Catherine Riegle-Crumb & Eric Grodsky
Sociology of Education, July 2010, Pages 248-270

Abstract:
Despite increases in the representation of African American and Hispanic youth in advanced math courses in high school over the past two decades, recent national reports indicate that substantial inequality in achievement remains. These inequalities can temper one's optimism about the degree to which the United States has made real progress toward educational equity. Using data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS), the authors find that the math achievement gap is most pronounced among those students who take the most demanding high school math classes, such as precalculus and calculus. The authors explore the roles of family socioeconomic status and school composition in explaining this pattern. Findings suggest that among those students reaching the advanced math high school stratum, Hispanic youth from low-income families and African American youth from segregated schools fare the worst in terms of closing the achievement gap with their white peers. The authors discuss potential explanations for the achievement differences observed and stress the need for more research that focuses explicitly on the factors that inhibit minority/majority parity at the top of the secondary curricular structure.

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Persistence of women and minorities in STEM field majors: Is it the school that matters?

Amanda Griffith
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming

Abstract:
During college, many students switch from their planned major to another, particularly so when that planned major was in a Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics (STEM) field. A worrying statistic shows that persistence in one of these majors is much lower for women and minorities, suggesting that this may be a leaky joint in the STEM pipeline for these two groups of students. This paper uses restricted-use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen (NLSF) and the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) to examine which factors contribute to persistence of all students in STEM field majors, and in particular the persistence of women and minorities. Although descriptive statistics show that a smaller percentage of women and minorities persist in a STEM field major as compared to male and non-minority students, regression analysis shows that differences in preparation and the educational experiences of these students explains much of the differences in persistence rates. Students at selective institutions with a large graduate to undergraduate student ratio and that devote a significant amount of spending to research have lower rates of persistence in STEM fields. A higher percentage of female and minority STEM field graduate students positively impacts on the persistence of female and minority students. However, there is little evidence that having a larger percentage of STEM field faculty members that are female increases the likelihood of persistence for women in STEM majors. These results suggest that the sorting of women and minorities into different types of undergraduate programs, as well as differences in their backgrounds have a significant impact on persistence rates.

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Interracial Friendships in College

Braz Camargo, Ralph Stinebrickner & Todd Stinebrickner
NBER Working Paper, May 2010

Abstract:
Motivated by the reality that the benefits of diversity on a college campus will be mitigated if interracial interactions are scarce or superficial, previous work has strived to document the amount of interracial friendship interaction and to examine whether policy can influence this amount. In this paper we take advantage of unique longitudinal data from the Berea Panel Study to build on this previous literature by providing direct evidence about the amount of interracial friendships at different stages of college and by providing new evidence about some of the possible underlying reasons for the observed patterns of interaction. We find that, while much sorting exists at all stages of college, black and white students are, in reality, very compatible as friends; randomly assigned roommates of different races are as likely to become friends as randomly assigned roommates of the same race. Further, we find that, in the long-run, white students who are randomly assigned black roommates have a significantly larger proportion of black friends than white students who are randomly assigned white roommates, even when the randomly assigned roommates are not included in the calculation of the proportions. This last result contradicts previous findings in the literature.

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Revival of test bias research in preemployment testing

Herman Aguinis, Steven Culpepper & Charles Pierce
Journal of Applied Psychology, July 2010, Pages 648-680

Abstract:
We developed a new analytic proof and conducted Monte Carlo simulations to assess the effects of methodological and statistical artifacts on the relative accuracy of intercept- and slope-based test bias assessment. The main simulation design included 3,185,000 unique combinations of a wide range of values for true intercept- and slope-based test bias, total sample size, proportion of minority group sample size to total sample size, predictor (i.e., preemployment test scores) and criterion (i.e., job performance) reliability, predictor range restriction, correlation between predictor scores and the dummy-coded grouping variable (e.g., ethnicity), and mean difference between predictor scores across groups. Results based on 15 billion 925 million individual samples of scores and more than 8 trillion 662 million individual scores raise questions about the established conclusion that test bias in preemployment testing is nonexistent and, if it exists, it only occurs regarding intercept-based differences that favor minority group members. Because of the prominence of test fairness in the popular media, legislation, and litigation, our results point to the need to revive test bias research in preemployment testing.

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Office Discipline and Student Behavior: Does Race Matter?

Michael Rocque
American Journal of Education, August 2010, Pages 557-581

Abstract:
Previous research has consistently found a relationship between student race and discipline. For example, African Americans are more likely than whites to be sent to the office or suspended. However, much of this work is limited by a lack of student behavior and school‐level variables. This study examined the effect of student race on office referrals in 45 elementary schools while controlling for ratings of student behavior and using a fixed effects model to remove school‐level influences. The results indicate that African American students are significantly more likely to be referred to the office than other racial groups. Neither student behavior nor school‐level factors are sufficient to explain this relationship; however, these factors do dampen the effect of race on discipline, suggesting that previous work has reported inflated coefficients. Given the historical association between exclusionary school discipline and later negative life outcomes, this issue warrants increased attention. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

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Multilevel Exploration of Factors Contributing to the Overrepresentation of Black Students in Office Disciplinary Referrals

Catherine Bradshaw, Mary Mitchell, Lindsey O'Brennan & Philip Leaf
Journal of Educational Psychology, May 2010, Pages 508-520

Abstract:
Although there is increasing awareness of the overrepresentation of ethic minority students-particularly Black students-in disciplinary actions, the extant research has rarely empirically examined potential factors that may contribute to these disparities. The current study used a multilevel modeling approach to examine factors at the child (e.g., teacher-rated disruptive behavior problems) and classroom or teacher levels (e.g., teacher ethnicity, level of disruptive behavior in classroom) that may contribute to the overrepresentation of minority students in office disciplinary referrals (ODRs). Data come from 6,988 children in 381 classrooms at 21 elementary schools. The analyses indicated that even after controlling for the student's level of teacher-rated behavior problems, teacher ethnicity, and other classroom factors, Black students were significantly more likely than White students to receive ODRs. Results also suggested that ethnic match between students and their teachers did not reduce the risk for referrals among Black students.

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Are Students of Color More Likely to Graduate From College if They Attend More Selective Institutions? Evidence From a Cohort of Recipients and Nonrecipients of the Gates Millennium Scholarship Program

Tatiana Melguizo
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, June 2010, Pages 230-248

Abstract:
The study takes advantage of the nontraditional selection process of the Gates Millennium Scholars (GMS) program to test the association between selectivity of 4-year institution attended as well as other noncognitive variables on the college completion rates of a sample of students of color. The results of logistic regression and propensity score matching suggest these students are slightly more likely to graduate from college if they attend a highly selective institution. There is also evidence that other noncognitive variables such as leadership are good predictors of college completion. This suggests that admission offices interested in attracting a more diverse student body might want to consider expanding the traditional admission criteria.

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If at first you don't succeed, try, try again: Understanding race, age, and gender differences in retesting score improvement

Deidra Schleicher, Chad Van Iddekinge, Frederick Morgeson & Michael Campion
Journal of Applied Psychology, July 2010, Pages 603-617

Abstract:
This article explores the intersection of 2 critical and timely concerns in personnel selection - applicant retesting and subgroup differences - by exploring demographic differences in retest effects across multiple assessments. Results from large samples of applicants taking 3 written tests (N = 7,031) and 5 performance tests (N = 2,060) revealed that Whites showed larger retest score improvements than Blacks or Hispanics on several of the assessments. However, the differential improvement of Whites was greater on the written tests than on the performance tests. In addition, women and applicants under 40 years of age showed larger improvements with retesting than did men and applicants over 40. We offer some preliminary theoretical explanations for these demographic differences in retesting gains, including differences in ability, testing attitudes and motivation, and receptivity to feedback. In terms of practical implications, the results suggest that allowing applicants to retake selection tests may, in some cases, exacerbate levels of adverse impact, which can have distinct implications for retesting policy and practices in organizations.

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European American children's and adolescents' evaluations of interracial exclusion

Melanie Killen, Megan Clark Kelly, Cameron Richardson, David Crystal & Martin Ruck
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, May 2010, Pages 283-300

Abstract:
No research, to date, has investigated the role of ethnic school composition (and intergroup contact) on European American youth's use of stereotypes to explain interracial discomfort in the context of peer exclusion. In this study, European American fourth-, seventh- and 10th-grade students (N = 414), attending low and high ethnically-diverse public schools (with low and high self-reports of cross-race/ethnic friendships respectively) evaluated three contexts of interracial exclusion (at lunch time, at a school dance, and at a sleepover). In addition to age and context effects, participants enrolled in high-diversity schools were less likely to use stereotypes to explain racial discomfort, more likely to view racial exclusion as wrong, and more likely to estimate that racial exclusion occurs, than were participants enrolled in low-diversity schools. These findings have implications for the role of social experience on racial attitudes and judgments about exclusion.

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A Life History Approach to Understanding Youth Time Preference: Mechanisms of Environmental Risk and Uncertainty and Attitudes Toward Risk Behavior and Education

Deborah Schechter & Cyrilla Francis
Human Nature, June 2010, Pages 140-164

Abstract:
Following from life history and attachment theory, individuals are predicted to be sensitive to variation in environmental conditions such that risk and uncertainty are internalized by cognitive, affective, and psychobiological mechanisms. In turn, internalizing of environmental uncertainty is expected to be associated with attitudes toward risk behaviors and investments in education. Native American youth aged 10-19 years (n = 89) from reservation communities participated in a study examining this pathway. Measures included family environmental risk and uncertainty, present and future time perspective, adolescent attachment, attitudes toward risk, investments in education, and salivary cortisol. Results support the idea that environmental risk and uncertainty are internalized during development. In addition, internalizing mechanisms significantly predicted attitudes toward risk and education: (1) lower scores on future time perspective and higher cortisol predicted higher scores on risk attitudes, and (2) higher scores on future time perspective and lower scores on problems with attachment predicted higher self-reported school performance. Gender differences were seen, with males anticipating a shorter lifespan than females, which predicted higher scores on risk attitudes and lower school performance. Implications for research on adolescent problem behavior and academic achievement are discussed.

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Socioeconomic background and racial earnings inequality: A propensity score analysis

Jeremy Pais
Social Science Research, forthcoming

Abstract:
Does a racial earnings gap exist among individuals who come from similar childhood socioeconomic backgrounds? Is the racial earnings gap larger or smaller for those from higher or lower socioeconomic origins? This research addresses these questions by taking a counterfactual approach to estimating the residual racial pay gap between non-Hispanic black and white men from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The findings indicate that the racial earnings gap is larger among those from lower-middle class and working class childhood backgrounds than among those from upper-middle class backgrounds, for whom the racial pay gap is indistinguishable from zero. Compared to their more advantaged counterparts, black men from lower-middle and working class backgrounds have more difficulty rising above their socioeconomic origins relative to white men from similar social class backgrounds. Racial earnings equality among those from upper-middle class backgrounds suggests that the high levels of racial inequality often observed among those with college and professional degrees may in fact reflect heterogeneous childhood socioeconomic backgrounds among the college educated-backgrounds that continue to have an effect on earnings despite individual academic achievements.

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Integrated Schools, Segregated Curriculum: Effects of Within-School Segregation on Adolescent Health Behaviors and Educational Aspirations

Katrina Walsemann & Bethany Bell
American Journal of Public Health, forthcoming

Objectives: We examined the extent to which within-school segregation, as measured by unevenness in the distribution of Black and White adolescents across levels of the English curriculum (advanced placement-international baccalaureate-honors, general, remedial, or no English), was associated with smoking, drinking, and educational aspirations, which previous studies found are related to school racial/ethnic composition.

Methods: We analyzed data from wave 1 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, restricting our sample to non-Hispanic Blacks (n=2731) and Whites (n=4158) who from 1994 to 1995 attended high schools that enrolled Black and White students.

Results: White female students had higher predicted probabilities of smoking or drinking than did Black female students; the largest differences were in schools with high levels of within-school segregation. Black male students had higher predicted probabilities of high educational aspirations than did White male students in schools with low levels of within-school segregation; this association was attenuated for Black males attending schools with moderate or high levels of within-school segregation.

Conclusions: Our results provide evidence that within-school segregation may influence both students' aspirations and their behaviors.

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Formal Dining at Cambridge Colleges: Linking Ritual Performance and Institutional Maintenance

Tina Dacin, Kamal Munir & Paul Tracey
Academy of Management Journal, forthcoming

Abstract:
We examine the role of rituals in institutional maintenance. Through an in-depth, qualitative study of formal dining at Cambridge University, we explore how the performance of these rituals contributes to the maintenance of the British class system. We find that rituals are important for institutional maintenance because they have a powerful bearing on participants beyond the confines of the ritual itself. Our analysis also suggests that institutions are refracted through context and individual experience at a micro level, and indicates a more fragmented and less strategic conception of institutional maintenance than is portrayed in recent work.

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The Effect of Gender, Ethnicity, and Income on College Students' Use of Communication Technologies

Reynol Junco, Dan Merson, Daniel Salter
Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, forthcoming

Abstract:
Because campus officials are relying on personal communication technologies to communicate with students, a question arises about access and usage. Although communication technologies are popular among college students, some evidence suggests that differences exist in ownership and use. We examined patterns of student ownership and use of cell phones and use of instant messaging, focusing on three predictors of digital inequality: gender, ethnicity, and income. Logistic and hierarchical linear regression analyses were used to analyze results from 4,491 students. The odds that female and white students owned cell phones were more than twice as high as for men and African-American students. Students in the $100,000-$149,000 per year income bracket were more than three times as likely to own a cell phone than those from the median bracket. However, being female, African-American, and/or from the highest income brackets was positively predictive of the number of text messages sent and the amount of time spent talking on a cell phone per week. We found no differences between students on the use of instant messaging. Implications of these results, as well as areas for further research, are provided.

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Love, discipline and elementary school achievement: The role of family emotional climate

Katerina Bodovski & Min-Jong Youn
Social Science Research, July 2010, Pages 585-595

Abstract:
Using structural equation modeling we examined the determinants of family emotional climate and its long-term impact on children's academic achievement and classroom behavior at the end of 5th grade. We employed the ECLS-K data-a large, nationally representative sample of U.S. elementary school students. Family emotional climate was measured in the spring of kindergarten and included three dimensions: parental depression, parental warmth, and use of physical discipline. Main findings: low SES, Black and single parents were more likely to report depressive symptoms. Black parents were more likely to use physical discipline, but they also reported greater parental warmth. Asian parents were less likely to use physical discipline, but also were less likely to express parental warmth. Parental depression was associated with increased use of physical discipline and reduced parental warmth. Parental depression, measured in kindergarten, was associated with lower reading and math achievement and lower approaches to learning at the end of 5th grade. Use of physical discipline in kindergarten was associated with lower 5th-grade math achievement.

Oludamini Ogunnaike, Yarrow Dunham & Mahzarin Banaji
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming

Abstract:
Are attitudes affected by the language in which they are expressed? In particular, do individual preferences shift to accord with the cultural values embedded in a given language? To examine these questions, two experiments tested bilingual participants, administering the same test of implicit attitudes in two languages. In both studies, participants manifested attitudes that favored social categories associated with the test language, e.g. more pro-Moroccan attitudes when tested in Arabic as compared with French (Study 1) and more pro-Spanish attitudes when tested in Spanish as compared with English (Study 2). The effects of language on elicited preference were large (mean d > .7), providing evidence that preferences are not merely transmitted through language but also shaped by it.

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Is the future the right time?

Marc Ouellet, Julio Santiago, Ziv Israeli & Shai Gabay
Experimental Psychology, Summer 2010, Pages 308-314

Abstract:
Spanish and English speakers tend to conceptualize time as running from left to right along a mental line. Previous research suggests that this representational strategy arises from the participants' exposure to a left-to-right writing system. However, direct evidence supporting this assertion suffers from several limitations and relies only on the visual modality. This study subjected to a direct test the reading hypothesis using an auditory task. Participants from two groups (Spanish and Hebrew) differing in the directionality of their orthographic system had to discriminate temporal reference (past or future) of verbs and adverbs (referring to either past or future) auditorily presented to either the left or right ear by pressing a left or a right key. Spanish participants were faster responding to past words with the left hand and to future words with the right hand, whereas Hebrew participants showed the opposite pattern. Our results demonstrate that the left-right mapping of time is not restricted to the visual modality and that the direction of reading accounts for the preferred directionality of the mental time line. These results are discussed in the context of a possible mechanism underlying the effects of reading direction on highly abstract conceptual representations.

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The weirdest people in the world?

Joseph Henrich, Steven Heine & Ara Norenzayan
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, June 2010, Pages 61-83

Abstract:
Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world's top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers - often implicitly - assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these "standard subjects" are as representative of the species as any other population. Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the behavioral sciences suggests both that there is substantial variability in experimental results across populations and that WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species - frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans. Many of these findings involve domains that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, and behavior - hence, there are no obvious a priori grounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation. Overall, these empirical patterns suggests that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions of human nature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity. We close by proposing ways to structurally re-organize the behavioral sciences to best tackle these challenges.

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What have we learnt from 20 years of economic research into culture?

Carsten Herrmann-Pillath
International Journal of Cultural Studies, July 2010, Pages 317-335

Abstract:
Economics is undergoing a process of methodological naturalization, i.e. further converging with the sciences. Simultaneously, in past decades there has been an upsurge of interest in the role of culture in the economy. Yet this does not imply an opening up to the humanities, both in the broad sense and in the sense of cultural studies. This article is a stock-taking exercise. I briefly summarize recent economic work on culture and show that this is lacking a systematic theory of culture. This compares with the strong fusion of economics and the humanities, especially historical studies, at the turn from the 19th to the 20th century, in continental Europe, especially Germany. Looking for theoretical foundations of cultural analysis in contemporary economics, the notion of cognitive schemes looms large, seen as a device to deal with uncertainty. Interestingly, this concurs with some views in biological anthropology, and thus fits into the naturalization trend. However, there are many difficulties in what turns out to be close to functional reductionism. This points towards an alternative approach in economics as well, which centres around the notion of identity. I argue that, even in the context of naturalization, identity is significant precisely for its non-functional dimensions, for instance, as a group marker that is resistant to corrosion because of the lack of incentives for functional imitation between groups. This almost paradoxical role of identity explains why economics has troubles with culture, which, on the one hand seems to be ephemeral to economic processes in general, but on the other can obtain strong causal impact depending on idiosyncratic contextual conditions. This stalemate can only be resolved if economics begins to consider creative actions that establish and change identities on both the individual and collective level. I argue that this perspective leads back to the origins of the discipline, in particular Adam Smith in his role as a moral philosopher.

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The Impact of Culture on Adaptive Versus Maladaptive Self-Reflection

Igor Grossmann & Ethan Kross
Psychological Science, forthcoming

Abstract:
Although recent findings indicate that people can reflect either adaptively or maladaptively over negative experiences, extant research has not examined how culture influences this process. We compared the self-reflective practices of Russians (members of an interdependent culture characterized by a tendency to brood) and Americans (members of an independent culture in which self-reflection has been studied extensively). We predicted that self-reflection would be associated with less-detrimental outcomes among Russians because they self-distance more when analyzing their feelings than Americans do. Findings from two studies supported these predictions. In Study 1, self-reflection was associated with fewer depressive symptoms among Russians than among Americans. In Study 2, Russians displayed less distress and a more adaptive pattern of construals than Americans after reflecting over a recent negative event. In addition, they self-distanced more than Americans while analyzing their feelings, and self-distancing mediated the cultural differences in self-reflection. These findings demonstrate how culture shapes the way people reflect over negative experiences.

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Old Habits Are Hard to Change: A Case Study of Israeli Real Estate Contracts

Doron Teichman
Law & Society Review, June 2010, Pages 299-330

Abstract:
This article presents a case study on the persistent dollarization norm in the Israeli real estate market. For many years Israeli real estate contracts have been denominated in American dollars. This contracting norm has remained surprisingly stable despite tremendous changes in the structure of the Israeli foreign currency market that severed the connection between the dollar and local inflation and added significant risks to exchange rates. Using an array of theoretical tools, I explain this puzzling phenomenon and demonstrate the centrality of social norms to the design of high-stakes contracts. Finally, I explore the interaction between social norms and the law and highlight the potential obstacles to regulating contracting norms.

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Is there a genetic contribution to cultural differences? Collectivism, individualism and genetic markers of social sensitivity

Baldwin Way & Matthew Lieberman
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, June 2010, Pages 203-211

Abstract:
Genes and culture are often thought of as opposite ends of the nature-nurture spectrum, but here we examine possible interactions. Genetic association studies suggest that variation within the genes of central neurotransmitter systems, particularly the serotonin (5-HTTLPR, MAOA-uVNTR) and opioid (OPRM1 A118G), are associated with individual differences in social sensitivity, which reflects the degree of emotional responsivity to social events and experiences. Here, we review recent work that has demonstrated a robust cross-national correlation between the relative frequency of variants in these genes and the relative degree of individualism-collectivism in each population, suggesting that collectivism may have developed and persisted in populations with a high proportion of putative social sensitivity alleles because it was more compatible with such groups. Consistent with this notion, there was a correlation between the relative proportion of these alleles and lifetime prevalence of major depression across nations. The relationship between allele frequency and depression was partially mediated by individualism-collectivism, suggesting that reduced levels of depression in populations with a high proportion of social sensitivity alleles is due to greater collectivism. These results indicate that genetic variation may interact with ecological and social factors to influence psychocultural differences.

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Exploring cultural differences in critical thinking: Is it about my thinking style or the language I speak?

Vivian Miu-Chi Lun, Ronald Fischer & Colleen Ward
Learning and Individual Differences, forthcoming

Abstract:
Critical thinking is deemed as an ideal in academic settings, but cultural differences in critical thinking performance between Asian and Western students have been reported in the international education literature. We examined explanations for the observed differences in critical thinking between Asian and New Zealand (NZ) European students, and tested hypotheses derived from research in international education and cultural psychology. The results showed that NZ European students performed better on two objective measures of critical thinking skills than Asian students. English proficiency, but not dialectical thinking style, explained these differences. This finding holds with both self-report (Study 1) and objectively measured (Study 2a) English proficiency. The results also indicated that Asian students tended to rely more on dialectical thinking to solve critical thinking problems than their Western counterparts. In a follow-up data analysis, students' critical thinking was found to predict their academic performance after controlling for the effects of English proficiency and general intellectual ability, but the relationship does not vary as a function of students' cultural backgrounds or cultural adoption (Study 2b). Altogether, these findings contribute to our understanding of the influence of culture on critical thinking in international education.

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I love you but...: Cultural differences in complexity of emotional experience during interaction with a romantic partner

Michelle Shiota, Belinda Campos, Gian Gonzaga, Dacher Keltner & Kaiping Peng
Cognition & Emotion, August 2010, Pages 786-799

Abstract:
Studies suggest that emotional complexity - the experience of positive and negative emotion in response to the same event - is unusual in Western samples. However, recent research finds that the co-occurrence of positive and negative emotion during unstructured situations is more common among East Asians than Westerners, consistent with theories emphasising the prevalence of dialectical folk epistemology in East-Asian culture. The present study builds upon previous research by examining Asian- and European-Americans' experience of a particular positive emotion - love - and a situationally appropriate negative emotion during four structured laboratory conversations with their romantic partner. Among Asian Americans, love and the experience of negative emotion were typically less negatively correlated during these conversations than was true for European Americans.

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Culture differences in neural processing of faces and houses in the ventral visual cortex

Joshua Goh1, Eric Leshikar, Bradley Sutton, Jiat Chow Tan, Sam Sim, Andrew Hebrank & Denise Park
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, June 2010, Pages 227-235

Abstract:
Behavioral and eye-tracking studies on cultural differences have found that while Westerners have a bias for analytic processing and attend more to face features, East Asians are more holistic and attend more to contextual scenes. In this neuroimaging study, we hypothesized that these culturally different visual processing styles would be associated with cultural differences in the selective activity of the fusiform regions for faces, and the parahippocampal and lingual regions for contextual stimuli. East Asians and Westerners passively viewed face and house stimuli during an functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment. As expected, we observed more selectivity for faces in Westerners in the left fusiform face area (FFA) reflecting a more analytic processing style. Additionally, Westerners showed bilateral activity to faces in the FFA whereas East Asians showed more right lateralization. In contrast, no cultural differences were detected in the parahippocampal place area (PPA), although there was a trend for East Asians to show greater house selectivity than Westerners in the lingual landmark area, consistent with more holistic processing in East Asians. These findings demonstrate group biases in Westerners and East Asians that operate on perceptual processing in the brain and are consistent with previous eye-tracking data that show cultural biases to faces.

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Cognitive and social influences on early prosocial behavior in two sociocultural contexts

Joscha Kärtner, Heidi Keller & Nandita Chaudhary
Developmental Psychology, July 2010, Pages 905-914

Abstract:
In this cross-cultural study, we tested 2 main hypotheses: first, that an early self-concept along with self-other differentiation is a universal precursor of prosocial behavior in 19-month-olds, and second, that the importance attached to relational socialization goals (SGs) concerning interpersonal responsiveness (obedience, prosocial behavior) is related to toddlers' prosocial behavior. Contrary to these predictions, the results show that mirror self-recognition, as an indicator of early self-concept, was correlated with toddlers' prosociality only in the Berlin sample (N = 38) and not in the Delhi sample (N = 39). As expected, however, Delhi mothers emphasized relational SGs more strongly than did Berlin mothers. There were no cross-cultural differences in toddlers' prosociality. On an individual level, mothers' emphasis on relational SGs (obedience) was a significant predictor of toddlers' prosocial behavior. On the basis of these results, we propose that situational helping behavior based on shared intentional relations provides an alternative developmental pathway for understanding toddlers' prosocial behavior. This view differs from the often-cited view that anticipating other people as autonomous intentional agents with their own psychological states gives rise to prosocial behavior in toddlers.

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Neural differences in the processing of semantic relationships across cultures

Angela Gutchess, Trey Hedden, Sarah Ketay, Arthur Aron & John Gabrieli
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, June 2010, Pages 254-263

Abstract:
The current study employed functional MRI to investigate the contribution of domain-general (e.g. executive functions) and domain-specific (e.g. semantic knowledge) processes to differences in semantic judgments across cultures. Previous behavioral experiments have identified cross-cultural differences in categorization, with East Asians preferring strategies involving thematic or functional relationships (e.g. cow-grass) and Americans preferring categorical relationships (e.g. cow-chicken). East Asians and American participants underwent functional imaging while alternating between categorical or thematic strategies to sort triads of words, as well as matching words on control trials. Many similarities were observed. However, across both category and relationship trials compared to match (control) trials, East Asians activated a frontal-parietal network implicated in controlled executive processes, whereas Americans engaged regions of the temporal lobes and the cingulate, possibly in response to conflict in the semantic content of information. The results suggest that cultures differ in the strategies employed to resolve conflict between competing semantic judgments.

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Culture and concepts of power

Carlos Torelli & Sharon Shavitt
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming

Abstract:
Five studies indicate that conceptualizations of power are important elements of culture and serve culturally relevant goals. These studies provide converging evidence that cultures nurture different views of what is desirable and meaningful to do with power. Vertical individualism is associated with a conceptualization of power in personalized terms (i.e., power is for advancing one's personal status and prestige), whereas horizontal collectivism is associated with a conceptualization of power in socialized terms (i.e., power is for benefiting and helping others). Cultural variables are shown to predict beliefs about appropriate uses of power, episodic memories about power, attitudes in the service of power goals, and the contexts and ways in which power is used and defended. Evidence for the cultural patterning of power concepts is observed at both the individual level and the cultural-group level of analysis.

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Individualism-Collectivism and Co-operation: A Cross-Society and Cross-Level Examination

Hannah-Hanh Nguyen, Huy Le & Terry Boles
Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, August 2010, Pages 179-204

Abstract:
We examined the influence of Individualism and Collectivism (I-C) on co-operation in workgroups at three levels (societal, organizational, and personal). Data were from 153 American business students representing an individualistic society and 207 Vietnamese counterparts (a collectivistic society). Participants role-played managers for a simulated company with either a collectivistic or individualistic organizational culture in a computerized social-dilemma game. Societal cultures did not moderate the interaction effect between organization-level I-C and person-level Individualism. Those high on individualism pursued their own gains in a dominantly individualistic organizational culture, yet behaving co-operatively in a collectivistic organizational culture. Interestingly, societal cultures moderated the effect of organizational culture on co-operation, such that the positive relationship between organization-level I-C and co-operation was weaker in a collectivistic society (Vietnam) than in an individualistic society (the United States). The results indicate the need for an integrative, cross-level approach to better understand the determinants of co-operation across societies, organizations, and individuals.

Samuel Marshall, Kathleen McGarry & Jonathan Skinner
NBER Working Paper, July 2010

Abstract:
There is conflicting evidence on the importance of out-of-pocket medical expenditures as a risk to financial security, particularly at older ages. We revisit this question, focusing on health care spending near the end of life using data from the Health and Retirement Study for the years 1998-2006. We address difficulties with missing values for various categories of expenditures, outliers, and variations across individuals in the length of the reporting period. Spending in the last year of life is estimated to be $11,618 on average, with the 90th percentile equal to $29,335, the 95th percentile $49,907, and the 99th equal to $94,310. These spending measures represent a substantial fraction of liquid wealth for decedents. Total out-of-pocket expenditures are strongly positively related to wealth and weakly related to income. We find evidence for a mechanism by which wealth could plausibly buy health: large expenditures on home modifications, helpers, home health care, and higher-quality nursing homes, which have been shown elsewhere to improve longevity.

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Genetic Adverse Selection: Evidence from Long-Term Care Insurance and Huntington Disease

Emily Oster, Ira Shoulson, Kimberly Quaid & Ray Dorsey
Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming

Abstract:
Individual, personalized genetic information is increasingly available, leading to the possibility of greater adverse selection over time, particularly in individual-payer insurance markets. We use data on individuals at risk for Huntington disease (HD), a degenerative neurological disorder with significant effects on morbidity, to estimate adverse selection in long-term care insurance. We find strong evidence of adverse selection: individuals who carry the HD genetic mutation are up to 5 times as likely as the general population to own long-term care insurance. This finding is supported both by comparing individuals at risk for HD to those in the general population and by comparing across tested individuals in the HD-risk population with and without the HD mutation.

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Waiting is the hardest part: Anticipating medical test results affects processing and recall of important information

David Portnoy
Social Science & Medicine, forthcoming

Abstract:
Waiting for medical test results that signal physical harm can be a stressful and potentially psychologically harmful experience. Despite this, interventionists and physicians often use this wait time to deliver behavior change messages and other important information about the test, possible results and its implications. This study examined how "bracing" for a medical test result impacts cognitive processing, as well as recall of information delivered during this period. Healthy U.S. university students (N = 150) were tested for a deficiency of a fictitious saliva biomarker that was said to be predictive of long-term health problems using a 2 (Test Result) x 2 (Expected immediacy of result: 10 minutes, 1 month) factorial design. Participants expecting to get the test result shortly should have been bracing for the result. While waiting for the test results participants completed measures of cognitive processing. After participants received the test result, recall of information about the biomarker was tested in addition to cognitive measures. One week later, participants who were originally told they did not have the deficiency had their recall assessed again. Results showed that anticipating an imminent test result increased cognitive distraction in the processing of information and lowered recall of information about the test and the biomarker. These results suggest that delivering critical information to patients after administering a test and immediately before giving the results may not be optimal.

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How Do Employers React to A Pay-or-Play Mandate? Early Evidence from San Francisco

Carrie Hoverman Colla, William Dow & Arindrajit Dube
NBER Working Paper, July 2010

Abstract:
In 2006 San Francisco adopted major health reform, becoming the first city to implement a pay-or-play employer health spending mandate. It also created Healthy San Francisco, a "public option" to promote affordable universal access to care. Using the 2008 Bay Area Employer Health Benefits Survey, we find that most employers (75%) had to increase health spending to comply with the law, yet most (64%) are supportive of the law. There is substantial employer demand for the public option, with 21% of firms using Healthy San Francisco for at least some employees, yet there is little evidence of firms dropping existing insurance offerings in the first year after implementation.

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Niche Players In Health Policy: Medical Specialty Societies In Congress 1969-2002

Aaron Rabinowitz & Miriam Laugesen
Social Science & Medicine, forthcoming

Abstract:
Scholars and commentators alike have long used 'organized medicine' as shorthand for the American Medical Association (AMA). However, organized medicine has increasingly shown signs of fragmentation into specialty societies over the last two decades. While the AMA remains the largest association of physicians, and wields a great deal of influence in political circles, its use as a proxy for organized medicine may warrant reevaluation due to the changing political organization of medicine. We developed a unique database of specialty medical society appearances before all Congressional committees by combining records from Lexis-Nexis Congressional and the Policy Agendas database. Descriptive statistics were used to evaluate the participation of specialty societies by committee and by hearing type. The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) was used to measure whether specialty societies develop niche roles with specific committees, and the Chi-Square Goodness of Fit test was used to study the distribution of specialty society testimonies in health hearings more formally. We found that although the AMA participates in Congressional hearings at a higher rate than any other individual medical specialty society, it accounts for a decreasing percentage of all specialty society appearances over time. In addition, specialty societies have developed niche and monopoly roles in health policymaking as well as relationships with particular congressional committees over time. We conclude that the increasing participation of specialty medical societies in the policymaking process is important because medical societies do not testify solely to promote the economic self-interest of their members. Specialization in medicine has segmented lobbying roles, such that specialty societies have a different focus than the AMA. Thus, ‘organized medicine' and the AMA are no longer synonymous.

