florida, Texas, and Washington) on the enrollment of underrepresented students of color within six different graduate fields of study: the natural sciences, engineering, social sciences, business, education, and humanities. Findings show that affirmative action bans have led to the greatest reductions in science-related fields of engineering, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. These declines pose serious long-term consequences for the United States since these fields provide specialized training critical to the nation's ability to compete effectively in a global market and for ensuring continued scientific and technological advancement.
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Magdalena Formanowicz et al.
European Journal of Social Psychology, February 2013, Pages 62-71
Abstract:
In many languages, feminization has been used as a strategy to make language more gender-fair, because masculine terms, even in a generic function, exhibit a male bias. Up to date, little is known about possible side effects of this language use, for example, in personnel selection. In three studies, conducted in Polish, we analyzed how a female applicant was evaluated in a recruitment process, depending on whether she was introduced with a feminine or masculine job title. To avoid influences from existing occupations and terms, we used fictitious job titles in Studies 1 and 2: diarolożka (feminine) and diarolog (masculine). In Study 3, we referred to existing occupations that varied in gender stereotypicality. In all studies, female applicants with a feminine job title were evaluated less favorably than both a male applicant (Study 1) and a female applicant with a masculine job title (Studies 1, 2, and 3). This effect was independent of the gender stereotypicality of the occupation (Study 3). Participants' political attitudes, however, moderated the effect: Conservatives devaluated female applicants with a feminine title more than liberals (Studies 2 and 3).
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Pauwke Berkers & Merel Eeckelaer
Journal of Gender Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
Combining insights from gender, popular music, and celebrity studies, this article addresses to what extent British broadsheets frame Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty differently with regard to their rock and roll lifestyle. Our content analyses of The Guardian and The Independent indicate clear gender differences. First, Doherty's excessive behavior is often framed in positive terms (rock and roll), while the media discuss Winehouse's conduct more negatively (rock and fall). Second, British newspaper journalists admire Doherty's courage to lead such a lifestyle, oftentimes justifying - or even negating - his behavior, arguing he is an independent individual or even a hero. Such adoration is absent when Winehouse's escapades are reported on; most articles treat her as a victim, expressing concern regarding her poor health. As such, our findings show how music journalists use relational complicit practices - admiration/justification/negation of male and victimization of female enactment of hegemonic masculinity - to maintain masculine monopoly over the archetypical rock and roll lifestyle.
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Lisa Edwards, Carwyn Jones & Charlene Weaving
Sport in Society, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this paper, we critically examine the moral outcry that greeted the Canadian women's ice hockey celebrations after they won gold at the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games in 2010. Stories of male athletes engaging in similar post game activities abound, but such incidents are rarely criticized or admonished. Celebrating victory with excessive drinking is simply customary in male sporting practices. In fact, such behaviour is usually celebrated as a ‘time-honoured tradition' within the sporting community. In this paper, we argue that there is a double standard at play that judges women more harshly than men when it comes to the kind of alcohol-related cultural practices commonplace in our society. In conclusion, we argue that if the cultural practices in question, binge drinking and so forth, are morally problematic, then they are equally so for men and women.
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Gender Wage Gaps, ‘Sticky Floors' and ‘Glass Ceilings' in Europe
Louis Christofides, Alexandros Polycarpou & Konstantinos Vrachimis
Labour Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We consider and attempt to understand the gender wage gap across 26 European countries, using 2007 data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions.4 The size of the gender wage gap varies considerably across countries, definitions of the gap, and selection-correction mechanisms. Most of the gap cannot be explained by the characteristics available in this data set. Quantile regressions show that, in a number of countries, the wage gap is wider at the top (‘glass ceilings') and/or at the bottom of the wage distribution (‘sticky floors'). We find larger mean/median gender gaps and more evidence of glass ceilings for full-time full-year employees, suggesting more female disadvantage in ‘better' jobs. These features may be related to country-specific policies that cannot be evaluated at the individual-country level, at a point in time. We use the cross-country variation in the unexplained wage gaps of this larger-than-usual sample of states to explore the influence of (i) country policies that reconcile work and family life and (ii) their wage-setting institutions. We find that country policies and institutions are related to features of their unexplained gender wage gaps in systematic, quantitatively important, ways.
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Bi-Polar: College Education and Loans to Small Businesses Headed by Black Females
John Gray
Review of Black Political Economy, September 2012, Pages 361-371
Abstract:
This paper uses the 1998 and 2003 Surveys of Small Business Finance (SSBF) to detail the recent experiences of black female headed small businesses (BFHBs) in the capital markets. It documents, a large disparity in the importance of a college education for black and non-black female headed businesses (NFHBs); that the race of a female headed business is an important factor in determining whether a loan is approved; and that although receiving a college education does not remove the cost BFHBs face due to their owner's race, it is significantly lower than that faced by their peers without a college educated owner. Together, this paper provides striking evidence of taste-based and statistical discrimination, both in violation of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.
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African Americans' pursuit of self-employment
Magnus Lofstrom & Timothy Bates
Small Business Economics, January 2013, Pages 73-86
Abstract:
We examine causes of black/white gaps in self-employment entry rates in the United States by recognizing that industry context heavily shapes impacts of owner resource endowments on the likelihood of successful entry. Barriers to entry, briefly stated, are high in some lines of business and low in others. We therefore proceed by explaining self-employment entry into separate subgroups of high- and low-barrier industries. Higher entry rates typifying whites, relative to African Americans, are traditionally interpreted as reflections of the former group's greater personal wealth and human-capital resources. This consensus view, however, is simplistic: personal wealth holdings have no positive explanatory power for predicting entry into low-barrier lines of business. Our findings demonstrate, furthermore, that high educational attainment is a strong, positive predictor of entry into high-barrier fields, but not into low-barrier industries. Because industry context indeed shapes entry patterns, "one-size-fits-all" econometric models commonly used to predict entry into self-employment fall short.
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Gregory Walton, Steven Spencer & Sam Erman
Social Issues and Policy Review, January 2013, Pages 1-35
Abstract:
We argue that in important circumstances meritocracy can be realized only through a specific form of affirmative action we call affirmative meritocracy. These circumstances arise because common measures of academic performance systematically underestimate the intellectual ability and potential of members of negatively stereotyped groups (e.g., non-Asian ethnic minorities, women in quantitative fields). This bias results not from the content of performance measures but from common contexts in which performance measures are assessed - from psychological threats like stereotype threat that are pervasive in academic settings, and which undermine the performance of people from negatively stereotyped groups. To overcome this bias, school and work settings should be changed to reduce stereotype threat. In such environments, admitting or hiring more members of devalued groups would promote meritocracy, diversity, and organizational performance. Evidence for this bias, its causes, magnitude, remedies, and implications for social policy and for law are discussed.
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Last line of defense
Atomic Aversion: Experimental Evidence on Taboos, Traditions, and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons
Daryl Press, Scott Sagan & Benjamin Valentino
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
How strong are normative prohibitions on state behavior? We examine this question by analyzing anti-nuclear norms, sometimes called the "nuclear taboo," using an original survey experiment to evaluate American attitudes regarding nuclear use. We find that the public has only a weak aversion to using nuclear weapons and that this aversion has few characteristics of an "unthinkable" behavior or taboo. Instead, public attitudes about whether to use nuclear weapons are driven largely by consequentialist considerations of military utility. Americans' willingness to use nuclear weapons increases dramatically when nuclear weapons provide advantages over conventional weapons in destroying critical targets. Americans who oppose the use of nuclear weapons seem to do so primarily for fear of setting a negative precedent that could lead to the use of nuclear weapons by other states against the United States or its allies in the future.
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Indra De Soysa & Paul Midford
International Studies Quarterly, December 2012, Pages 843-856
Abstract:
The rise of China has led to a spate of scholarly and journalistic speculation about the future of a liberal world order. Apparently, the rise of a nondemocratic, Asian rival to US hegemony potentially undermines the growth of democracy throughout the system. Many see a resource-hungry China engaging itself globally out of purely self-interested motives, and Chinese business and aid offer a viable alternative to Western influence. Using the Stockholm Institute for Peace Research's (SIPRI) data on arms transfers since the end of the Cold War, we test the proposition empirically by assessing the nature and strength of Chinese politico-military support, measured as conventional arms transfers, globally and to African regimes. In short, we find that China relative to the United States transfers greater amounts of arms to democracies rather than autocracies, whereas the United States seems to prefer more autocratic regimes, despite rhetoric that claims an ethical foreign policy. The same result holds when we assess this relationship using human rights data. Moreover, Chinese arms transfers to countries suffering civil wars are much lower than the United States'. The findings are robust to the inclusion of several control variables and alternative estimation techniques. The findings show that popular perceptions about China's role in Africa do not match reality, particularly when assessed against the current hegemon's behavior.
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Diversionary American Military Actions?: American Military Strikes on Grenada and Iraq
Brett Hall, Ryan Hendrickson & Nathan Polak
Comparative Strategy, Winter 2013, Pages 35-51
Abstract:
Research on potential diversionary uses of military force continues to generate widespread scholarly attention. New measures, novel databases, and an increasing internationalization of this research examine the kinds of targets an American president may strike. Yet in many respects, Levy's insight on research of diversionary military action(s), that quantitative research approaches fail to capture the decision-making dynamics involved in a military action, has generally held true. Current analysts still struggle to develop a consensus on the conditions that help explain a diversionary military action, or whether such military actions ever even occur. Using a diversionary-war model created from previous case-study analyses this research examines American military actions in Grenada in 1983 and Iraq in 1996 to determine whether or not these strikes appear to be diversionary in nature. Our model also employs previous research on diversionary military action to assist in the selection of American military actions, followed by a series of tests to assess various aspects of the decision-making process, international interaction prior to and after the strikes, and the strategic merits for conducting these strikes. Our research generally suggests that neither of these strikes was conducted for diversionary purposes.
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Liat Levontin, Eran Halperin & Carol Dweck
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Attributing the negative behavior of an adversary to underlying dispositions inflames negative attitudes. In two studies, by manipulating both implicit theories and attributions, we show that the negative impact of dispositional attributions can be reduced. Both studies showed that inducing an incremental theory ("traits are malleable") in Israelis kept negative attitudes toward Arabs low (Study1), and political tolerance and willingness to compromise for peace high (Study 2), even when people were oriented toward dispositional attributions. Thus an incremental theory blocked the negative effect of dispositional attributions. Inducing an entity theory ("traits are fixed") had a negative effect on attitudes, tolerance, and compromise when dispositional attributions were salient but not when situational attributions were made salient. These findings have important implications for promoting intergroup relations and conflict resolution.
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Modest, Secure and Informed: Successful Development in Conflict Zones
Eli Berman et al.
NBER Working Paper, February 2013
Abstract:
Most interpretations of prevalent counterinsurgency theory imply that increasing government services will reduce rebel violence. Empirically, however, development programs and economic activity sometimes yield increased violence. Using new panel data on development spending in Iraq, we show that violence reducing effects of aid are greater when (a) projects are small, (b) troop strength is high, and (c) professional development expertise is available. These findings are consistent with a "hearts and minds" model, which predicts that violence reduction will result when projects are secure, valued by community members, and implementation is conditional on the behavior of non-combatants.
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Identifying Terrorists using Banking Data
Steven Levitt
B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, December 2012
Abstract:
The fight against terrorism requires identifying potential terrorists before they have the opportunity to act. In this paper, we investigate the extent to which retail banking data - which as far as we know are not currently used by anti-terror intelligence agencies in any systematic manner - are a useful tool in identifying terrorists. Using detailed administrative records of a large British bank, we demonstrate that a number of variables in the data are strongly correlated with terrorism-related activities. Having both an Islamic given name and surname, not surprisingly, are among the strongest of these predictors, but a wide range of other demographic characteristics and behaviors observed in the data are also correlated strongly with terrorist involvement. The real key to our method, however, rests on the identification of one particular pattern of banking behavior (what we call "Variable Z") which dramatically improves our ability to identify terrorists. Our model is demonstrated to have substantial power to identify terrorists both within sample and out of sample.
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Brock Blomberg & Rozlyn Engel
Journal of Law and Economics, August 2012, Pages 503-538
Abstract:
This paper tests the impact of a change in security commitment on market development in a country embroiled in low-intensity conflict. We analyze weekly price data for approximately 250 goods from 18 Iraqi cities between 2005 and 2008. Our paper suggests four empirical regularities associated with price dispersion and market development in postwar Iraq. First, the degree of intracountry price dispersion in Iraq is higher than that reported for a typical industrialized nation. Second, the degree of price dispersion decreased significantly during 2007, coincident with the change in U.S. security strategy known as the "surge." Third, the economic impact of the surge is geographically uneven but loosely follows patterns of U.S. deployment - with price dispersion decreasing by roughly one-third in areas targeted during the surge but remaining relatively static in other areas. Finally, we find that internal ethnoreligious divisions have relatively modest effects on price dispersion.
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Authoritarian Signaling, Mass Audiences, and Nationalist Protest in China
Jessica Chen Weiss
International Organization, January 2013, Pages 1-35
Abstract:
How can authoritarian states credibly signal their intentions in international crises? Nationalist, antiforeign protests are one mechanism by which authoritarian leaders can visibly demonstrate their domestic vulnerability. Because protests in authoritarian states are risky and costly to repress, the decision to allow or stifle popular mobilization is informative. The threat of instability demonstrates resolve, and the cost of concession increases the credibility of a tough stance. The danger of instability and escalation increases foreign incentives to make concessions and preserve the status quo. This logic helps explain the pattern of authoritarian tolerance and repression toward nationalist protest. A case study of two U.S.-China crises shows how China's management of anti-American protests affected U.S. beliefs about Chinese resolve.
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Cross-border terror networks: A social network analysis of the Canada-US border
Christian Leuprecht, Todd Hataley & David Skillicorn
Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, forthcoming
Abstract:
American rhetoric has repeatedly painted Canada as a conduit for terrorists to enter the USA. But what actually happens at Canada's borders? This article analyses open-source, cross-sectional data on Canadians convicted of terrorism offences between 1999 and 2011. It applies social network analysis (SNA) - investigating stochastic networks by means of the structure of human groups using pairwise links among their members - to (1) identify the drivers, nature and direction of Canada-US extremist cross-border traffic; (2) generate hypotheses from a limited data set that can be subjected to further empirical scrutiny with the aim of modelling cross-border extremist networks more generally; and (3) assess the risk they pose by measuring the extent to which such networks increase or reduce marginal costs. SNA of nine cases involving 14 subjects between 1997 and 2011 finds no systematic terrorist threat directed at the USA emanating from Canada. That finding is reinforced by the simple structure of cross-border networks. Terrorist traffic actually runs both ways, exploits countervailing transaction costs in the form of markets of opportunity on either side of the border, and much of the effort is in support of terrorist activity outside of North America. Most subjects crossed the Canada-US border legally at ports of entry, suggesting that enforcement resources are better spent on flows than controls at the actual border.
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Stefano Costalli
British Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Cross-country empirical studies have reviewed many aspects of peacekeeping missions, but the findings on their effectiveness diverge. This article draws on recent empirical literature on civil wars using a disaggregated approach, addressing the effectiveness of peacekeeping by examining the local variation in UN troop deployment and violence in the Bosnian civil war. The relationship between the intensity of local violence and troop deployment across Bosnian municipalities and peacekeeping effects on the intensity of subsequent violence are examined with a matching approach. The results indicate that although peacekeeping ‘works', since it is deployed where the most severe violence takes place, peacekeepers have little effect on subsequent violence. This is consistent with research highlighting the obstacles to UN missions in addressing their objectives.
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Security Commitments and Nuclear Proliferation
Dan Reiter
Foreign Policy Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article develops a theory connecting security commitments and the decision to acquire nuclear weapons. In a threatening environment, third party security commitments can reduce a state's fear of abandonment in the event of war and its motive for acquiring nuclear weapons. However, a threatened state may reject at least some kinds of security commitments, such as foreign deployed nuclear weapons, if it fears that such commitments increase the risks of entrapment, the possibility that the threatened state will be dragged into a war it would like to avoid. The article looks at three kinds of security commitments, alliances, foreign deployed nuclear weapons, and foreign deployed troops. In quantitative tests, it finds strong evidence that foreign deployed nuclear weapons reduce proliferation motives, only very limited evidence that alliances reduce proliferation motives, and no evidence that foreign deployed troops reduce proliferation motives. It also presents several qualitative evidence, which supports the quantitative evidence, and in particular helps explain why alliance ties sometimes do not prevent proliferation.
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Conventional Prompt Global Strike: A Fresh Perspective
Thomas Scheber & Kurt Guthe
Comparative Strategy, Winter 2013, Pages 18-34
Abstract:
Conventional prompt global strike (CPGS) is the proposed capability to deliver a precision nonnuclear weapon against a target anywhere in the world in less than an hour. Despite years of study and debate, the need for a better understanding of the issues related to this capability remains. Recent political, arms control, and fiscal developments warrant a fresh look at conventional prompt global strike. Analyzed here are potential contributions of CPGS to U.S. national security objectives, weapon-system options for the CPGS role, arms control limits that apply to certain options, and some possible drawbacks of CPGS capabilities. Overall, a number of CPGS options could enhance U.S. and allied security within the existing arms control framework and without creating significant risks.
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Economic Sanctions, Poverty, and International Terrorism: An Empirical Analysis
Seung-Whan Choi & Shali Luo
International Interactions, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study examines the impact of economic sanctions on international terrorism. It is argued that sanctions intensify economic hardships on the poor within countries and this increases their level of grievance and makes them more likely to support or engage in international terrorism. Further, economic sanctions are conceptualized as creating an opportunity for rogue leaders to manipulate aggrieved poor people to terrorize foreign entities who are demonized as engaging in a foreign encroachment on the sanctioned nation's sovereignty. A cross-sectional, time-series data analysis of 152 countries for the past three decades provides evidence that ceteris paribus, economic sanctions are positively associated with international terrorism. This finding suggests that, although the main purpose of economic sanctions is to coerce rogue countries to conform to international norms and laws, they can unintentionally produce a negative ramification and become a cause of international terrorism.
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An Asymmetric Counter to the Asymmetric Threat
Douglas Johnston
American Foreign Policy Interests, January/February 2013, Pages 9-14
Abstract:
That a deeply religious nation like the United States should have such difficulty addressing the religious challenges of the post-cold war world is more than a little ironic. Two reasons for this situation stand out: (1) a proclivity for using our separation of church and state as an excuse for not working to understand how religion informs the worldviews and political aspirations of those who do not similarly separate the two and (2) the long-standing exclusion of religious considerations from our policy deliberations. Religious extremism married to weapons of mass destruction only makes more urgent the need to bridge this gap. One approach that shows unusual promise is a new form of engagement called faith-based diplomacy, which capitalizes on commonly shared religious values to bridge differences between adversaries. This article describes how faith-based diplomacy is being used in Pakistan to deal with the ideas behind the guns.
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De-Radicalization in Israel's Prison System
Boaz Ganor & Ophir Falk
Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, February 2013, Pages 116-131
Abstract:
An effective de-radicalization process in prisons is intended to facilitate the renouncement of violence and terrorism by those that have carried out such offenses. A key lesson that can be drawn from Israel's de-radicalization efforts is that it is possible, indeed recommended, to treat inmates - regardless of their level of radicalization - in a dignified and humane manner. However, Israel's ability to significantly de-radicalize security prisoners is limited if it is at all existent in its current form. Security prisoners with the potential for positive change should be placed in a different, perhaps foreign setting. This article provides an overview of Israel's prison system, the challenges it faces, its efforts to de-radicalize security inmates and suggests additional courses of action.
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The ancient olympics as a signal of city-state strength
Douglas Allen & Vera Lantinova
Economics of Governance, February 2013, Pages 23-44
Abstract:
Ancient Greece was wealthy enough to invent many of the foundations of Western Civilization. In order to accomplish this, they had to avoid the trap of dissipating wealth through continuous feuding. We contend that the ancient Olympics was one, of several, institutions that helped achieve this by acting as a signal of city-state strength. Although it could not prevent all battles, it provided information to reduce hostilities between competing cities. This hypothesis explains the rise and fall of the Olympics, and the unique and puzzling characteristics of the rules and events.
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Crisis Bargaining and Nuclear Blackmail
Todd Sechser & Matthew Fuhrmann
International Organization, January 2013, Pages 173-195
Abstract:
Do nuclear weapons offer coercive advantages in international crisis bargaining? Almost seventy years into the nuclear age, we still lack a complete answer to this question. While scholars have devoted significant attention to questions about nuclear deterrence, we know comparatively little about whether nuclear weapons can help compel states to change their behavior. This study argues that, despite their extraordinary power, nuclear weapons are uniquely poor instruments of compellence. Compellent threats are more likely to be effective under two conditions: first, if a challenger can credibly threaten to seize the item in dispute; and second, if enacting the threat would entail few costs to the challenger. Nuclear weapons, however, meet neither of these conditions. They are neither useful tools of conquest nor low-cost tools of punishment. Using a new dataset of more than 200 militarized compellent threats from 1918 to 2001, we find strong support for our theory: compellent threats from nuclear states are no more likely to succeed, even after accounting for possible selection effects in the data. While nuclear weapons may carry coercive weight as instruments of deterrence, it appears that these effects do not extend to compellence.
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The Effect of Competition on Terrorist Group Operations
Stephen Nemeth
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
Scholars have long accepted the contention that competition among terrorist organizations raises the level of violence used by the competitors. This article discusses this claim and advances another - that competition among terrorist organizations creates incentives to use less violence. Using insights from the organizational ecology literature - namely that competition occurs within "species" - I create a variable that assesses intraspecies competition. I test both claims using a data set of domestic terrorism created from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) for the years 1970 to 1997. I find support for the hypothesis that competition leads to more terrorism, validating the claims of outbidding theorists. Furthermore, ideologies have differential effects on whether outbidding occurs, with nationalist and religious terrorist groups responding to competition with more terrorism and left-wing organizations responding with less.
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Why We Fight: Understanding Military Participation over the Life Cycle
David Mann
Journal of Human Capital, Winter 2012, Pages 279-315
Abstract:
Looming reductions in military spending have sparked great interest in how military personnel respond to the incentives they face. This paper specifies a dynamic career decision model that includes military service options to understand how human capital, compensation, the business cycle, and combat risk affect the military labor supply. The model is estimated using data on males from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Experimental results show that the military wage elasticity of military participation is 3 percent, entering the workforce during an adverse business cycle state increases military participation by 3 percent, and combat death risk strongly affects military participation.
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International Law and Public Attitudes Toward Torture: An Experimental Study
Geoffrey Wallace
International Organization, January 2013, Pages 105-140
Abstract:
Domestic approaches to compliance with international commitments often presume that international law has a distinct effect on the beliefs and preferences of national publics. Studies attempting to estimate the consequences of international law unfortunately face a wide range of empirical and methodological challenges. This article uses an experimental design embedded in two U.S. national surveys to offer direct systematic evidence of international law's effect on mass attitudes. To provide a relatively tough test for international law, the surveys examine public attitudes toward the use of torture, an issue in which national security concerns are often considered paramount. Contrary to the common contention of international law's inefficacy, I find that legal commitments have a discernible impact on public support for the use of torture. The effect of international law is also strongest in those contexts where pressures to resort to torture are at their highest. However, the effects of different dimensions in the level of international agreements' legalization are far from uniform. In contrast to the attention often devoted to binding rules, I find that the level of obligation seems to make little difference on public attitudes toward torture. Rather, the relative precision of the rules, along with the degree to which enforcement is delegated to third parties, plays a much greater role in shaping public preferences. Across both international law and legalization, an individual's political ideology also exerts a strong mediating effect, though in varying directions depending on the design of the agreement. The findings have implications for understanding the overall impact of international law on domestic actors, the importance of institutional design, and the role of political ideology on compliance with international agreements.
