Monday, April 1, 2013
Preaching to the choir
Michela Menegatti & Monica Rubini
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Three studies examined the production of political messages and their persuasive impact on recipients as a function of speaker-audience similarity. The first two studies found support for the hypothesis that political leaders (Study 1) and party activists (Study 2) formulate more abstract messages when the audience is politically similar to them than when the audience is dissimilar or heterogeneous. The third study examined the persuasive impact of message abstractness versus concreteness. We predicted and found that abstract messages are more effective in convincing an audience whose political positions are similar to the speaker's and concrete messages are more effective in convincing an audience whose political positions differ from the speaker's or are heterogeneous. Implications of these findings for the relation between language and social cognition are discussed.
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Writing Autobiographical Narratives Increases Political Conservatism
Joris Lammers & Travis Proulx
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Two experiments show that writing chronological autobiographical narratives increases political conservatism, defined as an ideology of resistance to social change. When writing chronological autobiographical narratives, we hypothesized that people would re-experience the events of their life in a way that portrays the current situation as the result of past personal actions and choices. This awareness should evoke a general sense that the current situation is not the result of chaos and randomness, but that the way things are is the way things should be. This sense of order makes people feel that the status quo should be maintained and causes a corresponding shift towards resisting social change. Experiment 1 shows that only writing chronological autobiographical narratives increase political conservatism. Experiment 2 shows that only writing autobiographical narratives increase political conservatism. Together, these experiments demonstrate that the experience of writing chronological autobiographies systematically affects political thinking.
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The Polarizing Effect of a Partisan Workplace
David Jones
PS: Political Science & Politics, January 2013, Pages 67-73
Abstract:
The workplace provides an exceptional outlet for citizens to encounter different viewpoints and discuss politics with people with whom they may disagree. In Washington, DC, however, many people work in partisan environments where like-minded coworkers rarely encounter alternate points of view. Group polarization theory suggests that these environments push individuals to the partisan and ideological extremes. This study tests this hypothesis by comparing opinion change among interns who worked in a partisan workplace with that of interns who were employed in less-partisan environments. The results suggest that partisan workplace environments foster opinion polarization, especially among Republicans.
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The New Deal Realignment in Real Time
Helmut Norpoth, Andrew Sidman & Clara Suong
Presidential Studies Quarterly, March 2013, Pages 146-166
Abstract:
Right after the 1936 election the Gallup Poll began probing party identification. From then on until 1952, when the National Election Studies entered the field, nearly 200 surveys produced measurements of partisanship in the American electorate. We exploit this largely unexplored data set to examine the partisan transformation commonly called the New Deal Realignment in real time. It turns out that it was not until the late 1940s that the Democratic Party secured an enduring hold on the American electorate. The New Deal and the Depression had less to do with this change than did World War II and the postwar prosperity. The lead cohort of the Democratic surge in party identification was the generation that came of age during the 1940s, not the 1930s. The findings suggest that a historic crisis or a new policy program may not be enough to realign partisanship in the electorate but that it takes the success of the ascendant party in mastering historic crises.
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Biased assimilation, homophily, and the dynamics of polarization
Pranav Dandekar, Ashish Goel & David Lee
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study the issue of polarization in society through a model of opinion formation. We say an opinion formation process is polarizing if it results in increased divergence of opinions. Empirical studies have shown that homophily, i.e., greater interaction between like-minded individuals, results in polarization. However, we show that DeGroot's well-known model of opinion formation based on repeated averaging can never be polarizing, even if individuals are arbitrarily homophilous. We generalize DeGroot's model to account for a phenomenon well known in social psychology as biased assimilation: When presented with mixed or inconclusive evidence on a complex issue, individuals draw undue support for their initial position, thereby arriving at a more extreme opinion. We show that in a simple model of homophilous networks, our biased opinion formation process results in polarization if individuals are sufficiently biased. In other words, homophily alone, without biased assimilation, is not sufficient to polarize society. Quite interestingly, biased assimilation also provides a framework to analyze the polarizing effect of Internet-based recommender systems that show us personalized content.
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The Politicization of Knowledge Claims: The "Laffer Curve" in the U.S. Congress
Elizabeth Popp Berman & Laura Milanes-Reyes
Qualitative Sociology, March 2013, Pages 53-79
Abstract:
Political debates over knowledge claims often become emotionally charged, with two sides not only disputing what is true but seeing those on the other side as deluded or worse. By looking at use of the term "Laffer curve" in the U.S. Congress from 1977 to 2010, we draw attention to two ways such debates over knowledge claims can evolve. The Laffer curve is a simple schematic representation of the relationship between tax rates and government revenue that was influential in U.S. tax policy in the late 1970s. Early on, Republicans and Democrats faced off over the Laffer curve as a cognitive symbol to be debated with argument, evidence, and reference to experts. Over time, Republicans continued to treat the Laffer curve as a cognitive symbol, but for Democrats it became a polluted expressive symbol that could be dismissed without debate. Democrats also articulated the Laffer curve as part of an ironic narrative about the failure of the Reagan administration, which ended the possibility of serious deliberation. We suggest that the dynamics seen here may also be present around other politicized knowledge claims, such as the claim that human activity is causing climate change.
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Media and Polarization: Evidence from the Introduction of Broadcast TV in the United States
Filipe Campante & Daniel Hojman
Journal of Public Economics, April 2013, Pages 79-92
Abstract:
This paper sheds light on the links between media and political polarization by looking at the introduction of broadcast TV in the US. We provide causal evidence that broadcast TV decreased the ideological extremism of US representatives. We then show that exposure to radio was associated with decreased polarization. We interpret this result using a simple framework that identifies two channels linking media environment to politicians' incentives to polarize. First, the ideology effect: changes in the media environment may affect the distribution of citizens' ideological views, with politicians moving their positions accordingly. Second, the motivation effect: the media may affect citizens' political motivation, changing the ideological composition of the electorate and thereby impacting elite polarization while mass polarization is unchanged. The evidence on polarization and turnout is consistent with a prevalence of the ideology effect in the case of TV, as both of them decreased. Increased turnout associated with radio exposure is in turn consistent with a role for the motivation effect.
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Opening "Openness to Change": Political Events and the Increased Sensitivity of Young Adults
Elias Dinas
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
The impressionable years thesis asserts that early adulthood is accompanied by increased attitudinal vulnerability. Although there is tentative empirical evidence to support this idea, it remains unclear whether this sensitivity is due to exposure to change-inducing circumstances, typically encountered in early adulthood, or due to the weight attached by young people to new information. I address this question, focusing on a political event - the Watergate - that offers a test of youth's heightened susceptibility, holding exposure constant. The results confirm the impressionable years thesis and shed light on how it is most likely to be manifested empirically.
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Benjamin Highton
The Forum, February 2013, Pages 11-19
Abstract:
This paper analyzes variation in presidential outcomes across the American states from 1972 through 2012. The findings show that differences in cultural policy preferences across the states are more important than economic preferences for explaining state outcomes in 2012. This result fits a long-term trend of the growing importance of cultural issues - absolutely and relative to economic issues - for sorting the states, which has had the effect of rotating the "party cleavage" line that divides the Democratic and Republican parties in presidential elections.
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Alexis Alabastro et al.
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, January 2013, Pages 58-67
Abstract:
Drawing on the social identity theory of leadership and optimal distinctiveness theory, this research examined differences in perceived attitude similarity to in- and outgroup leaders among Liberals and Conservatives before and after the 2008 U.S. presidential election. We predicted Liberals and Conservatives alike would perceive their ingroup leaders (Obama or McCain) to be attitudinally similar to themselves before the election. After the election, however, Conservatives were expected to distance themselves from McCain and to accentuate similarity to Obama. Using a longitudinal design, analysis of American National Election Survey (N = 742) data showed that Liberals and Conservatives viewed themselves to be similar to their respective ingroup leader and dissimilar to the outgroup leader. Consistent with expectations, Conservatives significantly accentuated perceived similarity with Obama following his electoral victory, and significantly distanced themselves from McCain following his loss. Liberals' similarity with either candidate did not change from pre- to postelection. Implications for social identity in inter- and intragroup leadership contexts are discussed.
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James Davis
Social Science Research, May 2013, Pages 571-583
Abstract:
Two generations (1972-1976 and 2006-2008) are compared using 43 replicated attitudes in the NORC General Social Survey. The report describes the generational changes (primarily liberal), weighs the causal impact of rising educational levels (liberal), cohort replacement (liberal) and period effects (mildly conservative). It argues that this long term causal mechanism is slowly eroding.
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Joost van Spanje & Claes de Vreese
Party Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Hate speech prosecution of politicians is a common phenomenon in established democracies. Examples of politicians tried for hate speech include Nick Griffin in Britain and Jean-Marie Le Pen in France. Does hate speech prosecution of politicians affect the electoral support for their party? This is an important question, as the parties involved typically are controversial, often accused of stirring up political cynicism or political violence. The relevant literature has largely ignored this question, however. In this article, we use data from a representative sample of Dutch voters interviewed before and re-interviewed after the unexpected court decision to prosecute MP Geert Wilders. We demonstrate empirically that the decision substantially enhanced his party's appeal. This resulted in an immediate increase in support for the party by one to five percentage points among those who are moderately in favour of the assimilation of ethnic minorities into Dutch culture. In addition, the evidence suggests that the decision contributed to the party's subsequent electoral lift-off. Our findings call for investigations into the electoral effects of legal proceedings against political actors in democratic systems worldwide.
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Itai Himelboim, Stephen McCreery & Marc Smith
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, January 2013, Pages 40-60
Abstract:
This study integrates network and content analyses to examine exposure to cross-ideological political views on Twitter. We mapped the Twitter networks of 10 controversial political topics, discovered clusters - subgroups of highly self-connected users - and coded messages and links in them for political orientation. We found that Twitter users are unlikely to be exposed to cross-ideological content from the clusters of users they followed, as these were usually politically homogeneous. Links pointed at grassroots web pages (e.g.: blogs) more frequently than traditional media websites. Liberal messages, however, were more likely to link to traditional media. Last, we found that more specific topics of controversy had both conservative and liberal clusters, while in broader topics, dominant clusters reflected conservative sentiment.
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Motivated Misperception? Party, Education, Partisan News, and Belief in "Death Panels"
Patrick Meirick
Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, March 2013, Pages 39-57
Abstract:
This study drew on the literature in motivated reasoning and 2009 Pew survey data to examine the roles of partisanship, education, news exposure, and their interactions in the misperception that health care reform would create "death panels." Radio news exposure encouraged the misperception only among Republicans, while newspaper exposure discouraged it, especially among non-Republicans. But rather than polarize perceptions along partisan lines as predicted, Fox News exposure contributed to misperception mainstreaming. Finally, this study identified a complex role for education in both inhibiting misperceptions (as a main effect) and promoting them (as an interaction with Fox News exposure).
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Red State/Blue State Divisions in the 2012 Presidential Election
Avi Feller, Andrew Gelman & Boris Shor
The Forum, February 2013, Pages 127-131
Abstract:
The so-called "red/blue paradox" is that rich individuals are more likely to vote Republican but rich states are more likely to support the Democrats. Previous research argued that this seeming paradox could be explained by comparing rich and poor voters within each state - the difference in the Republican vote share between rich and poor voters was much larger in low-income, conservative, middle-American states like Mississippi than in high-income, liberal, coastal states like Connecticut. We use exit poll and other survey data to assess whether this was still the case for the 2012 Presidential election. Based on this preliminary analysis, we find that, while the red/blue paradox is still strong, the explanation offered by Gelman et al. no longer appears to hold. We explore several empirical patterns from this election and suggest possible avenues for resolving the questions posed by the new data.
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The Illusion of Argument Justification
Matthew Fisher & Frank Keil
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
Argumentation is an important way to reach a new understanding. Strongly caring about an issue, which is often evident when dealing with controversial issues, has been shown to lead to biases in argumentation. We suggest that people are not well calibrated in assessing their ability to justify a position through argumentation, an effect we call the illusion of argument justification. Furthermore, we find that caring about the issue further clouds this introspection. We first show this illusion by measuring the difference between ratings before and after producing an argument for one's own position. The strength of the illusion is predicted by the strength of care for a given issue (Study 1). The tacit influences of framing and priming do not override the effects of emotional investment in a topic (Study 2). However, explicitly considering counterarguments removes the effect of care when initially assessing the ability to justify a position (Study 3). Finally, we consider our findings in light of other recent research and discuss the potential benefits of group reasoning.
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Trash or treasure: Recycling narratives and reducing political polarization
Donna Lybecker, Mark McBeth & Elizabeth Kusko
Environmental Politics, March/April 2013, Pages 312-332
Abstract:
Recycling is an increasingly important tool in global and national efforts for sustainability. Yet, particularly in the United States, there remains disconnect between those who view recycling as a necessity and those who see it as a waste: many conservatives do not support recycling activities, while many liberals do. However, recycling can be framed in language that draws support from both conservatives and liberals. Data from a survey sample of 429 individuals shows that conservative frames of recycling are supported by both conservatives and liberals, whereas liberal frames are supported only by liberals. Similarly 'duty-based' citizenship frames are supported by both duty-based and engaged citizens, while 'engaged' citizenship frames are supported mainly by engaged citizens. The implications for researchers, educators, administrators, and others involved in recycling are detailed.
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Third-Party Labels Bias Evaluations of Political Platforms and Candidates
Geoffrey Munro et al.
Basic and Applied Social Psychology, March/April 2013, Pages 151-163
Abstract:
The current research investigated the role that partisanship plays in evaluations of third-party political policies and candidate evaluations. Democratic and Republican participants read political party and candidate brochures labeled with their own party or with an ideologically similar third party (Green or Libertarian). All other brochure information was identical. Participants evaluated the policies and candidate more favorably and indicated a greater intention to vote for the candidate when the brochure was labeled with their own party than the third party. Study 2 suggested that these effects were not due to strategic voting and that emotion may be a mediating variable.
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Benjamin Lauderdale
Public Opinion Quarterly, February 2013, Pages 2-23
Abstract:
Recent studies of the U.S. Congress have demonstrated a substantial difference between the level of partisan polarization displayed by legislators' votes and that shown in citizens' survey responses about those votes. Perhaps public polarization would increase if citizens were more attentive to political debates in Congress. Using natural variation in citizens' levels of political information, I show that citizens who are informed about the partisan alignment of issues have a preference distribution similar to that of Congress, even after the sample is reweighted to resemble the entire public in their political, social, and demographic characteristics via matching. In contrast, using a survey experiment, I show that cue and argument treatments only partially reduce the discrepancy between the views expressed by the public and the voting behavior of Congress on the same issues. Both experimental and observational studies have significant limitations for measuring counterfactuals involving public opinion, and so our understanding of the polarization gap remains unfortunately limited.
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Proximity Voting in the 2010 U.S. House Elections
Elizabeth Simas
Electoral Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
Utilizing data that allows for the placement of both of the candidates running and voters on the same ideological scale, I model proximity voting in the 2010 House elections. I demonstrate that though the literature predominantly emphasizes partisanship and incumbency, relative distance from the candidates also plays a significant role in the voting decision. Additionally, I show that these proximity effects are conditional upon the type of candidate running and the individual's partisan attachment. In total, these results show that while the rates of partisan voting and incumbent victory are high in House elections, voters do consider ideological proximity and can punish candidates who take positions that are too far out of line.
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Geoffrey Wetherell & Mark Brandt
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite ample research linking conservatism to discrimination and liberalism to tolerance, both groups may discriminate. In two studies, we investigated whether conservatives and liberals support discrimination against value violators, and whether liberals' and conservatives' values distinctly affect discrimination. Results demonstrated that liberals and conservatives supported discrimination against ideologically dissimilar groups, an effect mediated by perceptions of value violations. Liberals were more likely than conservatives to espouse egalitarianism and universalism, which attenuated their discrimination; whereas the conservatives' value of traditionalism predicted more discrimination, and their value of self-reliance predicted less discrimination. This suggests liberals and conservatives are equally likely to discriminate against value violators, but liberal values may ameliorate discrimination more than conservative values.
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When does the left do the right thing? A study of party position change on welfare policies
Gijs Schumacher
Party Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Why did pro-welfare Social Democrats and Christian Democrats cease to support the welfare state in the 1980s and 1990s, and support measures such as tighter welfare programme conditionality rules and lower social security benefits instead? Building on the party position change literature, I argue and empirically demonstrate that parties with an activist-dominated party organization adapt their position to shifts in the party voter position. Parties with a leadership-dominated party organization adapt their position to shifts in the median voter position. Parties in which neither leaders nor activists dictate party policy shift in the opposite direction of the previous policy shift if they are excluded from office. Using a cross-sectional time-series regression analysis of 181 position shifts of European Socialist, Social Democratic and Christian Democratic parties in the period 1977-2003, I find strong evidence that party organization is a crucial mediating variable in explaining when these parties shift to the right or left. Demonstrating that differences in party organizations motivate parties to respond to different incentives, this study has implications for the relationship between party behaviour and welfare state policy-making.
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Secular geographical polarization in the American South: The case of Texas, 1996-2010
Adam Myers
Electoral Studies, March 2013, Pages 48-62
Abstract:
This article uses fine-grained data to demonstrate that, since 1996, the State of Texas has undergone a process of 'secular geographical polarization' - a continuous divergence in the geographical bases of its political parties. It is suggested that this process exemplifies a new era of partisan politics in the American South. Analyses of spatial regression models show that the geographical polarization can be partially explained by a tighter link between demographic characteristics and aggregate voting patterns, but that growth in spatial clustering cannot be attributed entirely to demographics. The possibility that spatially-bounded social contexts are affecting partisan change is thus explored. Finally, the article's findings are considered in light of the growing debate about geographical polarization in the American electorate.
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Mauro Bertolotti et al.
Social Psychology, Spring 2013, Pages 117-128
Abstract:
In two experimental studies (conducted in Britain and Italy), participants read about a politician answering to leadership- versus morality-related allegations using either downward counterfactuals ("things could have been worse, if ...") or upward counterfactuals ("things could have been better, if ..."). Downward messages increased the perception of the politician's leadership, while both downward and upward messages increased morality perception. Political sophistication moderated the effect of message direction, with downward messages increasing perceived morality in low sophisticates and upward messages increasing perceived morality in high sophisticates. In the latter group, the acknowledgment of an intent to take responsibility mediated morality judgment. Results were consistent across different countries, highlighting previously unexplored effects of communication on the perception of the "Big Two" dimensions.
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Out of your mind
Less Is Still More: Maintenance of the Very Brief Exposure Effect 1 Year Later
Paul Siegel & Richard Warren
Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study tested the hypothesis that an immediate effect of exposure to masked phobic stimuli on avoidance of the corresponding feared object would be maintained 1 year later. Fifty-three spider-phobic participants were identified with a questionnaire and a Behavioral Avoidance Test (BAT) with a live tarantula. One week later, they were administered 1 of 3 types of exposure: very brief (25-ms, masked) or clearly visible (125-ms, unmasked) images of spiders, or very brief images of flowers. They engaged in the BAT again immediately thereafter. One year later, they returned for a follow-up BAT. The immediate effect of exposure to very brief spiders on reducing avoidance of the tarantula was still evident 1 year later. Endurance of an effect by masked stimuli of this duration has not been reported before. Potential theoretical implications are discussed.
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Eric Rasmussen & David Ewoldsen
Journal of Health Communication, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many people with a diagnosable mental illness do not receive professional treatment. Instead, they may turn to media mental health professionals for diagnosis and treatment recommendations. This study content analyzed episodes of Dr. Phil and issues of Psychology Today to determine what mental disorders are covered and treatments are recommended, and to determine whether their coverage of mental disorders corresponds to the national prevalence of mental disorders. Both sources provide content about depression more than about any other mental illness. Both also make recommendations for psychotherapy more than they recommend other forms of treatment. The study also found no relation between the proportion of times that mental disorders were discussed and the prevalence of the disorders among American adults. This research helps to lay a foundation for future research addressing the relations among mental disorders, self-treatment, and the media's role in mental health.
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The effectiveness of structural interventions at suicide hotspots: A meta-analysis
Jane Pirkis et al.
International Journal of Epidemiology, forthcoming
Background: Certain sites have gained notoriety as ‘hotspots' for suicide by jumping. Structural interventions (e.g. barriers and safety nets) have been installed at some of these sites. Individual studies examining the effectiveness of these interventions have been underpowered.
Method: We conducted a meta-analysis, pooling data from nine studies.
Results: Following the interventions, there was an 86% reduction in jumping suicides per year at the sites in question (95% CI 79% to 91%). There was a 44% increase in jumping suicides per year at nearby sites (95% CI 15% to 81%), but the net gain was a 28% reduction in all jumping suicides per year in the study cities (95% CI 13% to 40%).
Conclusions: Structural interventions at ‘hotspots' avert suicide at these sites. Some increases in suicide are evident at neighbouring sites, but there is an overall gain in terms of a reduction in all suicides by jumping.
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Facial cues to depressive symptoms and their associated personality attributions
Naomi Jane Scott et al.
Psychiatry Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Depression is a common mental health disorder, with 12% of the UK population diagnosed at any one time. We assessed whether there are cues to depressive symptoms within the static, non-expressive face, and if other socially-relevant impressions might be made by these cues. Composite "average" face images were created from students scoring high and low on self-report measures of depressive symptoms, capturing potential correlations between facial appearance and symptoms of depression. These were then used in a warping procedure, creating two versions of individual faces, one warped towards the high symptom composite, and the other towards the low. In Experiment 1, we first found observers were able to identify images representing high and low symptom occurrence at levels significantly greater than chance. Secondly, we collected observer impressions of the two versions of each face. The faces reflecting high levels of depressive symptoms were picked as less socially-desirable over a broad range of personality trait estimates compared to low symptom images. In Experiment 2, we replicated the key finding that the static face contains cues to levels of depression symptoms, using composites created from a new database of student photos and depression inventory scores.
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Neuroticism as Distancing: Perceptual Sources of Evidence
Tianwei Liu, et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Several theories and self-reported sources of data link individual differences in negative affectivity to avoidance motivation. Chronic avoidance motivation, through repeated practice, may result in a relatively cognitive distance-enhancing dynamic whereby events and stimuli are perceived as further away from the self, even when they are not threatening. Such predictions are novel but follow from cybernetic theories of self-regulation. In 5 studies (total N = 463), relations of this type were investigated. Study 1 presented participants with phrases that were ambiguous and found that trait negative affect predicted phrase interpretation in a distance-enhancing temporal direction. Study 2 replicated this effect across a systematic manipulation of event valence. Study 3 asked individuals to estimate the size of words and found that individuals higher in neuroticism generally perceived words to be smaller than did individuals lower in neuroticism. In Study 4, people high (but not low) in neuroticism perceived words to be shrinking faster than they were growing. In Study 5, greater perceptual distancing, in a font size estimation task, predicted more adverse reactions to negative events in daily life. Although normative effects varied across studies, consistent support for a chronic distancing perspective of individual differences in negative affectivity was found.
