Keeping in Touch with Context: Non-verbal Behavior as a Manifestation of Communality and Dominance

This research investigated the influence of observed touch on the perceptions of communality and dominance in dyadic interactions. We manipulated four key situational features of haptic behavior in two experiments: the initiation, reciprocity, the degree of formality of touch (Studies 1 and 2), and the context of the interaction (Study 2). The results showed that the default perception of touch, irrespective of whether it is initiated or reciprocated, is the communal intention of the toucher. Furthermore, the initiation of touch was seen as an act of dominance, particularly, when the contact between the actors was primed as being hierarchical. Reciprocation neutralized the perceived asymmetry in dominance, but such inferences seemed to hinge on the fit of the touch with the context: reciprocation of formal touch reduced the asymmetry in the hierarchical context, whereas reciprocation of informal touch reduced the asymmetry in the non-hierarchical context.     

Evaluating the effect of a campus-wide social norms marketing intervention on alcohol-use perceptions,consumption, and blackouts

Objective: To evaluate the effect of a campus-wide social norms marketing intervention on alcohol-use perceptions, consumption, and blackouts at a large, urban, public university. Participants: 4,172 college students (1,208 freshmen, 1,159 sophomores, 953 juniors, and 852 seniors) who completed surveys in Spring 2015 for the Spit for Science Study, a longitudinal study of students' substance use and emotional health. Methods: Participants were e-mailed an online survey that queried campaign readership, perception of peer alcohol use, alcohol consumption, frequency of consumption, and frequency of blackouts. Associations between variables were evaluated using path analysis. Results: We found that campaign readership was associated with more accurate perceptions of peer alcohol use, which, in turn, was associated with self-reported lower number of drinks per sitting and experiencing fewer blackouts. Conclusions: This evaluation supports the use of social norms marketing as a population-level intervention to correct alcohol-use misperceptions and reduce blackouts.     

New bounds for locally irregular chromatic index of bipartite and subcubic graphs

A graph is locally irregular if the neighbors of every vertex v have degrees distinct from the degree of v. A locally irregular edge-coloring of a graph G is an (improper) edge-coloring such that the graph induced on the edges of any color class is locally irregular. It is conjectured that three colors suffice for a locally irregular edge-coloring. In the paper, we develop a method using which we prove four colors are enough for a locally irregular edge-coloring of any subcubic graph admiting such a coloring. We believe that our method can be further extended to prove the tight bound of three colors for such graphs. Furthermore, using a combination of existing results, we present an improvement of the bounds for bipartite graphs and general graphs, setting the best upper bounds to 7 and 220, respectively.     

Knox meets Cox: Adapting epidemiological space-time statistics to demographic studies

Many important questions and theories in demography focus on changes over time, and on how those changes differ over geographic and social space. Space-time analysis has always been important in studying fertility transitions, for example. However, demographers have seldom used formal statistical methods to describe and analyze time series of maps. One formal method, used widely in epidemiology, criminology, and public health, is Knox’s space-time interaction test. In this article, we discuss the potential of the Knox test in demographic research and note some possible pitfalls. We demonstrate how to use familiar proportional hazards models to adapt the Knox test for demographic applications. These adaptations allow for nonrepeatable events and for the incorporation of structural variables that change in space and time. We apply the modified test to data on the onset of fertility decline in Brazil over 1960–2000 and show how the modified method can produce maps indicating where and when diffusion effects seem strongest, net of covariate effects.     

Sharp Right Turn: Globalization and Gender Equity

Research on trends in globalization, particularly its neoliberal variant, has exploded but sources linking these trends to gender equity are difficult to uncover. Discussed mainly in the context of development, gender issues tend to be marginalized from the larger globalization picture. With World Bank as a backdrop, this article disentangles development from the process to inspect the connection between neoliberal globalization (NLG) and gender equity. This is accomplished through three cost‐benefit analyses: an overall evaluation of NLG; how gender equity unfolds under NLG; and how it unfolds under NLG in China. Macroeconomic trends supplemented with examples documenting the plight of women under NLG policies, including garment industry workers in Bangladesh, suggest heightened gender peril ushered in with NLG. China's “state capitalism” modification of NLG, however, tends to mitigate negative consequences for women. A paradigm shift from hegemonic NLG to state capitalism models may offer successful global economic policies that are especially beneficial to women. I conclude with an epilogue reflecting on my original remarks in light of the horrific factory collapse that occurred in Bangladesh less than a month after this address.     