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Southeast Asia: In The Shadow of China
Benjamin Reilly
Journal of Democracy, January 2013, Pages 156-164
Abstract:
In this essay, Benjamin Reilly ponders the puzzling pattern of democracy's presence or absence across Southeast Asia. Indeed, the dearth of democracy in the region's richest countries (Brunei, Malaysia, and Singapore), together with its strength in the poorest (Indonesia, the Philippines, and Timor-Leste) seems to defy the idea - so basic to modernization theory - that stable democracy is fostered by economic development. The reason for this seemingly anomalous situation, says Reilly, lies in the realm of history and geography. He argues that physical proximity to China and the traditional degree of Chinese influence (heavier on the mainland, lighter on the offshore periphery) offer the best explanation of how democracy is distributed across Southeast Asia.
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America's Global Standing According to Popular News Sites From Around the World
Elad Segev & Menahem Blondheim
Political Communication, Winter 2013, Pages 139-161
Abstract:
The growing popularity and use of news Web sites around the world provides new possibilities for studying the position of the United States in the world system charted by digital news items. In this article, we look at 35 popular news sites in 10 different languages over a 2-year period, in order to assess the position of the United States in world news as well as to identify possible explanations for it. Our findings show that the United States is by far the most prominent country in the news sites that we studied from around the world, except for the French and Arabic ones. The network structure of news links clearly exhibits its key position as the centerpiece of a global system. Economic factors better explain America's news prominence than political, social, and geographical factors. Yet, none of the many variables we examined could explain the large gap between the news prominence of the United States and that of the rest of the world. We discuss possible reasons for these findings and suggest directions for further studies in the field.
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Nuclear Superiority and the Balance of Resolve: Explaining Nuclear Crisis Outcomes
Matthew Kroenig
International Organization, January 2013, Pages 141-171
Abstract:
Scholars have long debated whether nuclear superiority or the balance of resolve shapes the probability of victory in nuclear crises, but they have not clearly articulated a mechanism linking superiority to victory, nor have they systematically analyzed the entire universe of empirical cases. Beginning from a nuclear brinkmanship theory framework, I develop a new theory of nuclear crisis outcomes, which links nuclear superiority to victory in nuclear crises precisely through its effect on the balance of resolve. Using a new data set on fifty-two nuclear crisis dyads, I show that states that enjoy nuclear superiority over their opponents are more likely to win nuclear crises. I also find some support for the idea that political stakes shape crisis outcomes. These findings hold even after controlling for conventional military capabilities and for selection into nuclear crises. This article presents a new theoretical explanation, and the first comprehensive empirical examination, of nuclear crisis outcomes.
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Balances Without Great Powers: Some Evidence on War and Peace in the Americas, 1816-1989
William Moul
International Interactions, forthcoming
Abstract:
Did disputes between non-great powers in the New World, 1816-1989, escalate to war if the disputes involved roughly equal sides or not? Metaphorically and practically, "balances of power" are about measurement but many of the usual measures prove to be incorrect. Proper assessments of the balances of fighting power qualify counts of the material resources by considering the political-organizational capacity of the state to employ what is counted, the geopolitical location and logistics, and what bystander states might do if the dispute were to escalate. A modest correlation exists between rough equality in power capabilities and war, not peace, in the Americas, 1816-1989. A bare majority of the wars in the Americas from 1816 until 1989 were fought between equal sides, and equal disputants were thirteen times more likely to escalate to war than non-equals were. This relationship found among non-great powers is much less strong than the relationship found among the great powers.
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Rooted in Urban Poverty? Failed Modernization and Terrorism
Daniel Meierrieks
Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy, December 2012
Abstract:
This contribution finds that urban (but not rural) poverty fuels domestic and anti-U.S. terrorism in 43 developing countries. It argues that urban poverty aids non-state groups which use terrorism as a means to capture rents and consolidate popular support.
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No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Refugees, Humanitarian Aid, and Terrorism
Seung-Whan Choi & Idean Salehyan
Conflict Management and Peace Science, February 2013, Pages 53-75
Abstract:
We examine the consequences of hosting refugees for domestic and international terrorism. In line with the old saying, "no good deed goes unpunished", we argue that the infusion of aid resources provides militant groups with opportunities for looting and for attacking foreign targets. A cross-national, time-series data analysis of 154 countries for the years 1970-2007 shows evidence that countries with many refugees are more likely to experience both domestic and international terrorism. This finding implies that while the international community should strive to reduce the number of refugees by preventing the eruption of major conflict events, individual countries should find a way of maintaining the balance between humanitarianism toward refugees and providing safe, secure environments for refugees and those that assist them.
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Do Superpower Interventions Have Short and Long Term Consequences for Democracy?
Daniel Berger et al.
Journal of Comparative Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The United States' wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have revived again the phenomenon of "regime change" that was thought to have died with the Cold War. We study Cold War "regime changes" for insight, although of course they do not extrapolate exactly to modern events. The recent declassification of Cold War documents now makes it possible to develop a new time series cross section dataset of superpower interventions during the Cold War which takes account of interventions by the secret services. We find that US interventions to prop up a leader are associated with significant short term and medium term declines in democracy in the intervened country. We observe a similar size effect for Soviet interventions, but they are not robustly significant like US interventions. Although the negative effect of interventions dissipates once the intervention ends, an intervention has a large effect on democracy when it lasts for a long time.
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Contagious Rebellion and Preemptive Repression
Nathan Danneman & Emily Hencken Ritter
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
Civil conflict appears to be contagious - scholars have shown that civil wars in a state's neighborhood make citizens more likely to rebel at home. However, war occurs when both rebels and the state engage in conflict. How do state authorities respond to the potential for civil conflict to spread? We argue that elites will anticipate the incentive-altering effects of civil wars abroad and increase repression at home to preempt potential rebellion. Using a Bayesian hierarchical model and spatially weighted conflict measures, we find robust evidence that a state will engage in higher levels of human rights violations as civil war becomes more prevalent in its geographic proximity. We thus find evidence that states violate rights as a function of the internal politics of other states. Further, we argue authorities will act not to mimic their neighbors but rather to avoid their fate.
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Impacts of a nuclear war in South Asia on soybean and maize production in the Midwest United States
Mutlu Özdoğan, Alan Robock & Christopher Kucharik
Climatic Change, January 2013, Pages 373-387
Abstract:
Crop production would decline in the Midwestern United States from climate change following a regional nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan. Using Agro-IBIS, a dynamic agroecosystem model, we simulated the response of maize and soybeans to cooler, drier, and darker conditions from war-related smoke. We combined observed climate conditions for the states of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Missouri with output from a general circulation climate model simulation that injected 5 Tg of elemental carbon into the upper troposphere. Both maize and soybeans showed notable yield reductions for a decade after the event. Maize yields declined 10-40 % while soybean yields dropped 2-20 %. Temporal variation in magnitude of yield for both crops generally followed the variation in climatic anomalies, with the greatest decline in the 5 years following the 5 Tg event and then less, but still substantial yield decline, for the rest of the decade. Yield reduction for both crops was linked to changes in growing period duration and, less markedly, to reduced precipitation and altered maximum daily temperature during the growing season. The seasonal average of daily maximum temperature anomalies, combined with precipitation and radiation changes, had a quadratic relationship to yield differences; small (0 °C) and large (-3 °C) maximum temperature anomalies combined with other changes led to increased yield loss, but medium changes (-1 °C) had small to neutral effects on yield. The exact timing of the temperature changes during the various crop growth phases also had an important effect.
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Avoiding the Spotlight: Human Rights Shaming and Foreign Direct Investment
Colin Barry, Chad Clay & Michael Flynn
International Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Nonstate actors, such as international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) and multinational corporations (MNCs), have attained an increasingly prominent role in modern world affairs. While previous research has focused on these actors' respective interactions with states, little attention has been paid to their interactions with each other. In this paper, we examine the extent to which the decisions of private actors seeking to invest abroad are affected by the reputational costs of doing business in countries publicly targeted by human rights activists. We find that ‘‘naming and shaming'' by human rights INGOs tends to reduce the amount of foreign direct investment received by developing states, providing evidence that INGO activities affect the behavior of MNCs. An additional implication of our findings is that shaming by INGOs can impose real costs on targeted states in the form of lost investment.
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The Tablighi Jama'at: Proselytizing Missionaries or Trojan Horse?
Shireen Khan Burki
Journal of Applied Security Research, Winter 2013, Pages 98-117
Abstract:
Tablighi Jama'at, a transnational Deobandi (Sunni) Muslim proselytizing group with branches in over 150 countries today, has garnered attention in the West since 2001. With increasing frequency, terrorist plots in the West reveal Jama'at linkages. Although its leadership enunciates a peaceful, apolitical stance; the organization does share the same core ideology and ultimate objectives (the expansion of Dar al Islam and the establishment of a global Caliphate) as the Salafis, Wahhabis and other "revivalist" Islamist movements such as the Ikhwan al Muslimin (Muslim Brotherhood). The only difference between the Jama'at and the Ikhwan, for example, is their respective modus operandi. Although the Tablighi Jama'at stress proselytism as their sole objective, they have also provided cover, a conduit and a fertile recruiting ground for jihadi organizations such as Al Qaeda and Lashkar-i-Taiba.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
At the top
Managerial Attitudes and Corporate Actions
John Graham, Campbell Harvey & Manju Puri
Journal of Financial Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We administer psychometric tests to senior executives to obtain evidence on their underlying psychological traits and attitudes. We find US CEOs differ significantly from non-US CEOs in terms of their underlying attitudes. In addition, we find that CEOs are significantly more optimistic and risk-tolerant than the lay population. We provide evidence that CEOs' behavioral traits such as optimism and managerial risk-aversion are related to corporate financial policies. Further, we provide new empirical evidence that CEO traits such as risk-aversion and time preference are related to their compensation.
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Is Disclosure an Effective Cleansing Mechanism? The Dynamics of Compensation Peer Benchmarking
Michael Faulkender & Jun Yang
Review of Financial Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
Firms routinely justify CEO compensation by benchmarking against companies with highly paid CEOs. We examine whether the 2006 regulatory requirement of disclosing compensation peers mitigated firms' opportunistic peer selection activities. We find that strategic peer benchmarking did not disappear after enhanced disclosure. In fact, it intensified at firms with low institutional ownership, low director ownership, low CEO ownership, busy boards, large boards, and non-intensive monitoring boards, and at firms with shareholders complaining about compensation practices. The effect is also stronger at firms with new CEOs. These findings call into question whether disclosure regulation can remedy potential problems in compensation practices.
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Shareholder voting rights in early American corporations
Eric Hilt
Business History, forthcoming
Abstract:
In early American corporations, the power of large shareholders was frequently limited by voting rules that partially disenfranchised them. In particular, stock held in an individual's name was granted a number of votes per share that decreased with the number of shares held. Using data from the corporations created in New York up to 1825, this paper analyses the use of these ‘graduated' voting rights. Consistent with the view that they were intended to help small investors protect themselves against the predations of controlling shareholders, the data indicate that graduated voting rights were imposed in industries that attracted small investments from ordinary households. The results highlight the importance of concerns over the controlling influence of large shareholders in early corporate governance.
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A Paper Tiger? An Empirical Analysis of Majority Voting
Jay Cai, Jacqueline Garner & Ralph Walkling
Journal of Corporate Finance, forthcoming
Abstract:
Majority voting in board elections has emerged as a dominant theme in recent proxy seasons. Analysis of majority voting is important: first, the impact is controversial yet scant empirical evidence exists. Second, Congress is still considering mandating this practice. Third, there has been a tectonic shift in adoptions of majority voting, from 16% to over 67% of S&P 500 firms in just two years. Fourth, the vast majority of shareholder proposals for majority voting are sponsored by unions with little shareholdings. Proponents argue that majority voting aligns shareholder-director interests. Opponents argue that the practice will be disruptive and could result in the failure of boards to meet exchange and SEC requirements. Others assert that majority voting is a paper tiger, amounting to form over substance, particularly since many adoptions are non-binding. We provide an empirical analysis of the wealth effects, characteristics, and efficacy of majority voting. Our results are consistent with the paper tiger hypothesis.
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Are U.S. CEOs Paid More? New International Evidence
Nuno Fernandes et al.
Review of Financial Studies, February 2013, Pages 323-367
Abstract:
This paper challenges the widely accepted stylized fact that chief executive officers (CEOs) in the United States are paid significantly more than their foreign counterparts. Using CEO pay data across fourteen countries with mandated pay disclosures, we show that the U.S. pay premium is economically modest and primarily reflects the performance-based pay demanded by institutional shareholders and independent boards. Indeed, we find no significant difference in either level of CEO pay or the use of equity-based pay between U.S. and non-U.S. firms exposed to international and U.S. capital, product, and labor markets. We also show that U.S. and non-U.S. CEO pay has largely converged in the 2000s.
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The acquisitiveness of youth: CEO age and acquisition behavior
Soojin Yim
Journal of Financial Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
I demonstrate that acquisitions are accompanied by large, permanent increases in Chief Executive Officer (CEO) compensation, which create strong financial incentives for CEOs to pursue acquisitions earlier in their career. Accordingly, I document that a firm's acquisition propensity is decreasing in the age of its CEO: a firm with a CEO who is 20 years older is ∼30% less likely to announce an acquisition. This negative effect of CEO age on acquisitions is strongest among firms where CEOs likely anticipate or can influence high post-acquisition compensation, and is absent for other investment decisions that are not rewarded with permanent compensation gains. The age effect cannot be explained by the selection of young CEOs by acquisition-prone firms, nor by a story of declining overconfidence with age. This paper underscores the relevance of CEO personal characteristics and CEO-level variation in agency problems for corporate decisions.
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Ali Akyol, Wei Fen Lim & Patrick Verwijmeren
Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, September/October 2012, Pages 1029-1057
Abstract:
Current attempts to reform financial markets presume that shareholder empowerment benefits shareholders. We investigate the wealth effects associated with the Securities and Exchange Commission's rule to facilitate director nominations by shareholders. Our results are not in line with shareholder empowerment creating value: The average daily abnormal returns surrounding events that increase (decrease) the probability of the proposal's passage are significantly negative (positive). Furthermore, given an increase in the probability of the proposal's passage, firms whose shareholders are more likely to use the rule to nominate directors experience more negative abnormal returns.
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Industry Structure, Executive Pay, and Short-Termism
John Thanassoulis
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study outlines a new theory linking industry structure to optimal employment contracts and executive short-termism. Firms hire their executives using optimal contracts derived within a competitive labour market. To motivate effort, firms must use some variable remuneration. Such remuneration introduces a myopia problem: an executive would wish to inflate early expected earnings at some risk to future profits. To manage this short-termism, some bonus pay is deferred. Convergence in size among firms makes the cost of managing the myopia problem grow faster than the cost of managing the effort problem. Eventually, the optimal contract jumps from one deterring myopia to one tolerating myopia. Under some conditions, the industry partitions: the largest firms hire executives on contracts tolerant of myopia; smaller firms ensure myopia is ruled out.
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CEO wage dynamics: Estimates from a learning model
Lucian Taylor
Journal of Financial Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The level of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) pay responds asymmetrically to good and bad news about the CEO's ability. The average CEO captures approximately half of the surpluses from good news, implying CEOs and shareholders have roughly equal bargaining power. In contrast, the average CEO bears none of the negative surplus from bad news, implying CEOs have downward rigid pay. These estimates are consistent with the optimal contracting benchmark of Harris and Hölmstrom (1982) and do not appear to be driven by weak governance. Risk-averse CEOs accept significantly lower compensation in return for the insurance provided by downward rigid pay.
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Joseph Engelberg, Pengjie Gao & Christopher Parsons
Review of Financial Studies, January 2013, Pages 79-114
Abstract:
CEOs with large networks earn more than those with small networks. An additional connection to an executive or director outside the firm increases compensation by about $17,000 on average, more so for "important" members, such as CEOs of big firms. Pay-for-connectivity is unrelated to several measures of corporate governance, evidence in favor of an efficient contracting explanation for CEO pay.
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Boardroom centrality and firm performance
David Larcker, Eric So & Charles Wang
Journal of Accounting and Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Firms with central boards of directors earn superior risk-adjusted stock returns. A long (short) position in the most (least) central firms earns average annual returns of 4.68%. Firms with central boards also experience higher future return-on-assets growth and more positive analyst forecast errors. Return prediction, return-on-assets growth, and analyst errors are concentrated among high growth opportunity firms or firms confronting adverse circumstances, consistent with boardroom connections mattering most for firms standing to benefit most from information and resources exchanged through boardroom networks. Overall, our results suggest that director networks provide economic benefits that are not immediately reflected in stock prices.
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The Potential for Catastrophic Auditor Litigation
Dain Donelson
American Law and Economics Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Audit firms continue to lobby for legal liability limits based on their contention that catastrophic civil litigation is a realistic possibility. However, others disagree that catastrophic litigation is a viable threat to the audit firms and oppose legal reform at this time. To inform this debate, this study estimates the probability that a Big Four audit firm will face catastrophic litigation. Estimates are based upon recent disclosures by audit firms regarding settlements, litigation cost, and internal financial information. The results indicate that the likelihood of catastrophic liability is low in absolute terms. Assuming liquidation only when liability reaches a threshold that includes annual income, retirement benefits, and windup costs for the firm, the likelihood of at least one Big Four firm facing litigation substantial enough to trigger voluntary liquidation is ∼0.6% over a 5-year period. These findings are consistent with auditors being able to sustain litigation under the current legal system. However, the probability would increase dramatically if firms changed their financial structures to remove partner retirement benefits. In such a case, I estimate that the likelihood of catastrophic litigation is as high as 2.8% over a 1-year period and 14.1% over a 5-year period, depending on the level of variable associated litigation costs assumed.
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David Zhu
Strategic Management Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study investigates how a fundamental group decision-making bias referred to as group polarization can influence boards' acquisition premium decisions. The theory suggests that when prior premium experience would lead directors on average to support a relatively high premium prior to board discussions, they will support a focal premium that is even higher after discussions; but when directors' prior premium experience would lead them on average to support a relatively low premium prior to board discussions, they will support a focal premium that is even lower after discussions. Results provided strong support for the theory. Moreover, group polarization was reduced by demographic homogeneity among directors and by minority expertise but increased by board influence. This study introduces a fundamental group decision-making bias into governance research and explains how group processes can influence network diffusions.
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Learning and the Disappearing Association between Governance and Returns
Lucian Bebchuk, Alma Cohen & Charles Wang
Journal of Financial Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The correlation between governance indices and abnormal returns documented for 1990-1999 subsequently disappeared. The correlation and its disappearance are both due to market participants' gradually learning to appreciate the difference between good-governance and poor-governance firms. Consistent with learning, the correlation's disappearance was associated with increases in market participants' attention to governance; market participants and security analysts were, until the beginning of the 2000s but not subsequently, more positively surprised by the earning announcements of good-governance firms; and, although governance indices no longer generated abnormal returns during the 2000s, their negative association with firm value and operating performance persisted.
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Executive Compensation, Risk Taking And The State of The Economy
Alon Raviv & Elif Sisli-Ciamarra
Journal of Financial Stability, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this paper we present a model of executive compensation to analyze the link between incentive compensation and risk taking. Our model takes into account the loss in the value of an executive's expected wealth from employment if the firm becomes insolvent during a bad state of the economy. We illustrate that a given compensation package may lead to different levels of asset risk under different economic states. Most importantly, we show that the positive relationship between equity-based compensation and risk taking may weaken and possibly disappear during systemic financial crises. An important policy implication from our analysis is that similar regulations may have different effects on risk taking depending on the state of the economy.
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How Do Staggered Boards Affect Shareholder Value? Evidence from a Natural Experiment
Alma Cohen & Charles Wang
Harvard Working Paper, September 2012
Abstract:
This paper examines whether staggered boards reduce firm value or are merely associated with it due to the tendency of low-value firms to maintain staggered boards. To analyze this causal question, we take advantage of a natural experiment involving two recent court rulings, separated by several weeks, that affected in opposite directions the antitakeover force of staggered boards. We find evidence consistent with the hypothesis that the market viewed the antitakeover force of staggered boards as value reducing. Our findings have implications for the long-standing policy debate on the desirability of staggered boards.
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Hermann Achidi Ndofor, Curtis Wesley & Richard Priem
Journal of Management, forthcoming
Abstract:
Opportunities for financial reporting fraud arise because of information asymmetries - often labeled "lack of transparency" - between top managers and their diverse shareholders. We evaluate the relative contributions of information asymmetries arising from industry-level and firm-level complexities to the likelihood of top managers committing financial reporting fraud. Using a sample of 453 matched pairs of firms that have and have not been identified as having committed financial reporting fraud, we found that information asymmetries arising from industry- and firm-level complexities increase the likelihood of financial fraud. Moreover, more CEO stock options increase the likelihood of fraud when industry complexity is high, while aggressive monitoring by the audit committee reduces the likelihood of reporting fraud when firm-level complexity is high.
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Generalists versus specialists: Lifetime work experience and chief executive officer pay
Cláudia Custódio, Miguel Ferreira & Pedro Matos
Journal of Financial Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We show that pay is higher for chief executive officers (CEOs) with general managerial skills gathered during lifetime work experience. We use CEOs' résumés of Standard and Poor's 1,500 firms from 1993 through 2007 to construct an index of general skills that are transferable across firms and industries. We estimate an annual pay premium for generalist CEOs (those with an index value above the median) of 19% relative to specialist CEOs, which represents nearly a million dollars per year. This relation is robust to the inclusion of firm- and CEO-level controls, including fixed effects. CEO pay increases the most when firms externally hire a new CEO and switch from a specialist to a generalist CEO. Furthermore, the pay premium is higher when CEOs are hired to perform complex tasks such as restructurings and acquisitions. Our findings provide direct evidence of the increased importance of general managerial skills over firm-specific human capital in the market for CEOs in the last decades.
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It Pays to Follow the Leader: Acquiring Targets Picked by Private Equity
Amy Dittmar, Di Li & Amrita Nain
Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, September/October 2012, Pages 901-931
Abstract:
This paper examines the impact of financial sponsor competition on corporate buyers. We find that corporate acquirers who purchase targets that financial buyers also bid on outperform corporate acquirers who buy targets bid on by corporate firms only. Deal characteristics, acquirer abilities, and observable target characteristics cannot explain this difference in returns. Corporate acquirers have higher returns when they follow a first bid by a financial buyer rather than a first bid by another corporate buyer. The results suggest that financial bidders identify targets with high potential for value improvement and winning corporate bidders are competent in exploiting this potential.
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The Ethics of Hedging by Executives
Lee Dunham & Ken Washer
Journal of Business Ethics, December 2012, Pages 157-164
Abstract:
Executives of many publicly held firms agree to compensation packages that create immense exposure to their employer's stock. Corporate boards, aspiring to motivate executives to make value-maximizing decisions, often tie an executive's earnings to stock price performance through stock or option awards. However, this engenders a significant ethical dilemma for many executives who are uncomfortable with sizable, firm-specific risk and desire to reduce it through hedging activities. Recent research has shown that executive hedging has become more prevalent. In essence, managers are unwinding the acute economic incentive to act in the best interest of the owners. This appears to violate the spirit of the compensation contract and from a normative standpoint, is not how executives should act. In this article, we describe how some executives are acting in regard to this issue (descriptive ethics), how they should act (normative ethics) and how they can be helped to get from what they are doing, to what they should be doing (prescriptive ethics).