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Influence of Names on Career Choices in Medicine

Ernest Abel
Names: A Journal of Onomastics, June 2010, Pages 65-74

Abstract:
Three studies showed that medical doctors and lawyers were disproportionately more likely to have surnames that resembled their professions. A fourth study showed that, for doctors, this influence extended to the type of medicine they practiced. Study 1 found that people with the surname "Doctor" were more likely to be doctors than lawyers, whereas those with the surname "Lawyer" were more likely to be lawyers. Studies 2 and 3 broadened this finding by comparing doctors and lawyers whose first or last names began with three-letter combinations representative of their professions, for example, "doc," "law," and likewise found a significant relationship between name and profession. Study 4 found that the initial letters of physicians' last names were significantly related to their subspecialty, for example, Raymonds were more likely to be radiologists than dermatologists. These results provide further evidence names influence medical career choices.

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What Does Health Reform Mean for the Healthcare Industry? Evidence from the Massachusetts Special Senate Election

Mohamad Al-Ississ & Nolan Miller
NBER Working Paper, July 2010

Abstract:
President Obama's health insurance reform efforts, as embodied in the bills passed by the House and Senate in late 2009 and signed into law in March of 2010, have been described both as a boon and a death blow for private insurance industries. Using stock-price data on health care firms in the S&P health index, we exploit Republican Scott Brown's surprise victory in the Massachusetts Special Senate election to fill the seat of the late Ted Kennedy, which stripped Democrats of the 60-vote majority needed to pass the bill in the Senate, to evaluate the market's assessment of health reform on the health care industry. We find that the reduced likelihood of Health Reform's passage after the Brown election led to a significant increase in health industry stocks and average cumulative abnormal returns of 1.2 percent, corresponding to an increase in total market value of approximately $14.5 billion. Focusing on managed care (insurance) firms, we find an average cumulative abnormal return of 6.5 percent (a $6.7 billion increase in market value), with individual firms' cumulative abnormal returns ranging from around 5 to 9 percent.

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SCHIP premiums, enrollment, and expenditures: A two state, competing risk analysis

James Marton, Patricia Ketsche & Mei Zhou
Health Economics, July 2010, Pages 772-791

Abstract:
Faced with state budget troubles, policymakers may introduce or increase State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) premiums for children in the highest program income eligibility categories. In this paper we compare the responses of SCHIP recipients in a state (Kentucky) that introduced SCHIP premiums for the first time at the end of 2003 with the responses of recipients in a state (Georgia) that increased existing SCHIP premiums in mid-2004. We start with a theoretical examination of how these different policies create different changes to family budget constraints and produce somewhat different financial incentives for recipients. Next we empirically model the impact of these policies using a competing risk approach to differentiate exits due to transfers to other eligibility categories of public coverage from exiting the public health insurance system. In both states we find a short-run increase in the likelihood that children transfer to lower- income eligibility/lower-premium categories of SCHIP. We also find a short-run increase in the rate at which children transfer from SCHIP to Medicaid in Kentucky, which is consistent with our theoretical model. These findings have important financial implications for state budgets, as the matching rates and premium levels are different for different eligibility categories of public coverage.

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Death by Market Power: Reform, Competition and Patient Outcomes in the National Health Service

Martin Gaynor, Rodrigo Moreno-Serra & Carol Propper
NBER Working Paper, July 2010

Abstract:
The effect of competition on the quality of health care remains a contested issue. Most empirical estimates rely on inference from non experimental data. In contrast, this paper exploits a pro-competitive policy reform to provide estimates of the impact of competition on hospital outcomes. The English government introduced a policy in 2006 to promote competition between hospitals. Patients were given choice of location for hospital care and provided information on the quality and timeliness of care. Prices, previously negotiated between buyer and seller, were set centrally under a DRG type system. Using this policy to implement a difference-in-differences research design we estimate the impact of the introduction of competition on not only clinical outcomes but also productivity and expenditure. Our data set is large, containing information on approximately 68,000 discharges per year per hospital from 162 hospitals. We find that the effect of competition is to save lives without raising costs. Patients discharged from hospitals located in markets where competition was more feasible were less likely to die, had shorter length of stay and were treated at the same cost.

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Is Newer Always Better? Re-evaluating the benefits of newer pharmaceuticals

Michael Law & Karen Grépin
Journal of Health Economics, forthcoming

Abstract:
Whether newer pharmaceuticals justify their higher costs by reducing other health expenditures has generated significant debate. We replicate a frequently cited paper by Lichtenberg on drug "offsets" and find his results disappear using a more appropriate model or updated dataset. Further, we test the suitability of similar methods using newer hypertension drugs. We find our observational results run counter to well-established clinical evidence on comparative efficacy and conclude that our model, as well as other studies that do not adequately control for unobserved characteristics that jointly determine drug choice and health expenditures, are likely subject to significant bias.

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Do Bad Report Cards Have Consequences? Impacts of Publicly Reported Provider Quality Information on the CABG Market in Pennsylvania

Justin Wang, Jason Hockenberry, Shin-Yi Chou & Muzhe Yang
NBER Working Paper, July 2010

Abstract:
Since 1992, the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council (PHC4) has published cardiac care report cards for coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery providers. We examine the impact of CABG report cards on a provider's aggregate volume and volume by patient severity and then employ a mixed logit model to investigate the matching between patients and providers. We find a reduction in volume of poor performing and unrated surgeons' volume but no effect on more highly rated surgeons or hospitals of any rating. We also find that the probability that patients, regardless of severity of illness, receive CABG surgery from low-performing surgeons is significantly lower.

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On the Morality of Guinea-Pig Recruitment

Mikhail Valdman
Bioethics, July 2010, Pages 287-294

Abstract:
Can it be wrong to conduct medical research on human subjects even with their informed consent and even when the transaction between the subjects and researchers is expected to be mutually beneficial? This question is especially pressing today in light of the rise of a semi-professional class of 'guinea pigs'- human research subjects that sell researchers a right of access to their bodies in exchange for money. Can these exchanges be morally problematic even when they are consensual and mutually beneficial? I argue that there are two general kinds of concern one can have about such transactions - concerns about the nature of what is sold and concerns about the conditions in which the selling occurs. The former involves worries about degradation and the possible wrongness of selling a right of access to one's body. These worries, I argue, are not very serious. The latter involves worries about coercion, exploitation, and undue influence - about how, by virtue of their ignorance, impulsiveness, or desperation, guinea pigs can be taken advantage of by medical researchers. These worries are quite serious but I argue that, at least in cases where the exchange between guinea pigs and researchers is consensual and mutually beneficial, they do not raise insurmountable moral problems.

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Is the Demand for Health Care Generosity Equal for All Recipients? A Longitudinal Analysis of State Medicaid Spending, 1977-2004

Larry Howard
Public Finance Review, May 2010, Pages 346-377

Abstract:
This article estimates an economic model of the determinants of state government spending on health care benefits provided through the Medicaid program for the old, disabled, and young populations, respectively. Spending on the mutually exclusive recipient groups, rather than the aggregate, is examined to ascertain the extent to which one population's costs supplant spending on the alternative populations. Endogeneity bias arising from the incentive effects of health care benefit guarantees on program take-up is addressed using an identification strategy that relies on measures of time-varying state resident participation in federally administered welfare programs to control for unobservable economic and noneconomic opportunities simultaneously determining Medicaid recipiency. It finds that state demand for health care generosity for each population is interrelated with the specific costs of the alternative populations. Simulations of eligibility expansions targeting each of the recipient populations illustrate the substitution effects evident in state Medicaid spending.

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Long-run Effects on Longevity of a Nutritional Shock Early in Life: The Dutch Potato Famine of 1846-1847

Maarten Lindeboom, France Portrait & Gerard van den Berg
Journal of Health Economics, forthcoming

Abstract:
Nutritional conditions in utero and during infancy may causally affect health and mortality during childhood, adulthood, and at old ages. This paper investigates whether exposure to a nutritional shock in early life negatively affects survival at older ages, using individual data. Nutritional conditions are captured by exposure to the Potato famine in the Netherlands in 1846-47, and by regional and temporal variation in market prices of potato and rye. The data cover the lifetimes of a random sample of Dutch individuals born between 1812 and 1902 and provide individual information on life events and demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. First we non-parametrically compare the total and residual lifetimes of individuals exposed and not exposed to the famine in utero and/or until age 1. Next, we estimate survival models in which we control for individual characteristics and additional (early life) determinants of mortality. We find strong evidence for long-run effects of exposure to the Potato famine. The results are stronger for boys than for girls. Boys and girls lose on average 4, respectively 2.5 years of life after age 50 after exposure at birth to the Potato famine. Lower social classes appear to be more affected by early life exposure to the Potato famine than higher social classes. These results confirm the mechanism linking early-life (nutritional) conditions to old-age mortality. Finally, higher food prices at birth appear to reduce later life mortality of children of farmers from higher social classes. We interpret this as an income effect.

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Mortality consequences of the 1959-1961 Great Leap Forward famine in China: Debilitation, selection, and mortality crossovers

Shige Song
Social Science & Medicine, August 2010, Pages 551-558

Abstract:
Using retrospective mortality records for three cohorts of newborns (1956-1958, 1959-1961, and 1962-1964) drawn from a large Chinese national fertility survey conducted in 1988, this article examines cohort mortality differences up to age 22, with the aim of identifying debilitating and selection effects of the 1959-1961 Great Leap Forward Famine. The results showed that the mortality level of the non-famine cohort caught up to and exceeded the level of the famine cohort between ages 11 and 12, suggesting both debilitating and selection effects. Multilevel multiprocess models further established a more direct connection between frailties in infancy and frailties at subsequent ages, revealing the underlying dynamics of mortality convergence between the famine and the non-famine cohorts caused by differential excess infant mortality. These results provide important new insights into the human mortality process.

Nicholas Burger & John Lynham
Applied Economics Letters, August 2010, Pages 1161-1166

Abstract:
Professional bookmakers rarely accept bets from individuals who directly control the outcome of the bet. We analyse a unique exception to this rule and a potential policy innovation in the battle against obesity: a weight loss betting market. If obese individuals have time-inconsistent preferences then commitment mechanisms, such as personal gambles, should help them restrain their short-term impulses and lose weight. Correspondence with the bettors confirms that this is their primary motivation. However, it appears that the bettors in our sample are not particularly skilled at choosing effective commitment mechanisms. Despite payoffs of as high as $7350, approximately 80% of people who spend money to bet on their own behaviour end up losing their bets. Empirical analysis of the betting market yields further insights. Males are treated very differently compared to females: being male is considered equivalent to having an extra 6 months to lose the same amount of weight. Movements in the market price also confirm the belief that rigidity is preferred to flexibility in setting successful weight loss targets.

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Invocations and intoxication: Does prayer decrease alcohol consumption?

Nathaniel Lambert, Frank Fincham, Loren Marks & Tyler Stillman
Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, June 2010, Pages 209-219

Abstract:
Four methodologically diverse studies (N = 1,758) show that prayer frequency and alcohol consumption are negatively related. In Study 1 (n = 824), we used a cross-sectional design and found that higher prayer frequency was related to lower alcohol consumption and problematic drinking behavior. Study 2 (n = 702) used a longitudinal design and found that more frequent prayer at Time 1 predicted less alcohol consumption and problematic drinking behavior at Time 2, and this relationship held when controlling for baseline levels of drinking and prayer. In Study 3 (n = 117), we used an experimental design to test for a causal relationship between prayer frequency and alcohol consumption. Participants assigned to pray every day (either an undirected prayer or a prayer for a relationship partner) for 4 weeks drank about half as much alcohol at the conclusion of the study as control participants. Study 4 (n = 115) replicated the findings of Study 3, as prayer again reduced drinking by about half. These findings are discussed in terms of prayer as reducing drinking motives.

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The effects of alcohol use on academic achievement in high school

Ana Balsa, Laura Giuliano & Michael French
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming

Abstract:
This paper examines the effects of alcohol use on high school students' quality of learning. We estimate fixed-effects models using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Our primary measure of academic achievement is the student's GPA abstracted from official school transcripts. We find that increases in alcohol consumption result in small yet statistically significant reductions in GPA for male students and in statistically non-significant changes for females. For females, however, higher levels of drinking result in self-reported academic difficulty. The fixed-effects results are substantially smaller than OLS estimates, underscoring the importance of addressing unobserved individual heterogeneity.

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Forewarned is forearmed: Conserving self-control strength to resist social influence

Loes Janssen, Bob Fennis & Ad Pruyn
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming

Abstract:
Recent research has shown that resisting persuasion involves active self-regulation. Resisting an influence attempt consumes self-regulatory resources, and in a state of self-regulatory resource depletion, people become more susceptible to (unwanted) influence attempts. However, the present studies show that a forewarning of an impending influence attempt prompts depleted individuals to conserve what is left of their regulatory resources and thus promotes self-regulatory efficiency. As a result, when these individuals are subsequently confronted with a persuasive request, they comply less (Experiments 1 and 3), and generate more counterarguments (Experiment 2) than their depleted counterparts who were not forewarned and thus did not conserve their resources, and they are as able as non-depleted participants to resist persuasion.

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Does Information Matter? The Effect of the Meth Project on Meth Use among Youths

Mark Anderson
Journal of Health Economics, forthcoming

Abstract:
Are demand-side interventions effective at curbing drug use? To the extent demand-side programs are successful, their cost effectiveness can be appealing from a policy perspective. Established in 2005, the Montana Meth Project (MMP) employs a graphic advertising campaign to deter meth use among teens. Due to the MMP's apparent success, seven other states have adopted Meth Project campaigns. Using data from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveys (YRBS), this paper investigates whether the MMP reduced methamphetamine use among Montana's youth. When accounting for a preexisting downward trend in meth use, effects on meth use are statistically indistinguishable from zero. These results are robust to using related changes of meth use among individuals without exposure to the campaign as controls in a difference-in-difference framework. A complementary analysis of treatment admissions data from the Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS) confirms the MMP has had no discernable impact on meth use.

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College student employment and drinking: A daily study of work stressors, alcohol expectancies, and alcohol consumption

Adam Butler, Kama Dodge & Eric Faurote
Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, July 2010, Pages 291-303

Abstract:
We examined the within-person relationships between daily work stressors and alcohol consumption over 14 consecutive days in a sample of 106 employed college students. Using a tension reduction theoretical framework, we predicted that exposure to work stressors would increase alcohol consumption by employed college students, particularly for men and those with stronger daily expectancies about the tension reducing properties of alcohol. After controlling for day of the week, we found that hours worked were positively related to number of drinks consumed. Workload was unrelated to alcohol consumption, and work-school conflict was negatively related to consumption, particularly when students expressed strong beliefs in the tension reducing properties of alcohol. There was no evidence that the effects of work stressors were moderated by sex. The results illustrate that employment during the academic year plays a significant role in college student drinking and suggest that the employment context may be an appropriate intervention site to address the problem of student drinking.

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Promoting prospective self-control through abstraction

Kentaro Fujita & Joseph Roberts
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming

Abstract:
When people anticipate that future temptations may undermine valued goals, they use a number of prospective self-control strategies (or "precommitment devices") to increase the likelihood of future self-control success. Little is known, however, about the conditions under which people are more or less likely to use them. Drawing from construal level theory (e.g., Trope & Liberman, 2003), we argue that people are more likely to engage in prospective self-control when they construe events more abstractly (at higher-level construals). Results from two experiments demonstrated that higher-level construals promote use of two well-documented prospective strategies: choice bracketing and self-imposing punishment. Higher-level construals thus appear to enhance people's efforts to protect their valued goals from anticipated temptations.

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Ego depletion and the strength model of self-control: A meta-analysis

Martin Hagger, Chantelle Wood, Chris Stiff & Nikos Chatzisarantis
Psychological Bulletin, July 2010, Pages 495-525

Abstract:
According to the strength model, self-control is a finite resource that determines capacity for effortful control over dominant responses and, once expended, leads to impaired self-control task performance, known as ego depletion. A meta-analysis of 83 studies tested the effect of ego depletion on task performance and related outcomes, alternative explanations and moderators of the effect, and additional strength model hypotheses. Results revealed a significant effect of ego depletion on self-control task performance. Significant effect sizes were found for ego depletion on effort, perceived difficulty, negative affect, subjective fatigue, and blood glucose levels. Small, nonsignificant effects were found for positive affect and self-efficacy. Moderator analyses indicated minimal variation in the effect across sphere of depleting and dependent task, frequently used depleting and dependent tasks, presentation of tasks as single or separate experiments, type of dependent measure and control condition task, and source laboratory. The effect size was moderated by depleting task duration, task presentation by the same or different experimenters, intertask interim period, dependent task complexity, and use of dependent tasks in the choice and volition and cognitive spheres. Motivational incentives, training on self-control tasks, and glucose supplementation promoted better self-control in ego-depleted samples. Expecting further acts of self-control exacerbated the effect. Findings provide preliminary support for the ego-depletion effect and strength model hypotheses. Support for motivation and fatigue as alternative explanations for ego depletion indicate a need to integrate the strength model with other theories. Findings provide impetus for future investigation testing additional hypotheses and mechanisms of the ego-depletion effect.

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Body Weight and Smoking Initiation: Evidence from Add Health

Daniel Rees & Joseph Sabia
Journal of Health Economics, forthcoming

Abstract:
In volume 23, issue 2 of this journal, Cawley, Markowitz and Tauras used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 Cohort to estimate the relationship between body weight and smoking initiation. Using maternal obesity status as an instrument, they found strong evidence that overweight females between the ages of 12 and 21 were more likely to initiate smoking. Drawing on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we reexamine the relationship between body weight and smoking initiation. Our results are generally consistent with those of Cawley, Markowitz and Tauras.

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Counseling Young Cannabis Users by Text Message

Ditte Laursen
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, July 2010, Pages 646-665

Abstract:
This article presents a study of 2 Short Message Services (SMS) aimed at providing young people with information on cannabis and helping them to reduce their consumption of the drug. The study is based on qualitative interviews with 12 young people. The attitude of the participants in the study towards the predefined messages is generally positive, but they prefer factual information to advice and counseling. The messages prompt reflection and awareness among the recipients, and their repetitive, serial nature plays a significant part in the process of change. The SMS services offer a less demanding, potentially less confrontational alternative to traditional forms of counseling and treatment. The article compares text message counseling with web-based interventions and telephone help lines.

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Therapeutic Interactive Voice Response (TIVR) to Reduce Analgesic Medication Use for Chronic Pain Management

Magdalena Naylor, Shelly Naud, Francis Keefe & John Helzer
Journal of Pain, forthcoming

Abstract:
This paper examines whether a telephone-based, automated maintenance enhancement program can help to reduce opioid and nonsteroidal anti-inflamatory drugs (NSAID) analgesic use in patients with chronic pain. Following 11 weeks of group cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), 51 subjects with chronic musculoskeletal pain were randomized to 1 of 2 study groups. Twenty-six subjects participated in 4 months of a Therapeutic Interactive Voice Response (TIVR) program in addition to standard follow-up care, while a control group of 25 subjects received standard follow-up care only. TIVR is an automated, telephone-based tool developed for the maintenance and enhancement of CBT skills. Opioid analgesic use decreased in the experimental group in both follow-ups: 4 and 8 months postCBT. In addition, at 8-month follow-up, 21% of the TIVR subjects had discontinued the use of opioid analgesics, 23% had discontinued NSAIDS, and 10% had discontinued antidepressant medications. In contrast, the control group showed increases in opioid and NSAIDS use. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) revealed significant between-group differences in opioid analgesic use at 8-month follow up (P = .004). We have previously demonstrated the efficacy of TIVR to decrease pain and improve coping; this analysis demonstrates that the use of TIVR may also result in concurrent reductions in opioid analgesic and NSAID medications use.

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A genetically modulated, intrinsic cingulate circuit supports human nicotine addiction

Elliot Hong et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming

Abstract:
Whole-genome searches have identified nicotinic acetylcholine receptor α5-α3-β4 subunit gene variants that are associated with smoking. How genes support this addictive and high-risk behavior through their expression in the brain remains poorly understood. Here we show that a key α5 gene variant Asp398Asn is associated with a dorsal anterior cingulate-ventral striatum/extended amygdala circuit, such that the "risk allele" decreases the intrinsic resting functional connectivity strength in this circuit. Importantly, this effect is observed independently in nonsmokers and smokers, although the circuit strength distinguishes smokers from nonsmokers, predicts addiction severity in smokers, and is not secondary to smoking per se, thus representing a trait-like circuitry biomarker. This same circuit is further impaired in people with mental illnesses, who have the highest rate of smoking. Identifying where and how brain circuits link genes to smoking provides practical neural circuitry targets for new treatment development.

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Individual Discount Rates and Smoking: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Denmark

Glenn Harrison, Morten Lau & Elisabet Rutström
Journal of Health Economics, forthcoming

Abstract:
We elicit measures of individual discount rates from a representative sample of the Danish population and test two substantive hypotheses. The first hypothesis is that smokers have higher individual discount rates than non-smokers. The second hypothesis is that smokers are more likely to have time inconsistent preferences than non-smokers, where time inconsistency is indicated by a hyperbolic discounting function. We control for the concavity of the utility function in our estimates of individual discount rates and find that male smokers have significantly higher discount rates than male non-smokers. However, smoking has no significant association with discount rates among women. This result is robust across exponential and hyperbolic discounting functions. We consider the sensitivity of our conclusions to a statistical specification that allows each observation to potentially be generated by more than one latent data-generating process.

Jonathan Wai, Megan Cacchio, Martha Putallaz & Matthew Makel
Intelligence, July-August 2010, Pages 412-423

Abstract:
One factor in the debate surrounding the underrepresentation of women in science technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) involves male-female mathematical ability differences in the extreme right tail (top 1% in ability). The present study provides male-female ability ratios from over 1.6 million 7th grade students in the right tail (top 5% in ability) across 30 years (1981-2010) using multiple measures of math, verbal, and writing ability and science reasoning from the SAT and ACT. Male-female ratios in mathematical reasoning are substantially lower than 30 years ago, but have been stable over the last 20 years and still favor males. Over the last two decades males showed a stable or slightly increasing advantage in science reasoning. However, more females scored in the extreme right tail of verbal reasoning and writing ability tests. The potential role of sociocultural factors on changes in the male-female ability ratios is discussed and the introduction of science reasoning as a potential new factor in the debate is proposed. The implications of continued sex differences in math and science reasoning is discussed within the context of the many important interlocking factors surrounding the debate on the underrepresentation of women in STEM.

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Geographic Variation in the Gender Differences in Test Scores

Devin Pope & Justin Sydnor
Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2010, Pages 95-108

Abstract:
The causes and consequences of gender disparities in standardized test scores -- especially in the high tails of achievement -- have been a topic of heated debate. The existing evidence on standardized test scores largely confirms the prevailing stereotypes that more men than women excel in math and science while more women than men excel in tests of language and reading. We provide a new perspective on this gender gap in test scores by analyzing the variation in these disparities across geographic areas. We illustrate that male-female ratios of students scoring in the high ranges of standardized tests vary significantly across the United States. This variation is systematic in several important ways. In particular, states where males are highly overrepresented in the top math and science scores also tend to be states where women are highly overrepresented in the top reading scores. This pattern suggests that states vary in their adherence to stereotypical gender performance, rather than favoring one sex over the other across all subjects. Furthermore, since the genetic distinction and the hormonal differences between sexes that might affect early cognitive development (that is, innate abilities) are likely the same regardless of the state in which a person happens to be born, the variation we find speaks to the nature-versus-nurture debates surrounding test scores and suggests environments significantly impact gender disparities in test scores.

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The Market for College Graduates and the Worldwide Boom in Higher Education of Women

Gary Becker, William Hubbard & Kevin Murphy
American Economic Review, May 2010, Pages 229-233

"Differences in gender means and distributions of abilities, especially non-cognitive abilities, affect the supply of college-educated women compared to college-educated men since the full cost of college is lower for abler persons. It appears that the average non-cognitive abilities of women are higher than the average for men, as measured by average grades in school and standardized test scores, and that the inequality in non-cognitive abilities is lower for women, as measured by the variances in these grades and test scores. Lower inequality of non-cognitive abilities among women than men imply that elasticities of supply to college would be greater for women than men, since heterogeneity in costs of college attendance would be lower for women. Further, greater average non-cognitive abilities of women than men implies that the supply of women to college would be greater than that of men when their benefits were the same. Together, these gender differences explain how the increased demand for college graduates that occurred in most countries during past 30 years would have increased the supply of women by more than the supply of men, leading to women's college attendance surpassing that of men."

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Assessing Gender-Related Portrayals in Top-Grossing G-Rated Films

Stacy Smith, Katherine Pieper, Amy Granados & Marc Choueiti
Sex Roles, June 2010, Pages 774-786

Abstract:
The purpose of this content analysis was to examine gender-related portrayals in popular G-rated films. Our research questions addressed the prevalence and nature of males and females in general-audience fare. To answer our research queries, 101 of the top-grossing box office films released theatrically in the United States and Canada from 1990 to early 2005 were assessed. The results showed that males outnumber females by a ratio of 2.57 to 1, which has not changed in fifteen years. Females were more likely than males to be young and depicted traditionally. In terms of personality traits, females were more likely to be smart, good, and beautiful than were males.

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Careers as tournaments: The impact of sex and gendered organizational culture preferences on MBAs' income attainment

Olivia O'Neill & Charles O'Reilly
Journal of Organizational Behavior, August 2010, Pages 856-876

Abstract:
Drawing on gender role theory and tournament theory, we examined the effects of sex and organizational culture preferences on the incomes of MBA graduates over an 8-year period. We found that masculine culture preferences led to higher income 4 years after graduation and, in contrast to previous research, the effect was stronger for women. By 8 years after graduation, however, men's rate of income increase was significantly higher than women's, an effect that was mediated by hours worked per week. These findings clarify some of the conflicting results of previous research on the effects of gender roles on women's careers and suggest that a tournament-like aspect of careers may account for higher incomes in organizations.

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Understanding gender differences in children's risk taking and injury: A comparison of mothers' and fathers' reactions to sons and daughters misbehaving in ways that lead to injury

Barbara Morrongiello, Daniel Zdzieborski & Jackie Normand
Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, forthcoming

Abstract:
This study compared reactions of mothers and fathers to the risk taking behavior of sons and daughters. Mother-father pairs (N = 52) imagined their 2-year-old boy or girl behaving in risky ways in common home situations that could, and did, result in injury. Emotional and parenting reactions to the behaviors were assessed before and after injury. Results revealed few differences between mothers' and fathers' reactions but reactions varied for sons versus daughters. Parent reactions to risk taking by sons focused on discipline but reactions to the same behaviors by daughters focused on safety. Mothers, in particular, reacted to sons with anger and daughters with disappointment and surprise. Parents attributed risk taking to personality for sons but situational factors for daughters, and judged daughters could be taught to comply with safety rules more than sons. Overall, results suggest that parents socialize boys and girls differently regarding risk taking.

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The Female Advantage in College Academic Achievements and Horizontal Sex Segregation

Sigal Alon & Dafna Gelbgiser
Social Science Research, forthcoming

Abstract:
This study offers a structural explanation for the female advantage in college completion rates, stressing the importance of horizontal sex segregation across fields of study in shaping educational outcomes and gender inequality. Results from a nationally representative sample of students who matriculated at four-year institutions in 1995 reveal a high level of gender segregation by field of study. Field of study creates the immediate learning environment for the students and between-major differences in academic and social arrangements - such as different grading norms, academic intensity, size and social support - shape both female and male performance. We find that this variation is a key factor in the creation of the female advantage in grades and graduation likelihood. The simulation we conduct demonstrates that if sex integration were achieved and both groups had the male distribution of majors, the female advantage in graduation likelihood and grades, which remains after socioeconomic and academic factors are netted out, would be substantially reduced.

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Explaining the Gender Gap in Math Test Scores: The Role of Competition

Muriel Niederle & Lise Vesterlund
Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2010, Pages 129-144

Abstract:
The mean and standard deviation in performance on math test scores are only slightly larger for males than for females. Despite minor differences in mean performance, many more boys than girls perform at the right tail of the distribution. This gender gap has been documented for a series of math tests including the AP calculus test, the mathematics SAT, and the quantitative portion of the Graduate Record Exam (GRE). The objective of this paper is not to discuss whether the mathematical skills of males and females differ, be it a result of nurture or nature. Rather we argue that the reported test scores do not necessarily match the gender differences in math skills. We will present results that suggest that the evidence of a large gender gap in mathematics performance at high percentiles in part may be explained by the differential manner in which men and women respond to competitive test-taking environments. The effects in mixed-sex settings range from women failing to perform well in competitions, to women shying away from environments in which they have to compete. We find that the response to competition differs for men and women, and in the examined environment, gender difference in competitive performance does not reflect the difference in noncompetitive performance. We argue that the competitive pressures associated with test taking may result in performances that do not reflect those of less-competitive settings. Of particular concern is that the distortion is likely to vary by gender and that it may cause gender differences in performance to be particularly large in mathematics and for the right tail of the performance distribution. Thus the gender gap in math test scores may exaggerate the math advantage of males over females.

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Reversing fortunes or content change? Gender gaps in math-related skill throughout childhood

Benjamin Gibbs
Social Science Research, July 2010, Pages 540-569

Abstract:
Many scholars and policy makers of education have focused significant attention on male advantages in math skills during adolescence, but have often overlooked female advantages in math skills that emerge before school begins. As a way to explain this conflicting pattern, some scholars cite exposure to schooling as a reason why girls experience what some have termed girls' "reversal of fortunes." By using first-of-its-kind data I examine math-related skills with proscriptive data from early to late childhood using two nationally-representative data sets. Moving beyond standardized assessments of math skills, this study reconciles these two competing trends using subset measures. Far from a reversal of fortunes, girls excel in math skills that are less complex (i.e. counting, shape recognition) across childhood. Girls' disadvantages in math emerge with content change - as item complexity increases over time (i.e. multiplication, division, and fractions). In contrast to standardized assessments of cognitive skills, gender gaps in item complexity may be more revealing for understanding the origins and development of gender stratification.

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A Meta-Analysis of Gender Group Differences for Measures of Job Performance in Field Studies

Philip Roth, Kristen Purvis & Philip Bobko
Journal of Management, forthcoming

Abstract:
There are multiple views in human resource management and organizational behavior concerning gender differences in measures of job performance. Some researchers suggest that males generally are evaluated higher than females across a variety of situations that include job perormance measurement. At the same time, the presence of specific status cues in expectation states theory (EST; similar to the concept of individuating information) suggests that measures of job performance will be more similar than different for males and females. Previous analyses are unclear in their results for the measurement of the construct of job performance because they have included, and/or focused on, additional constructs (e.g., hiring suitability, leadership performance aggregated with leadership satisfaction) or have used student samples in lab experiments. The authors of this article conducted a meta-analysis of job performance measures from field studies. They found that females generally scored slightly higher than males (mean d = -.11, 80% credibility interval of -.33 to .12). Other analyses suggested that, although job performance ratings favored females, ratings of promotion potential were higher for males. Thus, ratings of promotability may deserve further attention as a potential source of differential promotion rates. These findings and processes are discussed within the context of EST.

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Social/Behavioral Skills and the Gender Gap in Early Educational Achievement

Thomas DiPrete & Jennifer Jennings
Columbia University Working Paper, February 2009

Abstract:
Though many studies have suggested that social and behavioral skills play a central role in gender stratification processes, we know little about the extent to which these skills affect gender gaps in academic achievement. Analyzing data from the Early Child Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort, we demonstrate that social and behavioral skills have substantively important effects on academic outcomes from kindergarten through fifth grade. Gender differences in the acquisition of these skills, moreover, explain a considerable fraction of the gender gap in academic outcomes during early elementary school. Boys get roughly the same academic return to social and behavioral skills as their female peers, but girls retain an advantage both because they begin school with more advanced social and behavioral skills, and because their skill advantage grows over time. While part of the effect may reflect an evaluation process that rewards students who better conform to school norms, our results imply that the acquisition of social and behavioral skills enhances learning as well. Our results call for a reconsideration of the family and school-level processes that produce gender gaps in social/behavioral skills and the advantages they confer for academic and later success.

