Adolescent Self‐Consciousness: Longitudinal Age Changes and Gender Differences in Two Cohorts

Adolescence is frequently described as a period of pervasive self‐consciousness, but an age‐related peak in adolescence is not consistently obtained, and higher self‐consciousness in girls is frequently obtained but not predicted by theoretical accounts. Two cohorts of adolescents (N=393), initially assessed at 13 and 15, completed public and private self‐consciousness measures 3 times in 4 years. They also reported social comparisons and social engagement. Public self‐consciousness decreased and private self‐consciousness increased in both cohorts, and girls scored higher on both measures, both in longitudinal and sibling replication samples (n=188). Public self‐consciousness appears to be a normative response to adolescent social challenges, with girls' higher levels largely attributable to their closer social engagement. Private self‐consciousness emerges as an individual difference in adolescence but is more likely to be salient and predictive of social behavior in adulthood.     

Briefly Noted

Drug‐Free Communities (DFC), a significant prevention grant program totaling more than $101 million and administered by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), will be moving to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but the change is mainly one that affects interagency machinations in Washington and not the end recipients of the funding — drug‐free coalitions. The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) will retain the program and policy oversight. The funding will go to the ONDCP, and then be distributed to the CDC instead of to SAMHSA, as it has been in the past. The DFC grant program funds anti‐drug coalitions ‐‐ there are more than 700 across the country. Most are members of Community Anti‐Drug Coalitions of American (CADCA), which has 5,000 members. The CDC will be the new agency that subcontracts with the ONDCP to do the day‐to‐day administration of the DFC program. The change was announced Feb. 4 at CADCA's National Leadership Forum by ONDCP Director James Carroll. For a 2019 fact sheet on DFC, see https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp‐content/uploads/2019/12/FY‐2019‐DFC‐Fact‐Sheet‐20191220‐converted.pdf .     

Lesbian and bisexual women's judgments of the attractiveness of different body types

Two studies were conducted using the Internet with 209 and 141 women respectively who reported themselves as being lesbian or bisexual, but not heterosexual. Women were presented with 8 figures in which weight (slender or heavy), waist‐to‐hip ratio (0.7 or 1.0), and breast size (small or large) were varied independently. Participants rated figures on a 20‐point scale for attractiveness, healthiness, femininity, kindness, and desirability for both short‐term and long‐term relationships. These ratings were summed to give a total preference score as a factor analysis showed that all ratings loaded positively on one factor. In the second study, women were also asked to rate themselves on the degree to which they were gender‐conforming or gender‐nonconforming. In both studies, participants preferred the heavy figure with the 0.7 waist‐to‐hip ratio and large breasts. The same figure with small breasts was the next most preferred. In the second study, there was no difference between gender‐conforming and gender‐nonconforming women in preference scores. We believe that a preference on the part of nonheterosexual women for heavy figures may reflect more comfort with heavier body weight as well as a rejection of what may be seen as an inappropriate societal fixation on excessive thinness.     

Eight‐Month‐Old Infants' Perception of Possible and Impossible Events

This study investigated 8‐month‐old infants' perception of object permanence in an extension of the rotating screen studies by Baillargeon (1987) and Baillargeon, Spelke, and Wasserman (1985). Using computer‐animated stimuli similar to the “live” stimuli used by Baillargeon and her colleagues (Baillargeon, 1987; Baillargeon et al., 1985), 48 8‐month‐old infants were habituated to 1 of 4 computer‐animated events and then tested on all 4 events. The events involved a screen that rotated in either a 180° or 120° arc*** and a block that either was sitting in the path of the rotating screen or absent from the event. The results provided no evidence that infants responded on the basis of the possibility or impossibility of the events as claimed by Baillargeon and her colleagues, but instead indicated that the infants responded on the basis of perceptual novelty. These results are consistent with the findings of Schilling (this issue) and Bogartz, Shinskey, and Schilling (this issue). Taken together, along with the findings of Rivera, Wakeley, and Langer (1999), these more recent findings suggest that Baillargeon's (1987; Baillargeon et al., 1985) results should not be interpreted as definitive evidence of object permanence in very young infants.     