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Director capital and corporate disclosure quality
David Reeb & Wanli Zhao
Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
Conventional wisdom regarding board effectiveness emphasizes the role of board composition and incentives in alleviating conflicts of interest. We argue that board capital, however, may be a more important aspect of board efficacy since directors are the highest level agents of shareholders, meet infrequently, and shareholders have limited recourse for poor decision-making. In contrast, shareholders and the SEC can sue/prosecute directors for conflicts of interest or bias. One role of the board involves determining the depth and degree of the firm's financial disclosures. To test the idea that high capital boards seek to provide greater disclosure quality to investors, we manually collect data on director attributes and apply factor analysis to measure the networking, educational, and experience capital of the board. The results indicate that board capital is positively related to disclosure quality, with differing key attributes for inside and outside directors. These results are robust to 2SLS and difference-in-difference approaches.
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Corporate Governance and Value Creation: Evidence from Private Equity
Viral Acharya et al.
Review of Financial Studies, February 2013, Pages 368-402
Abstract:
Using deal-level data from transactions initiated by large private equity houses, we find that the abnormal performance of deals is positive on average, after controlling for leverage and sector returns. Higher abnormal performance is related to improvement in sales and operating margin during the private phase, relative to that for quoted peers. General partners who are ex-consultants or ex-industry managers are associated with outperforming deals focused on internal value-creation programs, and ex-bankers or ex-accountants with outperforming deals involving significant mergers and acquisitions. The findings suggest the presence, on average, of positive but heterogeneous skills at the deal-partner level in large private equity transactions.
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The Value of "Boutique" Financial Advisors in Mergers and Acquisitions
Weihong Song, Jie (Diana) Wei & Lei Zhou
Journal of Corporate Finance, April 2013, Pages 94-114
Abstract:
Between 1995 and 2006 about a quarter of merging firms hired boutique banks as their advisors on mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Boutique advisors, often specialized by industry, are generally smaller and more independent than full-service banks. This paper investigates firms' choice between boutique and full-service advisors and the impact of advisor choice on deal outcomes. We find that both acquirers and targets are more likely to choose boutique advisors in complex deals, suggesting that boutique advisors are chosen for their skill and expertise. After controlling for the endogenous choice of advisors, we find lower deal premiums when acquirers hire boutique advisors. In addition, boutique advisors spend more time, probably on due diligence and negotiation, to complete deals. Overall, our findings suggest that boutique advisors are chosen in more complex deals and they achieve more favorable deal outcomes.
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Boards of Directors and Financial Risk during the Credit Crisis
Terry McNulty, Chris Florackis & Phillip Ormrod
Corporate Governance, January 2013, Pages 58-78
Research Question/Issue: This research examines the relationship between board processes and corporate financial risk. Using a unique questionnaire survey about board behavior, several measures related to board processes are developed and used to explain certain aspects of financial risk during the recent crisis.
Research Findings/Insights: In a sample of 141 companies with complete data collected from company chairs on both board structure and process, board process is found to be an important determinant of financial risk during the crisis of 2008-2009. In particular, financial risk is lower where non-executive directors have high effort norms and where board decision processes are characterized by a degree of cognitive conflict. The impact of cognitive conflict is, however, found to be less pronounced in boards with high levels of cohesiveness.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Instituting marriage
A Brief Intervention to Promote Conflict Reappraisal Preserves Marital Quality Over Time
Eli Finkel et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Marital quality is a major contributor to happiness and health. Unfortunately, marital quality normatively declines over time. We tested whether a novel 21-minute intervention designed to foster the reappraisal of marital conflicts could preserve marital quality in a sample of 120 couples enrolled in an intensive 2-year study. Half of the couples were randomly assigned to receive the reappraisal intervention in Year 2 (following no intervention in Year 1); half were not. Both groups exhibited declines in marital quality over Year 1. This decline continued in Year 2 among couples in the control condition, but was eliminated among couples in the reappraisal condition. This effect of the reappraisal intervention on marital quality over time was mediated through reductions in conflict-related distress over time. This study illustrates the potential of brief, theory-based, social-psychological interventions to preserve the quality of intimate relationships over time.
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In Sickness and in Wealth: Psychological and Sexual Costs of Income Comparison in Marriage
Lamar Pierce, Michael Dahl & Jimmi Nielsen
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
As the percentage of wives outearning their husbands grows, the traditional social norm of the male breadwinner is challenged. The upward income comparison of the husband may cause psychological distress that affects partners' mental and physical health in ways that affect decisions on marriage, divorce, and careers. This article studies this impact through sexual and mental health problems. Using wage and prescription medication data from Denmark, we implement a regression discontinuity design to show that men outearned by their wives are more likely to use erectile dysfunction medication than their male breadwinner counterparts, even when this inequality is small. Breadwinner wives suffer increased insomnia/anxiety medication usage, with similar effects for men. We find no effects for unmarried couples or for men who earned less than their fiancée prior to marriage. Our results suggest that social norms play important roles in dictating how individuals respond to upward social comparisons.
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Egalitarianism, Housework, and Sexual Frequency in Marriage
Sabino Kornrich, Julie Brines & Katrina Leupp
American Sociological Review, February 2013, Pages 26-50
Abstract:
Changes in the nature of marriage have spurred a debate about the consequences of shifts to more egalitarian relationships, and media interest in the debate has crystallized around claims that men who participate in housework get more sex. However, little systematic or representative research supports the claim that women, in essence, exchange sex for men's participation in housework. Although research and theory support the expectation that egalitarian marriages are higher quality, other studies underscore the ongoing importance of traditional gender behavior and gender display in marriage. Using data from Wave II of the National Survey of Families and Households, this study investigates the links between men's participation in core (traditionally female) and non-core (traditionally male) household tasks and sexual frequency. Results show that both husbands and wives in couples with more traditional housework arrangements report higher sexual frequency, suggesting the importance of gender display rather than marital exchange for sex between heterosexual married partners.
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Using complementary methods to test whether marriage limits men's antisocial behavior
Sara Jaffee, Caitlin McPherran Lombardi & Rebekah Levine Coley
Development and Psychopathology, February 2013, Pages 65-77
Abstract:
Married men engage in significantly less antisocial behavior than unmarried men, but it is not clear whether this reflects a causal relationship. Instead, the relationship could reflect selection into marriage whereby the men who are most likely to marry (men in steady employment with high levels of education) are the least likely to engage in antisocial behavior. The relationship could also be the result of reverse causation, whereby high levels of antisocial behavior are a deterrent to marriage rather than the reverse. Both of these alternative processes are consistent with the possibility that some men have a genetically based proclivity to become married, known as an active genotype-environment correlation. Using four complementary methods, we tested the hypothesis that marriage limits men's antisocial behavior. These approaches have different strengths and weaknesses and collectively help to rule out alternative explanations, including active genotype-environment correlations, for a causal association between marriage and men's antisocial behavior. Data were drawn from the in-home interview sample of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a large, longitudinal survey study of a nationally representative sample of adolescents in the United States. Lagged negative binomial and logistic regression and propensity score matching models (n = 2,250), fixed-effects models of within-individual change (n = 3,061), and random-effects models of sibling differences (n = 618) all showed that married men engaged in significantly less antisocial behavior than unmarried men. Our findings replicate results from other quasiexperimental studies of marriage and men's antisocial behavior and extend the results to a nationally representative sample of young adults in the United States.
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Nevena Kulic
Journal of Socio-Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
There is a growing tendency to see cohabitation as an equivalent alternative to marriage, and this article investigates how different these two unions are for a woman's financial satisfaction and income sharing in Denmark, France and Great Britain. The analysis suggests that a woman's financial satisfaction decreases with cohabitation as opposed to marriage due perhaps to the lack of income pooling of cohabiters. The paper however finds substantial heterogeneity among married couples; the difference between marriage and cohabitation is not only a result of the legal protection obtained by the marriage contract but is better explained by the level of relationship investment in marriage in terms of its duration. The systematic comparison of the three institutional frameworks points out that Denmark, as the country where marriage and cohabitation are most equated by law, is surprisingly the country where the relative difference between marriage and cohabitation for a woman's financial satisfaction is the greatest. No relative variation in results is observed between Great Britain and France.
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Relationship Churning, Physical Violence, and Verbal Abuse in Young Adult Relationships
Sarah Halpern-Meekin et al.
Journal of Marriage and Family, February 2013, Pages 2-12
Abstract:
Young adults' romantic relationships are often unstable, commonly including breakup-reconcile patterns. From the developmental perspective of emerging adulthood exploration, such relationship "churning" is expected; however, minor conflicts are more common in churning relationships. Using data from the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study (N = 792), the authors tested whether relationship churning is associated with more serious conflict, such as physical violence and verbal abuse. Couples who were stably broken up (breakup only-no reconciliation) were similar to those who were stably together in their conflict experiences. In contrast, churners (i.e., those involved in on/off relationships) were twice as likely as those who were stably together or stably broken up to report physical violence and half again as likely to report the presence of verbal abuse in their relationships; this association between churning and conflict held net of a host of demographic, personal, and relationship characteristics. These findings have implications for our better understanding of unhealthy relationship behaviors.
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Intimate Partner Violence in Interracial and Monoracial Couples
Brittny Martin et al.
Family Relations, February 2013, Pages 202-211
Abstract:
This study, using a nationally representative sample, investigated intimate partner violence (IPV) in interracial and monoracial relationships. Regression analyses indicated that interracial couples demonstrated a higher level of mutual IPV than monoracial White couples but a level similar to monoracial Black couples. There were significant gender differences in IPV, with women reporting lower levels of victimization than men. Regarding relationship status, cohabiting couples demonstrated the highest levels of IPV, and dating couples reported the lowest levels. Regarding interactions among couple racial composition, relationship status, and respondents' gender, an interaction between racial composition and relationship status was found. Implications for practitioners and directions for future research are discussed.
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Does working with spouses make teams more productive? A field experiment in India using NREGA
Alistair Munro, Arjan Verschoor & Amaresh Dubey
Economics Letters, March 2013, Pages 506-508
Abstract:
In Uttar Pradesh, teams of four are engaged to dig soil under the NREGA programme. In one treatment spouses work together; in the other treatment they work in separate teams. Working with spouses is associated with significantly higher output.
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(Not) Bringing Up Baby: The Effects of Jealousy on the Desire to Have and Invest in Children
Sarah Hill & Danielle DelPriore
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, February 2013, Pages 206-218
Abstract:
The present research uses insights from evolutionary psychology and social cognition to explore the relationship between jealousy - both experimentally activated and chronically accessible - on men's and women's desire to start a family and invest in children. In our first two studies, we found that chronically jealous men and women responded to primed infidelity threat by exhibiting a diminished interest in infants (Study 1) and reporting less happiness upon receiving pregnancy news (Study 2) relative to controls. Study 3 extended these results by examining the effects of jealousy on desired parental investment. Consistent with the proposed theoretical framework, chronically jealous men, but not women, respond to infidelity threat by decreasing their desired level of parental investment relative to controls. Together, these results provide novel empirical support for the hypothesis that jealousy functions to attenuate the reproductive costs associated with partner infidelity.
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Divorce Law Reforms and Divorce Rates in the USA: An Interactive Fixed-Effects Approach
Dukpa Kim & Tatsushi Oka
Journal of Applied Econometrics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper estimates the effects of unilateral divorce laws on divorce rates in the USA from a panel of state-level divorce rates. We use the interactive fixed-effects model to address the issue of endogeneity due to the association between cross-state unobserved heterogeneity and divorce law reforms. We document that earlier studies in the literature do not fully control for unobserved heterogeneity and result in mixed empirical evidence on the effects of divorce law reforms. While reconciling these conflicting results, our results suggest that divorce law reforms have temporal positive effects on divorce rates, thus confirming the 2006 findings of Wolfers. Via simulation experiments, we assess the degree to which faulty inclusion or faulty exclusion of interactive fixed effects affects the policy effect estimators. Our results suggest that faulty inclusion only results in efficiency loss whereas faulty exclusion causes bias.
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Gordon Anderson & Teng Wah Leo
Journal of Comparative Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper introduces an index that facilitates the testing of differing matching theories based on the degree of overlap between a theoretically generated matching joint density and its empirical counterpart. The index is asymptotically Normal, consequently permitting inference. To demonstrate its use, the paper examines the effect the One Child Policy had on matching patterns in the marriage market in China. To distinguish between confounding policies of the period, a static general equilibrium model is introduced. It predicts that constraining marital output in the child quantity dimension may raise the marginal benefit of positive assortative matching and investment in child quality, thereby increasing the intensity with which they are pursued and concomitantly reducing the marriage rate. Upon verifying that the policy was binding via a Poisson model, using the matching index, significant support for increases in positive assortative matching and reductions in negative assortative matching were found.
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Partnership longevity and personality congruence in couples
Beatrice Rammstedt et al.
Personality and Individual Differences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Evidence of assortative mating according to personality was reported in a previous SOEP-based study (Rammstedt & Schupp, 2008). Based on population representative data of almost 7000 couples, high levels of congruence between spouses were found, which increased with marriage duration. Almost 5000 of these couples were tracked over a five-year period with personality assessed at the beginning and end of this time, which allowed us to investigate the relationship between personality congruence and marriage duration longitudinally. Using this data, we investigated (a) whether personality congruence is predictive for partnership longevity and whether congruence therefore differs between subsequently stable and unstable couples, (b) if stable couples become more congruent, and (c) if separated couples become less congruent with regard to their personality over time. The results provide initial evidence of personality congruence as a predictor for partnership longevity: the more congruent couples are in the personality domain of Openness, the more stable their partnership. In addition, we found no indications of an increase in personality congruence over time within the stable couples; within the separated couples, however, a strong decrease in congruence was detectable.
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Marital Quality, Gender, and Markers of Inflammation in the MIDUS Cohort
Carrie Donoho, Eileen Crimmins & Teresa Seeman
Journal of Marriage and Family, February 2013, Pages 127-141
Abstract:
Marital quality is an important factor for understanding the relationship between marriage and health. Low-quality relationships may not have the same health benefits as high-quality relationships. To understand the association between marital quality and health, we examined associations between two indicators of marital quality (marital support and marital strain) and two biomarkers of inflammation (interleukin-6 and C-reactive protein) among men and women in long-term marriages using data from the Survey of Midlife in the United States (N = 542). Lower levels of spousal support were associated with higher levels of inflammation among women but not men. Higher levels of spousal strain were weakly and inconsistently associated with higher levels of inflammation among women and men; the effects were diminished with the addition of psychosocial and behavioral covariates. These findings suggest marital quality is an important predictor of inflammation, especially among women.
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Ilene Siegler et al.
Annals of Behavioral Medicine, forthcoming
Background: Marital status is associated with survival.
Purpose: The aims of this study are to evaluate marital history and timing on mortality during midlife, test the role of pre-marital personality, and quantify the role of health risk behaviors.
Methods: Cox proportional hazard models were run with varying classifications of marital history and sets of covariates.
Results: In fully adjusted models compared to the currently married, lifetime marital history predicts premature mortality with never married at 2.33 times risk of death and ever married at 1.64 risk of death. Midlife marital history shows that not having a partner during midlife (hazard ratio (HR) = 3.10 formerly married; HR = 2.59 remaining single) has the highest risk of death. Controlling for personality and health risk behaviors reduces but does not eliminate the impact of marital status.
Conclusion: Consistency of marital status during midlife suggests that lack of a partner is associated with midlife mortality.
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Marital Satisfaction and Physical Health: Evidence for an Orchid Effect
Susan South & Robert Krueger
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Marital distress and conflict are linked to poor physical health. Here, we used behavior genetic modeling to determine the etiology of this association. Biometric moderation models were used to estimate gene-by-environment interaction in the presence of gene-environment correlation between marital satisfaction and self-reported health. Using a sample of 347 married twin pairs from the Midlife in the United States study, we found that genetic influences on the variation in self-reported health were greatest at both high (h2 = .30) and low (h2 = .38) levels of marital satisfaction, with the lowest levels of heritability estimated for participants at the average level of marital satisfaction (h2 = .10). These findings are evidence of the orchid effect: the idea that genetic influences on a phenotype such as physical health are enhanced in nonnormative - both unusually positive and unusually negative - environmental contexts.
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The poorer cancer survival among the unmarried in Norway: Is much explained by comorbidities?
Øystein Kravdal
Social Science & Medicine, March 2013, Pages 42-52
Abstract:
Studies from Norway and other countries have shown that the unmarried have poorer cancer survival than the married, given age, tumor site and stage at diagnosis. The objective of this investigation was to assess the importance of comorbidities for this difference, using disease indicators derived from the Norwegian Prescription Database (NoPD) and information on cancer and sociodemographic characteristics from various other registers, all of which cover the entire Norwegian population. Discrete-time hazard models for cancer mortality up to 2007 were estimated for all 22925 men and 21694 women diagnosed with 13 common types of cancer in 2005-7. There were 4898 cancer deaths among men and 4187 among women. Controlling for sociodemographic factors and tumor characteristics, the odds of dying from cancer among never-married men relative to the married was 1.56 (CI 1.41-1.74). The corresponding estimates for widowed and divorced were 1.16 (CI 1.05-1.28) and 1.27 (CI 1.15-1.40). For women, the odds ratios for these three groups were 1.47 (CI 1.29-1.67), 1.10 (CI 1.01-1.20) and 1.14 (CI 1.02-1.27). Several of the 24 indicators of diseases in the year before diagnosis were associated with cancer survival, but their inclusion reduced the excess mortality of the unmarried by only 1-5 percentage points, or about 10% as an overall relative figure. Similar results were found when the four most common cancers were analysed separately, though there were some differences between them in the role played by the comorbidities. It is possible that important comorbidities are inadequately captured by the included indicators, and perhaps especially for the unmarried. Such concerns aside, the results suggest that the marital status differences in cancer survival to little extent are due to comorbidities (and the few disease risk factors that are also captured), but rather to various other "host factors" or to treatment or care.
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On the benefits of valuing being friends for nonmarital romantic partners
Laura VanderDrift, Juan Wilson & Christopher Agnew
Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, February 2013, Pages 115-131
Abstract:
Romantic relationships are, at their core, friendships. As such, it may be the case that valuing that aspect of the relationship fortifies the romantic relationship against negative outcomes and serves as a buffer against dissolution. We explored the role of valuing friendship within romantic relationships in two two-wave studies examining whether investing in the friendship aspect of the relationship (Study 1; N = 190) and placing importance on affiliative need fulfillment (Study 2; N = 184) were associated with positive concurrent outcomes and positive outcomes over time. Results revealed that valuing the friendship aspect of a romance is a strong positive predictor of concurrent romantic relationship qualities (i.e., love, sexual gratification, and romantic commitment), is associated with increases in these qualities over time and is negatively associated with romantic dissolution. Furthermore, evidence suggests that these benefits come from valuing friendship specifically, rather than any other aspect of the relationship (e.g., the sexual aspect).
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Attachment Anxiety Is Linked to Alterations in Cortisol Production and Cellular Immunity
Lisa Jaremka et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although evidence suggests that attachment anxiety may increase risk for health problems, the mechanisms underlying these effects are not well understood. In the current study, married couples (N = 85) provided saliva samples over 3 days and blood samples on two occasions. Participants with higher attachment anxiety produced more cortisol and had fewer numbers of CD3+ T cells, CD45+ T cells, CD3+CD4+ helper T cells, and CD3+CD8+ cytotoxic T cells than participants with lower attachment anxiety. Higher cortisol levels were also related to fewer numbers of CD3+, CD45+, CD3+CD4+, and CD3+CD8+ cells, which is consistent with research showing that cortisol alters the cellular immune response. These data suggest that attachment anxiety may have physiological costs, and they provide a glimpse into the pathways through which social relationships affect health. The current study also extends attachment theory in an important new direction by demonstrating the utility of a psychoneuroimmunological approach to the study of attachment anxiety, stress, and health.
Monday, February 11, 2013
Economic models
Views among Economists: Professional Consensus or Point-Counterpoint?
Roger Gordon & Gordon Dahl
NBER Working Paper, January 2013
Abstract:
To what degree do economists disagree about key economic questions? To provide evidence, we make use of the responses to a series of questions posed to a distinguished panel of economists put together by the Chicago School of Business. Based on our analysis, we find a broad consensus on these many different economic issues, particularly when the past economic literature on the question is large. Any differences are unrelated to observable characteristics of the Panel members, other than men being slightly more likely to express an opinion. These differences are idiosyncratic, with no support for liberal vs. conservative camps.
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The Failure of Private Regulation: Elite Control and Market Crises in the Manhattan Banking Industry
Lori Qingyuan Yue, Jiao Luo & Paul Ingram
Administrative Science Quarterly, March 2013, Pages 37-68
Abstract:
In this paper, we develop an account of the failure of private market-governance institutions to maintain market order by highlighting how control of their distributional function by powerful elites limits their regulatory capacity. We examine the New York Clearing House Association (NYCHA), a private market-governance institution among commercial banks in Manhattan that operated from 1853 to 1913. We find that the NYCHA, founded to achieve coordinating benefits among banks and to limit the effect of financial panics, evolved at the turn of the twentieth century into a device for large, elite market players to promote their own interests to the disadvantage of rival groups that were not members. Elites prevented the rest of the market from having equal opportunities to participate in emergency loan programs during bank panics. The elites' control not only worsened the condition of the rest of the market by allowing non-member banks to fail; it also diminished the influence of the NYCHA and escalated market crises as bank failures spread to member banks. As a result, crises developed to an extent that exceeded the control of the NYCHA and ended up hurting even elites' own interests. This paper suggests that institutional stability rests on a deliberate balance of interests between different market sectors and that, without such a balance, the distributional function of market-governance institutions plants the seeds of institutional destruction.
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Employment effects of Thanksgiving timing
R. Urbatsch
Economics Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the United States, the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas has long seen the most intense consumer sales and hence the most active economy. This period varies in length depending on the date of Thanksgiving. Years where it is longer see detectably larger seasonal increases in national employment figures, so that an earlier Thanksgiving appears to serves as economic stimulus in the labor market.
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Shopping Externalities and Self-Fulfilling Unemployment Fluctuations
Greg Kaplan & Guido Menzio
NBER Working Paper, February 2013
Abstract:
We propose a novel theory of self-fulfilling fluctuations in the labor market. A firm employing an additional worker generates positive externalities on other firms, because employed workers have more income to spend and have less time to shop for low prices than unemployed workers. We quantify these shopping externalities and show that they are sufficiently strong to create strategic complementarities in the employment decisions of different firms and to generate multiple rational expectations equilibria. Equilibria differ with respect to the agents' (rational) expectations about future unemployment. We show that negative shocks to the agents' expectations lead to fluctuations in vacancies, unemployment, labor productivity and the stock market that closely resemble those observed in the US during the Great Recession.
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The impact of TARP on bank efficiency
Oneil Harris, Daniel Huerta & Thanh Ngo
Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, April 2013, Pages 85-104
Abstract:
This paper examines the impact of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) capital injections on the operational efficiency of commercial banks. Using a nonparametric Data Envelopment Analysis to measure bank efficiency, we document a deteriorating pattern in the operating efficiency for banks that received the capital injection from TARP funds that is not evident in non-TARP banks. We test the impact of TARP on the change in bank efficiency as well as the abnormal change in bank efficiency; yet, our results continue to hold. We attribute the decrease in the operating efficiency of TARP funded banks to the abated incentives of bank managers to adopt best practices that improve asset quality, and the moral hazard associated with bailouts.
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Stock Returns and Monetary Policy: Are There Any Ties?
Hafedh Bouakez, Badye Essid & Michel Normandin
Journal of Macroeconomics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper empirically investigates the following three questions: (i) Do stock returns respond to monetary policy shocks? (ii) Do stock returns alter the transmission mechanism of monetary policy? and (iii) Does monetary policy systematically react to stock returns? Unlike existing empirical research on these topics, we use a structural vector auto-regression that relaxes the restrictions commonly imposed in earlier studies and identify monetary policy shocks by exploiting the conditional heteroskedasticity of the structural innovations. Applying this method to U.S. data, we find that the interaction between monetary policy and stock returns is much weaker than suggested by earlier empirical studies.