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Family Presence during Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation
Patricia Jabre et al.
New England Journal of Medicine, 14 March 2013, Pages 1008-1018
Background: The effect of family presence during cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on the family members themselves and the medical team remains controversial.
Methods: We enrolled 570 relatives of patients who were in cardiac arrest and were given CPR by 15 prehospital emergency medical service units. The units were randomly assigned either to systematically offer the family member the opportunity to observe CPR (intervention group) or to follow standard practice regarding family presence (control group). The primary end point was the proportion of relatives with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)-related symptoms on day 90. Secondary end points included the presence of anxiety and depression symptoms and the effect of family presence on medical efforts at resuscitation, the well-being of the health care team, and the occurrence of medicolegal claims.
Results: In the intervention group, 211 of 266 relatives (79%) witnessed CPR, as compared with 131 of 304 relatives (43%) in the control group. In the intention-to-treat analysis, the frequency of PTSD-related symptoms was significantly higher in the control group than in the intervention group (adjusted odds ratio, 1.7; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.2 to 2.5; P=0.004) and among family members who did not witness CPR than among those who did (adjusted odds ratio, 1.6; 95% CI, 1.1 to 2.5; P=0.02). Relatives who did not witness CPR had symptoms of anxiety and depression more frequently than those who did witness CPR. Family-witnessed CPR did not affect resuscitation characteristics, patient survival, or the level of emotional stress in the medical team and did not result in medicolegal claims.
Conclusions: Family presence during CPR was associated with positive results on psychological variables and did not interfere with medical efforts, increase stress in the health care team, or result in medicolegal conflicts.
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Christin Ogle, David Rubin & Ilene Siegler
Developmental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present study examined the impact of the developmental timing of trauma exposure on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and psychosocial functioning in a large sample of community-dwelling older adults (N = 1,995). Specifically, we investigated whether the negative consequences of exposure to traumatic events were greater for traumas experienced during childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, midlife, or older adulthood. Each of these developmental periods is characterized by age-related changes in cognitive and social processes that may influence psychological adjustment following trauma exposure. Results revealed that older adults who experienced their currently most distressing traumatic event during childhood exhibited more severe symptoms of PTSD and lower subjective happiness compared with older adults who experienced their most distressing trauma after the transition to adulthood. Similar findings emerged for measures of social support and coping ability. The differential effects of childhood compared with later life traumas were not fully explained by differences in cumulative trauma exposure or by differences in the objective and subjective characteristics of the events. Our findings demonstrate the enduring nature of traumatic events encountered early in the life course and underscore the importance of examining the developmental context of trauma exposure in investigations of the long-term consequences of traumatic experiences.
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Mental Health Problems in Teens Investigated by U.S. Child Welfare Agencies
Amy Heneghan et al.
Journal of Adolescent Health, forthcoming
Purpose: To examine prevalence and correlates of five mental health (MH) problems among 12-17.5 year olds investigated by child welfare.
Methods: Data from the National Survey on Child and Adolescent Well-being (NSCAW II) were analyzed to examine depression, anxiety, substance use/abuse, suicidality, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as reported by teens and their caregivers. In a sample of 815 adolescents, prevalence for each MH problem and correlates (e.g., age, placement location) were identified using bivariate and multivariable logistic analyses.
Results: After investigation for maltreatment, 42.7% of teens reported at least one MH problem, regardless of placement. Nine percent reported depression, 13.9% reported suicidality, 23% had substance use/abuse, 13.5% reported anxiety, and 18.6% had ADHD. Of 332 teens with any MH problem, 52.1% reported only one problem, 28.3% had two problems, and 19.6% had ≥ three problems. Teens with prior out-of-home placement had odds 2.29 times higher of reporting a MH problem and odds 2.12 times higher of reporting substance use/abuse. Males were significantly less likely to report depression. Older teens were more likely to report substance use/abuse. Black teens were significantly less likely to report suicidality and ADHD and almost half as likely to report anxiety. Teens with a chronic health condition and teens whose caregiver reported depression had more than twice the odds of reporting anxiety.
Conclusions: This study highlights high rates of MH problems in teens of all ages and placement locations and suggests that all teens involved with child welfare should be screened for MH problems, regardless of initial placement status.
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Impact of Racial Macro- and Microaggressions in Black Women's Lives: A Preliminary Analysis
Roxanne Donovan et al.
Journal of Black Psychology, April 2013, Pages 185-196
Abstract:
Most studies on perceived racial discrimination do not differentiate between macroaggressions (i.e., overt, purposeful discrimination) and microaggressions (i.e., subtle, typically unconscious discrimination) or examine gender. This study addresses these gaps by exploring: (a) the prevalence of perceived racial macroaggressions (PRMa) and perceived racial microaggressions (PRMi) in Black women's lives and (b) how PRMa and PRMi influence depressive and anxious symptoms in this group. Participants were 187 undergraduate students who self-identified as Black women. Sixty-three percent of the participants reported experiencing some type of PRMa at least once in a while during the past year, and 96% reported experiencing some type of PRMi at least a few times a year. As hypothesized, PRMa and PRMi significantly predicted depressive symptoms; however, PRMa made a stronger unique contribution. Contrary to hypotheses, PRMa but not PRMi significantly predicted anxious symptoms. Findings suggest that PRMa and PRMi are common occurrences for Black women and are associated with negative mental health outcomes, with PRMa being the less common but more detrimental of the two.
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Brea Perry, Danelle Stevens-Watkins & Carrie Oser
Race and Social Problems, March 2013, Pages 1-14
Abstract:
This study examined the influence of concurrent racism and sexism experiences (i.e., gendered racism) on African American women's suicidal ideation and behavior in the context of disadvantaged socioeconomic status. Drawing on a stress process framework, the moderating effects of ethnic identity and skin color were explored using multiple regression analyses. Data were from 204 low-income African American women in the B-WISE (Black Women in a Study of Epidemics) project. Findings suggested that experiencing gendered racism significantly increased these women's risk for suicidal ideation or behavior, though only among women with medium or dark skin color. Also, having strong ethnic identity buffered the harmful effects of gendered racism. The moderating properties of skin color and ethnic identity affirmation likely operate through psychosocial pathways, blocking internalization of negative stereotypes and reducing the level of distress experienced in response to gendered racism.
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Rachel Lucas-Thompson & Alison Holman
Hormones and Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examined whether the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs53576 genotype buffers the combined impact of negative social environments (e.g., interpersonal conflict/constraint) and economic stress on post-traumatic stress (PTS) symptoms and impaired daily functioning following collective stress (September 11th terrorist attacks). Saliva was collected by mail and used to genotype 704 respondents. Participants completed Web-based assessments of pre-9/11 mental health, acute stress 9-23 days after 9/11, the quality of social environments 1 year post-9/11, economic stress 18 months post-9/11, and PTS symptoms and impaired functioning 2 and 3 years post-9/11. Interactions between negative social environments and economic stress were examined separately based on OXTR rs53576 genotype (GG vs. any A allele). For individuals with an A allele, a negative social environment significantly increased PTS symptoms without regard to the level of economic stress experienced. However, for respondents with a GG genotype, negative social environments predicted elevated PTS symptoms only for those also experiencing high economic stress. Gender moderated associations between negative social environments, economic stress, and impaired functioning. The functioning of females was most affected by negative social environments regardless of genotype and economic stress, whereas the functioning of males was differentially susceptible to economic stress depending on OXTR genotype and negative social environments. These findings suggest that it is important to consider the combined impact of gender and ongoing stress in different domains as moderators of genetic vulnerability following collective stress.
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Patrick Davies et al.
Developmental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Guided by evolutionary game theory (Korte, Koolhaas, Wingfield, & McEwen, 2005), this study aimed to identify the genetic precursors and the psychosocial sequelae of inhibited temperament in a sociodemographically disadvantaged and racially diverse sample (N = 201) of 2-year-old children who experienced elevated levels of domestic violence. Using a multimethod, prospective design across 3 annual measurement occasions, the authors conducted structural equation modeling analyses indicating that trained observer ratings of inhibited temperament at age 2 were uniquely predicted by polymorphisms in dopamine and serotonin transporter genes. Children's inhibited temperament, in turn, indirectly predicted decreases in their externalizing problems at age 4 through its association with greater behavioral flexibility at age 3. Results highlight the value of integrating evolutionary and developmental conceptualizations in more comprehensively charting the developmental cascades of inhibited temperament.
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Salivary Cortisol Lower in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Helané Wahbeh & Barry Oken
Journal of Traumatic Stress, forthcoming
Abstract:
Altered cortisol has been demonstrated to be lower in those with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in most studies. This cross-sectional study evaluated salivary cortisol at waking and 30 minutes after, and at bedtime in 51 combat veterans with PTSD compared to 20 veterans without PTSD. It also examined the relationship of cortisol to PTSD symptoms using 2 classifications: the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) and the more recent 4-factor classification proposed for DSM-5. The PTSD group had lower cortisol values than the control group, F(6, 69) = 3.35, p = .006. This significance did not change when adding age, body mass index, smoking, medications affecting cortisol, awakening time, sleep duration, season, depression, perceived stress, service era, combat exposure, and lifetime trauma to the model. Post hoc analyses revealed that the PTSD group had lower area-under-the-curve ground and waking, 30 min, and bedtime values; the cortisol awakening response and area-under-the-curve increase were not different between groups. The 4-factor avoidance PTSD symptom cluster was associated with cortisol, but not the other symptom clusters. This study supports the finding that cortisol is lower in people with PTSD.
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Mortality, ADHD, and Psychosocial Adversity in Adults With Childhood ADHD: A Prospective Study
William Barbaresi et al.
Pediatrics, forthcoming
Objective: We examined long-term outcomes of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in a population-based sample of childhood ADHD cases and controls, prospectively assessed as adults.
Methods: Adults with childhood ADHD and non-ADHD controls from the same birth cohort (N = 5718) were invited to participate in a prospective outcome study. Vital status was determined for birth cohort members. Standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) were constructed to compare overall and cause-specific mortality between childhood ADHD cases and controls. Incarceration status was determined for childhood ADHD cases. A standardized neuropsychiatric interview was administered.
Results: Vital status for 367 childhood ADHD cases was determined: 7 (1.9%) were deceased, and 10 (2.7%) were currently incarcerated. The SMR for overall survival of childhood ADHD cases versus controls was 1.88 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.83-4.26; P = .13) and for accidents only was 1.70 (95% CI, 0.49-5.97; P = .41). However, the cause-specific mortality for suicide only was significantly higher among ADHD cases (SMR, 4.83; 95% CI, 1.14-20.46; P = .032). Among the childhood ADHD cases participating in the prospective assessment (N = 232; mean age, 27.0 years), ADHD persisted into adulthood for 29.3% (95% CI, 23.5-35.2). Participating childhood ADHD cases were more likely than controls (N = 335; mean age, 28.6 years) to have ≥1 other psychiatric disorder (56.9% vs 34.9%; odds ratio, 2.6; 95% CI, 1.8-3.8; P < .01).
Conclusions: Childhood ADHD is a chronic health problem, with significant risk for mortality, persistence of ADHD, and long-term morbidity in adulthood.
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Growing Old but Not Growing Apart: Twin Similarity in the Latter Half of the Lifespan
Matt McGue & Kaare Christensen
Behavior Genetics, January 2013, Pages 1-12
Abstract:
While a substantial amount of behavioral genetic research has helped to characterize developmental trends in twin similarity in early life, relatively little is known about changes in twin similarity with age in adulthood. We investigated age moderation of twin similarity for a composite measure of cognitive ability, depression symptomatology and hand grip strength in a cross-sectional sample of 2,332 like-sex pairs of Danish twins age 46-96 years. All three outcomes were strongly correlated with age, indicating that the three phenotypes analyzed are not developmentally static. Nonetheless, in moderated regression analysis we found no evidence of declining twin similarity for any of the three outcomes in either zygosity group. Moreover, biometric analysis of the twin data revealed minimal differences in heritability estimates across the age range sampled. While small sample size limits our ability to draw firm conclusions at very advanced ages, these findings call into question the hypothesis that the cumulative impact of life experiences diminishes twin similarity at least through age 80. We hypothesize that twins are able to maintain similarity over extended periods of time because in part they are able to construct similar environments that reinforce that similarity.
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Geeta Thakur et al.
PLoS ONE, November 2012
Objective: Despite strong pharmacological evidence implicating the norepinephrine transporter in ADHD, genetic studies have yielded largely insignificant results. We tested the association between 30 tag SNPs within the SLC6A2 gene and ADHD, with stratification based on maternal smoking during pregnancy, an environmental factor strongly associated with ADHD.
Methods: Children (6-12 years old) diagnosed with ADHD according to DSM-IV criteria were comprehensively evaluated with regard to several behavioral and cognitive dimensions of ADHD as well as response to a fixed dose of methylphenidate (MPH) using a double-blind placebo controlled crossover trial. Family-based association tests (FBAT), including categorical and quantitative trait analyses, were conducted in 377 nuclear families.
Results: A highly significant association was observed with rs36021 (and linked SNPs) in the group where mothers smoked during pregnancy. Association was noted with categorical DSM-IV ADHD diagnosis (Z = 3.74, P = 0.0002), behavioral assessments by parents (CBCL, P = 0.00008), as well as restless-impulsive subscale scores on Conners'-teachers (P = 0.006) and parents (P = 0.006). In this subgroup, significant association was also observed with cognitive deficits, more specifically sustained attention, spatial working memory, planning, and response inhibition. The risk allele was associated with significant improvement of behavior as measured by research staff (Z = 3.28, P = 0.001), parents (Z = 2.62, P = 0.009), as well as evaluation in the simulated academic environment (Z = 3.58, P = 0.0003).
Conclusions: By using maternal smoking during pregnancy to index a putatively more homogeneous group of ADHD, highly significant associations were observed between tag SNPs within SLC6A2 and ADHD diagnosis, behavioral and cognitive measures relevant to ADHD and response to MPH. This comprehensive phenotype/genotype analysis may help to further understand this complex disorder and improve its treatment.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Born and raised this way
Toni Schmader et al.
Basic and Applied Social Psychology, January/February 2013, Pages 141-149
Abstract:
In an effort to identify effective strategies for reducing prejudice, this research tested whether stigmatized individuals can evoke a common identity to deflect discrimination. In an initial survey, gay/lesbian/bisexual participants reported a preference for evoking common identity in intergroup interactions. In two experiments, straight male perceivers in a managerial role-playing paradigm were more likely to select a gay man for an interview if he had primed a common identity. Evoking a common identity did not similarly benefit straight candidates. Findings suggest that integrating prejudice reduction and persuasion research can identify strategies that empower targets to effectively cope with prejudice.
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Human social stratification and hypergyny: Toward an understanding of male homosexual preference
Julien Barthes, Bernard Godelle & Michel Raymond
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Male homosexual preference (MHP) challenges evolutionary thinking because the preference for male-male relationships is heritable, implies a fertility cost (lower offspring number), and is relatively frequent in some societies (2%-6% in Western countries) for a costly trait. Proximate explanations include the hypothesis of a "sexually antagonistic factor" in which a trait that increases fertility in females also promotes the emergence of MHP. Because no animal species is known to display consistent MHP in the wild (only transient and contextual homosexual behavior has been described), additional human-specific features must contribute to the maintenance of MHP in human populations. We built a theoretical model that revealed that, in a stratified society, a relatively high frequency of MHP could be maintained as a result of the social ascension of females signaling high fertility (hypergyny). Additional computer simulations confirmed that this result applies to populations with various numbers of classes, conditions of demographic regulation, and mating systems. The prediction that MHP is more prevalent in stratified societies was significantly supported in a sample of 48 societies for which the presence or absence of MHP has been anthropologically documented. More generally, any traits associated with up-migration are likely to be selected for in a stratified society and will be maintained by frequency dependence even if they induce a pleiotropic cost, such as MHP. These results offer a new perspective for understanding seemingly paradoxical traits in human populations.
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Do Popular Votes on Rights Create Animosity Toward Minorities?
Todd Donovan & Caroline Tolbert
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine whether votes on minority rights make the public less sympathetic to the targeted group. Panel data are used to test whether votes on marriage changed public attitudes about gays and lesbians. We propose the marriage debate had a stigmatizing effect on attitudes about gays and lesbians in states where marriage was on the ballot. Results reveal a conditional relationship. Religious people in states where marriage was voted on had lower affect for gays and lesbians after the campaign. Independent of policy outcomes, subjecting a minority group to public judgment about rights may promote animus toward the group.
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Familiarity increases the accuracy of categorizing male sexual orientation
Marco Brambilla, Paolo Riva & Nicholas Rule
Personality and Individual Differences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although individual differences are known to influence numerous aspects of social perception, such as person memory and individuation, little is known about how such variations may affect social categorization. Extending prior research, the present study tested one potential moderator: familiarity with group members. Specifically, straight participants (n = 84) reported their real-life experiences with gay men and categorized faces as gay or straight. Results showed that participants who reported greater familiarity with gay men were significantly more sensitive, or accurate, in judging the sexual orientations of men from their faces. These results are discussed in terms of their theoretical implications for social perception and future research directions are outlined.
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Salivary testosterone is related to self-selected training load in elite female athletes
Christian Cook & Martyn Beaven
Physiology & Behavior, forthcoming
Background: Testosterone has been related to improved acute neuromuscular performance in athletic populations. It is our contention that testosterone may also contribute to improved volitional motivation and, when monitored longitudinally, may provide one proxy marker for readiness to perform.
Methods: Twelve female netball players provided saliva samples prior to five standardized training sessions in which they completed a maximal-distance medicine ball throw, and then 3 sets of bench press and then back squat using a self-selected load perceived to equal a 3-repetition maximum load. Additional repetitions were encouraged when possible and total voluntary workload was calculated from the product of the load lifted and repetitions performed.
Results: Relative salivary testosterone levels as a group were correlated with bench press (r = 0.8399; p = 0.0007) and squat (r = 0.6703; p = 0.0171) self-selected workload, as well as maximal medicine ball throw performance (r = 0.7062; p = 0.0103).
Conclusions: Individual salivary testosterone, when viewed relatively over time, demonstrated strong relationships with self-selected workloads during an in-season training period in female netball players. As such, daily variations in testosterone may provide information regarding voluntary training motivation and readiness to perform in elite athletic populations. Psychological and behavioral aspects of testosterone may have the potential to enhance training adaptation by complementing the known anabolic and permissive properties of testosterone.
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John Pachankis & Mark Hatzenbuehler
Basic and Applied Social Psychology, March/April 2013, Pages 176-190
Abstract:
Young sexual minority men might cope with early stigma by strongly investing in achievement-related success. Sexual minority men (n = 136) reported deriving their self-worth from academics (d = 0.33), appearance (d = 0.33), and competition (d = 0.35) more so than heterosexual men (n = 56). Length of early sexual orientation concealment predicted investment in these domains (β = 0.19, 0.22, 0.24) and an objective measure of stigma predicted the degree to which young sexual minority men sought self-worth through competition (β = 0.26). A nine-day experience sampling approach confirmed that investment in achievement-related domains exacts negative health consequences for young sexual minority men.
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Allison Shaw
Personality and Individual Differences, July 2013, Pages 19-23
Abstract:
The ratio of the lengths of the second and fourth digits of hands (2D:4D) seems to vary as a function of systematic differences in prenatal androgen exposure (Hönekopp & Watson, 2010). The 2D:4D ratio has been shown to be related to a variety of personality attributes. This study predicted that 2D:4D would covary with scores on the emotionality dimension of the six-facet HEXACO personality assessment, due to emotionality's relationship with neural reactivity systems controlled by the amygdala (Hines, Allen, & Gorski, 1992), but that 2D:4D would relate to no other facet. Consistent with hypotheses, data showed that men had smaller ratios than women on both the right, t(405) = 2.84, p < .05, d = .28, and left hands, t(405) = 4.51, p < .05, d = .45, and the relationship between 2D:4D and emotionality was outside of sampling error of zero, r = .18, p < .001. Additionally, 2D:4D was unrelated to the remaining HEXACO facets. Findings suggest that prenatal testosterone exposure has an organizing effect on personality traits.
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David Edwards & Kathleen Casto
Hormones and Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent research suggests that testosterone and cortisol jointly regulate dominance motivation and, perhaps, the status relationships that are affected by it. For this article, the results of six different studies of women's intercollegiate athletic competition were combined to give a sample size of almost ninety women for whom we had before- and after-competition values for salivary cortisol and testosterone for at least one and sometimes two competitions. For many of these women, we had surveys that allowed us to assess their status with teammates. In no matter what sport (soccer, softball, volleyball, and tennis) levels of salivary cortisol and testosterone increased when women participated in athletic competition. Salivary levels of C and T appear to rise in parallel during competition and increases in levels of one hormone are significantly related to increases in the other. Salivary levels of these hormones typically decreased for teammates who did not play but watched the competition from the sidelines. For women who played in two competitions, individual differences in the positive effect of competition on cortisol and testosterone were conserved from one competition to the next, affirming the personal consistency of endocrine responses to competition. Status with teammates was positively related to before-competition levels of testosterone, but only for women with relatively low before-competition levels of cortisol. This result provides novel support for the "dual hormone hypothesis" as it relates to predicting social status in women's athletic teams - natural social groups of individuals who know each other and whose social hierarchy has evolved over the course of practice and play for at least one and, in some cases, several years of intercollegiate athletic competition.
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Soo Hong Chew, Richard Ebstein & Songfa Zhong
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Combining the methodologies of experimental economics and molecular genetics, we report a genetic association between sex-hormone genes and ultimatum game (UG) behavior in a discovery sample from China and a replication sample from Israel. The androgen receptor gene is found to be associated with UG responder behavior for male but not female subjects in the Chinese population, but this finding is not replicated in the Israeli sample. The estrogen receptor β gene is significantly associated with female UG responder behavior but not for male subjects in the Chinese sample. This finding is marginally replicated in the Israeli sample. Overall, our findings provide suggestive evidence on a gender specific relationship between sex-hormone genes and UG responder behavior, and can contribute to a deeper understanding of gender differences in fairness preference at the level of molecular genetics.
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Taveeshi Gupta et al.
Journal of Research on Adolescence, March 2013, Pages 57-68
Abstract:
This 3-year, longitudinal analysis examined the psychological and social correlates of adhering to gender-typed behaviors in friendships among boys during middle school in United States (N = 446, Mage = 11.37 years) and in China (N = 368, Mage = 12.20 years). Results indicated that boys did not differ by nationality in the mean levels or in the increase over time in adherence to gender-typed behaviors. Furthermore, adherence over time was associated with higher depressive symptoms, lower self-esteem, and lower friendship quality for boys in both countries. However, the associations between gender-typed behaviors and friendship quality and depressive symptoms were stronger for boys in the United States. Our study suggests that gender-typed behaviors play an important role in the well-being of youth in different parts of the world.
