URBAN TRANSPORTATION MODE CHOICE AND TRIP COMPLEXITY: BICYCLISTS STICK TO THEIR GEARS

Commuters' lives have become more complicated with rising income. In my model, transportation mode choices are made simultaneously with the choice of whether to make multiple stops. Using travel behavior data, I estimate the model using an error components logit (ECL) specification to account for commuters' unobserved preferences for particular modes and find that omitting unobserved preferences underestimates value of travel time relative to the crossing‐components ECL. The estimated model predicts that increased trip complexity causes substitution away from public transit to automobiles, with the exception that bicyclists transition only to more complex trips and do not change transportation modes. (JEL R41, C25)     

Pointing to Visible and Invisible Targets

We investigated how the visibility of targets influenced the type of point used to provide directions. In Study 1, we asked 605 passersby in three localities for directions to well-known local landmarks. When that landmark was in plain view behind the requester, most respondents pointed with their index fingers, and few respondents pointed more than once. In contrast, when the landmark was not in view, respondents pointed initially with their index fingers, but often elaborated with a whole-hand point. In Study 2, we covertly filmed the responses from 157 passersby we approached for directions, capturing both verbal and gestural responses. As in Study 1, few respondents produced more than one gesture when the target was in plain view and initial points were most likely to be index finger points. Thus, in a Western geographical context in which pointing with the index finger is the dominant form of pointing, a slight change in circumstances elicited a preference for pointing with the whole hand when it was the second or third manual gesture in a sequence.     

Japanese Children’s Knowledge of the Facial Components of Basic Emotions

While numerous studies have investigated children’s recognition of facial emotional expressions, little evidence has been gathered concerning their explicit knowledge of the components included in such expressions. Thus, we investigated children’s knowledge of the facial components involved in the expressions of happiness, sadness, anger, and surprise. Four- and 5-year-old Japanese children were presented with the blank face of a young character, and asked to select facial components in order to depict the emotions he felt. Children’s overall performance in the task increased as a function of age, and was above chance level for each emotion in both age groups. Children were likely to select the Cheek raiser and Lip corner puller to depict happiness, the Inner brow raiser, Brow lowerer, and Lid droop to depict sadness, the Brow lowerer and Upper lid raiser to depict anger, and the Upper lid raiser and Jaw drop to depict surprise. Furthermore, older children demonstrated a better knowledge of the involvement of the Upper lid raiser in surprise expressions.     

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.     

Almost Like a Real Band: Navigating a Gendered Jazz Art World

Professional jazz has been organized around two contradictory cultures. Historically, the jazz art world has followed norms of meritocracy, which promote equality across boundaries of race and class. At the same time a culture of exclusivity, anchored in gendered essentialism, has severely limited female participation. By analyzing interview data with artists from the Hamilton College Jazz Archive, we illustrate how these contradictory cultures of inclusion and exclusion operate to channel women into feminized roles in the jazz world. We then discuss how women employ a number of strategies to work around the culture of exclusivity and capitalize on the norms and values of musical meritocracy. Despite institutional openings in professional jazz that emerged following the women’s movement, female jazz artists continue to face strong barriers toward full equality in the jazz world. Although female artists consistently demonstrate that they possess equal musical skills to male musicians according to the norms of meritocracy that guide professional jazz, women remain on the margins of the jazz art world.     

Committed,Grateful, and Worthy of Acceptance: <Emphasis Type="Italic">Master Chef Israel</Emphasis> and the Social Construction of Immigration Narratives

The rhetoric of nations, such as Israel, often assigns immigrants social positions in nationalist reconstructions. Given the active role the media has taken in reconstructing the nation, this paper suggests looking at Master Chef Israel (MCI) as an arena in which immigrant contestants are staged as recruited to engage in the reconstruction and branding of Israel. A narrative analysis of five seasons of MCI and interviews with 15 contestants tracked three narratives, each of which reveals a different mode of branding Israel. The show branded Jewish immigrants as equipped with the necessary capital to become Israelis, while those who converted to Judaism and immigrated to Israel were expected to show commitment both to their new religion and to their new country. In the third narrative, MCI staged the patriotism of individuals who immigrated after marrying an Israeli citizen as a gradually emerging sentiment based on the extent to which their difference enabled the incorporation of an Israeli component into their overall identity.     