Self‐Focused Attention and Career Anxiety: The Mediating Role of Career Adaptability

The purpose of this study was to examine how 2 forms of self‐focused attention, self‐reflection and self‐rumination, influence career anxiety. The authors hypothesized that the association between these 2 types of self‐focused attention and career anxiety would be mediated by career adaptability on the basis of a career construction model of adaptation. The participants were 326 undergraduate students in South Korea. The results of this study supported the hypothesized mediation model by indicating significant indirect effects of self‐reflection and self‐rumination on career anxiety via career adaptability. The direct effect of self‐rumination on career anxiety was significant (B = .44, p < .01), but the direct effect of self‐reflection on career anxiety was not significant (B = –.05, p > .05). The authors discuss implications for counselors to help college students manage career anxiety by encouraging and supporting increased career adaptability. Future research to examine the cross‐cultural validity of the current findings is needed.     

Margaret Sanger and the modern contraceptive techniques∗∗

The purposes of this study were (1) to show that a previously established relationship between female sexual enjoyment and self‐actualization also holds for males and (2) to demonstrate that sexual enjoyment of males and females is related to the actualization of their sexual partners. Forty‐two couples attending a large northeastern state university participated on a voluntary basis. Actualization was measured by the Personal Orientation Inventory. Sexual enjoyment was assessed by a questionnaire about orgasm consistency and by the Sexual Interaction Inventory (SII), which measures a variety of aspects of sexual satisfaction. Self‐actualization was related to orgasm consistency among males but not females. Several SII scales were correlated with self‐actualization for both males and females. Partners' self‐actualization was positively correlated with several aspects of male sexual enjoyment. However, female sexual enjoyment was negatively correlated with partners' self‐actualization. The results indicate that personality factors account for variance in male as well as female sexual responsiveness and that personality characteristics of one's partner may be related to one's sexual pleasure.     

LEAVING IN DROVES: Exit Chains in Network Attrition

The article examines the emergence of “exit chains”—temporal clusters in attrition, which are expected but rarely documented. Studying attrition in an industry peer network (IPN), we compare the three modes of leaving: as an initial exit in a chain (“leader”), a subsequent exit in a chain (“follower”), and a stand‐alone exit (“loner”). Combining regression and simulation techniques, the analysis affirms the role interdependence between leader and followers, whose rationales for leaving are distinct but complementary, one internal based on exchange imbalances, the other external based on exposure to peer influence. Exit chains are depicted as a by‐product of social embeddedness and the inherently high costs of relationship termination.     

Fragments and Links: Organizational Actor‐World of the Harry Potter Phenomenon

The article seeks to develop an Actor‐Network Theory perspective on the relationship between organization and literature by focusing on the Harry Potter phenomenon. The latter is seen as an example of how contemporary popular literature does not stop at itself, but rather supersedes itself by spinning its own truly impressive organizational actor‐network. This industrious industrial entanglement challenges what may be called the ‘disembodied’ conceptualization of literature—the conceptualization that is centred on the contents of works of fiction alone. When the contents of the literary texts are decentred in that they are taken as but one (however important) actor of the actor‐world that comes to be known by their name, other actors become more visible that help to conceptualize Harry Potter as an organizational, as much as a literary, phenomenon.     

Infants’ Ability to Detect Emotional Incongruency: Deep or Shallow?

Infants can detect individuals who demonstrate emotions that are incongruent with an event and are less likely to trust them. However, the nature of the mechanisms underlying this selectivity is currently subject to controversy. The objective of this study was to examine whether infants’ socio‐cognitive and associative learning skills are linked to their selective trust. A total of 102 14‐month‐olds were exposed to a person who demonstrated congruent or incongruent emotional referencing (e.g., happy when looking inside an empty box), and were tested on their willingness to follow the emoter's gaze. Knowledge inference and associative learning tasks were also administered. It was hypothesized that infants would be less likely to trust the incongruent emoter and that this selectivity would be related to their associative learning skills, and not their socio‐cognitive skills. The results revealed that infants were not only able to detect the incongruent emoter, but were subsequently less likely to follow her gaze toward an object invisible to them. More importantly, infants who demonstrated superior performance on the knowledge inference task, but not the associative learning task, were better able to detect the person's emotional incongruency. These findings provide additional support for the rich interpretation of infants’ selective trust.     