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Sexually dimorphic traits (digit ratio, body height, systemizing-empathizing scores) and gender segregation between occupations: Evidence from the BBC internet study

John Manning, Stian Reimers, Simon Baron-Cohen, Sally Wheelwright & Bernhard Fink
Personality and Individual Differences, forthcoming

Abstract:
The proportion of women (PW) across occupations shows considerable variation. Here we hypothesize that occupational segregation could be moderated by the effect of testosterone (T), leading individuals to gender-typical choice of occupation. To test this, we examined the relationship between PW across 22 occupations and three putative correlates of T (the 2nd to 4th digit ratio [2D:4D], a supposed correlate of prenatal T [PT]; body height, a possible correlate of adult T [AT]; and a systemizing-empathizing score [SQ-EQ], a putative behavioural correlate of PT and AT) in a large internet survey. PW varied from 17% (Engineering/R&D) to 94% (Homemaker) per occupation. Compared to participants in female-typical jobs, participants in male-typical jobs tended to have low right hand 2D:4D and low right-left hand 2D:4D [Dr-l] (higher PT, women only), were taller (higher AT, men and women), and had higher SQ-EQ scores (higher PT and AT, men and women). With regard to women, the relationships for Dr-l and SQ-EQ (but not body height) remained significant when Whites only were considered. We conclude that in women Dr-l, and SQ-EQ are related to occupational segregation, suggesting that high PT and AT are found in women who are in male-typical occupations.

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Gender role differences in reactions to unemployment: Exploring psychological mobility and boundaryless careers

Monica Forret, Sherry Sullivan & Lisa Mainiero
Journal of Organizational Behavior, July 2010, Pages 647-666

Abstract:
Using Sullivan and Arthur's (Sullivan & Arthur, [2006]) refinement of the boundaryless career concept, this study examines whether there are gender role differences in psychological mobility (i.e., the career actor's capacity to envision a variety of career options) in response to the same physical transition of unemployment. We surveyed 1095 individuals across numerous organizations and industries, and analyzed our data by generational cohort in light of evolving societal attitudes toward child rearing and breadwinning responsibilities. We found that for both Gen Xers and Baby Boomers, men with children were more likely to perceive unemployment as a defeat than women with children; and women with children were more likely to perceive unemployment as an opportunity than men with children. Despite the many historical, economic, social, and cultural changes in the environment over the past decades, traditional gender roles remain pervasive in response to unemployment. Based on the study's empirical findings, we suggest critical issues for the future study of gender role differences and psychological mobility.

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Sex, intelligence and educational achievement in a national cohort of over 175,000 11-year-old schoolchildren in England

Catherine Calvin, Cres Fernandes, Pauline Smith, Peter Visscher & Ian Deary
Intelligence, July-August 2010, Pages 424-432

Abstract:
General cognitive ability (g) does not explain sex differences in academic test performance by the end of compulsory education. Instead, individual differences in specific reasoning abilities, after removing the effects of g, may contribute to the observed gender gaps. Associations between general or specific cognitive abilities, sex, and educational attainments were analysed in a cross-sectional study of 11-year-olds (M = 133.5 months, SD = 3.5), at an age before substantive gender-related selection-bias occurred. The 178,599 pupils (89,545 girls and 89,054 boys) attending English state schools represented 93% of the UK's local education authorities. In 2004 each student completed the Cognitive Abilities Test-Third Edition (CAT3), assessing verbal, quantitative, and nonverbal reasoning abilities. These data were linked to each child's attainment scores on national Key Stage 2 tests in English, mathematics and science. A sex difference in g, favoring girls, was statistically significant but of negligible effect size (Cohen's d = .01). Girls scored 26% of a SD higher than boys on a verbal residual factor, and boys scored 28% of a SD higher than girls on a quantitative residual factor, with negligible sex differences on a nonverbal residual factor (1% of a SD). In education, 10% more girls than boys achieved UK government targets in English. In mathematics and science, sex differences were less apparent at the government target grade (Level 4), although a 5% greater proportion of boys than girls performed at the highest level in mathematics (Level 5). General cognitive ability (g) was strongly related to an educational factor score (r = .83) as expected, and did not explain sex differences in academic performance. In general linear models, a verbal residual factor explained up to 29% of girls' higher English attainment, and better quantitative skills among boys explained 50% of their higher attainment in mathematics. Besides the significant contributions of specific cognitive abilities to gender differences in English and mathematics, there remains substantive variance of the educational gender gap left to explain.

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Gender Gaps in Educational Attainment in Less Developed Countries

Monica Grant & Jere Behrman
Population and Development Review, March 2010, Pages 71-89

Abstract:
Conventional wisdom holds that gender gaps in schooling favoring males in developing countries generally are large, though probably declining. In this article we re-examine recent gender gaps in schooling in the developing world and come to a more nuanced characterization of their nature, which suggests that the developing countries are becoming more like the developed countries, with gender gaps that increasingly favor, rather than discriminate against, females. Using data from 38 countries with multiple Demographic and Health Surveys, we examine how the gender gaps in current school enrollment and grade completion emerge across the educational life course from age 6 to 18. We also examine how these age-specific measures have changed over time, comparing the periods 1990-99 and 2000-06. Our analyses indicate that among children who have ever attended school, girls younger than 16 years of age have equal or greater schooling progress than boys of the same age in all regions of the developing world.

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Maintaining Separate Spheres in Policing: Women on SWAT Teams

Mary Dodge, Laura Valcore & David Klinger
Women & Criminal Justice, July 2010, Pages 218-238

Abstract:
The Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team may represent the last vestige of male dominance in law enforcement as an assignment that remains grounded in traditional masculine notions of policing. Although SWAT units have become a prominent feature of modern American policing, there are few female team members. In an attempt to develop some insight into why women rarely serve on SWAT teams, the present research examines the viewpoints of a sample of 30 male and 31 female police officers on the gendered aspects of SWAT assignment. This exploratory study represents the first qualitative attempt to uncover police officers' perspectives and thoughts on the "fit" of women on SWAT teams. The results show that the majority of officers, whether implicitly or explicitly, and regardless of gender, agree that the presence of women on SWAT teams presents a variety of challenges.

Atif Mian, Amir Sufi & Francesco Trebbi
NBER Working Paper, June 2010

Abstract:
We examine how special interests, measured by campaign contributions from the mortgage industry, and constituent interests, measured by the share of subprime borrowers in a congressional district, may have influenced U.S. government policy toward the housing sector during the subprime mortgage credit expansion from 2002 to 2007. Beginning in 2002, mortgage industry campaign contributions increasingly targeted U.S. representatives from districts with a large fraction of subprime borrowers. During the expansion years, mortgage industry campaign contributions and the share of subprime borrowers in a congressional district increasingly predicted congressional voting behavior on housing related legislation. The evidence suggests that both subprime mortgage lenders and subprime mortgage borrowers influenced government policy toward housing finance during the subprime mortgage credit expansion.

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The Role of Economic Reliance in Defense Procurement Contracting

Rebecca Thorpe
American Politics Research, July 2010, Pages 636-675

Abstract:
This article examines how a defense sector presence in sparsely populated areas influences (a) House of Representatives defense committee assignments and (2) defense procurement allocations from 1999 to 2005. Although previous work had shown that prime contracts typically flow to headquarter locations, this article goes beyond existing research by tracking the distribution of defense expenditures to major subcontracting locations. In doing so, I find a conditional relationship between defense industry presence and rural geography: Defense funds disproportionately flow to congressional districts that are more economically reliant on the defense sector of the economy. Constituency dependence on the defense sector is one of the most important factors leading members of Congress to seek representation on defense committees and to procure defense benefits. Local dependence on the defense industry may reinforce political relationships that contribute to inefficiency and excess in weapons contracting.

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Risk and Global Economic Architecture: Why Full Financial Integration May Be Undesirable

Joseph Stiglitz
American Economic Review, May 2010, Pages 388-392

Abstract:
This paper provides a general framework for analyzing the optimal degree and form of financial integration. Full integration is not in general optimal: faced with a choice between two polar regimes, full integration or autarky, autarky may be superior. The intuition is simple: if underlying technologies are not convex, then risk-sharing can lower expected utility. The simplistic models arguing for financial integration typically employed in economics assume convexity; but the world is rife with non-convexities, e.g. associated with bankruptcy. The architecture of the credit market can, for instance, affect the likelihood of a bankruptcy cascade, "contagion" and systemic risk.

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The Effects of Earmarks on the Likelihood of Reelection

Thomas Stratmann
George Mason University Working Paper, May 2010

Abstract:
Both academic and popular sources claim that incumbent legislators use government spending - "pork barrel" spending - to win over voters. To date, however, evidence for this hypothesis is scarce. Using recently available data on the sponsorship of earmarks in U.S. appropriations legislation, this paper tests the effect of earmarks on the likelihood of legislators' reelection. The results show that secured earmarks lead to higher vote shares. Furthermore, the paper tests for voter responses using alternative definitions for what an incumbent's constituency might count as "his earmarks." Here, one finding is that voters care about the amount of earmarks, not whether earmarks have few or many sponsors.

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Do the GSEs expand the supply of mortgage credit? New evidence of crowd out in the secondary mortgage market

Stuart Gabriel & Stuart Rosenthal
Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming

Abstract:
The dramatic government takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in September, 2008 was motivated in part by a desire to ensure a continued flow of credit to the mortgage market. This study examines a closely related issue: the extent to which GSE activity crowds out mortgage purchases by private secondary market intermediaries. Evidence of substantial crowd out suggests that government support for the GSEs may be less warranted, whereas the absence of crowd out implies that GSE loan purchases enhance liquidity. Using 1994-2008 HMDA data for conventional, conforming sized loans, three distinct periods with regard to GSE crowd out are apparent. From 1994 - 2003, the share of loans sold to the secondary market increased from 60 to over 90 percent, private sector and GSE market shares of loan purchases were roughly similar for most market segments, and IV estimates indicate relatively little GSE crowd out of private secondary market purchases. From 2004 to 2006, private loan purchases boomed and dominated those of the GSEs, while IV estimates indicate crowd out jumped to 50 percent at the peak of the boom. This is especially true in the market for home purchase as opposed to refinance loans. With the crash in housing and mortgage markets in 2007, private sector intermediaries pulled back, the GSEs regained market share, and evidence of GSE crowd out disappeared in both the home purchase loan and refinance markets. These patterns suggest that the degree of GSE crowd out varies with market conditions and that the federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac likely served to enhance liquidity to the mortgage market during the 2007-2009 financial crisis.

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Is past prologue? Prospects for state and local sales tax bases

Benjamin Russo
Applied Economics, July 2010, Pages 2261-2274

Abstract:
General sales taxes provide substantial fractions of state and local revenues in the US. However, state and local sales tax bases have been eroding steadily during the past 50 years. Base erosion contributes to fiscal stress in the states; therefore, prospects for continued sales tax base erosion are important to state tax administrators, policymakers and public finance economists. This article offers a quantitative assessment of base erosion. We construct time series of a representative state sales tax base and its price index, and estimate a structural demand system for 'taxed' and 'untaxed' commodities. We use the estimates to forecast the sales tax base over coming years. Time-series forecasts and a weighted-average forecast are constructed, to reduce the likelihood of forecast error. The results suggest slow, but relentless, base erosion and possible recurring fiscal stress, in states where sales tax revenues make up sizable fractions of total tax revenues.

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State Regulatory Spending: Boon or Brake for New Enterprise Creation and Income?

Noel Campbell, Kirk Heriot & Andres Jauregui
Economic Development Quarterly, August 2010, Pages 243-250

Abstract:
This article addresses a public policy question: Does state government regulation foster or deter economic development? The authors estimate a system of simultaneous equations for income growth, regulation growth, and growth in the number of new enterprises. It is found that regulation does not provide efficient solutions to conflicts and, therefore, does not foster economic development. It is also found that new enterprise formation does not necessarily indicate income growth and economic development.

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U.S. War Costs: Two Parts Temporary, One Part Permanent

Ryan Edwards
NBER Working Paper, June 2010

Abstract:
Military spending, fatalities, and the destruction of capital, all of which are immediately felt and are often large, are the most overt costs of war. They are also relatively short-lived. The costs of war borne by combatants and their caretakers, which includes families, communities, and the modern welfare state, tend instead to be lifelong. In this paper I show that a significant component of the public costs associated with U.S. wars are long-lived. One third to one half of the total present value of historical war costs have been absorbed by benefits distributed over the remaining life spans of veterans and their dependents. The half-life of these benefits has averaged more than 30 years following the end of hostilities. Estimates of the value of injuries and deaths, while uncertain, suggest that the private burden of war borne by survivors, namely the uncompensated costs of service-related injuries, are also large and long-lived.

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Public Versus Private Delivery of Municipal Solid Waste Services: The Case of North Carolina

Suho Bae
Contemporary Economic Policy, July 2010, Pages 414-428

Abstract:
This paper examines the effects of different institutional arrangements and characteristics on cost savings, efficiency gains, and productivity of delivering municipal solid waste services. A cost function approach is employed, and North Carolina municipal data for three years (1997, 2001, and 2003) are used for the analysis. Empirical findings indicate that there is no significant difference in cost savings between public delivery and private contractor delivery of solid waste services, a finding similar to those of other recent studies. There are three possible reasons for this. First, the threat of competition and contracting out might have led to cost savings in the cases of public delivery. Second, there might be a lack of competition because a few large private contractors have been able to win follow-on contracts over the years. Third, there might be substantial transaction costs arising as the result of private contracting.

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Is private production of public services cheaper than public production? A meta-regression analysis of solid waste and water services

Germà Bel, Xavier Fageda & Mildred Warner
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Summer 2010, Pages 553-577

Abstract:
Privatization of local government services is assumed to deliver cost savings, but empirical evidence for this from around the world is mixed. We conduct a meta-regression analysis of all econometric studies examining privatization of water distribution and solid waste collection services and find no systematic support for lower costs with private production. Differences in study results are explained by differences in time period of the analyses, service characteristics, and policy environment. We do not find a genuine empirical effect of cost savings resulting from private production. The results suggest that to ensure cost savings, more attention be given to the cost characteristics of the service, the transaction costs involved, and the policy environment stimulating competition, rather than to the debate over public versus private delivery of these services.

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The Size and Composition of Government Spending in Europe and Its Impact on Well-Being

Zohal Hessami
Kyklos, August 2010, Pages 346-382

Abstract:
This paper empirically analyzes whether large governments in Europe reflect efficient responses to a changing social and economic environment ('welfare economic view') as opposed to wasteful spending ('public choice view'). To this end, the effect of government size on subjective well-being is estimated in a combined survey and country-level dataset covering 153,268 respondents from twelve EU countries over the 1990-2000 period. The first finding is an inversely U-shaped relationship between government size and well-being. In addition, the analysis suggests that given the high institutional quality as compared to other parts of the world there might be scope for a further enlargement of governments in the EU from a well-being perspective. However, one must acknowledge that the effect on well-being may be quite small and that democratic societies in Europe have no experience with even larger governments. The investigation also reveals that the impact of government size on well-being depends negatively on levels of corruption and positively on the extent of decentralization. Moreover, left-wing voters and low-income earners are the main beneficiaries of a large public sector. Finally, in all twelve EU countries included in the sample higher levels of well-being could have been achieved by allocating a higher share of public resources to education, while Finland and Germany could have given an additional boost to well-being by cutting expenditures on social protection.

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Federal-State Tax Interactions in the United States and Canada

Howard Chernick & Jennifer Tennant
Publius: The Journal of Federalism, Summer 2010, Pages 508-533

Abstract:
The potential for vertical tax competition is strongest when different levels of government share the same base. Because there is greater sharing of common tax bases in Canada than in the United States, we expect vertical tax competition to be weaker in the United States than in Canada. Econometric analysis of US data supports this hypothesis. Taking account of the deductibility-related endogeneity of federal tax burdens by state, federal income tax burdens have no effect on average state income tax burdens. Introducing distributional considerations into the vertical tax competition model, we do find a significant displacement effect for higher income taxpayers, with higher federal burdens associated with lower state income tax burdens in the highest income quintile. For low-income taxpayers, federal and state tax burdens are complementary.

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Cutting Back Public Investment after 1980: Collateral Damage, Policy Legacies and Political Adjustment

Hans Keman
Journal of Public Policy, August 2010, Pages 163-182

Abstract:
Since the 1980s public investment expenditures have been cut back in many OECD democracies. One explanation is a priority for fiscal stringency in order to curb big government in the context of neo-liberal ideas, which is reinforced by EMU requirements in the 1990s. Another is the potential impact of left and right partisan politics on investment policies. The main finding here is that the overall decrease in public investment expenditure appears to be caused by collateral damage due to the downsizing of total government outlays. This is particularly the case where there is a policy legacy of the Left with high levels of total public spending on the welfare state prior to the 1980s. Where the Right in government has been dominant after 1980, this downward development in public investment is particularly noticeable.

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Social Security and Democracy

Casey Mulligan, Ricard Gil & Xavier Sala-i-Martin
B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 2010

Abstract:
Using some new international data sets to produce both across-country econometric estimates as well as case studies of South American and southern European countries, we find that Social Security policies vary according to economic and demographic factors but that very different political histories can result in the same Social Security policy. We find weak partial correlation between democracy and the size of Social Security budgets, on how those budgets are allocated, or how economic and demographic factors affect Social Security. If there is any observed difference between democracies and non-democracies, it is that the former spend a little less of their GDP on Social Security, grow their budgets a bit more slowly, and cap their payroll tax more often, than do economically and demographically similar non-democracies. Democracies and non-democracies are equally likely to have benefit formulas inducing retirement and, conditional on GDP per capita, equally likely to induce retirement with a retirement test vs. an earnings test.

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The macroeconomics of fiscal consolidations in euro area countries

Lorenzo Forni, Andrea Gerali & Massimiliano Pisani
Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, forthcoming

Abstract:
We quantitatively assess the macroeconomic implications of permanently reducing the public debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio in euro area countries. The simulations of a currency union dynamic general equilibrium model, calibrated to the euro area, give the following results. First, tax distortions are quantitatively significant. Second, the best fiscal consolidation strategy is to permanently reduce both expenditures and tax rates. Third, the transition is generally not costly, as the GDP and investment would grow, while private consumption would not fall. Finally, spillovers to the rest of the euro area are generally expansionary.

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Is fiscal decentralization harmful for economic growth? Evidence from the OECD countries

Andrés Rodríguez-Pose & Roberto Ezcurra
Journal of Economic Geography, forthcoming

Abstract:
The global drive towards decentralization has been increasingly justified on the basis that greater transfers of resources to subnational governments are expected to deliver greater efficiency in the provision of public goods and services and greater economic growth. This article examines whether this is the case, by analysing the relationship between decentralization and economic growth in 21 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries during the period between 1990 and 2005 and controlling not only for fiscal decentralization, but also for political and administrative decentralization. The results point towards a negative and significant association between fiscal decentralization and economic growth in the sample countries, a relationship which is robust to the inclusion of a series of control variables and to differences in expenditure preferences by subnational governments. The impact of political and administrative decentralization on economic growth is weaker and sensitive to the definition and measurement of political decentralization.

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Banking on Politics: When Former High-ranking Politicians Become Bank Directors

Matías Braun & Claudio Raddatz
World Bank Economic Review, forthcoming

Abstract:
New data are presented for a large number of countries on how frequently former high-ranking politicians become bank directors. Politician-banker connections at this level are relatively rare, but their frequency is robustly correlated with many important characteristics of banks and institutions. At the micro level, banks that are politically connected are larger and more profitable than other banks, despite being less leveraged and having less risk. At the country level, this connectedness is strongly negatively related to economic development. Controlling for this, the analysis finds that the phenomenon is more prevalent where institutions are weaker and governments more powerful but less accountable. Bank regulation tends to be more pro-banker and the banking system less developed where connectedness is higher. A benign, public-interest view is hard to reconcile with these patterns.

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Making or Breaking a Deal: The Impact of Electoral Systems on Mergers & Acquisitions

Dong-Hun Kim
Kyklos, August 2010, Pages 432-449

Abstract:
The phenomenal increase in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) activities brought a widespread adoption of merger control laws throughout the world, including both developed and developing countries. Governments throughout the world, however, responded differently towards the regulation of M&A activities by adopting and enforcing merger control regimes with a varying degree of stringency. This article examines the impact of the electoral system on the governmental intervention on merger & acquisitions (M&A) activities. Empirical analyses of the data set that includes all M&A transactions from 1975 to 2006 suggest that countries with the majoritarian electoral system are more likely to not only adopt stringent merger control laws but also to disapprove the proposed deals than countries with the proportional electoral system. This finding confirms that merger control policies are indeed vulnerable to political influence and provides a support to recent works that link majoritarian systems with pro-competitive regulatory policies.

Chris Fraley & Michael Marks
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming

Abstract:
Evolutionary psychological theories assume that sexual aversions toward kin are triggered by a nonconscious mechanism that estimates the genetic relatedness between self and other. This article presents an alternative perspective that assumes that incest avoidance arises from consciously acknowledged taboos and that when awareness of the relationship between self and other is bypassed, people find individuals who resemble their kin more sexually appealing. Three experiments demonstrate that people find others more sexually attractive if they have just been subliminally exposed to an image of their opposite-sex parent (Experiment 1) or if the face being rated is a composite image based on the self (Experiment 2). This finding is reversed when people are aware of the implied genetic relationship (Experiment 3). These findings have implications for a century-old debate between E. Westermarck and S. Freud, as well as contemporary research on evolution, mate choice, and sexual imprinting.

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Concealment and Ego Depletion: Does "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Hinder Performance?

Clayton Critcher & Melissa Ferguson
Cornell Working Paper, June 2010

Abstract:
People possess concealable identities (e.g., sexual orientation) that it sometimes behooves them to conceal, but at what cost? In the present research, participants who had to conceal their sexual orientation during a short interview showed subsequent self-regulatory deficits in intellectual acuity (Studies 1-2, 4) and physical strength (Study 3). Studies 3-5 experimentally distinguished between two mechanistic accounts of the depletion effect: the need to monitor one's speech for content to inhibit (self-monitoring) or the need to alter or embellish the content of one's speech (impression management). Studies 4 and 5 provided support for the self-monitoring hypothesis: Participants continued to show ego depletion effects when concealing content they would not have spontaneously revealed. Merely having to alter or embellish one's speech did not have a similar effect (Studies 3 and 5). The results have clear implications for "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and other policies that mandate identity concealment.

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Disgust: A predictor of social conservatism and prejudicial attitudes toward homosexuals

John Terrizzi, Natalie Shook & Larry Ventis
Personality and Individual Differences, forthcoming

Abstract:
Disgust is a universal human emotion that evolved to protect individuals from ingesting harmful substances such as toxins and pathogens. Recent research suggests that disgust is a component of a "behavioral immune system" that encourages individuals to avoid people and situations that could potentially result in bodily contamination. The purpose of the current research was to explore the role of social conservatism in the link between disgust and prejudicial attitudes toward homosexuals. The results of a correlational study (Study 1) indicated that disgust sensitivity was positively correlated with socially conservative values. However, the relation was specific to conservative values regarding intergroup relations and potential contamination. In Study 2, disgust was experimentally manipulated. Inducing disgust resulted in increased prejudicial attitudes toward contact with homosexuals for conservative individuals and reduced prejudice for liberals. The results of these studies support the claim that disgust is part of a "behavioral immune system" that promotes socially conservative value systems and can lead to increased negative attitudes toward outgroups.

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Sexual orientation and earnings: A register data-based approach to identify homosexuals

Ali Ahmed & Mats Hammarstedt
Journal of Population Economics, June 2010, Pages 835-849

Abstract:
This paper examines earnings differentials between homo- and heterosexual individuals by identifying sexual orientation with the help of information from register data. Register data enable us to avoid the misclassifications of sexual orientation often mentioned as a potential bias in survey-based studies. The results show that gay men are at an earnings disadvantage as compared to male heterosexuals while the earnings differential between lesbians and heterosexual women is very small. Our results are in line with results from previous research but are more reliable since we use a more reliable measure of sexual orientation than previous research.

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US National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study: Psychological Adjustment of 17-Year-Old Adolescents

Nanette Gartrell & Henny Bos
Pediatrics, forthcoming

Objectives: The objective of this study was to document the psychological adjustment of adolescents who were conceived through donor insemination by lesbian mothers who enrolled before these offspring were born in the largest, longest running, prospective, longitudinal study of same-sex-parented families.

Methods: Between 1986 and 1992, 154 prospective lesbian mothers volunteered for a study that was designed to follow planned lesbian families from the index children's conception until they reached adulthood. Data for the current report were gathered through interviews and questionnaires that were completed by 78 index offspring when they were 10 and 17 years old and through interviews and Child Behavior Checklists that were completed by their mothers at corresponding times. The study is ongoing, with a 93% retention rate to date.

Results: According to their mothers' reports, the 17-year-old daughters and sons of lesbian mothers were rated significantly higher in social, school/academic, and total competence and significantly lower in social problems, rule-breaking, aggressive, and externalizing problem behavior than their age-matched counterparts in Achenbach's normative sample of American youth. Within the lesbian family sample, no Child Behavior Checklist differences were found among adolescent offspring who were conceived by known, as-yet-unknown, and permanently unknown donors or between offspring whose mothers were still together and offspring whose mothers had separated.

Conclusions: Adolescents who have been reared in lesbian-mother families since birth demonstrate healthy psychological adjustment. These findings have implications for the clinical care of adolescents and for pediatricians who are consulted on matters that pertain to same-sex parenting.

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Hold the sex, please: The discursive politics between national and local abstinence education providers

Amie Hess
Sex Education, August 2010, Pages 251-266

Abstract:
There are many assumptions made about the beliefs behind abstinence-only until marriage (AOUM) sex education, yet comparatively little research examining the views of abstinence education providers. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 21 abstinence grantees throughout New York State, I examine how individuals working in abstinence organizations conceive of AOUM education and understand their work in the broader spectrum of sex education efforts. I contrast these understandings with the national-level abstinence discourse, using data collected from two national, government-sponsored conferences for federal abstinence grantees. The comparative focus reveals a disjuncture between the national agenda and the varied understandings that local abstinence organizations bring to abstinence education. While the national movement frames abstinence using a discourse of scientific morality, local providers resist this framing. Local providers express ambivalence around AOUM education and manage contradictory feelings by discursively repurposing abstinence education in ways that better reflect the needs of their communities. This local level variation underscores the importance of contextualizing research on sex education.

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Evaluation of "Big Decisions": An Abstinence-Plus Sexuality Curriculum

Janet Realini, Ruth Buzi, Peggy Smith & Mario Martinez
Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, July 2010, Pages 313-326

Abstract:
This study examines the effectiveness of Big Decisions, a sexuality curriculum developed to promote abstinence, as well as condom and contraceptive use, while overcoming school districts' concern about controversy surrounding sex education. The authors used a pre- and post-test survey design to measure changes in attitudes, self-efficacy, and behavioral intentions regarding sex, pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and condom use. The sample for this analysis included 788 inner-city 9th-grade students, the majority of which (78.4%) were Hispanic. Pre- to posttest data comparisons demonstrated improvement in mean scores for each item, with statistically significant changes for 11 of the 12 items measured. The male participants' pretest responses reflected higher risk status than did those of female participants. A large majority (87.8%) of students rated the program as "great" or "good". The results suggest that Big Decisions provides a promising approach to reaching minority students with both abstinence and risk-reduction messages.

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How Are Restrictive Abortion Statutes Associated With Unintended Teen Birth?

Mandy Coles, Kevin Makino, Nancy Stanwood, Ann Dozier & Jonathan Klein
Journal of Adolescent Health, August 2010, Pages 160-167

Purpose: Legislation that restricts abortion access decreases abortion. It is less well understood whether these statutes affect unintended birth. Given recent increases in teen pregnancy and birth, we examined the relationship between legislation that restricts abortion access and unintended births among adolescent women.

Methods: Using 2000-2005 Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System data, we examined the relationship between adolescent pregnancy intention and policies affecting abortion access: mandatory waiting periods, parental involvement laws, and Medicaid funding restrictions. Logistic regression controlled for individual characteristics, state-level factors, geographic regions, and time trends. Subgroup analyses were done for racial, ethnic, and insurance groups.

Results: In our multivariate model, minors in states with mandatory waiting periods were more than two times as likely to report an unintended birth, with even higher risk among blacks, Hispanics, and teens receiving Medicaid. Medicaid funding restrictions were associated with higher rates of unwanted birth among black teens. Parental involvement laws were associated with a trend toward more unwanted births in white minors and fewer in Hispanic minors.

Conclusions: Mandatory waiting periods are associated with higher rates of unintended birth in teens, and funding restrictions may especially affect black adolescents. Policies limiting access to abortion appear to affect the outcomes of unintended teen pregnancy. Subsequent research should clarify the magnitude of such effects, and lead to policy changes that successfully reduce unintended teen births.

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Morality or equality? Ideological framing in news coverage of gay marriage legitimization

Po-Lin Pan & Juan Meng & Shuhua Zhou
Social Science Journal, forthcoming

Abstract:
This content analytic study investigated the approaches of two mainstream newspapers-The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune-to cover the gay marriage issue. The study used the Massachusetts legitimization of gay marriage as a dividing point to look at what kinds of specific political or social topics related to gay marriage were highlighted in the news media. The study examined how news sources were framed in the coverage of gay marriage, based upon the newspapers' perspectives and ideologies. The results indicated that The New York Times was inclined to emphasize the topic of human equality related to the legitimization of gay marriage. After the legitimization, The New York Times became an activist for gay marriage. Alternatively, the Chicago Tribune highlighted the importance of human morality associated with the gay marriage debate. The perspective of the Chicago Tribune was not dramatically influenced by the legitimization. It reported on gay marriage in terms of defending American traditions and family values both before and after the gay marriage legitimization.

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Homosexual behaviour in birds: Frequency of expression is related to parental care disparity between the sexes

Geoff MacFarlane, Simon Blomberg & Paul Vasey
Animal Behaviour, forthcoming

Abstract:
Homosexual behaviour occurs in over 130 species of birds, yet explaining its maintenance in evolutionary terms appears problematic at face value, as such sexual behaviours do not seem in immediate pursuit of reproductive goals. Parental care sexual conflict theory predicts that release from parental care translates to an increased propensity towards polygamous sexual behaviour. We hypothesized that homosexual behaviour(s) may be expected to increase in frequency for the sex that invests less in parental care and potentially enjoys increased mating opportunities. Consistent with our predictions, lower relative contribution to parental care for a particular sex is related to increased frequency of occurrence of homosexual behaviour. For males, highly polygynous species with minimal male parental investment exhibit higher frequencies of male homosexual behaviour, including male-male mounting and especially courtship. In socially monogamous species, male parental investment is greater, and the expression of male homosexual behaviour is lower. Similarly, among pair-bonding species, frequencies of male-male pair bonding increase with decreases in male contribution to care relative to females. When females of socially monogamous species provide less care than males, they exhibit higher frequencies of homosexual behaviour, namely pair bonding and courtship activities. Conversely, when females of polygynous species provide the bulk of parental care, female-female sexual behaviour is infrequently expressed. Homosexual behaviour in birds is more likely to occur under scenarios of enhanced mating opportunity without necessarily influencing reproductive success and thus may exist neutrally, or alternatively provide a behavioural template co-opted for adaptive design.

Andy Martens, Spee Kosloff & Lydia Eckstein Jackson
Social Psychological and Personality Science, July 2010, Pages 268-273

Abstract:
Research using a bug-killing paradigm has suggested that increased initial killing may promote increased subsequent killing. Here, the authors tested whether this effect is due to killing per se or merely due to practice and whether this initial repeated bug killing exerts its effect by desensitizing people or by motivating them to kill more. Participants were asked to place bugs into an "extermination grinder" at their own pace after putting either one or five bugs into the grinder initially. Participants either believed they were actually killing the bugs or knew they were not. Results showed that the initial-killing effect occurred only when people thought they were killing, suggesting this is not merely a practice effect. Also, suggesting a motivational component, among participants who killed five bugs initially, those who believed they were killing went on to kill more than those who knew the killing was simulated.

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The Southern Culture of Violence and Homicide-Type Differentiation: An Analysis Across Cities and Time Points

Graham Ousey & Matthew Lee
Homicide Studies, August 2010, Pages 268-295

Abstract:
Extant research testing the Southern culture of violence theory has not fully investigated the logical implications of the theoretical mechanisms asserted to be at work. This analysis builds on prior research by examining the effects of a widely used measure of Southern cultural influence on homicide-type differentiation across cities and over time. Specifically, we examine whether the measure of Southern cultural influence is more likely to generate argument or conflict homicides than other types and whether the Southern influence has been diminishing over time. The results of multilevel latent variable models of homicide-type differentiation for 1980, 1990, and 2000 suggest that the Southern cultural influence does contribute to differentiation toward more argument homicides relative to other types. Relative to felony homicides, the data indicate this pattern has been easing off over time, but relative to drug and gang homicides, it has not.

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Automatic Effects of Alcohol and Aggressive Cues on Aggressive Thoughts and Behaviors

Baptiste Subra, Dominique Muller, Laurent Bègue, Brad Bushman & Florian Delmas
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming

Abstract:
Numerous studies have shown that alcohol increases aggression. In this article it is proposed that the link between alcohol and aggression is so strong that mere exposure to alcohol-related cues will automatically activate aggressive thoughts and behaviors. Two experiments tested this automaticity theory of alcohol-related aggression. In Experiment 1, participants exposed to alcohol- or weapon-related primes made faster lexical decisions about aggression-related words than did participants exposed to neutral primes. In Experiment 2, participants exposed to alcohol- or aggression-related subliminal primes were more aggressive toward the experimenter than were participants exposed to neutral subliminal primes. In both experiments, the effects of alcohol-related cues were as strong as the effect of aggression-related cues on aggressive thoughts and behaviors. People do not need to drink a drop of alcohol to become aggressive; exposure to alcohol cues is enough to automatically increase aggression.