Preference intensity representation: strategic overstating in large elections

If voters vote strategically, is it useful to offer them the possibility of expressing nuanced opinions, or would they always overstate the intensity of their preferences? For additive voting rules, say that a ballot is extremal if it is neither abstention-like nor can be expressed as a mixture of the available ballots. We give a sufficient condition for strategic equivalence: if two rules share the same set of extremal ballots (up to an homothetic transformation), they are strategically equivalent in large elections. This condition is also necessary for the strategic equivalence of positional rules. These results do not hold for small electorates.     

Meaning of Political Controversy in the Classroom: A Dialogue Across The Podium

The abstract value of academic freedom is enjoyed (or not) in concrete settings, as interactional and emergent experiences. We examine classroom political controversy in our experiences, understandings, and values, using grounded theory methods and collective autoethnography by a team of five teachers and students. Our data were generated through electronic and face‐to‐face dialogues. Our analysis, guided by a symbolic interactionist and constructionist framework, yields a picture of Controversy in Action, whereby we navigate Barriers to Open Discussion and Costs of Controversy. Results highlight insights into taken‐for‐granted meanings unexamined in day‐to‐day classroom interaction. We attend to the relevance of the local context in which our classrooms are embedded and the interactional, meaning creating work that goes on in those classrooms, as we negotiate controversy.     

The incidence of metabolic risk factors in an inpatient psychiatric setting

Our study examines risk factors for metabolic syndrome on admission to an acute psychiatric facility and the incidence of medical referrals at discharge. Data on demographics, risk factors for metabolic syndrome, other health risk factors, medications, related diagnoses, and primary care providers and referrals were collected from 125 psychiatric patient charts. Comparison analysis was done for two groups: those with two or more risk factors for metabolic syndrome and those with less than two risk factors. Differences between groups were statistically significant for age, waist circumference, body mass index, high-density lipoprotein, triglycerides, and fasting glucose levels. Few patients were referred to their primary care provider for follow-up care. This study has clinical implications for improving assessment of psychiatric patients at risk for developing metabolic syndrome, for designing interventions to help patients adopt lifestyle changes to mitigate these risks, and for working toward fuller integration of psychiatric and primary care.     

Therapeutic change in Colombian families dealing with violence: therapists, clients, and referring systems in conversation

There is a gap in the Marriage and Family Therapy literature regarding clients', therapists', and family judges' theories of change in relational therapy for family violence. We conducted in-depth interviews with eleven court-referred families, their therapists, and two family judges in Bogota, Colombia. Interviews focused on their expectations of therapy outcomes, their understanding of change, and their evaluation of individual and relational therapy outcomes. We followed a grounded theory approach to data analysis. Analyses showed that therapists, family judges, and clients hold different expectations and theories regarding therapeutic change. Findings are discussed based on existing research on clients' and therapists' ideas about change. Implications for future research and practice are presented.     

Trauma and Bowen Family Systems Theory: Working with Adults Who were Abused as Children

Working with survivors of trauma is mostly challenging, exhausting, long‐term and often ‘messy’, when interventions that ‘should’ work, don't, or the unexpected arises. Nevertheless, explanations that speak to recovery from trauma more and more rely on neurobiological concepts to account for any positive change. Combining the family systems approach of Murray Bowen and recent research on the brain and trauma, post trauma symptoms are viewed as part of the ‘family emotional process’ even when traumatic events have emanated from outside the family system itself. Variations in responses to trauma, including dissociation and self‐harm are discussed in relation to chronic anxiety and ‘differentiation of self’.