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Homosexuality as a Consequence of Epigenetically Canalized Sexual Development
William Rice, Urban Friberg & Sergey Gavrilets
Quarterly Review of Biology, December 2012, Pages 343-368
Abstract:
Male and female homosexuality have substantial prevalence in humans. Pedigree and twin studies indicate that homosexuality has substantial heritability in both sexes, yet concordance between identical twins is low and molecular studies have failed to find associated DNA markers. This paradoxical pattern calls for an explanation. We use published data on fetal androgen signaling and gene regulation via nongenetic changes in DNA packaging (epigenetics) to develop a new model for homosexuality. It is well established that fetal androgen signaling strongly influences sexual development. We show that an unappreciated feature of this process is reduced androgen sensitivity in XX fetuses and enhanced sensitivity in XY fetuses, and that this difference is most feasibly caused by numerous sex-specific epigenetic modifications ("epi-marks") originating in embryonic stem cells. These epi-marks buffer XX fetuses from masculinization due to excess fetal androgen exposure and similarly buffer XY fetuses from androgen underexposure. Extant data indicates that individual epi-marks influence some but not other sexually dimorphic traits, vary in strength across individuals, and are produced during ontogeny and erased between generations. Those that escape erasure will steer development of the sexual phenotypes they influence in a gonad-discordant direction in opposite sex offspring, mosaically feminizing XY offspring and masculinizing XX offspring. Such sex-specific epi-marks are sexually antagonistic (SA-epi-marks) because they canalize sexual development in the parent that produced them, but contribute to gonad-trait discordances in opposite-sex offspring when unerased. In this model, homosexuality occurs when stronger-than-average SA-epi-marks (influencing sexual preference) from an opposite-sex parent escape erasure and are then paired with a weaker-than-average de novo sex-specific epi-marks produced in opposite-sex offspring. Our model predicts that homosexuality is part of a wider phenomenon in which recently evolved androgen-influenced traits commonly display gonad-trait discordances at substantial frequency, and that the molecular feature underlying most homosexuality is not DNA polymorphism(s), but epi-marks that evolved to canalize sexual dimorphic development that sometimes carryover across generations and contribute to gonad-trait discordances in opposite-sex descendants.
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Robert-Paul Juster et al.
Psychosomatic Medicine, February-March 2013, Pages 103-116
Objectives: Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals - particularly those who have not disclosed their sexual orientation - are believed to experience increased chronic stress in comparison with heterosexuals. This interdisciplinary study assessed whether psychiatric symptoms (self-rated anxiety, depression, and burnout), stress hormone profiles (diurnal cortisol), and physiological dysregulations (allostatic load [AL]) would differ for a) LGBs versus heterosexuals and b) disclosed LGBs versus nondisclosed LGBs.
Methods: The study included 87 healthy participants (mean [SD] age = 24.6 [0.6] years; LGB n = 46, 43% women; and heterosexual n = 41, 49% women). Diurnal cortisol sampled at five time points was averaged for 2 days. AL indices were based on an algorithm incorporating 21 biomarkers representing neuroendocrine, immune/inflammatory, metabolic, and cardiovascular functioning. Psychological measures were assessed with well-validated questionnaires.
Results: Between-group results revealed no significant differences in symptoms of anxiety and burnout, nor among diurnal cortisol levels between sexual orientations. By contrast, gay/bisexual men unexpectedly had lower depressive symptoms (p = .003) and AL levels (p = .043) compared with heterosexual men. Within-group results revealed that disclosed LGBs had fewer psychiatric symptoms (p values < 0.01) and lower cortisol levels +30 minutes upon awakening (p = .004) compared with nondisclosed LGBs. Disclosure was not significantly related to AL levels.
Conclusions: LGBs did not manifest more stress-related problems than did heterosexuals. Life transitions like disclosing to one's family and friends may be protective against psychopathologies and hyperactive cortisol awakening responses. Our novel findings underline the roles disclosure processes have on positive health and well-being for sexual minorities.
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Emily Barrett et al.
Physiology & Behavior, 10 April 2013, Pages 14-20
Abstract:
In animal models, prenatal stress programs reproductive development in the resulting offspring, however little is known about effects in humans. Anogenital distance (AGD) is a commonly used, sexually dimorphic biomarker of prenatal androgen exposure in many species. In rodents, prenatally stressed males have shorter AGD than controls (suggesting lower prenatal androgen exposure), whereas prenatally stressed females have longer AGD than controls (suggesting greater prenatal androgen exposure). Our objective was to investigate the relationship between stressful life events in pregnancy and infant AGD. In a prospective cohort study, pregnant women and their partners reported exposure to stressful life events during pregnancy. Pregnancies in which the couple reported 4 + life events were considered highly stressed. After birth (average 16.5 months), trained examiners measured AGD in the infants (137 males, 136 females). After adjusting for age, body size and other covariates, females born to couples reporting high stress had significantly longer (i.e. more masculine) AGD than females born to couples reporting low stress (p = 0.015). Among males, high stress was weakly, but not significantly, associated with shorter AGD. Our results suggest prenatal stress may masculinize some aspects of female reproductive development in humans. More sensitive measures of prenatal stress and additional measures of reproductive development are needed to better understand these relationships and clarify mechanisms.
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Michelle Treleaven et al.
Journal of Research in Personality, forthcoming
Abstract:
Genetic males may receive androgen deprivation therapy for reasons ranging from sexual reassignment to treating prostate cancer. We investigated the relationship of androgen deprivation to personality for voluntarily castrated males in a large-scale online survey. Based on the historical social positions of androgen-deprived males and contemporary research on testosterone, we predicted that modern day androgen-deprived males (n=122) would differ on several axes of the Big Five Factor Personality Inventory compared to eugonadal controls (n=1229). Though not statistically significant, an increase in agreeability for the androgen-deprived group was observed. The role of estrogen on the personality of castrated males was also explored through androgen-deprived participants taking supplemental estrogen (n=33). Estrogen was found to correlate with significantly higher agreeability scores.
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Empathy, estradiol and androgen levels in 9-year-old children
Eider Pascual-Sagastizabal et al.
Personality and Individual Differences, forthcoming
Abstract:
The aim of this study was to analyze the possible relationship between circulating hormone levels (testosterone, androstenedione and estradiol) and empathy, as well as to identify any possible gender differences in this relationship. The subjects were 123 9-year-old Caucasian children (57 boys and 66 girls). Bryant's Empathy Index was used to measure empathy. Hormone levels were measured using an enzyme immunoassay technique in saliva samples. The Kruskal-Wallis test revealed the existence of interaction effects of estradiol-gender and testosterone-gender on empathy. Girls with low testosterone levels scored higher in Cognitive Empathy than girls with high testosterone levels. Boys with low estradiol levels scored higher in Affective Empathy than boys with high levels of this hormone. The results obtained open up new and interesting avenues of future research into the relationship between hormones and empathy in children.
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Walking the Straight and Narrow: Examining the Role of Traditional Gender Norms in Sexual Prejudice
Joseph Wellman & Shannon McCoy
Psychology of Men & Masculinity, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the current work, we examine the extent to which prejudice toward gay men and lesbian women may be driven in part by traditional gender norms and the violation of these norms that same-sex couples represent. Although these relationships have long been theorized, strong empirical evidence is lacking. Across two studies, men who strongly endorsed (Study 1) or were primed with (Study 2) traditional gender norms perceived relationship violence directed toward gay men as less severe, less in need of intervention, and more likely caused by the victim than participants low in gender norm endorsement or primed with neutral content. In contrast, traditional gender norms were less predictive of heterosexual men's prejudice toward lesbian victims of relationship violence, and not predictive of heterosexual women's prejudice toward gay and lesbian victims. Thus, the relationship between traditional gender norms and sexual prejudice appears to be strongest for heterosexual men's prejudice toward gay men.
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Contact with Gays and Lesbians and Same-Sex Marriage Support: The Moderating Role of Social Context
Stephen Merino
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Empirical research on the contact hypothesis has paid inadequate attention to the broader social and normative context in which contact occurs. Using data from the nationally representative Portraits of American Life Study, I test whether individuals' core networks moderate the effect of personal contact with gays and lesbians on same-sex marriage attitudes. OLS regression results demonstrate that, though contact is strongly associated with greater support for same-sex marriage, the effect is attenuated for individuals with a higher proportion of religious conservatives in their core network. This moderating effect holds even after controlling for respondents' religiosity and when the sample is limited to self-identified religious liberals and moderates. Future research on intergroup contact should be attentive to other influences within individuals' social contexts and examine how the outcomes of contact across a variety of social boundaries are moderated by these social influences.
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George Cunningham & Nicole Melton
Journal of Sex Research, Spring 2013, Pages 401-408
Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to examine the degree to which contact with lesbian and gay friends moderated the effects of religious fundamentalism and sexism on sexual prejudice. The authors gathered data from 269 heterosexual adults living in Texas. Results indicate that the effects of religious fundamentalism on sexual prejudice were reduced when contact was high. However, the positive association between modern sexism and sexual prejudice was not moderated by contact. The authors discuss theoretical and practical implications.
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Shaohua Hu et al.
PLoS ONE, March 2013
Abstract:
Recent imaging studies have shown that brain morphology and neural activity during sexual arousal differ between homosexual and heterosexual men. However, functional differences in neural networks at the resting state is unknown. The study is to characterize the association of homosexual preference with measures of regional homogeneity and functional connectivity in the resting state. Participants were 26 healthy homosexual men and 26 age-matched healthy heterosexual men in whom we collected echo planar magnetic resonance imaging data in the resting state. The sexual orientation was evaluated using the Kinsey Scale. We first assessed group differences in regional homogeneity and then, taking the identified differences as seed regions, we compared groups in measures of functional connectivity from those seeds. The behavioral significances of the differences in regional homogeneity and functional connectivity were assessed by examining their associations with Kinsey Scores. Homosexual participants showed significantly reduced regional homogeneity in the left inferior occipital gyrus, right middle occipital gyrus, right superior occipital gyrus, left cuneus, right precuneus, and increased regional homogeneity in rectal gyrus, bilateral midbrain, and left temporal lobe. Regional homogeneity correlated positively with Kinsey scores in the left inferior occipital gyrus. The homosexual group also showed reduced functional connectivity between left middle temporal gyrus, left supra-marginal gyrus, right cuneus and the seed region, i.e. left inferior occipital gyrus. Additionly, the connection between the left inferior occipital gyrus and right thalamus correlated positively with Kinsey scores. These differences in regional homogeneity and functional connectivity may contribute to a better understanding of the neural basis of male sexual orientation.
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Paul Merritt et al.
Psychology of Popular Media Culture, forthcoming
Abstract:
Authors of recent news columns have claimed that an "out" actor cannot convincingly play a heterosexual because knowing someone is gay will bias our perceptions of his performance. We tested this hypothesis by conducting a three-condition experiment in which participants read information about an actor from a fictional Facebook page indicating the actor was gay, straight, or did not say. All participants then viewed the same video audition monologue. After viewing the monologue, participants rated the actor's performance and personal characteristics of the actor himself. Although knowing the actor was gay significantly reduced ratings of his masculinity, there was no significant effect on ratings of his performance. This provides evidence that although being "out" may reduce perceptions of masculinity, this may not translate into reductions in performance appraisal. Our experiment also demonstrates the unique opportunity social networking sites provide for studying the potentially biasing effect of biographical information.
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Glen Jankowski, Philippa Diedrichs & Emma Halliwell
Psychology of Men & Masculinity, forthcoming
Abstract:
Men's body dissatisfaction is prevalent and a serious health concern as it is associated with negative outcomes including depression, disordered eating, and anabolic steroid abuse. Gay men are particularly vulnerable to body dissatisfaction, perhaps due to heightened sociocultural appearance pressures experienced in gay subculture. Appearance conversations represent an underresearched, but potentially potent, mechanism of appearance pressures. The current study explored whether differences in the frequency of engaging in appearance conversations accounted for differences in body dissatisfaction and associated risk factors among gay and heterosexual men. A purposeful sample of gay (N = 77, Mage = 32.57) and heterosexual (N = 78, Mage = 25.30) men were recruited from community organizations in the United Kingdom. Participants completed an online questionnaire assessing appearance conversations, body dissatisfaction, appearance orientation, and internalization of appearance ideals. Gay men reported more frequent engagement in positive and negative appearance conversations and greater body dissatisfaction, appearance orientation, and general internalization than heterosexual men. Moreover, frequency of appearance conversations mediated the relationship between sexuality and the majority of study variables, including body dissatisfaction (ps < .05). These findings suggest that appearance conversations are an important sociocultural influence on male body image and that they are important in understanding the differences between gay and heterosexual men's body dissatisfaction and associated risk factors.
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Ali Ahmed, Lina Andersson & Mats Hammarstedt
Review of Economics of the Household, March 2013, Pages 83-108
Abstract:
In this paper we explore annual earnings as well as full-time monthly earnings differentials resulting from sexual orientation. We observe that gay males are at an earnings disadvantage compared to male heterosexuals regardless of which earnings measure we use. This earnings disadvantage is found to be larger when we compare gay and heterosexual males who are working full-time. In addition, the disadvantage is larger in the private than in the public sector. Lesbians, however, earn more than heterosexual females. This earnings advantage is considerably smaller when we study full-time monthly rather than annual earnings but an earnings advantage for lesbians at the top of the earnings distribution is documented regardless of which earnings measure we use. In addition, lesbians are doing better than female heterosexuals in the public sector. To sum up, the results indicate that gay males face obstacles on the labor market that hinder them from reaching top-level positions and high earnings. The earnings advantage observed for lesbians is likely to stem from the fact that lesbians devote more time to market work than heterosexual females do.
Friday, March 29, 2013
Playing doctor
The Articulation Effect of Government Policy: Health Insurance Mandates Versus Taxes
Keith Marzilli Ericson & Judd Kessler
NBER Working Paper, March 2013
Abstract:
We examine how the articulation of government policy affects behavior. Our experiment compares a government mandate to purchase health insurance to a financially equivalent tax on the uninsured. Participants report their probability of purchasing health insurance under one of the two articulations of the policy. The experiment was conducted in four waves, from December 2011 to November 2012. We document the controversy over the Affordable Care Act's insurance mandate provision that changed the political discourse during the year. Pre-controversy, articulating the policy as a mandate, rather than a financially equivalent tax, increased probability of insurance purchase by 10.6 percentage points - an effect comparable to a $1000 decrease in annual premiums. After the controversy, the mandate is no more effective than the tax. Our results show that how a policy is articulated affects behavior and that persuasion and public opinion management can help achieve policy objectives at lower cost.
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The Hazards of Correcting Myths About Health Care Reform
Brendan Nyhan, Jason Reifler & Peter Ubel
Medical Care, February 2013, Pages 127-132
Context: Misperceptions are a major problem in debates about health care reform and other controversial health issues.
Methods: We conducted an experiment to determine if more aggressive media fact-checking could correct the false belief that the Affordable Care Act would create "death panels." Participants from an opt-in Internet panel were randomly assigned to either a control group in which they read an article on Sarah Palin's claims about "death panels" or an intervention group in which the article also contained corrective information refuting Palin.
Findings: The correction reduced belief in death panels and strong opposition to the reform bill among those who view Palin unfavorably and those who view her favorably but have low political knowledge. However, it backfired among politically knowledgeable Palin supporters, who were more likely to believe in death panels and to strongly oppose reform if they received the correction.
Conclusions: These results underscore the difficulty of reducing misperceptions about health care reform among individuals with the motivation and sophistication to reject corrective information.
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Karen Joynt et al.
Health Affairs, March 2013, Pages 571-578
Abstract:
Critics of Massachusetts's health reform, a model for the Affordable Care Act, have argued that insurance expansion probably had a negative spillover effect leading to worse outcomes among already insured patients, such as vulnerable Medicare patients. Using Medicare data from 2004 to 2009, we examined trends in preventable hospitalizations for conditions such as uncontrolled hypertension and diabetes - markers of access to effective primary care - in Massachusetts compared to control states. We found that after Massachusetts's health reform, preventable hospitalization rates for Medicare patients actually decreased more in Massachusetts than in control states (a reduction of 101 admissions per 100,000 patients per quarter compared to a reduction of 83 admissions). Therefore, we found no evidence that Massachusetts's insurance expansion had a deleterious spillover effect on preventable hospitalizations among the previously insured. Our findings should offer some reassurance that it is possible to expand access to uninsured Americans without negatively affecting important clinical outcomes for those who are already insured.
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Mark Duggan & Tamara Hayford
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, forthcoming
Abstract:
From 1991 to 2009, the fraction of Medicaid recipients enrolled in HMOs and other forms of Medicaid managed care (MMC) increased from 11 percent to 71 percent. This increase was largely driven by state and local mandates that required most Medicaid recipients to enroll in an MMC plan. Theoretically, it is ambiguous whether the shift from fee-for-service into managed care would lead to an increase or a reduction in Medicaid spending. This paper investigates this effect using a data set on state- and local-level MMC mandates and detailed data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on state Medicaid expenditures. The findings suggest that shifting Medicaid recipients from fee-for-service into MMC did not on average reduce Medicaid spending. If anything, our results suggest that the shift to MMC increased Medicaid spending and that this effect was especially present for risk-based HMOs. However, the effects of the shift to MMC on Medicaid spending varied significantly across states as a function of the generosity of the state's baseline Medicaid provider reimbursement rates.
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Do Patients "Like" Good Care?: Measuring Hospital Quality via Facebook
Alex Timian et al.
American Journal of Medical Quality, forthcoming
Abstract:
With the growth of Facebook, public health researchers are exploring the platform's uses in health care. However, little research has examined the relationship between Facebook and traditional hospital quality measures. The authors conducted an exploratory quantitative analysis of hospitals' Facebook pages to assess whether Facebook "Likes" were associated with hospital quality and patient satisfaction. The 30-day mortality rates and patient recommendation rates were used to quantify hospital quality and patient satisfaction; these variables were correlated with Facebook data for 40 hospitals near New York, NY. The results showed that Facebook "Likes" have a strong negative association with 30-day mortality rates and are positively associated with patient recommendation. These exploratory findings suggest that the number of Facebook "Likes" for a hospital may serve as an indicator of hospital quality and patient satisfaction. These findings have implications for researchers and hospitals looking for a quick and widely available measure of these traditional indicators.
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Elbert Huang & Kenneth Finegold
Health Affairs, March 2013, Pages 614-621
Abstract:
The Affordable Care Act's expansion of insurance coverage is expected to increase demand for primary care services. We estimate that the national increase in demand for such services will require 7,200 additional primary care providers, or 2.5 percent of the current supply. On average, that increased demand is unlikely to prove disruptive. But when we examined how this increased demand will be experienced in different areas of the country, we found considerable variability: Seven million people live in areas where the expected increase in demand for providers is greater than 10 percent of baseline supply, and forty-four million people live in areas with an expected increase in demand above 5 percent of baseline supply. These findings highlight the need to promote policies that encourage more primary care providers and community health centers to practice in areas with the greatest expected need for services.
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U.S. Graduate Medical Education and Physician Specialty Choice
Paul Jolly, Clese Erikson & Gwen Garrison
Academic Medicine, April 2013, Pages 468-474
Purpose: The United States is facing a critical physician shortage. It will only get worse as many more Americans gain insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act and as additional millions enter the Medicare system. There is a serious concern that the pipeline for the production of the physician workforce is inadequate to meet future needs. It is imperative to continue to monitor the structure and size of this pipeline-the purpose of the research reported here.
Method: This descriptive analysis uses data derived from the National Graduate Medical Education Census, which includes reports on the entire population of residents in programs accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. Data for the years 2001 to 2010 are reported both on specialties which can be entered directly from medical school or with one preliminary year and on subspecialty residencies and fellowships, which require completion of an earlier residency program. Estimates of the number of new trainees who will practice primary care are provided.
Results: In 2010, there were 4,754 residents reported in preliminary programs, 89,142 residents in core specialty and combined specialty programs, and 20,007 in subspecialty and sub-subspecialty programs. Between 2001 and 2010, there was a 13.6% (13,655) increase in all residents. Since 2001, there has been a 6.3% (540) decrease in the number expected to enter primary care.
Conclusions: Without a substantially accelerated growth in graduate medical education, the physician workforce will fall short of the nation's needs, and competition for available residency positions will radically increase.
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Geoffrey Lamb et al.
Health Affairs, March 2013, Pages 536-543
Abstract:
Public reporting of how physicians and hospitals perform on certain quality of care measures is increasingly common, but little is known about whether such disclosures have an impact on the quality of care delivered to patients. We analyzed fourteen publicly reported quality of ambulatory care measures from 2004 to 2009 for the Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality, a voluntary consortium of physician groups. We also fielded a survey of the collaborative's members and analyzed Medicare billing data to independently compare members' performance to that of providers in the rest of Wisconsin, neighboring states, and the rest of the United States. We found that physician groups in the collaborative improved their performance during the study period on many measures, such as cholesterol control and breast cancer screening. Physician groups reported on the survey that publicly reported performance data motivated them to act on some, but not all, of the quality measures. Our study suggests that large group practices will engage in quality improvement efforts in response to public reporting, especially when comparative performance is displayed, as it was in this case on the collaborative's website.
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Doula Care, Birth Outcomes, and Costs Among Medicaid Beneficiaries
Katy Backes Kozhimannil et al.
American Journal of Public Health, April 2013, Pages e113-e121
Objectives: We compared childbirth-related outcomes for Medicaid recipients who received prenatal education and childbirth support from trained doulas with outcomes from a national sample of similar women and estimated potential cost savings.
Methods: We calculated descriptive statistics for Medicaid-funded births nationally (from the 2009 Nationwide Inpatient Sample; n = 279 008) and births supported by doula care (n = 1079) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 2010 to 2012; used multivariate regression to estimate impacts of doula care; and modeled potential cost savings associated with reductions in cesarean delivery for doula-supported births.
Results: The cesarean rate was 22.3% among doula-supported births and 31.5% among Medicaid beneficiaries nationally. The corresponding preterm birth rates were 6.1% and 7.3%, respectively. After control for clinical and sociodemographic factors, odds of cesarean delivery were 40.9% lower for doula-supported births (adjusted odds ratio = 0.59; P < .001). Potential cost savings to Medicaid programs associated with such cesarean rate reductions are substantial but depend on states' reimbursement rates, birth volume, and current cesarean rates.
Conclusions: State Medicaid programs should consider offering coverage for birth doulas to realize potential cost savings associated with reduced cesarean rates.
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Amy Kelley et al.
Health Affairs, March 2013, Pages 552-561
Abstract:
Despite its demonstrated potential to both improve quality of care and lower costs, the Medicare hospice benefit has been seen as producing savings only for patients enrolled 53-105 days before death. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, 2002-08, and individual Medicare claims, and overcoming limitations of previous work, we found $2,561 in savings to Medicare for each patient enrolled in hospice 53-105 days before death, compared to a matched, nonhospice control. Even higher savings were seen, however, with more common, shorter enrollment periods: $2,650, $5,040, and $6,430 per patient enrolled 1-7, 8-14, and 15-30 days prior to death, respectively. Within all periods examined, hospice patients also had significantly lower rates of hospital service use and in-hospital death than matched controls. Instead of attempting to limit Medicare hospice participation, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services should focus on ensuring the timely enrollment of qualified patients who desire the benefit.