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On the Perils of Living Dangerously in the Slasher Horror Film: Gender Differences in the Association Between Sexual Activity and Survival

Andrew Welsh
Sex Roles, June 2010, Pages 762-773

Abstract:
The slasher horror film has been deplored based on claims that it depicts eroticized violence against predominately female characters as punishment for sexual activities. To test this assertion, a quantitative content analysis was conducted to examine the extent to which gender differences are evident in the association between character survival and engagement in sexual activities. Information pertaining to gender, engagement in sexual activities, and survival was coded for film characters from a simple random sample of 50 English-language, North American slasher films released between 1960 and 2009. Results indicated that sexual female characters were less likely to survive and had significantly longer death scenes as compared to those female characters who did not engage in sexual behaviors.

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The Hitman Study: Violent Video Game Exposure Effects on Aggressive Behavior, Hostile Feelings, and Depression

Christopher Ferguson & Stephanie Rueda
European Psychologist, February 2010, Pages 99-108

Abstract:
This article explores commonly discussed theories of violent video game effects: the social learning, mood management, and catharsis hypotheses. An experimental study was carried out to examine violent video game effects. In this study, 103 young adults were given a frustration task and then randomized to play no game, a nonviolent game, a violent game with good versus evil theme (i.e., playing as a good character taking on evil), or a violent game in which they played as a "bad guy." Results indicated that randomized video game play had no effect on aggressive behavior; real-life violent video game-playing history, however, was predictive of decreased hostile feelings and decreased depression following the frustration task. Results do not support a link between violent video games and aggressive behavior, but do suggest that violent games reduce depression and hostile feelings in players through mood management.

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Identity fusion and self-sacrifice: Arousal as a catalyst of pro-group fighting, dying, and helping behavior

William Swann, Ángel Gómez, Carmen Huici, Francisco Morales & Gregory Hixon
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming

Abstract:
Identity fusion is a feeling of oneness with the group that induces people to tether their feelings of personal agency to the group. We accordingly proposed that increasing the agency of fused persons by elevating autonomic arousal would amplify their tendency to endorse and actually enact pro-ingroup behavior. In 4 experiments, increasing autonomic arousal through physical exercise elevated heart rates and fusion-unrelated activity among all participants. Fused participants, however, uniquely responded to arousal by translating elevated agency into endorsement of pro-group activity. These effects emerged both for endorsement of extreme behaviors for the group and for overt behaviors, specifically helping behavior (donating money to needy in-group members), and the speed with which participants raced a fusion-related avatar. The effects also generalized across 3 different arousal inductions (dodgeball, wind sprints, and Exercycle). Finally, fusion-related agency partially mediated the interactive effects of fusion and arousal on pro-group behavior. Apparently, autonomic arousal increases agency and identity fusion channels increased agency into pro-group behavior.

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"If you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" Social identity salience moderates support for retaliation in response to collective threat

Peter Fischer, Alexander Haslam & Laura Smith
Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, June 2010, Pages 143-150

Abstract:
Researchers have recently asserted that social identity salience moderates the way in which people react to external stressors. However, previous research has mainly investigated this idea in the context of internal coping processes in response to personal threat. The present research examines people's willingness to respond to collective threat by means of aggressive acts of revenge. A study with 80 female participants revealed that aggressive revenge intentions were most pronounced when the form of collective threat was relevant to a currently salient social identity. Specifically, we found that a threat to national identity (the 7/7/2005 London bombings) led to greater aggression and greater support for revenge when national rather than gender identity was salient. In contrast, a threat to gender identity (Taliban misogyny) led to greater aggression and greater support for revenge when gender rather than national identity was salient. Implications for research on social identity, stress, and responses to terrorism are discussed.

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The acute effect of local homicides on children's cognitive performance

Patrick Sharkey
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 29 June 2010, Pages 11733-11738

Abstract:
This study estimates the acute effect of exposure to a local homicide on the cognitive performance of children across a community. Data are from a sample of children age 5-17 y in the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. The effect of local homicides on vocabulary and reading assessments is identified by exploiting exogenous variation in the relative timing of homicides and interview assessments among children in the same neighborhood but assessed at different times. Among African-Americans, the strongest results show that exposure to a homicide in the block group that occurs less than a week before the assessment reduces performance on vocabulary and reading assessments by between ∼0.5 and ∼0.66 SD, respectively. Main results are replicated using a second independent dataset from Chicago. Findings suggest the need for broader recognition of the impact that extreme acts of violence have on children across a neighborhood, regardless of whether the violence is witnessed directly.

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Glucose consumption decreases impulsive aggression in response to provocation in aggressive individuals

Thomas Denson, William von Hippel, Richard Kemp & Lydia Teo
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming

Abstract:
Impaired executive control is implicated in aggression. Research suggests that the acute administration of glucose can improve executive control. In two experiments undergraduates completed a measure of trait aggression and consumed a glucose or placebo beverage before being given the chance to administer a blast of white noise to a fictitious participant. In Experiment 1, all participants were provoked and mentally depleted or not. Glucose was most effective in reducing aggression for those high in trait aggression even when depleted. In Experiment 2, participants were provoked or not. When provoked, glucose reduced aggression among those high in trait aggression. However, when not provoked, glucose increased aggression among those high in trait aggression. These data suggest that the acute administration of glucose can be beneficial in reducing aggression in response to provocation among those high in trait aggression.

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Value of Statistical Life and Cause of Accident: A Choice Experiment

Fredrik Carlsson, Dinky Daruvala & Henrik Jaldell
Risk Analysis, June 2010, Pages 975-986

Abstract:
The purpose of this study is to compare the value of statistical life (VSL) estimates for traffic, drowning, and fire accidents. Using a choice experiment in a mail survey of 5,000 Swedish respondents we estimated the willingness to pay for risk reductions in the three accidents. In the experiment respondents were asked a series of questions, whether they would choose risk reducing investments where type of accident, cost of the investment, the risk reduction acquired, and the baseline risk varied between questions. The VSLs for fire and drowning accidents were found to be about 1/3 lower than that for traffic accidents. Although respondents worry more about traffic accidents, this alone cannot explain the difference in VSL estimates. The difference between fire and drowning accidents was not found to be statistically significant.

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Exogenous cortisol enhances aggressive behavior in females, but not in males

Robina Böhnke, Katja Bertsch, Menno Kruk, Steffen Richter & Ewald Naumann
Psychoneuroendocrinology, August 2010, Pages 1034-1044

Abstract:
The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis plays a major role in the development, elicitation, and enhancement of aggressive behavior in animals. Increasing evidence suggests that this is also true for humans. Here, we report on a study of the role of basal and acute HPA axis activity in a sample of 48 healthy male and female adults. We pharmacologically enhanced cortisol levels and used the Taylor Aggression Paradigm (TAP) to induce and measure aggression (divided into three blocks). Participants either received an oral dose of 20 mg hydrocortisone (cortisol group) or a placebo (placebo group). Half of each group received high or low levels of provocation with the TAP, respectively. Before, we assessed the cortisol awakening response as a trait measure of basal HPA axis activity. Participants in the cortisol group reacted more aggressively in the third block of the TAP compared to the placebo group. Furthermore, gender interacted with treatment: only females, but not males showed enhanced aggressive behavior after cortisol administration. There was no significant difference in males between the placebo and cortisol group. Basal HPA axis activity was negatively related to aggressive behavior, but again only in females and most strongly within the placebo group. This study provides the first evidence for a causal involvement of acute HPA axis activation in aggressive behavior in humans.

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Neural Mechanisms of the Testosterone-Aggression Relation: The Role of Orbitofrontal Cortex

Pranjal Mehta & Jennifer Beer
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, October 2010, Pages 2357-2368

Abstract:
Testosterone plays a role in aggressive behavior, but the mechanisms remain unclear. The present study tested the hypothesis that testosterone influences aggression through the OFC, a region implicated in self-regulation and impulse control. In a decision-making paradigm in which people chose between aggression and monetary reward (the ultimatum game), testosterone was associated with increased aggression following social provocation (rejecting unfair offers). The effect of testosterone on aggression was explained by reduced activity in the medial OFC. The findings suggest that testosterone increases the propensity toward aggression because of reduced activation of the neural circuitry of impulse control and self-regulation.

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Suicide Patterns and Association With Predictors Among Rhode Island Public High School Students: A Latent Class Analysis

Yongwen Jiang, Donald Kent Perry & Jana Earl Hesser
American Journal of Public Health, forthcoming

Objectives: We analyzed Rhode Island's 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) data to investigate suicide patterns and their association with suicide risk predictors among public high school students.

Methods: We used latent class regression analysis of Rhode Island's 2007 YRBS data (from a random sample of 2210 public high school students) to model latent classes of suicide risk and identify predictors of latent class membership.

Results: Four latent classes of suicide risk were modeled and predictors were associated with each: class 1 (emotionally healthy, 74%); class 2 (considered and planned suicide, 14%) was associated with being female, having low grades, being gay/lesbian/bisexual/unsure, feeling unsafe at school, having experienced forced sexual intercourse, and self-perceived overweight; class 3 (attempted suicide, 6%) was associated with speaking a language other than English at home, being gay/lesbian/bisexual/unsure, feeling unsafe at school, and forced sexual intercourse; and class 4 (planned and attempted suicide, 6%) was associated with the previously mentioned predictors and with being in 9th or 10th grade and currently smoking.

Conclusions: A single model characterized and quantified 4 patterns of suicide risk among adolescents and identified predictors for 3 at-risk classes. Interventions for high-risk youths may help prevent adolescent suicides.

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Examining the Terror Management Health Model: The Interactive Effect of Conscious Death Thought and Health-Coping Variables on Decisions in Potentially Fatal Health Domains

Douglas Cooper, Jamie Goldenberg & Jamie Arndt
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming

Abstract:
From the perspective of the terror management health model (TMHM), expectancies as to whether a health behavior is likely to effectively protect one's health (i.e., response efficacy) and whether an individual is optimistic about the outcomes of his or her health risk assessment (i.e., health optimism) should have a more potent influence on health decisions when thoughts of death are conscious and the health risk domain is potentially fatal. Supporting this, health optimism and response efficacy were found to moderate skin cancer prevention intentions in response to conscious, but not nonconscious, reminders of death, whereas this same relationship was not found in the context of priming thoughts associated with uncertainty. Moreover, these effects were not observed in response to nonfatal dental care outcomes. Discussion focuses on the implications of TMHM for existing health models and health promotion.

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Suicide in England and Wales 1861-2007: A time-trends analysis

Kyla Thomas & David Gunnell
International Journal of Epidemiology, forthcoming

Background: Suicide is one of the leading causes of premature mortality worldwide. Few studies have assessed long-term trends or sex differences in its incidence over time. We have investigated the age-, sex- and method-specific trends in suicide in England and Wales from 1861 to 2007.

Methods: Overall age-standardized suicide rates using the European Standard Population and age-, sex- and method-specific rates were calculated for ages 15 years from 1861 to 2007.

Results: Rates in males were consistently higher than females throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, although the male-to-female sex ratio fluctuated from 4 : 1 in the 1880s to 1.5 : 1 in the 1960s. Suicide rates increased in all age groups in the 1930s, coinciding with the Great Depression. The highest male rates (30.3 per 100 000) were recorded in 1905 and 1934 and have since been declining. Female rates peaked in the 1960s (11.8 per 100 000), declining afterwards. In both sexes the lowest recorded rates were in the 21st century. There was a rapid rise in the use of domestic gas as a method of suicide in both sexes following its introduction at the end of the 19th century. There was no evidence that this rise was accompanied by a decline in the use of other methods. Self-poisoning also increased in popularity from the 1860s (5% of suicides) to the 1990s (22% of suicides).

Conclusions: The epidemiology of suicide in England and Wales has changed markedly over the past 146 years. The rapid rise in gas suicide deaths in the 1920s highlights how quickly a new method of suicide can be established in a population when it is easily available. The increase in suicides during the Great Depression has implications in relation to the current economic crisis. Changes in the acceptability and lethality of various suicide methods may account for the large variations in sex ratios over time.

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Jumping, lying, wandering: Analysis of suicidal behaviour patterns in 1,004 suicidal acts on the German railway net

Andreas Dinkel, Jens Baumert, Natalia Erazo & Karl-Heinz Ladwig
Journal of Psychiatric Research, forthcoming

Abstract:
Current knowledge on behavioural patterns and personal characteristics of subjects who choose the railway as means of suicide is sparse. The aim of this study was to determine the frequency of three distinct behaviour patterns (jumping, lying, wandering) in railway suicides and to explore associated variables. Cases were derived from the National Central Registry of person accidents on the German railway net covering the period from 2002 to 2006. A retrospective analysis of registry protocols of all 4127 suicidal acts allowed classification of behaviour patterns in 1004 cases. Types of suicidal behaviour occurred with nearly equal frequencies; jumping in 32.2%, lying in 32.6% and wandering in 34.2% of cases. Age and sex were not associated with type of suicidal behaviour. The proportion of jumping was highest during 9:01 am to 6:00 pm while at night, lying was used most frequently. Jumping predominated in the station area, while lying and wandering on the open track. Fatality was highest in liers and lowest in jumpers. The frequency of jumping decreased during the study period by 12.6% (p < .05). These findings may help to elucidate differential risk features of this highly lethal suicide method.

Helena Holmlund, Sandra McNally & Martina Viarengo
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming

Abstract:
There is considerable disagreement in the academic literature about whether raising school expenditure improves educational outcomes. Yet changing the level of resources is one of the key policy levers open to governments. In England, school expenditure has increased by about 40 per cent since 2000. Thus assessing whether such spending has had an impact on educational outcomes is of paramount importance. We address this issue using data of better quality than what are often available in similar studies and test our identification assumption by use of a falsification test. We find that the increase in school expenditure over recent years has had a consistently positive effect on outcomes at the end of primary school. Back-of-envelope calculations suggest that the investment may well be cost-effective. There is also some evidence of heterogeneity in the effect of expenditure, with higher effects for students who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

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Stuck in the Middle: Impacts of Grade Configuration in Public Schools

Jonah Rockoff & Benjamin Lockwood
Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming

Abstract:
We examine the implications of separating students of different grade levels across schools for the purposes of educational production. Specifically, we find that moving students from elementary to middle school in 6th or 7th grade causes significant drops in academic achievement. These effects are large (about 0.15 standard deviations), present for both math and English, and persist through grade 8, the last year for which we have achievement data. The effects are similar for boys and girls, but stronger for students with low levels of initial achievement. We instrument for middle school attendance using the grade range of the school students attended in grade 3, and employ specifications that control for student fixed effects. This leaves only one potential source of bias-correlation between grade range of a student's grade 3 school and unobservable characteristics that cause decreases in achievement precisely when students are due to switch schools-which we view as highly unlikely. We find little evidence that placing public school students into middle schools during adolescence is cost-effective.

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Achievement Inequality and the Institutional Structure of Educational Systems: A Comparative Perspective

Herman Van de Werfhorst & Jonathan Mijs
Annual Review of Sociology, 2010, Pages 407-428

Abstract:
We review the comparative literature on the impact of national-level educational institutions on inequality in student achievement. We focus on two types of institutions that characterize the educational system of a country: the system of school-type differentiation (between-school tracking) and the level of standardization (e.g., with regard to central examinations and school autonomy). Two types of inequality are examined: inequality in terms of dispersion of student test scores and inequality of opportunity by social background and race/ethnicity. We conclude from this literature, which mostly uses PISA, TIMSS, and/or PIRLS data, that inequalities are magnified by national-level tracking institutions and that standardization decreases inequality. Methodological issues are discussed, and possible avenues for further research are suggested.

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Cognitive and Noncognitive Peer Effects in Early Education

Matthew Neidell & Jane Waldfogel
Review of Economics and Statistics, August 2010, Pages 562-576

Abstract:
We examine peer effects in early education by estimating value-added models with school fixed effects that control extensively for individual, family, peer, and teacher characteristics to account for the endogeneity of peer group formation. We find statistically significant and robust spillover effects from preschool on math and reading outcomes, but statistically insignificant effects on various behavioral and social outcomes. We also find that peer externalizing problems, which most likely capture classroom disturbance, hinder cognitive outcomes. Our estimates imply that ignoring spillover effects significantly understates the social returns to preschool.

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Impact of Delaying School Start Time on Adolescent Sleep, Mood, and Behavior

Judith Owens, Katherine Belon & Patricia Moss
Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, July 2010, Pages 608-614

Objective: To examine the impact of a 30-minute delay in school start time on adolescents' sleep, mood, and behavior.

Design: Participants completed the online retrospective Sleep Habits Survey before and after a change in school start time.

Setting: An independent high school in Rhode Island.

Participants: Students (n = 201) in grades 9 through 12.

Intervention: Institution of a delay in school start time from 8 to 8:30 AM.

Main Outcome Measures: Sleep patterns and behavior, daytime sleepiness, mood, data from the Health Center, and absences/tardies.

Results: After the start time delay, mean school night sleep duration increased by 45 minutes, and average bedtime advanced by 18 minutes (95% confidence interval, 7-29 minutes [t423 = 3.36; P < .001]); the percentage of students getting less than 7 hours of sleep decreased by 79.4%, and those reporting at least 8 hours of sleep increased from 16.4% to 54.7%. Students reported significantly more satisfaction with sleep and experienced improved motivation. Daytime sleepiness, fatigue, and depressed mood were all reduced. Most health-related variables, including Health Center visits for fatigue-related complaints, and class attendance also improved.

Conclusions: A modest delay in school start time was associated with significant improvements in measures of adolescent alertness, mood, and health. The results of this study support the potential benefits of adjusting school schedules to adolescents' sleep needs, circadian rhythm, and developmental stage.

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The Role of Peers and Grades in Determining Major Persistence in the Sciences

Ben Ost
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming

Abstract:
Using longitudinal administrative data from a large elite research university, this paper analyzes the role of peers and grades in determining major persistence in the life and physical sciences. In the physical sciences, analyses using within-course, across-time variation show that ex-ante measures of peer quality in a student's introductory courses has a lasting impact on the probability of persisting in the major. This peer effect exhibits important non-linearities such that weak students benefit from exposure to stronger peers while strong students are not dragged down by weaker peers. In both the physical and life sciences, I find evidence that students are "pulled away" by their high grades in non-science courses and "pushed out" by their low grades in their major field. In the physical sciences, females are found to be more responsive to grades than males, consistent with psychological theories of stereotype vulnerability.

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Teacher Incentives

Paul Glewwe, Nauman Ilias & Michael Kremer
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2010, Pages 205-227

Abstract:
We analyze a randomized trial of a program that rewarded Kenyan primary school teachers based on student test scores, with penalties for students not taking the exams. Scores increased on the formula used to reward teachers, and program school students scored higher on the exams linked to teacher incentives. Yet most of the gains were focused on the teacher reward formula. The dropout rate was unchanged. Instead, exam participation increased among enrolled students. Test scores increased on exams linked to the incentives, but not on other, unrelated exams. Teacher attendance and homework assignment were unaffected, but test preparation sessions increased.

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Scaling the Digital Divide: Home Computer Technology and Student Achievement

Jacob Vigdor & Helen Ladd
NBER Working Paper, June 2010

Abstract:
Does differential access to computer technology at home compound the educational disparities between rich and poor? Would a program of government provision of computers to early secondary school students reduce these disparities? We use administrative data on North Carolina public school students to corroborate earlier surveys that document broad racial and socioeconomic gaps in home computer access and use. Using within-student variation in home computer access, and across-ZIP code variation in the timing of the introduction of high-speed internet service, we also demonstrate that the introduction of home computer technology is associated with modest but statistically significant and persistent negative impacts on student math and reading test scores. Further evidence suggests that providing universal access to home computers and high-speed internet access would broaden, rather than narrow, math and reading achievement gaps.

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Home Computers and Educational Outcomes: Evidence from the NLSY97 and CPS

Robert Fairlie, Daniel Beltran & Kuntal Das
Economic Inquiry, July 2010, Pages 771-792

Abstract:
Although computers are universal in the classroom, nearly 20 million children in the United States do not have computers in their homes. Surprisingly, only a few previous studies explore the role of home computers in the educational process. Home computers might be very useful for completing school assignments, but they might also represent a distraction for teenagers. We use several identification strategies and panel data from the two main U.S. data sets that include recent information on computer ownership among children-the 2000-2003 Current Population Survey (CPS) Computer and Internet Use Supplements matched to the CPS basic monthly files and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97)-to explore the causal relationship between computer ownership and high school graduation and other educational outcomes. Teenagers who have access to home computers are 6-8 percentage points more likely to graduate from high school than teenagers who do not have home computers after controlling for individual, parental, and family characteristics. We generally find evidence of positive relationships between home computers and educational outcomes using several identification strategies, including controlling for typically unobservable home environment and extracurricular activities in the NLSY97, fixed effects models, instrumental variables, and including future computer ownership and falsification tests. Home computers may increase high school graduation by reducing nonproductive activities, such as truancy and crime, among children in addition to making it easier to complete school assignments.

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College Quality, Earnings, and Job Satisfaction: Evidence from Recent College Graduates

Xiangmin Liu, Scott Thomas & Liang Zhang
Journal of Labor Research, June 2010, Pages 183-201

Abstract:
This study investigates the relationship among college quality, earnings, and job satisfaction among a recent cohort of college graduates. Our results suggest that, controlling for earnings, college quality is negatively related to job satisfaction, especially to those aspects of the job that are associated with monetary rewards. Further analysis indicates that there is no significant difference between the male and female groups; however, the negative relationship between satisfaction with monetary rewards and college quality is mainly driven by the non-white group. These findings do not support the view that graduating from elite schools will necessarily lead to greater job satisfaction.

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Attrition in STEM Fields at a Liberal Arts College: The Importance of Grades and Pre-Collegiate Preferences

Kevin Rask
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming

Abstract:
There is widespread concern, both in the private and public sectors, about perceived declines in U.S. college graduates in STEM fields. In our sample, the proportion of science majors has remained steady over the sample period; however, the number entering our college intending to major in STEM fields has fallen. In this paper we use administrative data from the graduating classes of 2001-2009, roughly 5000 graduates, from a northeastern liberal arts college to model the progression of students through STEM majors. The results suggest that absolute and sometimes relative grades are important, as is the intended major (as reported on the admissions application). AP credits are also strongly correlated to taking a first course, but diminish in the more selected samples. Simulations suggest that if science grade distributions were more like the college average, there would be roughly 2-4% more students progressing in STEM departments.

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An Investigation of the Relationship Between Retention in First Grade and Performance on High Stakes Tests in Third Grade

Jan Hughes, Qi Chen, Felix Thoemmes & Oi-man Kwok
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, June 2010, Pages 166-182

Abstract:
The association between grade retention in first grade and passing the third grade state accountability tests, the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) reading and math, was investigated in a sample of 769 students who were recruited into the study when they were in first grade. Of these 769 students, 165 were retained in first grade and 604 were promoted. Using propensity matching, we created five imputed datasets (average N = 321) in which promoted and retained students were matched on 67 comprehensive covariates. Using GEE models, we obtained the association between retention and passing the third grade TAKS reading and math tests. The positive association between retention and math scores was significant, whereas the association was marginally significant for reading scores.

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Is it Live or is it Internet? Experimental Estimates of the Effects of Online Instruction on Student Learning

David Figlio, Mark Rush & Lu Yin
NBER Working Paper, June 2010

Abstract:
This paper presents the first experimental evidence on the effects of live versus internet media of instruction. Students in a large introductory microeconomics course at a major research university were randomly assigned to live lectures versus watching these same lectures in an internet setting, where all other factors (e.g., instruction, supplemental materials) were the same. Counter to the conclusions drawn by a recent U.S. Department of Education meta-analysis of non-experimental analyses of internet instruction in higher education, we find modest evidence that live-only instruction dominates internet instruction. These results are particularly strong for Hispanic students, male students, and lower-achieving students. We also provide suggestions for future experimentation in other settings.

Peter Muennig, Kevin Fiscella, Daniel Tancredi & Peter Franks
American Journal of Public Health, forthcoming

Objectives: We sought to quantify the potential health impact of selected medical and nonmedical policy changes within the United States.

Methods: Using data from the 1997-2000 National Health Interview Surveys (linked to mortality data through 2002) and the 1996-2002 Medical Expenditure Panel Surveys, we calculated age-specific health-related quality-of-life scores and mortality probabilities for 8 social and behavioral risk factors. We then used Markov models to estimate the quality-adjusted life years lost.

Results: Ranked quality-adjusted life years lost were income less than 200% of the poverty line versus 200% or greater (464 million; 95% confidence interval [CI]=368, 564); current-smoker versus never-smoker (329 million; 95% CI=226, 382); body mass index 30 or higher versus 20 to less than 25 (205 million; 95% CI=159, 269); non-Hispanic Black versus non-Hispanic White (120 million; 95% CI=83, 163); and less than 12 years of school relative to 12 or more (74 million; 95% CI=52, 101). Binge drinking, overweight, and health insurance have relatively less influence on population health.

Conclusions: Poverty, smoking, and high-school dropouts impose the greatest burden of disease in the United States.

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The Increasing Protection of Marriage on Infant Low Birth Weight Across Two Generations of African American Women

Debbie Barrington
Journal of Family Issues, August 2010, Pages 1041-1064

Abstract:
This study used data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) on two generations of African American women who gave birth from 1967 to 2005 to describe changing relationships between marital status and low birth weight (LBW) across the generations. An increasing protection of marriage on infant LBW across the two generations was found after adjusting for socioeconomic and demographic confounding factors via (a) logistic regression using generalized estimating equations, (b) propensity score analyses taking into account the differential distribution of confounders across the generations, and (c) sensitivity analyses that adjusted for childhood health of the mother prior to marriage. Intergenerational findings also suggest that marriage across generations was most protective against infant LBW; the lowest risk for LBW was found among women who were both married when they gave birth to their infants and had mothers who were married at the time they themselves were born.

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Exploring Weathering: Effects of Lifelong Economic Environment and Maternal Age on Low Birth Weight, Small for Gestational Age, and Preterm Birth in African-American and White Women

Catherine Love, Richard David, Kristin Rankin & James Collins
American Journal of Epidemiology, 15 July 2010, Pages 127-134

Abstract:
White women experience their lowest rate of low birth weight (LBW) in their late 20s; the nadir LBW for African-American women is under 20 years with rates rising monotonically thereafter, hypothesized as due to "weathering" or deteriorating health with cumulative disadvantage. Current residential environment affects birth outcomes for all women, but little is known about the impact of early life environment. The authors linked neighborhood income to a transgenerational birth file containing infant and maternal birth data, allowing assessment of economic effects over a woman's life course. African-American women who were born in poorer neighborhoods and were still poor as mothers showed significant weathering with regard to LBW and small for gestational age (SGA) but not preterm birth (PTB). However, African-American women in upper-income areas at both time points had a steady fall in LBW and SGA rate with age, similar to the pattern seen in white women. No group of white women, even those always living in poorer neighborhoods, exhibited weathering with regard to LBW, SGA, or PTB. In contrast, the degree of weathering among African-American women is related to duration of exposure to low-income areas and disappears for those with a life residence in non-poor neighborhoods.

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Experimental evidence of welfare reform impact on clinical anxiety and depression levels among poor women

Radha Jagannathan, Michael Camasso & Usha Sambamoorthi
Social Science & Medicine, July 2010, Pages 152-160

Abstract:
In this paper, we employ a classical experiment to determine if welfare reform causes poor women to experience increased levels of clinical anxiety and depression. We organize our analyses around the insights provided by lifestyle change and ecosocial theories of illness. Our data come from the New Jersey Family Development Program (FDP), one of the most highly publicized welfare experiments in the U.S. A sample of 8393 women was randomly assigned into two groups, one which stressed welfare-to-work and the other which offered traditional welfare benefits. These women were followed from 1992 through 1996 and information on clinical diagnoses was collected quarterly from physician treatment claims to the government Medicaid program. Our intention-to-treat estimates show that for short-term welfare recipients FDP decreased the prevalence of anxiety by 40% and increased depression by 8%. For black women both anxiety and depression diagnoses declined while Hispanic women experienced a 68% increase in depression. We discuss several public policy implications which arise from our work.

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Socioeconomic Status in One's Childhood Predicts Offspring Cardiovascular Risk

Hannah Schreier & Edith Chen
Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, forthcoming

Objective: To test whether effects of socioeconomic environments can persist across generations, we examined whether parents' childhood socioeconomic status (SES) could predict blood pressure (BP) trajectories in their youth across a 12-month study period and C-reactive protein (CRP) levels at one year follow-up.

Methods: BP was assessed in 88 healthy youth (M age = 13 2.4) at three study visits, each 6 months apart. CRP was also assessed in youth at baseline and one year follow-up. Parents reported on current and their own childhood SES (education and crowding).

Results: If parents' childhood SES was lower, their children displayed increasing SBP and CRP over the 12-month period, or conversely, the higher parents' childhood SES, the greater the decrease in SBP and CRP in their youth over time. These effects persisted even after controlling for current SES. A number of other factors, including child health behaviors, parent psychosocial characteristics, general family functioning, and parent physiology could not explain these effects.

Conclusion: Our study suggests that the SES environment parents grow up in may influence physical health across generations, here, SBP and CRP in their children, and hence that intergenerational histories are important to consider in predicting cardiovascular health in youth.

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The Education-Health Gradient

Gabriella Conti, James Heckman & Sergio Urzua
American Economic Review, May 2010, Pages 234-238

"We determine the role played by early cognitive, noncognitive, and health endowments. We identify the causal effect of education on health and health-related behaviors. We develop an empirical model of schooling choice and post-schooling outcomes, where both schooling and the outcomes determined in part by schooling are influenced by measured early family environments and latent capabilities (cognitive, noncognitive and health). We show that family background characteristics, and cognitive, noncognitive, and health endowments developed by age 10, are important determinants of labor market and health disparities at age 30. Not properly accounting for personality traits overestimates the importance of cognitive ability in determining adult health. Selection on factors determined early in life explains more than half of the observed difference by education in poor health, depression, and obesity. Education has an important causal effect in explaining differences in many adult outcomes and healthy behaviors. We uncover significant gender differences. We go beyond the current literature which typically estimates mean effects to compute distributions of treatment effects. We show how the health returns to education can vary among individuals who are similar with respect to their observed characteristics, and how a mean effect can hide gains and losses for different individuals. Our research highlights the important role played by the early years in producing health."

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Inequality and Infant and Childhood Mortality in the United States in the Twentieth Century

Michael Haines
NBER Working Paper, June 2010

Abstract:
This paper deals with the issue of using infant and childhood mortality as an indicator of inequality. The case is that of the United States in the 20th century. Using microdata from the 1900 and 1910 Integrated Public Use Microsamples (IPUMS), published data from the Birth Registration Area in the 1920s, results from a number of surveys, and the Linked Birth & Infant Death Files from the National Center for Health Statistics for 1991, infant and child mortality can be related to such other variables as occupation of father or mother, education of father or mother, family income, race, ethnicity, and residence. The evidence shows that, although there have been large absolute reductions in the level of infant and child mortality rates and also a reduction in the absolute levels of differences across socioeconomic groups, relative inequality has not diminished over the 20th century.

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Health outcomes of Experience Corps®: A high-commitment volunteer program

S.I. Hong & Nancy Morrow-Howell
Social Science & Medicine, July 2010, Pages 414-420

Abstract:
Experience Corps® (EC) is a high-commitment US volunteer program that brings older adults into public elementary schools to improve academic achievement of students. It is viewed as a health promotion program for the older volunteers. We evaluated the effects of the EC program on older adults' health, using a quasi-experimental design. We included volunteers from 17 EC sites across the US. They were pre-tested before beginning their volunteer work and post-tested after two years of service. We compared changes over time between the EC participants (n = 167) and a matched comparison group of people from the US Health and Retirement Study (2004, 2006). We developed the comparison group by using the nearest available Mahalanobis metric matching within calipers combined with the boosted propensity scores of those participating in the EC. We corrected for clustering effects via survey regression analyses with robust standard errors and calculated adjusted post-test means of health outcomes, controlling for all covariates and the boosted propensity score of EC participants. We found that compared to the comparison group, the EC group reported fewer depressive symptoms and functional limitations after two years of participation in the program, and there was a statistical trend toward the EC group reporting less decline in self-rated health. Results of this study add to the evidence supporting high-intensity volunteering as a social model of health promotion for older adults.

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Underlying Causes of the Emerging Nonmetropolitan Mortality Penalty

Jeralynn Cossman, Wesley James, Arthur Cosby & Ronald Cossman
American Journal of Public Health, August 2010, Pages 1417-1419

Abstract:
The nonmetropolitan mortality penalty results in an estimated 40201 excessive deaths per year, deaths that would not occur if nonmetropolitan and metropolitan residents died at the same rate. We explored the underlying causes of the nonmetropolitan mortality penalty by examining variation in cause of death. Declines in heart disease and cancer death rates in metropolitan areas drive the nonmetropolitan mortality penalty. Future work should explore why the top causes of death are higher in nonmetropolitan areas than they are in metropolitan areas.