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Forecasting the Recovery from the Great Recession: Is This Time Different?
Kathryn Dominguez & Matthew Shapiro
NBER Working Paper, February 2013
Abstract:
This paper asks whether the slow recovery of the US economy from the trough of the Great Recession was anticipated, and identifies some of the factors that contributed to surprises in the course of the recovery. It constructs a narrative using news reports and government announcements to identify policy and financial shocks. It then compares forecasts and forecast revisions of GDP to the narrative. Successive financial and fiscal shocks emanating from Europe, together with self-inflicted wounds from the political stalemate over the US fiscal situation, help explain the slowing of the pace of an already slow recovery.
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Michael Owyang, Valerie Ramey & Sarah Zubairy
NBER Working Paper, February 2013
Abstract:
A key question that has arisen during recent debates is whether government spending multipliers are larger during times when resources are idle. This paper seeks to shed light on this question by analyzing new quarterly historical data covering multiple large wars and depressions in the U.S. and Canada. Using an extension of Ramey's (2011) military news series and Jordà's (2005) method for estimating impulse responses, we find no evidence that multipliers are greater during periods of high unemployment in the U.S. In every case, the estimated multipliers are below unity. We do find some evidence of higher multipliers during periods of slack in Canada, with some multipliers above unity.
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Growth Forecast Errors and Fiscal Multipliers
Olivier Blanchard & Daniel Leigh
NBER Working Paper, February 2013
Abstract:
This paper investigates the relation between growth forecast errors and planned fiscal consolidation during the crisis. We find that, in advanced economies, stronger planned fiscal consolidation has been associated with lower growth than expected, with the relation being particularly strong, both statistically and economically, early in the crisis. A natural interpretation is that fiscal multipliers were substantially higher than implicitly assumed by forecasters. The weaker relation in more recent years may reflect in part learning by forecasters and in part smaller multipliers than in the early years of the crisis.
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National Banking's Role in U.S. Industrialization, 1850-1900
Matthew Jaremski
NBER Working Paper, February 2013
Abstract:
The passage of the National Banking Acts stabilized the existing financial system and encouraged the entry of 729 banks between 1863 and 1866. The national banks not only attracted more deposits than previous state banks, but also concentrated in the area that would eventually become the Manufacturing Belt. Using a new bank census, the paper shows that these changes to the financial system were a major determinant of the geographic distribution of manufacturing. The sudden entry not only resulted in more manufacturing capital and output at the county-level, but also more steam engines and value added at the establishment-level.
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Harvests and Financial Crises in Gold-Standard America
Christopher Hanes & Paul Rhode
NBER Working Paper, December 2012
Abstract:
Most American financial crises of the postbellum gold-standard era were caused by fluctuations in the cotton harvest due to exogenous factors such as weather. The transmission channel ran through export revenues and financial markets under the pre-1914 monetary regime. A poor cotton harvest depressed export revenues and reduced international demand for American assets, which depressed American stock prices, drained deposits from money-center banks and precipitated a business-cycle downturn -- conditions that bred financial crises. The crises caused by cotton harvests could have been prevented by an American central bank, even under gold-standard constraints.
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Jaromir Nosal & Guillermo Ordoñez
NBER Working Paper, February 2013
Abstract:
Time-inconsistency of no-bailout policies can create incentives for banks to take excessive risks and generate endogenous crises when the government cannot commit. However, at the outbreak of financial problems, usually the government is uncertain about their nature, and hence it may delay intervention to learn more about them. We show that intervention delay leads to strategic restraint banks endogenously restrict the riskiness of their portfolio relative to their peers in order to avoid being the worst performers and bearing the cost of such delay. These novel forces help to avoid endogenous crises even when the government cannot commit. We analyze the effect of government policies from the perspective of this new result.
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On Financing Retirement with an Aging Population
Ellen McGrattan & Edward Prescott
NBER Working Paper, February 2013
Abstract:
A problem facing the United States is financing retirement consumption as its population ages. Policy analysts increasingly advocate savings-for-retirement systems, but are concerned with insufficient savings opportunities with limited government debt. This concern is unwarranted. First, there is more productive capital than commonly assumed in macroeconomic modeling. Second, if the policy reform subsumes the elimination of capital income taxes, then the value of business equity increases relative to the capital stock. Phasing in a switch from the current U.S. system to a savings-for-retirement system without capital income taxes increases welfare of all current and future cohorts.
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The Missing Transmission Mechanism in the Monetary Explanation of the Great Depression
Christina Romer & David Romer
NBER Working Paper, January 2013
Abstract:
This paper examines an important gap in the monetary explanation of the Great Depression: the lack of a well-articulated and documented transmission mechanism of monetary shocks to the real economy. It begins by reviewing the challenge to Friedman and Schwartz's monetary explanation provided by the decline in nominal interest rates in the early 1930s. We show that the monetary explanation requires not just that there were expectations of deflation, but that those expectations were the result of monetary contraction. Using a detailed analysis of Business Week magazine, we find evidence that monetary contraction and Federal Reserve policy contributed to expectations of deflation during the central years of the downturn. This suggests that monetary shocks may have depressed spending and output in part by raising real interest rates.
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Is Knowledge of the Tax Law Socially Desirable?
David Weisbach
American Law and Economics Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper considers whether knowledge of the tax law is socially desirable. Unlike other laws, which most often attempt to channel behavior, revenue-raising taxes attempt to avoid changing behavior; so, it is not obvious whether or when knowledge of the tax law is desirable. I argue that whether knowledge of the tax law is desirable depends on three factors: expectations about the tax in the absence of knowledge, the type of tax, and the quality of the tax. These factors may often be hard to observe, which leads to the conclusion that it may often not be desirable to try to manipulate knowledge of the tax law.
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Government investment and the stock market
Frederico Belo & Jianfeng Yu
Journal of Monetary Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
High rates of government investment in public sector capital forecast high risk premiums both at the aggregate and firm-level. This result is in sharp contrast with the well-documented negative relationship between the private sector investment rate and risk premiums. To explain the empirical findings, we extend the neoclassical q-theory model of investment and specify public sector capital as an additional input in the firm's technology. We show that the model can quantitatively replicate the empirical facts with reasonable parameter values if public sector capital increases the marginal productivity of private inputs.
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Decision Heuristics And Tax Perception - An Analysis Of A Tax-Cut-Cum-Base-Broadening Policy
Kay Blaufus et al.
Journal of Economic Psychology, April 2013, Pages 1-16
Abstract
In this paper, both a conjoint analysis and a lab experiment are conducted to analyze the influence of changes in the tax rate and the tax base on the perceived tax burden. Our results show that the majority of individuals do not make rational tax decisions based on the actual tax burden but rather use simple decision heuristics. This leads to an irrationally high impact of changes in nominal tax rates on the perceived tax burden. Taxpayers favor tax options that apply a lower tax rate on their gross income over a higher tax rate applied on their net income despite the lower actual tax burden of the latter option. This result suggests that politicians could combine increasing fiscal revenues and decreasing subjects' tax perception. Furthermore, overestimation of tax rate changes increases considerably when information on tax rate is considered first (framing effect).
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Incentive Effects of Inheritances and Optimal Estate Taxation
Wojciech Kopczuk
NBER Working Paper, February 2013
Abstract:
I consider nonlinear taxation of income and bequests with a joy-of-giving bequest motive and explicitly characterize the estate tax rate structure that maximizes social planner's welfare function. The solution trades off correction of externality from giving and discouraging effort of children due to income effect generated by bequests. The analysis shows that optimality of a positive tax on bequests in this context rests on the strength of the effect of bequests on behavior of future generations, and suggests that inheritance rather than estate tax is better suited to implement the corresponding policy.
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Fiscal Decentralization and Economic Growth: Spending versus Revenue Decentralization
Norman Gemmell, Richard Kneller & Ismael Sanz
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article examines whether the efficiency gains accompanying fiscal decentralization generate higher growth in more decentralized economies, applying pooled-mean group techniques to a panel dataset of 23 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, 1972-2005. We find that spending decentralization has tended to be associated with lower economic growth while revenue decentralization has been associated with higher growth. Since OECD countries are substantially more spending than revenue decentralized, this is consistent with Oates' (1972) hypothesis that maximum efficiency gains require a close match between spending and revenue decentralization. It suggests reducing expenditure decentralization, and simultaneously increasing the fraction financed locally, would be growth-enhancing.
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Nonlinear Growth Effects of Taxation: A Semi-Parametric Approach Using Average Marginal Tax Rates
Peren Arin et al.
Journal of Applied Econometrics, forthcoming
Abstract:
One of the major challenges of empirical tax research is the identification and calculation of appropriate tax data. While there is consensus that average marginal tax rates are most suitable for studying the effects of tax policy on economic growth, because of data limitations the calculation of marginal tax rates has been limited to the USA and the UK. This paper provides calculations of average marginal tax rates for the four Scandinavian countries using the methodologies of Seater (1982,1985) and Barro and Sahasakul (1983, 1986). Then, by pooling the newly calculated tax rates for the Scandinavian countries with the data for the USA and the UK, we investigate the effects of tax policy shocks on the per capita GDP growth rate. Our results suggest that an increase in average marginal tax rates has a negative impact on economic growth. Employing additive mixed panel models with penalized splines as estimation approach, we show that changes in tax rates have nonlinear effects. Increasing average marginal tax rates turn out to be the most distorting at relatively moderate tax rates.
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U.S. Farm Prosperity: The New Normal or Reversion to the Mean
Michael Boehlje, Brent Gloy & Jason Henderson
American Journal of Agricultural Economics, January 2013, Pages 310-317
"In 2011, farm commodity prices reached all-time highs and net returns for crop and livestock producers were expected to rise, despite surging production costs. In fact, USDA projected real net farm income to exceed $100 billion dollars, which is the highest inflation adjusted income since 1974. Since 2005, real farmland values have soared 5.6 percent per year, with more recent Federal Reserve and university land value surveys pointing to increases of 20 percent or more during 2011 (Henderson and Akers 2011; Duffy 2011). With rising land values, USDA forecasts that farmers' equity climbed to a record high of $1.8 trillion in 2011. Farmers are enjoying a boom in real farm income and wealth."
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Reference Dependent Preferences, Hedonic Adaptation and Tax Evasion: Does the Tax Burden Matter?
Michele Bernasconi, Luca Corazzini & Raffaello Seri
Journal of Economic Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study the effects of the tax burden on tax evasion both theoretically and experimentally. We develop a theoretical framework of tax evasion decisions that is based on two behavioral assumptions: 1) taxpayers are endowed with reference dependent preferences that are subject to hedonic adaptation; and 2) in making their choices, taxpayers are affected by ethical concerns. The model generates new predictions on how a change in the tax rate affects the decision to evade taxes. Contrary to the classical expected utility theory, but in line with previous applications of reference dependent preferences to taxpayers' decisions, an increase in the tax rate increases tax evasion. Moreover, as taxpayers adapt to the new legal tax rate, the decision to evade taxes becomes independent of the tax rate. We present results from a laboratory experiment that support the main predictions of the model.
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Pension reform, employment by age, and long-run growth
Tim Buyse, Freddy Heylen & Renaat Van de Kerckhove
Journal of Population Economics, April 2013, Pages 769-809
Abstract:
We study the effects of pension reform on hours worked by three active generations, education of the young, the retirement decision of older workers, and aggregate growth in a four-period OLG model. The model explains important facts well for many OECD countries. Our simulation results prefer an intelligent pay-as-you-go system above a fully funded private system. Positive effects on employment and growth are the strongest when the pay-as-you-go system includes a tight link between individual labor income and the pension, and when it attaches a high weight to labor income earned as an older worker to compute the pension assessment base.
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Daniel Jubinski & Marc Tomljanovich
Review of Financial Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines the 2006 to 2007 time period to determine the extent to which the release of the Federal Reserve minutes affects equity volatility and returns for 2,832 individual firms. Using intraday data, we find equity returns are essentially unaffected by FOMC minutes releases. We do find evidence of volatility effects, in that conditional volatility is lower prior to the minutes release and higher after the minutes release on release days, relative to a "control" day one week prior to the release date. These differences manifest at the 2:00-2:05 pm interval, and generally dissipate within 15 minutes. Consistent with previous literature, we also find evidence of both industry-specific and firm size effects in our data. Finally, we see that volatility is higher (lower) when the minutes are released after the Federal Reserve engages in restrictive (expansionary) monetary policy. Our results are robust to a variety of different definitions of the "control" dates, as well as differing industry definitions.
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Labor Income Responds Differently to Income-Tax and Payroll-Tax Reforms
Etienne Lehmann, François Marical & Laurence Rioux
Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We estimate the responses of gross labor income with respect to marginal and average net-of-tax rates in France over the period 2003-2006. We exploit a series of reforms to the income-tax and payroll-tax schedules affecting individuals who earn less than twice the minimum wage. Our estimate for the elasticity of gross labor income with respect to the marginal net-of-income-tax rate is around 0.2, while we find no response to the marginal net-of-payroll-tax rate. The elasticity with respect to the average net-of-tax rate is not significant for the income-tax schedule, while it is close to -1 for the payroll-tax schedule. A plausible explanation is the existence of significant labor supply responses to the income-tax schedule, combined with sticky posted wages (i.e., the gross labor income minus payroll taxes divided by hours worked). Finally, the effect of the net-of-income-tax rate seems to be driven by participation decisions, in particular those of married women.
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Deepankar Basu & Panayiotis Manolakos
Review of Radical Political Economics, March 2013, Pages 76-95
Abstract:
The law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit has been at the center of theoretical and empirical debates within Marxian political economy since the publication of volume III of Capital. An important limitation of this literature is the relative paucity of modern econometric investigations of the behavior of the rate of profit. The central objective of this paper is to remedy this lacuna. We investigate the properties of the profit rate series utilizing the methods of time series econometrics. The evidence suggests that the rate of profit is non-stationary. We also specify a test of Marx's law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit with a novel econometric model that explicitly accounts for the counter-tendencies and their time series properties. We find weak evidence of a long-run downward trend in the general profit rate for the U.S. economy for the period 1948-2007.
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Andrew Hayashi, Brent Nakamura & David Gamage
Public Finance Review, March 2013, Pages 203-226
Abstract:
Recent research in marketing and public economics suggests that consumers underestimate the effects of taxes and surcharges on total purchase prices when taxes and surcharges are made less salient. The leading explanation is that consumers anchor on base prices and underadjust for surcharges. We perform experiments that (1) extend the tax salience and price partitioning literatures to the labor supply context, (2) test the anchoring hypothesis by examining the effects of positive and negative wage surcharges on willingness to work, and (3) test whether responses to price partitioning result from imperfect calculation of all-inclusive prices or from deeper preferences. We reject the anchoring hypothesis and find that subjects are less willing to work both when their wages are partitioned with positive and with negative surcharge components. We also find evidence that partitioned pricing effects result from cognitive limitations and possibly from responses to complexity.
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Policy Announcements and Welfare
Vadym Lepetyuk & Christian Stoltenberg
Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
We show that in the presence of idiosyncratic risk, the public revelation of information about risky aggregate outcomes such as policy choices can have a welfare-reducing effect. By announcing information on non-insurable aggregate risk, the policy maker distorts households' incentives for insurance of idiosyncratic risk and increases the riskiness of the optimal self-enforceable allocation. The negative effect of distorted insurance incentives can be quantitatively important for a monetary authority that reveals changes in its shortrun inflation target. We characterize parameters for which the effect dominates conventional effects that favour releasing better information.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Hangover
Measuring Crack Cocaine and Its Impact
Roland Fryer et al.
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
Numerous social indicators turned negative for Blacks in the 1980s and rebounded a decade later. We explore whether crack cocaine explains these patterns. Absent a direct measure, we construct a crack prevalence index using multiple proxies. Our index reproduces spatial and temporal patterns described in ethnographic accounts of the crack epidemic. It explains much of the 1980s rise in Black youth homicide and more moderate increases in adverse birth outcomes. Although our index remains high through the 1990s, crack's deleterious social impact fades. Changes over time in behavior, crack markets, and the user population may have mitigated crack's damaging impacts.
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The Effects of Earned Income Tax Credit Payment Expansion on Maternal Smoking
Susan Averett & Yang Wang
Health Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The Earned Income Tax Credit is the largest antipoverty program in the USA. In 1993, the Earned Income Tax Credit benefit levels were changed significantly based on the number of children in the family such that families with two or more children experienced an exogenous expansion in their incomes. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort, we use a triple-difference plus fixed effects framework to examine the effect of this change on the probability of smoking among low-educated mothers. We find that the probability of smoking for White low-educated mothers of two or more children significantly decreased relative to those with only one child, and this result is robust to various specification tests. This result provides new evidence on the protective effect of income on health through changes in a health-related behavior and therefore has important policy implications.
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Mike Vuolo
Drug and Alcohol Dependence, forthcoming
Introduction: Recent research has called upon investigators to exploit cross-national differences to uncover the cultural and structural factors influencing drug use. While the individual-level correlates are well-established, little is known about the association between cross-national variation in drug policies and young people's substance use. This study examines, net of individual-level predictors, the association between national-level drug policy and use of an illicit drug other than cannabis.
Methods: The study uses Eurobarometer repeated cross-sectional surveys in 2002 and 2004 of adolescents aged 15-24 drawn in multistage, random probability samples proportional to population size and density within regions of their country (N = 15,191). Participants completed self-reported measures of last month drug use, attitudes toward drugs, school and work participation, and demographics. Gathered from several international bodies, national-level policy measures include drug offense levels, possession decriminalization, and presence and usage of harm reduction strategies.
Results: Hierarchical logistic regression models demonstrate that, while controlling for important individual-level predictors, in countries where there is no restriction on possession of drugs for personal use, the odds of drug use in the last month are 79% lower (p < 0.05). On the other hand, higher usage of treatment and drug substitution are associated with higher levels of drug use. These results are robust to several alternate specifications.
Conclusions: Among the strongest and most consistent findings, eliminating punishments for possession for personal use is not associated with higher drug use. The results indicate that researchers should take national-level context into account in individual-level studies of drug use.
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Michael Slater & Kimberly Henry
Journal of Health Communication, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present study tests prospective effects of music-related media content (from television, Internet, and magazines) on youth alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use initiation. Indirect effects through association with substance-using peers were tested in a 4-wave longitudinal data set (2,729 middle school students for the alcohol model, 2,716 students for the cigarette model, and 2,710 students for the marijuana model) from schools across the United States. In so doing, the authors examine theoretical claims regarding socialization mechanisms for effects of popular music listenership on substance use initiation. Results supported direct effects on alcohol and cigarette uptake, and indirect effects through association with substance-using peers on all 3 substances. This research, in combination with prior studies by several research teams, suggests elevated popular music involvement is a risk factor with respect to younger adolescents' substance use behavior. This influence is in part explained by the role of music-related media content in socialization to substance-using peer groups.
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The Persistent Effects of Minimum Legal Drinking Age Laws on Drinking Patterns Later in Life
Andrew Plunk et al.
Alcoholism, forthcoming
Background: Exposure to permissive minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) laws not only affects young adults in the short term, but also later in life; for example, individuals who could legally purchase alcohol before the age of 21 are more likely to suffer from drinking problems as older adults, long after the laws had been changed. However, it is not known how permissive MLDA exposure affects specific drinking behavior. This present study uses changes in MLDA laws during the 1970s and 1980s as a natural experiment to investigate the potential impact of permissive MLDA exposure on average alcohol consumption, frequency of drinking, and patterns of binging and more moderate, nonheavy drinking.
Methods: Policy exposure data were paired with alcohol use data from the 1991 to 1992 National Longitudinal Alcohol Epidemiologic Survey and the 2001 to 2002 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. Past-year drinkers born between 1949 and 1972 (n = 24,088) were included. Average daily intake, overall drinking frequency, and frequency of both binge episodes (5+ drinks) and days without a binge episode (nonheavy drinking) for the previous year at the time of interview were tracked for each respondent.
Results: Exposure to permissive MLDAs was associated with higher odds to report frequent binging and lower odds to report any moderate drinking; these associations were largely driven by men and those who did not attend college. Overall drinking frequency and average alcohol consumption were not affected by MLDA exposure.
Conclusions: The ability to legally purchase alcohol before the age of 21 does not seem to increase overall drinking frequency, but our findings suggest that it is associated with certain types of problematic drinking behaviors that persist into later adulthood: more frequent binge episodes and less frequent nonheavy drinking. We also propose that policymakers and critics should not focus on college drinking when evaluating the effectiveness of MLDAs.
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Drunk, but not blind: The effects of alcohol intoxication on change blindness
Gregory Colflesh & Jennifer Wiley
Consciousness and Cognition, March 2013, Pages 231-236
Abstract:
Alcohol use has long been assumed to alter cognition via attentional processes. To better understand the cognitive consequences of intoxication, the present study tested the effects of moderate intoxication (average BAC between .071 and .082) on attentional processing using complex working memory capacity (WMC) span tasks and a change blindness task. Intoxicated and sober participants were matched on baseline WMC performance, and intoxication significantly decreased performance on the complex span tasks. Surprisingly, intoxication improved performance on the change blindness task. The results are interpreted as evidence that intoxication decreases attentional control, causing either a shift towards more passive processing and/or a more diffuse attentional state. This may result in decreased performance on tasks where attentional control or focus are required, but may actually facilitate performance in some contexts.
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The Effects of Alcohol on the Emotional Displays of Whites in Interracial Groups
Catharine Fairbairn et al.
Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Discomfort during interracial interactions is common among Whites in the U.S. and is linked to avoidance of interracial encounters. While the negative consequences of interracial discomfort are well-documented, understanding of its causes is still incomplete. Alcohol consumption has been shown to decrease negative emotions caused by self-presentational concern but increase negative emotions associated with racial prejudice. Using novel behavioral-expressive measures of emotion, we examined the impact of alcohol on displays of discomfort among 92 White individuals interacting in all-White or interracial groups. We used the Facial Action Coding System and comprehensive content-free speech analyses to examine affective and behavioral dynamics during these 36-min exchanges (7.9 million frames of video data). Among Whites consuming nonalcoholic beverages, those assigned to interracial groups evidenced more facial and speech displays of discomfort than those in all-White groups. In contrast, among intoxicated Whites there were no differences in displays of discomfort between interracial and all-White groups. Results highlight the central role of self-presentational concerns in interracial discomfort and offer new directions for applying theory and methods from emotion science to the examination of intergroup relations.
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Susan Calcaterra, Jason Glanz & Ingrid Binswanger
Drug and Alcohol Dependence, forthcoming
Background: Pharmaceutical opioid related deaths have increased. This study aimed to place pharmaceutical opioid overdose deaths within the context of heroin, cocaine, psychostimulants, and pharmaceutical sedative hypnotics examine demographic trends, and describe common combinations of substances involved in opioid related deaths.
Methods: We reviewed deaths among 15-64 year olds in the US from 1999-2009 using death certificate data available through the CDC Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (WONDER) Database. We identified International Classification of Disease-10 codes describing accidental overdose deaths, including poisonings related to stimulants, pharmaceutical drugs, and heroin. We used crude and age adjusted death rates (deaths/100,000 person years [p-y] and 95% confidence interval [CI] and multivariable Poisson regression models, yielding incident rate ratios; IRRs), for analysis.
Results: The age adjusted death rate related to pharmaceutical opioids increased almost 4-fold from 1999 to 2009 (1.54/100,000 p-y [95% CI 1.49-1.60] to 6.05/100,000 p-y [95% CI 5.95-6.16; p < 0.001). From 1999 to 2009, pharmaceutical opioids were responsible for the highest relative increase in overdose death rates (IRR 4.22, 95% CI 3.03-5.87) followed by sedative hypnotics (IRR 3.53, 95% CI 2.11-5.90). Heroin related overdose death rates increased from 2007 to 2009 (1.05/100,000 persons [95% CI 1.00-1.09] to 1.43/100,000 persons [95% CI 1.38-1.48; p < 0.001). From 2005-2009 the combination of pharmaceutical opioids and benzodiazepines was the most common cause of polysubstance overdose deaths (1.27/100,000 p-y (95% CI 1.25-1.30).
