Assigned and Felt Status in Relation to Observer-Coded and Participant-Reported Smiling

Three experiments examined the relation of smiling to experimentally assigned interpersonal status and, within status groups, to self-reported feelings of status/power. In two of the experiments, participants' reports of own and partner smiling were also gathered and examined in relation to assigned status. In Studies 1 and 2, assigned status had no impact on smiling. In Study 3, lower-status participants smiled more than their higher-status partners in one experimental task; in the other task, lower-status participants smiled more than their higher-status partners only when the higher-status person was instructed to be controlling. In none of the experiments was self-reported status/power significantly related to actual smiling. Participant-reported smiling revealed a status effect that was much stronger than that found for actual smiling. Women smiled more than men, and this effect could not be accounted for in terms of status roles nor self-reported feelings of status/power.     

MODELS FOR GENERALIZED LOCATION SYSTEMS

A formal framework is introduced for a general class of assignment systems that can be used to characterize a range of social phenomena. An exponential family of distributions is developed for modeling such systems, allowing for the incorporation of both attributional and relational covariates. Methods are shown for simulation and inference using the location system model. Two illustrative applications (occupational stratification and residential settlement patterns) are presented, and simulation is employed to show the behavior of the location system model in each case; a third application, involving occupancy of positions within an organization, is used to demonstrate inference for the location system. By leveraging established results in the fields of social network analysis, spatial statistics, and statistical mechanics, it is argued that sociologists can model complex social systems without sacrificing inferential tractability.     

Diagnosis and medication overload? A nurse review of the psychiatric histories of older youth in treatment foster care

Prior research has raised concern about the appropriateness of psychotropic medication use and the validity of psychiatric diagnosing for youth in child welfare but has lacked in-depth case information. This study reports results from a psychiatric nurse review conducted with eight youth entering a foster care intervention using case records and multiple key informant interviews. Results revealed extensive histories of unique (nonoverlapping) psychiatric diagnoses (M = 8, range 7-9) and past psychotropic medications (M = 13, range 9-21). The findings highlight the need to improve assessment practices and to create mechanisms that promote greater continuity of psychiatric care.     

BLACK ATTITUDES AND THE 1960s BLACK RIOTS:

Nearly all aggregate-level studies of political violence use objective indicators to assess an aggrieved group's dissatisfactions and deprivations. Critics of this research often note that there are no necessary connections between perceived grievances and their objective counterparts. Moreover, even if such correlations do exist, detractors contend there is no inherent relation between felt grievances and participation in—or support of—collective violent protest. The 1968 Kerner Commission's 15-Cities Study provides a unique set of data to test both of these objections. Correlational analyses of aggregated subjective reports of black grievances and their objective counterparts reveal a weak relation; however, such reports do not correlate with riot activity in directions that would be predicted by conventional wisdom or much of current social science theory.