Attitudinal and behavioral differences between cigarette users who do and do not identify as “smokers”

Objective: The current research aimed to understand differences in smoking-related identity among college students and to illustrate the distinct characteristics of nonidentified smokers (NIS). Participants: Students from 2 colleges in Massachusetts (N = 538; April 2016). Methods: Respondents reported by online survey whether or not they had smoked a cigarette in the past 30 days and if they self-identified as smokers. Nonsmokers (NIS) and identified smokers (IS) were then compared on their smoking attitudes and behavior. Results: NIS made up 12.5% of the sample and 64% of all tobacco users. NIS perceived themselves as less addicted and were more confident in their ability to quit smoking. They also were less likely to smoke alone, buy their own cigarettes, or have friends who smoked. Conclusions: College health officials can best motivate NIS to quit smoking by focusing on peer norms and the potential of long-term addiction.     

Assessing Politicized Sexual Orientation Identity: Validating the Queer Consciousness Scale

Building on psychological theories of motivation for collective action, we introduce a new individual difference measure of queer consciousness, defined as a politicized collective identity around sexual orientation. The Queer Consciousness Scale (QCS) consists of 12 items measuring five aspects of a politicized queer identity: sense of common fate, power discontent, system blame, collective orientation, and cognitive centrality. In four samples of adult women and men of varied sexual orientations, the QCS showed good test-retest and Cronbach’s reliability and excellent known-groups and predictive validity. Specifically, the QCS was positively correlated with identification as a member of the LGBTQ community, political liberalism, personal political salience, and LGBTQ activism and negatively correlated with right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation. QCS mediated relationships between several individual difference variables and gay rights activism and can be used with both LGBTQ people and allies.     

The Importance of “Empty Gestures” in Recovery: Being Human Together

What do clients/patients want or value from their encounters with healthcare providers? Based on ethnographic research conducted with individuals suffering from drug addiction and mental health issues, this article argues that clients/patients treasure “everyday” or “human” interaction with medical staff. Everydayness is accomplished through three generic social processes: **co‐silence, inclusion in back‐stage activity, and physical dramatizations of authenticity. These processes and other ordinary interactional strategies for “being human together” should be seen as vital tools for recovery.     

“Phil's Calling Grandma… ”: The Role of External Support in Human–Companion Animal Identity Pairings

This exploratory paper deals with human–animal role identity pairings such as parent–child or sibling–sibling and the necessity of support from other actors both for the formation of these idiosyncratic identities, as well as for their situational placement in social environments not limited to the nonhuman animal. Taken from a qualitative study examining identity formation counter to the nonhuman animal, I use in‐depth interviews of both people with and without human children to demonstrate how human‐to‐human relationships are formed by categorizing the companion animal as a “child” of sorts within the family structure. These relationships prove integral to the continued development and enactment of identities such as the animal “parent” or the animal “sibling” via three different groups: their own parents, partners, and, in one case, adult siblings. This creates positive affect and commitment to the identity across other social situations. Implications of these findings for identity theory and family research are discussed.     

The international field placement: a reconciliation of identity

The international field placement is a site of both identity confusion and identity development for the social work student. Aiming to develop their professional identity they are faced with a challenge: the presence of two dominant identities, the tourist identity and the student identity. Whilst the embodiment of the tourist identity has often facilitated the student’s motivation to undertake the placement experience, the student identity is what both university staff and agency field educators perceive as integral to student engagement in this remote educational setting. Social work educators perceive this identity challenge as an impediment to learning. In contrast, students report feeling that their tourist traits strengthened their personal and professional capacity, natural curiosity and ability to engage with the local community. By analysing the roles of university staff as liaison support, and field educators as agency supervisors, it is possible to explore a teaching and learning relationship that is student-centred, grounded in the immersive international experience. Through privileging the student’s voice social work educators involved with organising, supporting and supervising international field placements are able to understand the placement as a continuum of learning. On this continuum identity reconciliation is viewed as a crucial element in the development of a professional identity.     