Conclusion: Strategies, such as wider implementation of naloxone, expanded access to treatment, and development of new interventions are needed to curb the pharmaceutical opioid overdose epidemic.
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Sarah Zemore et al.
Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, January 2013, Pages 9-20
Objective: We examined whether race/ethnicity was related to exposure to acute economic losses in the 2008-2009 recession, even accounting for individual-level and geographic variables, and whether it influenced associations between economic losses and drinking patterns and problems.
Method: Data were from the 2010 National Alcohol Survey (N = 5,382). Surveys assessed both severe losses (i.e., job and housing loss) and moderate losses (i.e., reduced hours/pay and trouble paying the rent/mortgage) attributed to the 2008-2009 recession. Alcohol outcomes included total annual volume, monthly drunkenness, drinking consequences, and alcohol dependence (based on criteria from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition).
Results: Compared with Whites, Blacks reported significantly greater exposure to job loss and trouble paying the rent/mortgage, and Latinos reported greater exposure to all economic losses. However, only Black-White differences were robust in multivariate analyses. Interaction tests suggested that associations between exposure to economic loss and alcohol problems were stronger among Blacks than Whites. Given severe (vs. no) loss, Blacks had about 13 times the odds of both two or more drinking consequences and alcohol dependence, whereas the corresponding odds ratios for Whites were less than 3. Conversely, associations between economic loss and alcohol outcomes were weak and ambiguous among Latinos.
Conclusions: Results suggest greater exposure to economic loss for both Blacks and Latinos (vs. Whites) and that the Black population may be particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of economic hardship on the development and/or maintenance of alcohol problems. Findings extend the economic literature and signal policy makers and service providers that Blacks and Latinos may be at special risk during economic downturns.
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The Contribution of Smoking to Black-White Differences in U.S. Mortality
Jessica Ho & Irma Elo
Demography, forthcoming
Abstract:
Smoking has significantly impacted American mortality and remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality. No previous study has systematically examined the contribution of smoking-attributable deaths to mortality trends among blacks or to black-white mortality differences at older ages over time in the United States. In this article, we employ multiple methods and data sources to provide a comprehensive assessment of this contribution. We find that smoking has contributed to the black-white gap in life expectancy at age 50 for males, accounting for 20 % to 48 % of the gap between 1980 and 2005, but not for females. The fraction of deaths attributable to smoking at ages above 50 is greater for black males than for white males; and among men, current smoking status explains about 20 % of the black excess relative risk in all-cause mortality at ages above 50 without adjustment for socioeconomic characteristics. These findings advance our understanding of the contribution of smoking to contemporary mortality trends and differences and reinforce the need for interventions that better address the needs of all groups.
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Revisiting the Hispanic mortality advantage in the United States: The role of smoking
Andrew Fenelon
Social Science & Medicine, forthcoming
Abstract:
More than three decades of health disparities research in the United States has consistently found lower adult mortality risks among Hispanics than their non-Hispanic white counterparts, despite lower socioeconomic status among Hispanics. Explanations for the "Hispanic Paradox" include selective migration and cultural factors, though neither has received convincing support. This paper uses a large nationally representative survey of health and smoking behavior to examine whether smoking can explain life expectancy advantage of Hispanics over US-born non-Hispanics whites, with special attention to individuals of Mexican origin. It tests the selective migration hypothesis using data on smoking among Mexico-to-US migrants in Mexico and the United States. Both US-born and foreign-born Mexican-Americans exhibit a life expectancy advantage vis-à-vis whites. All other Hispanics only show a longevity advantage among the foreign-born, while those born in the United States are disadvantaged relative to whites. Smoking-attributable mortality explains the majority of the advantage for Mexican-Americans, with more than 60% of the gap deriving from lower rates of smoking among Mexican-Americans. There is no evidence of selective migration with respect to smoking; Mexicans who migrate to the US smoke at similar rates to Mexicans who remain in Mexico, with both groups smoking substantially less than non-Hispanic whites in the US. The results suggest that more research is needed to effectively explain the low burden of smoking among Mexican-Americans in the United States.
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Ole Rogeberg
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Does cannabis use have substantial and permanent effects on neuropsychological functioning? Renewed and intense attention to the issue has followed recent research on the Dunedin cohort, which found a positive association between, on the one hand, adolescent-onset cannabis use and dependence and, on the other hand, a decline in IQ from childhood to adulthood [Meier et al. (2012) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 109(40):E2657-E2664]. The association is given a causal interpretation by the authors, but existing research suggests an alternative confounding model based on time-varying effects of socioeconomic status on IQ. A simulation of the confounding model reproduces the reported associations from the Dunedin cohort, suggesting that the causal effects estimated in Meier et al. are likely to be overestimates, and that the true effect could be zero. Further analyses of the Dunedin cohort are proposed to distinguish between the competing interpretations. Although it would be too strong to say that the results have been discredited, the methodology is flawed and the causal inference drawn from the results premature.
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Neighborhood characteristics and the initiation of marijuana use and binge drinking
Joan Tucker et al.
Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 1 February 2013, Pages 83-89
Background: This study examines whether residential neighborhood characteristics influence the initiation of marijuana use and binge drinking, and if these neighborhood factors heighten or dampen peer influences on substance use.
Methods: Predictors of marijuana (N = 6516) and binge drinking (N = 6630) initiation over a 1-year period were identified using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Participants were of ages 12-19 years at baseline. The main predictor variables were neighborhood characteristics, using both objective (proportion of households below the poverty line and female-headed, unemployment rate, residential stability) and subjective (perceived cohesion and safety) measures. Binge drinking was defined as 5 or more drinks in a row.
Results: Initiation occurred for 12.9% of adolescents in the case of marijuana and 16.4% for binge drinking. Marijuana initiation was more likely among adolescents who lived in neighborhoods with a higher unemployment rate, and binge drinking initiation was more likely among those who perceived greater safety in their neighborhood, after adjusting for other neighborhood characteristics, demographics, friend characteristics, and behavioral and family risk factors. There was no evidence that neighborhood context moderates the associations of peer factors on initiation.
Conclusions: Select neighborhood characteristics appear relevant to the initiation of marijuana use and binge drinking, although the mechanisms appear to be distinct for each substance. If these results are found to be robust, future research should aim to better understand how neighborhood context influences the initiation of adolescent substance use in order to inform prevention efforts.
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Exposure to Alcohol Advertisements and Teenage Alcohol-Related Problems
Jerry Grenard, Clyde Dent & Alan Stacy
Pediatrics, February 2013, Pages e369-e379
Objective: This study used prospective data to test the hypothesis that exposure to alcohol advertising contributes to an increase in underage drinking and that an increase in underage drinking then leads to problems associated with drinking alcohol.
Methods: A total of 3890 students were surveyed once per year across 4 years from the 7th through the 10th grades. Assessments included several measures of exposure to alcohol advertising, alcohol use, problems related to alcohol use, and a range of covariates, such as age, drinking by peers, drinking by close adults, playing sports, general TV watching, acculturation, parents' jobs, and parents' education.
Results: Structural equation modeling of alcohol consumption showed that exposure to alcohol ads and/or liking of those ads in seventh grade were predictive of the latent growth factors for alcohol use (past 30 days and past 6 months) after controlling for covariates. In addition, there was a significant total effect for boys and a significant mediated effect for girls of exposure to alcohol ads and liking of those ads in 7th grade through latent growth factors for alcohol use on alcohol-related problems in 10th grade.
Conclusions: Younger adolescents appear to be susceptible to the persuasive messages contained in alcohol commercials broadcast on TV, which sometimes results in a positive affective reaction to the ads. Alcohol ad exposure and the affective reaction to those ads influence some youth to drink more and experience drinking-related problems later in adolescence.
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Giovanni Battistella et al.
PLoS ONE, January 2013
Abstract:
Marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug, however its effects on cognitive functions underling safe driving remain mostly unexplored. Our goal was to evaluate the impact of cannabis on the driving ability of occasional smokers, by investigating changes in the brain network involved in a tracking task. The subject characteristics, the percentage of Δ9-Tetrahydrocannabinol in the joint, and the inhaled dose were in accordance with real-life conditions. Thirty-one male volunteers were enrolled in this study that includes clinical and toxicological aspects together with functional magnetic resonance imaging of the brain and measurements of psychomotor skills. The fMRI paradigm was based on a visuo-motor tracking task, alternating active tracking blocks with passive tracking viewing and rest condition. We show that cannabis smoking, even at low Δ9-Tetrahydrocannabinol blood concentrations, decreases psychomotor skills and alters the activity of the brain networks involved in cognition. The relative decrease of Blood Oxygen Level Dependent response (BOLD) after cannabis smoking in the anterior insula, dorsomedial thalamus, and striatum compared to placebo smoking suggests an alteration of the network involved in saliency detection. In addition, the decrease of BOLD response in the right superior parietal cortex and in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex indicates the involvement of the Control Executive network known to operate once the saliencies are identified. Furthermore, cannabis increases activity in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex and ventromedial prefrontal cortices, suggesting an increase in self-oriented mental activity. Subjects are more attracted by intrapersonal stimuli ("self") and fail to attend to task performance, leading to an insufficient allocation of task-oriented resources and to sub-optimal performance. These effects correlate with the subjective feeling of confusion rather than with the blood level of Δ9-Tetrahydrocannabinol. These findings bolster the zero-tolerance policy adopted in several countries that prohibits the presence of any amount of drugs in blood while driving.
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Matthew Rousu & James Thrasher
Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, March 2013, Pages 171-184
Abstract:
We report the results of experimental auctions with U.S. smokers, assessing the percentage of U.S. smokers whose demand for cigarettes decreases when bidding on packs with text and pictorial warnings, relative to packs with text-only warnings. We find that pictorial labels and pictorial labels accompanied by plain packaging are more effective at reducing demand for cigarettes than only a front text warning label. We also find that pictorial labels were most effective at encouraging younger smokers to reduce their demand for cigarettes, and plain packaging was most effective at reducing demand among less educated smokers.
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Charu Mathur et al.
American Journal of Public Health, March 2013, Pages 543-548
Objectives: We examined the prospective effects of parental education (as a proxy for individual socioeconomic status [SES]) and neighborhood SES on adolescent smoking trajectories and whether the prospective effects of individual SES varied across neighborhood SES.
Methods: The study included 3635 randomly recruited adolescents from 5 age cohorts (12-16 years) assessed semiannually for 3 years in the Minnesota Adolescent Community Cohort study. We employed a cohort-sequential latent growth model to examine smoking from age 12 to 18 years with predictors.
Results: Lower individual SES predicted increased levels of smoking over time. Whereas neighborhood SES had no direct effect, the interaction between individual and neighborhood SES was significant. Among higher and lower neighborhood SES, lower individual SES predicted increased levels of smoking; however, the magnitude of association between lower individual SES and higher smoking levels was significantly greater for higher neighborhood SES.
Conclusions: We found evidence for differential effects of individual SES on adolescent smoking for higher and lower neighborhood SES. The group differences underscore social conditions as fundamental causes of disease and development of interventions and policies to address inequality in the resources.
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Aimei Mao, Katie Bristow & Jude Robinson
Health Education Research, February 2013, Pages 153-164
Abstract:
Intimate relationships influence family members' health practices. Although cigarette smoking in China is predominantly a male behavior, (non-smoking) women's roles should be taken into account for the development of home-smoking interventions. Drawing on ethnographic interviews with 22 families in a rural area of China, this article explores non-smoking women's attitudes towards male smoking. The findings suggest that women's ability to influence male behavior is largely determined by culturally defined gender roles, underpinned by ideologies of familism and collectivism. Despite concerns about the adverse results of smoking to their family members and households, non-smoking women ultimately maintain the (male) smokers' argument that smoking plays an important role in construction and maintenance of intra- and extra-family relationships. By accepting male smoking and men's engagement in the social practice of smoking and cigarette exchanges, women maintain their identities as supportive wives, filial daughters/in-law and responsible family members who pursue family collective interests at the expense of their own personal beliefs. Future smoking control initiatives that target non-smoking women to influence male smoking should take into account the women's overarching need to maintain the status and harmony of their families.
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Magdalena Cerdá et al.
Drug and Alcohol Dependence, forthcoming
Background: The drug overdose mortality rate tripled between 1990 and 2006; prescription opioids have driven this epidemic. We examined the period 1990-2006 to inform our understanding of how the current prescription opioid overdose epidemic emerged in urban areas.
Methods: We used data from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to examine changes in demographic and spatial patterns in overdose fatalities induced by prescription opioids (i.e., analgesics and methadone) in New York City (NYC) in 1990-2006, and what factors were associated with death from prescription opioids vs. heroin, historically the most prevalent form of opioid overdose in urban areas.
Results: Analgesic-induced overdose fatalities were the only types of overdose fatalities to increase in 1990-2006 in NYC; the fatality rate increased sevenfold from 0.39 in 1990 to 2.7 per 100,000 persons in 2006. Whites and Latinos were the only racial/ethnic groups to exhibit an increase in overdose-related mortality. Relative to heroin overdose decedents, analgesic and methadone overdose decedents were more likely to be female and to concurrently use psychotherapeutic drugs, but less likely to concurrently use alcohol or cocaine. Analgesic overdose decedents were less likely to be Black or Hispanic, while methadone overdose decedents were more likely to be Black or Hispanic in contrast to heroin overdose decedents.
Conclusions: The distinct epidemiologic profiles exhibited by analgesic and methadone overdose fatalities highlight the need to define drug-specific public health prevention efforts.
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Chris Delcher, Rachel Johnson & Mildred Maldonado-Molina
Journal of Adolescent Health, forthcoming
Purpose: National guidelines for alcohol screening and brief interventions advise practitioners to consider age, drinking frequency, and context to identify at-risk youth. The purpose of this study was to identify the contextual risk and protective factors in high school-aged adolescents associated with future driving after drinking (Drinking Under the Influence [DUI] at age 21) by race/ethnicity.
Methods: Data included 10,271 adolescents (67% white, 12% Hispanic, 16% black, 3.6% Asian; 49% Male) who participated in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Waves I, II, and III) from 1995 to 2001. A lagged panel design and survey logistic regression was used to examine the association between multiple contextual factors (e.g., demographics, parents, peers, social context) during adolescence and self-reported DUI in young adulthood.
Results: As expected, the likelihood of DUI was higher among whites followed by Hispanics, Asians, and blacks in all models. Perception of easy home access to alcohol increased risk for future DUI for whites (OR: 1.25 CI: 1.04-1.49), Hispanics (OR: 2.02 CI: 1.29-3.16), and Asians (OR: 1.90 CI: 1.13-3.22), but not for black youth. Drinking frequency and prior DUI were not risk factors for Hispanics. Risk-taking attitudes, marijuana use, and religious affiliation were risk factors for whites only.
Conclusions: Findings suggest that in addition to screening for drinking behaviors, brief interventions and prevention efforts should assess perceived home access to alcohol and other race-specific factors to reduce alcohol-related injuries and harm.
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Nonverbal Displays of Shame Predict Relapse and Declining Health in Recovering Alcoholics
Daniel Randles & Jessica Tracy
Clinical Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Public shaming has long been thought to promote positive behavioral change. However, studies suggest that shame may be a detrimental response to problematic behavior because it motivates hiding, escape, and general avoidance of the problem. We tested whether shame about one's past addictive drinking (measured via nonverbal displays and self-report) predicts future drinking behaviors and changes in health among newly recovering alcoholics (i.e., sober < 6.5 months; N = 105; Wave 2, n = 46), recruited from Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Results showed that nonverbal behavioral displays of shame expressed while discussing past drinking strongly predicted (a) the tendency to relapse over the next 3 to 11 months, (b) the severity of that relapse, and (c) declines in health. All results held controlling for a range of potential confounders (e.g., alcohol dependence, health, personality). These findings suggest that shame about one's problematic past may increase, rather than decrease, future occurrences of problem behaviors.
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Implicit Drinking Identity: Drinker + Me Associations Predict College Student Drinking Consistently
Kristen Lindgren et al.
Addictive Behaviors, forthcoming
Abstract:
Predicting hazardous drinking in college students continues to be a serious priority. Emerging evidence suggests that implicit measures may offer additional insight in predicting unique variance in alcohol outcomes. Implicit drinking identity, in particular, may be a powerful predictor of alcohol use. The current study examined the predictive validity of three alcohol-related associations (e.g., drinking identity, alcohol approach, and alcohol cope) using adaptations of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) in a sample of 243 undergraduates. Confirming previous findings, drinking identity associations were the most consistent predictor of alcohol consumption and alcohol problems. They were the only associations that were unique predictors of alcohol use after controlling for other implicit associations. In comparison, alcohol cope and alcohol approach associations were weak but consistent predictors of alcohol consumption and alcohol problems. Although positively correlated with all drinking outcomes, neither set of associations predicted unique variance in the drinking outcomes when all implicit associations were included in the same model. Collectively, these results extend previous findings that implicit drinking identity may be a uniquely powerful tool for predicting alcohol outcomes and a potential target for clinical intervention and prevention efforts.
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Alcohol-dependent individuals discount sex at higher rates than controls
David Jarmolowicz, Warren Bickel & Kirstin Gatchalian
Drug and Alcohol Dependence, forthcoming
Background: Research on delay discounting has expanded our understanding of substance dependence in many ways. Recently, orderly discounting of sexual rewards has been demonstrated in both substance-dependent individuals, and healthy controls. Less clear, however, is if rates of sexual discounting are higher than controls in alcohol-dependent-individuals.
Methods: 20 alcohol-dependent individuals and 21 healthy control participants completed two delay-discounting tasks. One task involved monetary rewards, whereas the other involved the discounting of sexual rewards (i.e., number of sex acts).
Results: Alcohol dependent individuals discounted sexual rewards at significantly higher rates than did controls. There was a trend toward, but not a similarly significant relation for the discounting of monetary rewards.
Conclusions: Rates of sexual discounting are elevated in alcohol dependent individuals. If this relation is replicated in other at risk populations, the rapid devaluation of sexual rewards may be a laboratory marker of impulsive sexual choices.
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Campaign to counter a deteriorating consumer market: Philip Morris's Project Sunrise
M. Givel
Public Health, forthcoming
Objectives: From 1997 to 2000, Philip Morris implemented Project Sunrise. This paper discusses the impact of this project on national and Philip Morris's cigarette unit sales, public opinion about smoking and secondhand tobacco smoke, and national prevalence trends for tobacco use.
Study design: A qualitative archival content analysis of Project Sunrise from 1997 to 2000, and a descriptive statistical analysis of cigarette unit sales and operating profits, acceptability of smoking and secondhand tobacco smoke, and national prevalence trends for tobacco use from 1996 to 2006.
Methods: Qualitative data sources related to Project Sunrise found on WebCat, Pubmed.com, LexisNexis Academic and Philip Morris's website, and archived tobacco industry documents were analysed using NVivo Version 9.0. A descriptive statistical analysis of cigarette unit sales, public opinion about smoking and secondhand tobacco smoke, and national prevalence trends for tobacco use was undertaken.
Results: Project Sunrise was a high-level strategic corporate plan to maintain profits that included four possible scenarios resulting in seven interwoven strategies. However, national prevalence rates for tobacco use declined, sales of national and Philip Morris cigarettes declined, operating profits remained at substantially lower levels after 2000 from 2001 to 2006, and a large majority of Americans agreed that there were significant health dangers associated with smoking and secondhand tobacco smoke.
Conclusion: The impact of Project Sunrise, including countering the anti-tobacco movement, was less than successful in the USA.
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Jennifer Cantrell et al.
PLoS ONE, January 2013
Background: The U.S. Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009 requires updating of the existing text-only health warning labels on tobacco packaging with nine new warning statements accompanied by pictorial images. Survey and experimental research in the U.S. and other countries supports the effectiveness of pictorial health warning labels compared with text-only warnings for informing smokers about the risks of smoking and encouraging cessation. Yet very little research has examined differences in reactions to warning labels by race/ethnicity, education or income despite evidence that population subgroups may differ in their ability to process health information. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the potential impact of pictorial warning labels compared with text-only labels among U.S. adult smokers from diverse racial/ethnic and socioeconomic subgroups.
Methods/Findings: Participants were adult smokers recruited from two online research panels (n = 3,371) into a web-based experimental study to view either the new pictorial warnings or text-only warnings. Participants viewed the labels and reported their reactions. Adjusted regression models demonstrated significantly stronger reactions for the pictorial condition for each outcome salience (b = 0.62, p<.001); perceived impact (b = 0.44, p<.001); credibility (OR = 1.41, 95% CI = 1.22-1.62), and intention to quit (OR = 1.30, 95% CI = 1.10-1.53). No significant results were found for interactions between condition and race/ethnicity, education, or income. The only exception concerned the intention to quit outcome, where the condition-by-education interaction was nearly significant (p = 0.057).
Conclusions: Findings suggest that the greater impact of the pictorial warning label compared to the text-only warning is consistent across diverse racial/ethnic and socioeconomic populations. Given their great reach, pictorial health warning labels may be one of the few tobacco control policies that have the potential to reduce communication inequalities across groups. Policies that establish strong pictorial warning labels on tobacco packaging may be instrumental in reducing the toll of the tobacco epidemic, particularly within vulnerable communities.
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Hospital Admissions for Childhood Asthma After Smoke-Free Legislation in England
Christopher Millett et al.
Pediatrics, February 2013, Pages e495-e501
Objective: To assess whether the implementation of English smoke-free legislation in July 2007 was associated with a reduction in hospital admissions for childhood asthma.
Methods: Interrupted time series study using Hospital Episodes Statistics data from April 2002 to November 2010. Sample consisted of all children (aged ≤14 years) having an emergency hospital admission with a principle diagnosis of asthma.
Results: Before the implementation of the legislation, the admission rate for childhood asthma was increasing by 2.2% per year (adjusted rate ratio 1.02; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.02-1.03). After implementation of the legislation, there was a significant immediate change in the admission rate of -8.9% (adjusted rate ratio 0.91; 95% CI: 0.89-0.93) and change in time trend of -3.4% per year (adjusted rate ratio 0.97; 95% CI: 0.96-0.98). This change was equivalent to 6802 fewer hospital admissions in the first 3 years after implementation. There were similar reductions in asthma admission rates among children from different age, gender, and socioeconomic status groups and among those residing in urban and rural locations.
Conclusions: These findings confirm those from a small number of previous studies suggesting that the well-documented population health benefits of comprehensive smoke-free legislation appear to extend to reducing hospital admissions for childhood asthma.
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S.A. Magrys et al.
Psychophysiology, February 2013, Pages 204-209
Abstract:
Ambiguous biochemical and subjective responses to alcohol may relate to preexisting individual differences in alcohol expectations, experience, or impulsivity. This study examined cortisol and alpha-amylase responses to alcohol and their association with trait impulsivity, alcohol expectancy, and subjective reports of alcohol's effects. Eighty-seven males assigned to an alcohol, sober, or placebo group provided biochemical and self-report measures. Both cortisol and alpha-amylase increased following alcohol administration. Impulsivity correlated with cortisol changes, and the greatest rise in cortisol correlated with high stimulating effects in the alcohol group. These findings emphasize the importance of individual differences in alcohol responses and support a relationship between hormonal responses and alcohol use.
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Opioid abusers' ability to differentiate an opioid from placebo in laboratory challenge testing
Denis Antoine et al.
