Toward an Animal Model of Gambling: Delay Discounting and the Allure of Unpredictable Outcomes

Laboratory investigations of gambling are sometimes criticized as lacking ecological validity because the stakes wagered by human subjects are not real or no real monetary losses are experienced. These problems may be partially addressed by studying gambling in laboratory animals. Toward this end, data are summarized which demonstrate that laboratory animals will work substantially harder and prefer to work under gambling-like schedules of reinforcement in which the number of responses per win is unpredictable. These findings are consistent with a delay discounting model of gambling which holds that rewards obtained following unpredictable delays are more valuable than rewards obtained following predictable delays. According to the delay discounting model, individuals that discount delayed rewards at a high rate (like pathological gamblers) perceive unpredictably delayed rewards to be of substantially greater value than predictable rewards. The reviewed findings and empirical model support the utility of studying animal behavior as an ecologically valid first-approximation of human gambling.     

A spatial analysis of population dynamics and climate change in Africa: potential vulnerability hot spots emerge where precipitation declines and demographic pressures coincide

We present an integrative measure of exposure and sensitivity components of vulnerability to climatic and demographic change for the African continent in order to identify “hot spots” of high potential population vulnerability. Getis-Ord Gi* spatial clustering analyses reveal statistically significant locations of spatio-temporal precipitation decline coinciding with high population density and increase. Statistically significant areas are evident, particularly across central, southern, and eastern Africa. The highly populated Lake Victoria basin emerges as a particularly salient hot spot. People located in the regions highlighted in this analysis suffer exceptionally high exposure to negative climate change impacts (as populations increase on lands with decreasing rainfall). Results may help inform further hot spot mapping and related research on demographic vulnerabilities to climate change. Results may also inform more suitable geographical targeting of policy interventions across the continent.     

Language and the Shaping of Social Work

This article is concerned with the power of language to shapeand confirm social work’s identity and to control itsessential direction and task. Social work has perennially concerneditself with communication but paid surprisingly little attentionto the more abstract concept of language. The authors tracethe changing language used throughout social work’s UKhistory, placing this into socio-political and socio-economiccontext and analysing the discourses thus created and promoted.We identify three broad periods in the development of socialwork, characterized as the moral enterprise, the therapeuticenterprise and the managerial enterprise. We conclude by connectingthis discussion with some key challenges, issues and dilemmascurrently facing social work in the criminal justice and communitycare arenas, highlighting the language and discourse of punishment,risk management, consumerism and the market economy. The articleconcludes by arguing that social work must reclaim the languageof its activity as it engages with the challenges to its identity.     

Social Work, Asset-based Welfare and the Child Trust Fund

Asset-based welfare represents a new departure in British incomemaintenance policy and the Child Trust Fund is its most importantcontemporary example. This Research Note explores the claimsmade for asset-based welfare in general and for the Child TrustFund in particular. It sets out the results of an investigationinto the views of young people into potential uses which individualsmight make of the Fund. It then suggests a series of reasonswhy social workers ought to take a particular interest in thedevelopment of asset-based welfare policies and the benefitswhich might flow from them.     

“Habits of employees”: smoking, spies, and shopfloor culture at Hammermill Paper Company

As cigarette smoking expanded dramatically during the early twentieth century, it brought more and more workers into conflict with the policies and demands of the manufacturers who employed them. As this paper shows, addiction to nicotine ignited daily struggles over workers’ shopfloor rights and the ability of employers to set rules, establish discipline, and monitor behavior. A specific set of records from the archives of the Hammermill Paper Company, a paper manufacturer once based in Erie, Pennsylvania, provide a unique opportunity to explore the impact of cigarette consumption on labor relations during the era of mass production, as two nosy factory spies probed and documented worker actions and attitudes in the summer of 1915. As a result of their intelligence gathering, the spies discovered a factory-wide work culture rooted in the addictive pleasure of cigarette smoke. This discovery worried them. Worker-smokers needed to dampen their hunger for nicotine with frequent, and often clandestine, breaks from work, typically in defiance of “no-smoking” rules, employer designations for the uses of factory space, and bosses’ demands for continuous production. Highlighting the intersections of the histories of labor, smoking, and addiction, this paper argues that cigarettes were a key battleground in workers’ and managers’ intensifying struggles over who really controlled the industrial shopfloor during the early 1900s.     

