Intergroup leadership

Strong leadership within a group can increase the likelihood of conflict with other groups. This ingroup/outgroup leadership trade-off, occurring in contexts from businesses and political parties to ethnic groups and nations, raises questions about how a different kind of leadership can improve intergroup relations. Although leadership theory often focuses on a single group, sidelining questions of intergroup dynamics, some leadership literature addresses intergroup relations. Concurrently, some intergroup relations literature directly addresses leadership. Here, we synthesize and attempt to catalyze research on leadership that promotes positive intergroup relations: intergroup leadership. We begin by reviewing the ingroup/outgroup leadership trade-off. Next, we examine five theoretical approaches to leadership that show potential to promote positive intergroup relations. Finally, we identify six characteristics of the literature as it has developed and might develop in the future. These serve as possible directions for research to further illuminate the science and practice of intergroup leadership.     

Elder abuse and neglect in an urban chinese population

This study aims to investigate the prevalence of elder abuse and neglect in an urban Chinese population. A cross-sectional study was performed in a major urban medical center in NanJing, China. A total of 412 participants completed the survey and 145 (35%) participants screened positive for elder abuse and neglect. The mean age of the victims was 69 years and 59% were male. Caregiver neglect was the most common form of abuse, followed by financial exploitation, psychological abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and abandonment. Thirty-six percent of the victims suffered multiple forms of abuse and neglect. In the logistical regression analyses of the data, female gender, lower education and lower income were demographic risk factors associated with elder abuse and neglect. A better understanding of these and additional risk factors associated with elder abuse and neglect in older Chinese people is needed.     

The Experiences of Care Leavers (Post-care Adults) in Social Work Education

This paper explores the experiences of social work students on qualifying degree programmes in the UK who have previously been in care or ‘looked after’. Using a sample drawn from three social work programmes in the North West of England, a semi-structured interview schedule was constructed, with the support of social workers who had been in the care system, to examine the individual journeys of 11 students. This paper aims to explore, with this group of students, how their experiences relate to their decision to apply for a place on a social work course, their experience of admission and the duration of the programme. The paper is of particular relevance to social work educators and makes specific suggestions regarding how current practice in social work education might improve.     

Langevin incremental mixture importance sampling

This work proposes a novel method through which local information about the target density can be used to construct an efficient importance sampler. The backbone of the proposed method is the incremental mixture importance sampling (IMIS) algorithm of Raftery and Bao (Biometrics 66(4):1162–1173, 2010), which builds a mixture importance distribution incrementally, by positioning new mixture components where the importance density lacks mass, relative to the target. The key innovation proposed here is to construct the mean vectors and covariance matrices of the mixture components by numerically solving certain differential equations, whose solution depends on the local shape of the target log-density. The new sampler has a number of advantages: (a) it provides an extremely parsimonious parametrization of the mixture importance density, whose configuration effectively depends only on the shape of the target and on a single free parameter representing pseudo-time; (b) it scales well with the dimensionality of the target; (c) it can deal with targets that are not log-concave. The performance of the proposed approach is demonstrated on two synthetic non-Gaussian densities, one being defined on up to eighty dimensions, and on a Bayesian logistic regression model, using the Sonar dataset. The Julia code implementing the importance sampler proposed here can be found at https://github.com/mfasiolo/LIMIS.     

Retrospective accounts of first exposure to minoritized sexual and gender identities

Although there has been considerable research about attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people, there has been little research into how people first come to be aware of minoritized sexual and gender minority (SGM) identities. This study sought to address this gap. A sample of sexual minority (n = 150) and heterosexual (n = 802) young adults (N = 952; M_age = 18.88 years, SD = 1.75; 949 were cisgender, three were transgender), primarily recruited from a large southern university, were asked retrospectively to recount their first exposure to or awareness of SGM identities. Responses between SGM and heterosexual participants were compared through a variety of analytical approaches, including analyzing themes about the source from which participants first recalled encountering these identities, and whether understanding about these identities came through a personal connection to someone with these identities. SGM participants reported encountering minoritized sexual identities a year earlier than did heterosexual participants, with both groups encountering these concepts in middle childhood, on average. SGM participants were more likely than heterosexual participants to report learning about minoritized gender identities from someone with a minoritized gender identity, while heterosexual participants more often reported learning about these identities from media or celebrities. Heterosexual (vs. SGM) participants were also more likely to imply that minoritized gender identities were adopted to be popular, rather than being authentic identities in themselves. Framed by developmental intergroup theory (DIT), we discuss implications of these findings, especially potential interrelationships with the development of prejudiced attitudes about SGM identities.