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Determinants of Health Care Decisions: Insurance, Utilization, and Expenditures
Chan Shen
Review of Economics and Statistics, March 2013, Pages 142-153
Abstract:
This paper studies three interrelated health care decisions: insurance, utilization, and expenditures. The model treats insurance as an endogenous variable with respect to both utilization and expenditures, addresses potential selection issues, and takes into account that the decisions to use health care and the level of treatment are determined by different decision makers. We employ semiparametric methods to avoid making distributional assumptions. Using the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey 2005 data, the semiparametric approach predicts insurance to increase the level of expenditures by 48%, a number in accord with an important experimental study and less than half that obtained using parametric methods.
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Health insurance as a two-part pricing contract
Darius Lakdawalla & Neeraj Sood
Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Monopolies appear throughout health care. We show that health insurance operates like a conventional two-part pricing contract that allows monopolists to extract profits without inefficiently constraining quantity. When insurers are free to offer a range of insurance contracts to different consumer types, health insurance markets perfectly eliminate deadweight losses from upstream health care monopolies. Frictions limiting the sorting of different consumer types into different insurance contracts restore some of these upstream monopoly losses, which manifest as higher rates of uninsurance, rather than as restrictions in quantity utilized by insured consumers. Empirical analysis of pharmaceutical patent expiration supports the prediction that heavily insured markets experience little or no efficiency loss under monopoly, while less insured markets exhibit behavior more consistent with the standard theory of monopoly.
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Rocio Garcia-Retamero & Ulrich Hoffrage
Social Science & Medicine, April 2013, Pages 27-33
Abstract:
Doctors and patients have difficulty inferring the predictive value of a medical test from information about the prevalence of a disease and the sensitivity and false-positive rate of the test. Previous research has established that communicating such information in a format the human mind is adapted to - namely natural frequencies - as compared to probabilities, boosts accuracy of diagnostic inferences. In a study, we investigated to what extent these inferences can be improved - beyond the effect of natural frequencies - by providing visual aids. Participants were 81 doctors and 81 patients who made diagnostic inferences about three medical tests on the basis of information about prevalence of a disease, and the sensitivity and false-positive rate of the tests. Half of the participants received the information in natural frequencies, while the other half received the information in probabilities. Half of the participants only received numerical information, while the other half additionally received a visual aid representing the numerical information. In addition, participants completed a numeracy scale. Our study showed three important findings: (1) doctors and patients made more accurate inferences when information was communicated in natural frequencies as compared to probabilities; (2) visual aids boosted accuracy even when the information was provided in natural frequencies; and (3) doctors were more accurate in their diagnostic inferences than patients, though differences in accuracy disappeared when differences in numerical skills were controlled for. Our findings have important implications for medical practice as they suggest suitable ways to communicate quantitative medical data.
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Gayle Shier et al.
Health Affairs, March 2013, Pages 544-551
Abstract:
A growing evidence base suggests services that address social factors with an impact on health, such as transportation and caregiver support, must be integrated into new models of care if the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's Triple Aim is to be realized. We examined early evidence from seven innovative care models currently in use, each with strong social support services components. The evidence suggests that coordinated efforts to identify and meet the social needs of patients can lead to lower health care use and costs, and better outcomes for patients. For example, Senior Care Options - a Massachusetts program that coordinates the direct delivery of social support services for patients with chronic conditions and adults with disabilities - reported that hospital days per 1,000 members were just 55 percent of those generated by comparable patients not receiving the program's extended services. More research is required to determine which social service components yield desired outcomes for specific patient populations. Gaining these deeper insights and disseminating them widely offer the promise of considerable benefit for patients and the health care system as a whole.
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Stéphanie Lluis & Jean Abraham
Industrial Relations, April 2013, Pages 541-581
Abstract:
Key provisions within healthcare reform will likely further increase the cost of employer-sponsored insurance. Theory suggests that workers pay for their health insurance through a wage offset. We investigate this issue using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. GMM estimates aimed at correcting for endogenous worker mobility reveal evidence of a trade-off for workers who are offered health insurance as the only fringe benefit. On the other hand, employees in establishments with a more comprehensive set of benefits enjoy higher wages relative to employees in establishments that offer no benefits. Health also affects the wage-health insurance trade-off.
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Ann Kutney-Lee, Douglas Sloane & Linda Aiken
Health Affairs, March 2013, Pages 579-586
Abstract:
An Institute of Medicine report has called for registered nurses to achieve higher levels of education, but health care policy makers and others have limited evidence to support a substantial increase in the number of nurses with baccalaureate degrees. Using Pennsylvania nurse survey and patient discharge data from 1999 and 2006, we found that a ten-point increase in the percentage of nurses holding a baccalaureate degree in nursing within a hospital was associated with an average reduction of 2.12 deaths for every 1,000 patients - and for a subset of patients with complications, an average reduction of 7.47 deaths per 1,000 patients. We estimate that if all 134 hospitals in our study had increased the percentage of their nurses with baccalaureates by ten points during our study's time period, some 500 deaths among general, orthopedic, and vascular surgery patients might have been prevented. The findings provide support for efforts to increase the production and employment of baccalaureate nurses.
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The impact of health insurance mandates on drug innovation: Evidence from the United States
Natalie Chun & Minjung Park
European Journal of Health Economics, April 2013, Pages 323-344
Abstract:
An important health policy issue is the low rate of patient enrollment into clinical trials, which may slow down the process of clinical trials and discourage their supply, leading to delays in innovative life-saving drug treatments reaching the general population. In the US, patients' cost of participating in a clinical trial is considered to be a major barrier to patient enrollment. In order to reduce this barrier, some states in the US have implemented policies requiring health insurers to cover routine care costs for patients enrolled in clinical trials. This paper evaluates empirically how effective these policies were in increasing the supply of clinical trials and speeding up their completion, using data on cancer clinical trials initiated in the US between 2001 and 2007. Our analysis indicates that the policies did not lead to an increased supply in the number of clinical trials conducted in mandate states compared to non-mandate states. However, we find some evidence that once clinical trials are initiated, they are more likely to finish their patient recruitment in a timely manner in mandate states than in non-mandate states. As a result, the overall length to completion was significantly shorter in mandate states than in non-mandate states for cancer clinical trials in certain phases. The findings hint at the possibility that these policies might encourage drug innovation in the long run.
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Deverick Anderson et al.
American Journal of Infection Control, forthcoming
Background: State-specific, health care-associated infection (HAI) cost estimates have not been calculated to guide Department of Public Health efforts and investments.
Methods: We completed a cost identification study by conducting a survey of 117 acute care hospitals in NC to collect surveillance data on patient-days, device-days, and surgical procedures during 1 year. We then calculated expected rates and direct hospital costs of surgical site infections (SSI), Clostridium difficile infection, and 3 selected device-related HAIs for hospitals and the entire state using reference data sets such as the National Healthcare Safety Network.
Results: In total, 67 (53%) hospitals responded to the survey. The median bed size of respondent hospitals was 140 (interquartile range, 66-350). A "standard" NC hospital diagnosed approximately 100 HAI each year with estimated costs of $985,000 to $2.7 million. The most common HAI was SSI (73%). Costs related to SSI accounted for 87% to 91% of overall costs. In total, the overall direct annual cost of these 5 selected HAIs was estimated to be between $124.1 and $347.8 million in 2009 for the state of NC.
Conclusion: Using conservative estimates, HAI led to costs of more than $100 million in acute care hospitals in the state of NC in 2009. The majority of costs were due to SSI.
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Katy Backes Kozhimannil, Michael Law & Beth Virnig
Health Affairs, March 2013, Pages 527-535
Abstract:
Cesarean delivery is the most commonly performed surgical procedure in the United States, and cesarean rates are increasing. Working with 2009 data from 593 US hospitals nationwide, we found that cesarean rates varied tenfold across hospitals, from 7.1 percent to 69.9 percent. Even for women with lower-risk pregnancies, in which more limited variation might be expected, cesarean rates varied fifteenfold, from 2.4 percent to 36.5 percent. Thus, vast differences in practice patterns are likely to be driving the costly overuse of cesarean delivery in many US hospitals. Because Medicaid pays for nearly half of US births, government efforts to decrease variation are warranted. We focus on four promising directions for reducing these variations, including better coordinating maternity care, collecting and measuring more data, tying Medicaid payment to quality improvement, and enhancing patient-centered decision making through public reporting.
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Isabel Cáceres et al.
PLoS ONE, March 2013
Objective: We examined the extent to which differences in hospital-level cesarean delivery rates in Massachusetts were attributable to hospital-level, rather than maternal, characteristics.
Methods: Birth certificate and maternal in-patient hospital discharge records for 2004-06 in Massachusetts were linked. The study population was nulliparous, term, singleton, and vertex births (NTSV) (n = 80,371) in 49 hospitals. Covariates included mother's age, race/ethnicity, education, infant birth weight, gestational age, labor induction (yes/no), hospital shift at time of birth, and preexisting health conditions. We estimated multilevel logistic regression models to assess the likelihood of a cesarean delivery
Results: Overall, among women with NTSV births, 26.5% births were cesarean, with a range of 14% to 38.3% across hospitals. In unadjusted models, the between-hospital variance was 0.103 (SE 0.022); adjusting for demographic, socioeconomic and preexisting medical conditions did not reduce any hospital-level variation 0.108 (SE 0.023).
Conclusion: Even after adjusting for both socio-demographic and clinical factors, the chance of a cesarean delivery for NTSV pregnancies varied according to hospital, suggesting the importance of hospital practices and culture in determining a hospital's cesarean rate.
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Misrecognition of need: Women's experiences of and explanations for undergoing cesarean delivery
Kristin Tully & Helen Ball
Social Science & Medicine, May 2013, Pages 103-111
Abstract:
International rates of operative delivery are consistently higher than the World Health Organization determined is appropriate. This suggests that factors other than clinical indications contribute to cesarean section. Data presented here are from interviews with 115 mothers on the postnatal ward of a hospital in Northeast England during February 2006 to March 2009 after the women underwent either unscheduled or scheduled cesarean childbirth. Using thematic content analysis, we found women's accounts of their experiences largely portrayed cesarean section as everything that they had wanted to avoid, but necessary given their situations. Contrary to popular suggestion, the data did not indicate impersonalized medical practice, or that cesareans were being performed ‘on request.' The categorization of cesareans into ‘emergency' and ‘elective' did not reflect maternal experiences. Rather, many unscheduled cesareans were conducted without indications of fetal distress and most scheduled cesareans were not booked because of ‘choice.' The authoritative knowledge that influenced maternal perceptions of the need to undergo operative delivery included moving forward from ‘prolonged' labor and scheduling cesarean as a prophylactic to avoid anticipated psychological or physical harm. In spontaneously defending themselves against stigma from the ‘too posh to push' label that is currently common in the media, women portrayed debate on the appropriateness of cesarean childbirth as a social critique instead of a health issue. The findings suggest the ‘need' for some cesareans is due to misrecognition of indications by all involved. The factors underlying many cesareans may actually be modifiable, but informed choice and healthful outcomes are impeded by lack of awareness regarding the benefits of labor on the fetal transition to extrauterine life, the maternal desire for predictability in their parturition and recovery experiences, and possibly lack of sufficient experience for providers in a variety of vaginal delivery scenarios (non-progressive labor, breech presentation, and/or after previous cesarean).
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David Kindig & Erika Cheng
Health Affairs, March 2013, Pages 451-458
Abstract:
Researchers increasingly track variations in health outcomes across counties in the United States, but current ranking methods do not reflect changes in health outcomes over time. We examined trends in male and female mortality rates from 1992-96 to 2002-06 in 3,140 US counties. We found that female mortality rates increased in 42.8 percent of counties, while male mortality rates increased in only 3.4 percent. Several factors, including higher education levels, not being in the South or West, and low smoking rates, were associated with lower mortality rates. Medical care variables, such as proportions of primary care providers, were not associated with lower rates. These findings suggest that improving health outcomes across the United States will require increased public and private investment in the social and environmental determinants of health - beyond an exclusive focus on access to care or individual health behavior.
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When Is Prevention More Profitable than Cure? The Impact of Time-Varying Consumer Heterogeneity
Michael Kremer & Christopher Snyder
NBER Working Paper, March 2013
Abstract:
We argue that in pharmaceutical markets, variation in the arrival time of consumer heterogeneity creates differences between a producer's ability to extract consumer surplus with preventives and treatments, potentially distorting R&D decisions. If consumers vary only in disease risk, revenue from treatments - sold after the disease is contracted, when disease risk is no longer a source of private information - always exceeds revenue from preventives. The revenue ratio can be arbitrarily high for sufficiently skewed distributions of disease risk. Under some circumstances, heterogeneity in harm from a disease, learned after a disease is contracted, can lead revenue from a treatment to exceed revenue from a preventative. Calibrations suggest that skewness in the U.S. distribution of HIV risk would lead firms to earn only half the revenue from a vaccine as from a drug. Empirical tests are consistent with the predictions of the model that vaccines are less likely to be developed for diseases with substantial disease-risk heterogeneity.
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The Economics of FTC v. Lundbeck: Why Drug Mergers May Not Raise Prices
Gregory Werden
Journal of Competition Law & Economics, March 2013, Pages 89-95
Abstract:
In Federal Trade Commission v. Lundbeck, the courts rejected a challenge to a consummated acquisition that had placed under common control the only two drugs for treating a serious heart condition in newborns. Clinical studies showed that the two drugs were equally effective, and the only alternative, surgery, was not a good substitute. Moreover, prices shot up immediately after the acquisition. Yet the courts ruled that the FTC failed to demonstrate substitutability in response to a price difference between the drugs. This article explains why the much-criticized result and rationale of the case plausibly were correct. Analysis of a bespoke model of competition between therapeutic substitute drugs reveals that: (1) competition plausibly results in monopoly pricing, and if not, (2) competition plausibly results in near-monopoly pricing.
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Proximity to safety-net clinics and HPV vaccine uptake among low-income, ethnic minority girls
Jennifer Tsui et al.
Vaccine, 12 April 2013, Pages 2028-2034
Purpose: Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine uptake remains low. Although publicly funded programs provide free or low cost vaccines to low-income children, barriers aside from cost may prevent disadvantaged girls from getting vaccinated. Prior studies have shown distance to health care as a potential barrier to utilizing pediatric preventive services. This study examines whether HPV vaccines are geographically accessible for low-income girls in Los Angeles County and whether proximity to safety-net clinics is associated with vaccine initiation.
Methods: Interviews were conducted in multiple languages with largely immigrant, low-income mothers of girls ages 9 to 18 via a county health hotline to assess uptake and correlates of uptake. Addresses of respondents and safety-net clinics that provide the HPV vaccine for free or low cost were geo-coded and linked to create measures of geographic proximity. Logistic regression models were estimated for each proximity measure on HPV vaccine initiation while controlling for other factors.
Results: On average, 83% of the 468 girls had at least one clinic within 3-miles of their residence. The average travel time on public transportation to the nearest clinic among all girls was 21 min. Average proximity to clinics differed significantly by race/ethnicity. Latinas had both the shortest travel distances (2.2 miles) and public transportation times (16 min) compared to other racial/ethnic groups. The overall HPV vaccine initiation rate was 25%. Increased proximity to the nearest clinic was not significantly associated with initiation. By contrast, mother's awareness of HPV and daughter's age were significantly associated with increased uptake.
Conclusions: This study is among the first to examine geographic access to HPV vaccines for underserved girls. Although the majority of girls live in close proximity to safety-net vaccination services, rates of initiation were low. Expanding clinic outreach in this urban area is likely more important than increasing geographic access to the vaccine for this population.
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Policy Resistance Undermines Superspreader Vaccination Strategies for Influenza
Chad Wells, Eili Klein & Chris Bauch
PLoS Computational Biology, March 2013
Abstract:
Theoretical models of infection spread on networks predict that targeting vaccination at individuals with a very large number of contacts (superspreaders) can reduce infection incidence by a significant margin. These models generally assume that superspreaders will always agree to be vaccinated. Hence, they cannot capture unintended consequences such as policy resistance, where the behavioral response induced by a new vaccine policy tends to reduce the expected benefits of the policy. Here, we couple a model of influenza transmission on an empirically-based contact network with a psychologically structured model of influenza vaccinating behavior, where individual vaccinating decisions depend on social learning and past experiences of perceived infections, vaccine complications and vaccine failures. We find that policy resistance almost completely undermines the effectiveness of superspreader strategies: the most commonly explored approaches that target a randomly chosen neighbor of an individual, or that preferentially choose neighbors with many contacts, provide at best a relative improvement over their non-targeted counterpart as compared to when behavioral feedbacks are ignored. Increased vaccine coverage in super spreaders is offset by decreased coverage in non-superspreaders, and superspreaders also have a higher rate of perceived vaccine failures on account of being infected more often. Including incentives for vaccination provides modest improvements in outcomes. We conclude that the design of influenza vaccine strategies involving widespread incentive use and/or targeting of superspreaders should account for policy resistance, and mitigate it whenever possible.
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Wellness Incentives In The Workplace: Cost Savings Through Cost Shifting To Unhealthy Workers
Jill Horwitz, Brenna Kelly & John DiNardo
Health Affairs, March 2013, Pages 468-476
Abstract:
The Affordable Care Act encourages workplace wellness programs, chiefly by promoting programs that reward employees for changing health-related behavior or improving measurable health outcomes. Recognizing the risk that unhealthy employees might be punished rather than helped by such programs, the act also forbids health-based discrimination. We reviewed results of randomized controlled trials and identified challenges for workplace wellness programs to function as the act intends. For example, research results raise doubts that employees with health risk factors, such as obesity and tobacco use, spend more on medical care than others. Such groups may not be especially promising targets for financial incentives meant to save costs through health improvement. Although there may be other valid reasons, beyond lowering costs, to institute workplace wellness programs, we found little evidence that such programs can easily save costs through health improvement without being discriminatory. Our evidence suggests that savings to employers may come from cost shifting, with the most vulnerable employees - those from lower socioeconomic strata with the most health risks - probably bearing greater costs that in effect subsidize their healthier colleagues.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Prehistoric
A Revised Timescale for Human Evolution Based on Ancient Mitochondrial Genomes
Qiaomei Fu et al.
Current Biology, forthcoming
Background: Recent analyses of de novo DNA mutations in modern humans have suggested a nuclear substitution rate that is approximately half that of previous estimates based on fossil calibration. This result has led to suggestions that major events in human evolution occurred far earlier than previously thought.
Results: Here, we use mitochondrial genome sequences from ten securely dated ancient modern humans spanning 40,000 years as calibration points for the mitochondrial clock, thus yielding a direct estimate of the mitochondrial substitution rate. Our clock yields mitochondrial divergence times that are in agreement with earlier estimates based on calibration points derived from either fossils or archaeological material. In particular, our results imply a separation of non-Africans from the most closely related sub-Saharan African mitochondrial DNAs (haplogroup L3) that occurred less than 62-95 kya.
Conclusions: Though single loci like mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) can only provide biased estimates of population divergence times, they can provide valid upper bounds. Our results exclude most of the older dates for African and non-African population divergences recently suggested by de novo mutation rate estimates in the nuclear genome.
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Anthony Ortmann & Tristram Kidder
Geoarchaeology, January/February 2013, Pages 66-86
Abstract:
Hunter-gatherer societies are often characterized by limited complexity and social equality. Therefore, the construction of monumental architecture by hunter-gatherers is seen as the manifestation of social and political inequality. The massive size and rapid construction of Mound A at Poverty Point (ca. 3261 cal. yr B.P.) in northeast Louisiana challenges these notions. Geoarchaeological investigations of stratigraphy at the macro- and micro-levels shows there are no erosion events, natural episodes of soil formation, or cultural stages. We infer from these results that Mound A was constructed by a large labor force over a short period of time. There is no evidence, however, that the mound was constructed under the aegis of a ranked socio-political system. We argue instead that the mound was constructed as a ritual feature and that leadership required to mobilize labor and resources was situational and emerged through ritual practice that developed because of the need to integrate a large population.
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Fernando Mendez et al.
American Journal of Human Genetics, March 2013, Pages 454-459
Abstract:
We report the discovery of an African American Y chromosome that carries the ancestral state of all SNPs that defined the basal portion of the Y chromosome phylogenetic tree. We sequenced ∼240 kb of this chromosome to identify private, derived mutations on this lineage, which we named A00. We then estimated the time to the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) for the Y tree as 338 thousand years ago (kya) (95% confidence interval = 237-581 kya). Remarkably, this exceeds current estimates of the mtDNA TMRCA, as well as those of the age of the oldest anatomically modern human fossils. The extremely ancient age combined with the rarity of the A00 lineage, which we also find at very low frequency in central Africa, point to the importance of considering more complex models for the origin of Y chromosome diversity. These models include ancient population structure and the possibility of archaic introgression of Y chromosomes into anatomically modern humans. The A00 lineage was discovered in a large database of consumer samples of African Americans and has not been identified in traditional hunter-gatherer populations from sub-Saharan Africa. This underscores how the stochastic nature of the genealogical process can affect inference from a single locus and warrants caution during the interpretation of the geographic location of divergent branches of the Y chromosome phylogenetic tree for the elucidation of human origins.
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Universal distribution of component frequencies in biological and technological systems
Tin Yau Pang & Sergei Maslov
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Bacterial genomes and large-scale computer software projects both consist of a large number of components (genes or software packages) connected via a network of mutual dependencies. Components can be easily added or removed from individual systems, and their use frequencies vary over many orders of magnitude. We study this frequency distribution in genomes of ∼500 bacterial species and in over 2 million Linux computers and find that in both cases it is described by the same scale-free power-law distribution with an additional peak near the tail of the distribution corresponding to nearly universal components. We argue that the existence of a power law distribution of frequencies of components is a general property of any modular system with a multilayered dependency network. We demonstrate that the frequency of a component is positively correlated with its dependency degree given by the total number of upstream components whose operation directly or indirectly depends on the selected component. The observed frequency/dependency degree distributions are reproduced in a simple mathematically tractable model introduced and analyzed in this study.
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Karin Isler & Carel van Schaik
Current Anthropology, December 2012, Pages S453-S465
Abstract:
The "expensive brain" framework proposes that the costs of an increase in brain size can be met by any combination of increasing the total energy turnover or reducing energy allocation to other expensive functions, such as maintenance (digestion), locomotion, or production (growth and reproduction). Here, we explore its implications for human evolution. Using both comparative data on extant mammals and life-table simulations from wild extant apes, we show that primates with a hominoid lifestyle face a gray ceiling that limits their brain size, with larger values leading to demographic nonviability. We argue that cooperative care provides the most plausible exaptation for the increase in brain size in the Homo lineage.