Introduction to the Special Section Value Development from Middle Childhood to Early Adulthood—New Insights from Longitudinal and Genetically Informed Research

Research into values at an early age has only started recently, although it has expanded quickly and dynamically in the past years. The purpose of this article is twofold: First, it provides an introduction to a special section that aims to help fill the gap in value development research. The special section brings together four new longitudinal and genetically informed studies of value development from the beginning of middle childhood through early adulthood. Second, this article reviews recent research from this special section and beyond, aiming to provide new directions to the field. With new methods for assessing children's values and an increased awareness of the role of values in children's and adolescents' development, the field now seems ripe for an in‐depth investigation. Our review of empirical evidence shows that, as is the case with adults, children's values are organized based on compatibilities and conflicts in their underlying motivations. Values show some consistency across situations, as well as stability across time. This longitudinal stability tends to increase with age, although mean changes are also observed. These patterns of change seem to be compatible with Schwartz's (1992) theory of values (e.g., if the importance of openness to change values increases, the importance of conservation values decreases). The contributions of culture, family, peers, significant life events, and individual characteristics to values are discussed, as well as the development of values as guides for behavior.     

Stories of Non‐Becoming: Non‐Issues,Non‐Events and Non‐Identities in Asexual Lives

In contrast to conventional models of positively “becoming” an identity through social interaction, this article explores the inverse, negational process of “non‐becoming,” whereby actors start but do not continue along an identity career trajectory. Through cumulative attrition, interactions and encounters at key moments create an overall pattern of non‐progression. Using asexuality as an example, we identify three main trajectory stages of non‐awareness, communicative negation and non‐consolidation, each involving interactional contingencies. With a wider applicability to other repudiated identities, this model shows how even negational symbolic social objects (non‐issues, non‐events, and non‐identities) are constituted through social interaction.     

Communication and representation of risk in health crises: the influence of framing and group identity / Comunicación en crisis sanitarias y representación del riesgo. La influencia del framing y la identidad grupal

Based on the Social Representations Theory (SRT) applied to the social construction of risk and the role played by group identities, this study examines the construction of risk created by the mass media in health epidemics. An experimental design with split-ballot questionnaire and 319 participants was used in which message framing (human interest vs. attribution of responsibility) and proximity (high vs. low) were manipulated for a high invulnerability identity (youth) vs. a low invulnerability identity (elderly) population. Results showed that the human interest framing increased the perception of risk, especially when the proximity of the epidemic was high; this effect was explained by people’s emotional response. Furthermore, youth projected the risk towards ‘the other’ in order to protect their invulnerability identity. Finally, we stress the importance of the SRT on a theoretical and applied level for risk communication in health crises.     

Comiendo Bien: The Production of Latinidad through the Performance of Healthy Eating among Latino Immigrant Families in San Francisco

Utilizing a bricolage of interactionist cultural studies, ethnic foodways, and situational analysis this paper examines how Latino immigrants, representing six countries and multiple preimmigration class positions, come to perform Latinidad through the lay health practice of comiendo bien (eating well). Comiendo bien was examined through participant observation of 15 families living in San Francisco and 27 key informant interviews. Comiendo bien is a performance that exists through the convergence of multiple identity positions. Latina/o immigrants not only enact the Latinidad in the United States through artistic expression or political strategizing, but also by sharing an idealized practice of healthy eating.     

Lena Finkle’s magic arc: hybrid influences in the Russian American graphic novel

ABSTRACT

The article examines Anya Ulinich’s graphic narrative Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel and the novel’s use of visual culture from both the author’s Russian and US American backgrounds. The article interrogates the use of history and timelines, Russian art history and Russian art education in Ulinich’s text. It also analyzes other literary constructs that influenced Ulinich’s novel: US American comics/graphic novels and their use of stereotype, and novels by Russian-speaking Jewish American writers, with their thematized Jewishness.