Decoding Basic and Non-basic Facial Expressions and Depressive Symptoms in Late Childhood and Adolescence

This study examined the relationship between decoding nonverbal cues and depressive symptoms in a general school population of 606 children and adolescents (9–15 years). The focus was on the perceived intensity of several emotions in both basic and non-basic facial expressions. The perceived intensities of anger and joy in low intensity facial expressions were related to depression. The higher the perceived intensity of anger the more depressed adolescents were, whereas the reversed effect was found for the perception of joy, but only in girls. These results suggest that the development of decoding biases in low intensity facial expressions may be useful for understanding the development of individual and gender differences in depression during adolescence.

Back and Forth and Beyond

The Journal invited Tom Andersen, author of major pioneering work on the reflecting team, and his colleagues, to offer comment on The Reflecting Team Process in Training. We thought such a north-south dialogue was in keeping with the spirit of reflecting teams, and the team members in Melbourne and Tromsø agree — Editor.     

Imagined interactions,family money management patterns and coalitions,and attitudes toward money and credit

This study explores the imagined interactions college students have with their parents about money and credit, their attitudes toward credit and money, the ways they say their parents deal with financial decisions, and the communication coalitions regarding finances they perceive existing within their family. Students’ imagined interaction pleasantness is greatest when parents jointly form a plan for paying off credit card debt and lowest when parents argue. When family coalitions exist, students report more frequent imagined interactions. Imagined interaction frequency and pleasantness are related to credit and money attitudes.

Caste and Muslim Peasantries of North India and East and West Pakistan

On croit généralement que l'lslamisme est une confession religieuse égalitaire et qu'il en découle que les sociétés où l'on est de cette religion n'ont pas un systéme rigide de stratification. A la suite d'une recherche effectuée auprès de paysans musulmans dans le nord de l'lnde et dans les régions orientale et occidentale du Pakistan, l'auteur indique au contraire que des classes rigides existent dans des sociétés de religion islamique. II tente de démontrer que la rigidité de cette stratification tient en partie à la tradition islamique même et pas seule-ment à rinfluence des castes hindoues.     

Teaching Religion and Media: Syllabi and Pedagogy

This study explores the pedagogy of Religion and Media. The topic has garnered growing attention in recent years (Stout, 2012 Stout, D. (2012). Media and religion: Foundations of an emerging field. New York, NY: Routledge. [Google Scholar]) and the sheer array of classes is a testament to its status as a lively growing topic. This study takes a nonnormative, exploratory approach to uncover four key categorical approaches to how the topic of religion and media is taught in universities. The methodology included a textual analysis of 48 syllabi and interviews with professors who teach religion and media.     

Age and Gender Differences in Decoding Basic and Non-basic Facial Expressions in Late Childhood and Early Adolescence

This study examined age and gender differences in decoding nonverbal cues in a school population of 606 (pre)adolescents (9–15 years). The focus was on differences in the perceived intensity of several emotions in both basic and non-basic facial expressions. Age differences were found in decoding low intensity and ambiguous faces, but not in basic expressions. Older adolescents indicated more negative meaning in these more subtle and complex facial cues. Girls attributed more anger to both basic and non-basic facial expressions and showed a general negative bias in decoding non-basic facial expressions compared to boys. Findings are interpreted in the light of the development of emotion regulation and the importance for developing relationships.

Review of Attachment Theory: Familial Predictors,Continuity and Change,and Intrapersonal and Relational Outcomes

Initially, the major focus of attachment theory was the parent–child relationship, but Bowlby (1988 Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Clinical applications of attachment theory. London: Routeledge. [Google Scholar]) also described the attachment system as active over the entire life course. Accordingly, a proliferation of research on attachment theory in the past two decades has addressed an array of familial predictors as well as intrapersonal and relational outcomes of attachment. The purpose of this review is to present: 1) measurement of attachment, 2) family violence, parental depression, and parental divorce as predictors of attachment, 3) (in)stability of attachment over time, 4) impact of attachment on emotion regulation and psychopathology, and 5) influence of attachment on romantic relationship. Special attention is paid to the role of attachment as a mediator between family of origin experiences and outcomes among youth and adults.     