Drug and Alcohol Dependence, forthcoming
Background: Abuse liability assessments influence drug development, federal regulation, and clinical care. One suggested procedure to reduce variability of assessments is a qualification phase, which assesses whether study applicants adequately distinguish active drug from placebo; applicants failing to make this distinction are disqualified. The present analyses assessed differences between qualification phase qualifiers and non-qualifiers.
Methods: Data were collected from 23 completers of the qualification phase of an abuse liability study. Opioid abusing participants received 30 mg oxycodone and placebo orally on separate days, and were characterized as qualifiers (vs. non-qualifiers) if their peak visual analog scale liking rating for oxycodone was at least 20 points higher than placebo's peak rating. Groups were compared on demographic characteristics, drug history, and physiologic, subject and observer ratings.
Results: 61% of participants were qualifiers and 39% were non-qualifiers. Groups had similar demographic characteristics, drug use histories, and pupillary constriction responses. However, unlike qualifiers, non-qualifiers had an exaggerated placebo response for the liking score (p = 0.03) and an attenuated oxycodone response for the liking score (p < 0.0001). Non-qualifiers' failure to differentiate oxycodone versus placebo was evident for subject and observer ratings.
Conclusion: Different subjective responses to identical stimuli support the use of a qualification phase in abuse liability assessments. Further research should explore objective measures that may better account for these differences, determine optimal qualification criteria, and explore the developmental course of drug use. This study also documents certain opioid abusers fail to differentiate 30 mg of oxycodone from placebo, a phenomenon deserving further study.
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Orienteering
Chadly Stern et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the present research, we investigated whether, because of differences in cognitive style, liberals and conservatives would differ in the process of categorizing individuals into a perceptually ambiguous group. In 3 studies, we examined whether conservatives were more likely than liberals to rely on gender inversion cues (e.g., feminine = gay) when categorizing male faces as gay vs. straight, and the accuracy implications of differential cue usage. In Study 1, perceivers made dichotomous sexual orientation judgments (gay-straight). We found that perceivers who reported being more liberal were less likely than perceivers who reported being more conservative to use gender inversion cues in their deliberative judgments. In addition, liberals took longer to categorize targets, suggesting that they may have been thinking more about their judgments. Consistent with a stereotype correction model of social categorization, in Study 2 we demonstrated that differences between liberals and conservatives were eliminated by a cognitive load manipulation that disrupted perceivers' abilities to engage in effortful processing. Under cognitive load, liberals failed to adjust their initial judgments and, like conservatives, consistently relied on gender inversion cues to make judgments. In Study 3, we provided more direct evidence that differences in cognitive style underlie ideological differences in judgments of sexual orientation. Specifically, liberals were less likely than conservatives to endorse stereotypes about gender inversion and sexual orientation, and this difference in stereotype endorsement was partially explained by liberals' greater need for cognition. Implications for the accuracy of ambiguous category judgments made with the use of stereotypical cues in naturalistic settings are discussed.
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Pornography Consumption, Education, and Support for Same-Sex Marriage Among Adult U.S. Males
Paul Wright & Ashley Randall
Communication Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many consider same-sex marriage the civil rights issue of our time. Although support is on the rise, there are some Americans who oppose same-sex marriage. Heterosexual males are a demographic group particularly likely to oppose same-sex marriage. Mass media and education are often thought of as important agents of socialization in American culture. Pornography in particular is a platform often discussed in terms of its impact on males' sexual attitudes. This study used nationally representative three-wave longitudinal data gathered from adult U.S. males to examine the over-time interplay between pornography consumption, education, and support for same-sex marriage. Support for same-sex marriage did not prospectively predict pornography consumption, but pornography consumption did prospectively predict support for same-sex marriage. Education was also positively associated with support for same-sex marriage. Scientific and social implications of these findings are discussed.
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Mariana Preciado, Kerri Johnson & Letitia Anne Peplau
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Sexual orientation can be thought of as encompassing both actual sexual experience (e.g., behavior, attraction, fantasy) and beliefs about those experiences. We refer to those beliefs as self-perceived sexual orientation. We report the first experimental evidence that manipulating situational cues directly impacts self-perceived sexual orientation among heterosexually identified men and women. Across three studies that used distinct manipulations (both explicit and implicit), measured different outcomes, and sampled different ages, we found that cues of support for same-sex sexuality lead to self-perceived sexual orientation containing more same-sex sexuality than did cues of stigma against same-sex sexuality. We discuss the implications for understanding the role of factors outside of actual sexual experience in the development and maintenance of sexual orientation.
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Richard Wight, Allen LeBlanc & Lee Badgett
American Journal of Public Health, February 2013, Pages 339-346
Objectives: We examined whether same-sex marriage was associated with nonspecific psychological distress among self-identified lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults, and whether it had the potential to offset mental health disparities between lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons and heterosexuals.
Methods: Population-based data (weighted) were from the 2009 adult (aged 18-70 years) California Health Interview Survey. Within-group analysis of lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons included 1166 individuals (weighted proportion = 3.15%); within-group heterosexual analysis included 35 608 individuals (weighted proportion = 96.58%); and pooled analysis of lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons and heterosexuals included 36 774 individuals.
Results: Same-sex married lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons were significantly less distressed than lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons not in a legally recognized relationship; married heterosexuals were significantly less distressed than nonmarried heterosexuals. In adjusted pairwise comparisons, married heterosexuals had the lowest psychological distress, and lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons who were not in legalized relationships had the highest psychological distress (P < .001). Psychological distress was not significantly distinguishable among same-sex married lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons, lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons in registered domestic partnerships, and heterosexuals.
Conclusions: Being in a legally recognized same-sex relationship, marriage in particular, appeared to diminish mental health differentials between heterosexuals and lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons. Researchers must continue to examine potential health benefits of same-sex marriage, which is at least in part a public health issue.
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The Power and Limits of Marriage: Married Gay Men's Family Relationships
Abigail Ocobock
Journal of Marriage and Family, February 2013, Pages 191-205
Abstract:
Same-sex marriage has received much scholarly attention in the United States in the past decade. Yet we know little about how same-sex couples experience marriage. In this article, I present findings from in-depth interviews with 32 legally married gay men in Iowa. I focus on their experiences with families of origin and investigate the legitimating potential of same-sex marriage. The men had high expectations about the power of marriage to help them gain recognition and support, but their experiences with family members were more varied and complex than they expected. Although marriage often led to positive family outcomes, it also commonly had negative consequences, including new and renewed experiences of family rejection. This study complicates ideas about the legitimating potential of marriage for same-sex couples by illuminating both its power and limits in helping gay men gain status and support from their families of origin.
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Rachel Farr & Charlotte Patterson
Child Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
Coparenting is associated with child behavior in families with heterosexual parents, but less is known about coparenting among lesbian- and gay-parent families. Associations were studied among self-reported divisions of labor, coparenting observations, and child adjustment (Mage = 3 years) among 104 adoptive families headed by lesbian, gay, or heterosexual couples. Lesbian and gay couples reported sharing child care, whereas heterosexual couples reported specialization (i.e., mothers did more child care than fathers). Observations confirmed this pattern - lesbian and gay parents participated more equally than heterosexual parents during family interaction. Lesbian couples showed the most supportive and least undermining behavior, whereas gay couples showed the least supportive behavior, and heterosexual couples the most undermining behavior. Overall, supportive coparenting was associated with better child adjustment.
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David Lick & Kerri Johnson
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, May 2013, Pages 419-425
Abstract:
Prejudice arises from the categorizations people make upon perceiving others. To date, however, there has been little progress toward understanding how metacognitive processes underlying categorization contribute to prejudice. In two studies, we tested whether processing fluency - the speed with which targets are categorized - explains prejudiced evaluations related to concealable (sexual orientation) and overt (race) social identities. In Study 1, targets categorized as lesbian/gay were evaluated more negatively than targets categorized as straight, and evaluative differences were explained by the fluency with which targets were processed. In Study 2, we replicated our initial findings about the mediating role of processing fluency in evaluations related to sexual orientation categorizations, but found no evidence that fluency explains evaluations related to race categorizations. These findings provide a framework for understanding the perceptual underpinnings of interpersonal prejudice.
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Judith Andersen & John Blosnich
PLoS ONE, January 2013
Background: Adverse childhood experiences (e.g., physical, sexual and emotional abuse, neglect, exposure to domestic violence, parental discord, familial mental illness, incarceration and substance abuse) constitute a major public health problem in the United States. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) scale is a standardized measure that captures multiple developmental risk factors beyond sexual, physical and emotional abuse. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (i.e., sexual minority) individuals may experience disproportionately higher prevalence of adverse childhood experiences.
Purpose: To examine, using the ACE scale, prevalence of childhood physical, emotional, and sexual abuse and childhood household dysfunction among sexual minority and heterosexual adults.
Methods: Analyses were conducted using a probability-based sample of data pooled from three U.S. states' Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) surveys (Maine, Washington, Wisconsin) that administered the ACE scale and collected information on sexual identity (n = 22,071).
Results: Compared with heterosexual respondents, gay/lesbian and bisexual individuals experienced increased odds of six of eight and seven of eight adverse childhood experiences, respectively. Sexual minority persons had higher rates of adverse childhood experiences (IRR = 1.66 gay/lesbian; 1.58 bisexual) compared to their heterosexual peers.
Conclusions: Sexual minority individuals have increased exposure to multiple developmental risk factors beyond physical, sexual and emotional abuse. We recommend the use of the Adverse Childhood Experiences scale in future research examining health disparities among this minority population.
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Eric Swank, Breanne Fahs & David Frost
Sociological Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
Exposure to heterosexist discrimination may vary by a person's place of residency. Utilizing a minority stress perspective, an online survey of self-identified lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals (n = 285) examined whether rural and small town inhabitants experienced greater exposure to six types of enacted stigma. After comparing the frequency of enacted stigma by community type, findings demonstrated that rural LGBs reported experiencing more homophobic statements, property damage, and employment discrimination than urban LGBs. Small town LGBs also encountered additional amounts of housing discrimination and were more often chased by strangers compared with urban sexual minorities. Finally, disclosure practices and hierarchies based on race and social class also influenced exposure to discrimination. The importance of spatial factors often intensified when respondents disclosed their sexual identity more publicly. When exploring racial and class differences, affluent sexual minorities experienced less employment discrimination and white sexual minorities were less likely to experience several forms of heterosexist events (especially being punched and kicked).
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W.A. Arrindell et al.
Cross-Cultural Research, February 2013, Pages 51-67
Abstract:
It was hypothesized that societies that put greater emphasis on men being rigidly committed to culturally accepted models of masculinity (nations with high Hofstede MASculinity scores) would report higher mean national levels of masculine gender role stress (MGRS) than societies that emphasize such to a clearly lesser extent (low national MAS scores). Supporting this expectation, a large country-level correlation of +.64 (p = .01) was found across 13 countries (n = 6,420) between national MAS scores and national MGRS scores. In line with previous findings, Hofstede's MAS measure was found to be conceptually distinct from Bem's measure of instrumentality. Implications for intervention and further studies are briefly pinpointed.
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Distancing Through Objectification? Depictions of Women's Bodies in Menstrual Product Advertisements
Mindy Erchull
Sex Roles, January 2013, Pages 32-40
Abstract:
Terror Management Theory has led to suggestions that humans may distance themselves from menstruation in order to avoid reminders of their own corporeality and mortality, and the objectification of women has received empirical support as one means to do so. A content analysis of 240 menstrual product advertisements published in Seventeen and Cosmopolitan over 12 years was undertaken to look for evidence of objectification. Idealized images of women were common, lending support to the idea that these tactics can be used to provide distance from reminders of our own mortality, but overtly sexualized images were less common. The fact that nearly half of the advertisements did not include images of women may provide even stronger support for this idea. This indicated that a sanitized female body is not just being paired with reminders of menstruation, we are, literally, removing the female body entirely in many instances.
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Bryn Austin et al.
American Journal of Public Health, February 2013, Pages e16-e22
Objectives: We examined purging for weight control, diet pill use, and obesity across sexual orientation identity and ethnicity groups.
Methods: Anonymous survey data were analyzed from 24 591 high school students of diverse ethnicities in the federal Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance System Survey in 2005 and 2007. Self-reported data were gathered on gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation identity, height, weight, and purging and diet pill use in the past 30 days. We used multivariable logistic regression to estimate odds of purging, diet pill use, and obesity associated with sexual orientation identity in gender-stratified models and examined for the presence of interactions between ethnicity and sexual orientation.
Results: Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) identity was associated with substantially elevated odds of purging and diet pill use in both girls and boys (odds ratios [OR] range = 1.9-6.8). Bisexual girls and boys were also at elevated odds of obesity compared to same-gender heterosexuals (OR = 2.3 and 2.1, respectively).
Conclusions: Interventions to reduce eating disorders and obesity that are appropriate for LGB youths of diverse ethnicities are urgently needed.
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Francisco Sánchez, Sven Bocklandt & Eric Vilain
Health Psychology, January 2013, Pages 52-56
Objective: In general, heterosexual men are less favorable to asking for help compared to women and gay men. This can be problematic if a man avoids professional help when he is experiencing significant psychological distress. Yet, it is unclear to what degree such attitudes among men are due to innate differences or social environments. Studying twins provides one avenue for teasing apart these relationships.
Method: We recruited 38 pairs of monozygotic male twins (Mage = 35.87 years, SD = 9.52) raised together and who were discordant for sexual orientation. They completed measures of psychological distress (Symptom Checklist-90-Revised), positive attitudes toward psychological help-seeking behavior, and emphasis with fulfilling traditional masculine norms.
Results: Contrary to predictions, the heterosexual twins expressed more symptoms of specific distress - hostility (r = .30), paranoid ideation (r = .26), and psychoticism (r = .24) - than their gay cotwins. As predicted, heterosexual men were less favorable to seeking help (r = .25) and expressed greater emphasis on masculine norms (r = .26) than their cotwins. Within each group of men, unique aspects of masculine norms were significantly related to attitudes toward psychological help-seeking behavior.
Conclusion: The findings lend credence to the hypothesis that social environments influence attitudes and behaviors that are stereotypically masculine and potentially detrimental to men's health.
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Peer sexual harassment and disordered eating in early adolescence
Jennifer Petersen & Janet Hyde
Developmental Psychology, January 2013, Pages 184-195
Abstract:
Peer sexual harassment is a pervasive problem in schools and is associated with a variety of negative mental health outcomes. Objectification theory suggests that sexual attention in the form of peer harassment directs unwanted attention to the victim's body and may lead to a desire to alter the body via disordered eating. In the current study, we used latent growth modeling with a sample of 406 U.S. adolescents to examine the relationship between longitudinal trends in peer sexual harassment from 5th to 9th grade and disordered eating in 9th grade. Longitudinal trends in self-surveillance were proposed as a mediator of the relationships. Results indicated that the relationship between upsetting sexual harassment at 5th grade and disordered eating symptoms at 9th grade was mediated by self-surveillance at 5th grade. Girls reported more upsetting sexual harassment, more self-surveillance, and thus more disordered eating than boys did. These results are in accord with objectification theory, which proposes that sexual harassment is a form of sexual objectification and may lead to self-surveillance and disordered eating.
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Vivien Ainley & Manos Tsakiris
PLoS ONE, February 2013
Background: ‘Self-objectification' is the tendency to experience one's body principally as an object, to be evaluated for its appearance rather than for its effectiveness. Within objectification theory, it has been proposed that self-objectification accounts for the poorer interoceptive awareness observed in women, as measured by heartbeat perception. Our study is, we believe, the first specifically to test this relationship.
Methodology/Principal Findings: Using a well-validated and reliable heartbeat perception task, we measured interoceptive awareness in women and compared this with their scores on the Self-Objectification Questionnaire, the Self-Consciousness Scale and the Body Consciousness Questionnaire. Interoceptive awareness was negatively correlated with self-objectification. Interoceptive awareness, public body consciousness and private body consciousness together explained 31% of the variance in self-objectification. However, private body consciousness was not significantly correlated with interoceptive awareness, which may explain the many nonsignificant results in self-objectification studies that have used private body consciousness as a measure of body awareness.
Conclusions/Significance: We propose interoceptive awareness, assessed by heartbeat perception, as a measure of body awareness in self-objectification studies. Our findings have implications for those clinical conditions, in women, which are characterised by self-objectification and low interoceptive awareness, such as eating disorders.
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The animals went in two by two: Heteronormativity in television wildlife documentaries
Brett Mills
European Journal of Cultural Studies, February 2013, Pages 100-114
Abstract:
This article examines British television wildlife documentaries in order to outline the ways in which limited representations of animal behaviour recur. It focuses on representations of animal sexuality, monogamy and parenthood, and suggests that how such activities are repeatedly represented draw on normalised human notions of such behaviour. This is demonstrated through comparison of these representations with literature from zoology and ethology, which shows that a considerably wider variety of animal behaviour has been documented. The article suggests that the discourses of sexuality, monogamy and parenthood are interrelated and interdependent, with the validity of each supported by the existence of the others. It is argued that how animals are represented in such documentaries matters, partly because normalised discourses must be drawn on in order for programmes to make sense of the behaviour they present, but mainly because animal behaviour is commonly used as evidence for ‘natural' forms of human behaviour.
Friday, February 8, 2013
As the Romans do
In the Land of the Free, Interdependent Action Undermines Motivation
MarYam Hamedani, Hazel Rose Markus & Alyssa Fu
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Today's most pressing social challenges require people to recognize their shared fate and work together - to think and act interdependently. In the three studies reported here, we found that appeals for increased interdependence may undermine the very motivation they seek to inspire. We examined the hypothesis that invoking interdependent action undermines motivation for chronically independent European Americans but not for bicultural Asian Americans who are both chronically independent and chronically interdependent. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that priming interdependent rather than independent action undermined European Americans' motivation to perform challenging mental and physical tasks. Study 3 showed that framing an appeal for environmental sustainability in terms of interdependent rather than independent action led to decreased motivation and resource allocation among European Americans. Motivation was not undermined for Asian Americans, which reveals how behavior is divergently shaped, in the land of the free, by foundational sociocultural schemas of independence and interdependence. This research has the novel implication that it may be necessary to invoke independent behaviors in order to successfully motivate interdependence.
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Consanguinity as a Major Predictor of Levels of Democracy: A Study of 70 Nations
Michael Woodley & Edward Bell
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, February 2013, Pages 263-280
Abstract:
This article examines the hypothesis that although the level of democracy in a society is a complex phenomenon involving many antecedents, consanguinity (marriage and subsequent mating between second cousins or closer relatives) is an important though often overlooked predictor of it. Measures of the two variables correlate substantially in a sample of 70 nations (r = -0.632, p < 0.001), and consanguinity remains a significant predictor of democracy in multiple regression and path analyses involving several additional independent variables. The data suggest that where consanguineous kinship networks are numerically predominant and have been made to share a common statehood, democracy is unlikely to develop. Possible explanations for these findings include the idea that restricted gene flow arising from consanguineous marriage facilitates a rigid collectivism that is inimical to individualism and the recognition of individual rights, which are key elements of the democratic ethos. Furthermore, high levels of within-group genetic similarity may discourage cooperation between different large-scale kin groupings sharing the same nation, inhibiting democracy. Finally, genetic similarity stemming from consanguinity may encourage resource predation by members of socially elite kinship networks as an inclusive fitness enhancing behavior.
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China's language input system in the digital age affects children's reading development
Li Hai Tan et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 15 January 2013, Pages 1119-1123
Abstract:
Written Chinese as a logographic system was developed over 3,000 y ago. Historically, Chinese children have learned to read by learning to associate the visuo-graphic properties of Chinese characters with lexical meaning, typically through handwriting. In recent years, however, many Chinese children have learned to use electronic communication devices based on the pinyin input method, which associates phonemes and English letters with characters. When children use pinyin to key in letters, their spelling no longer depends on reproducing the visuo-graphic properties of characters that are indispensable to Chinese reading, and, thus, typing in pinyin may conflict with the traditional learning processes for written Chinese. We therefore tested character reading ability and pinyin use by primary school children in three Chinese cites: Beijing (n = 466), Guangzhou (n = 477), and Jining (n = 4,908). Children with severe reading difficulty are defined as those who were normal in nonverbal IQ but two grades (i.e., 2 y) behind in character-reading achievement. We found that the overall incidence rate of severe reading difficulty appears to be much higher than ever reported on Chinese reading. Crucially, we found that children's reading scores were significantly negatively correlated with their use of the pinyin input method, suggesting that pinyin typing on e-devices hinders Chinese reading development. The Chinese language has survived the technological challenges of the digital era, but the benefits of communicating digitally may come with a cost in proficient learning of written Chinese.
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Joseph Hackman & Daniel Hruschka
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Parasite stress theory has recently been used to account for an array of cross-cultural differences in human cognition and social behavior, including in-group bias, interpersonal violence, child maltreatment, and religious adherence. Here, we re-assess the apparently ubiquitous effects of parasite stress on behavior observed in the U.S., using the cross-sectional, cross-population approach implemented by prior pathogen stress studies. Our results raise two challenges to previous findings. First, we show that the observed effects of pathogen stress in the U.S. data are due exclusively to one type of infectious disease - sexually transmitted diseases (STD) - while non-STD infections have no effect. Second, we find that controlling for life history measures of extrinsic risk and a fast life history erases the observed associations with family ties, interpersonal violence, child fatalities, and religious adherence. Thus, after appropriate variable specification, stratification, and control, U.S. cross-state population differences provide no support for the pathogen stress hypothesis in these various domains of behavior. Rather, the findings are more consistent with predictions from life history theory.
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Quantifying the Advantage of Looking Forward
Tobias Preis et al.
Scientific Reports, April 2012
Abstract:
We introduce a future orientation index to quantify the degree to which Internet users worldwide seek more information about years in the future than years in the past. We analyse Google logs and find a striking correlation between the country's GDP and the predisposition of its inhabitants to look forward.
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The LL game: The curious preference for low quality and its norms
Diego Gambetta & Gloria Origgi
Politics, Philosophy & Economics, February 2013, Pages 3-23
Abstract:
We investigate a phenomenon which we have experienced as common when dealing with an assortment of Italian public and private institutions: people promise to exchange high-quality goods and services, but then something goes wrong and the quality delivered is lower than had been promised. While this is perceived as ‘cheating' by outsiders, insiders seem not only to adapt to, but to rely on this outcome. They do not resent low-quality exchanges; in fact, they seem to resent high-quality ones, and are inclined to put pressure on or avoid dealing with agents who deliver high quality. The equilibrium among low-quality producers relies on an unusual preference ranking which differs from that associated with the Prisoners' Dilemma and similar games, whereby self-interested rational agents prefer to dish out low quality in exchange for high quality. While equally ‘lazy', agents in our low-quality worlds are oddly ‘pro-social': for the advantage of maximizing their raw self-interest, they prefer to receive low-quality goods and services, provided that they too can in exchange deliver low quality without embarrassment. They develop a set of oblique social norms to sustain their preferred equilibrium when threatened by the intrusion of high quality. We argue that high-quality collective outcomes are endangered not only by self-interested individual defectors, but by ‘cartels' of mutually satisfied mediocrities.
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Cultural Differences in Targets of Stigmatization Between Individual- and Group-Oriented Cultures
Hyeyoung Shin, John Dovidio & Jaime Napier
Basic and Applied Social Psychology, January/February 2013, Pages 98-108
Abstract:
This research investigated cultural differences in stigmatization of out-groups representing Goffman's distinction between "tribal stigma" and "blemishes of character." We hypothesized that "group-oriented" (vs. individual-oriented) cultures would be more likely to stigmatize nonnormative groups, including tribal out-groups (people of a different race, immigrants/foreign workers) and out-groups with blemishes of character (homosexuals, heavy drinkers, drug addicts), because of higher value of behavioral conformity and/or lower value of uniqueness. Country-level analyses with nine individual-oriented and four group-oriented countries supported our hypotheses and revealed that the cultural value of uniqueness played a more influential role than behavioral conformity. We discuss implications and directions for future research.