Negotiating Symbolic Boundaries in Conflict Resolution: Religion and Ethnicity in Turkey’s Kurdish Conflict

This article is an inquiry into understanding why supranational religious identity often fails to act as a conflict resolution tool in religiously homogenous ethnic conflicts. Narrowing its focus down to the role of religious elites as potential peacemakers in such conflict zones, it proposes the divergence in their conceptualizations of religious and ethnic identities as an explanatory factor. Building on 62 in-depth interviews conducted in Turkey with Sunni Muslim Kurdish and Turkish religious elites, it identifies a three-fold typology of religious and ethnic identities, as conceptualized by these elites: 1) religio-ethnic; 2) ethno-religious; 3) religious. After exemplifying each category with interview data it demonstrates the role these distinctions play in preventing the successful implementation of “Muslim fraternity” as a solution to the Kurdish conflict in Turkey. With these findings, the article contributes to both the literature on religion in conflict resolution and that on identity formation and boundary making. While it invites the former to turn its gaze from macro-level structural factors to meso- and micro-level cultural factors in analyzing religious elite involvement in conflict resolution, it invites the latter to stop employing “ethnicity” as an all-encompassing term (that covers a vast array of identity markers including religion) and focus, instead, on the gradations between religion and ethnicity as sources of identity.     

Effect of Health on Retirement of Older Americans: a Competing Risks Study

Retirement is an important event in the life of an individual. The decision to retire or exit from full-time employment may be motivated by several factors, including health. This paper explores the effect of both subjective and relatively more objective physical and mental health conditions on the probability of exit from full-time employment. Using longitudinal data on older Americans from ten waves of the Health and Retirement Study (1992–2010), eight health indices are created from a wide range of health measures by principal component analysis. The effect of these health indices on the time until exit from full-time employment is empirically examined in a proportional hazard model. Single and competing risk specifications are estimated that allow for multiple spells of full-time employment and control for unobserved heterogeneity. The main results suggest that better self-reported health decreases the likelihood of exit from full- time employment, while poor physical health (functional limitations factor) increases the likelihood of exit from full-time employment via complete retirement and disability. For mental health, I find that depression increases the likelihood of exit via complete retirement, part-time work and unemployment while cognitive disorders lead to an increase in likelihood of exit via the disability exit route. Hence, physical and mental health problems are both impediments to continued work. These results have implications for public policies targeted towards retaining older workers within the labor market.     

Sexual Orientation,Labour Earnings,and Household Income in Canada

Using five cycles of a large nationally representative Canadian health survey, covering 2008 to 2012, the present paper examines the extent of labour earnings and household income gaps among gays, lesbians, and heterosexuals. The data used in this paper has the advantage of allowing for a direct classification of sexual orientation, through respondent self-identification. In accord with previous reports, this paper finds that homosexual females holding fulltime employment earn statistically significantly above comparable heterosexual females. Homosexual males with fulltime employment, on the other hand, are found no different in their earnings, from otherwise identical heterosexual males. When household income is considered, data reveal that lesbian households have statistically significantly lower incomes compared with otherwise identical gay households, who outearn heterosexuals as well. This pattern, not previously reported for Canada but observed in some other countries, is likely due to the combined effects of the general gender wage gap, the fading of homosexual males’ wage penalty, and the existence of two male income earners in a gay male household.     

The Times They are A’changing: Multigenerational Family Simulations

Multigenerational households are increasingly affecting both the individual and family as well as community organizations and social policies. Social work and other family studies students can profit from educational modalities that use adult learning applications through a systems life-course perspective, the whole family aging over time. Family simulation software—addressing multigenerational families, such as two or more adult generations living together—builds on a previous paper (Marriage & Family Review, Feb. 2015). Social class, among other demographic and environmental variables, is emphasized. Agent-based family social network simulation of multigenerational families can facilitate experiential learning. An automatically generated life events report, based on both factual data and specific family characteristics, can be used as a classroom case study for role playing and assessing.