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Early Life Adversity and Inflammation in African Americans and Whites in the Midlife in the United States Survey

Natalie Slopen, Tené Lewis, Tara Gruenewald, Mahasin Mujahid, Carol Ryff, Michelle Albert & David Williams
Psychosomatic Medicine, forthcoming

Objectives: To determine whether early life adversity (ELA) was predictive of inflammatory markers and to determine the consistency of these associations across racial groups.

Methods: We analyzed data from 177 African Americans and 822 whites aged 35 to 86 years from two preliminary subsamples of the Midlife in the United States biomarker study. ELA was measured via retrospective self-report. We used multivariate linear regression models to examine the associations between ELA and C-reactive protein, interleukin-6, fibrinogen, endothelial leukocyte adhesion molecule-1, and soluble intercellular adhesion molecule-1, independent of age, gender, and medications. We extended race-stratified models to test three potential mechanisms for the observed associations.

Results: Significant interactions between ELA and race were observed for all five biomarkers. Models stratified by race revealed that ELA predicted higher levels of log interleukin-6, fibrinogen, endothelial leukocyte adhesion molecule-1, and soluble intercellular adhesion molecule-1 among African Americans (p < .05), but not among whites. Some, but not all, of these associations were attenuated after adjustment for health behaviors and body mass index, adult stressors, and depressive symptoms.

Conclusions: ELA was predictive of high concentrations of inflammatory markers at midlife for African Americans, but not whites. This pattern may be explained by an accelerated course of age-related disease development for African Americans.

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Increasing marginal utility of small increases in life-expectancy?: Results from a population survey

Maria Knoph Kvamme, Dorte Gyrd-Hansen, Jan Abel Olsen & Ivar Sønbø Kristiansen
Journal of Health Economics, July 2010, Pages 541-548

Abstract:
The standard practice in cost-effectiveness analyses of health care is to assign a linear value to increasing lifetime gains. The aim of the current study was to examine the possible existence of non-linear utility for short life extensions. A representative sample of the Norwegian population, aged 40-59 years (n = 2402), was asked to imagine that they had a limited remaining lifetime (1 year or 10 years) and were offered a treatment that would increase lifetime by a specified amount of time from 1 week to 1 year. In all scenarios, the price per week of life extension was held constant. The proportion of respondents that accepted the treatment increased with increasing extensions, indicating a convex utility function. The result suggests increasing marginal utility for life extensions up to 1 year.

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Psychotherapeutic interventions for depressed, low-income women: A review of the literature

Lauren Levy & Michael O'Hara
Clinical Psychology Review, forthcoming

Abstract:
Low-income women have very high rates of depression and also face a number of unique barriers that can prevent them from seeking, accepting, engaging in, or benefiting from psychotherapy treatment. Untreated depression often leads to deleterious psychological consequences for these women and their children, and may also diminish a woman's ability to improve her economic circumstances. We reviewed the literature on psychotherapeutic interventions for depressed, low-income women, identifying a number of practical, psychological, and cultural barriers that often prevent them from engaging in psychotherapy. Next, we assessed the degree to which established intervention programs help women overcome these barriers. The data suggest that it is quite difficult to engage depressed, low-income women in psychotherapy, but that a number of standard psychotherapy approaches do show promise. However, we found that many of the currently available interventions fail to fully address the barriers that prevent this population from engaging in treatment. Moreover, the impact these interventions have on engagement and attrition rates or clinical improvements is often inadequately reported. We provide preliminary recommendations for clinicians who work with low-income women as well as suggestions for bolstering the literature base.

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Is wealthier always healthier? The impact of national income level, inequality, and poverty on public health in Latin America

Brian Biggs, Lawrence King, Sanjay Basu & David Stuckler
Social Science & Medicine, July 2010, Pages 266-273

Abstract:
Despite findings indicating that both national income level and income inequality are each determinants of public health, few have studied how national income level, poverty and inequality interact with each other to influence public health outcomes. We analyzed the relationship between gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in purchasing power parity, extreme poverty rates, the gini coefficient for personal income and three common measures of public health: life expectancy, infant mortality rates, and tuberculosis (TB) mortality rates. Introducing poverty and inequality as modifying factors, we then assessed whether the relationship between GDP and health differed during times of increasing, decreasing, and decreasing or constant poverty and inequality. Data were taken from twenty-two Latin American countries from 1960 to 2007 from the December 2008 World Bank World Development Indicators, World Health Organization Global Tuberculosis Database 2008, and the Socio-Economic Database for Latin America and the Caribbean. Consistent with previous studies, we found increases in GDP have a sizable positive impact on population health. However, the strength of the relationship is powerfully influenced by changing levels of poverty and inequality. When poverty was increasing, greater GDP had no significant effect on life expectancy or TB mortality, and only led to a small reduction in infant mortality rates. When inequality was rising, greater GDP had only a modest effect on life expectancy and infant mortality rates, and no effect on TB mortality rates. In sharp contrast, during times of decreasing or constant poverty and inequality, there was a very strong relationship between increasing GDP and higher life expectancy and lower TB and infant mortality rates. Finally, inequality and poverty were found to exert independent, substantial effects on the relationship between national income level and health. Wealthier is indeed healthier, but how much healthier depends on how increases in wealth are distributed.

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Effects of vacation from work on health and well-being: Lots of fun, quickly gone

Jessica de Bloom, Sabine Geurts, Toon Taris, Sabine Sonnentag, Carolina de Weerth & Michiel Kompier
Work & Stress, April 2010, Pages 196-216

Abstract:
Although vacation from work provides a valuable opportunity for recovery, few studies have met the requirements for assessing its effects. These include taking measurements well ahead of the vacation, during the vacation and at several points in time afterwards. Our study on vacation (after-) effects focused on two related questions: (1) Do health and well-being of working individuals improve during a vacation? and (2) How long does a vacation effect last after resumption of work? In a longitudinal study covering seven weeks, 96 Dutch workers reported their health and well-being levels two weeks before a winter sports vacation, during vacation and one week, two weeks and four weeks after vacation on seven indicators. Participants' health and well-being improved during vacation on five indicators: health status, mood, tension, energy level and satisfaction. However, during the first week of work resumption, health and well-being had generally returned to pre-vacation levels. In conclusion, a winter sports vacation is associated with improvements in self-reported health and well-being among working individuals. However, these effects fade out rapidly after work resumption. We propose a framework for future vacation research and suggest investigating the role of vacation type, duration and means to prolong vacation relief.

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Is neighborhood racial/ethnic composition associated with depressive symptoms? The multi-ethnic study of atherosclerosis

Christina Mair, Ana Diez Roux, Theresa Osypuk, Stephen Rapp, Teresa Seeman & Karol Watson
Social Science & Medicine, August 2010, Pages 541-550

Abstract:
The racial/ethnic composition of a neighborhood may be related to residents' depressive symptoms through differential levels of neighborhood social support and/or stressors. We used the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis to investigate cross-sectional associations of neighborhood racial/ethnic composition with the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression (CES-D) scale in adults aged 45-84. The key exposure was a census-derived measure of the percentage of residents of the same racial/ethnic background in each participant's census tract. Two-level multilevel models were used to estimate associations of neighborhood racial/ethnic composition with CES-D scores after controlling for age, income, marital status, education and nativity. We found that living in a neighborhood with a higher percentage of residents of the same race/ethnicity was associated with increased CES-D scores in African American men (p < 0.05), and decreased CES-D scores in Hispanic men and women and Chinese women, although these differences were not statistically significant. Models were further adjusted for neighborhood-level covariates (social cohesion, safety, problems, aesthetic quality and socioeconomic factors) derived from survey responses and census data. Adjusting for other neighborhood characteristics strengthened protective associations amongst Hispanics, but did not change the significant associations in African American men. These results demonstrate heterogeneity in the associations of race/ethnic composition with mental health and the need for further exploration of which aspects of neighborhood environments may contribute to these associations.

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The Effect of Education on Adult Health and Mortality: Evidence from Britain

Damon Clark & Heather Royer
NBER Working Paper, May 2010

Abstract:
There is a strong, positive and well-documented correlation between education and health outcomes. There is much less evidence on the extent to which this correlation reflects the causal effect of education on health - the parameter of interest for policy. In this paper we attempt to overcome the difficulties associated with estimating the causal effect of education on health. Our approach exploits two changes to British compulsory schooling laws that generated sharp differences in educational attainment among individuals born just months apart. Using regression discontinuity methods, we confirm that the cohorts just affected by these changes completed significantly more education than slightly older cohorts subject to the old laws. However, we find little evidence that this additional education improved health outcomes or changed health behaviors. We argue that it is hard to attribute these findings to the content of the additional education or the wider circumstances that the affected cohorts faced (e.g., universal health insurance). As such, our results suggest caution as to the likely health returns to educational interventions focused on increasing educational attainment among those at risk of dropping out of high school, a target of recent health policy efforts.

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The association of earnings with health in middle age: Do self-reported earnings for the previous year tell the whole story?

David Rehkopf, Christopher Jencks & Maria Glymour
Social Science & Medicine, August 2010, Pages 431-439

Abstract:
Research on earnings and health frequently relies on self-reported earnings (SRE) for a single year, despite repeated criticism of this measure. We use 31 years (1961-1991) of earnings recorded by the United States Social Security Administration (SSA) to predict the 1992 prevalence of disability, diabetes, stroke, heart disease, cancer, depression and death by 2002 in a subset of Health and Retirement Study participants (n = 5951). We compare odds ratios (ORs) for each health outcome associated with self-reported or administratively recorded earnings. Individuals with no 1991 SSA earnings had worse health in multiple domains than those with positive earnings. However, this association diminished as the time lag between earnings and health increased, so that the absence of earnings before approximately 1975 did not predict health in 1992. Among those with positive earnings, lengthening the lag between SSA earnings and health did not significantly diminish the magnitude of the association with diabetes, heart disease, stroke, or death. Longer lags did reduce but did not eliminate the association between earnings and both disability and depression. Despite theoretical limitations of single year SRE, there were no statistically significant differences between the ORs estimated with single-year SRE and those estimated with a 31-year average of SSA earnings. For example, a one unit increase in logged SRE for 1991 predicted a 19% reduction in the odds of dying by 2002 (OR = 0.81; 95% confidence interval: 0.72,0.90), while a similar increase in average SSA earnings for 1961-1991 had an OR of 0.72 (0.63, 0.82). The point estimates for the OR associated with 31 year average SSA earnings were further from the null than the ORs associated with single year SRE for heart disease, depression, and death, and closer to the null for disability, diabetes, and stroke, but none of these differences was statistically significant.

Xiuping Li, Liyuan Wei & Dilip Soman
Psychological Science, forthcoming

Abstract:
This research investigated whether the physical act of enclosing an emotionally laden stimulus can help alleviate the associated negative emotions. Four experiments found support for this claim. In Experiments 1a and 1b, emotional negativity was reduced for participants who placed a written recollection of a regretted past decision or unsatisfied strong desire inside an envelope. However, enclosing a stimulus unrelated to the emotional experience did not have the same effect (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, we showed that the effect was not driven by participants simply doing something extra with the materials, and that the effect of physical enclosure was mediated by the psychological closure that participants felt toward the event.

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Guilty, free, and wise: Determinism and psychopathy diminish learning from negative emotions

Tyler Stillman & Roy Baumeister
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming

Abstract:
Emotional experiences can bring about personal growth. For instance, feeling guilty may prompt one to learn from a mistake, and this learning can bring about different and better future behavior. Four studies (N = 570) found that belief in free will facilitated learning from emotional experiences, as deterministic beliefs were associated with reduced learning. Studies included both correlational (Study 1) and experimental (Studies 2-4) designs. Emotional responsiveness, as defined by low psychopathy scores, also facilitated learning from emotional experiences (Studies 3 and 4). The degree of learning associated with emotional experiences was measured by self-rating (Studies 1 and 2), independent evaluations of lessons learned (Study 3), and whether participants joined a campus recycling program (after being made to feel guilty about an environmental transgression; Study 4).

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The effects of BOTOX injections on emotional experience

Joshua Ian Davis, Ann Senghas, Fredric Brandt & Kevin Ochsner
Emotion, June 2010, Pages 433-440

Abstract:
Although it was proposed over a century ago that feedback from facial expressions influence emotional experience, tests of this hypothesis have been equivocal. Here we directly tested this facial feedback hypothesis (FFH) by comparing the impact on self-reported emotional experience of BOTOX injections (which paralyze muscles of facial expression) and a control Restylane injection (which is a cosmetic filler that does not affect facial muscles). When examined alone, BOTOX participants showed no pre- to posttreatment changes in emotional responses to our most positive and negative video clips. Between-groups comparisons, however, showed that relative to controls, BOTOX participants exhibited an overall significant decrease in the strength of emotional experience. This result was attributable to (a) a pre- versus postdecrease in responses to mildly positive clips in the BOTOX group and (b) an unexpected increase in responses to negative clips in the Restylane control group. These data suggest that feedback from facial expressions is not necessary for emotional experience, but may influence emotional experience in some circumstances. These findings point to specific directions for future work clarifying the expression-experience relationship.

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Emotional reactions to losing explain gender differences in entering a risky lottery

Kimmo Eriksson & Brent Simpson
Judgment and Decision Making, June 2010, Pages 159-163

Abstract:
A gender difference in risk preferences, with women being more averse to risky choices, is a robust experimental finding. Speculating on the sources of this difference, Croson and Gneezy recently pointed to the tendency for women to experience emotions more strongly and suggested that feeling more strongly about negative outcomes would lead to greater risk-aversion. Here we test this hypothesis in an international survey with 424 respondents from India and 416 from US where we ask questions about a hypothetical lottery. In both countries we find that emotions about outcomes are stronger among women, and that this effect partially mediates gender difference in willingness to enter the lottery.

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Optimistic Expectancies and Cell-Mediated Immunity: The Role of Positive Affect

Suzanne Segerstrom & Sandra Sephton
Psychological Science, March 2010, Pages 448-455

Abstract:
Optimistic expectancies affect many psychosocial outcomes and may also predict immune system changes and health, but the nature and mechanisms of any such physiological effects have not been identified. The present study related law-school expectancies to cell-mediated immunity (CMI), examining the within- and between-person components of this relationship and affective mediators. First-year law students (N = 124) completed questionnaire measures of expectancies and affect and received delayed-type hypersensitivity skin tests at five time points. A positive relationship between optimistic expectancies and CMI occurred: Changes in optimism correlated with changes in CMI. Likewise, changes in optimism predicted changes in positive and, to a lesser degree, negative affect, but the relationship between optimism and immunity was partially accounted for only by positive affect. This dynamic relationship between expectancies and immunity has positive implications for psychological interventions to improve health, particularly those that increase positive affect.

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Can expressions of anger enhance creativity? A test of the emotions as social information (EASI) model

Gerben Van Kleef, Christina Anastasopoulou & Bernard Nijstad
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming

Abstract:
We investigated whether expressions of anger can enhance creative performance. Building on the emotions as social information (EASI) model (Van Kleef, 2009), we predicted that the interpersonal effects of anger expressions on creativity depend on the target's epistemic motivation (EM) - the desire to develop an accurate understanding of the situation (Kruglanski, 1989). Participants worked on an idea generation task in the role of "generator." Then they received standardized feedback and tips from an "evaluator" (a trained actor) via a video setup. The feedback was delivered in an angry way or in a neutral way (via facial expressions, vocal intonation, and bodily postures). Participants with high EM exhibited greater fluency, originality, and flexibility after receiving angry rather than neutral feedback, whereas those with low EM were less creative after receiving angry feedback. These effects were mediated by task engagement and motivation, which anger increased (decreased) among high (low) EM participants.

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Effects of Directed Written Disclosure on Grief and Distress Symptoms Among Bereaved Individuals

Wendy Lichtenthal & Dean Cruess
Death Studies, July 2010, Pages 475-499

Abstract:
Bereavement-specific written disclosure trials have generally demonstrated null effects, but these studies have not directed the focus of writing. This randomized controlled trial compared directed writing that focused on either sense-making or benefit-finding, both associated with adjustment to loss, to traditional, non-directed emotional disclosure and a control condition. Bereaved undergraduates (n = 68) completed three 20-min writing sessions over 1 week. Intervention effects were found on prolonged grief disorder, depressive, and posttraumatic stress symptoms 3 months postintervention, and the benefit-finding condition appeared particularly efficacious. Physical health improved over time in all treatment groups. Findings suggested that directing written disclosure on topics associated with adjustment to bereavement may be useful for grieving individuals.

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The ability to process emotional information predicts loss aversion

Peter Bibby & Eamonn Ferguson
Personality and Individual Differences, forthcoming

Abstract:
On the basis of previous research it was hypothesized that alexithymia is associated with a higher tolerance for losses. This hypothesis is extended to explore whether the putative link between loss aversion and alexithymia remains once traits associated with risk taking (sensation seeking) and broad based personality traits (the Big 5) are controlled. Participants (N = 260) completed indices of alexithymia, sensation seeking and the Big 5 and both a riskless (endowment effect) and risky (lottery task) measure of loss aversion. It was found that the higher the alexithymia score the lower the loss aversion for both riskless and risky decisions even when sex, sensation seeking and the Big 5 are taken into account. The implications for this finding are discussed in the light of a neurological explanation of the relationship between alexithymia and loss aversion.

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Emotional Inertia and Psychological Maladjustment

Peter Kuppens, Nicholas Allen & Lisa Sheeber
Psychological Science, July 2010, Pages 984-991

Abstract:
In this article, we examine the concept of emotional inertia as a fundamental property of the emotion dynamics that characterize psychological maladjustment. Emotional inertia refers to the degree to which emotional states are resistant to change. Because psychological maladjustment has been associated with both emotional underreactivity and ineffective emotion-regulation skills, we hypothesized that its overall emotion dynamics would be characterized by high levels of inertia. We provide evidence from two naturalistic studies that, using different methods, showed that the emotional fluctuations of individuals who exhibited low self-esteem (Study 1) and depression (Study 2) were characterized by higher levels of inertia in both positive and negative emotions than the emotional fluctuations of people who did not exhibit low self-esteem and depression. We also discuss the usefulness of the concept of emotional inertia as a hallmark of maladaptive emotion dynamics.

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Inferring the preferences of others from spontaneous, low-emotional facial expressions

Michael North, Alexander Todorov & Daniel Osherson
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming

Abstract:
The present study investigates whether people can infer the preferences of others from spontaneous facial expressions alone. We utilize a paradigm that unobtrusively records people's natural facial reactions to relatively mundane stimuli while they simultaneously report which ones they find more appealing. Videos were then presented to perceivers who attempted to infer the choices of the target individuals-thereby linking perceiver inferences to objective outcomes. Perceivers demonstrated above-chance ability to infer target preferences across four different stimulus categories: people (attractiveness), cartoons (humor), paintings (decorative appeal), and animals (cuteness). While perceivers' subjective ratings of expressivity varied somewhat between targets, these ratings did not predict the relative "readability" of the targets. The findings suggest that non-communicative, natural facial behavior by itself suffices for certain types of interpersonal prediction, even in low-emotional contexts.

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Seeing is believing: The effects of facial expressions of emotion and verbal communication in social dilemmas

Jeroen Stouten & David De Cremer
Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, July 2010, Pages 271-287

Abstract:
In social dilemmas, verbal communication of one's intentions is an important factor in increasing cooperation. In addition to verbal communication of one's intentions, also the communication of emotions of anger and happiness can influence cooperative behavior. In the present paper, we argue that facial expressions of emotion moderate verbal communication in social dilemmas. More specifically, three experiments showed that if the other person displayed happiness he or she was perceived as honest, trustworthy, and reliable, and cooperation was increased when verbal communication was cooperative rather than self-interested. However, if the other person displayed anger, verbal communication did not influence people's decision behavior. Results also showed interactive effects on people's perceptions of trustworthiness, which partially mediated decision behavior. These findings suggest that emotion displays have an important function in organizational settings because they are able to influence social interactions and cooperative behavior.

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Red Diffuse Light Suppresses the Accelerated Perception of Fear

Greg West, Adam Anderson, Jeffrey Bedwell & Jay Pratt
Psychological Science, July 2010, Pages 992-999

Abstract:
Prioritization of affective events may occur via two parallel pathways originating from the retina-a parvocellular (P) pathway projecting to ventral-stream structures responsible for object recognition or a faster and phylogenetically older magnocellular (M) pathway projecting to dorsal-stream structures responsible for localization and action. It has previously been demonstrated that retinal exposure to red diffuse light suppresses M-cell neural activity. We tested whether the fast propagation along the dorsal-action pathway drives an accelerated conduction of fear-based content. Using a visual prior-entry procedure, we assessed accelerated stimulus perception while either suppressing the M pathway with red diffuse light or leaving it unaffected with green diffuse light. We show that the encoding of fearful faces is accelerated, but not when M-channel activity is suppressed, revealing a dissociation that implicates a privileged neural link between emotion and action that begins at the retina.

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Intranasal Arginine Vasopressin Enhances the Encoding of Happy and Angry Faces in Humans

Adam Guastella, Amanda Kenyon, Gail Alvares, Dean Carson & Ian Hickie
Biological Psychiatry, 15 June 2010, Pages 1220-1222

Background: Arginine vasopressin (AVP) has a complex but crucial role in social behavior. In nonhuman mammals it facilitates social recognition and bonding while also promoting defensive, aggressive, and territorial behaviors. There has been little research in humans exploring its effect on social cognition, including the encoding of social memories.

Methods: In a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, between-subject design, we administered AVP (20 IU) or a placebo intranasally to 48 healthy human male volunteers and then presented 54 happy, angry, or neutral human faces. Participants returned the following day to make "remember", "know", or "new" judgments for a mix of 108 new and previously seen faces. Results: Participants who were administered AVP were more likely to make know judgments for previously seen happy and angry faces in comparison with neutral human faces. Arginine vasopressin did not influence judgments for faces that had not been presented previously.

Conclusions: Administration of AVP to male humans enhances the encoding of both happy and angry social information to make this more memorable.

Results suggest that AVP could facilitate both bonding and aggressive related behaviors in humans by enhancing the encoding of positive and negative social cues within everyday interactions.

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How benefits of expressive writing vary as a function of writing instructions, ethnicity and ambivalence over emotional expression

Qian Lu & Annette Stanton
Psychology & Health, July 2010, Pages 669-684

Abstract:
Written emotional disclosure has been reported to confer a variety of benefits on physical and psychological well-being. However, variable findings suggest that outcomes may vary systematically as a function of specific parameters of the experimental design. This study aims to investigate the unique and combined effects of disclosure instructions focusing on emotional expression and instructions facilitating cognitive reappraisal and to examine how ambivalence over emotional expression and ethnicity moderate the effects of these writing instructions. Seventy-one Asian and 59 Caucasian undergraduates (N = 130) with at least minimal physical or depressive symptoms were randomly assigned to one of the four writing conditions: emotional disclosure (ED), cognitive reappraisal (COG), the combination of ED and COG, or a control condition. Self-reported physical symptoms, positive affect (PA) and negative affect were assessed at baseline and three follow-ups spanning 4 months. Mixed linear models revealed that COG writing reduced physical symptoms, ED buffered a decrease in PA over time, and the combination of ED and COG (i.e. self-regulation; SR) was most effective. Asians and highly ambivalent participants benefited most from expressive writing. Findings contribute to the development of a SR moderator model and carry implications for designing expressive disclosure studies, particularly for ethnic minorities.

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Stop looking angry and smile, please: Start and stop of the very same facial expression differentially activate threat- and reward-related brain networks

Andreas Mühlberger, Matthias Wieser, Antje Gerdes, Monika Frey, Peter Weyers & Paul Pauli
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, forthcoming

Abstract:
Static pictures of emotional facial expressions have been found to activate brain structures involved in the processing of emotional stimuli. However, in everyday live, emotional expressions are changing rapidly, and the processing of the onset vs the offset of the very same emotional expression might rely on different brain networks, presumably leading to different behavioral and physiological reactions (e.g. approach or avoidance). Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, this was examined by presenting video clips depicting onsets and offsets of happy and angry facial expressions. Subjective valence and threat ratings clearly depended on the direction of change. Blood oxygen level dependent responses indicate both reward- and threat-related activations for the offset of angry expressions. Comparing onsets and offsets, angry offsets were associated with stronger ventral striatum activation than angry onsets. Additionally, the offset of happy and the onset of angry expressions showed strong common activity in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex bilaterally, the left amygdala and the left insula, whereas the onset of happy and the offset of angry expressions induced significant activation in the left dorsal striatum. In sum, the results confirm different activity in motivation-related brain areas in response to the onset and offset of the same emotional expression and highlight the importance of temporal characteristics of facial expressions for social communication.

Joseph Bafumi, Robert Erikson & Christopher Wlezien
Journal of Politics, July 2010, Pages 705-719

Abstract:
One mystery of U.S. politics is why the president's party regularly loses congressional seats at midterm. Although presidential coattails and their withdrawal provide a partial explanation, coattails cannot account for the fact that the presidential party typically performs worse than normal at midterm. This paper addresses the midterm vote separate from the presidential year vote, with evidence from generic congressional polls conducted during midterm election years. Polls early in the midterm year project a normal vote result in November. But as the campaign progresses, vote preferences almost always move toward the out party. This shift is not a negative referendum on the president, as midterms do not show a pattern of declining presidential popularity or increasing salience of presidential performance. The shift accords with "balance" theory, where the midterm campaign motivates some to vote against the party of the president in order to achieve policy moderation.

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Managing Monikers: The Role of Name Presentation in the 2008 Presidential Election

Ray Block & Chinonye Onwunli
Presidential Studies Quarterly, September 2010, Pages 464-481

Abstract:
Given America's widespread contempt for Islamic extremists, Obama's Muslim-sounding moniker could have cost him electoral support. Consequently, anecdotal evidence suggests that Obama played a "name game" in which he deflected suspicions about his religious background by avoiding use of his middle name (Hussein) and minimizing the frequency with which his opponents used it. Did the presentation of Obama's name affect how voters evaluated him? Results from a web-based experiment suggest that the answer varies by political orientation. Among Republicans and conservatives, Obama's favorability ratings are generally lower when his middle name is present. Name presentation had little effect on Democrats and liberals, and moderates and independents rated the president more favorably when his middle name appeared. Regardless of party identification or political ideology, name presentation had no effect on the probability of voting for Obama.

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Ready to Lead on Day One: Predicting Presidential Greatness from Political Experience

John Balz
PS: Political Science & Politics, July 2010, Pages 487-492

Abstract:
Presidential candidates frequently tout their political experience on the campaign trail, telling voters that it has prepared them to deal with complex problems, make weighty decisions, and show leadership. The value of that argument was put to the test in the 2008 presidential campaign by Hillary Clinton against her opponent, Barack Obama. This paper uses a multilevel model to analyze the value of national and state political experience on overall presidential greatness, as judged by seven surveys of academic experts. Overall, there is no evidence that political experience improves the likelihood of strong presidential performance, and even some weak evidence that political experience in certain political positions, most notably mayor and member of Congress, leads to poorer performance. In the end, great presidents are not great simply because they have spent their lives in politics and learned important lessons. Other personal and historical factors are likely to be more important.

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Prospective and Retrospective Evaluations and The Dynamics of Vote Choice in 2008

Roy Elis, Sunshine Hillygus & Norman Nie
Electoral Studies, forthcoming

Abstract:
In this paper, we leverage a 10-wave election panel to examine the relative and dynamic effects of voter evaluations of Bush, Palin, Biden, McCain, and Obama in the 2008 presidential election. Critically, we show that the effects of these political figures on vote choice evolves through the campaign, with the predictive effects of President Bush declining after the nominees are known, and the effects of the candidates (and Palin), increasing towards Election Day. In evaluating the relative effects of these political figures on individual-level changes in vote choice during the fall campaign, we also find that evaluations of the candidates and Sarah Palin dwarf that of President Bush. Our results suggest a Bayesian model of voter decision making in which retrospective evaluations of the previous administration might provide a starting point for assessing the candidates, but prospective evaluations based on information learned during the campaign helps voters to update their candidate preference. Finally, we estimate the "Palin effect," based on individual-level changes in favorability towards the vice-presidential nominee, and conclude that her campaign performance cost McCain just under 2% of the final vote share.

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The Economy and the Dynamics of the 2008 Presidential Campaign: Evidence from the National Annenberg Election Study

Richard Johnston, Emily Thorson & Andrew Gooch
Journal of Elections, Public Opinion & Parties, May 2010, Pages 271-289

Abstract:
This paper considers the impact of economic perceptions on vote intention in the 2008 presidential campaign with data from the two components of the National Annenberg Election Survey. It addresses a controversy over whether the collapse of Lehman Brothers and its aftermath altered the terms of competition, and produced the late-campaign widening of Barack Obama's lead and his comfortable victory. Detailed attention to the chronology of the campaign, made possible by the structure of NAES data collection, indicates that the timing of key shifts is inconsistent with a simple economic interpretation of vote-intention dynamics. Multivariate analyses indicate that the economy-vote link weakened at the critical point.

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State political culture and support for Obama in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries

Patrick Fisher
Social Science Journal, forthcoming

Abstract:
Though ideologically similar, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton appealed to different types of voters in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries and demographically the candidates' support varied considerably. Relative to the demographics of the primary electorates, however, we find that state political culture played an outsized role in determining which candidate emerged victorious in a particular state. When the size of demographic groups in the 2008 Democratic primaries are utilized in ordinary least squares regression models as independent variables with state political characteristics and Daniel Elazar's state political culture typology, political culture proves to be an important determinant of the level of support given to Obama in a state. States that are characterized by a more moralistic political culture are more likely to have given Obama a greater share of the primary vote and states that are characterized by a more traditionalistic or individualistic culture were less likely to support Obama in the 2008 Democratic primaries.

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The Politics of Hope and Despair: The Effect of Presidential Election Outcomes on Suicide Rates

Timothy Classen & Richard Dunn
Social Science Quarterly, September 2010, Pages 593-612

Objectives: This article examines the effect of election outcomes on suicide rates by combining the theory of social integration developed by Durkheim with the models of rational choice used in economics.

Methods: Theory predicts that states with a greater percentage of residents who supported the losing candidate would tend to exhibit a relative increase in suicide rates. However, being around others who also supported the losing candidate may indicate a greater degree of social integration at the local level, thereby lowering relative suicide rates. We therefore use fixed-effects regression of state suicide rates from 1981 to 2005 on state election outcomes during presidential elections to determine which effect is stronger.

Results: We find that the local effect of social integration is dominant. The suicide rate when a state supports the losing candidate will tend to be lower than if the state had supported the winning candidate - 4.6 percent lower for males and 5.3 percent lower for females.

Conclusion: Social integration works at many levels; it not only affects suicide risk directly, but can mediate other shocks that influence suicide risk.

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Obama on the Stump: Features and Determinants of a Rhetorical Approach

Kevin Coe & Michael Reitzes
Presidential Studies Quarterly, September 2010, Pages 391-413

Abstract:
From the moment Barack Obama entered the national political scene in 2004, his formidable rhetorical skills were a central component of his public persona and his political success. Not surprisingly, a growing body of research has examined Obama's rhetorical techniques. Thus far, however, these studies have consisted almost entirely of qualitative analyses of single speeches, making it difficult to generalize about the broader features of Obama's rhetorical approach and impossible to understand the determinants of his rhetorical choices. This study fills these gaps in the literature by systematically tracking Obama's rhetoric over the course of campaign 2008 and testing competing explanations for the variation that occurs during this period. Using a unique computer-assisted content analysis procedure that draws coding categories directly from the more than 11,500 distinct words that Obama used during his campaign, the authors analyze 183 speeches and debates from his announcement of candidacy in February 2007 to his victory speech in November 2008. Obama's campaign rhetoric varied by speaking context, geography, and poll position, indicating a twofold rhetorical approach of emphasizing policy and thematic appeals while downplaying more contentious issues.

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On Speech and Public Release

Joshua Gunn
Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Summer 2010, Pages 175-215

Abstract:
This essay argues for a reprivileging of the object of speech in the study of public address. To this end, public discourse concerning the tonal qualities of male and female speech, particularly in moments of affective transgression, is examined to better discern our deeply gendered, cultural norms of eloquence. The primary case study analyzes reactions to the oratory of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to show how their respective vocal tones played a significant role in the 2008 presidential election.

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"Sour Grapes" or Rational Voting? Voter Decision Making Among Thwarted Primary Voters in 2008

Michael Henderson, Sunshine Hillygus & Trevor Tompson
Public Opinion Quarterly, forthcoming

Abstract:
During the 2008 presidential campaign, journalists and pundits debated the electoral consequences of the prolonged and hard-fought nomination contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Previous research, typically using aggregate vote returns, has concluded that divisive primaries negatively impact the electoral prospects of the winning candidate. It is thought that supporters of the losing candidate are less likely to vote and more likely to defect because of psychological disaffection, or "sour grapes." Using a new panel dataset that traces individual candidate preferences during the primary and general election campaigns, we are able to explicitly examine individual-level decision making in the general election conditioned on voting behavior in the primary. Although "sour grapes" had a modest effect on eventual support for the party nominee, fundamental political considerations - especially attitudes on the War in Iraq - were far better predictors of the vote decision among thwarted voters. Moreover, we find that supporters of losing Democratic candidates were far more likely to vote for Obama if they lived in a battleground state.