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Eiluned Pearce, Chris Stringer & R.I.M. Dunbar
Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 7 May 2013
Abstract:
Previous research has identified morphological differences between the brains of Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans (AMHs). However, studies using endocasts or the cranium itself are limited to investigating external surface features and the overall size and shape of the brain. A complementary approach uses comparative primate data to estimate the size of internal brain areas. Previous attempts to do this have generally assumed that identical total brain volumes imply identical internal organization. Here, we argue that, in the case of Neanderthals and AMHs, differences in the size of the body and visual system imply differences in organization between the same-sized brains of these two taxa. We show that Neanderthals had significantly larger visual systems than contemporary AMHs (indexed by orbital volume) and that when this, along with their greater body mass, is taken into account, Neanderthals have significantly smaller adjusted endocranial capacities than contemporary AMHs. We discuss possible implications of differing brain organization in terms of social cognition, and consider these in the context of differing abilities to cope with fluctuating resources and cultural maintenance.
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Stature, Body Mass, and Brain Size: A Two-Million-Year Odyssey
Andrew Gallagher
Economics & Human Biology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Physical size has been critical in the evolutionary success of the genus Homo over the past 2.4 million-years. An acceleration in the expansion of savannah grasslands in Africa from 1.6 Ma - 1.2 Ma witnessed concomitant increases in physical stature (150 cm-170 cm), weight (50 kg-70 kg), and brain size (750 cc's-900 cc's). With the onset of 100,000 year Middle Pleistocene glacial cycles ("ice ages") some 780,000 years ago, large-bodied Homo groups had reached modern size and had successfully dispersed from equatorial Africa, Central, and Southeast Asia to high-latitude localities in Atlantic Europe and North East Asia. While there is support for incursions of multiple Homo lineages to West Asia and Continental Europe at this time, data does not favour a persistence of Homo erectus beyond ∼ 400,000 years ago in Africa, west and Central Asia, and Europe. Novel Middle Pleistocene Homo forms (780,000-400,000 years) may not have been substantially taller (150-170 cm) than earlier Homo (1.6 Ma-800,000 years), yet brain size exceeded 1000 cc's and body mass approached 80 kg in some males. Later Pleistocene Homo (400,000-138,000 years) were ‘massive' in their height (160-190 cm) and mass (70-90 kg) and consistently exceed recent humans. Relative brain size exceeds earlier Homo, yet is substantially lower than in final glacial H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis. A final leap in absolute and relative brain size in Homo (300,000-138,000 years) occurred independent of any observed increase in body mass and implies a different selective mediator to that operating on brain size increases observed in earlier Homo.
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Tree climbing and human evolution
Vivek Venkataraman, Thomas Kraft & Nathaniel Dominy
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 22 January 2013, Pages 1237-1242
Abstract:
Paleoanthropologists have long argued - often contentiously - about the climbing abilities of early hominins and whether a foot adapted to terrestrial bipedalism constrained regular access to trees. However, some modern humans climb tall trees routinely in pursuit of honey, fruit, and game, often without the aid of tools or support systems. Mortality and morbidity associated with facultative arboreality is expected to favor behaviors and anatomies that facilitate safe and efficient climbing. Here we show that Twa hunter-gatherers use extraordinary ankle dorsiflexion (>45°) during climbing, similar to the degree observed in wild chimpanzees. Although we did not detect a skeletal signature of dorsiflexion in museum specimens of climbing hunter-gatherers from the Ituri forest, we did find that climbing by the Twa is associated with longer fibers in the gastrocnemius muscle relative to those of neighboring, nonclimbing agriculturalists. This result suggests that a more excursive calf muscle facilitates climbing with a bipedally adapted ankle and foot by positioning the climber closer to the tree, and it might be among the mechanisms that allow hunter-gatherers to access the canopy safely. Given that we did not find a skeletal correlate for this observed behavior, our results imply that derived aspects of the hominin ankle associated with bipedalism remain compatible with vertical climbing and arboreal resource acquisition. Our findings challenge the persistent arboreal-terrestrial dichotomy that has informed behavioral reconstructions of fossil hominins and highlight the value of using modern humans as models for inferring the limits of hominin arboreality.
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Richard Bribiescas, Peter Ellison & Peter Gray
Current Anthropology, December 2012, Pages S424-S435
Abstract:
The evolution of male life history traits was central to the emergence of the genus Homo. Compared with earlier hominins, changes in the behavioral and physiological mechanics of growth, survivorship, reproductive effort, and senescence all likely contributed to shifts in how males contributed to the evolution of our genus. For example, the range of paternal investment in modern Homo sapiens is unusual compared with most mammals and primates, all but certainly contributing to the evolution of the suite of life history traits that define Homo, including high fertility, large bodies, altricial offspring, large brains, and long lives. Moreover, the extensive range of phenotypic and behavioral variation in somatic and behavioral reflections of male reproductive effort across modern H. sapiens is especially noteworthy. We propose that selection for a broad range of variation in traits reflective of male reproductive effort was important to the evolution of Homo. We examine factors that contribute to this variation, proposing that selection for paternal and somatic investment plasticity across the entire male life span was important for the evolution of Homo. Potential research strategies and directions for new research for exploring these issues in the fossil record are also discussed.
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Genome-Wide Diversity in the Levant Reveals Recent Structuring by Culture
Marc Haber et al.
PLoS Genetics, February 2013
Abstract:
The Levant is a region in the Near East with an impressive record of continuous human existence and major cultural developments since the Paleolithic period. Genetic and archeological studies present solid evidence placing the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula as the first stepping-stone outside Africa. There is, however, little understanding of demographic changes in the Middle East, particularly the Levant, after the first Out-of-Africa expansion and how the Levantine peoples relate genetically to each other and to their neighbors. In this study we analyze more than 500,000 genome-wide SNPs in 1,341 new samples from the Levant and compare them to samples from 48 populations worldwide. Our results show recent genetic stratifications in the Levant are driven by the religious affiliations of the populations within the region. Cultural changes within the last two millennia appear to have facilitated/maintained admixture between culturally similar populations from the Levant, Arabian Peninsula, and Africa. The same cultural changes seem to have resulted in genetic isolation of other groups by limiting admixture with culturally different neighboring populations. Consequently, Levant populations today fall into two main groups: one sharing more genetic characteristics with modern-day Europeans and Central Asians, and the other with closer genetic affinities to other Middle Easterners and Africans. Finally, we identify a putative Levantine ancestral component that diverged from other Middle Easterners ~23,700-15,500 years ago during the last glacial period, and diverged from Europeans ~15,900-9,100 years ago between the last glacial warming and the start of the Neolithic.
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Climatic Fluctuations and the Diffusion of Agriculture
Quamrul Ashraf & Stelios Michalopoulos
NBER Working Paper, February 2013
Abstract:
This research examines variations in the diffusion of agriculture across countries and archaeological sites. The theory suggests that a society's history of climatic shocks shaped the timing of its adoption of farming. Specifically, as long as climatic disturbances did not lead to a collapse of the underlying resource base, the rate at which foragers were climatically propelled to experiment with their habitats determined the accumulation of tacit knowledge complementary to farming. Thus, differences in climatic volatility across hunter-gatherer societies gave rise to the observed spatial variation in the timing of the adoption of agriculture. Consistent with the proposed hypothesis, the empirical investigation demonstrates that, conditional on biogeographic endowments, climatic volatility has a non-monotonic effect on the timing of the adoption of agriculture. Farming diffused earlier across regions characterized by intermediate levels of climatic fluctuations, with those subjected to either too high or too low intertemporal variability transiting later.
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A continuous climatic impact on Holocene human population in the Rocky Mountains
Robert Kelly et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 8 January 2013, Pages 443-447
Abstract:
Ancient cultural changes have often been linked to abrupt climatic events, but the potential that climate can exert a persistent influence on human populations has been debated. Here, independent population, temperature, and moisture history reconstructions from the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming (United States) show a clear quantitative relationship spanning 13 ka, which explains five major periods of population growth/decline and ∼45% of the population variance. A persistent ∼300-y lag in the human demographic response conforms with either slow (∼0.3%) intrinsic annual population growth rates or a lag in the environmental carrying capacity, but in either case, the population continuously adjusted to changing environmental conditions.
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Andrea Bamberg Migliano & Myrtille Guillon
Current Anthropology, December 2012, Pages S359-S368
Abstract:
The increase in body size observed with the appearance and evolution of Homo is most often attributed to thermoregulatory and locomotor adaptations to environment; increased reliance on animal protein and fat; or increased behavioral flexibility, provisioning, and cooperation leading to decreased mortality rates and slow life histories. It is not easy to test these hypotheses in the fossil record. Therefore, understanding selective pressures shaping height variability in living humans might help to construct models for the interpretation of body size variation in the hominins. Among human populations, average male height varies extensively (145 cm-183 cm); a similar range of variation is found in Homo erectus (including African and Georgian samples). Previous research shows that height in human populations covaries with life history traits and variations in mortality rates and that different environments affect adult height through adaptations related to thermoregulation and nutrition. We investigate the interactions between life history traits, mortality rates, environmental setting, and subsistence for 89 small-scale societies. We show that mortality rates are the primary factor shaping adult height variation and that people in savanna are consistently taller than people in forests. We focus on relevant results for interpreting the evolution of Homo body size variability.
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Reconstructing Roma History from Genome-Wide Data
Priya Moorjani et al.
PLoS ONE, March 2013
Abstract:
The Roma people, living throughout Europe and West Asia, are a diverse population linked by the Romani language and culture. Previous linguistic and genetic studies have suggested that the Roma migrated into Europe from South Asia about 1,000-1,500 years ago. Genetic inferences about Roma history have mostly focused on the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA. To explore what additional information can be learned from genome-wide data, we analyzed data from six Roma groups that we genotyped at hundreds of thousands of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). We estimate that the Roma harbor about 80% West Eurasian ancestry-derived from a combination of European and South Asian sources-and that the date of admixture of South Asian and European ancestry was about 850 years before present. We provide evidence for Eastern Europe being a major source of European ancestry, and North-west India being a major source of the South Asian ancestry in the Roma. By computing allele sharing as a measure of linkage disequilibrium, we estimate that the migration of Roma out of the Indian subcontinent was accompanied by a severe founder event, which appears to have been followed by a major demographic expansion after the arrival in Europe.
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Communal breeding promotes a matrilineal social system where husband and wife live apart
Jia-Jia Wu et al.
Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 7 May 2013
Abstract:
The matrilineal Mosuo of southwest China live in large communal houses where brothers and sisters of three generations live together, and adult males walk to visit their wives only at night; hence males do not reside with their own offspring. This duolocal residence with ‘walking' or ‘visiting' marriage is described in only a handful of matrilineal peasant societies. Benefits to women of living with matrilineal kin, who cooperate with child-care, are clear. But why any kinship system can evolve where males invest more in their sister's offspring than their own is a puzzle for evolutionary anthropologists. Here, we present a new hypothesis for a matrilineal bias in male investment. We argue that, when household resources are communal, relatedness to the whole household matters more than relatedness to individual offspring. We use an inclusive fitness model to show that the more sisters (and other closely related females) co-reside, the more effort males should spend working on their sister's farm and less on their wife's farm. The model shows that paternity uncertainty may be a cause of lower overall work rates in males, but it is not likely to be the cause of a matrilineal bias. The bias in work effort towards working on their natal farm, and thus the duolocal residence and ‘visiting marriage' system, can be understood as maximizing inclusive fitness in circumstances where female kin breed communally.
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Genome-wide data substantiate Holocene gene flow from India to Australia
Irina Pugach et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 29 January 2013, Pages 1803-1808
Abstract:
The Australian continent holds some of the earliest archaeological evidence for the expansion of modern humans out of Africa, with initial occupation at least 40,000 y ago. It is commonly assumed that Australia remained largely isolated following initial colonization, but the genetic history of Australians has not been explored in detail to address this issue. Here, we analyze large-scale genotyping data from aboriginal Australians, New Guineans, island Southeast Asians and Indians. We find an ancient association between Australia, New Guinea, and the Mamanwa (a Negrito group from the Philippines), with divergence times for these groups estimated at 36,000 y ago, and supporting the view that these populations represent the descendants of an early "southern route" migration out of Africa, whereas other populations in the region arrived later by a separate dispersal. We also detect a signal indicative of substantial gene flow between the Indian populations and Australia well before European contact, contrary to the prevailing view that there was no contact between Australia and the rest of the world. We estimate this gene flow to have occurred during the Holocene, 4,230 y ago. This is also approximately when changes in tool technology, food processing, and the dingo appear in the Australian archaeological record, suggesting that these may be related to the migration from India.
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The emergence of hierarchical structure in human language
Shigeru Miyagawa, Robert Berwick & Kazuo Okanoya
Frontiers in Psychology, February 2013
Abstract:
We propose a novel account for the emergence of human language syntax. Like many evolutionary innovations, language arose from the adventitious combination of two pre-existing, simpler systems that had been evolved for other functional tasks. The first system, Type E(xpression), is found in birdsong, where the same song marks territory, mating availability, and similar "expressive" functions. The second system, Type L(exical), has been suggestively found in non-human primate calls and in honeybee waggle dances, where it demarcates predicates with one or more "arguments," such as combinations of calls in monkeys or compass headings set to sun position in honeybees. We show that human language syntax is composed of two layers that parallel these two independently evolved systems: an "E" layer resembling the Type E system of birdsong and an "L" layer providing words. The existence of the "E" and "L" layers can be confirmed using standard linguistic methodology. Each layer, E and L, when considered separately, is characterizable as a finite state system, as observed in several non-human species. When the two systems are put together they interact, yielding the unbounded, non-finite state, hierarchical structure that serves as the hallmark of full-fledged human language syntax. In this way, we account for the appearance of a novel function, language, within a conventional Darwinian framework, along with its apparently unique emergence in a single species.
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Transformation of social networks in the late pre-Hispanic US Southwest
Barbara Mills et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
The late pre-Hispanic period in the US Southwest (A.D. 1200-1450) was characterized by large-scale demographic changes, including long-distance migration and population aggregation. To reconstruct how these processes reshaped social networks, we compiled a comprehensive artifact database from major sites dating to this interval in the western Southwest. We combine social network analysis with geographic information systems approaches to reconstruct network dynamics over 250 y. We show how social networks were transformed across the region at previously undocumented spatial, temporal, and social scales. Using well-dated decorated ceramics, we track changes in network topology at 50-y intervals to show a dramatic shift in network density and settlement centrality from the northern to the southern Southwest after A.D. 1300. Both obsidian sourcing and ceramic data demonstrate that long-distance network relationships also shifted from north to south after migration. Surprisingly, social distance does not always correlate with spatial distance because of the presence of network relationships spanning long geographic distances. Our research shows how a large network in the southern Southwest grew and then collapsed, whereas networks became more fragmented in the northern Southwest but persisted. The study also illustrates how formal social network analysis may be applied to large-scale databases of material culture to illustrate multigenerational changes in network structure.
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Ecological constraints on the first prehistoric farmers in Europe
William Banks et al.
Journal of Archaeological Science, June 2013, Pages 2746-2753
Abstract:
The Neolithic Revolution, which witnessed the transformation of hunter-gatherer groups into farming communities, is traditionally viewed as the event that allowed human groups to create systems of production that, in the long run, led to present-day societies. Despite the large corpus of research focused on the mechanisms and outcomes of the Neolithic transition, relatively little effort has been devoted to evaluating whether particular production-oriented adaptations could be integrated into a broad range of ecological conditions, and if specific cultural traditions differed ecologically. In order to investigate whether the differences between the adaptations and geographic distributions of three major Early Neolithic archaeological cultures are related to the exploitation of different suites of environmental conditions, we apply genetic algorithm and maximum entropy ecological niche modeling techniques to reconstruct and compare the ecological niches within which three principal Neolithic cultures (Impressed Ware, Cardial Ware, and Linearbandkeramik) spread across Europe between ca. 8000-7000 cal yr BP. Results show that these cultures occupied mutually exclusive suites of environmental conditions and, thus, were adapted to distinct and essentially non-overlapping ecological niches. We argue that the historical processes behind the Neolithization of Europe were influenced by environmental factors predisposing occupation of regions most suited to specific cultural adaptations.
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Ecosystem variability and early human habitats in eastern Africa
Clayton Magill, Gail Ashley & Katherine Freeman
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 22 January 2013, Pages 1167-1174
Abstract:
The role of savannas during the course of early human evolution has been debated for nearly a century, in part because of difficulties in characterizing local ecosystems from fossil and sediment records. Here, we present high-resolution lipid biomarker and isotopic signatures for organic matter preserved in lake sediments at Olduvai Gorge during a key juncture in human evolution about 2.0 Ma-the emergence and dispersal of Homo erectus (sensu lato). Using published data for modern plants and soils, we construct a framework for ecological interpretations of stable carbon-isotope compositions (expressed as δ13C values) of lipid biomarkers from ancient plants. Within this framework, δ13C values for sedimentary leaf lipids and total organic carbon from Olduvai Gorge indicate recurrent ecosystem variations, where open C4 grasslands abruptly transitioned to closed C3 forests within several hundreds to thousands of years. Carbon-isotopic signatures correlate most strongly with Earth's orbital geometry (precession), and tropical sea-surface temperatures are significant secondary predictors in partial regression analyses. The scale and pace of repeated ecosystem variations at Olduvai Gorge contrast with long-held views of directional or stepwise aridification and grassland expansion in eastern Africa during the early Pleistocene and provide a local perspective on environmental hypotheses of human evolution.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
For extra credit
School Choice: Supporters and Opponents
David Brasington & Diane Hite
Contemporary Economic Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine the attitudes of Ohio homeowners about school choice, which includes open enrollment programs, school vouchers, tuition tax credits, and charter schools. Previous studies examine more limited forms of choice and investigate fewer possible influences. Overall we report at least five new findings and five findings that contradict previous studies. We find the strongest predictors of opposition for school choice are people having graduate degrees and living in high-performing public school districts. We find people living in blue collar areas and using private schools to be the strongest predictors of support. Males tend to oppose choice and African Americans support it. We find no role for income, the convenience of alternative schools, or the protection of house values in support for school choice. Overall we report at least five new findings and five findings that contradict previous studies.
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School Vouchers and Student Outcomes: Experimental Evidence from Washington, DC
Patrick Wolf et al.
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Spring 2013, Pages 246-270
Abstract:
School vouchers are the most contentious form of parental school choice. Vouchers provide government funds that parents can use to send their children to private schools of their choice. Here we examine the empirical question of whether or not a school voucher program in Washington, DC, affected achievement or the rate of high school graduation for participating students. The District of Columbia Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) has operated in the nation's capital since 2004, funded by a federal government appropriation. Because the program was oversubscribed in its early years of operation, and vouchers were awarded by lottery, we were able to use the "gold standard" evaluation method of a randomized experiment to determine what impacts the OSP had on student outcomes. Our analysis revealed compelling evidence that the DC voucher program had a positive impact on high school graduation rates, suggestive evidence that the program increased reading achievement, and no evidence that it affected math achievement. We discuss the implications of these findings in light of recent policy developments including the reauthorization of the OSP and the enactment or expansion of more than a dozen school voucher or voucher-type programs throughout the United States in 2011 and 2012.
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Joshua Cowen et al.
Policy Studies Journal, February 2013, Pages 147-168
Abstract:
In this article we examine educational attainment levels for students in Milwaukee's citywide voucher program and a comparable group of public school students. Using unique data collected as part of a state-mandated evaluation of the program, we consider high school graduation and enrollment in postsecondary institutions for students initially exposed to voucher schools and those in public schools at the same time. We show that exposure to voucher schools was related to graduation and, in particular, to enrollment and persistence in a 4-year college. These differences are apparent despite controls for student neighborhoods, demographics, early-career test scores and - for a subsample of survey respondents - controls for parental education, income, religious behavior, and marital status. We conclude by stressing the implications for future scholarship and policy, including the importance of attainment outcomes in educational research.
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The Effects of HOPE on Post-College Retention in the Georgia Workforce
David Sjoquist & John Winters
Regional Science and Urban Economics, May 2013, Pages 479-490
"Previous researchers have examined the effects of merit scholarship programs including Georgia's HOPE Scholarship on a number of important variables, but the effects on post-college retention have been largely overlooked...Together our two sets of results suggest that HOPE kept many students in-state for college, but the students who attended college in Georgia because of HOPE were less attached to the state and more likely to leave after college. As a result, Georgia's HOPE Scholarship Program did not increase the percentage of the state's college-bound high school students who remain in the state after college."
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Does Sorting Students Improve Scores? An Analysis of Class Composition
Courtney Collins & Li Gan
NBER Working Paper, February 2013
Abstract:
This paper examines schools' decisions to sort students into different classes and how those sorting processes impact student achievement. There are two potential effects that result from schools creating homogeneous classes - a "tracking effect," which allows teachers to direct their focus to a more narrow range of students, and a peer effect, which causes a particular student's achievement to be influenced by the quality of peers in his classroom. In schools with homogeneous sorting, both the tracking effect and the peer effect should benefit high performing students. However, the effects would work in opposite directions for a low achieving student; he would benefit from the tracking effect, but the peer effect should decrease his score. This paper seeks to determine the net effect for low performing students in order to understand the full implications of sorting on all students. We use a unique student-level data set from Dallas Independent School District that links students to their actual classes and reveals the entire distribution of students within a classroom. We find significant variation in sorting practices across schools and use this variation to identify the effect of sorting on student achievement. Implementing a unique instrumental variables approach, we find that sorting homogeneously by previous performance significantly improves students' math and reading scores. This effect is present for students across the score distribution, suggesting that the net effect of sorting is beneficial for both high and low performing students. We also explore the effects of sorting along other dimensions, such as gifted and talented status, special education status, and limited English proficiency.
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Sophia Catsambis & Anthony Buttaro
Social Psychology of Education, December 2012, Pages 483-515
Abstract:
We revisit Harry L. Gracey's perspective of kindergarten as academic boot camp where, at school entry, children acquire the student role through a structured program of activities. We provide further insights into the crucial mechanisms of socialization that occur in U.S. kindergartens by examining the relationship between within-class ability grouping and attributes of children's psycho-social development that are critical for school success. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K) and incorporating stratified propensity scores into multi-level models, our analyses link within-class ability grouping to student behaviors in a manner that supports the concerns raised by ability grouping critics. Children in low ability groups show slower development in approaches to learning than comparable ungrouped children. Children in high ability groups show more accelerated development in all psycho-social attributes considered (approaches to learning, interpersonal skills, self control and externalizing problem behaviors) than comparable ungrouped children. These asymmetrical findings suggest that children placed in high and low ability groups are socialized into different versions of the student role.
