Shame,Sexual Compulsivity,and Eroticizing Flirtatious Others: An Experimental Study

Clinical observation and correlational studies with nonclinical samples suggest that a linkage between negative affective states (especially shame) and engagement in erotic pursuits typifies sexual compulsivity. The present study tested whether experimental induction of shame leads to increased interest in erotically suggestive targets among more sexually compulsive individuals. A total of 74 age-traditional heterosexual university students first recalled either an emotionally neutral or a shame-inducing personal experience, then completed a nonpredictive gaze-cueing task featuring flirtatious or emotionally neutral faces of the same or opposite sex. They also rated the faces’ attractiveness and completed a validated sexual compulsivity scale and two control measures (executive control, sociosexuality). Higher (versus lower) sexual compulsivity predicted weaker gaze-triggered attentional orienting in response to the flirtatious opposite-sex face in the shame (versus neutral) condition, and this was accounted for by (higher) attractiveness ratings of the flirtatious opposite-sex face. Shame thus appears to increase sexualization (i.e., reduces salience of agentic features and increases appeal of physical attributes) of erotically suggestive targets among more sexually compulsive individuals.     

Adoption and Termination of Employee Involvement Programs

Using an interview survey of manufacturing establishments that provide 10 years of retrospective data on labor practices, we investigate factors associated with the adoption and termination of employee involvement programs and the relation between these and other human resource policies. In the period studied, more firms introduced than terminated such programs but a sufficiently large number chose to eliminate such programs to indicate that employee involvement does not fit in all business settings. Our results show that business strategy and the use of other complementary human resource policies affect the dynamics of employee involvement use in US manufacturing establishments.     

Social-economic context of parent care: explaining Chinese caregivers' psychological and emotional well-being

This paper explores Chinese familial caregivers' depression and subjective burdens among the current caregivers. Data were collected in 1997-1999 with 110 caregivers who were then taking care of physically dependent parents or parents-in-law. Regression analyses were conducted to assess the factors that influence caregivers depression and subjective burden. Findings suggest that family and individual economic conditions are related to caregivers' depression. Caregivers' involvement in caregiving tasks is associated with caregivers' subjective burden. Poorer self-perceived health is related to higher report of caregivers' depression. The author argues that poorer health and unemployment at the time of drastic social and economic changes in China may have created psychological and emotional anxieties and depression for caregivers. The lack of financial and social stability may have deleterious effect for current caregivers in the future when they grow older and have to be cared for by their one-child generation children.     

On the Edge: the Financial Situation of Older Renters in the Private Rental Market in Sydney

In this study, based mainly on 17 in‐depth interviews, I explore the financial implications of being an older private renter in Sydney. I illustrate that there are three key factors which determine their degree of financial stress – the actual rent being paid; the degree of support from family members and whether the older renter is living in a single or couple household. It is shown that several of the older renters interviewed found it hard to maintain their physical and mental health. The purchasing of basic items such as nutritious food and clothes was difficult. Having to devote such a substantial part of their income to cover the rent and never knowing when there would be another rent increase had a serious impact on the psychological health of some interviewees. The lack of finances encouraged isolation as interviewees found it financially difficult to participate in social activities.     

Neoliberalism,Inequality and Politics: The Changing Face of Australia

Since the early 1980s Australian public policy has undergone the most major transformation since Federation. This transformation has been underwritten by two key principles: liberalism – the view that citizens are autonomous individual actors whose interests are best served when they are free from coercive government interventions into individual action; and marketisation – the belief that free markets are arenas which best enable individual autonomy and produce efficient economic outcomes. These principles define ‘neoliberalism’ or ‘hard liberalism‘. After summarising the major policy changes identified with neoliberalism in Australia, the paper introduces a new research project that examines its impact on socioeconomic inequality, gender inequality and politics and culture. Inspection of relevant data indicates that there are important trends in inequality, public opinion and political behaviour that warrant this investigation.     

TRUSTING THE TAX OFFICE: DOES PUTNAM'S THESIS RELATE TO TAX?

Data from the Community Participation and Citizenship Survey are used to explore the factors that influence people to place trust in strangers and impersonal others. We use Putnam's social capital thesis to explore whether civic engagement and associational membership are major factors in the development of generalised or social trust, and whether this kind of trust is generalisable to trust in government institutions, specifically the Tax Office. There is partial support for Putnam's thesis that civic engagement develops social trust. More important is affective trust developed in the family and through familiar others. We find that trust is generalisable, being extended to strangers and to the impersonal others in government institutions. It is trust that builds trust — and government institutions like the Tax Office begin their task with benefits accrued through generalised trust.     

Ground Zero: reflections on trauma,in/distinction and response

This essay traces practices of tourism and memory at Ground Zero in New York in 2001 in an attempt to understand the perceived significance of what had happened and what it was that had been seen as traumatic. It describes the endless circling of the site, and the need for people to see for themselves. It argues that what happened included not just the impact of the planes but the collapse of the twin towers and the wound to the cityscape that followed. This exploration leads the paper to propose a more all‐embracing view of trauma, not as an injury to the flesh, to the psyche, to the community, or to the built environment, but as the name for an event where the very distinctions between body, psyche, community and environment are called into question. Practices that took place after 9.11 reveal how visitors and rescue workers sought, for example by taking photographs and in their insistent search for remains, to reinstate distinctions that had been obliterated, and how they struggled not only against the use of victims as a means that took place that day, but the ongoing instrumentalisation of life that takes place anyway under contemporary systems of sovereign power.