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Genetic Diversity and the Origins of Cultural Fragmentation
Quamrul Ashraf & Oded Galor
NBER Working Paper, January 2013
Abstract:
Despite the importance attributed to the effects of diversity on the stability and prosperity of nations, the origins of the uneven distribution of ethnic and cultural fragmentation across countries have been underexplored. Building on the role of deeply-rooted biogeographical forces in comparative development, this research empirically demonstrates that genetic diversity, predominantly determined during the prehistoric "out of Africa" migration of humans, is an underlying cause of various existing manifestations of ethnolinguistic heterogeneity. Further exploration of this uncharted territory may revolutionize the understanding of the effects of deeply-rooted factors on economic development and the composition of human capital across the globe.
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Language experienced in utero affects vowel perception after birth: A two-country study
Christine Moon, Hugo Lagercrantz & Patricia Kuhl
Acta Paediatrica, February 2013, Pages 156-160
Aims: To test the hypothesis that exposure to ambient language in the womb alters phonetic perception shortly after birth. This two-country study aimed to see if neonates demonstrated prenatal learning by how they responded to vowels in a category from their native language and another nonnative language, regardless of how much postnatal experience the infants had.
Method: A counterbalanced experiment was conducted in Sweden (n=40) and the USA (n=40) using Swedish and English vowel sounds. The neonates (mean postnatal age = 33 hrs) controlled audio presentation of either native or nonnative vowels by sucking on a pacifier, with the number of times they sucked their pacifier being used to demonstrate what vowel sounds attracted their attention. The vowels were either the English /i/ or Swedish /y/ in the form of a prototype plus 16 variants of the prototype.
Results: The infants in the native and nonnative groups responded differently. As predicted, the infants responded to the unfamiliar nonnative language with higher mean sucks. They also sucked more to the nonnative prototype. Time since birth (range: 7-75 hours) did not affect the outcome.
Conclusion: The ambient language to which foetuses are exposed in the womb starts to affect their perception of their native language at a phonetic level. This can be measured shortly after birth by differences in responding to familiar vs. unfamiliar vowels.
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Social and Emotional Parenting: Mothering in a Changing Chinese Society
Niobe Way et al.
Asian American Journal of Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Chua's (2011) book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother generated vigorous debate regarding its description of "Chinese" parenting ideology and practices. In this article, the authors analyzed the narratives from 24 Chinese mothers of middle school students in Nanjing, China to explore their parenting ideology and practices. In sharp distinction to the "Tiger Mother" image, our analysis indicated that although all mothers wanted their children to do well in school, their primary goals were focused on raising socially and emotionally well-adjusted children who had the capacity to be self-sufficient and gainfully employed in the future. With few exceptions, the mothers' strategies for achieving these goals included providing their children the freedom to make their own decisions and not forcing their children to engage in particular activities. These strategies were based on their concerns for the children's short-term and long-term happiness as well as a perception that the way they were raised was no longer relevant to raising their children; consequently, the mothers allowed their children more autonomy and control to forge their own path than the mothers themselves were allowed as children. Our findings draw attention to the social, political, and economic context of China and how this changing context is shaping parenting goals and practices.
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Linda Jackson & Jin-Liang Wang
Computers in Human Behavior, May 2013, Pages 910-921
Abstract:
This research compared social networking site (SNS) use in a collectivistic culture, China, and an individualistic culture, the United States (US). Over 400 college student participants from a Southwestern University in Chongqing, China, and 490 college participants from a Midwestern University in the US completed a survey about their use of SNSs - time spent, importance and motives for use. They then rated themselves on a variety of personal characteristics, namely the Big Five Personality factors, Loneliness, Shyness and Life Satisfaction. Results revealed cultural differences in SNS use. US participants spent more time in SNS, considered them to be more important and had more friends in SNSs than did Chinese participants. Self-ratings of personal characteristics also differed in the two cultures as did the personal characteristics that predicted SNS use. In general, personal characteristics were less effective in predicting SNS use in China than in the US. Findings suggest that in collectivistic cultures the importance of the family, friends and one's groups may be partly responsible for Chinese participants' lesser use of SNSs, whereas in individualistic cultures the importance of self and having more but less close and enduring friendships may be partly responsible for US participants' greater use of SNSs. Personal characteristics predicted SNS use in both cultures but were stronger predictors in an individualistic culture than in a collectivistic, consistent with the emphasis on self in the former and on family, friends and one's groups in the latter. Future research is needed to identify whether cultural values always take precedence over personal characteristics and motives in determining behavior in the virtual world.
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Diana Boer & Ronald Fischer
Psychological Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article examines how and when personal values relate to social attitudes. Considering values as motivational orientations, we propose an attitude-value taxonomy based on Moral Foundation Theory (Haidt & Joseph, 2007) and Schwartz's (1992) basic human values theory allowing predictions of (a) how social attitudes are related to personal values, and (b) when macro-contextual factors have an impact on attitude-value links. In a meta-analysis based on the Schwartz Value Survey (Schwartz, 1992) and the Portrait Value Questionnaire (Schwartz et al., 2001; k = 91, N = 30,357 from 31 countries), we found that self-transcendence (vs. self-enhancement) values relate positively to fairness/proenvironmental and care/prosocial attitudes, and conservation (vs. openness-to-change) values relate to purity/religious and authority/political attitudes, whereas ingroup/identity attitudes are not consistently associated with value dimensions. Additionally, we hypothesize that the ecological, economic, and cultural context moderates the extent to which values guide social attitudes. Results of the multi-level meta-analysis show that ecological and cultural factors inhibit or foster attitude-value associations: Disease stress is associated with lower attitude-value associations for conservation (vs. openness-to-change) values; collectivism is associated with stronger attitude-value links for conservation values; individualism is associated with stronger attitude-value links for self-transcendence (vs. self-enhancement) values; and uncertainty avoidance is associated with stronger attitude-values links, particularly for conservation values. These findings challenge universalistic claims about context-independent attitude-value relations and contribute to refined future value and social attitude theories.
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Anxiety as a consequence of modern dietary pattern in adults in Tehran-Iran
M. Bakhtiyari et al.
Eating Behaviors, April 2013, Pages 107-112
Abstract:
Food intake patterns in relation to mental health have already been revealed. To investigate the relationship between processed foods consumption behavior and anxiety disorder, a cross sectional study was conducted. Overall, 1782 young adults aged 18-35 years were randomly selected using cluster sampling method from 22 districts of Tehran-Iran in 2011. Diet assessment was done using a 24 hours recall questionnaire in two times with a week interval. Anxiety level was determined using the validated Speilburger test (Persian version). A Proportional odds regression model was used to assess the effect of processed food consumption on anxiety variables. A significant statistical difference was found between men and women in terms of processed food consumption (p < 0.001). Adjusting for age, total calorie intake, gender, body mass index, socioeconomic status, history of sedative drug consumption as well as mental health disorders, the proportional odds regression model showed a significant relationship between increased consumption of processed foods and anxiety (OR = 4.73, 95% CI: 2.89-12.54 for state and OR = 4.91, 95% CI: 2.88-13.99 for trait). Identification, modification and adjusting incorrect food patterns in the community could be considered as valuable steps to turn down nutritional-based health difficulties.
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Debi Brannan et al.
Journal of Positive Psychology, January/February 2013, Pages 65-75
Abstract:
Despite the growing number of cross-cultural studies focusing on well-being, little is known about social support outside of western civilization, particularly among people in Middle Eastern cultures. The current study examined the relationships between perceived social support and components of subjective well-being (i.e. positive and negative affect, satisfaction with life) among college students in Iran, Jordan, and the United States. Perceived support from family significantly predicted each aspect of well-being within each country. However, perceived support from friends did not predict any component of well-being in Iran; yet, in Jordan and the US, friend support predicted higher levels of positive mood. These results will be examined in terms of roles and relationship norms in these countries.
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The strength and persistence of entrepreneurial cultures
James Foreman-Peck & Peng Zhou
Journal of Evolutionary Economics, January 2013, Pages 163-187
Abstract:
The twentieth century United States provides a natural experiment to measure the strength and persistence of entrepreneurial cultures. Assuming immigrants bear the cultures of their birth place, comparison of revealed entrepreneurial propensities of US immigrant groups in 1910 and 2000 reflected these backgrounds. Two measures of entrepreneurial culture are employed; the first is simply the chance that a member of the migrant group will be an employer and the second is the origin country effect on this probability, conditional upon personal characteristics. The preferred second measure shows persistence of some cultures and change of others over the twentieth century. Among the more stable cultures North-western Europe, where modern economic growth is widely held to have originated, did not host unusually strong entrepreneurial propensities. Instead such cultures were carried by persons originating from Greece, Turkey and Italy, together with Jews.
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Gabriella Treglia
Journal of American Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
From the 1880s until the early 1930s the US federal government adopted a formal policy of intolerance towards Native American cultures and religions, stemming primarily from the belief that traditional religio-cultural practices - especially dances - distracted Native Americans from crop-tending and stock-rearing, and also constituted "outmoded" reminders of a "savage" past seen as incompatible with the responsibilities of US citizenship. Some cultural practices were banned outright, while others were actively discouraged or denigrated as "oldtime." Yet Native American cultural expression did not die - in large part because Native communities employed varied methods to resist the bans. This article examines the ways in which pro-dancing communities utilized the language of US citizenship and made appeals to the Constitution, private property rights and US patriotism in their bid to ensure the survival of their dances and ceremonies. It also examines support for the dance bans by Native individuals, and the increasingly complex and evolving cultural identities in reservation communities in the early twentieth century.
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Population structure and cultural geography of a folktale in Europe
Robert Ross, Simon Greenhill & Quentin Atkinson
Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 7 April 2013
Abstract:
Despite a burgeoning science of cultural evolution, relatively little work has focused on the population structure of human cultural variation. By contrast, studies in human population genetics use a suite of tools to quantify and analyse spatial and temporal patterns of genetic variation within and between populations. Human genetic diversity can be explained largely as a result of migration and drift giving rise to gradual genetic clines, together with some discontinuities arising from geographical and cultural barriers to gene flow. Here, we adapt theory and methods from population genetics to quantify the influence of geography and ethnolinguistic boundaries on the distribution of 700 variants of a folktale in 31 European ethnolinguistic populations. We find that geographical distance and ethnolinguistic affiliation exert significant independent effects on folktale diversity and that variation between populations supports a clustering concordant with European geography. This pattern of geographical clines and clusters parallels the pattern of human genetic diversity in Europe, although the effects of geographical distance and ethnolinguistic boundaries are stronger for folktales than genes. Our findings highlight the importance of geography and population boundaries in models of human cultural variation and point to key similarities and differences between evolutionary processes operating on human genes and culture.
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Danielle Badro et al.
PLoS ONE, January 2013
Abstract:
The Middle East was a funnel of human expansion out of Africa, a staging area for the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution, and the home to some of the earliest world empires. Post LGM expansions into the region and subsequent population movements created a striking genetic mosaic with distinct sex-based genetic differentiation. While prior studies have examined the mtDNA and Y-chromosome contrast in focal populations in the Middle East, none have undertaken a broad-spectrum survey including North and sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, and Middle Eastern populations. In this study 5,174 mtDNA and 4,658 Y-chromosome samples were investigated using PCA, MDS, mean-linkage clustering, AMOVA, and Fisher exact tests of FST's, RST's, and haplogroup frequencies. Geographic differentiation in affinities of Middle Eastern populations with Africa and Europe showed distinct contrasts between mtDNA and Y-chromosome data. Specifically, Lebanon's mtDNA shows a very strong association to Europe, while Yemen shows very strong affinity with Egypt and North and East Africa. Previous Y-chromosome results showed a Levantine coastal-inland contrast marked by J1 and J2, and a very strong North African component was evident throughout the Middle East. Neither of these patterns were observed in the mtDNA. While J2 has penetrated into Europe, the pattern of Y-chromosome diversity in Lebanon does not show the widespread affinities with Europe indicated by the mtDNA data. Lastly, while each population shows evidence of connections with expansions that now define the Middle East, Africa, and Europe, many of the populations in the Middle East show distinctive mtDNA and Y-haplogroup characteristics that indicate long standing settlement with relatively little impact from and movement into other populations.
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Coming of Age in Times of Change: The Transition to Adulthood in China
Wei-Jun Jean Yeung & Shu Hu
ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, March 2013, Pages 149-171
Abstract:
This article aims to (1) describe trends for Chinese young adults' pathways into adulthood for birth cohorts that have experienced distinct historical events over the past half century and (2) examine factors that shape young adults' transitioning behavior. We draw data from the 2005 to 2008 Chinese General Social Survey. In contrast to the increasingly protracted trend seen in many Western societies, the more recent Chinese cohorts transitioned to marriage and parenthood sooner than those who grew up during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The economic and education reforms since the late 1970s have greatly increased urban-rural disparity in youths' life trajectories despite their generally positive impact on young adults' educational attainment and economic well-being. While near-universal marriage and childbearing within marriage prevail and son preference remains strong in modern China, evidence suggests that today's young Chinese are exploring new pathways to adulthood, including cohabitation and premarital sex.
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Hoping for a Phoenix: Shanghai Fathers and Their Daughters
Qiong Xu & Wei-Jun Jean Yeung
Journal of Family Issues, February 2013, Pages 182-207
Abstract:
Intergenerational relationships and gender roles in China are in transition because of ideational and structural changes resulting from social movements and policies in the past half a century. Using a mixed-methods design, we examine Shanghai fathers' involvement in their adolescent daughters' lives. In contrast to traditional stereotypes, Shanghai fathers are nurturing and highly involved in multiple domains of their daughters' lives. They also have very high aspirations for their daughters, regardless of their own socioeconomic background. Shanghai fathers see providing emotional and financial support, and helping their daughters to achieve success in education as their most important roles. The behavior of Shanghai fathers can be best understood in the unique Chinese contexts of one-child policy, transition to market economy, and increasing globalization.
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Yi Shao et al.
Personality and Individual Differences, March 2013, Pages 536-541
Abstract:
Individuals' development is a multilayered affair. The influence of family relationship on personality, such as and focusing on birth order, is subject to influence from other social systems in which the families are situated. The current research examined the relation of birth order to personality and life satisfaction in China, where only children have become the majority because of national policy. Across two studies with both between-family data (N = 1468) and within-family data (N = 171), onlyborns and laterborns surpassed firstborns on openness to experience. In addition, only-child participants were more satisfied with their own lives than were sibling participants, especially laterborns. The results offer new insights into the dynamic relations between ecology and personality.
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Influences of Culture and Visual Context on Real-Time Social Categorization
Jonathan Freeman et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, March 2013, Pages 206-210
Abstract:
Social categorization is often thought to be based on facial features and immune to visual context. East Asians have been argued to attend to context more whereas Westerners to context less. American and Chinese participants were presented with faces varying along a White-Asian morph continuum either in American, neutral, or Chinese contexts. American contexts made White categorizations more likely, and Chinese contexts made Asian categorizations more likely. Further, as facial and contextual cues became more compatible, participants' hand trajectories exhibited a more direct approach toward the selected response. As they became more incompatible, trajectories exhibited a stronger partial attraction toward the unselected response. Even when the response was not biased by context, the trajectory was nevertheless partially attracted to the category associated with the context. Importantly, such context effects occurred earlier in time for Chinese participants relative to American participants. Together, the results show that context systematically influences social categorization, sometimes overtly and other times only partially. Further, the timing of contextual influence differs by culture. The findings highlight the role of contextual and cultural factors in social categorization.
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Junji Kageyama
Social Indicators Research, March 2013, Pages 327-339
Abstract:
National average happiness and the difference in happiness between women and men are positively correlated in European countries. This study focuses on this cross-country relationship and tests (1) whether, after controlling for socio-economic factors, the correlation is attributed to their direct relationship, or, alternatively, explained by the sex difference in life expectancy, and (2) whether the correlation is not only exogenously explained but also endogenously generated by the sex difference in life expectancy. Performing regression analyses, this study shows that the correlation between happiness and its sex difference is spurious, and that the sex difference in life expectancy generates this correlation and accounts for about one-third of the correlation. A decline in happiness influences men's mortality more than women's, and widens the life expectancy gap between women and men. This in turn raises the widowhood ratio among women, lowers women's average happiness, and reduces the happiness gap between women and men. The results obtained in this study points to the importance of controlling for the demographic composition of the population when we use aggregate happiness measures as national happiness indicators.
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Individual Attitudes Toward Others, Misanthropy Analysis in a Cross-Country Perspective
Natalia Melgar, Máximo Rossi & Tom Smith
American Journal of Economics and Sociology, January 2013, Pages 222-241
Abstract:
While misanthropy has been analyzed taking into account one country and just comparing results, we employ the 2004 International Social Survey Program data set and assess its determinants from a cross-country analysis by considering personal characteristics and country effects. Findings indicate that misanthropy is explained by sociodemographic and economic characteristics (being a woman, education, and marriage reduce misanthropy while being young or poor, and self-employment have the opposite effect). Country effects are significant; some environmental factors play a relevant role. Finally, we add new elements to the discussion by showing a strong relationship among our misanthropy ranking and two corruption perception rankings.
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The History of Slavs Inferred from Complete Mitochondrial Genome Sequences
Marta Mielnik-Sikorska et al.
PLoS ONE, January 2013
Abstract:
To shed more light on the processes leading to crystallization of a Slavic identity, we investigated variability of complete mitochondrial genomes belonging to haplogroups H5 and H6 (63 mtDNA genomes) from the populations of Eastern and Western Slavs, including new samples of Poles, Ukrainians and Czechs presented here. Molecular dating implies formation of H5 approximately 11.5-16 thousand years ago (kya) in the areas of southern Europe. Within ancient haplogroup H6, dated at around 15-28 kya, there is a subhaplogroup H6c, which probably survived the last glaciation in Europe and has undergone expansion only 3-4 kya, together with the ancestors of some European groups, including the Slavs, because H6c has been detected in Czechs, Poles and Slovaks. Detailed analysis of complete mtDNAs allowed us to identify a number of lineages that seem specific for Central and Eastern Europe (H5a1f, H5a2, H5a1r, H5a1s, H5b4, H5e1a, H5u1, some subbranches of H5a1a and H6a1a9). Some of them could possibly be traced back to at least ~4 kya, which indicates that some of the ancestors of today's Slavs (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Ukrainians and Russians) inhabited areas of Central and Eastern Europe much earlier than it was estimated on the basis of archaeological and historical data. We also sequenced entire mitochondrial genomes of several non-European lineages (A, C, D, G, L) found in contemporary populations of Poland and Ukraine. The analysis of these haplogroups confirms the presence of Siberian (C5c1, A8a1) and Ashkenazi-specific (L2a1l2a) mtDNA lineages in Slavic populations. Moreover, we were able to pinpoint some lineages which could possibly reflect the relatively recent contacts of Slavs with nomadic Altaic peoples (C4a1a, G2a, D5a2a1a1).
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Condition
The Status of Baby Boomers' Health in the United States: The Healthiest Generation?
Dana King et al.
JAMA Internal Medicine, forthcoming
"Despite their longer life expectancy over previous generations, US baby boomers have higher rates of chronic disease, more disability, and lower self-rated health than members of the previous generation at the same age. On a positive note, baby boomers are less likely to smoke cigarettes and experience lower rates of emphysema and myocardial infarction than the previous generation. The findings from the present study documenting poorer health status and increased rates of obesity, hypertension, diabetes, and hypercholesterolemia support an increased likelihood for continued rising health care costs and a need for increased numbers of health professionals as baby boomers age."
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Sheepskin effects of education in the 10-year Framingham risk of coronary heart disease
Sze Yan Liu et al.
Social Science & Medicine, March 2013, Pages 31-36
Abstract:
While the association between education and adult health is well documented, it is unclear whether quantity (i.e. years of schooling) or credentials (i.e. degrees) drive this association. Individuals with degrees may have better health than their non-credentialed counterparts given similar years of schooling, the so-called "sheepskin" effect. This paper contributes to this line of inquiry by examining associations of educational degree and years of schooling with the Framingham Risk Score, a measure of 10-year risk of coronary heart disease (CHD), using data from a unique birth cohort (the New England Family Study; participants mean age 42 years) with prospective information on childhood health and intelligence quotient (IQ). According to our results, years of schooling were inversely associated with 10-year CHD risk in the unadjusted model but not in the fully adjusted models that included degree attainment. By contrast, associations between degree attainment and 10-year CHD risk remained significant in the fully adjusted models that included years of schooling. College degree holders had 10-year CHD risk 19% (95% CI: -33%, -2%) lower than individuals with HS degrees or less in the fully adjusted models. Subanalyses evaluating sheepskin effects on the individual components of the 10-year CHD risk algorithm showed the expected education gradient was generally noted for each of the individual components, with decreasing prevalence of "high risk" values associated with higher degree credentials. Our results suggest educational credentials provide an additional benefit to risk of coronary heart disease beyond schooling.
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Markus Schafer, Lindsay Wilkinson & Kenneth Ferraro
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
College-educated adults are healthier than other people in the United States, but selection bias complicates our understanding of how education influences health. This article focuses on the possibility that the health benefits of college may vary according to childhood (mis)fortune and people's propensity to attain a college degree in the first place. Several perspectives from life course sociology offer competing hypotheses as to whether the most or the least advantaged see the greatest return of a college education. The authors use a national survey of middle-age American adults to assess risk of two cardiovascular health problems and mortality. Results from propensity score and hierarchical regression analysis indicate that the protective effect of college attainment is indeed heterogeneous. Further, the greatest returns are among those least likely to experience this life course transition (i.e., compensatory leveling). Explanations for this selection effect are offered, along with several directions for future research on the health benefits of completing college.
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United States Counties with Low Black Male Mortality Rates
Robert Levine et al.
American Journal of Medicine, January 2013, Pages 76-80
Objective: In the United States, young and middle-aged black men have significantly higher total mortality than any other racial or ethnic group. We describe the characteristics of US counties with low non-Hispanic Black or African American male mortality (ages 25-64 years, 1999-2007).
Methods: Information was accessed through public data, the US Census, the US Compressed Mortality File, and the Native American Graves Repatriation Act military database.
Results: Of 1307 counties with black mortality rates classified as reliable by the National Center for Health Statistics (at least 20 deaths), 66 recorded lower mortality among black men than corresponding US whites. Most notable, 97% of the 66 counties were home to or adjacent a military installation versus 37% of comparable US counties (P < .001). Blacks in these counties had less poverty, higher percentages of elderly civilian veterans, and higher per capita income. Within these counties, national black:white disparities in mortality were eliminated for ischemic heart disease, accidents, diseases of the liver, chronic lower respiratory diseases, and mental disorder from psychoactive substance use. Application of age-, race-, ethnicity-, gender-, and urbanization-specific mortality rates from counties with relatively low mortality would reduce the black:white mortality rate ratio for black men aged 25 to 64 years from 1.67 to 1.20 nationally and to 1.00 in areas outside large central metropolitan areas.
Conclusions: These descriptive data demonstrate a small number of communities with low mortality rates among young and middle-aged black/African American men. Their characteristics may provide clinical and public health insights to reduce these higher mortality rates in the US population. Analytic epidemiologic studies are necessary to test these hypotheses.
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Subjective Socioeconomic Status And Health: Relationships Reconsidered
Jenna Nobles, Miranda Ritterman Weintraub & Nancy Adler
Social Science & Medicine, forthcoming
Abstract:
Subjective status, an individual's perception of her socioeconomic standing, is a robust predictor of physical health in many societies. To date, competing interpretations of this correlation remain unresolved. Using longitudinal data on 8,430 older adults from the 2000 and 2007 waves of the Indonesia Family Life Survey, we test these oft-cited links. As in other settings, perceived status is a robust predictor of self-rated health, and also of physical functioning and nurse-assessed general health. These relationships persist in the presence of controls for unobserved traits, such as difficult-to-measure aspects of family background and persistent aspects of personality. However, we find evidence that these links likely represent bi-directional effects. Declines in health that accompany aging are robust predictors of declines in perceived socioeconomic status, net of observed changes to the economic profile of respondents. The results thus underscore the social value afforded good health status.