Four Documents,a Non‐Citizen,and a Diplomatic Controversy: The Documentation of Identity in the Mid‐Nineteenth Century

A forgotten diplomatic controversy centered on the claim to U.S. protection by a yet‐to‐be‐naturalized citizen is analyzed to offer insights into the mid‐nineteenth century understanding of the status and function of the documentation of individual identity. It makes clear the documentation of identity had a contested and gradual development. Documentation was contested in that people (both officials and members of the public) struggled to understand how it was that a document identified a person. This uncertainty centered not only on who had the authority to document identity, but how that authority was represented on a document. Beyond its mid‐nineteenth century and U.S. focus this essay is intended to provide the context for an understanding of the administrative, bureaucratic, and social developments that had to occur before identification documents could play a pivotal role in the development of the twentieth century state. In this way it suggests that official identification is an important object of analysis for debates about the articulation of information and governing in state formation.     

Cervico‐motor reflex: Description of the reflex and role in sexual acts

A recently identified reflex, termed the “cervico‐motor reflex,” was studied in 15 healthy women (mean age 36.6 years). The response of levator ani (LA) and puborectalis (PR) muscles to electrical and mechanical stimulation of the cervix uteri (CU) was determined. One concentric needle electrode was inserted into the CU (stimulating), a second into the LA (recording), and a third into the PR (recording). The vaginal pressure was measured at rest and on cervical stimulation by balloon‐tipped catheters. Electrical stimulation of the CU led to a reduction in pressure in the upper portion of the vagina (p < .05) and an increase in pressure in the middle and lower portions (p < .001). Stimulation also caused an increase in the electromyographic (EMG) activity of the LA and PR muscles (p < .01). Mechanical stimulation induced the same effects but to a lesser degree. Stimulation of the anesthetized CU, LA, or PR did not evoke the response. The data suggested the presence of a reproducible reflex relationship between the CU and both the LA and PR. During the sexual act and penile buffeting of the CU, levator contraction “balloons” the upper vagina, which acts as a “receptacle” for the semen. Meanwhile, PR contraction narrows the lower vagina, which may effect an increase of penile erection and rigidity. The cervico‐motor reflex may be incorporated as an investigative tool in sexual act disorders.     

Correlates of Voluntary vs. Involuntary Part‐time Employment among US Women

This article presents a study of the extent to which type and duration of labour force attachment add to the explanatory power of psychological, demographic, and family household characteristics to predict voluntary (n=166) vs. involuntary part‐time (n=160) employment of women in the United States. We use the terms ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’ to reflect the woman's choice in accepting to work in paid part‐time employment. In this context, voluntary part‐time work is not meant to be construed as charitable, non‐paid activities, but rather is construed as individuals who are working part‐time but who would prefer to be working full‐time, if a suitable job were available. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Market Experience (NLSLME), we found that labour market attachment characteristics added little to predict part‐time employment status (involuntary vs. voluntary) and had virtually no effect on the odds of any other correlates on employment status. The major exception was number of years of unemployment. The longer working women were previously unemployed, the greater the likelihood they were involuntarily employed in part‐time jobs. In addition, we found that marriage and private sector employment decreased the likelihood of involuntary part‐time employment. Findings suggest that involuntarily part‐time employed women appear to be ‘settling’ for what they can get, namely, part‐time rather than full‐time jobs and that unmarried part‐timers may be viewed as a stigmatized or marginal group more likely to be employed in the public rather than private sector. Policy implications and future research are discussed.     

Delivering development? Evidence on self‐help groups as development intermediaries in South Asia and Africa

Donors and governments increasingly seek to deliver development projects through community‐based organizations such as self‐help groups (SHGs), but little is known about the effectiveness of such arrangements. This article briefly summarizes hypotheses regarding the effectiveness of interventions using SHGs and presents the results of an evidence review on the impacts of interventions delivered through SHGs on health, finance, agriculture and empowerment outcomes in South Asia and sub‐Saharan Africa. Though the impacts of SHG‐based interventions are generally positive, the evidence base is limited and does not generally test whether alternative delivery mechanisms might be more effective.     