The family and adults 65 years of age and over

The policy makers usually assume that the nuclear family model is almost universally favoured in our industrial and urban society. Governmental agencies are thus left with the responsibility taken over in the past by the extended family. Gerontological literature studied the family support available to the elderly. In general, research results have supported the modified extended family model. Here, the multigenerational household is defined as a living arrangement in contradiction with the nuclear family model, but able to provide support to the disabled elderly. With three random samples of non-institutionalized francophone elderly, it was possible to estimate the number of elderly people living in multigenerational households. It was observed that the elderly in such households are older and more functionally impaired than the elderly living in other kinds of households. Thus, the multigenerational household offers a potential for support neglected by policy makers. Governmental agencies should see themselves as supporters of family involvement with elderly members rather than as surrogates for the family. Les planificateurs assument que la famille nucléaire est le modèle presqu'unique adopte par les families de sociétés industrielles et urbaines. Les agences gouvernementales doivent done prendre la reléve de la famille ètendue. Les recherches en gérontologie ont pourtant démontrv que l'aide familiale est disponible aux personnes âgées. En fait, la famille contemporaine assure la plus grande part de l'aide aux personnes âgées. Le ménage multi-générationel se pose en source importante de support pour la personne âgée qui en est membre. L'observation de trois échantillons aléatoires de personnes âgées urbaines et francophones permet une estimation du nombre de personnes âgées habitant dans un ménage multigénérationel. En plus, ces personnes sont plus âgées et ont plus d'incapacités fonctionnelles que les personnes âgées seules ou vivant avec leur conjoint seulement. En conséquence, la famille nucléaire n'est pas un modèle empiriquement adéquat. Les recherches ont plutôt proposé le modèle de la famille étendue modifiée. Les agences gouvernementales devraient concevoir leur rôle en fonction du support qu'offre la famille â ses membres âgés plutôt que de se définir comme substituts familiaux.     

Visual Dominance and Visual Egalitarianism: Individual and Group-Level Influences of Sex and Status in Group Interactions

This study investigated visual dominance and visual egalitarianism of men and women (N = 94; 17 teams) in team meetings at diverse workplaces. Two novel gaze-related measures were developed: (a) a group visual dominance ratio (group-VDR) assessing each member’s visual dominance vis-à-vis all other members, and (b) a gaze distribution index (GDI) assessing each member’s visual egalitarianism to all group members. Multilevel analyses were conducted to account for influences of the team members’ sex and status on the individual level and for influences of sex and status composition of the teams, and the team leaders’ sex on the group level. Results suggested that high-status individuals displayed more visual dominance than low-status individuals. The significant interaction of individuals’ sex and status indicated that the positive relationship of status and visual dominance applied particularly to women. The more women in a team, the more visual dominance was displayed. The team leader’s sex significantly influenced visual egalitarianism: Gaze distribution was less egalitarian when the team leader was male.     

Reading and Writing,Talking and Listening Introducing Studies in Gender and Sexuality

This essay offers a brief history of how the stereotype “the female homosexual” was created through three installments of psychoanalytic theorizing, starting with Freud's (1920) case study. A second, brief history presents the various strands of critical theorizing that have identified “the female homosexual” as a stereotype. The essay then makes a contribution to current discussion of female homosexuality by suggesting an instinct theory that features ego instincts and sexual instincts interacting (as Freud' theory did before 1920). Reference is made to Takeo Doi's concept of amae (expectation of affection) and to amae as an ego instinct. This theory then is the framework for a clinical v ignette focused on a female homosexual's ego-instinctual needs.     

Righteous Dopefiend and AIDS,Sex, and Culture: Global Politics and Survival in Southern Africa

This essay offers a comparative reading of two ethnographies, Ida Susser's AIDS, Sex, and Culture: Global Politics and Survival in Southern Africa (2009 Susser, I. 2009. AIDS, Sex, and Culture: Global Politics and Survival in Southern Africa, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), a multisited text focused on community responses to dynamics of HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment in Southern Africa, and Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg's Righteous Dopefiend (2009 Bourgois, P. and Schonberg, J. 2009. Righteous Dopefiends, Berkeley: University of California Press.  [Google Scholar]), a photo-ethnographic exploration of lumpen subjectivity within an encampment of homeless drug addicts in San Francisco. Pointing out these texts' common focus on circumstances of the precarious and marginal poor under conditions of neoliberalization, social conditions shaping dynamics of HIV prevention, and poor people's negotiations of affliction and structural violence, this essay highlights the theoretical and practical effects of these books' divergent methodologies, scopes of analysis, and differing degrees of emphasis on subjective experience as well as women's experiences. It also considers a key commonality across these texts: their attention to the role of historical experience and political-economic context in shaping responses to affliction and structural violence.     