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Born at the Wrong Time: Selection Bias in the NHL Draft
Robert Deaner, Aaron Lowen & Stephen Cobley
PLoS ONE, February 2013
Abstract:
Relative age effects (RAEs) occur when those who are relatively older for their age group are more likely to succeed. RAEs occur reliably in some educational and athletic contexts, yet the causal mechanisms remain unclear. Here we provide the first direct test of one mechanism, selection bias, which can be defined as evaluators granting fewer opportunities to relatively younger individuals than is warranted by their latent ability. Because RAEs are well-established in hockey, we analyzed National Hockey League (NHL) drafts from 1980 to 2006. Compared to those born in the first quarter (i.e., January-March), those born in the third and fourth quarters were drafted more than 40 slots later than their productivity warranted, and they were roughly twice as likely to reach career benchmarks, such as 400 games played or 200 points scored. This selection bias in drafting did not decrease over time, apparently continues to occur, and reduces the playing opportunities of relatively younger players. This bias is remarkable because it is exhibited by professional decision makers evaluating adults in a context where RAEs have been widely publicized. Thus, selection bias based on relative age may be pervasive.
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Erin Pahlke, Janet Shibley Hyde & Janet Mertz
Journal of Educational Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Some U.S. school districts are experimenting with single-sex schooling, hoping that it will yield better academic outcomes for students. Empirical research on the effects of single-sex schooling, however, has been equivocal, with various studies finding benefits, disadvantages, or no effect. Most of this research is marred because families generally choose whether the child attends a single-sex or coeducational school, so there are selection effects that create pre-existing differences between students in the different types of schools. The research reported here capitalized on the case of Korea, where students are randomly assigned to single-sex or coeducational schools. Using 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) data, we applied hierarchical linear modeling to account for the nesting of students within schools. Results for eighth graders indicated no differences between students in single-sex and coeducational schools in mathematics and science achievement. Results from the 2003 TIMSS data replicated the finding: students' mathematics and science achievement was unrelated to the gender composition of their school. These results call into question whether single-sex schooling has the academic advantages claimed by its proponents.
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The Impact of Chicago's Small High School Initiative
Lisa Barrow, Amy Claessens & Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach
NBER Working Paper, March 2013
Abstract:
This project examines the effects of the introduction of new small high schools on student performance in the Chicago Public School (CPS) district. Specifically, we investigate whether students attending small high schools have better graduation/enrollment rates and achievement than similar students who attend regular CPS high schools. We show that students who choose to attend a small school are more disadvantaged on average. To address the selection problem, we use an instrumental variables strategy and compare students who live in the same neighborhoods but differ in their residential proximity to a small school. In this approach, one student is more likely to sign up for a small school than another statistically identical student because the small school is located closer to the student's house and therefore the "cost" of attending the school is lower. We find that small schools students are substantially more likely to persist in school and eventually graduate. Nonetheless, there is no positive impact on student achievement as measured by test scores. The finding of no test score improvement but a strong improvement in school attainment is consistent with a growing literature suggesting that interventions aimed at older children are more effective at improving their non-cognitive skills than their cognitive skills.
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Valuing school quality using boundary discontinuities
Stephen Gibbons, Stephen Machin & Olmo Silva
Journal of Urban Economics, May 2013, Pages 15-28
Abstract:
Existing research shows that house prices respond to local school quality as measured by average test scores. However, higher test scores could signal higher academic value-added or higher ability, more sought-after intakes. In our research, we show that both school value-added and student prior achievement - linked to the background of children in schools - affect households' demand for education. In order to identify these effects, we improve the boundary discontinuity regression methodology by matching identical properties across admissions authority boundaries; by allowing for boundary effects and spatial trends; by re-weighting our data towards transactions that are closest to district boundaries; by eliminating boundaries that coincide with major geographical features; and by submitting our estimates to a number of novel falsification tests. Our results survive this battery of tests and show that a one-standard deviation change in either school average value-added or prior achievement raises prices by around 3%.
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Effects of Sesame Street: A meta-analysis of children's learning in 15 countries
Marie-Louise Mares & Zhongdang Pan
Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Sesame Street is broadcast to millions of children globally, including in some of the world's poorest regions. This meta-analysis examines the effects of children's exposure to international co-productions of Sesame Street, synthesizing the results of 24 studies, conducted with over 10,000 children in 15 countries. The results indicated significant positive effects of exposure to the program, aggregated across learning outcomes, and within each of the three outcome categories: cognitive outcomes, including literacy and numeracy; learning about the world, including health and safety knowledge; social reasoning and attitudes toward out-groups. The effects were significant across different methods, and they were observed in both low- and middle-income countries and also in high-income countries. The results are contextualized by considering the effects and reach of the program, relative to other early childhood interventions.
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School markets: The impact of information approximating schools' effectiveness
Alejandra Mizala & Miguel Urquiola
Journal of Development Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The impact of competition on academic outcomes is likely to depend on whether parents are informed about schools' effectiveness or value added (which may or may not be correlated with absolute measures of their quality), and on whether this information influences their school choices, thereby affecting schools' market outcomes. To explore these issues, this paper considers Chile's SNED program, which seeks to identify effective schools, selecting them from within "homogeneous groups" of arguably comparable institutions. Its results are widely disseminated, and the information it generates is quite different from that conveyed by a simple test-based ranking of schools (which in Chile, turns out to largely resemble a ranking based on socioeconomic status). We rely on a sharp regression discontinuity to estimate the effect that being identified as a SNED winner has on schools' enrollment, tuition levels, and socioeconomic composition. Through five applications of the program, we find no consistent evidence that winning a SNED award affects these outcomes.
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Rebecca Jacobsen, Andrew Saultz & Jeffrey Snyder
Educational Policy, March/April 2013, Pages 360-389
Abstract:
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requires that two accountability strategies - raising standards and public pressure through publicizing performance data - be implemented simultaneously. However, when coupled, they may produce an inappropriate consequence for public opinion. The public may misunderstand the drop in achievement that occurs when the bar is raised and become dissatisfied with school performance. To examine this potential negative consequence, the authors analyze data from New York City. The authors find parent satisfaction declined when school performance grades dropped after the implementation of higher standards. This article contributes to our understanding of how the public responds to school accountability data. Because public support for sustained and successful reforms is key, understanding how accountability policies may erode support is critical.
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Early Teacher Expectations Disproportionately Affect Poor Children's High School Performance
Nicole Sorhagen
Journal of Educational Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This research used prospective longitudinal data to examine the associations between first-grade teachers' over- and underestimation of their students' math abilities, basic reading abilities, and language skills and the students' high school academic performance, with special attention to the subject area and moderating effects of student demographic characteristics. Teachers' inaccurate expectations in first grade predicted students' math, reading comprehension, vocabulary knowledge, and verbal reasoning standardized test scores at age 15. Significant interactions between students' family income and teachers' misperceptions of students' math and language skills were found, such that teachers' over- and underestimation of abilities had a stronger impact on students from lower income families than on students from more affluent homes. In contrast, the effects of teachers' misperceptions of students' basic reading abilities on performance at age 15 did not differ by income. These results have implications for understanding the complexities of self-fulfilling prophecies and for understanding the achievement gap between students from disadvantaged and advantaged homes.
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RaeHyuck Lee et al.
Developmental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (n ≈ 6,950), a nationally representative sample of children born in 2001, we examined school readiness (academic skills and socioemotional well-being) at kindergarten entry for children who attended Head Start compared with those who experienced other types of child care (prekindergarten, other center-based care, other nonparental care, or parental care). Using propensity score matching methods and ordinary least squares regressions with rich controls, we found that Head Start participants had higher early reading and math scores than children in other nonparental care or parental care but also higher levels of conduct problems than those in parental care. Head Start participants had lower early reading scores compared with children in prekindergarten and had no differences in any outcomes compared with children in other center-based care. Head Start benefits were more pronounced for children who had low initial cognitive ability or parents with low levels of education or who attended Head Start for more than 20 hr per week.
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Child-Care Subsidies and School Readiness in Kindergarten
Anna Johnson, Anne Martin & Jeanne Brooks-Gunn
Child Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
The federal child-care subsidy program represents one of the government's largest investments in early care and education. Using data from the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort, this study examines associations, among subsidy-eligible families, between child-care subsidy receipt when children are 4 years old and a range of school readiness outcomes in kindergarten (sample n ≈ 1,400). Findings suggest that subsidy receipt in preschool is not directly linked to subsequent reading or social-emotional skills. However, subsidy receipt predicted lower math scores among children attending community-based centers. Supplementary analyses revealed that subsidies predicted greater use of center care, but this association did not appear to affect school readiness.
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Lei Zhang
Education Economics, Spring 2013, Pages 154-175
Abstract:
This paper examines how college educational debt affects various post-baccalaureate decisions of bachelor's degree recipients. I employ the Baccalaureate and Beyond 93/97 survey data. Using college-aid policies as instrumental variables to correct for the endogeneity of student college debt level, I find that for public college graduates, college debt has a negative and significant effect on graduate school attendance. This negative effect is concentrated on more costly programs associated with doctoral, MBA, and first professional (FP) degrees, and debt has no effect on the choice of a master's program. For private college students, debt does not have an effect on the overall graduate school attendance, but this absence of effect conceals the differential effects of debt on different graduate programs - debt has a positive and significant effect on the choice of an MBA or an FP program, and a zero effect on other programs. For both public and private college students, debt has no effects on early career choices such as salary, sector of occupation, marital status, and homeownership.
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Thijs Bol & Herman van de Werfhorst
Comparative Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Educational systems with a high level of tracking and vocational orientation have been shown to improve the allocation of school-leavers in the labor market. However, tracked educational systems are also known to increase inequality of educational opportunity. This presumed trade-off between equality and labor market preparation is clearly rooted in two different perspectives on the origin of differentiation in educational systems, dating back to the nineteenth century. Tracking was seen both as a way to prepare students for an industrializing labor market and as a way for the elite to formalize social distances in the educational system. We empirically study the trade-off with newly developed country-level indicators for tracking and vocational orientation. Our country-level regressions largely support the existence of the trade-off between labor market allocation and equality of opportunity.
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Evaluating Urban Public Schools: Parents, Teachers, and State Assessments
Nathan Favero & Kenneth Meier
Public Administration Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Among the most contentious questions in public administration is how the performance of public organizations should be evaluated, and nowhere is this issue more salient than in urban public schools. While significant attention has been devoted to studying administrative measures of public organizations, the views of citizens concerning performance have been widely criticized and are not frequently gathered by schools. How these assessments relate to each other is central to many questions in education policy (e.g., choice, equity) and has important implications for democracy, bureaucratic professionalism, and public performance. This debate can be viewed as focusing on the distinction between convergent validity and discriminant validity. Using data from New York City's public school system with a cross-sectional time-series approach, parent and teacher evaluations are compared to government records of schools' characteristics and performance. The findings suggest that parents and teachers are able to conduct intelligent, meaningful evaluations of school quality.
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Gregory Arief Liem et al.
American Educational Research Journal, April 2013, Pages 326-370
Abstract:
The big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE) was evaluated with 4,461 seventh to ninth graders in Singapore where a national policy of ability streaming is implemented. Consistent with the BFLPE, when prior achievement was controlled, students in the high-ability stream had lower English and mathematics self-concepts (ESCs and MSCs) and those in the lower-ability stream had higher ESCs and MSCs. Consistent with the local-dominance effect, the effect of stream-average achievement on ESCs and MSCs was more negative than - and completely subsumed - the negative effect of school-average achievement. However, stream-average achievement was stronger than, or as strong as, the more local class-average achievement. Taken together, findings highlight the potential interplay of a local dominance effect with variability and/or salience of target comparisons in academic self-concept formations.
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Amanda Sullivan & Samuel Field
Journal of School Psychology, April 2013, Pages 243-260
Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to examine the average treatment effect of preschool special education services on children's kindergarten academic skills. Using data from a nationally representative sample of United States children who participated in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort, we examined the effectiveness of preschool special education services by comparing reading and math outcomes for children who received special education services at preschool-age to a propensity-score-weighted sample of children who did not receive these services. Results indicated that the receipt of these special education services had a statistically significant moderate negative effect on children's kindergarten skills in both reading (d = - 0.21) and mathematics (d = - 0.29). These findings have implications for the implementation and evaluation of services for young children experiencing developmental delays or disabilities.
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Quizzing in Middle-School Science: Successful Transfer Performance on Classroom Exams
Mark McDaniel et al.
Applied Cognitive Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examined whether learning from quizzing arises from memorization of answers or fosters more complete understanding of the quizzed content. In middle-school science classes, we spaced three multiple-choice quizzes on content in a unit. In Experiment 1, the class exams included questions given on quizzes, transfer questions targeting the same content, and content that had not been quizzed (control content). The quizzing procedure was associated with significant learning benefits with large effect sizes and similar effect sizes for both transfer items and identical items. In Experiment 2, quiz questions focused on definitional information or application of the principle. Application questions increased exam performance for definitional-type questions and for different application questions. Definition questions did not confer benefits for application questions. Test-enhanced learning, in addition to other factors in the present quizzing protocol (repeated, spaced presentation of the content), may create deeper understanding that leads to certain types of transfer.
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Nadine Perkinson-Gloor, Sakari Lemola & Alexander Grob
Journal of Adolescence, April 2013, Pages 311-318
Abstract:
Sleep timing undergoes profound changes during adolescence, often resulting in inadequate sleep duration. The present study examines the relationship of sleep duration with positive attitude toward life and academic achievement in a sample of 2716 adolescents in Switzerland (mean age: 15.4 years, SD = 0.8), and whether this relationship is mediated by increased daytime tiredness and lower self-discipline/behavioral persistence. Further, we address the question whether adolescents who start school modestly later (20 min; n = 343) receive more sleep and report better functioning. Sleeping less than an average of 8 h per night was related to more tiredness, inferior behavioral persistence, less positive attitude toward life, and lower school grades, as compared to longer sleep duration. Daytime tiredness and behavioral persistence mediated the relationship between short sleep duration and positive attitude toward life and school grades. Students who started school 20 min later received reliably more sleep and reported less tiredness.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
How the better half lives
Kristin Laurin, David Kille & Richard Eibach
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We often become evangelists for our own lifestyles. When it comes to our relational status, we are rarely content to simply say "being single works for me" or "being in a relationship suits my disposition." Four studies suggest that this tendency to view one's own relational status as the universal ideal emerges in part from a desire to rationalize one's own relational status. Building on existing evidence that people are motivated to rationalize circumstances they perceive as likely to persist, we predict that participants' perceptions of the stability of their own relational status lead them to rationalize that status. Studies 1 and 2 present evidence on the association between perceptions of stability and idealizations, and rule out an alternative explanation. Studies 3 and 4 offer experimental evidence of the effect of stability on people's judgments of same- and different-status others, in contexts where relational status should carry little objective weight.
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Erin Horn et al.
Journal of Family Psychology, February 2013, Pages 30-41
Abstract:
Married adults show better psychological adjustment and physical health than their separated/divorced or never-married counterparts. However, this apparent "marriage benefit" may be due to social selection, social causation, or both processes. Genetically informed research designs offer critical advantages for helping to disentangle selection from causation by controlling for measured and unmeasured genetic and shared environmental selection. Using young-adult twin and sibling pairs from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Harris, 2009), we conducted genetically informed analyses of the association between entry into marriage, cohabitation, or singlehood and multiple indices of psychological and physical health. The relation between physical health and marriage was completely explained by nonrandom selection. For internalizing behaviors, selection did not fully explain the benefits of marriage or cohabitation relative to being single, whereas for externalizing symptoms, marriage predicted benefits over cohabitation. The genetically informed approach provides perhaps the strongest nonexperimental evidence that these observed effects are causal.
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Schemas of Marital Change: From Arranged Marriages to Eloping for Love
Keera Allendorf
Journal of Marriage and Family, April 2013, Pages 453-469
Abstract:
In recent decades, arranged marriages have become less common in many parts of Asia. This paper explores people's schemas surrounding just such a marital change in one Indian village using semi-structured interviews (N = 30) and ethnographic fieldwork. Respondents categorize marriages into two main types: arranged marriages and elopements, also called love marriages. Arranged marriages were common in the past, while elopements are now dominant. Both types of marriages have characteristics that are perceived positively and the ideal marriage is a hybrid of the two. Respondents ascribe the rise of love marriages to educational expansion, technological change, and foreign influence. Many also see it as an inevitable part of a larger process of socioeconomic change. These schemas are strongly shaped by global influences, but also reflect multiple layers of local beliefs and cultures. The schemas also demonstrate a complex integration of both structural and ideational factors in accounting for marital change.
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Marital Satisfaction Predicts Weight Gain in Early Marriage
Andrea Meltzer et al.
Health Psychology, forthcoming
Objective: Prior research makes competing predictions regarding whether marital satisfaction is positively or negatively associated with weight gain. The health regulation model suggests that satisfying relationships facilitate the functions of marriage that promote health. Thus, spouses should be most likely to gain weight when either partner is less satisfied because marital strain causes stress that interferes with self-regulatory behaviors. The mating market model, in contrast, suggests that weight maintenance is motivated primarily by the desire to attract a mate. Thus, spouses should be least likely to gain weight when either partner is less satisfied because they should feel an increased need to attract a new mate. This longitudinal study of 169 newlywed couples evaluated each possibility.
Methods: Spouses completed measures of height, weight, marital satisfaction, stress, steps toward divorce, and several covariates biannually for 4 years.
Results: Supporting the mating market model, own and partner satisfaction were positively associated with changes in weight, and this association was mediated by steps toward divorce: Spouses who were less satisfied than usual or had partners who were less satisfied than usual were more likely to consider divorce and thus less likely to gain weight.
Conclusions: These findings challenge the idea that quality relationships always benefit health, suggesting instead that spouses in satisfying relationships relax their efforts to maintain their weight because they are no longer motivated to attract a mate. Interventions to prevent weight gain in early marriage may therefore benefit from encouraging spouses to think about their weight in terms of health rather than appearance.
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Hui Zheng & Patricia Thomas
Journal of Health and Social Behavior, March 2013, Pages 128-143
Abstract:
This study challenges two well-established associations in medical sociology: the beneficial effect of marriage on health and the predictive power of self-rated health on mortality. Using The National Health Interview Survey 1986-2004 with 1986-2006 mortality follow-up (789,096 respondents with 24,095 deaths) and Cox Proportional Hazards Models, we find the protective effect of marriage against mortality decreases with deteriorating health so that the married and unmarried in poor health are at similar risk for death. We also find the power of self-rated health to predict mortality is higher for the married than for any unmarried group. By using ordered logistic regression models, we find thresholds shift such that, compared to the unmarried, the married may not report poorer health until developing more severe health problems. These findings suggest the married tend to overestimate their health status. These two phenomena (diminishing protection and overestimation) contribute to but do not completely explain each other.
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Attitudes Toward Divorce, Commitment, and Divorce Proneness in First Marriages and Remarriages
Sarah Whitton et al.
Journal of Marriage and Family, April 2013, Pages 276-287
Abstract:
A random multistate sample of married individuals (N = 1,931) was used to explore whether more positive attitudes toward divorce and weaker commitment to marriage may contribute to the greater instability of remarriages than first marriages. Remarried adults, whether or not they brought children from a previous union into the remarriage, reported marital quality (happiness and conflict) equal to those in first marriages. They also reported more positive attitudes toward divorce, which were associated with higher divorce proneness (i.e., thinking about and taking actions toward divorce). Marriage type interacted with marital quality to predict divorce proneness, such that the association between low marital quality and divorce proneness was stronger for remarried individuals than for those in first marriages. This suggests that remarried adults may be more likely than adults in first marriages to take steps toward divorce when experiencing marital distress, possibly reflecting a weaker commitment to marriage.
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Oral sex as mate retention behavior
Michael Pham & Todd Shackelford
Personality and Individual Differences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Men perform "mate retention" behaviors to reduce the likelihood of their partner's infidelity. One mate retention strategy men use is to increase their partner's relationship satisfaction by provisioning her with benefits. We recruited 351 men to investigate whether men perform oral sex on their partner as part of a broader benefit-provisioning mate retention strategy. In support of the predictions, men who reported performing more mate retention behaviors, in general, and more benefit-provisioning mate retention behaviors, in particular, also reported greater interest in and spent more time performing oral sex on their partner. We present limitations of the research and discuss the benefits of an evolutionary perspective for investigating oral sex as a mate retention behavior.
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Morten Frisch & Jacob Simonsen
International Journal of Epidemiology, forthcoming
Background: Living arrangements have changed markedly in recent decades, so we wanted to provide an up-to-date assessment of mortality as a function of marital status and cohabitation status in a complete population.
Methods: We studied mortality in a national cohort of 6.5 million Danes followed for 122.5 million person-years during 1982-2011, using continuously updated individual-level information on living arrangements, socio-demographic covariates and causes of deaths. Hazard ratios (HRs) estimated relative mortality in categories of marital status, cohabitation status and combinations thereof.
Results: HRs for overall mortality changed markedly over time, most notably for persons in same-sex marriage. In 2000-2011, opposite-sex married persons (reference, HR = 1) had consistently lower mortality than persons in other marital status categories in women (HRs 1.37-1.89) and men (HRs 1.37-1.66). Mortality was particularly high for same-sex married women (HR = 1.89), notably from suicide (HR = 6.40) and cancer (HR = 1.62), whereas rates for same-sex married men (HR = 1.38) were equal to or lower than those for unmarried, divorced and widowed men. Prior marriages (whether opposite-sex or same-sex) were associated with increased mortality in both women and men (HR = 1.16-1.45 per additional prior marriage).
Conclusion: Our study provides a detailed account of living arrangements and their associations with mortality over three decades, thus yielding accurate and statistically powerful analyses of public health relevance to countries with marriage and cohabitation patterns comparable to Denmark's. Of note, mortality among same-sex married men has declined markedly since the mid-1990s and is now at or below that of unmarried, divorced and widowed men, whereas same-sex married women emerge as the group of women with highest and, in recent years, even further increasing mortality.
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Ximena Arriaga et al.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Partner aggression negatively affects well-being in ways that the people experiencing aggression may not expect. Individuals (n = 171) who reported aggression by their current partner completed a longitudinal study. At the start of the study, participants rated their current happiness and how happy they expected to feel if their relationship were to end. The data revealed a partner aggression-unhappiness link and evidence of misforecasting future happiness: Committed individuals overestimated their unhappiness after a breakup because they expected worse things from a breakup than actually materialized, and people who experienced high partner aggression overestimated their unhappiness because they became more happy without the partner than they had expected. Forecasting unhappiness after a breakup predicted staying in an aggressive relationship. In aggressive relationships, bias occurs not only in forecasting future happiness but also in misreading how badly one feels now.
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Marriage, Marital History, and Black-White Wealth Differentials Among Older Women
Fenaba Addo & Daniel Lichter
Journal of Marriage and Family, April 2013, Pages 342-362
Abstract:
This study investigated the impact of union history and marital transitions on wealth inequality between older Black and White women (N = 7,026). Cohort data from the Health and Retirement Study show large and increasing Black-White differences in wealth. Marital and relationship histories are associated with the wealth accumulation process among older women. Women who married and stay married accumulated levels of wealth that exceeded those of other women with disrupted family lives. The marriage-wealth nexus is sensitive to a woman's position in the wealth distribution. Quantile regression results revealed that racial differences in total wealth holdings between Black and White women exist throughout the wealth distribution, whereas the relationship between current union history and wealth differentials is significant at the lower tail and middle of the distribution. Decomposition analyses highlighted the nontrivial role of racial disparities in marital histories in accounting for the racial wealth gap. As members of the baby boom generation enter their retirement years, it will be more important than ever to monitor the wealth accumulation process among older single and racial/ethnic minority women.