Form Perception of Partly Occluded Shapes in 4‐Month‐Old Infants

Two habituation experiments were conducted to investigate how 4‐month‐old infants perceive partly occluded shapes. In the first experiment, we presented a simple, partly occluded shape to the infants until habituation was reached. Then we showed either a probable completion (one that would be predicted on the basis of both local and global cues) or an improbable completion. Longer looking times were found for the improbably completed shape (compared to probable and control conditions), suggesting that the probable shape was perceived during partial occlusion. In the second experiment, infants were habituated to more ambiguous partly occluded shapes, where local and global cues would result in different completions. For adults, the percept of these shapes is usually dominated by global influences. However, after habituation the infants looked longer at the globally completed shapes. These results suggest that by the age of 4 months, infants are able to infer the perceptual completion of partly occluded shapes, but for more ambiguous shapes, this completion seems to be dominated by local influences.     

Evaluating phase movement theory with the dramatis personae of time: 1923–1988

Parsons and Bales maintain that the temporal organization of a group's activities is characterized by a periodic swing between internal and external imperatives. The phase hypothesis holds that at the societal level phases characterized by an emphasis on solving external problems will be accompanied by economic prosperity. Temporal organization is also characterized by adaptive upgrading in response to environmental demands and a concomitant secular trend, or increasingly external focus. To test these hypotheses, 3,209 roles featured on the cover of Time magazine from 1923 to 1988 were classified as either internal (educators, mass media, entertainers, athletes, celebrities, private interest group leaders, religious leaders, and labor leaders) or external (politicians, public interest group leaders, military, administrators, scientists, and foreigners). A Phase Index was determined by the proportion of external roles. The level of business activity was established by the Cleveland Trust Company's “American Business Activity” index. While Henry Luce was editor‐in‐chief of Time (1923–1967), the phase and business cycles were correlated at +.58 (p <.01), and for the 60‐year period from 1923 to 1988 the correlation was +.468 (p = .001). Lagged values of the Phase Index produced steadily increasing correlations with business activity, from a seven‐year lag (r = ‐0.048) to a maximum correlation of +0.485 with a two‐year lag, suggesting that the Phase Index is a two‐year leading indicator of the business cycle. The trend hypothesis was evaluated by regression analysis. An increase in the proportion of external roles from 1923 to 1988 was found to be significant (Y = 63.5 + .151(X), p = .0052). Increasing numbers of “villain” roles suggest that high levels of external activity in the 1970s and 1980s may be creating internal problems. These strains may be a sign of transition from an external to an internal phase. These data are interpreted as supporting Parsons and Bales’ phase and trend hypotheses.     

A moral vision: human dignity in the eyes of the founders of sociology

The case argued in this paper is not that the concerns of the founders of sociology are uniformly and in every particular still our own (Runciman, 2008), but that the concepts and methods used to address just one of their concerns were both ground breaking and of enduring value (Shilling and Mellor, 2001, 2011, for example, make a similar claim). Such a concern focused on the kind of morality grounded in a capitalist social order and, by implication, how it might be theorized. This generated in the process the uniquely sociological operationalization of what had seemed hitherto a philosophical concept: human dignity, along with the freedom and autonomy that attend it. Certainly, the priorities differed in each of the contributions to this endeavour but, in coming at the problem from different standpoints, the concept of dignity came to appear more rounded, more substantive and more relevant to the human condition in all its historical specificity. Quite crucially, there is also in these sources from the classical period of sociology an intimation of method: both the way in which human dignity is to be ‘perceived’ within an inter‐personal dialectic at a micro‐level and, at a macro‐level, how we can discern that dignity transcends artificial confinement by any one aspect of life (be it economic, political or cultural).¹     

Infants' Sensitivity to the Causal Features of Means‐End Support Sequences in Action and Perception