Anthropologists and social involvement: some issues and problems

De plus en plus souvent, les anthropologues interviennent à titre de médiateurs entre les agences gouvernementales et les groupes locaux. En fait, dans diverses régions du monde, ce mêmes anthropologues jouent les rôles inédits de consultants, de défenseurs et de médiateurs. Leurs interventions annoncent l'émergence d'une nouvelle conception du travail anthropologique, ce qui devra entraîner d'importants changements dans la discipline tout entière. Pourtant, bien peu d'analyses récentes ont tenté d'étudier les répercussions, ou même les avantages et les désavantages de cette activité nouvelle des anthropologues.
With increasing regularity anthropologists act as intermediaries in conflict situations, particularly between government agencies and local groups. Anthropologists in diverse areas of the world are enacting new roles as consultants, advocates, and mediators. These activities indicate the emergence of a new conception of anthropological work, and therefore they have important implications for changes in the discipline as a whole. Yet, remarkably little effort has been expended in the literature to anlyze these implications, or on the various advantages and disadvantages that these activities hold for anthropologists.     

State neutrality and Islamic headscarf laws in France and Germany

Neutrality has been the classic answer of the liberal state to religious and cultural difference. A number of multicultural critics recently debunked it as “myth” and group power in disguise. Comparing Islamic headscarf laws in France and Germany, I argue that neutrality is more complex and multifaceted than this. The comparison shows that neutrality leaves space for particularistic and universalistic, unity- and rights-oriented stances, the first located in the sphere of democratic politics, the second in the legal–constitutional sphere. Recent headscarf laws may then be understood as political backlash against the rights-oriented neutrality that has emerged in the legal spheres of both countries.

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Residential Mobility and Adolescent Achievement and Behavior: Understanding Timing and Extent of Mobility

Residential mobility is generally viewed as an adverse event for adolescents' development. Less is known about whether moving during adolescence, childhood, or both periods explains this connection and whether the extent of mobility matters. Analytic shortcomings with much of the research call into question extant findings. We examined associations between childhood, adolescent, and child–adolescent mobility and adolescents' achievement (math and reading) and behavior problems (internalizing and externalizing). With a multisite, longitudinal sample (N = 1,056), we employed propensity score methods, which mitigate concerns about selection bias on observed variables, to investigate relationships. Results suggest that multiple, child–adolescent movers had more internalizing problems in adolescence than their stable peers, but did not differ on externalizing problems or achievement.     

Understanding and knowledge of credit cost and duration: Effects on credit judgements and decisions

Financial capability requires understanding measures of consumer credit cost and using them appropriately in credit judgements and decisions. In three studies, UK adults’ understanding and use of credit cost and duration information were investigated from a bounded rationality perspective. Study 1, part of a representative survey of UK adults (N = 1000), found that when presented with annual percentage rate (APR) participants significantly overestimated the total cost (TC) of a 12-month loan. In Study 2, loan duration and APR were varied in an independent groups experiment (N = 242). Bank customers’ TC estimates were sensitive to both loan duration and APR but TC was again substantially overestimated. Study 3 was an independent groups experiment investigating the effect of APR and TC information on credit decisions (N = 241). APR often influenced decisions between loans varying in duration and monthly repayment, but this effect was moderated by TC information. It was concluded that: (1) people generally misunderstand the relation between APR and TC; and (2) although APR information can have a large effect on credit decisions, its effect is either attenuated or amplified by TC information. The findings are interpreted in terms of a ‘take the best APR’ heuristic and a dual mental account model of instalment credit. Recommendations for improving credit information provision and financial education are offered.     

Evening and night work schedules and children's social and emotional well-being

ABSTRACT

An emerging body of evidence shows that parents’ non-standard work schedules have a detrimental effect on children's well-being. However, only a limited number of studies have investigated mediating factors that underpin this association. Likewise, only a few studies have examined the impact of fathers’ non-standard work schedules on children's well-being. Based on data from the Families in Germany Study (FiD), this study aimed to address these research gaps. The sample consists of parents and their children at ages 7–8 and 9–10 (n?=?838 child observations in dual-earner families). The data were collected in the years 2010–2013. Non-standard work hours were defined as working in evenings and or at night (every day, several times a week, or changing as shifts). Children's social and emotional well-being was measured with the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). The findings show that both mothers’ and fathers’ evening and night work schedules are linked to an increase in children's externalizing and internalizing behavior and that this association is partially mediated by mothers’ and fathers’ harsh and strict parenting, with a stronger mediation effect for fathers parenting.     