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The Effects of Candidate Age in the 2008 Presidential Election

Kate Kenski & Kathleen Hall Jamieson
Presidential Studies Quarterly, September 2010, Pages 449-463

Abstract:
Using data from the 2008 National Annenberg Election Survey (NAES), this study finds that during the general election, adults in the United States were more likely to report that John McCain, who was 71 during the 2008 primaries and 72 in the general election, was "too old to be president" than to report that Barack Obama was "too young to be president." The percentage of the population subscribing to these views was not a constant in the general election. Instead, the belief that McCain was "too old to be president" increased across the campaign period, while the belief that Obama was "too young to be president" declined. Throughout the general election, major party identifiers were more likely to believe that the other major party candidate's age was a liability. Newspaper consumption and Internet use were positively associated with perceptions of McCain being "too old to be president," even when controlling for demographic and political ideological factors. Perceptions about candidate age were significantly associated with candidate evaluations and vote preference even after controls were factored in.

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Creating Better Heuristics for the Presidential Primary: The Citizen Assembly

Heather Gerken & Douglas Rand
Political Science Quarterly, Summer 2010, Pages 233-253

Abstract:
Heather K. Gerken and Douglas B. Rand propose creating citizen assemblies to vet presidential hopefuls in order to give low-information voters a useful heuristic for casting their votes. Their conceptual claim is that citizen assemblies should be of interest to the vast swaths of political science preoccupied with making representative democracy work. By shearing away the deliberative baggage that has long accompanied proposals like this one, the authors highlight the role that citizen assemblies can play in helping low-information voters make sensible choices.

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Unified Government, Bill Approval, and the Legislative Weight of the President

Eduardo Alemán & Ernesto Calvo
Comparative Political Studies, April 2010, Pages 511-534

Abstract:
This article proposes a new approach to measuring the legislative weight of the president and Congress based on the approval of each actor's legislative agenda. The authors focus on presidential systems where presidents possess both formal authority to introduce their own bills and a variety of prerogatives to influence the passage of legislation. The authors argue that the legislative weight of the president varies over time in response to contextual political variables. After devising a general model to measure changes in the legislative weight of the president vis-à-vis Congress, the authors empirically test their propositions using data from Argentina. The results indicate that the policy and productivity weights of the president actually increase in the absence of unified government.

Kristi Olson
Philosophy & Public Affairs, Summer 2010, Pages 240-271

"Suppose you could be a corporate lawyer with an annual income of $500,000, but you choose instead to pursue a career as a philosophy professor, despite the much smaller income. If the state imposes an earnings tax, you will be taxed according to your actual income as a philosophy professor. In contrast, if the state imposes an endowment tax, you will be taxed according to your maximum potential income as a corporate lawyer. In this scenario, the endowment tax seems likely to have a significant effect on your freedom. The worry is not merely that, under the endowment tax, you will have to pay a much greater percentage of your salary as a philosophy professor in taxes. Rather, the more troubling worry is that, in order to pay your taxes, you might have to forgo your career as a philosophy professor altogether. Indeed, depending upon how lucrative your other career options are and how high the tax is, you might have no choice but to work as a corporate lawyer - no matter how much you despise it. And this seems to be an impermissible intrusion on your freedom. For libertarians who believe that all taxation is impermissible, the conclusion that the endowment tax is morally impermissible presents no difficulties at all. But for those of us who believe that taxation is sometimes morally permissible, the conclusion that the endowment tax is impermissible gives rise to the following puzzle: If the endowment tax is impermissible but other forms of taxation are permissible, we need a principle capable of explaining the difference...And libertarians who oppose all forms of taxation ought to insist on such an account...According to my solution to the endowment tax puzzle, the endowment tax is objectionable because it disregards the moral distinction between options. But, since the earnings tax as it is currently implemented also disregards the moral distinction between options, in order to adopt my solution we must reject the moral sanctity of the earnings tax as it is currently implemented...In contrast, taxing all of the talent rent before imposing a tax on any non-rent is sensitive to the moral distinction between options."

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Objectivism Versus Subjectivism: A Market Test

Peter Calcagno, Joshua Hall & Robert Lawson
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming

Abstract:
The terms objective and subjective are considered antonyms, and yet "objectivists", associated with the ideas of Ayn Rand, and "subjectivists", associated with the ideas of Ludwig von Mises, are both associated with the same political philosophy: classical liberalism. There are however important apparent differences between the "objectivist" approach of Rand and the "subjectivist" approach of Mises. Who is right? And which intellectual has the greater place in the classical liberal tradition? We propose to test these questions using data from a unique housing development in Charleston, South Carolina. We find objective evidence in favor of Mises's subjectivism.

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Hayek's 'Great Society': On civilization and its savages

David Bholat
Journal of Political Ideologies, June 2010, Pages 175-188

Abstract:
Friedrich Hayek is widely viewed as a key intellectual source of neo-liberalism. Taking issue with the conventional view that Hayek's philosophy is, above all, concerned with individual freedom, this article argues that his foundational category is civility. Civility encompasses sensibilities and structures that restrict the liberties we take in our interpersonal relations and channel individual efforts to building what Hayek calls the 'Great Society'. For instance, Hayek endorses subordinating persons to price signals on the assumption that the market efficiently maximizes individual and social returns. However, Hayek's claim about the wisdom of market prices is contradicted by his own arguments about the limitations of human knowledge, individual or aggregate. Overall, I claim that the individual freedom Hayek's philosophy grants is quite limited and that the continued activism of neo-liberal governments is not an ideological contradiction, but actualizes the 'civilizing mission' demanded by one of its most important intellectual figures. Consequently, Hayek's philosophy invites broader reflection about the primacy of individual freedom in political thought and suggests civility as an alternative starting point. The way Hayek shifts the philosophical conversation, from theorizing conditions for the autonomy of individuals to the ideal qualities of relations adhering between them, may also explain his increasing attractiveness to thinkers on the Left.

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Having less, giving more: The influence of social class on prosocial behavior

Paul Piff, Michael Kraus, Bonnie Cheng & Dacher Keltner
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming

Abstract:
Lower social class (or socioeconomic status) is associated with fewer resources, greater exposure to threat, and a reduced sense of personal control. Given these life circumstances, one might expect lower class individuals to engage in less prosocial behavior, prioritizing self-interest over the welfare of others. The authors hypothesized, by contrast, that lower class individuals orient to the welfare of others as a means to adapt to their more hostile environments and that this orientation gives rise to greater prosocial behavior. Across 4 studies, lower class individuals proved to be more generous (Study 1), charitable (Study 2), trusting (Study 3), and helpful (Study 4) compared with their upper class counterparts. Mediator and moderator data showed that lower class individuals acted in a more prosocial fashion because of a greater commitment to egalitarian values and feelings of compassion. Implications for social class, prosocial behavior, and economic inequality are discussed.

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Shared Social Responsibility: A Field Experiment in Pay-What-You-Want Pricing and Charitable Giving

Ayelet Gneezy, Uri Gneezy, Leif Nelson & Amber Brown
Science, 16 July 2010, Pages 325-327

Abstract:
A field experiment (N = 113,047 participants) manipulated two factors in the sale of souvenir photos. First, some customers saw a traditional fixed price, whereas others could pay what they wanted (including $0). Second, approximately half of the customers saw a variation in which half of the revenue went to charity. At a standard fixed price, the charitable component only slightly increased demand, as similar studies have also found. However, when participants could pay what they wanted, the same charitable component created a treatment that was substantially more profitable. Switching from corporate social responsibility to what we term shared social responsibility works in part because customized contributions allow customers to directly express social welfare concerns through the purchasing of material goods.

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Warm glow, information, and inefficient charitable giving

C. Null
Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming

Abstract:
More than 200 donors participated in a framed field experiment which consisted of a series of decisions about how to divide a gift between a set of similar charities. Most subjects simultaneously gave to multiple charities even when the social benefit of gifts to different charities were not equal, as proxied by the matching rates applied to subjects' gifts. Taking each subject's preferences over the set of charities as given, these choices resulted in substantial inefficiencies: subjects forfeited social surplus (matching funds) equal to 25% of the value of their gifts. Suggestive evidence indicates that warm glow utility derived from the act of making a gift, which can lead to a love of variety even among similar charities, and risk aversion over the social value of charitable gifts are both important factors motivating donors who make socially inefficient gifts. Additionally, few subjects were willing to pay for information that could have enabled them to increase the social benefit of their gifts, although many of these subjects also forfeited potential personal gains in an investment decision, casting some doubt on the results. This possibility that the personal value of information might not be equal to the social value might help explain why there are so few rigorous evaluations of aid programs: such evaluations are costly to charities and might not be valued by donors.

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Meritocracy, Modernization and Students' Occupational Expectations: Cross-National Evidence

Gary Marks
Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, forthcoming

Abstract:
The meritocracy thesis argues that ability is the dominant influence on educational and other social outcomes in contemporary societies. The broader and related modernization thesis contends that as societies modernize the influence of ascriptive criteria, such as socioeconomic background and gender, decline. This paper informs on both theses by examining the effects of ability (measured by test scores), socioeconomic background and gender on the socioeconomic level of expected occupation at age 30 of approximately 170,000 15-year-old students in 30 countries. In almost all countries, ability was a stronger influence. Consistent with the modernization thesis, the effects of ability relative to socioeconomic background were stronger in more economically developed societies. The effects of both ability and socioeconomic background are partially mediated by national school systems. Ability also had a stronger influence on between-school differences in occupational expectations and negatively on 'not having an expected occupation'. However, a strong version of the meritocracy thesis was not supported by the significant, albeit often small, effects of socioeconomic background on occupational expectations observed in most countries.

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How History and Convention Create Norms: An Experimental Study

Francesco Guala & Luigi Mittone
Journal of Economic Psychology, forthcoming

Abstract:
According to a tradition that goes back to David Hume, social conventions have a natural tendency to turn into norms. Normativity increases compliance and stabilizes individual behaviour in spite of changes in incentives. In this paper we report experimental data that confirm this insight and encourage mildly optimistic conclusions regarding human sociality: habits provide extra glue that keeps individuals together, and prevents them from succumbing to anti-social temptation even when punishment is unlikely.

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No excuses for good behavior: Volunteering and the social environment

Sera Linardi & Margaret McConnell
Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming

Abstract:
We study the effect of the social environment on the quantity and quality of voluntary labor contributions. By extending Benabou and Tirole's (2006) image signaling framework, we derive theoretical predictions on time volunteered given (1) the availability of excuses to stop volunteering and (2) the presence of an authority figure. We test these predictions in an experiment where laboratory subjects are directly involved in a local nonprofit operation. We find that in the absence of excuses to stop volunteering, subjects volunteer longer without working less productively. This increase is partially driven by subjects' reluctance to be the first to stop volunteering. The presence of an authority figure has little impact, but the presence of peers hasa positive and significant impact.

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Encephalization and division of labor by early humans

John Hartwick
Journal of Bioeconomics, July 2010, Pages 77-100

Abstract:
We draw on Ricardian comparative advantage between distinct persons to map out the division of labor among proto-humans in a village some 1.7 million years ago. A person specialized in maintaining a cooking fire in the village is of particular interest (Ofek, Second nature, economic origins of human evolution, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2001). We are also interested in modeling hunting by village males in teams. The large issue is whether and how specialization (division of labor) and interpersonal trade might have driven brain-expansion in early humans. We emphasize the need for early humans to develop the capacity to see themselves in others' shoes (other-regardingness) in order for regularized trading to follow division of labor.

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Community Economic Identity: The Coal Industry and Ideology Construction in West Virginia

Shannon Elizabeth Bell & Richard York
Rural Sociology, March 2010, Pages 111-143

Abstract:
Economic changes and the machinations of the treadmill of production have dramatically reduced the number of jobs provided by extractive industries, such as mining and timber, in the United States and other affluent nations in the post-World War II era. As the importance of these industries to national, regional, and local economies wanes, community resistance to ecologically and socially destructive industry practices threatens the political power of corporations engaged in natural-resource extraction. Here we argue that to maintain their power (and profits) as their contribution to employment declines, extractive industries have increased their efforts to maintain and amplify the extent to which the "economic identity" of communities is connected with the industry that was historically an important source of employment. We fit this argument within the neo-Marxian theoretical tradition, which emphasizes the roles ideology and legitimation play in maintaining elite rule. We illustrate this theorized process by analyzing the efforts of the West Virginia coal industry, which, through its (faux) "grassroots" front group "Friends of Coal," attempts to construct the image that West Virginia's economy and cultural identity are centered on coal production. Our analysis relies on content analysis of various sources and on experience gained from field research. We find that key strategies of the Friends of Coal include efforts to become pervasively visible in the social landscape and the appropriation of cultural icons that exploit the hegemonic masculinity of the region. These findings have implications for how industries around the country, and the world, work to maintain their power through ideological manipulation.

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Social learning promotes institutions for governing the commons

Karl Sigmund, Hannelore De Silva, Arne Traulsen & Christoph Hauert
Nature, forthcoming

Abstract:
Theoretical and empirical research highlights the role of punishment in promoting collaborative efforts. However, both the emergence and the stability of costly punishment are problematic issues. It is not clear how punishers can invade a society of defectors by social learning or natural selection, or how second-order free-riders (who contribute to the joint effort but not to the sanctions) can be prevented from drifting into a coercion-based regime and subverting cooperation. Here we compare the prevailing model of peer-punishment with pool-punishment, which consists in committing resources, before the collaborative effort, to prepare sanctions against free-riders. Pool-punishment facilitates the sanctioning of second-order free-riders, because these are exposed even if everyone contributes to the common good. In the absence of such second-order punishment, peer-punishers do better than pool-punishers; but with second-order punishment, the situation is reversed. Efficiency is traded for stability. Neither other-regarding tendencies or preferences for reciprocity and equity, nor group selection or prescriptions from higher authorities, are necessary for the emergence and stability of rudimentary forms of sanctioning institutions regulating common pool resources and enforcing collaborative efforts.

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Reputation for reciprocity engages the brain reward center

Luan Phan, Chandra Sekhar Sripada, Mike Angstadt & Kevin McCabe
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming

Abstract:
Brain reward circuitry, including ventral striatum and orbitofrontal cortex, has been independently implicated in preferences for fair and cooperative outcomes as well as learning of reputations. Using functional MRI (fMRI) and a "trust game" task involving iterative exchanges with fictive partners who acquire different reputations for reciprocity, we measured brain responses in 36 healthy adults when positive actions (entrust investment to partners) yield positive returns (reciprocity) and how these brain responses are modulated by partner reputation for repayment. Here we show that positive reciprocity robustly engages the ventral striatum and orbitofrontal cortex. Moreover, this signal of reciprocity in the ventral striatum appears selectively in response to partners who have consistently returned the investment (e.g., a reputation for reciprocity) and is absent for partners who lack a reputation for reciprocity. These findings elucidate a fundamental brain mechanism, via reward-related neural substrates, by which human cooperative relationships are initiated and sustained.

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Maximum Effort in the Minimum-Effort Game

Dirk Engelmann & Hans Theo Normann
Experimental Economics, forthcoming

Abstract:
We report results from standard minimum-effort experiments conducted in Copenhagen (Denmark). Our subjects frequently coordinate on the Pareto-efficient equilibrium even in groups of six. This is in stark contrast to the previous literature, as we show in a detailed analysis of experiments which had the same design but were held in different countries. The subject-pool effect is substantiated by the finding that, the higher the share of Danish subjects in a group, the higher the minimum-effort levels. These findings suggest that the prevalent coordination failures previously observed are affected by significant subject-pool effects.

Aneeta Rattan & Jennifer Eberhardt
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming

Abstract:
Without visual attention, even the obvious - like a gorilla walking through a scene of people - goes undetected (Mack & Rock, 1998; Simons & Chabris, 1999). This 'inattentional blindness' is a persistent, well-documented limitation of the human visual system. The current research examines whether social meaning reduces this visual bias by imbuing unexpected objects with signal value, thus increasing their relevance and facilitating perception. Using one of the most established illustrations of inattentional blindness, we show for the first time that activating a social association, even an erroneous one (i.e., the African American-ape association), drastically attenuates inattentional blindness. This is not accounted for by visual feature matching. Rather, these results suggest that social meaning, even when flawed, may direct our visual system towards associated visual information that would otherwise be overlooked. As such, these results provide a powerful replication of the African American-ape association and illustrate that this broadly held association has the power to spontaneously change the content of one's visual world.

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"I'm Not Prejudiced, but...": Compensatory Egalitarianism in the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary

Corinne Moss-Racusin, Julie Phelan & Laurie Rudman
Political Psychology, August 2010, Pages 543-561

Abstract:
The historic 2008 Democratic presidential primary race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton posed a difficult choice for egalitarian White voters, and many commentators speculated that the election outcome would reflect pitting the effects of racism against sexism (Steinem, 2008). Because self-reported prejudices may be untrustworthy, we used the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to assess White adults' (1) condemnation of prejudices, and (2) attitudes toward the candidates in relation to voting decisions, as part of an online survey. Results supported the proposed compensatory egalitarianism process, such that Whites' voting choice was consistent with their implicit candidate preference, but in an effort to remain egalitarian, participants compensated for this preference by automatically condemning prejudice toward the other candidate's group. Additional findings showed that this process was moderated by participants' ethnicity and level of prejudice, as expected. Specifically, compensatory egalitarianism occurred primarily among Whites and individuals low in explicit prejudice. Implications for candidate support, aversive racism theory, and implicit compensation processes are discussed.

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Prejudice at the nexus of race and gender: An outgroup male target hypothesis

Carlos David Navarrete, Melissa McDonald, Ludwin Molina & Jim Sidanius
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, June 2010, Pages 933-945

Abstract:
Adopting an evolutionary approach to the psychology of race bias, we posit that intergroup conflict perpetrated by male aggressors throughout human evolutionary history has shaped the psychology of modern forms of intergroup bias and that this psychology reflects the unique adaptive problems that differ between men and women in coping with male aggressors from groups other than one's own. Here we report results across 4 studies consistent with this perspective, showing that race bias is moderated by gender differences in traits relevant to threat responses that differ in their adaptive utility between the sexes - namely, aggression and dominance motives for men and fear of sexual coercion for women. These results are consistent with the notion that the psychology of intergroup bias is generated by different psychological systems for men and women, and the results underscore the importance of considering the gender of the outgroup target as well as the gender of the agent in psychological studies on prejudice and discrimination.

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Concerns about appearing prejudiced: Implications for anxiety during daily interracial interactions

Nicole Shelton, Tessa West & Thomas Trail
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, May 2010, Pages 329-344

Abstract:
We investigated the relationship between Whites' and ethnic minorities' concerns about appearing prejudiced and anxiety during daily interracial interactions. College roommate pairs completed an individual difference measure of concerns about appearing prejudiced at the beginning of the semester. Then they completed measures of anxiety and perceptions of their roommates' anxiety-related behaviors for 15 days. Results indicated that among interracial roommate pairs, Whites' and ethnic minorities' concerns about appearing prejudiced were related to their self-reported anxiety on a daily basis; but this was not the case among same-race roommate pairs. In addition, among interracial roommate pairs, roommates who were concerned about appearing prejudiced began to "leak" their anxiety towards the end of the diary period, as indicated by their out-group roommate who perceived their anxious behaviors as increasing across time, and who consequently liked them less. The implications of these findings for intergroup relations are discussed in this article.

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Power, Individuation, and the Cross-Race Recognition Deficit

Edwin Shriver & Kurt Hugenberg
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming

Abstract:
The well-known Cross-Race Effect (CRE) in facial recognition is observed as better recognition for faces of one's own race than faces of another race. Across two experiments, this very robust phenomenon was attenuated via an increase in cross-race (CR) recognition when CR targets were perceived as wielding power either because of their occupational roles (Experiment 1) or the behaviors in which they engaged (Experiment 2). Furthermore, evidence in Experiment 2 indicates that neither target stereotypicality nor target valence can easily explain the observed increase in CR recognition. These results conform closely to predictions derived from a social-cognitive model of the Cross-Race Effect.

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When inequality matters: The effect of inequality frames on academic engagement

Brian Lowery & Daryl Wout
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, June 2010, Pages 956-966

Abstract:
Research indicates that, among women and ethnic minorities, perceived inequality reduces the association between self-esteem and academic outcomes. The present studies demonstrate that the perception of social inequality does not always induce subordinate-group disengagement. Rather, inequality framed as dominant-group advantage allows subordinate groups to remain engaged and causes dominant groups to disengage. Experiments 1-3 demonstrate that academic inequality framed in terms of ingroup disadvantage causes Black, Latino, and female students to disengage, but inequality framed in terms of White or male advantage does not. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrate the same effect for Whites and men-inequality framed in terms of the ingroup (i.e., advantage) causes disengagement, but inequality framed as outgroup disadvantage does not.

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Racial Bias Reduces Empathic Sensorimotor Resonance with Other-Race Pain

Alessio Avenanti, Angela Sirigu & Salvatore Aglioti
Current Biology, 8 June 2010, Pages 1018-1022

Abstract:
Although social psychology studies suggest that racism often manifests itself as a lack of empathy, i.e., the ability to share and comprehend others' feelings and intentions, evidence for differential empathic reactivity to the pain of same- or different-race individuals is meager. Using transcranial magnetic stimulation, we explored sensorimotor empathic brain responses in black and white individuals who exhibited implicit but not explicit ingroup preference and race-specific autonomic reactivity. We found that observing the pain of ingroup models inhibited the onlookers' corticospinal system as if they were feeling the pain. Both black and white individuals exhibited empathic reactivity also when viewing the pain of stranger, very unfamiliar, violet-hand models. By contrast, no vicarious mapping of the pain of individuals culturally marked as outgroup members on the basis of their skin color was found. Importantly, group-specific lack of empathic reactivity was higher in the onlookers who exhibited stronger implicit racial bias. These results indicate that human beings react empathically to the pain of stranger individuals. However, racial bias and stereotypes may change this reactivity into a group-specific lack of sensorimotor resonance.

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Do You See What I Am? How Observers' Backgrounds Affect Their Perceptions of Multiracial Faces

Melissa Herman
Social Psychology Quarterly, March 2010, Pages 58-78

Abstract:
Although race is one of the most salient status characteristics in American society, many observers cannot distinguish the racial ancestries of multiracial youth. This paper examines how people perceive multiracial adolescents: specifically, I investigate whether observers perceive the adolescents as multiracial and whether these racial perceptions are congruent with the multiracial adolescents' self-identifications. Results show that 1) observers perceived close to half of multiracial targets as monoracial, 2) multiracial targets who identified themselves as black were nearly always perceived as black but not always as multiracial, and 3) the demographic and environmental characteristics of observers had no bearing on the congruence of their racial perceptions. That is, regardless of their own demographic characteristics or exposure to people of other races, observers were more congruent when examining targets who self-identified as black or white and less congruent when identifying targets from Asian, Hispanic, American Indian, or Middle Eastern backgrounds. Despite the demographic trend toward multiracialism in the United States, observers' perceptions may maintain the status quo in race relations: a black-white dichotomy where part-blacks remain in the collective black category.

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Responses to Discrimination and Psychiatric Disorders Among Black, Hispanic, Female, and Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Individuals

Katie McLaughlin, Mark Hatzenbuehler & Katherine Keyes
American Journal of Public Health, August 2010, Pages 1477-1484

Objectives: We examined associations between perceived discrimination due to race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender; responses to discrimination experiences; and psychiatric disorders.

Methods: The sample included respondents in the 2004-2005 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (n=34653). We analyzed the associations between self-reported past-year discrimination and past-year psychiatric disorders as assessed with structured diagnostic interviews among Black (n=6587); Hispanic (n=6359); lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB; n=577); and female (n=20089) respondents.

Results: Black respondents reported the highest levels of past-year discrimination, followed by LGB, Hispanic, and female respondents. Across groups, discrimination was associated with 12-month mood (odds ratio [ORs]=2.1-3.1), anxiety (ORs=1.8-3.3), and substance use (ORs=1.6-3.5) disorders. Respondents who reported not accepting discrimination and not discussing it with others had higher odds of psychiatric disorders (ORs=2.9-3.9) than did those who did not accept discrimination but did discuss it with others. Black respondents and women who accepted discrimination and did not talk about it with others had elevated rates of mood and anxiety disorders, respectively.

Conclusions: Psychiatric disorders are more prevalent among individuals reporting past-year discrimination experiences. Certain responses to discrimination, particularly not disclosing it, are associated with psychiatric morbidity.

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The Influence of Explicitly and Implicitly Measured Prejudice on Interpretations of and Reactions to Black Film

Cassie Eno & David Ewoldsen
Media Psychology, January 2010, Pages 1-30

Abstract:
The present research focused on how explicitly and implicitly measured attitudes toward Blacks influenced interpretations of film and how film, in turn, influenced explicitly and implicitly measured attitudes toward Blacks. In Study 1, explicit and implicit attitudes toward Blacks were measured online, and participants later watched the film Remember the Titans and made judgments about the film. Explicitly measured attitudes influenced participants' global reactions to the film and interpretations of events within the film. In Study 2, participants completed explicit and implicit measures in the lab and, one week later, watched either the film Rosewood or a control film, made judgments about the film, and completed explicit and implicit measures for a second time. Implicitly measured attitudes influenced interpretation of some specific judgments about the film. Additionally, participants who viewed Rosewood showed less implicitly measured prejudice, more pro-Black attitudes, and less explicitly measured prejudice after viewing the film. Results are discussed in terms of the MODE model-a dual process model of judgment and behavior.

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When your friends matter: The effect of white students' racial friendship networks on meta-perceptions and perceived identity contingencies

Daryl Wout, Mary Murphy & Claude Steele
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming

Abstract:
Prior research suggests that people expect to be perceived negatively in inter-racial interactions, but positively in intra-racial interactions. The present research demonstrates that an interaction partner's racial network of friends can moderate these expectations in inter-racial interactions, but not intra-racial interactions. Across two experiments we led Black and White college students to believe they would have conversation with a White student on campus. The results revealed that Black students expected to be perceived more positively, and anticipated a less challenging conversation, when their interaction partner had a racially diverse network of friends compared to a racially homogeneous network of friends. In contrast, White students expected to be perceived positively, and anticipated few challenges in the conversation, regardless of their interaction partner's racial network of friends. The implications of racial friendship diversity are discussed.

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Do the ideological beliefs of peers predict the prejudiced attitudes of other individuals in the group?

Paul Poteat & Lisa Spanierman
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, July 2010, Pages 495-514

Abstract:
The authors used multilevel modeling to examine whether peer group ideological beliefs (n = 109 friendship groups) predicted the homophobic and racist attitudes of other individuals within the group (n = 395 college students). Results indicated that the social dominance orientation (SDO), right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), and universal-diverse orientation (UDO) ideological beliefs of peers predicted the prejudiced attitudes of other group members, over and above individuals' own ideological views. Additionally, the strength with which individuals' own ideological beliefs predicted their prejudiced attitudes varied systematically across peer groups. Affiliations with high-RWA peers strengthened the extent to which individuals' own SDO and RWA predicted their prejudiced attitudes. Results suggest the ideological beliefs of peers are relevant to predicting the prejudiced attitudes of the individuals with whom they affiliate. Although specific peer ideologies differentially predicted forms of prejudice, the overall contribution of these peer ideology beliefs to the prediction of individuals' prejudiced attitudes was comparable for both homophobic and racist attitudes. Attention to proximal social networks and the social dynamics within these networks can contribute to better explanations of individual differences in prejudiced attitudes.

Lesley Chioue & Mary Lopez
Economics Letters, forthcoming

"We estimate changes in the city's crimes per capita after the debut of the MTV-based reality show 'Laguna Beach' using a difference-in-differences approach. Given the demographic and geographic similarities between Laguna Beach and its neighboring city Dana Point, we use Dana Point as a control to account for trends in crimes over time. We observe a divergence in total crimes for the two cities in the period after the show aired. More specifically, we find that after the show aired, the number of non-residential burglaries, auto thefts, and rapes increased disproportionately in Laguna Beach. We do not find evidence of an increase in the number of residential burglaries or robberies after the show aired."

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Public Opinion and Senate Confirmation of Supreme Court Nominees

Jonathan Kastellec, Jeffrey Lax & Justin Phillips
Journal of Politics, July 2010, Pages 767-784

Abstract:
Does public opinion influence Supreme Court confirmation politics? We present the first direct evidence that state-level public opinion on whether a particular Supreme Court nominee should be confirmed affects the roll-call votes of senators. Using national polls and applying recent advances in opinion estimation, we produce state-of-the-art estimates of public support for the confirmation of 10 recent Supreme Court nominees in all 50 states. We find that greater home-state public support does significantly and strikingly increase the probability that a senator will vote to approve a nominee, even controlling for other predictors of roll-call voting. These results establish a systematic and powerful link between constituency opinion and voting on Supreme Court nominees. We connect this finding to larger debates on the role of majoritarianism and representation.

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Testing Causal Direction in the Influence of Presumed Media Influence

Nurit Tal-Or, Jonathan Cohen, Yariv Tsfati & Albert Gunther
Communication Research, forthcoming

Abstract:
According to the influence of presumed media influence hypothesis, people estimate the potential effects of media on other people and change their attitudes or behaviors as a consequence. In recent years, many studies offered some support for this idea. However, a central limitation of these studies is that all of them utilized correlational methodology and thus do not offer a valid way to infer causality. The current research examined the causal direction in the influence of presumed media influence using experimental methodology. In Study 1, the authors manipulated the perceived influence of watching pornography and measured the effects of this manipulation on support for censorship. In Study 2, perceptions regarding the influence of a news story about an expected shortage in sugar were manipulated indirectly, by manipulating the perceived exposure to the news story, and behavioral intentions resulting from the story were consequently measured. In both studies, results supported the causal direction postulated by the "presumed influence" hypothesis.

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Executive Discretion, Judicial Decision Making, and Separation of Powers in the United States

Clifford Carrubba & Christopher Zorn
Journal of Politics, July 2010, Pages 812-824

Abstract:
Existing work on the U.S. separation of powers typically views the Supreme Court as the final arbiter of constitutional and statutory disputes. By contrast, much comparative work explicitly recognizes the role of executives in enforcing and implementing court decisions. Drawing on that work, this study relaxes the assumption that executives must comply with Supreme Court rulings, and instead allows the propensity for executive compliance to depend upon indirect enforcement by the public. We develop a simple model of Supreme Court decision making in the presence of executive discretion over compliance and demonstrate that such discretion can restrict substantially the Court's decision making. Using data collected for the Warren and Burger courts, we find evidence consistent with the argument that the Supreme Court's ability to constrain exective descretion depends critically upon the public.

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Does informative media commentary reduce politicians' incentives to pander?

Scott Ashworth & Kenneth Shotts
Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming

Abstract:
Elections sometimes give policy-makers incentives to pander, i.e., to implement a policy that voters think is in their best interest, even though the policy-maker knows that a different policy is actually better for the voters. Pandering incentives are typically attenuated when voters learn, prior to the election, whether the policy chosen by the incumbent truly was in their best interest. This suggests that the media can improve accountability by reporting to voters information about whether an incumbent made good policy choices. We show that, although media monitoring does sometimes eliminate the incumbent's incentive to pander, in other cases it makes the problem of pandering worse. Furthermore, in some circumstances incumbent incentives are improved when the media acts as a "yes man" - suppressing some information that indicates the policy-maker made the wrong choice. We explain these seemingly paradoxical results by focusing on how media commentary affects voters' tendency to apply an asymmetric burden of proof to the incumbent, based on whether she pursues popular or unpopular policies.

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Politicians and the News Media: How Elite Attacks Influence Perceptions of Media Bias

Glen Smith
International Journal of Press/Politics, July 2010, Pages 319-343

Abstract:
When political elites receive unfavorable news coverage, a common strategy is to attack the source. Past research suggests that attacks on the news media increase perceptions of media bias, but it remains unclear how this occurs. Using two experiments, the author examines how attacks on the news media increase perceptions of bias. For the experiments, all participants read news articles about elected officials, but some read an attack on the source. The author also manipulated the direction of the attack (liberal or conservative bias) and its placement before or after the article. The results suggest that elite attacks increase perceptions of bias in the news source, and this occurs even when the attack is read following the article. In addition, attacks were effective when they came from politicians in both parties, suggesting that Republicans and Democrats are able to influence perceptions of bias. In conclusion, the author argues that elite attacks are likely to benefit the attackers but weaken democratic accountability.

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Does Local Television News Coverage Cultivate Fatalistic Beliefs About Cancer Prevention?

Jeff Niederdeppe, Erika Franklin Fowler, Kenneth Goldstein & James Pribble
Journal of Communication, June 2010, Pages 230-253

Abstract:
Many U.S. adults hold fatalistic beliefs about cancer prevention despite evidence that a large proportion of cancer deaths are preventable. We report findings from two studies that assess the plausibility of the claim that local television (TV) news cultivates fatalistic beliefs about cancer prevention. Study 1 features a content analysis of an October 2002 national sample of local TV and newspaper coverage about cancer. Study 2 describes an analysis of the 2005 Annenberg National Health Communication Survey (ANHCS). Overall, findings are consistent with the claim that local TV news coverage may promote fatalistic beliefs about cancer prevention. We conclude with a discussion of study implications for cultivation theory and the knowledge gap hypothesis and suggest foci for future research.

