Neutralizing marginally deviant behavior: Bingo players and superstition

Bingo is one of the most popular and most accepted forms of gambling in the United States today. Yet, despite its popularity, many bingo players are not completely comfortable with the moral rightness of their actions. This participant observation and interview study spanning a 5 year period shows how bingo players use superstitious strategies, such as feelings, hunches and psi, attitudes, and luck to neutralize their marginally deviant behaviors.     

Smart money

Rick was an ambitious entrepreneur beginning the first of several businesses at age 16. He amassed a fortune by age 35. Between the ages of 42 and 50, his gambling rampage liquidated his assets, he lost his business and license to practice in his field, and he ended up in debt of over $1 million. Today at age 53 he is starting a new career in counseling and working with compulsive gamblers.     

Measurement of Hispanic ethnicity in the U.S. census: an evaluation based on latent-class analysis

"Two models, the U.S. census model and the latent-class model, are compared in their application to evaluating measurements of ethnicity. Although the census approach assumes that the response categories of a questionnaire item correspond to groups in the population, the latent-class approach seeks to assess whether any set of response categories can represent observed ethnic heterogeneity. Data collected using the 1990 census Hispanic-origin question and other instruments for measuring ethnicity suggest that the latent-class approach is superior whenever the response categories are not known to be valid. In particular, using the latent-class model, this article rejects the census model's assumption of a single dimension of meaning underlying responses to the Hispanic-origin question."     

New information from the State Committee on Statistics of the USSR

Selected data concerning the USSR are presented. They concern vital statistics by republic for 1989 for rural and urban areas, birth order, life expectancy by sex, and population change and vital statistics for cities with a population over one million.     

Effects of fixed costs in two-person sequential bargaining

Rubinstein (1982) considered the problem of dividing a given surplus between two players sequentially, and then proposed a model in which the two players alternately make and respond to each other's offers through time. He further characterized the perfect equilibrium outcomes, which depend on the players time preferences and order of moves. Using both equal and unequal bargaining cost conditions and an unlimited number of rounds, two experiments were designed to compare the perfect equilibrium model to alternative models based on norms of fairness. We report analyses of final agreements, first offers, and number of bargaining rounds, which provide limited support to the perfect equilibrium model, and then conclude by recommending a shift in focus from model testing to specification of the conditions favoring one model over another.     

THE EFFECTS OF PRESTIGE NAMES IN QUESTION WORDING

Although survey researchers are often warned against using prestigenames in questions (e.g., identifying Contra aid as "PresidentReagan's policy"), prestige names are still commonly used. Tolearn more about the effects of using prestige names, we analyzetwo sets of experiments—on judicial confirmation electionsand on an initiative on tax indexing. The results indicate thatprestige names do more than shift responses in one direction—they eliminate the effect of education on DKs and provide moreof a political basis for the responses.     

Assimilation vs. multiculturalism: Views from a community in France

A recent American survey of attitudes toward societal multiculturalism vs. assimilation has found surprisingly widespread support for maintaining heritage cultures not only among immigrant minority groups but also among most subsamples of majority host groups, black and white. Working-class whites are the one exception. This pilot study explores the same attitude domain in a contrasting European setting. Randomly selected samples of middle- and working-class families (a mother, father, and teenage son or daughter) from a small city in France were interviewed. As a group, they were neutral to slightly favorable to immigrants maintaining heritage cultures and languages rather than losing them through assimilation. On measures of attitudes toward specific immigrant groups, there were marked intergroup dyfferunces with Maghrebian Arabs rated leist favorably and Southeast Asians, the model immigrants, most favorably. Comparisons of subgroups of respondents who varied in terms of (a) political left-right orientation, (b) social class standing, (c) degree of religiosity, and (d) generational level provide the base for a more general discussion of cultural assimilation and multiculturalism.     

Religion: friend or foe of the aging?

Religion can be a guide in the quest of older adults for a fuller understanding of their lives and purposes as they cope with the diminishments brought about by aging.