Stepfamilies and the Law: Legal Ambiguities and Suggestions for Reform

Cherlin's (1978 Cherlin, A. 1978. Remarriage as an incomplete institution. American Journal of Sociology, 84: 634–650. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) argument that stepfamilies are incomplete as far as the legal system is concerned is still valid and relevant today. This review of literature discusses the ambiguous role stepparents have in the legal system, both in intact and divorced stepfamilies. Legal scholars and social science researchers' suggestions to help stepfamilies find their place within the legal system are also included to show the variation of the proposed solutions. Scholars seem uncertain as to how to accomplish the task of changing laws to benefit stepfamilies, but agree that laws need to give more authority and recognition to the stepparent role.     

A program based on Social Cognitive Theory and Smith's model of health and illness and its effect on maternal self-efficacy and child behavior

PurposeThis study was conducted in order to determine the effect of a program based on Social Cognitive Theory and Smith's Model of Health and Illness on the self-efficacy, self-esteem and attitudes of mothers and on the emotional and behavioral problems and competence levels of their children.MethodThis quasi-experimental study used a control group and a pretest-posttest design. The sample was composed of 77 mothers (experimental group, n = 39; control group, n = 38) who had low self-efficacy and self-esteem and whose children had problematic behavior. The mothers in the experimental group underwent a 10-session program over a period of 10 weeks. This program included activities to help them build trust in themselves and their surroundings, induce positive thinking, increase their childcare knowledge and skills, establish an effective interaction with their children, set realistic and positive goals, cope with stress, experience the feeling of success and become motivated. Data were collected by using the Demographic Information Form, the self-efficacy for Parenting Task Index-Toddler Scale, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, the Parent Attitude Scale and the Brief Infant-Toddler Social & Emotional Assessment. Data were collected before the start of the program, immediately after its completion and three months afterwards.ResultsIt was found that, at the end of the program and after the following three months, the self-efficacy, self-esteem and democratic attitude scores of the experimental group mothers and the competency scores of their children had significantly increased compared to their pre-program scores. The problem domain scores of their children had decreased and a statistically significant difference was detected in favor of the experimental group. In both the experimental and the control group, a weak negative correlation was found between the self-efficacy and democratic attitude scores of the mothers and the problem domain scores of their children.ConclusionThe total 12-hour program created a positive change, even among the mothers with low self-efficacy, low self-esteem and low education and income levels who had problematic children. Therefore, healthcare professionals may find it beneficial to offer this program to all mothers having 2- and 3-year-old children.     

Long-term Growth Perspectives and Economic Convergence of CEE and SEE Countries

The paper first investigates the main drivers of economic growth and real convergence in CEE and SEE Countries. In the theoretical framework provided by the growth-accounting approach, both are shown to be driven by capital accumulation and total factor productivity changes, with the latter making however a major contribution. The nominal convergence path towards the Eurozone is then analysed. Despite considerable results obtained in the last decade, most EU new members are still found to face severe challenges in the process of converging towards Maastricht criteria. The need to reconcile exchange rate stability with inflation convergence is in particular seen to be at the heart of their de facto decision to delay the EMU entry date until a higher degree of real convergence will have been achieved.

Acceptability of Information Management Strategies: Adolescents' and Parents' Judgments and Links With Adjustment and Relationships

Parents' and adolescents' (M_age = 15.7) acceptability ratings of four information management strategies and associations between these ratings and adjustment, relationship quality, and strategy use were examined in 174 middle‐class families over 1 year. Acceptance of information management was greater for adolescents than for parents and for personal than for prudential issues; acceptance decreased across telling only if asked, avoidance, omitting details, and lying. Strategy acceptance and use were associated for lying and avoiding the topic. Controlling for strategy use, teens' acceptance of lying, omitting details, and avoidance was associated with poorer parent–adolescent relationships and more problem behavior 1 year later; acceptance of lying was associated with increases in depressed mood. Associations in the opposite direction were rare.