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Stare Decisis: Rhetoric and Substance

Patricio Fernandez & Giacomo Ponzetto
Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, forthcoming

Abstract:
Stare decisis allows common law to develop gradually and incrementally. We show how judge-made law can steadily evolve and tend to increase efficiency even in the absence of new information. Judges' opinions must argue that their decisions are consistent with precedent: this is the more costly, the greater the innovation they are introducing. As a result, each judge effects a cautious marginal change in the law. Alternative models in which precedents are either strictly obeyed or totally discarded would instead predict abrupt large swings in legal rules. Thus, we find that the evolution of case law is grounded not in binary logic fixing judges' constraints, but in costly rhetoric shaping their incentives. We apply this finding to an assessment of the role of analogical reasoning in shaping the joint development of different areas of law.

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My body or my mind: The impact of state and trait objectification on women's cognitive resources

Robin Gay & Emanuele Castano
European Journal of Social Psychology, August 2010, Pages 695-703

Abstract:
Objectification theory posits that as a result of pervasive sexual objectification of the female body in American culture, women are socialized to take an observers' perspective towards the self, resulting in self-objectification. This tendency, combined with an objectifying context, is hypothesized to increase cognitive load, thereby impairing performance. Two experiments tested this hypothesis by investigating the joint impact of trait and state objectification on cognitive load among women. Results of the first experiment showed longer response latencies on a Letter Number Sequencing task, specifically among women high in trait self-objectification (TSO), in a highly objectifying condition. The second experiment replicated results from the first while also exploring possible correlates of the effects.

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The Tone of Local Presidential News Coverage

Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha
Political Communication, April 2010, Pages 121-140

Abstract:
There is little research on the tone of local news coverage of the presidency, despite the public's preference for local rather than national news. I use theories of media politics, based primarily on the profit-seeker model of news coverage, to explore the impact of newspaper characteristics, audience preferences, and story characteristics on local newspaper coverage of the presidency. Based on a sample of 288 stories taken from the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, I demonstrate that everyday local newspaper coverage of the presidency is slightly more negative than positive and that audience support for the president, newspaper resources, and corporate ownership affect the tone of local newspaper coverage of the presidency.

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Socializing economic theories of discrimination: Lessons from Survivor

Lisa Dilks, Shane Thye & Patricia Taylor
Social Science Research, forthcoming

Abstract:
This paper draws upon structural social psychological theories of small group dynamics to add predictive power to economic theories of discrimination. We first combine economic models of taste-based discrimination with social identity theory and hypothesize that discrimination is driven mainly by preferences or affinities that follow in-group/out-group boundaries. We also bring together status characteristics theory with economic views on information-based discrimination to alternatively hypothesize that discrimination is primarily driven by expectations of competency that are culturally linked to status characteristics. Predictions from both arguments are tested using data from the reality television show Survivor, a quasi-experimental setting that has compelling advantages for the study of discrimination. Specifically, we model the number of votes for elimination a contestant receives using sex, race, age, education and group membership as explanatory variables. The results overwhelmingly support our integration of status characteristics theory and information-based models of discrimination. In the early episodes, when strategic considerations should lead contestants to value competency, low status individuals (women, minorities and older contestants), receive more votes for elimination than high status contestants. However, as predicted from our refinement of information-based discrimination, this pattern is reversed in the later episodes. Here, when strategic considerations disfavor competency, it is high status contestants who are targeted more frequently. In contradiction to taste-based theories, discrimination tied to status characteristics is much more evident than voting according to in-group/out-group membership. We conclude by discussing the implications of our research for contemporary theories of discrimination.

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Resistance and relief: The wit and woes of early twentieth century folk and country music

Iain Ellis
Humor - International Journal of Humor Research, May 2010, Pages 161-178

Abstract:
Folk and country music were rural-based music styles that developed during the pre-rock decades of the early twentieth century. Largely performed by working-class practitioners for working-class audiences, these genres captured the hardships of poor constituencies through markedly different means of humorous expression. Whereas folk employed an often strident satire in resisting perceived oppressors, country looked inwards, using self-deprecating and personalized humor as a shield and relief against outside forces. Narrative tall-tales and regional vernacular were ubiquitous features of folk and country humor, and both crafted struggling characters to serve as illustrative metaphors for broader class concerns. In surveying these music forms in their infancy-as well as their key players-we are connected to the roots of American humor, as well as subsequent developments in rock & roll rebellion.

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Pop stars and idolatry: An investigation of the worship of popular music icons, and the music and cult of Prince

Rupert Till
Journal of Beliefs & Values, April 2010, Pages 69-80

Abstract:
Prince is an artist who integrates elements from the sacred into his work. He uses popular iconography to present himself as an icon of consumer culture, as a deified 'rock god' worshipped by his fans, and as a preacher leading his audience like a congregation. His personality cult mixes spirituality and sexuality, and deals with issues of ecstasy and liberation, a transgressional approach that draws both controversy and public interest. This paper investigates Prince's work and the role of the pop star as an icon within contemporary culture, an icon that contains a physicality and sexuality not present in contemporary Western religious traditions. It discusses to what extent popular musical culture operates as a form of religious practice within contemporary Western culture, and the implications that this has. The paper investigates the construction of Prince's public character, his manipulation of the star system, and how he uses popular iconography to blur the distinctions between spirituality and sexuality, the idealised performer and the real world, the sacred and the profane, and the human and the divine. It explores how he possesses and is possessed by the audience, who enter into the hollow vessel he offers up to his fans.

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"Can't C Me": Surveillance and Rap Music

Erik Nielson
Journal of Black Studies, July 2010, Pages 1254-1274

Abstract:
Rap music has always been under surveillance, and the purpose of this article is to explore the most significant ways that the genre has been influenced by it. It begins with an overview of some of the ways in which surveillance has played a crucial role in the emergence of hip hop in general and rap in particular. It then uses a close analysis of 2Pac's track "Can't C Me" as a point of departure for a broader discussion of the way many of rap's lyrical, structural, and thematic features can be interpreted as a response to the perception of being watched. As this article will demonstrate, despite rap's ostensible emphasis on visibility and recognition, these features indicate a countervailing strain in rap's aesthetic, one that favors invisibility and anonymity.

Parvez Ahmed, Sudhir Nanda & Oliver Schnusenberg
Applied Financial Economics, June 2010, Pages 845-860

Abstract:
We investigate the relationship between a firm's degree of social responsibility and its performance. To accomplish this objective, we examine the stock market reaction to the announcement of Fortune magazine's list of 100 Best Companies to Work For over the 1998-2003 period. We find significant positive excess returns, which indicate that being included on the list is viewed positively by the stock market. To explain the positive abnormal performance, we regress the excess returns against firm-specific variables. Excess return has a positive relation to the job growth rate, but not to firm rank, on a pre-listing basis. However, the additional analysis reveals that the firms with a more favourable ranking are relatively small and have a higher job growth rate, low employee turnover, high betas and extremely positive stock market performance prior to their inclusion on the list. In the year following the publication, sample firms with a favourable ranking have higher sales and gross profit margin than their lower-ranked counterparts. Overall, the results indicate that firms exhibiting a high degree of social responsibility towards their employees are positively rewarded by stock market participants, and that the rankings are somewhat related to pre- and post-survey financial performance.

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Charitable Motives and Bidding in Charity Auctions

Peter Popkowski Leszczyc & Michael H. Rothkopf
Management Science, March 2010, Pages 399-413

Abstract:
Research on bidding in auctions has generally relied on the assumption of self-interested bidders. This work relaxes that assumption in the context of charity auctions. Because understanding charitable motives has important implications for auction design and charities' fundraising strategies, this study investigates bidders' specific types of charitable motives and the strength of these motives. We carry out three controlled field experiments consisting of real-life auctions conducted on a local Internet auction site. We use a novel design in which we simultaneously run charity and noncharity auctions for identical products and vary the percentage donated to charity. Results show that auctions with proceeds donated to charity lead to significantly higher selling prices, a result due to a higher bidding by bidders with charitable motives rather than to increased bidder entry. We also find that increased prices only occur when the charitable donation is a percentage of the auction revenue, and that a fixed charitable donation associated with each auction has no effect on prices. Furthermore, we find that prices are increasing in the percentage donated to charity. We find considerable support for a model of voluntary shill-like bidding, where charitable bidders try to increase proceeds in charity auctions. We also find that auctions with 25% of revenue donated to charity had higher net revenue than noncharity auctions. Hence, companies may be able to use charity auctions as part of a corporate social responsibility strategy and at the same time increase profitability even though they donate part of the proceeds to charity.

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Do DVRs Influence Sales?

Bart Bronnenberg, Jean-Pierre Dubé & Carl Mela
Journal of Marketing Research, forthcoming

Abstract:
The authors analyze a multimillion dollar, three-year field study sponsored by five firms to assess whether DVRs impact consumers' shopping behavior for advertised and private label goods. A large sample of households received an offer for a free DVR and service and close to 20% accepted. Each household's shopping history is observed for 48 consumer packaged goods categories during the 13 months prior and the 26 months following the DVR offer. The authors fail to reject the null of no DVR treatment effect on household spending on advertised branded or private label goods, either 1 or 2 years after the DVRs are shipped. The predicted DVR effect is tightly centered around 0, suggesting the data may have sufficient power to identify a true null effect. Using advertising exposure information for seven of the brands in the study, the authors offer suggestive evidence that ad-skipping occurs for a relatively small fraction of the total television content viewed. Other potential explanations for the lack of a DVR effect are also discussed.

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Music File Sharing and Sales Displacement in the iTunes Era

Joel Waldfogel
Information Economics and Policy, forthcoming

Abstract:
A growing empirical literature examines the relationship between music file sharing and legal purchases of music, but existing studies examine the period before consumers had attractive legal digital a la carte options. The iTunes Music Store has grown quickly since its appearance in 2003, and digital music now accounts for a third of US recorded music sales. Using two new surveys of University of Pennsylvania undergraduates in 2009 and 2010, we ask how music file sharing and sales displacement operate in the iTunes era, when the alternative to file sharing is purchasing individual songs, rather than entire albums. We find large amounts of file sharing in this population. Respondents have more stolen than paid music, but the music obtained via file sharing is, for the most part, low-valuation music which the respondents would likely not have purchased. The rate of sales displacement implied by the relationship between stolen and purchased music across respondents in both samples is between -0.15 and -0.3. That is, an additional song stolen reduces paid consumption by between a third and a sixth of song. Perhaps surprisingly, this is about the same as the CD sales displacement rate found for the pre-iTunes era using a similar empirical approach on a similar study population.

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Investor Inattention and the Market Reaction to Merger Announcements

Henock Louis & Amy Sun
Management Science, forthcoming

Abstract:
Prior studies suggest that investors have limited attention. Tests of the inattention hypothesis have been performed in the context of relatively small corporate events, particularly earnings announcements. Presumably, large corporate events would always attract sufficient investor attention. However, we find evidence indicating that inattention affects investors' information processing even in the context of one of the largest and most important corporate events - merger announcements. More specifically, consistent with the notion that investors are less attentive to Friday announcements, we find that the market reaction to Friday stock swap announcements is muted, as evidenced by lower acquirers' merger announcement abnormal trading volumes and less pronounced acquirers' merger announcement abnormal stock returns.

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To Pay or to Apologize? On the Psychology of Dealing with Unfair Offers in a Dictator Game

David De Cremer
Journal of Economic Psychology, forthcoming

Abstract:
Prior research has largely failed to focus on how transgressors can promote trust when having made unfair offers in bargaining. I investigated in the context of receiving an unfair offer in a dictator game when financial compensations and when apologies are most effective in motivating trust behaviour by the violated party. I hypothesized that when losses were allocated, the violated party would be motivated to show more trust behaviour towards the transgressor when a financial compensation (resulting again in equal final outcomes) relative to an apology was delivered, whereas when gains were allocated, apologies would be more effective in promoting trust behaviour than a financial compensation. Results from a laboratory study indeed supported this prediction as such demonstrating the importance of how allocation decisions are framed (i.e. loss or gain) in testing the effectiveness of trust repair strategies (financial compensations versus apologies).

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The Sound of Brands

Jennifer Argo, Monica Popa & Malcolm Smith
Journal of Marketing, July 2010, Pages 97-109

Abstract:
Recent research has demonstrated that linguistic characteristics of brand names can cognitively affect product evaluations. In six experiments, the authors demonstrate that affect arising from sound repetition may also be influential. The results reveal across multiple brand names and product categories that exposure to a brand name that has sound repetition in its phonetic structure and is spoken aloud produces positive affect, which favorably affects consumers' brand evaluations, reactions to cross-selling, and product choice. The effects are moderated by consumers' sensitivity to repetition, consumers' opportunity to experience emotions, and the degree to which the brand name's phonetic sound repetition deviates from linguistic expectations. The authors discuss implications for managers and avenues for further research.

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Determinants of fundraising efficiency of nonprofit organizations: Evidence from US public charitable organizations

David Yi
Managerial and Decision Economics, forthcoming

Abstract:
Using a translog stochastic production frontier and maximum likelihood estimation method, we estimate fundraising efficiency and examine the determinants of fundraising efficiency in public charitable organizations in the United States. Our study shows that organizational size has a positive impact on fundraising efficiency and government grants have a negative impact on fundraising efficiency. We also show that charities that allocate more resources on fundraising related labor, as compared with fundraising-related materials and equipments, are more efficient in fundraising. These findings provide important managerial implications for public charities.

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How do people value extended warranties? Evidence from two field surveys

Marieke Huysentruyt & Daniel Read
Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, June 2010, Pages 197-218

Abstract:
Extended warranties are popular but expensive. This paper examines how consumers value these warranties, and asks whether economic considerations alone can account for their popularity. Results from two field surveys show that consumers greatly overestimate both the likelihood and the cost of product breakdown. However, these biases alone do not explain their willingness to buy warranties. In fact, we find evidence of probability neglect, in which warranty purchase decision depends on the magnitude of the possible consequences of not having insurance and not on the probability of having to suffer these consequences. The expected emotional benefits from having a warranty was the best predictor of purchase decision and willingness to pay. We also found that people with higher cognitive skills are less likely to overestimate the economic determinants of warranty value, yet are still highly influenced by emotional considerations when deciding whether to purchase a warranty.

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Boycott or buycott? Understanding political consumerism

Lisa Neilson
Journal of Consumer Behaviour, May/June 2010, Pages 214-227

Abstract:
This research addresses the question of how boycotting (punishing business for unfavorable behavior) differs from buycotting (rewarding business for favorable behavior). This analysis of 21 535 adults from the 2002/2003 European Social Survey (ESS) compares the effects of social capital, altruism, and gender on different categories of political consumers. Logistic regression analyses reveal that boycotters do indeed differ from buycotters. Specifically, women and people who are more trusting, involved in more voluntary associations, or more altruistic are more likely to buycott than boycott. These differences support the inclusion of both boycott and buycott measures in future studies of political consumerism.

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Prerelease Demand Forecasting for Motion Pictures Using Functional Shape Analysis of Virtual Stock Markets

Natasha Zhang Foutz & Wolfgang Jank
Marketing Science, May-June 2010, Pages 568-579

Abstract:
Prerelease demand forecasting is one of the most crucial yet difficult tasks facing marketers in the $60 billion motion picture industry. We propose functional shape analysis (FSA) of virtual stock markets (VSMs) to address this long-standing challenge. In VSMs, prices of a movie's stock reflect the dynamic demand expectations prior to the movie's release. Using FSA, we identify a small number of distinguishing shapes, e.g., the last-moment velocity spurt, that carry information about a movie's future demand and produce early and accurate prerelease forecasts. We find that although forecasting errors from the existing methods, e.g., those that rely on movie features, can be as high as 90.87%, our approach results in an error of only 4.73%. Because demand forecasting is especially useful for managerial decision making when provided long before a movie's release, we further demonstrate how our method can be used for early forecasting and compare its power against alternative approaches. We also discuss the theoretical implications of the discovered shapes that may help managers identify indicators of a potentially successful movie early and dynamically.

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Not All Rivals Look Alike: Estimating an Equilibrium Model of the Release Date Timing Game

Liran Einav
Economic Inquiry, April 2010, Pages 369-390

Abstract:
I develop a new empirical model for discrete games and apply it to study the release date timing game played by distributors of movies. The results suggest that release dates of movies are too clustered around big holiday weekends and that box office revenues would increase if distributors shifted some holiday releases by one or two weeks. The proposed game structure could be applied more broadly to situations where competition is on dimensions other than price. It relies on sequential moves with asymmetric information, making the model particularly attractive for studying (common) situations where player asymmetries are important.

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In-store music and aroma influences on shopper behavior and satisfaction

Michael Morrison, Sarah Gan, Chris Dubelaar & Harmen Oppewal
Journal of Business Research, forthcoming

Abstract:
Retail markets are increasingly competitive and retailers continuously look to differentiate their retail offering. One way to differentiate is by providing a pleasant and exciting shopping ambience. This paper experimentally tests the effects of music (volume high or low) and aroma (vanilla scent present/absent) on young fashion shoppers in a real retail setting. Results show that volume of music and the presence of a vanilla aroma both have a significant impact on shoppers' emotions and satisfaction levels. Additional analysis reveals that the arousal induced by music and aroma results in increased pleasure levels, which in turn positively influences shopper behaviors, including time and money spend, approach behavior, and satisfaction with the shopping experience. Direct effects of arousal on behaviors as well as an interaction effect between music and aroma on pleasure and time spent in the store are also present. The paper contributes to the better understanding of shoppers' emotions and shopper behaviors in response to in-store atmospherics and offers retailers practical insights into how to create competitive advantage by customizing the atmosphere in their stores.

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Piracy or Promotion? The Impact of Broadband Internet Penetration on DVD Sales

Michael Smith & Rahul Telang
Information Economics and Policy, forthcoming

Abstract:
The Internet provides copyright holders with new sales and promotional channels for their content, while also providing consumers with new opportunities to illegally obtain free copies of this content. Unfortunately, disentangling these two effects is extremely difficult. In this paper we attempt to disentangle these two effects by applying fixed effects and first difference models to a new dataset quantifying changes in broadband Internet penetration and DVD sales at a local level from 2000 to 2003. We then compare our results to those reported in Liebowitz (2008), who uses similar models in a similar time period on a similar product category: music CDs. Unlike Liebowitz, who finds a strong negative impact of broadband penetration on music sales, our results show that increased broadband penetration leads to a significant increase in DVD sales. Using the most conservative results, 9.3% of the $14.1 billion increase in DVD sales during our study period can be attributed to increased broadband penetration. One interpretation of these results is that the difference arises from differences in the ability to pirate these two types of content: while Internet music piracy was easy and rampant from 2000-2003, Internet movie piracy was difficult and of generally low quality in this time period. If this interpretation is true it would suggest that, in the absence of piracy, the Internet has an overall strong positive impact on media sales.

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Puffery in Advertisements: The Effects of Media Context, Communication Norms, and Consumer Knowledge

Alison Jing Xu & Robert Wyer
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming

Abstract:
Ads often contain puffery-product descriptions that purport to be important but actually provide little if any meaningful information. Consumers' reactions to these descriptions depend on whether they perceive themselves to be more or less knowledgeable about the product than others whom the ad is specifically intended to influence. When an ad appears in a professional magazine that is read primarily by experts in the product domain, puffery generally increases the ad's effectiveness. This is also true when the ad appears in a popular magazine but readers perceive themselves to know less about the product than consumers at large. If readers believe they know as much as or more than general consumers, however, puffery decreases the ad's effectiveness. In addition, the media context in which an ad is encountered has a direct effect on judgments by consumers who perceive themselves to have little knowledge about the type of product being advertised.

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An Analysis of International Price Differentials on eBay

Philipp Maier
Contemporary Economic Policy, July 2010, Pages 307-321

Abstract:
Online auction sites like eBay provide ways to measure what consumers buy and how much they pay. Does this imply that consumers pay similar prices, irrespective of their location? Comparing prices for homogeneous, tradable goods in the euro area and the United Kingdom, we find that prices differ significantly. The differential is not related to countries' having different currencies. However, price dispersion - the variance of prices - does seem to be smaller if two countries share a common currency. Our results confirm the importance of national borders in explaining price differences and their magnitude is related to (not) sharing a common currency.

Alexes Harris, Heather Evans & Katherine Beckett
American Journal of Sociology, May 2010, Pages 1753-1799

Abstract:
The expansion of the U.S. penal system has important consequences for poverty and inequality, yet little is known about the imposition of monetary sanctions. This study analyzes national and state‐level court data to assess their imposition and interview data to identify their social and legal consequences. Findings indicate that monetary sanctions are imposed on a substantial majority of the millions of people convicted of crimes in the United States annually and that legal debt is substantial relative to expected earnings. This indebtedness reproduces disadvantage by reducing family income, by limiting access to opportunities and resources, and by increasing the likelihood of ongoing criminal justice involvement.

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Economic Development, Income Inequality, and Preferences for Redistribution

Michelle Dion & Vicki Birchfield
International Studies Quarterly, June 2010, Pages 315-334

Abstract:
Adopting a cross-regional and global perspective, this article critically evaluates one of the core assertions of political economy approaches to welfare - that support for redistribution is inversely related to income. We hypothesize that economic self-interest gives way to more uniform support for redistribution in the interest of ensuring that basic or relative needs are met in less developed and highly unequal societies. To test this hypothesis, we analyze individual-level surveys combined with country-level indicators for more than 50 countries between 1984 and 2004. Our analysis shows that individual-level income does not systematically explain support for redistribution in countries with low levels of economic development or high levels of income inequality. These findings challenge the universality of the assumption of economic self-interest in shaping preferences for redistribution that has been so pervasive in the literature.

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Occupations and the Structure of Wage Inequality in the United States, 1980s to 2000s

Ted Mouw & Arne Kalleberg
American Sociological Review, June 2010, Pages 402-431

Abstract:
Occupations are central to the stratification systems of industrial countries, but they have played little role in empirical attempts to explain the well-documented increase in wage inequality that occurred in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. We address this deficiency by assessing occupation-level effects on wage inequality using data from the Current Population Survey for 1983 through 2008. We model the mean and variance of wages for each occupation, controlling for education and demographic factors at the individual level to test three competing explanations for the increase in wage inequality: (1) the growth of between-occupation polarization, (2) changes in education and labor force composition, and (3) residual inequality unaccounted for by occupations and demographic characteristics. After correcting for a problem with imputed data that biased Kim and Sakamoto's (2008) results, we find that between-occupation changes explain 66 percent of the increase in wage inequality from 1992 to 2008, although 23 percent of this is due to the switch to the 2000 occupation codes in 2003. Sensitivity analysis reveals that 18 percent of the increase in inequality from 1983 to 2002 is due to changes in just three occupations: managers "not elsewhere classified," secretaries, and computer systems analysts.

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Inequality of opportunity and income inequality in nine Chinese provinces, 1989-2006

Yingqiang Zhang & Tor Eriksson
China Economic Review, forthcoming

Abstract:
While there is a large and growing body of research describing and analyzing changes in the Chinese income distribution, researchers have paid considerable less attention to inequality of opportunity. The aim of this paper is to contribute to filling this gap in the literature. The two main questions addressed empirically for the first time in a Chinese context are: To what extent are individuals' incomes and individual income differences due to factors beyond the individual's control (in Roemer's terminology "circumstances") and to what extent are they due to outcomes of the individual's own choices ("effort"). What is the relationship between income inequality and inequality of opportunity? For this purpose we use data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey collected from nine provinces during the period 1989 to 2006. The CHNS has detailed information about incomes and other factors enabling us to construct a host of circumstance and effort variables for the offspring. We find that China has a substantial degree of inequality of opportunity. Parental income and parents' type of employer explain about two thirds of the total inequality of opportunity. Notably, parental education plays only a minor role implying that parental connections remain important. The results show that the increase in income inequality during the period under study largely mirrors the increase in inequality of opportunity. Thus, increased income inequality does not reflect changes in effort variables, or expressed differently, increased income inequality has not been accompanied by a decrease in inequality of opportunity.

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Sector‐Specific Human Capital and the Distribution of Earnings

Eric Smith
Journal of Human Capital, Spring 2010, Pages 35-61

Abstract:
This paper demonstrates the way in which assignment frictions-the limited ability of workers to find jobs in which they have a comparative advantage-affect the level and composition of human capital acquisition as well as the distribution of income. As workers become more likely to find their preferred job, they specialize more. Specialization raises expected income. It also exposes workers to a greater downside loss when the more desired employment opportunities are unavailable. More specialization thereby raises the earnings divide between those who match well and those who do not, which under some conditions leads to greater inequality.

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Teen employment, poverty, and the minimum wage: Evidence from Canada

Anindya Sen, Kathleen Rybczynski & Corey Van De Waal
Labour Economics, forthcoming

Abstract:
In May 2007, the U.S. Congress enacted legislation, which increased the Federal minimum hourly wage from $5.15 to $7.25, over a two year time period. This increase to the minimum wage was the first in nearly a decade and was approved with the objective of alleviating poverty among low income households. However, a higher minimum wage may result in more unemployment and poverty. We exploit time-series variation in minimum wages set by Canadian provinces between 1981 and 2004. OLS and IV results suggest that a 10% increase in the minimum wage is significantly correlated with a 3% - 5% drop in teen employment. Further, a 10% rise in the minimum wage is also significantly associated with a 4% - 6% increase in the percentage of families living under Low Income Cut Offs (LICOs). Difference-in-difference estimates from the 1993, 1995, and 1998 waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) support these findings as they suggest that income earned by teens constitutes a non-trivial portion of household income for families beneath Low Income Cut Offs. Therefore, a higher minimum wage may paradoxically result in a significant negative shock to household income among low-income families.

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Do Temporary-Help Jobs Improve Labor Market Outcomes for Low-Skilled Workers? Evidence from "Work First"

David Autor & Susan Houseman
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2010, Pages 96-128

Abstract:
Temporary-help jobs offer rapid entry into paid employment, but they are typically brief and it is unknown whether they foster longer term employment. We utilize the unique structure of Detroit's welfare-to- work program to identify the effect of temporary-help jobs on labor market advancement. Exploiting the rotational assignment of welfare clients to numerous nonprofit contractors with differing job placement rates, we find that temporary-help job placements do not improve and may diminish subsequent earnings and employment outcomes among participants. In contrast, job placements with direct-hire employers substantially raise earnings and employment over a seven quarter follow-up period.

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Labour Market Institutions and the Personal Distribution of Income in the OECD

Daniele Checchi & Cecilia García-Peñalosa
Economica, July 2010, Pages 413-450

Abstract:
A large literature has studied the impact of labour market institutions on wage inequality, but their effect on income inequality has received little attention. This paper argues that personal income inequality depends on the wage differential, the labour share and the unemployment rate. Labour market institutions affect income inequality through these three channels, and their overall effect is theoretically ambiguous. We use a panel of OECD countries for the period 1960-2000 to examine these effects. We find that greater unionization and greater wage bargaining coordination have opposite effects on inequality, implying conflicting effects of greater union presence on income inequality.

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Natural Resources and Income Inequality: The Role of Ethnic Divisions

Ruikang Marcus Fum & Roland Hodler
Economics Letters, June 2010, Pages 360-363

Abstract:
We hypothesize that natural resources raise income inequality in ethnically polarized societies, but reduce income inequality in ethnically homogenous societies; and we present empirical evidence in support of this hypothesis.

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Has Increased Women's Educational Attainment Led to Greater Earnings Inequality in the United Kingdom? A Multivariate Decomposition Analysis

Richard Breen & Leire Salazar
European Sociological Review, April 2010, Pages 143-157

Abstract:
It is widely believed that the growth in women's educational attainment and their increasing labour force participation, together with educational homogamy, will lead to greater inequality between households in their earnings. In this article, we use data from the United Kingdom to test that assertion. We use a new method of decomposing the change in household earnings inequality, and this allows us to identify effects associated with women's increasing educational attainment and consequential changes in their propensity to marry, in educational assortative mating and in labour-force participation. We find that changes in women's education and their behavioural consequences account for little if any of the growth in earnings inequality between households in the United Kingdom during the closing decades of the 20th century.

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Has social mobility in Britain decreased? Reconciling divergent findings on income and class mobility

Robert Erikson & John Goldthorpe
British Journal of Sociology, June 2010, Pages 211-230

Abstract:
Social mobility has become a topic of central political concern. In political and also media circles it is widely believed that in Britain today mobility is in decline. However, this belief appears to be based on a single piece of research by economists that is in fact concerned with intergenerational income mobility: specifically, with the relation between family income and children's later earnings. Research by sociologists using the same data sources - the British birth cohort studies of 1958 and 1970 - but focusing on intergenerational class mobility does not reveal a decline either in total mobility rates or in underlying relative rates. The paper investigates these divergent findings. We show that they do not result from the use of different subsets of the data or of different analytical techniques. Instead, given the more stable and generally less fluid class mobility regime, it is the high level of income mobility of the 1958 cohort, rather than the lower level of the 1970 cohort, that is chiefly in need of explanation. Further analyses - including ones of the relative influence of parental class and of family income on children's educational attainment - suggest that the economists' finding of declining mobility between the two cohorts may stem, in part at least, from the fact that the family income variable for the 1958 cohort provides a less adequate measure of 'permanent income' than does that for the 1970 cohort. But, in any event, it would appear that the class mobility regime more fully captures the continuity in economic advantage and disadvantage that persists across generations.

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The Impact of Migration on Poverty Concentrations in the United States, 1995-2000

Matt Foulkes & Kai Schafft
Rural Sociology, March 2010, Pages 90-110

Abstract:
Poverty is frequently conceptualized as an attribute of either people or places. Yet residential movement of poor people can redistribute poverty across places, affecting and reshaping the spatial concentration of economic disadvantage. In this article, we utilize 1995 to 2000 county-to-county migration data from the 2000 United States decennial census to explore how differential migration rates of the poor and nonpoor affect local incidence of poverty, and how migration reconfigures poverty rates across metropolitan, micropolitan, and noncore counties. We further examine the impact of differential migration rates on African American and Latino poverty rates, two groups that have experienced higher than average poverty rates and have a sizable presence in rural areas. Our analysis indicates that during the 1990s the poor moved at rates equal to or greater than the nonpoor, and that, especially in micropolitan counties, this movement tended to deepen existing poverty concentrations. Both African American and Latino migration patterns tended to reinforce existing poverty concentrations, a result similar to that of the population as a whole, although the migration patterns of both groups more severely exacerbated poverty in high-poverty noncore counties.

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Building Bridges to the Middle Class: The Role of Community-Based Organizations in Asian American Wealth Accumulation

Varisa Patraporn, Deirdre Pfeiffer & Paul Ong
Economic Development Quarterly, August 2010, Pages 288-303

Abstract:
Despite the increasing provision of social and financial services by community-based organizations (CBOs), few studies focus on the roles that Asian American-serving CBOs play in helping their economically and culturally diverse communities accumulate wealth. The authors explore this overlooked sector by interviewing key informants in 30 mostly Asian American asset-building organizations nationwide. Participating CBOs respond to the financial needs of their diverse communities primarily in three ways: (a) adapting programs for the underserved, (b) facilitating access to the mainstream, and (c) preserving existing assets. Unlike mainstream banks, they use a comprehensive asset-building framework premised on extensive technical assistance and culturally congruent programming. The interviewed organizations face a variety of challenges in implementing programs - namely, maintaining financial solvency and working with limited capacity - issues that they struggle to overcome through forming collaborations and partnerships, earned income strategies, obtaining certification, and cross-training.

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Domestication Alone Does Not Lead to Inequality: Intergenerational Wealth Transmission among Horticulturalists

Michael Gurven et al.
Current Anthropology, February 2010, Pages 49-64

Abstract:
We present empirical measures of wealth inequality and its intergenerational transmission among four horticulturalist populations. Wealth is construed broadly as embodied somatic and neural capital, including body size, fertility and cultural knowledge, material capital such as land and household wealth, and relational capital in the form of coalitional support and field labor. Wealth inequality is moderate for most forms of wealth, and intergenerational wealth transmission is low for material resources and moderate for embodied and relational wealth. Our analysis suggests that domestication alone does not transform social structure; rather, the presence of scarce, defensible resources may be required before inequality and wealth transmission patterns resemble the familiar pattern in more complex societies. Land ownership based on usufruct and low‐intensity cultivation, especially in the context of other economic activities such as hunting and fishing, is associated with more egalitarian wealth distributions as found among hunter‐gatherers.

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The Effect of Changes in the Tax Structure on the Reported Income of High-Income Individuals

Hernan Acuna & Randall Holcombe
Public Finance Review, May 2010, Pages 321-345

Abstract:
Tax incidence theory shows how taxes initially placed on one group can be shifted and ultimately borne by others. This paper shows that income of high-income taxpayers is affected both by the rates they face and by the rates faced by non-high-income taxpayers. The income of high-income taxpayers rises when they face lower tax rates, but also rises in response to lower tax rates imposed on non-high-income taxpayers. While high-income responses to own statutory tax changes may be explained - at least partially - by their making a "smart use of the tax code," high-income responses to tax changes on non-high income individuals indicate the presence of structural effects of tax changes.