Current work has yielded differential findings regarding infants' ability to perceptually detect the causal structure of a means‐end support sequence. Resolving this debate has important implications for perception‐action dissociations in this domain of object knowledge. In Study 1, 12‐month‐old infants' ability to perceive the causal structure of a cloth‐pulling sequence was assessed via a habituation paradigm. After seeing an event in which a supported toy was moved by pulling a cloth that it sat on, 12‐month‐old infants demonstrated longer looking to events that violated the causal structure of this sequence than to events that preserved the causal structure but varied other perceptual features of the event. Studies 2 and 3 investigated 10‐month‐olds' interpretations of means‐end support sequences using both a habituation paradigm and a task that assessed infants' own means‐end actions. Whereas 10‐month‐olds failed to demonstrate an understanding of the causal structure when tested using a flat cloth as the support (Study 2), sensitivity to this structure was apparent when a rectangular box was the support. These patterns were evident in both action and perception (Study 3). Moreover, individual variation in action task performance was related to visual habituation performance. The results are discussed with respect to the relation between action and perception in infancy.     

Stress Pattern Preference in Spanish‐Learning Infants: The Role of Syllable Weight

As a result of exposure, infants acquire biases that conform to the rhythmic properties of their native language. Previous lexical stress preference studies have shown that English‐ and German‐, but not French‐learning infants, show a bias toward trochaic words. The present study explores Spanish‐learning infants' lexical stress preferential patterns and the role of syllable weight at 9 months of age. Spanish is a syllable‐timed language with no vowel reduction and variable stress. Around 50% of the word types in Spanish are disyllabic, with a superior proportion of trochees than iambs (60% and 40%, respectively). Experiment 1 with CV.CV pseudo‐words failed to reveal a clear trochaic bias in 9‐month‐old Spanish‐learning infants. However, when preference was explored with items containing a heavy syllable (CVC.CV and CV.CVC, respectively), both a trochaic (Experiment 2) and an iambic preference (Experiment 3) could be elicited. These results suggest that knowledge about the close and highly regular link between heavy syllables and stress assignment in Spanish can be easily acquired and determines infants' preference at 9 months of age, while for CV.CV items, the trochaic bias appears to be weak. Our results broaden the current knowledge on the factors that determine the emergence of rhythmic biases.     

Differences in How 12‐ and 24‐Month‐Olds Interpret the Gaze of Adults

This study examined the hypothesis that toddlers interpret an adult's head turn as evidence that the adult was looking at something, whereas younger infants interpret gaze based on an expectancy that an interesting object will be present on the side to which the adult has turned. Infants of 12 months and toddlers of 24 months were first shown that an adult head turn to the side predicted the activation of a remote‐controlled toy on that side of the room. After this connection had been demonstrated, participants were assigned to 2 conditions. In the head turn condition the toys were removed but the adult continued to produce head turns to the side. In the toy condition the adult stopped turning but the toys continued to be activated when the participant turned toward them. Results showed that, compared to 12‐month‐olds, 24‐month‐olds were more likely to continue to turn to the side when the adult continued to turn even though there was no longer anything of interest to see. In contrast, compared to 24‐month‐olds, 12‐month‐olds were, if anything, more likely to continue to turn to the side in the condition in which the adult stopped turning. The latter result was replicated in a condition in which the activation of the toy was not contingent on the child's own head turn. These results imply that the meaning of gaze following may change significantly over the 2nd year of life. For 12‐month‐olds, gaze is a useful predictor of where interesting sights may occur. In contrast, for 24‐month‐olds, gaze may be a signal that the adult is looking at something.     

On‐The‐Job Skills and Earnings of Returned Migrants

In this paper we study the factors altering the probability of migrants to acquire additional on‐the‐job skills while abroad, and the determinants of their earnings level, using a sample of 6120 returned migrants from Bosnia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Kyrgyz Republic, Romania, and Tadjikistan. We use a two‐stage procedure to estimate a system of two equations where on‐the‐job skills and earnings are determined simultaneously. The probability of acquiring skills on‐the‐job is found to be positively affected by the level of earnings. It is also higher for migrants who are employed in the same sector (pre‐ and during migration), and for migrants with lower initial financial status. Interestingly, the probability is lower for migrants with university education. The earnings level is positively affected by acquired on‐the‐job skills, the level of education, and the duration of migration. Women have lower earnings while those (males and females) who have learned the language of the destination country have higher earnings. The country variables are statistically significant in all cases but one, indicating that there are differences in the acquisition of skills and earnings reflecting unspecified differences among the countries of origin.