Pursuing Political Persuasion: War and Peace Frames in the United States after September 11th

Despite the prominence of framing analysis in social movement research, the ways that power-holders and challengers attempt to persuade the general public remain under-theorized. We develop a multidimensional typology of what content producers frequently anticipate will make their frames potent. Moreover, we argue that several contextual factors influence which of these dimensions are emphasized in frames. To assess these propositions, we conducted an analysis of statements issued by President Bush and 10 US peace movement organizations following the September 11th attacks. Both sides touched upon all dimensions. President Bush's statements took advantage of discursive and emotional opportunities in crafting messages supportive of war and repression. Illustrating their strategic nature, PMO statements either appropriated or rejected dominant discourses for any single dimension. While peace groups took advantage of emotional opportunities, oppositional cultures curtailed their use of discursive opportunities. Lacking democratic legitimacy and rational legal authority, peace groups devoted a higher proportion of text to establishing the empirical credibility and the moral authority of their claims. The study advances social movement theory by highlighting the interplay of culture, power, and agency in the production of public collective action frames.     

Black heterosexuals’ attitudes toward lesbians and gay men in the United States

Although the direction and intensity of Black heterosexuals’ attitudes toward homosexuality have been topics for considerable speculation, empirical data from representative samples previously have not been available. In the current article we report findings from a two‐wave telephone survey with a national probability sample of 391 Black heterosexual adults. Results indicated that negative attitudes toward homosexuality are widespread but do not appear to be more prevalent among Blacks than among Whites. Gender differences in Black heterosexuals’ attitudes (men's attitudes toward gay men were more negative than their attitudes toward lesbians or women's attitudes toward gay men) appeared to result primarily from men's greater tendency to regard male homosexuality as unnatural. The single most important predictor of attitudes was the attribution of choice to sexual orientation: Respondents who believed that homosexuality is beyond an individual's control expressed significantly more favorable attitudes toward gay men and lesbians than did respondents who regarded homosexuality as a choice. Consistent with previous research in predominantly White samples, respondents were more likely to express favorable attitudes if they were highly educated, unmarried, politically liberal, registered to vote and not religious, and if they included Blacks in their concept of gay men. In addition, respondents reported more favorable attitudes if they had experienced personal contact with gay men or lesbians, but this was not a significant predictor of attitudes when other variables were statistically controlled. Possible differences between Blacks’ and Whites’ social constructions of sexual orientation are discussed.     

Professional Distance and Social Work: Stretching the Elastic?

Abstract

Professional distance and the parallel concept of models of practice reliant on professional objectivity have been major platforms in professional education. In social work, these ideas are often seen as contentious, unreasonable and, in some cases, unrealistic. Radical, feminist and rural social work approaches, for example, suggest that the expert role is not only inappropriate, but can be counter-productive and disrespectful of the people with whom we work. Postmodern approaches call for a deconstruction of professionalism in favour of context-specific partnerships between worker and client. How can workers ensure good, professional practice within a more flexible approach to professional distance and expertise? What are the issues and how may they be resolved? Are the boundaries of the professional relationship elastic and, if so, what are the consequences for practice and the individual worker? The present article explores the notion of flexible, elastic boundaries using literature and research from radical, postmodern, feminist and rural social work approaches.     

Divided we stand: Defying hegemony in global public relations theory and practice?

The last decade has seen the world becoming increasingly complex. One way of dealing with complexity, according to Schwab (2010a), is to look for certainties or solutions that impose order by simplifying. The authors contend that this is a risk in public relations practice and the academy. While recognizing their benefits they warn against attempts to produce global models which also seek to impose hegemony and argue for maintaining a diversity that reflects reality. They take the cases of the UK and Singapore as respective exemplars where hegemony has arguably occurred and where it can still be resisted. They call for a professional and epistemological stand against hegemony.