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Racial Differences in the Association Between Night Shift Work and Melatonin Levels Among Women
Parveen Bhatti, Dana Mirick & Scott Davis
American Journal of Epidemiology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Reduced suppression of melatonin in response to working the night shift among people of Asian ancestry has been suggested as a possible explanation for the null results observed in a recent analysis of shift work and breast cancer risk in a Chinese cohort. The authors analyzed the impact of Asian versus white race on previously reported differences in urinary 6-sulfatoxymelatonin levels in a 2003-2008 study in Seattle, Washington, of female health-care workers that exclusively worked night or day shifts. A total of 225 white and 51 Asian participants were included in the analysis. Although 6-sulfatoxymelatonin levels were affected by night shift work in both racial groups, Asian night shift workers consistently showed 6-sulfatoxymelatonin levels that were closer to levels in day shift workers than did white night shift workers. Furthermore, differences in 6-sulfatoxymelatonin levels between white and Asian night shift workers relative to day shift workers were statistically significant in every instance (P < 0.05). These results suggest that Asians may be better able to maintain a "normal" circadian pattern of melatonin production compared with whites and suggest a biological mechanism by which Asian night shift workers may be at a reduced risk of cancer.
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Psychosocial resources, aging, and natural killer cell terminal maturity
Suzanne Segerstrom, Ahmad Al-Attar & Charles Lutz
Psychology and Aging, December 2012, Pages 892-902
Abstract:
Psychosocial factors may influence aspects of immunological aging. The present study tested the hypothesis that psychosocial resources correlate with the expression of the cell surface maker CD57 on natural killer (NK) immune cells. CD57 is a marker of terminal maturation and senescence in this cell subset. The study further tested the relative contribution of specific resources in the social, psychological, financial, and status-skill domains, given the potential differential value of different resources for younger and older adults, and the contribution of relative versus absolute resources. Younger (n = 38) and older (n = 34) women completed measures of relative and absolute resources and had blood drawn. Examined both between groups and within the older women, older age and fewer total relative resources were associated with more CD57 expression on NK cells. One SD in resources was the equivalent of 5 years of aging among the older women. Among the specific resource types, a preponderance of financial resources, both relative and absolute, was associated with less CD57 expression on NK cells, and these relationships did not significantly vary between younger and older women. There was no evidence that depressive symptoms mediated the effects of resources on CD57 expression on NK cells. These findings provide support for the hypothesis that the sense that one has substantial resources, particularly with regard to finances and possessions, may retard age-associated aspects of the microenvironment in which NK cells develop and mature, independent of effects on distress, and this process may begin in younger adulthood.
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Judith Carroll et al.
Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, February 2013, Pages 108-114
Abstract:
Previous findings have linked lower socioeconomic status (SES) with elevated morbidity and mortality. Leukocyte telomere length (LTL), which also has been associated with age-related disease morbidity and mortality, is a marker of aging at the cellular level, making it a valuable early biomarker of risk and an indicator of biological age. It is hypothesized that SES will be associated with LTL, indicating that SES influences disease risk by accelerating biological aging. In the present sample we test for associations of childhood SES and adult SES (i.e. education, income, home ownership) with LTL, and examine whether these associations vary by racial/ethnic group. Analyses on 963 subjects (18.7% White, 53% Hispanics, and 28.5% African American) from the stress ancillary study of the multi-ethnic study of atherosclerosis revealed a significant difference in LTL between home owners and renters in Hispanic and White participants (p < .05), but not amongst African Americans (p = .98). There were no linear associations of adult education or family income with LTL, however, there was an inverse association between father's education and LTL (p = .03). These findings suggest that for Whites and Hispanics renting vs. owning a home is associated with an older biological age; however we did not replicate previous findings linking education with LTL.
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The Relationship Between Trees and Human Health: Evidence from the Spread of the Emerald Ash Borer
Geoffrey Donovan et al.
American Journal of Preventive Medicine, February 2013, Pages 139-145
Background: Several recent studies have identified a relationship between the natural environment and improved health outcomes. However, for practical reasons, most have been observational, cross-sectional studies.
Purpose: A natural experiment, which provides stronger evidence of causality, was used to test whether a major change to the natural environment - the loss of 100 million trees to the emerald ash borer, an invasive forest pest - has influenced mortality related to cardiovascular and lower-respiratory diseases.
Methods: Two fixed-effects regression models were used to estimate the relationship between emerald ash borer presence and county-level mortality from 1990 to 2007 in 15 U.S. states, while controlling for a wide range of demographic covariates. Data were collected from 1990 to 2007, and the analyses were conducted in 2011 and 2012.
Results: There was an increase in mortality related to cardiovascular and lower-respiratory-tract illness in counties infested with the emerald ash borer. The magnitude of this effect was greater as infestation progressed and in counties with above-average median household income. Across the 15 states in the study area, the borer was associated with an additional 6113 deaths related to illness of the lower respiratory system, and 15,080 cardiovascular-related deaths.
Conclusions: Results suggest that loss of trees to the emerald ash borer increased mortality related to cardiovascular and lower-respiratory-tract illness. This finding adds to the growing evidence that the natural environment provides major public health benefits.
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Education Externalities on Longevity
Francesco Ricci & Marios Zachariadis
Economica, forthcoming
Abstract:
We argue that education exerts positive external effects on health, beyond the standard internal effects documented in the literature. We implement an innovative approach to control for endogeneity and omitted variables problems, and present evidence for the significant role played by higher education in explaining longevity across countries. Our findings provide empirical evidence in support of our hypothesis of educational externalities on health.
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Fetal Health Shocks and Early Inequalities in Health Capital Accumulation
George Wehby, Kwame Nyarko & Jorge Lopez-Camelo
Health Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Several studies report socioeconomic inequalities in child health and consequences of early disease. However, not much is known about inequalities in health capital accumulation in the womb in response to fetal health shocks, which is essential for finding the earliest sensitive periods for interventions to reduce inequalities. We identify inequalities in birth weight accumulation as a result of fetal health shocks from the occurrence of one of the most common birth defects, oral clefts, within the first 9 weeks of pregnancy, using quantile regression and two datasets from South America and the USA. Infants born at lower birth weight quantiles are significantly more adversely affected by the health shock compared with those born at higher birth weight quantiles, with overall comparable results between the South American and US samples. These results suggest that fetal health shocks increase child health disparities by widening the spread of the birth weight distribution and that health inequalities begin in the womb, requiring interventions before pregnancy.
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Air Pollution and Infant Mortality: Evidence from the Expansion of Natural Gas Infrastructure
Resul Cesur, Erdal Tekin & Aydogan Ulker
NBER Working Paper, January 2013
Abstract:
One of the consequences of rapid economic growth and industrialization in the developing world has been deterioration in environmental conditions and air quality. While air pollution is a serious threat to health in most developing countries, environmental regulations are rare and the determination to address the problem is weak due to ongoing pressures to sustain robust economic growth. Under these constraints, natural gas, as a clean, abundant, and highly-efficient source of energy, has emerged as an increasingly attractive source of fuel, which could address some of these environmental and health challenges faced by these countries without requiring a compromise on their economic development. In this paper, we use the variation across space and time in the expansion of natural gas infrastructure in Turkish provinces using data between 2001 and 2011. Our results indicate that the rate of increase in the use of natural gas has resulted in a significant reduction in the rate of infant mortality in Turkey. In particular, a one-percentage point increase in the rate of subscriptions to natural gas services would cause the infant mortality rate to decline by 4 percent, which could result in 348 infant lives saved in 2011 alone. These results are robust to a large number of specifications. Finally, we utilize supplemental data on total particulate matter and sulfur dioxide to produce direct estimates of the effects of these pollutants on infant mortality using natural gas expansion as an instrument. Our elasticity estimates from the instrumental variable analysis are 1.25 for particulate matter and 0.63 for sulfur dioxide.
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Childhood adversity and inflammatory processes in youth: A prospective study
Natalie Slopenet al.
Psychoneuroendocrinology, February 2013, Pages 188-200
Background: Retrospective studies show that childhood adversity is associated with systemic inflammation in adulthood. Few prospective studies have examined whether childhood adversity influences inflammation in an observable manner during childhood or adolescence and if these effects are sustained over time.
Methods: Using longitudinal data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, we examined associations between acute adverse events at seven time points prior to age 8 and inflammation at ages 10 and 15. Inflammatory markers at age 10 included interleukin-6 (IL-6; N = 4655) and C-reactive protein (CRP; N = 4647), and CRP was measured again at age 15 (N = 3286). We further evaluated whether body mass index (BMI), depression, or cigarette smoking mediated associations between adverse events and inflammation.
Results: Adverse events in middle childhood (occurring between ages 6 to 8), as well as cumulative adversity from birth to 8 years, were associated with higher levels of IL-6 and CRP at age 10. Adverse events reported in early childhood (1.5 years) or middle childhood, and cumulative adversity from birth through 8 years predicted increased levels of CRP at age 15, and these associations persisted after adjustment for CRP at age 10. Some, but not all, of these associations were mediated by BMI.
Conclusions: This study documents that exposure to adverse events prior to age 8 is associated with elevated inflammation at age 10 and in mid-adolescence. These findings provide prospective evidence for a biological mechanism by which early experiences may shape long-term health. Future studies with earlier assessments of inflammation are necessary in order to elucidate potential sensitive periods and mechanisms that link childhood adversity to later disease vulnerability.
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Eric Orman et al.
Liver Transplantation, January 2013, Pages 59-68
Abstract:
Worsening donor liver quality resulting in decreased organ utilization may be contributing to the recent decline in liver transplants nationally. We sought to examine trends in donor liver utilization and the relationship between donor characteristics and nonuse. We used the United Network for Organ Sharing database to review all deceased adult organ donors in the United States from whom at least 1 solid organ was transplanted into a recipient. Trends in donor characteristics were examined. Multivariate logistic regression was used to evaluate the association between donor characteristics and liver nonuse between 2004 and 2010. Population attributable risk proportions were determined for donor factors associated with nonuse. We analyzed 107,259 organ donors. The number of unused livers decreased steadily from 1958 (66% of donors) in 1988 to 841 (15%) in 2004 but then gradually increased to 1345 (21%) in 2010. The donor age, the body mass index (BMI), and the prevalence of diabetes and donation after cardiac death (DCD) all increased over time, and all 4 factors were independently associated with liver nonuse. DCD had the highest adjusted odds ratio (OR) for nonuse, and the odds increased nearly 4-fold between 2004 [OR = 5.53, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 4.57-6.70] and 2010 (OR = 21.31, 95% CI = 18.30-24.81). The proportion of nonuse attributable to DCD increased from 9% in 2004 to 28% in 2010. In conclusion, the proportion of donor livers not used has increased since 2004. Older donor age, greater BMI, diabetes, and DCD are all independently associated with nonuse and are on the rise nationally. Current trends may lead to significant declines in liver transplant availability.
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Self-Forgiveness and Mortality in Late Life
Neal Krause & David Hayward
Social Indicators Research, March 2013, Pages 361-373
Abstract:
The purpose of this study is to see if older people who are able to forgive themselves have a lower mortality risk than older adults who are not able to forgive themselves. In addition, it is hypothesized that the relationship between self-forgiveness and mortality will be contingent upon the level of an older individual's education. More specifically, it is predicted that the potentially beneficial effects of self-forgiveness will be more evident among older people with more years of schooling. Data from a nationwide survey of older people provide support for this view. Self-forgiveness does not provide a mortality benefit for less educated elders. But as the level of educational attainment rises, self-forgiveness is associated with a progressively smaller mortality risk.
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The Dose-Response of Time Served in Prison on Mortality: New York State, 1989-2003
Evelyn Patterson
American Journal of Public Health, March 2013, Pages 523-528
Objectives: I investigated the differential impact of the dose-response of length of stay on postprison mortality among parolees.
Methods: Using 1989-2003 New York State parole administrative data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics on state correctional facilities, I employed multinomial logistic regression analyses and formal demographic techniques that used the life table of the populations to deduce changes in life expectancy.
Results: Each additional year in prison produced a 15.6% increase in the odds of death for parolees, which translated to a 2-year decline in life expectancy for each year served in prison. The risk was highest upon release from prison and declined over time. The time to recovery, or the lowest risk level, was approximately two thirds of the time served in prison.
Conclusions: Incarceration reduces life span. Future research should investigate the pathways to this higher mortality and the possibilities of recovery.
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The effect of compulsory schooling on health - evidence from biomarkers
Hendrik Jürges, Eberhard Kruk & Steffen Reinhold
Journal of Population Economics, April 2013, Pages 645-672
Abstract:
Using data from the Health Survey for England and the English Longitudinal Study on Ageing, we estimate causal effects of schooling on health. Our study complements earlier studies exploiting two nationwide increases in British compulsory school leaving age in 1947 and 1973, respectively, by using biological stress markers as measures of health outcomes in addition to self-reported measures. We find a strong positive correlation between education and health, both self-rated and measured by blood fibrinogen and C-reactive protein levels. However, causal effects estimates based on compulsory schooling changes are ambiguous and remain statistically insignificant.
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The health returns to schooling - what can we learn from twins?
Petter Lundborg
Journal of Population Economics, April 2013, Pages 673-701
Abstract:
This paper estimates the health returns to schooling, using a twin design. For this purpose, I use data on monozygotic twins from the Midlife in the United States survey. The results suggest that completing high school improves health, as measured through self-reported health, chronic conditions, and exercise behavior, but that additional schooling does not lead to additional health gains. Controlling for certain early life factors that may vary within twin pairs does not alter the main conclusions of this paper.
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Was What Ail'd Ya What Kill'd Ya?
Robert Fogel et al.
Economics & Human Biology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Making use of those Union Army veterans for whom death certificates are available, we compare the conditions with which they were diagnosed by Civil War pension surgeons to the causes of death on the certificates. We divide the data between those veterans who entered the pension system early because of war injuries and those who entered the pension system after the 1890 reform that made it available to many more veterans. We examine the correlation between specific medical conditions rated by the surgeons and death causes to gauge support for the hypothesis that death is attributable to something specific. We also examine the correlation between the accumulation of rated conditions to the length of time until death to gauge support for the "insult hypothesis." In general, we find support for both hypotheses. Examining the hazard ratios for dying of a specific condition, there is support for the idea that what ail'd ya' is what kill'd ya'.
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Demographics and Burden on Caregivers of Seriously Wounded, Ill, and Injured Service Members
Eric Christensen & Yvette Clinton
Journal of Disability Policy Studies, March 2013, Pages 235-244
Abstract:
The media is replete with stories about the impact on families when they drastically alter their lives to provide care to a service member who is seriously wounded, ill, or injured (WII), though few studies have systematically examined these impacts. Using a 2008 survey of seriously WII service members, the authors found that 27% of caregivers provided an average of more than 40 hr of care per week, 64% of caregivers have provided care for more than a year, and 50% expected they may need to provide care over the long term. The probit and ordered probit results show that significant others (such as a spouse, fiancée, or girlfriend) bear a greater caregiving burden in both intensity and duration compared to other caregivers. The results also show that duration of caregiving for Reserve Component service members is greater than for Active Component service members.
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Narayan Sastry & Jesse Gregory
Social Science & Medicine, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examined the effects of Hurricane Katrina on disability-related measures of health among adults from New Orleans, U.S.A., in the year after the hurricane, with a focus on differences by age, race, and sex. Our analysis used data from the American Community Survey to compare disability rates between the pre-Katrina population of New Orleans with the same population in the year after Katrina (individuals were interviewed for the study even if they relocated away from the city). The comparability between the pre- and post-Katrina samples was enhanced by using propensity weights. We found a significant decline in health for the adult population from New Orleans in the year after the hurricane, with the disability rate rising from 20.6% to 24.6%. This increase in disability reflected a large rise in mental impairments and, to a lesser extent, in physical impairments. These increases were, in turn, concentrated among young and middle-aged black females. Stress-related factors likely explain why young and middle-aged black women experienced worse health outcomes, including living in dwellings and communities that suffered the most damage from the hurricane, household breakup, adverse outcomes for their children, and higher susceptibility.
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Are low wages risk factors for hypertension?
Paul Leigh & Juan Du
European Journal of Public Health, December 2012, Pages 854-859
Objective: Socio-economic status (SES) is strongly correlated with hypertension. But SES has several components, including income and correlations in cross-sectional data need not imply SES is a risk factor. This study investigates whether wages - the largest category within income - are risk factors.
Methods: We analysed longitudinal, nationally representative US data from four waves (1999, 2001, 2003 and 2005) of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The overall sample was restricted to employed persons age 25-65 years, n = 17 295. Separate subsamples were constructed of persons within two age groups (25-44 and 45-65 years) and genders. Hypertension incidence was self-reported based on physician diagnosis. Our study was prospective since data from three base years (1999, 2001, 2003) were used to predict newly diagnosed hypertension for three subsequent years (2001, 2003, 2005). In separate analyses, data from the first base year were used to predict time-to-reporting hypertension. Logistic regressions with random effects and Cox proportional hazards regressions were run.
Results: Negative and strongly statistically significant correlations between wages and hypertension were found both in logistic and Cox regressions, especially for subsamples containing the younger age group (25-44 years) and women. Correlations were stronger when three health variables - obesity, subjective measures of health and number of co-morbidities - were excluded from regressions. Doubling the wage was associated with 25-30% lower chances of hypertension for persons aged 25-44 years.
Conclusions: The strongest evidence for low wages being risk factors for hypertension among working people were for women and persons aged 25-44 years.
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Childhood emotional functioning and the developmental origins of cardiovascular disease risk
Allison Appleton et al.
Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, forthcoming
Background: Dysregulated emotional functioning has been linked with higher cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk among adults. Early life experiences may influence the development of adulthood CVD, but few studies have examined whether potential damaging effects of dysregulated emotional function begin earlier in life. Therefore, we examined associations of child emotional functioning and the 10-year risk of developing CVD in midlife.
Methods: We studied 377 adult offspring (mean age=42.2) of Collaborative Perinatal Project participants, a US cohort of pregnant women enrolled in 1959-1966. Three measures of child emotional functioning derived from psychologist ratings of behaviour at 7 years of age were examined: distress proneness, attention and inappropriate self-regulation. Adulthood 10-year CVD risk was calculated with the validated Framingham general CVD risk algorithm. Gender-specific multiple regression models assessed associations of childhood emotion and adulthood CVD risk independent of covariates measured across the life course. Potential mediators of the associations were also examined.
Results: Women had 31% higher CVD risk per SD increase in childhood distress proneness (p=0.03) and 8% reduced risk per SD increase in attention (p=0.09). For men, each SD increase in childhood distress proneness was associated with 17% higher CVD risk (p=0.02). Associations were partly explained by adulthood body mass index and depressive symptoms in women but not in men. Inappropriate self-regulation was not associated with CVD risk.
Conclusions: Several aspects of childhood emotional functioning was associated with adulthood CVD risk, particularly for women. As such, primary prevention of CVD may be associated with addressing early life emotional functioning.
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Risk of Total and Aggressive Prostate Cancer and Pesticide Use in the Agricultural Health Study
Stella Koutros et al.
American Journal of Epidemiology, 1 January 2013, Pages 59-74
Abstract:
Because pesticides may operate through different mechanisms, the authors studied the risk of prostate cancer associated with specific pesticides in the Agricultural Health Study (1993-2007). With 1,962 incident cases, including 919 aggressive prostate cancers among 54,412 applicators, this is the largest study to date. Rate ratios and 95% confidence intervals were calculated by using Poisson regression to evaluate lifetime use of 48 pesticides and prostate cancer incidence. Three organophosphate insecticides were significantly associated with aggressive prostate cancer: fonofos (rate ratio (RR) for the highest quartile of exposure (Q4) vs. nonexposed = 1.63, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.22, 2.17; Ptrend < 0.001); malathion (RR for Q4 vs. nonexposed = 1.43, 95% CI: 1.08, 1.88; Ptrend = 0.04); and terbufos (RR for Q4 vs. nonexposed = 1.29, 95% CI: 1.02, 1.64; Ptrend = 0.03). The organochlorine insecticide aldrin was also associated with increased risk of aggressive prostate cancer (RR for Q4 vs. nonexposed = 1.49, 95% CI: 1.03, 2.18; Ptrend = 0.02). This analysis has overcome several limitations of previous studies with the inclusion of a large number of cases with relevant exposure and detailed information on use of specific pesticides at 2 points in time. Furthermore, this is the first time specific pesticides are implicated as risk factors for aggressive prostate cancer.
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Max Kleiman-Weiner et al.
China Economic Review, March 2013, Pages 165-176
Abstract:
Despite growing wealth and a strengthening commitment from the government to provide quality education, a significant share of students across rural China still have inadequate access to micronutrient-rich regular diets. Such poor diets can lead to nutritional problems, such as iron-deficiency anemia, that can adversely affect attention and learning in school. Large scale policies in Northwestern China have attempted to tackle these nutritional problems using eggs. The overall goal of this paper is to assess the impact of the government's egg distribution program by comparing the effect on anemia rates of an intervention that gives students an egg per day versus an intervention that gives students a chewable vitamin per day. We will also assess whether either intervention leads to improved educational performance among students in poor areas of rural China. To meet this goal, we report on the results of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) involving over 2,600 fourth grade students from 70 randomly-chosen elementary schools in 5 of the poorest counties in Gansu Province in China's poor Northwest region. The design called for random assignment of schools to one of two intervention groups, or a control group with no intervention. One intervention provided a daily chewable vitamin, including 5 milligrams of iron. The other mimicked the government policy by providing a daily egg. According to the findings of the paper, in the schools that received the chewable vitamins, hemoglobin (Hb) levels rose by more than 2 g/L (over 0.2 standard deviations). The standardized math test scores of students in these schools also improved significantly. In schools that received eggs, there was no significant effect on Hb levels or math test scores. Overall, these results should encourage China's Ministry of Education (MOE) to look beyond eggs when tackling nutritional problems related to anemia in an education setting.
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Antibiotic Resistance Is Prevalent in an Isolated Cave Microbiome
Kirandeep Bhullar et al.
PLoS ONE, April 2012
Abstract:
Antibiotic resistance is a global challenge that impacts all pharmaceutically used antibiotics. The origin of the genes associated with this resistance is of significant importance to our understanding of the evolution and dissemination of antibiotic resistance in pathogens. A growing body of evidence implicates environmental organisms as reservoirs of these resistance genes; however, the role of anthropogenic use of antibiotics in the emergence of these genes is controversial. We report a screen of a sample of the culturable microbiome of Lechuguilla Cave, New Mexico, in a region of the cave that has been isolated for over 4 million years. We report that, like surface microbes, these bacteria were highly resistant to antibiotics; some strains were resistant to 14 different commercially available antibiotics. Resistance was detected to a wide range of structurally different antibiotics including daptomycin, an antibiotic of last resort in the treatment of drug resistant Gram-positive pathogens. Enzyme-mediated mechanisms of resistance were also discovered for natural and semi-synthetic macrolide antibiotics via glycosylation and through a kinase-mediated phosphorylation mechanism. Sequencing of the genome of one of the resistant bacteria identified a macrolide kinase encoding gene and characterization of its product revealed it to be related to a known family of kinases circulating in modern drug resistant pathogens. The implications of this study are significant to our understanding of the prevalence of resistance, even in microbiomes isolated from human use of antibiotics. This supports a growing understanding that antibiotic resistance is natural, ancient, and hard wired in the microbial pangenome.
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