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Explaining Racial/Ethnic Variation in Partnered Women's and Men's Housework: Does One Size Fit All?
Vanessa Wight, Suzanne Bianchi & Bijou Hunt
Journal of Family Issues, March 2013, Pages 394-427
Abstract:
Using a national sample of 12,424 partnered women and 10,721 partnered men from the 2003-2006 American Time Use Survey, this article examines racial/ethnic variation in women's and men's housework time and its covariates. The ratio of women's to men's housework hours is greatest for Hispanics and Asians and smallest for Whites and Blacks. White and Hispanic women's housework hours are associated with household composition and employment suggesting that the time availability perspective is a good predictor for these women, but may have less explanatory power for other race/ethnic groups of women. Relative resources also have explanatory power for White women's housework time but are weak predictors for women of Other race/ethnicities. Time availability and relative resource measures show some association with White men's housework time but are generally poor predictors among other race/ethnic groups of men, suggesting that traditional models of housework allocation do not "fit" all groups equally.
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Xiaomeng Xu et al.
Neuroscience Letters, 20 September 2012, Pages 33-38
Abstract:
Early-stage romantic love is associated with activation in reward and motivation systems of the brain. Can these localized activations, or others, predict long-term relationship stability? We contacted participants from a previous fMRI study of early-stage love by Xu et al. after 40 months from initial assessments. We compared brain activation during the initial assessment at early-stage love for those who were still together at 40 months and those who were apart, and surveyed those still together about their relationship happiness and commitment at 40 months. Six participants who were still with their partners at 40 months (compared to six who had broken up) showed less activation during early-stage love in the medial orbitofrontal cortex, right subcallosal cingulate and right accumbens, regions implicated in long-term love and relationship satisfaction. These regions of deactivation at the early stage of love were also negatively correlated with relationship happiness scores collected at 40 months. Other areas involved were the caudate tail, and temporal and parietal lobes. These data are preliminary evidence that neural responses in the early stages of romantic love can predict relationship stability and quality up to 40 months later in the relationship. The brain regions involved suggest that forebrain reward functions may be predictive for relationship stability, as well as regions involved in social evaluation, emotional regulation, and mood.
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Personality Similarity and Life Satisfaction in Couples
Katrin Furler, Veronica Gomez & Alexander Grob
Journal of Research in Personality, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present study examined the association between personality similarity and life satisfaction in a large, nationally representative sample of 1608 romantic couples. Similarity effects were computed for the Big Five personality traits as well as for personality profiles with global and differentiated indices of similarity. Results showed substantial actor and partner effects, indicating that both partners' personality traits were related to both partners' life satisfaction. Personality similarity, however, was not related to either partner's life satisfaction. We emphasize the importance of thoroughly controlling for each partner's personality and for applying appropriate analytical methods for dyadic data when assessing the effect of personality similarity in couples.
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Sarah Halpern-Meekin & Laura Tach
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
The symbolism of rituals creates a shared understanding of events among group members. In the context of romantic relationships, a shared understanding of relationship status transitions may be associated with greater commitment and higher quality relationships. We argue that couples with differing retrospective accounts of their premarital courtship may indicate that they did not have clear discussions or rituals marking relationship turning points. We test the association between discordance in couples' reports of premarital courtship stages and marital quality using data from married couples in a national online survey (n = 1,504). We find that couple discordance is common, particularly among former premarital cohabitors and for the less institutionalized relationship stages of dating and stayovers, and is associated with lower marital quality. Implications for relationship measurement and the meaning of couple discordance are discussed.
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I've Got You Under My Skin: Marital Biography and Biological Risk
Michael McFarland, Mark Hayward & Dustin Brown
Journal of Marriage and Family, April 2013, Pages 363-380
Abstract:
Social relationships shape adult health in profound ways. This study informs our understanding of this association by investigating how the transitions, timing, and exposures to marriage are associated with types of biological risk presumed to serve as pathways to disease and disability. Drawing on the 2005-2006 National Social Health and Aging Project (N = 1,062), the authors evaluated how marital biography was associated with cardiovascular, metabolic, and chronic inflammation risk. The results showed that the effects of marital biography were highly sensitive to gender, the dimension of marital biography, and type of biological risk. For example, marital exposure was protective of cardiovascular risk for women, but not men, whereas an earlier age at first marriage had a pernicious effect on chronic inflammation among men, but not women. Health behaviors did not explain these associations. The implications of these findings are discussed as they pertain to under-the-skin risk processes and chronic morbidity.
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Howard Markman et al.
Journal of Family Psychology, February 2013, Pages 165-172
Abstract:
This study examined the effects of premarital relationship intervention on divorce during the first 8 years of first marriage. Religious organizations were randomly assigned to have couples marrying through them complete the Prevention and Relationship Education Program (PREP) or their naturally occurring premarital services. Results indicated no differences in overall divorce rates between naturally occurring services (n = 44), PREP delivered by clergy at religious organizations (n = 66), or PREP delivered by professionals at a university (n = 83). Three moderators were also tested. Measured premaritally and before intervention, the level of negativity of couples' interactions moderated effects. Specifically, couples observed to have higher levels of negative communication in a video task were more likely to divorce if they received PREP than if they received naturally occurring services; couples with lower levels of premarital negative communication were more likely to remain married if they received PREP. A history of physical aggression in the current relationship before marriage and before intervention showed a similar pattern as a moderator, but the effect was only marginally significant. Family-of-origin background (parental divorce and/or aggression) was not a significant moderator of prevention effects across the two kinds of services. Implications for defining risk, considering divorce as a positive versus negative outcome, the practice of premarital relationship education, and social policy are discussed.
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Concealing negative evaluations of a romantic partner's physical attractiveness
Edward Lemay et al.
Personal Relationships, forthcoming
Abstract:
Two studies provided evidence that people hide their negative evaluations of their romantic partner's physical attractiveness. This pattern was found using self-reports of concealment (Study 1) and a behavioral observation measure (Study 2). Participants who engaged in this deception also exhibited elevated speech disfluencies, which is a deception cue. Moderators of concealment were examined. Concealment was especially pronounced for participants high in care for the partner's welfare (Studies 1 and 2), low in commitment (Studies 1 and 2), and high in attractiveness ideals (Study 2). Results suggest that people use deception to regulate their romantic partner's feelings, but that long-term orientation or desire to maintain closeness may curtail use of this strategy.
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Machiavellianism and Dating: Deception and Intimacy
Matthew Dussault, Mahzad Hojjat & Thomas Boone
Social Behavior and Personality, Spring 2013, Pages 283-294
Abstract:
We explored the relationship between Machiavellian personality, mate attraction strategies, and intimacy. Participants filled out the Mach IV and self-report questionnaires about the use of deceptive tactics in attracting potential dating partners, level of intimacy, and previous dating history. Higher scores on Machiavellianism were associated with greater likelihood of using deceptive tactics and lower levels of relationship intimacy. However, for women the relationship between Machiavellianism and deceptive strategies was moderated by the history of intimate behaviors. Implications and future directions are discussed.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Offending
Effects of Welfare Reform on Women's Crime
Hope Corman, Dhaval Dave & Nancy Reichman
NBER Working Paper, March 2013
Abstract:
We investigate the effects of broad-based work incentives on female crime by exploiting the welfare reform legislation of the 1990s, which dramatically increased employment among women at risk for relying on cash assistance. We find that welfare reform decreased female property crime arrests by 4-5%, but did not affect other types of crimes. The effects appear to be stronger in states with lower welfare benefits and higher earnings disregards, and in states with larger caseload declines. The findings point to broad-based work incentives - and, by inference, employment - as a key determinant of female property crime.
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Broadband Internet: An Information Superhighway to Sex Crime?
Manudeep Bhuller et al.
Review of Economic Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
Does internet use trigger sex crime? We use unique Norwegian data on crime and internet adoption to shed light on this question. A public program with limited funding rolled out broadband access points in 2000-2008, and provides plausibly exogenous variation in internet use. Our instrumental variables estimates show that internet use is associated with a substantial increase in both reports, charges and convictions of rape and other sex crimes. We present a conceptual framework that highlights three mechanisms for how internet use may affect reported sex crime, namely a reporting effect, a matching effect on potential offenders and victims, and a direct effect on sex crime propensity. To investigate the importance of these mechanisms, we use data on individual reporting behavior, police investigations, and criminal charges and convictions. None of the analyses we perform suggest that the positive relationship between internet use and sex crime is driven by changes in reporting behavior. Our findings suggest that the direct effect on sex crime propensity is positive and non-negligible, possibly as a result of increased consumption of pornography.
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Economic Liberalization and Violent Crime
Kislaya Prasad
Journal of Law and Economics, November 2012, Pages 925-948
Abstract:
I study the effect of economic liberalization on violent crime. The particular emphasis is on the case of India, where, in the years following 1991, there was a virtual dismantling of controls on entry and production in registered manufacturing. This was accompanied by a significant reduction in impediments to foreign trade and access to foreign exchange. Economic controls create an incentive for illegal trade, and a frequent by-product of illegal trade is violent crime. Consequently, violent crimes such as murders would be expected to decline following market-based reforms. Analysis of aggregate all-India data, as well as data at the state level, suggests that economic reforms did indeed lead to a reduction in violent crime. I extend the analysis to a panel of countries and find strong evidence that greater trade openness is negatively related to violent crime.
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First do no harm: A look at correctional policies and programs today
Doris Layton MacKenzie
Journal of Experimental Criminology, March 2013, Pages 1-17
Objectives: This paper reviews the historical changes in correctional policies and the impact these changes have had on the operations of corrections and correctional programs. Social changes and theoretical perspectives moved corrections away from a focus on rehabilitation to programs characterized by deterrence, incapacitation, and control. Similarly, theoretical criminology encouraged corrections to move away from rehabilitation towards programs designed to provide social opportunities such as employment and housing for offenders. This paper examines whether these changes in policies and programs have been effective in reducing recidivism. The question is: What works in corrections?
Methods: This paper reviews the research examining the impact of correctional policies and programs on the later criminal activities of offenders and delinquents. Research using systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and the Maryland method scores is used to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of various types of programs, management strategies, and policies.
Results: Research demonstrates programs based on deterrence, incapacitation and increased control do not reduce the future criminal activities of offenders and delinquents. Nor have programs targeting social opportunities such as employment and housing been effective in reducing recidivism. The most effective programs target individual-level change in thinking and information processing.
Conclusions: In the search for ways to sanction offenders, U.S. correctional policies and programs using control, deterrence, and incapacitation have harmed individuals and communities. Such programs have not been effective in reducing recidivism. While programs that provide social opportunities for offenders do not necessarily harm offenders neither do they decrease later criminal activities. Effective programs bring about a cognitive transformation in offenders and delinquents. Theorists have begun to develop hypotheses about how and why these transformations are effective. The current emphasis on evidence-based programs, the research evidence on what is effective and the need to reduce the cost of corrections suggest we are on the brink of another paradigm change. Where this will take us is still unclear, but the paradigm will have to address the current problems facing the U.S. correctional systems.
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Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera
Politics & Policy, February 2013, Pages 65-82
Abstract:
This article analyzes the effects of Mexico's drug war on security, migration, and the economy on the eastern U.S.-Mexico border between the state of Texas and the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. Both sides of the border are analyzed and compared simultaneously. The article shows that the extreme violence that Mexico is suffering has benefited U.S. border towns while having a negative impact on Tamaulipas. The positive effects of Mexico's violent spiral on U.S. border security and the U.S. border economy are evident, notwithstanding American public discourse and the reporting of U.S. media alleging the opposite.
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Race and Crime in Sports Media: Content Analysis on the Michael Vick and Ben Roethlisberger Cases
Dan Coogan
Journal of Sports Media, Fall 2012, Pages 129-151
Abstract:
Between 2007 and 2009 a prominent black and white National Football League (NFL) quarterback was implicated in violent criminal activity. This paper looks at how ABC, CBS and Fox News portrayed the cases of Michael Vick and Ben Roethlisberger. Not only did these outlets dedicate far more content to Vick's case, but there also emerged the theme that his behavior reflected a subculture of violence more so than did Roethlisberger's.
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Michelle Meloy, Kristin Curtis & Jessica Boatwright
Criminal Justice and Behavior, April 2013, Pages 438-452
Abstract:
In the first investigation of its kind, a national U.S. sample of state-level policy makers (N = 61) were interviewed about their perceptions of the sexual offenders in their state, their state's sex offender laws, and collateral consequences of these laws, among other efficacy questions. Respondents were selected nonrandomly, as policy makers who sponsored sex offender bills were deliberately targeted for inclusion in the study. It was presumed these respondents would be more knowledgeable about sex offenders and sex offender laws. Results indicated that most respondents were familiar with the sex offender legislation in their state, that most of the laws were drafted with hopes of increasing public safety, and that policy makers believed their laws were functioning as intended, although empirical data are lacking to support these latter claims. Despite a strong conviction that sex offender laws are necessary to control sexual recidivism, policy makers discussed numerous complications and potentially deleterious effects of their own laws.
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Alias: Lying to the police and pathological criminal behavior
Matt DeLisi et al.
Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, forthcoming
Abstract:
The use of aliases has been shown to be associated with antisocial behavior, but the empirical research on this topic is modest. The current study employs a multiple analytical approach to explore the association between aliases and career criminality in two large samples of adult offenders. We hypothesized that the use of aliases would not only be strongly associated with arrest history but this singular behavior would accurately classify a large proportion of habitual criminals. Results show that alias usage is robustly associated with career arrests net the effects of arrest onset, age, and sex in negative binomial regression models and was an excellent classifier (AUC = .82) of habitual criminality. Implications of the findings for forensic and criminal justice practitioners are offered.
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Schools, Neighborhood Risk Factors, and Crime
Dale Willits, Lisa Broidy & Kristine Denman
Crime & Delinquency, March 2013, Pages 292-315
Abstract:
Prior research has identified a link between schools (particularly high schools) and neighborhood crime rates. However, it remains unclear whether the relationship between schools and crime is a reflection of other criminogenic dynamics at the neighborhood level or whether schools influence neighborhood crime patterns independently of other established structural predictors. We address this question by investigating the relationship between schools and serious crime at the block group level while controlling for the potentially criminogenic effects of neighborhood instability and structural disadvantage. We find that, net of other structural correlates, neighborhoods with high schools and middle schools experience more violent, property, and narcotics crimes than those without middle or high schools. Conversely, neighborhoods with elementary schools exhibit less property crime than those not containing elementary schools. These results, which are consistent with prior research and with explanations derived from the routine activities and social disorganization perspectives, suggest some strategies for police deployment and community involvement to control crime.
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Lynn Addington & Callie Marie Rennison
Justice Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite the widely-held belief that gated communities are safer than their non-gated counterparts, little is known about the veracity of this assumption. Explanations rooted in routine activity theory and situational crime prevention suggest that restricted entry would reduce crime. Alternative explanations hypothesize that the overuse of security may actually increase crime. The present study explores this issue by comparing burglary victimizations in gated and non-gated communities using data from the National Crime Victimization Survey. We find support for the hypothesis that housing units in gated communities experience less burglary than their non-gated counterparts. Our findings also emphasize the diversity of gated communities and their residents, which is in stark contrast to commonly held perceptions of these areas as affluent enclaves. Future research is needed to further explore this initial finding and assess the influence, if any, of gated communities on other types of crime such as intimate violence and vandalism.
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Burglary in Gated Communities: An Empirical Analysis Using Routine Activities Theory
Gregory Breetzke & Ellen Cohn
International Criminal Justice Review, March 2013, Pages 56-74
Abstract:
Gated communities have experienced phenomenal growth worldwide due in part to increasing fear of urban crime and violence. However, very little is known about the effect of gating a neighborhood on rates of criminal victimization. In this article, we fill this gap by examining the relationship between residential burglary and gated communities in Tshwane, South Africa. South Africa has over 26,000 registered gated communities and high levels of violent and property crime, making it a suitable geographical focus area for research of this nature. Using variables informed by routine activities theory, we ran a series of regression models to assess the independent effect of gating on rates of day and night time burglary. The findings indicate that gated neighborhoods have a significant positive association with burglary rates in both day and night time models, suggesting that residing in a gated community actually increases one's risk of burglary victimization. Possible explanations for these unexpected findings are discussed in the context of South Africa's unique sociopolitical past.
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Frustration, Euphoria, and Violent Crime
Ignacio Munyo & Martín Rossi
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
We exploit a series of natural experiments that use real crime data to investigate the effect of a violation of expectancies on violent crime. We study two types of violation of expectancies that generate the emotions of frustration and euphoria. Our empirical designs exploit differential expectations (as measured by the odds of soccer games in the betting market) while maintaining the outcome unchanged (a loss in a soccer game for frustration, a win in a soccer game for euphoria). We find that frustration is followed by a spike in violent crime whereas euphoria is followed by a reduction in violent crime. The two effects are concentrated in a narrow time window after the end of the game: one hour.
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Guns and Fear: A One-Way Street?
Will Hauser & Gary Kleck
Crime & Delinquency, March 2013, Pages 271-291
Abstract:
Surveys show that more than one half of gun owners report owning their firearm for self-protection. Although research has examined the effect of fear of crime on gun ownership, the issue of reciprocity and temporal order has been largely ignored. Furthermore, the effect of firearm acquisition and relinquishment on fear has not been evaluated empirically. We hypothesize that the relationship between fear and gun ownership is reciprocal. As James Wright and Peter Rossi noted, it may be that "the initially most fearful may arm themselves and then feel psychologically safer because of it." Using two-wave panel data, we found, as expected, that higher fear among nonowners encourages them to become gun owners, but lower fear among gun owners does not encourage gun relinquishment. We also found that gun acquisition does not reduce fear, but relinquishment increases fear, suggesting the relationship between guns and fear may be asymmetrical.
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Deaths in New York City Jails, 2001-2009
Joan Brittain, George Axelrod & Homer Venters
American Journal of Public Health, April 2013, Pages 638-640
Abstract:
Approximately 90 000 inmates are admitted annually to the New York City jail system, many of whom require a high level of medical or mental health services. According to our analysis of deaths in custody from 2001 to 2009, crude death rates have dropped significantly despite the increasing age of the population. Falling HIV-related mortality appears to contribute to this change. Other observations include low rates of suicide across all 9 years and increasing age of the population in recent years.
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Putting Parolees Back in Prison: Discretion and the Parole Revocation Process
Sara Steen et al.
Criminal Justice Review, March 2013, Pages 70-93
Abstract:
As the prison population in the United States has ballooned over the past 30 years, people entering prison for parole revocation have come to constitute an increasingly large percentage of all prison admissions (35% in 2006). As a result, researchers have begun to turn their attention toward this criminal justice decision-making point to examine the factors that relate to why an individual is returned to prison. Notably, this developing body of research focuses almost entirely on one decision maker: the parole board who ultimately determines whether or not an individual on parole stays in the community, receives alternative sanctions, or returns to prison. Notably, this ignores the fact that parole revocation is a process beginning with the parolee who commits a violation behavior, turning next to the parole officer who uses his or her discretionary power to determine whether or not to file a complaint, and ending with the decision of the parole board. In this article, we examine each stage of this revocation process using structured qualitative interviews with 35 parole officers as well as quantitative data on 300 individuals on parole in Colorado between 2006 and 2007, who we followed for an 18-month period. We find that parolees with mental health needs commit significantly more technical violations; that race, gender, age, and measures of parolee effort affect whether a parole officer files a complaint; and that the decision made by the parole board is either largely random or driven by variables unspecified in our models.
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Why the Police Have an Effect on Violent Crime After All: Evidence from the British Crime Survey
Ben Vollaard & Joseph Hamed
Journal of Law and Economics, November 2012, Pages 901-924
Abstract:
We present evidence that the use of police statistics as a source of crime data can seriously bias empirical tests of the model of deterrence. We use data for 21 areas in England and Wales in 2001-8. In addition to police-recorded crime data, we use victim-reported crime data from the British Crime Survey that are unaffected by changes in public reporting of crime and police recording of crime. We find that the estimated effect of the number of police on recorded and victim-reported crime is similar for property crime but different for violent crime. Our findings suggest that higher numbers of police not only reduce crime rates but also increase the share of crime, and in particular violent crime, that finds its way into police statistics. The resulting estimation bias is found to be large.
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The Paradox of Probation: Community Supervision in the Age of Mass Incarceration
Michelle Phelps
Law & Policy, January-April 2013, Pages 51-80
Abstract:
After four decades of steady growth, U.S. states' prison populations finally appear to be declining, driven by a range of sentencing and policy reforms. One of the most popular reform suggestions is to expand probation supervision in lieu of incarceration. However, the classic socio-legal literature suggests that expansions of probation instead widen the net of penal control and lead to higher incarceration rates. This article reconsiders probation in the era of mass incarceration, providing the first comprehensive evaluation of the role of probation in the build-up of the criminal justice system. The results suggest that probation was not the primary driver of mass incarceration in most states, nor is it likely to be a simple panacea to mass incarceration. Rather, probation serves both capacities, acting as an alternative and as a net-widener, to varying degrees across time and place. Moving beyond the question of diversion versus net widening, this article presents a new theoretical model of the probation-prison link that examines the mechanisms underlying this dynamic. Using regression models and case studies, I analyze how states can modify the relationship between probation and imprisonment by changing sentencing outcomes and the practices of probation supervision. When combined with other key efforts, reforms to probation can be part of the movement to reverse mass incarceration.