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Re-Assessing Poverty Dynamics and State Protections in Britain and the US: The Role of Measurement Error

Diana Worts, Amanda Sacker & Peggy McDonough
Social Indicators Research, July 2010, Pages 419-438

Abstract:
This paper addresses a key methodological challenge in the modeling of individual poverty dynamics - the influence of measurement error. Taking the US and Britain as case studies and building on recent research that uses latent Markov models to reduce bias, we examine how measurement error can affect a range of important poverty estimates. Our data are taken from the British Household Panel Survey and the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics, for working-aged adults over the period 1993-2003. For both national samples we ask how common vulnerability to poverty was over the period in question, what the entry and exit probabilities were for the group likely to transition into or out of poverty, and how effective redistributive programs were at protecting those most at risk. Crucially, in answering these questions we estimate and remove the effects of error in the measurement of poverty status. Throughout, we compare our results with estimates that do not take this error into account, and assess the implications for understanding poverty dynamics both within and between the two countries. Our modeling strategy extends previous research in several respects, enabling us to make stronger statements about measurement error and individual poverty dynamics. We find that correcting for error affects conclusions in important ways: Poverty is less temporary and risks are less widely dispersed than otherwise assumed, while cross-national differences are more pronounced.

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Marxism as a Capitalist Tool

David Ellerman
Journal of Socio-Economics, forthcoming

Abstract:
Just as the two sides in the Cold War agreed that Capitalism and Communism were "the" two alternatives, so the two sides in the intellectual Great Debate agreed on a common framing of questions with the defenders of capitalism taking one side and Marxists taking the other. From the viewpoint of economic democracy (e.g., a labor-managed market economy), this late Great Debate between capitalism and socialism was as misframed as would be an antebellum Great Debate between the private or public ownership of slaves. The Great Debate between capitalism and socialism is now in the dustbin of intellectual history, but Marxism still plays an important role in sustaining the misframing of the questions so that the defenders of the present employment system do not have to face the real questions that separate that system from a system of economic democracy. In that sense, Marxism has become the ultimate capitalist tool.

Michael Eriksen
Regional Science and Urban Economics, forthcoming

Abstract:
This paper estimates the impact of being randomly assigned down payment assistance with a home purchase on the marriage and divorce decisions of low-income households using unique data from a field experiment. 1,103 participants in Tulsa, Oklahoma were randomly assigned in 1998 to either a treatment group eligible to receive a 2:1 match on saving for a down payment, or a control group that was not eligible. Using data collected on treated and controls 18 and 48 months after randomization, it is shown the offer of the subsidy had important impacts on participants' marriage and divorce decisions. Treated participants who reported being unmarried prior to randomization were 42% more likely to be married 48 months after opening an account than similar control group members. The offer to receive the subsidy is also shown to substantially increase the divorce rates for originally married participants, with the most pronounced effect occurring among women with children or those who reported poor spousal relations prior to randomization. Although the exact mechanisms for how the subsidy affects such decisions are unclear, homeownership is shown to have an important role.

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Quality of Available Mates, Education, and Household Labor Supply

Brighita Negrusa & Sonia Oreffice
Economic Inquiry, July 2010, Pages 558-574

Abstract:
We investigate the impact of sex ratios by education and metropolitan area on spouses' bargaining power and labor supplies, to capture the local and qualitative nature of mate availability. Using Current Population Survey and Census data for 2000, 1990, and 1980, we estimate these effects in a collective household framework. We find that a higher relative shortage of comparably educated women in the couple's metropolitan area reduces wives' labor supply and increases their husbands'. The impact is stronger for couples in higher education groups but not significant for high school graduates. Results are similar across decades. No such effects are found for unmarried individuals.

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America's settling down: How Better Jobs and Falling Immigration led to a Rise in Marriage, 1880-1930

Tomas Cvrcek
NBER Working Paper, July 2010

Abstract:
The growing education and employment of women are usually cited as crucial forces behind the decline of marriage since 1960. However, both trends were already present between 1900 and 1960, during which time marriage became increasingly widespread. This early period differed from the post-1960 decades due to two factors primarily affecting men, one economic and one demographic. First, men's improving labor market prospects made them more attractive as marriage partners to women. Second, immigration had a dynamic effect on partner search costs. Its short-run effect was to fragment the marriage market, making it harder to find a partner of one's preferred ethnic and cultural background. The high search costs led to less marriage and later marriage in the 1890s and 1900s. As immigration declined, the long-run effect was for immigrants and their descendants to gradually integrate with American society. This reduced search costs and increased the marriage rate. The immigration primarily affected the whites' marriage market which is why the changes in marital behavior are much more pronounced among this group than among blacks.

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Breaking Up is Hard to Do, Unless Everyone Else is Doing it Too: Social Network Effects on Divorce in a Longitudinal Sample Followed for 32 Years

Rose McDermott, Nicholas Christakis & James Fowler
University of California Working Paper, October 2009

Abstract:
Divorce is the dissolution of a social tie, but it is also possible that attitudes about divorce flow across social ties. To explore how social networks influence divorce and vice versa, we utilize a longitudinal data set from the long-running Framingham Heart Study. We find that divorce can spread between friends, siblings, and coworkers, and there are clusters of divorcees that extend two degrees of separation in the network. We also find that popular people are less likely to get divorced, divorcees have denser social networks, and they are much more likely to remarry other divorcees. Interestingly, we do not find that the presence of children influences the likelihood of divorce, but we do find that each child reduces the susceptibility to being influenced by peers who get divorced. Overall, the results suggest that attending to the health of one's friends' marriages serves to support and enhance the durability of one's own relationship, and that, from a policy perspective, divorce should be understood as a collective phenomenon that extends far beyond those directly affected.

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Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful: Anti-Attractiveness Bias in Organizational Evaluation and Decision Making

Maria Agthe
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming

Abstract:
Within organizational judgment and decision-making contexts, biases based on an evaluated person's attractiveness are among the most salient and frequently investigated. An enormous amount of research indicates favoritism for attractive people compared to unattractive ones. The current research demonstrates that the nature of this bias depends on whether one is evaluating a member of the same sex or the opposite sex. Experiment 1 (N = 2639) investigated selection of scholarship applicants and demonstrated that a pro-attractiveness bias held only for selection of opposite-sex scholarship applicants; no such bias was observed for highly attractive same-sex applicants. Experiment 2 (N = 622) investigated evaluations of prospective job candidates and demonstrated again that pro-attractiveness bias was observed only for opposite-sex candidates; participants discriminated against highly attractive same-sex candidates. Moreover, this bias was not observed among highly attractive participants; it held only for moderately attractive participants, those for whom highly attractive same-sex individuals can pose especially potent social threats. Findings suggest that attractiveness biases in organizational decision-making are rooted partly in the social threats and opportunities afforded by attractive people.

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Judging a book by its cover: Jealousy after subliminal priming with attractive and unattractive faces

Karlijn Massar & Abraham Buunk
Personality and Individual Differences, forthcoming

Abstract:
The present paper focuses on the effect a rival's facial attractiveness has on female jealousy. A parafoveal subliminal priming paradigm was employed to expose participants to rivals outside their conscious awareness. Female participants were exposed to either an attractive woman or an unattractive woman for 60 ms. They subsequently read a jealousy-evoking scenario which introduced a rival, but a description of her appearance was withheld. Our results suggest that participants have unconsciously linked the subliminally presented photograph to the rival. Women exposed to the attractive woman reported significantly more jealousy than women exposed to the unattractive rival. Moreover, they reported feeling significantly more worried, hurt, angry, and sad.

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Adaptations in humans for assessing physical strength from the voice

Aaron Sell, Gregory Bryant, Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, Daniel Sznycer, Christopher von Rueden, Andre Krauss & Michael Gurven
Proceedings of the Royal Society B, forthcoming

Abstract:
Recent research has shown that humans, like many other animals, have a specialization for assessing fighting ability from visual cues. Because it is probable that the voice contains cues of strength and formidability that are not available visually, we predicted that selection has also equipped humans with the ability to estimate physical strength from the voice. We found that subjects accurately assessed upper-body strength in voices taken from eight samples across four distinct populations and language groups: the Tsimane of Bolivia, Andean herder-horticulturalists and United States and Romanian college students. Regardless of whether raters were told to assess height, weight, strength or fighting ability, they produced similar ratings that tracked upper-body strength independent of height and weight. Male voices were more accurately assessed than female voices, which is consistent with ethnographic data showing a greater tendency among males to engage in violent aggression. Raters extracted information about strength from the voice that was not supplied from visual cues, and were accurate with both familiar and unfamiliar languages. These results provide, to our knowledge, the first direct evidence that both men and women can accurately assess men's physical strength from the voice, and suggest that estimates of strength are used to assess fighting ability.

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Who Cares About Marrying a Rich Man? Intelligence and Variation in Women's Mate Preferences

Christine Stanik & Phoebe Ellsworth
Human Nature, June 2010, Pages 203-217

Abstract:
Although robust sex differences are abundant in men and women's mating psychology, there is a considerable degree of overlap between the two as well. In an effort to understand where and when this overlap exists, the current study provides an exploration of within-sex variation in women's mate preferences. We hypothesized that women's intelligence, given an environment where women can use that intelligence to attain educational and career opportunities, would be: (1) positively related to their willingness to engage in short-term sexual relationships, (2) negatively related to their desire for qualities in a partner that indicated wealth and status, and (3) negatively related to their endorsement of traditional gender roles in romantic relationships. These predictions were supported. Results suggest that intelligence may be one important individual difference influencing women's mate preferences.

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Handgrip Strength and Socially Dominant Behavior in Male Adolescents

Andrew Gallup, Daniel O'Brien, Daniel White & David Sloan Wilson
Evolutionary Psychology, May 2010, Pages 229-243

Abstract:
Handgrip strength (HGS) is highly heritable and a good overall measure of strength and muscle function. Indicative of blood testosterone levels and fat-free body mass, HGS is also highly sexually dimorphic. Recent psychological research shows that HGS is correlated with a number of social variables, but only in males. We conducted three studies to further investigate the relationship between HGS and measures of aggression and social competition among adolescents. Consistent with previous reports, correlations were almost exclusive to males, but this was only visible during late adolescence (i.e., high school). These findings support evolutionary hypotheses regarding grip strength in male-male competition and suggest that similar to measures of testosterone, HGS is a measure that is predictive of social behavior in older adolescent males.

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Eye color predicts but does not directly influence perceived dominance in men

Karel Kleisner, Tomáš Kočnar, Anna Rubešová & Jaroslav Flegr
Personality and Individual Differences, July 2010, Pages 59-64

Abstract:
This study focuses on the relationship between eye color, gender, and psychological characteristics perceived from the human face. Photographs of 40 male and 40 female students were rated for perceived dominance and attractiveness. Attractiveness showed no relation with eye color. In contrast, eye color had a significant effect on perceived dominance in males: brown-eyed men were rated as more dominant than men with blue eyes. To control for the effect of eye color, we studied perceived dominance on the same photographs of models after changing the iris color. The eye color had no effect on perceived dominance. This suggests that some other facial features associated with eye color affect the perception of dominance in males. Geometric morphometrics have been applied to reveal features responsible for the differences in facial morphospace of blue-eyed and brown-eyed males.

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Anthropometry and socioeconomics among couples: Evidence in the United States

Sonia Oreffice & Climent Quintana-Domeque
Economics & Human Biology, forthcoming

Abstract:
We analyze the marriage-market aspects of weight and height in the United States using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics on anthropometric characteristics of both spouses. We find evidence of positive sorting in spouses' body mass index (BMI), weight, and height. Within couples, gender-asymmetric trade-offs arise not only between physical and socioeconomic attributes, but also between anthropometric attributes, with significant penalties for fatter women and shorter men. A wife's obesity (BMI or weight) measures are negatively correlated with her husband's income, education, and height, controlling for his weight and her height, along with spouses' demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. Conversely, heavier husbands are not penalized by matching with poorer or less educated wives, but only with shorter ones. Height is valued mainly for men, with shorter men matched with heavier and less educated wives.

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The wandering mind of men: ERP evidence for gender differences in attention bias towards attractive opposite sex faces

Johanna van Hooff, Helen Crawford & Mark van Vugt
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, forthcoming

Abstract:
To examine the time course and automaticity of our attention bias towards attractive opposite sex faces, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 20 males and 20 females while they carried out a covert orienting task. Faces that were high, low or average in attractiveness, were presented in focus of attention, but were unrelated to task goals. Across the entire sample larger P2 amplitudes were found in response to both attractive and unattractive opposite sex faces, presumably reflecting early implicit selective attention to distinctive faces. In male but not female participants this was followed by an increased late slow wave for the attractive faces, signifying heightened processing linked to motivated attention. This latter finding is consistent with sexual strategy theory, which suggests that men and women have evolved to pursue different mating strategies with men being more attentive to cues such as facial beauty. In general, our ERP results suggest that, in addition to threat-related stimuli, other evolutionary-relevant information is also prioritized by our attention systems.

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The effect of childhood experiences on mate choice in personality traits: Homogamy and sexual imprinting

Petra Gyuris, Róbert Járai & Tamás Bereczkei
Personality and Individual Differences, October 2010, Pages 467-472

Abstract:
We have made an attempt at demonstrating the effect of parental influence, particularly sexual imprinting, on human mate choice. Extending our earlier studies that focused on facial similarities between couples, and parents and couples, now we investigate resemblances in personality characters. Forty-nine couples and their parents filled in Caprara's Big Five Questionnaire and the s-EMBU retrospective attachment test. We found significant correlations between the young men's wives and their mothers in Conscientiousness that may be a key factor for similarity, given that it is related to the attitudes regarding parental investment. As far as the effect of childhood experiences are considered, we have controversial results. We found several significant relationships for the same-sex parents and a reverse relationship between the quality of parent-child attachment and the degree of similarity between the child's parent and spouse, that may contradict the ethological notion of sexual imprinting. As a possible interpretation, we emphasize the very complexity of detecting and using parental personality structure as a model in mate choice. In general, our results suggest that childhood experiences would play an important role in shaping mate preferences, and parental models may guide partner choice in terms of personality traits.

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Male Incarceration, the Marriage Market, and Female Outcomes

Kerwin Kofi Charles & Ming Ching Luoh
Review of Economics and Statistics, August 2010, Pages 614-627

Abstract:
This paper studies how rising male incarceration has affected women through its effect on the marriage market. Variation in marriage-market shocks arising from incarceration is isolated using two facts: the tendency of people to marry within marriage markets defined by the interaction of race, location, and age and the fact that increases in incarceration have been very different across these three characteristics. Using a variety of estimation strategies, including difference and fixed effects models and TSLS models in which we use policy parameters to instrument for within-marriage market changes in incarceration, we find evidence that is, on the whole, consistent with the implications of the standard marriage-market model. In particular, higher male imprisonment appears to have lowered the likelihood that women marry, modestly reduced the quality of their spouses when they do marry, and shifted the gains from marriage away from women and toward men. The evidence suggests that women in affected markets have increased their schooling and labor supply in response to these changes.

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Experiences of falling in love: Investigating culture, ethnicity, gender, and speed

Suzanne Riela, Geraldine Rodriguez, Arthur Aron, Xiaomeng Xu & Bianca Acevedo
Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, June 2010, Pages 473-493

Abstract:
This research investigated 12 precursors to falling love - reciprocal liking, appearance, personality, similarity, familiarity, social influence, filling needs, arousal, readiness, specific cues, isolation, and mysteriousness - with respect to culture, ethnicity, gender, and speed. In Study 1, White-American and Asian-American participants wrote narratives of their falling in love experiences. In Study 2, participants from the United States and China wrote narratives and completed self-ratings of the precursors. Few ethnic, gender, and speed differences were obtained in either study, but those found were in the predicted direction. Many cultural differences were found in Study 2, the majority of which were consistent with individualism-collectivism models. Implications for understanding falling in love and directions for future research are discussed.

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Commercial Sexual Practices Before and After Legalization in Australia

Charrlotte Seib, Michael Dunne, Jane Fischer & Jackob Najman
Archives of Sexual Behavior, August 2010, Pages 979-989

Abstract:
The nature of sex work changes over time for many reasons. In recent decades around the world, there has been movement toward legalization and control of sex economies. Studies of the possible impact of legalization mainly have focused on sexually transmitted infections and violence, with little attention to change in the diversity of sexual services provided. This study examined the practices of sex workers before and after legalization of prostitution. Cross-sectional surveys of comparable samples of female sex workers were conducted in 1991 (N = 200, aged 16-46 years) and 2003 (N = 247, aged 18-57 years) in Queensland, Australia, spanning a period of major change in regulation of the local industry. In 2003, male clients at brothels and private sole operators (N = 161; aged 19-72 years) were also interviewed. Over time, there was a clear increase in the provision of "exotic" sexual services, including bondage and discipline, submission, fantasy, use of sex toys, golden showers, fisting, and lesbian double acts, while "traditional" services mostly remained at similar levels (with substantial decrease in oral sex without a condom). Based on comparisons of self-reports of clients and workers, the demand for anal intercourse, anal play, and urination during sex apparently exceeded supply, especially in licensed brothels. Within this population, legalization of sex work coincided with a substantial increase in diversity of services, but it appears that in the regulated working environments, clients who prefer high risk practices might not dictate what is available to them.

Daehee Bak & Glenn Palmer
Foreign Policy Analysis, July 2010, Pages 257-273

Abstract:
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. predicted that Barack Obama would face an international challenge in his early term by foreign enemies who want to test a young leader's resolve as a chief executive just like John F. Kennedy did in the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. We test this argument using the directed-leader-dyad-period data for both world leaders and the US presidents between 1875 and 2001. We find that old leaders are more likely to be a target of militarized disputes, and even more so during the early term as opposed to Biden's prediction. The impact of tenure on the likelihood of being targeted largely depends on age. We also find that old Republican US presidents are especially vulnerable to foreign challenges early in their term.

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The Effect of Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq

Luke Condra, Joseph Felter, Radha Iyengar & Jacob Shapiro
NBER Working Paper, July 2010

Abstract:
How are insurgents able to mobilize the population to fight and withhold valuable information from government forces? More specifically, what role does government mistreatment of non-combatants play? We study these questions by using uniquely-detailed micro-data from Afghanistan and Iraq to assess the impact of civilian casualties on insurgent violence. By comparing the data along temporal, spatial, and gender dimensions we are able to distinguish short-run 'information' and 'capacity' effects from the longer run 'recruiting' and 'revenge' effects. In Afghanistan we find strong evidence for a revenge effect in that local exposure to ISAF generated civilian casualties drives increased insurgent violence over the long-run. Matching districts with similar past trends in violence shows that counterinsurgent-generated civilian casualties from a typical incident are responsible for 6 additional violent incidents in an average sized district in the following 6 weeks. There is no evidence of short run effects in Afghanistan, thus ruling out the information and the capacity mechanisms. Critically, we find no evidence of a similar reaction to civilian casualties in Iraq, suggesting insurgents' mobilizing tools may be quite conflict-specific. Our results show that if counterinsurgent forces in Afghanistan wish to minimize insurgent recruitment, they must minimize harm to civilians despite the greater risk this entails.

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Selection, Availability, and Opportunity: The Conditional Effect of Poverty on Terrorist Group Participation

Jennifer Kavanagh
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming

Abstract:
Poverty is often identified as a determinant of terrorist group participation, but existing research reveals mixed support for this relationship. Some studies find that macroeconomic decline is associated with increased production of terrorists, but micro-level research suggests terrorists have above average socioeconomic status and educational attainment. In this article, the author argues that poverty should increase terrorist group participation only for individuals with high education. The author suggests that as a result of terrorist group selection preferences and the lower opportunity costs for militant group membership in economically depressed environments, the likelihood of terrorist group participation should be highest for the highly educated, poor members of any population. The author tests the hypotheses using data from Krueger and Maleckova (2003) on participation in Hezbollah, adding an interaction term to their model. The results support the hypotheses. Poverty increases the likelihood of participation in Hezbollah only for those with at least high school education.

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Friends Don't Let Friends Proliferate

Scott Helfstein
Political Science Quarterly, Summer 2010, Pages 281-307

Abstract:
Scott Helfstein examines the efficacy of economic sanctions as a tool to counter nuclear proliferation. He argues that contrary to conventional wisdom, international cooperation is not a key determinant in sanction success. Instead, empirical evidence shows that sanctions have been effective at altering nuclear policies only when the sanction sender and target have had friendly relations.

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Balancing on Land and at Sea: Do States Ally against the Leading Global Power?

Jack Levy & William Thompson
International Security, Summer 2010, Pages 7-43

Abstract:
Scholars often interpret balance of power theory to imply that great powers almost always balance against the leading power in the system, and they conclude that the absence of a counterbalancing coalition against the historically unprecedented power of the United States after the end of the Cold War is a puzzle for balance of power theory. They are wrong on both counts. Balance of power theory is not universally applicable. Its core propositions about balancing strategies and the absence of sustained hegemonies apply to the European system and perhaps to some other autonomous continental systems but not to the global maritime system. Sea powers are more interested in access to markets than in territorial aggrandizement against other great powers. Consequently, patterns of coalition formation have been different in the European system and in the global maritime system during the last five centuries. An empirical analysis demonstrates that counterhegemonic balancing is frequent in Europe but much less frequent in the global system. Higher concentrations of power in the global system lead to fewer and smaller rather than more frequent and larger balancing coalitions, as well as to more frequent and larger alliances with the leading sea power than against it.

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Dangerous Patriots: Washington's Hidden Army during the American Revolution

Sean Halverson
Intelligence and National Security, April 2010, Pages 123-146

Abstract:
How did George Washington's intelligence networks during the American Revolution operate in a more open and proficient manner than their British counterparts? British and American forces developed competing understandings of intelligence gathering. Both used spies to obtain information. Washington, however, guided his intelligence officers to avoid monopolizing information and maintain their own tools of communication that did not require him to approve all the Rebels' covert operations or read through innumerable reports. Relying on his spies to develop their own roles of intelligencer far outside his direct command, Washington gave his spies more autonomy, while being able to overlap more sources. This allowed him to overcome the limitations of his forces. A close reading of the messages between Washington and his covert agents demonstrates that his intelligence system became an essential arm in molding the Americans partisan style asymmetrical strategy. This laid the groundwork for Washington to formulate intelligence gathering as an important tool in presidential power.

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Elite Consensus as a Determinant of Alliance Cohesion: Why Public Opinion Hardly Matters for NATO-led Operations in Afghanistan

Sarah Kreps
Foreign Policy Analysis, July 2010, Pages 191-215

Abstract:
Despite the increasing popularity of fighting wars through multilateral coalitions, scholars have largely been silent on the question of how public opinion in member states affects alliance cohesion. This article assesses public opinion data for states contributing to operations in Afghanistan. It finds that despite the unpopularity of the war, leaders have largely bucked public opinion and neither reduced nor withdrawn troops from NATO-led operations in Afghanistan. Theoretical expectations about international cooperation and evidence from case studies point to elite consensus as the reason why leaders are not running for the exits in Afghanistan when their publics would prefer that they do. As the article shows, operating through a formal institution such as NATO creates systemic incentives for sustained international cooperation. The result is that elite consensus inoculates leaders from electoral punishment and gives states' commitments to Afghanistan a "stickiness" that defies negative public opinion. A formal alliance such as NATO may therefore create more policy constraints than an ad hoc coalition but also increase the costs of defection and confer a degree of staying power that is unexpected given the adverse public opinion environment.

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Does Terrorism Threaten Human Rights? Evidence from Panel Data

Axel Dreher, Martin Gassebner & Lars Siemers
Journal of Law and Economics, February 2010, Pages 65-93

Abstract:
Using panel data for 111 countries over the period 1982-2002, we employ two indexes that cover a wide range of human rights to empirically analyze whether and to what extent terrorism affects human rights. According to our results, terrorism significantly, but not dramatically, diminishes governments' respect for basic human rights such as the absence of extrajudicial killings, political imprisonment, and torture. The result is robust to how we measure terrorist attacks, to the method of estimation, and to the choice of countries in our sample. However, we find no effect of terrorism on empowerment rights.

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The missing currency of Israeli/Palestinian negotiations

Lloyd Cohen
Israel Affairs, July 2010, Pages 455-465

Abstract:
The premise of the Arab-Israeli 'land for peace' process is that each side values what it will receive more than what it must surrender. The repeated failure of this process spanning decades reveals the shocking truth that this premise is erroneous. For the process to succeed, the currency that the Arabs must bring to the table is the ability and willingness to pay for their sovereignty in the currency of vigorous enforcement of Israeli rights and privileges, something they are not willing to do. Why not? At present, the payoff to the Palestinian Arabs as a body of a state is simply not worth the price they must pay.

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Risk Groups in Exposure to Terror: The Case of Israel's Citizens

Yariv Feniger & Ephraim Yuchtman-Yaar
Social Forces, March 2010, Pages 1451-1462

Abstract:
This research addresses a largely ignored question in the study of terror: who are its likely victims? An answer was sought through analysis of comprehensive data on civilian victims of terror in Israel from 1993 through 2003. The chances of being killed in seemingly random terror attacks were found unequally distributed in Israeli society, but the weaker sectors were not the most vulnerable. This pattern may be attributed to the perpetration of most terror attacks in public places, where members of underprivileged groups are less likely to be. Paradoxically, ethnic segregation, gender and other forms of social exclusion and inequality may have helped to protect marginalized social groups from the risk of terror victimization.

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Perpetuating U.S. Preeminence: The 1990 Deals to "Bribe the Soviets Out" and Move NATO In

Mary Elise Sarotte
International Security, Summer 2010, Pages 110-137

Abstract:
Washington and Bonn pursued a shared strategy of perpetuating U.S. preeminence in European security after the end of the Cold War. As multilingual evidence shows, they did so primarily by shielding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) from potential competitors during an era of dramatic change in Europe. In particular, the United States and West Germany made skillful use in 1990 of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's political weakness and his willingness to prioritize his country's financial woes over security concerns. Washington and Bonn decided "to bribe the Soviets out," as then Deputy National Security Adviser Robert Gates phrased it, and to move NATO eastward. The goal was to establish NATO as the main post-Cold War security institution before alternative structures could arise and potentially diminish U.S. influence. Admirers of a muscular U.S. foreign policy and of NATO will view this strategy as sound; critics will note that it alienated Russia and made NATO's later expansion possible. Either way, this finding challenges the scholarly view that the United States sought to integrate its former superpower enemy into postconflict structures after the end of the Cold War.

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The effect of essentialism in settings of historic intergroup atrocities

Hanna Zagefka, Samuel Pehrson, Richard Mole & Eva Chan
European Journal of Social Psychology, August 2010, Pages 718-732

Abstract:
Three studies tested the effects of essentialist beliefs regarding the national ingroup in situations where a perpetrator group has inflicted harm on a victim group. For members of the perpetrator group, it was hypothesised that essentialism has a direct positive association with collective guilt felt as a result of misdeeds conducted by other ingroup members in the past. Simultaneously, it was hypothesised to have an indirect negative association with collective guilt, mediated by perceived threat to the ingroup. Considering these indirect and direct effects jointly, it was hypothesised that the negative indirect effect suppresses the direct positive effect, and that the latter would only emerge if perceived ingroup threat was controlled for. This was tested in a survey conducted in Latvia among Russians (N = 70) and their feelings toward how Russians had treated ethnic Latvians during the Soviet occupation; and in a survey in Germany among Germans (N = 84), focussing on their feelings toward the Holocaust. For members of the victim group, it was hypothesised that essentialism would be associated with more anger and reluctance to forgive past events inflicted on other ingroup members. It was proposed that this effect would be mediated by feeling connected to the ingroup victims. This was tested in a survey conducted among Hong Kong Chinese and their feelings toward the Japanese and the Nanjing massacre (N = 56). Results from all three studies supported the hypotheses.

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Experimenting in Democracy Promotion: International Observers and the 2004 Presidential Elections in Indonesia

Susan Hyde
Perspectives on Politics, June 2010, Pages 511-527

Abstract:
Randomized field experiments have gained attention within the social sciences and the field of democracy promotion as an influential tool for causal inference and a potentially powerful method of impact evaluation. With an eye toward facilitating field experimentation in democracy promotion, I present the first field-experimental study of international election monitoring, which should be of interest to both practitioners and academics. I discuss field experiments as a promising method for evaluating the effects of democracy assistance programs. Applied to the 2004 presidential elections in Indonesia, the random assignment of international election observers reveals that even though the election was widely regarded as democratic, the presence of observers had a measurable effect on votes cast for the incumbent candidate, indicating that such democracy assistance can influence election quality even in the absence of blatant election-day fraud.

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Terrorist Threats and Police Performance: A Study of Israeli Communities

David Weisburd, Badi Hasisi, Tal Jonathan & Gali Aviv
British Journal of Criminology, July 2010, Pages 725-747

Abstract:
In recent years, scholars and police practitioners have become increasingly concerned with the possible impacts of terrorism on police performance. Some scholars have argued that increased terrorist threats will reduce resources that are devoted to ordinary policing functions such as solving crimes, and that anti-terrorism functions may overshadow traditional police activities. Others have suggested that heightened surveillance due to terrorist threats could have unintended crime prevention benefits. In this study, we examine the impacts of terrorist threats on one aspect of police performance-the clearance of police files. Using Israel during the Second Intifada (2000-04) as a case study, we analyse the impact of level of terrorist threat, while controlling for other possible confounding factors, separating out communities that are primarily Jewish or Arab. Our analyses suggest that terrorist threats have a significant impact upon police performance, though that impact varies strongly by type of community. Higher levels of threat are associated with lower proportions of cleared cases in the majority Jewish communities, and higher proportions in the majority Arab communities.

African American adolescent females possess higher self-esteem than any other racial or ethnic adolescent female group. This article tests two popular empirically supported explanations for Black high self-esteem: contingency of self-esteem theory and the locus of control model. This article builds on past research to illustrate the specific mechanisms of self-esteem for Black and White adolescent girls. To facilitate an investigation of these theories, self-esteem was explored as a bidimensional construct consisting of self-worth and self-deprecation. The sample consisted of 453 Black and 1,902 White adolescent females. Multivariate regression analyses produced the following outcomes: The contingency of self-esteem theory and the locus of control model were not supported. A significant race by social support interaction found that even in low support situations Black adolescent females reported less self-deprecation than White females.

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Mirror, mirror on the wall: The effect of time spent grooming on earnings

Steve De Loach
Journal of Socio-Economics, forthcoming

Abstract:
To most economists, personal grooming is a non-market activity. The standard view is that time spent in non-market activities is counterproductive as it reduces work effort and job commitment (Becker 1985). But grooming may be different. Grooming provides an important source of communication about workers, their values, social identities and personalities. There is reason to believe that certain productive personality traits may be inferred on the basis of personal grooming. In this paper, we use data from the American Time Use survey's pooled cross-section 2003-2007 to investigate the effect of additional time spent grooming on earnings. The results show that the effect of grooming on earnings differs significantly by gender and race. These results cannot easily be reconciled with any one particular theory, but imply a complex interaction between several possible effects.

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The influence of social class salience on self-assessed intelligence

Laura Kudrna, Adrian Furnham & Viren Swami
Social Behavior and Personality, Summer 2010, Pages 859-864

Abstract:
Previous research on self-assessed intelligence (SAI) has been focused on sex differences to the exclusion of other pertinent factors, including objective and subjective social class differences. In this study, 343 participants completed an online questionnaire in which the salience of social class identity was manipulated and measures of self-assessed overall intelligence, participant sex, and objective and subjective social class status were obtained. Results showed that participants of a high social class had a significantly higher SAI when their social class identity was salient, but there was no significant difference in the SAI of low social class groups with or without their social class identity salient. Results also revealed significant sex differences in SAI, but only among participants of a high social class. Overall, these results suggest that social class salience may be an important factor in shaping SAI.

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Being grateful is beyond good manners: Gratitude and motivation to contribute to society among early adolescents

Jeffrey Froh, Giacomo Bono & Robert Emmons
Motivation and Emotion, June 2010, Pages 144-157

Abstract:
Gratitude, a positive response to receiving a benefit, may contribute more to youth than just momentary happiness. It may ignite in youth a motivation for “upstream generativity” whereby its experience contributes to a desire to give back to their neighborhood, community, and world. We tested this notion by longitudinally examining early adolescents’ gratitude and their social integration, or motivation to use their strengths to help others and feel connected to others at a macro level. Middle school students (N = 700) completed measures of gratitude, prosocial behavior, life satisfaction, and social integration at baseline (T1), 3-months (T2), and 6-months (T3) later. Using bootstrapping to examine multiple mediators, controlling for demographics and social integration at T1, we found that gratitude at T1 predicted social integration at T3 and that prosocial behavior and life satisfaction at T2 mediated the relation. Further mediational analyses showed that gratitude and social integration serially enhanced each other. This prospective evidence aligns well with the interpretation that gratitude may help to initiate upward spirals toward greater emotional and social well-being. Implications are discussed in terms of gratitude’s role in positive youth development.