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Aleksandra Snowden & William Alex Pridemore
Criminal Justice Review, March 2013, Pages 29-49
Abstract:
This study examined the direct and moderating effects of alcohol outlet density, social disorganization, and land use on violence in a large college town whose economy is driven by the presence of a flagship state university. Empirical literature points to a consistent association between alcohol outlet density and assault density, and recent research has found social disorganization and land use to moderate the association in urban areas. However, little research has been done to determine whether similar associations hold outside large urban cities. Using geocoded data on assaults and alcohol outlets in Bloomington, Indiana, we estimated ordinary least squares and spatially lagged regression models to determine whether social disorganization and land use moderate the association between alcohol outlet density and assault. We found a consistent association between outlet density and assault density. In contrast to the findings from urban areas, however, the direct effects of social disorganization and of seven land use types on simple assault density were nonsignificant, nor was social disorganization associated with aggravated assault. Further, the relationship between alcohol outlet density and assault density was moderated by neither social disorganization nor land use. Ecological characteristics like social disorganization and land use may matter less in smaller cities and towns than they do in large urban cities, both in terms of direct effects and when accounting for the relationship between alcohol outlet density and violence.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Disciplinary
Nine Facts about Top Journals in Economics
David Card & Stefano DellaVigna
NBER Working Paper, January 2013
Abstract:
How has publishing in top economics journals changed since 1970? Using a data set that combines information on all articles published in the top-5 journals from 1970 to 2012 with their Google Scholar citations, we identify nine key trends. First, annual submissions to the top-5 journals nearly doubled from 1990 to 2012. Second, the total number of articles published in these journals actually declined from 400 per year in the late 1970s to 300 per year most recently. As a result, the acceptance rate has fallen from 15% to 6%, with potential implications for the career progression of young scholars. Third, one journal, the American Economic Review, now accounts for 40% of top-5 publications, up from 25% in the 1970s. Fourth, recently published papers are on average 3 times longer than they were in the 1970s, contributing to the relative shortage of journal space. Fifth, the number of authors per paper has increased from 1.3 in 1970 to 2.3 in 2012, partly offsetting the fall in the number of articles per year. Sixth, citations for top-5 publications are high: among papers published in the late 1990s, the median number of Google Scholar citations is 200. Seventh, the ranking of journals by citations has remained relatively stable, with the notable exception of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which climbed from fourth place to first place over the past three decades. Eighth, citation counts are significantly higher for longer papers and those written by more co-authors. Ninth, although the fraction of articles from different fields published in the top-5 has remained relatively stable, there are important cohort trends in the citations received by papers from different fields, with rising citations to more recent papers in Development and International, and declining citations to recent papers in Econometrics and Theory.
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Thomas Rabovsky & William Curtis Ellis
Social Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Objective: This study examines grant funding to four-year universities to determine if institutions with more powerful congressional delegations receive more in research funding from the NIH and NSF.
Methods: We analyze grant awards to 1,501 universities from 2000 through 2009. We employ fixed and random effects models to determine the influence of representation on key congressional committees, in conjunction with institutional characteristics such as size and mission, in shaping institutional success in securing grant revenues.
Results: Time-series cross-sectional analysis suggests that members of the U.S. House and Senate may be able to influence the allocation of seemingly merit-based grants and contracts made by the National Institutes of Health, but not the National Science Foundation.
Conclusion: We find that congressional-bureaucratic relationships appear to directly impact grant receipts, and that structural and organizational variations across bureaucratic agencies have important mitigating effects on the extent to which issues of political control matter.
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No End to the Consensus in Macroeconomic Theory? A Methodological Inquiry
John McCombie & Maureen Pike
American Journal of Economics and Sociology, April 2013, Pages 497-528
Abstract:
After the acrimonious debates between the New Classical and New Keynesian economists in the 1980s and 1990s, a consensus developed, namely, the New Neoclassical Synthesis. However, the 2007 credit crunch exposed the severe limitations of this approach. This article presents a methodological analysis of the New Neoclassical Synthesis and how the paradigmatic heuristic of the representative agent, namely, market clearing subject to sticky prices, excluded the Keynesian notion of involuntary unemployment arising from lack of effective demand. It shows these models may be modified to produce Keynesian results, but are ruled out of consideration by proponents of the New Neoclassical approach by weak incommensurability. It concludes that because of this the New Neoclassical Synthesis, in spite of its failure to explain the sub-prime crisis, is likely to resist successfully the resurgence in Keynesian economics.
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Demographics and the fate of the young scientist
Samuel Arbesman & Brad Wray
Social Studies of Science, April 2013, Pages 282-286
Abstract:
Many have suggested that young scientists are having a more difficult time getting research grants, citing the fact that the average age of recipients of prestigious grants is getting higher. We present a population model that suggests that the reason the average age of grant recipients is now higher is because the growth rate of science has slowed down in the last four decades.
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Douglas Stenstrom, Mathew Curtis & Ravi Iyer
Perspectives on Psychological Science, March 2013, Pages 208-217
Abstract:
The outcome of a graduate student's hunt for employment is often attributed to the student's own accomplishments, the reputation of the department, and the reputation of the university. In 2007, a national survey of psychology graduate students was conducted to assess accomplishments and experiences in graduate school, part of which was an assessment of employment after completion of the doctorate (PhD). Five hundred and fifty-one respondents who had applied for employment reported whether they had obtained employment and in what capacity. Survey results were then integrated with the National Research Council's most recent official ranking system of academic departments. The strongest predictor of employment was department-level rankings even while controlling for individual accomplishments, such as publications, posters, and teaching experience. Equally accomplished applicants for an employment position were not equal, apparently, if they graduated from differently ranked departments. The results also show the degree to which school-level rankings, department-level rankings, and individual accomplishments uniquely predict the various types of employment, including jobs at PhD-granting institutions, master's-granting institutions, liberal arts colleges, 2-year schools, outside academia, or no employment at all.
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Marion Fourcade & Rakesh Khurana
Theory and Society, March 2013, Pages 121-159
Abstract:
This article draws on historical material to examine the co-evolution of economic science and business education over the course of the twentieth century, showing that fields evolve not only through internal struggles but also through struggles taking place in adjacent fields. More specifically, we argue that the scientific strategies of business schools played an essential - if largely invisible and poorly understood - role in major transformations in the organization and substantive direction of social-scientific knowledge, and specifically economic knowledge, in twentieth century America. We use the Wharton School as an illustration of the earliest trends and dilemmas (ca. 1900-1930), when business schools found themselves caught between their business connections and their striving for moral legitimacy in higher education. Next, we look at the creation of the Carnegie Tech Graduate School of Industrial Administration after World War II. This episode illustrates the increasingly successful claims of social scientists, backed by philanthropic foundations, on business education and the growing appeal of "scientific" approaches to decision-making and management. Finally, we argue that the rise of the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago from the 1960s onwards (and its closely related cousin at the University of Rochester) marks the decisive ascendancy of economics, and particularly financial economics, in business education over the other behavioral disciplines. We document the key role of these institutions in diffusing "Chicago-style" economic approaches - offering support for deregulatory policies and popularizing narrowly financial understandings of the firm - that sociologists have described as characteristic of the modern neo-liberal regime.
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Beyond the Hype: The Value of Evolutionary Theorizing in Economics
Armin Schulz
Philosophy of the Social Sciences, March 2013, Pages 46-72
Abstract:
In this paper, I consider the recent resurgence of "evolutionary economics" - the idea that evolutionary theory can be very useful to push forward key debates in economics - and assess the extent to which it rests on a plausible foundation. To do this, I first distinguish two ways in which evolutionary theory can, in principle, be brought to bear on an economic problem - namely, evidentially and heuristically - and then apply this distinction to the three major hypotheses that evolutionary economists have come to defend: the implausibility of rational choice theory as an account of economic rationality, the idea that firms are autonomous economic agents, and the need for a more dynamic, less equilibrium-focused economic methodology. In each of these cases, I conclude negatively: the relevant evolutionary considerations neither suggest interesting and novel hypotheses to investigate further (the hallmark of heuristic devices) nor are backed up by the needed data to constitute genuine evidence. I end by distinguishing this criticism of evolutionary economics from others that have been put forward in the literature: in particular, I make clear that, unlike those of other critics, the arguments of this paper are based on epistemic - not structural - considerations and therefore leave more room for a plausible form of evolutionary economics to come about in the future.
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Marginalization processes in science: The controversy about the theory of relativity in the 1920s
Milena Wazeck
Social Studies of Science, April 2013, Pages 163-190
Abstract:
In the 1920s, hundreds of pamphlets were published whose authors self-confidently claimed to have refuted the theory of relativity. The opposition to relativity was extraordinarily fierce and lasted years, including not only physicists and philosophers but also scientific laymen. What were the motives of Einstein's opponents? On what basis was the theory of relativity attacked so vociferously? This article focuses on the emergence of a heterogeneous international network of academic and nonacademic opponents to Einstein in the early 1920s and suggests a theoretical approach for understanding the nature of the controversy about the theory of relativity. I argue that the controversy about the theory of relativity represents a type of controversy that is unresolvable because of the ontological commitments underlying the arguments against academic consensus and the social dynamics of a process of marginalization of proponents of deviant knowledge.
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A Day Among the Diehard Terrorists: The Psychological Costs of Doing Ethnographic Research
Alessandro Orsini
Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, April 2013, Pages 337-351
Abstract:
This article describes the experience of a sociologist who made contact with a group of diehard terrorists responsible for multiple murders in order to conduct an ethnographic study. After outlining the sociological profile of the diehard terrorists, the author - making reference to the ethnographic studies of Jack Douglas, Martin Sanchez Jankowski, and Laud Humphreys - describes how he followed their traces. The aim of the article is to analyze the psychological costs that the sociologist must pay when he interacts with men and women who, in addition to proudly claiming credit for the homicides they have committed, affirm the importance of continuing to kill in order to salvage humanity's future.
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Revealed Preferences for Journals: Evidence from Page Limits
David Card & Stefano DellaVigna
NBER Working Paper, December 2012
Abstract:
Academic journals set a variety of policies that affect the supply of new manuscripts. We study the impact of page limit policies adopted by the American Economic Review (AER) in 2008 and the Journal of the European Economic Association (JEEA) in 2009 in response to a substantial increase in the length of articles in economics. We focus the analysis on the decision by potential authors to either shorten a longer manuscript in response to the page limit, or submit to another journal. For the AER we find little indication of a loss of longer papers - instead, authors responded by shortening the text and reformatting their papers. For JEEA, in contrast, we estimate that the page length policy led to nearly complete loss of longer manuscripts. These findings provide a revealed-preference measure of competition between journals and indicate that a top-5 journal has substantial monopoly power over submissions, unlike a journal one notch below. At both journals we find that longer papers were more likely to receive a revise and resubmit verdict prior to page limits, suggesting that the loss of longer papers may have had a detrimental effect on quality at JEEA. Despite a modest impact of the AER's policy on the average length of submissions (-5%), the policy had little or no effect on the length of final accepted manuscripts. Our results highlight the importance of evaluating editorial policies.
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Replication, statistical consistency, and publication bias
Gregory Francis
Journal of Mathematical Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Scientific methods of investigation offer systematic ways to gather information about the world; and in the field of psychology application of such methods should lead to a better understanding of human behavior. Instead, recent reports in psychological science have used apparently scientific methods to report strong evidence for unbelievable claims such as precognition. To try to resolve the apparent conflict between unbelievable claims and the scientific method many researchers turn to empirical replication to reveal the truth. Such an approach relies on the belief that true phenomena can be successfully demonstrated in well-designed experiments, and the ability to reliably reproduce an experimental outcome is widely considered the gold standard of scientific investigations. Unfortunately, this view is incorrect; and misunderstandings about replication contribute to the conflicts in psychological science. Because experimental effects in psychology are measured by statistics, there should almost always be some variability in the reported outcomes. An absence of such variability actually indicates that experimental replications are invalid, perhaps because of a bias to suppress contrary findings or because the experiments were run improperly. Recent investigations have demonstrated how to identify evidence of such invalid experiment sets and noted its appearance for prominent findings in experimental psychology. The present manuscript explores those investigative methods by using computer simulations to demonstrate their properties and limitations. The methods are shown to be a check on the statistical consistency of a set of experiments by comparing the reported power of the experiments with the reported frequency of statistical significance. Overall, the methods are extremely conservative about reporting inconsistency when experiments are run properly and reported fully. The manuscript also considers how to improve scientific practice to avoid inconsistency, and discusses criticisms of the investigative method.
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Rising Publication Delays Inflate Journal Impact Factors
Adriano Tort, Zé Targino & Olavo Amaral
PLoS ONE, January 2013
Abstract:
Journal impact factors have become an important criterion to judge the quality of scientific publications over the years, influencing the evaluation of institutions and individual researchers worldwide. However, they are also subject to a number of criticisms. Here we point out that the calculation of a journal's impact factor is mainly based on the date of publication of its articles in print form, despite the fact that most journals now make their articles available online before that date. We analyze 61 neuroscience journals and show that delays between online and print publication of articles increased steadily over the last decade. Importantly, such a practice varies widely among journals, as some of them have no delays, while for others this period is longer than a year. Using a modified impact factor based on online rather than print publication dates, we demonstrate that online-to-print delays can artificially raise a journal's impact factor, and that this inflation is greater for longer publication lags. We also show that correcting the effect of publication delay on impact factors changes journal rankings based on this metric. We thus suggest that indexing of articles in citation databases and calculation of citation metrics should be based on the date of an article's online appearance, rather than on that of its publication in print.
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Phillipa Chong
Social Studies of Science, April 2013, Pages 265-281
Abstract:
This article considers affinities between artistic and scientific evaluations. Objectivity has been widely studied, as it is thought the foundation for legitimate judgments of truth. Yet we know comparatively little about subjectivity apart from its characterization as the obstacle to objective knowledge. In this article, I examine how subjectivity operates as an epistemic virtue in artistic evaluation, which is an especially interesting field for study given the accepted relativism of taste. Data are taken from interviews with 30 book reviewers drawn from major American newspapers including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and others. The data reveal that critics invest in a set of strategies to effectively ‘objectivize' the subjectivity intrinsic to artistic evaluation, which I refer to collectively as strategies for maintaining critical distance. I argue that the concrete procedures for producing legitimate judgment in the world of art can be usefully compared to the norms for legitimate judgment in science.
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Rash
Rational Temporal Predictions Can Underlie Apparent Failures to Delay Gratification
Joseph McGuire & Joseph Kable
Psychological Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
An important category of seemingly maladaptive decisions involves failure to postpone gratification. A person pursuing a desirable long-run outcome may abandon it in favor of a short-run alternative that has been available all along. Here we present a theoretical framework in which this seemingly irrational behavior emerges from stable preferences and veridical judgments. Our account recognizes that decision makers generally face uncertainty regarding the time at which future outcomes will materialize. When timing is uncertain, the value of persistence depends crucially on the nature of a decision maker's prior temporal beliefs. Certain forms of temporal beliefs imply that a delay's predicted remaining length increases as a function of time already waited. In this type of situation, the rational, utility-maximizing strategy is to persist for a limited amount of time and then give up. We show empirically that people's explicit predictions of remaining delay lengths indeed increase as a function of elapsed time in several relevant domains, implying that temporal judgments offer a rational basis for limiting persistence. We then develop our framework into a simple working model and show how it accounts for individual differences in a laboratory task (the well-known "marshmallow test"). We conclude that delay-of-gratification failure, generally viewed as a manifestation of limited self-control capacity, can instead arise as an adaptive response to the perceived statistics of one's environment.
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Red Brain, Blue Brain: Evaluative Processes Differ in Democrats and Republicans
Darren Schreiber et al.
PLoS ONE, February 2013
Abstract:
Liberals and conservatives exhibit different cognitive styles and converging lines of evidence suggest that biology influences differences in their political attitudes and beliefs. In particular, a recent study of young adults suggests that liberals and conservatives have significantly different brain structure, with liberals showing increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, and conservatives showing increased gray matter volume in the in the amygdala. Here, we explore differences in brain function in liberals and conservatives by matching publicly-available voter records to 82 subjects who performed a risk-taking task during functional imaging. Although the risk-taking behavior of Democrats (liberals) and Republicans (conservatives) did not differ, their brain activity did. Democrats showed significantly greater activity in the left insula, while Republicans showed significantly greater activity in the right amygdala. In fact, a two parameter model of partisanship based on amygdala and insula activations yields a better fitting model of partisanship than a well-established model based on parental socialization of party identification long thought to be one of the core findings of political science. These results suggest that liberals and conservatives engage different cognitive processes when they think about risk, and they support recent evidence that conservatives show greater sensitivity to threatening stimuli.
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Alexander Persoskie
Judgment and Decision Making, January 2013, Pages 1-6
Abstract:
Recent investigations of adolescents' beliefs about risk have led to surprisingly optimistic conclusions: Teens' self estimates of their likelihood of experiencing various life events not only correlate sensibly with relevant risk factors (Fischhoff et al., 2000), but they also significantly predict later experiencing the events (Bruine de Bruin et al., 2007). Using the same dataset examined in previous investigations, the present study extended these analyses by comparing the predictive value of self estimates of risk to that of traditional risk factors for each outcome. The analyses focused on the prediction of pregnancy, criminal arrest, and school enrollment. Three findings emerged. First, traditional risk factor information tended to out-predict self assessments of risk, even when the risk factors included crude, potentially unreliable measures (e.g., a simple tally of self-reported criminal history) and when the risk factors were aggregated in a nonoptimal way (i.e., unit weighting). Second, despite the previously reported correlations between self estimates and outcomes, perceived invulnerability was a problem among the youth: Over half of the teens who became pregnant, half of those who were not enrolled in school, and nearly a third of those who were arrested had, one year earlier, indicated a 0% chance of experiencing these outcomes. Finally, adding self estimates of risk to the other risk factor information produced only small gains in predictive accuracy. These analyses point to the need for greater education about the situations and behaviors that lead to negative outcomes.
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Optimism Following a Tornado Disaster
Jerry Suls et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Effects of exposure to a severe weather disaster on perceived future vulnerability were assessed in college students, local residents contacted through random-digit dialing, and community residents of affected versus unaffected neighborhoods. Students and community residents reported being less vulnerable than their peers at 1 month, 6 months, and 1 year after the disaster. In Studies 1 and 2, absolute risk estimates were more optimistic with time, whereas comparative vulnerability was stable. Residents of affected neighborhoods (Study 3), surprisingly, reported less comparative vulnerability and lower "gut-level" numerical likelihood estimates at 6 months, but later their estimates resembled the unaffected residents. Likelihood estimates (10%-12%), however, exceeded the 1% risk calculated by storm experts, and gut-level versus statistical-level estimates were more optimistic. Although people believed they had approximately a 1-in-10 chance of injury from future tornadoes (i.e., an overestimate), they thought their risk was lower than peers.
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Bi-frontal direct current stimulation affects delay discounting choices
David Hecht, Vincent Walsh & Michal Lavidor
Cognitive Neuroscience, Winter 2013, Pages 7-11
Abstract:
In delay discounting tasks, participants decide between receiving a certain amount of money now or a larger sum sometime in the future. This study investigated the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation on delay discounting. Participants made delay discounting choices while receiving a bi-frontal stimulation of right-hemisphere anodal/left-hemisphere cathodal, left-hemisphere anodal/right-hemisphere cathodal, and sham stimulation, in three separate sessions. When the difference between the alternatives was 10% or more, participants generally preferred to wait for the larger sum. Nevertheless, there were more choices of smaller "immediate" gains, instead of the larger delayed options, when the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) was facilitated and the right DLPFC inhibited, compared to the sham stimulation. These observations indicate the significant role of the prefrontal cortex in delay discounting choices, and demonstrate that increased left frontal activation combined with decreased right frontal activation can alter decision-making by intensifying a tendency to choose immediate gains.
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When waiting to choose increases patience
Xianchi Dai & Ayelet Fishbach
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, forthcoming
Abstract:
We explore how waiting to choose influences patience. We propose that waiting to make an intertemporal choice increases the assumed value of the items for which people are waiting, leading them to become more patient. Five studies support this model. Study 1 finds that after waiting to choose, people exhibit greater patience than if they had not waited or before they had started to wait. Studies 2a and 2b find that increased valuation (rather than decreased cost of the wait) mediates the impact of waiting on patience. Study 3 further finds that whereas waiting to choose increases preference for a larger-later (over smaller-sooner) item, it also increases willingness to pay to expedite delivery of a single item. Finally, study 4 shows the waiting effect is stronger for hedonic than for utilitarian products. These studies modify existing theory by identifying the conditions under which waiting to choose can improve patience.
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I'm too calm - Let's take a risk! On the impact of state and trait arousal on risk taking
Barbara Schmidt, Patrick Mussel & Johannes Hewig
Psychophysiology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Theories of an optimal level of arousal suggest that underaroused humans seek stimulation to enhance their arousal. One way to increase arousal is risky behavior during gambling. In the current study, we show that the lower the participants' resting arousal, measured via resting heart rate, the riskier they acted in a gamble and the faster they responded, indicating less impulse control. Participants with low resting heart rate also perceived the risk options in the gamble as less arousing and less risky compared to participants with higher resting heart rate. Partial correlations show that resting heart rate, risk behavior, and ratings were interrelated. After physical exercise, participants tended to behave less risky in the gamble compared to a control condition without exercise. Thus, both trait and state arousal effects indicate an inverse relationship of arousal and risky behavior.
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Factors affecting soldiers' time preference: A field study in Israel
Tal Shavit, Eyal Lahav & Uri Benzion
Journal of Socio-Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The current field study examines how the day of the week, optimism level and other personal characteristics influences the time preference of soldiers. To do this, we compare the time discount of soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces at the beginning of the work week (Sunday in Israel) and just prior to the weekend (on Thursday afternoon in Israel). The soldiers were asked to answer questionnaires regarding their time preferences, and dispositional optimism. We found that the soldiers have a higher subjective discount rate on Thursday when they need money for weekend activities. In addition, we found that optimism, being a firstborn sibling, having parents with higher earnings, and time remaining until discharge are negatively related to subjective discount rate. Conversely, having a balanced bank account is positively related to subjective discount rate.
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'O Sole Mio: An Experimental Analysis of Weather and Risk Attitudes in Financial Decisions
Anna Bassi, Riccardo Colacito & Paolo Fulghieri
Review of Financial Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although weather has been shown to affect financial markets and financial decision making, a still open question is the channel through which such influence is exerted. By employing a multiple price list method, this paper provides direct experimental evidence that sunshine and good weather promote risk-taking behavior. This effect is present whether relying on objective measures of meteorological conditions or subjective weather assessments. Finally, employing a psychological test, we find evidence that weather may affect individual risk tolerance through its effect on mood.
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Serotonergic Genotypes, Neuroticism, and Financial Choices
Camelia Kuhnen, Gregory Samanez-Larkin & Brian Knutson
PLoS ONE, January 2013
Abstract:
Life financial outcomes carry a significant heritable component, but the mechanisms by which genes influence financial choices remain unclear. Focusing on a polymorphism in the promoter region of the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR), we found that individuals possessing the short allele of this gene invested less in equities, were less engaged in actively making investment decisions, and had fewer credit lines. Short allele carriers also showed higher levels of the personality trait neuroticism, despite not differing from others with respect to cognitive skills, education, or wealth. Mediation analysis suggested that the presence of the 5-HTTLPR short allele decreased real life measures of financial risk taking through its influence on neuroticism. These findings show that 5-HTTLPR short allele carriers avoid risky and complex financial choices due to negative emotional reactions, and have implications for understanding and managing individual differences in financial choice.
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Crude Comments and Concern: Online Incivility's Effect on Risk Perceptions of Emerging Technologies
Ashley Anderson et al.
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, forthcoming
Abstract:
Uncivil discourse is a growing concern in American rhetoric, and this trend has expanded beyond traditional media to online sources, such as audience comments. Using an experiment given to a sample representative of the U.S. population, we examine the effects online incivility on perceptions toward a particular issue - namely, an emerging technology, nanotechnology. We found that exposure to uncivil blog comments can polarize risk perceptions of nanotechnology along the lines of religiosity and issue support.
