Effects of Mindfulness-Based Therapies for Female Sexual Dysfunction: A Meta-Analytic Review

Mindfulness-based therapy (MBT) represents a potentially efficacious treatment for female sexual dysfunction (FSD). A number of recent trials assessing MBT for FSD have been published, but we are aware of no existing meta-analysis synthesizing these results. We conducted a literature review to identify all published trials of MBT for FSD. References of retrieved studies were searched and key authors were contacted with requests for complete but unpublished trials. Eleven trials, including a total of 449 participants, were identified. Two of these studies were under review at the time of the current analyses. Four trials utilized wait-list controls. All aspects of sexual function and subjective sexual well-being exhibited significant improvement during MBT, with effect sizes generally moderate. Controlled effect sizes versus wait list were of similar magnitude in most cases; however, they did not reach statistical significance for multiple outcome measures. Results for some outcomes were consistent with possible publication bias. For some outcomes, larger effect sizes tended to be reported in studies requiring participants to be in a romantic relationship or studies providing individual (versus group) therapy. MBT may be an efficacious intervention for FSD. However, important limitations of the current literature and future directions for research are discussed.     

The Ethical Implications of Mandatory Computer Ownership for Students

Many universities, colleges, and schools are contemplating mandatory computer ownership policies for undergraduate students. Review of these policies and the rhetoric employed in debate over such policies leaves some with strong misgivings. I suggest that seemingly widely held social values and a number of suspect assumptions underlie such policies, the questions raised by both their supporters and detractors, and the answers offered in response to those questions. Moreover, I identify four serious ethical concerns linked to mandatory computer ownership policies. Therefore, I argue that social science educators and practitioners have an ethical responsibility to resist such policies.     

A New Marriage Squeeze for Black Women: The Role of Racial Intermarriage by Black Men

Recent declines in the rate of marriage among Black women have been accompanied by substantial increases in rates of interracial marriage, especially between Black men and non‐Black women. Explanations for the retreat from marriage among Black women have focused on deficits in the quantity and quality of available partners, and the role of racial intermarriage largely has been ignored. This study examines the impact of interracial marriage by Black men on the marriage prospects of Black women. First, our analysis of data from the 1990 Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) reveals that intermarried Black men are selective of those with the highest levels of education, income, and occupational prestige. Second, multilevel analyses, using both the IPUMS and Panel Study of Income Dynamics, show that the level of intermarriage in metropolitan areas is significantly related to the marital behaviors of Black women. Local rates of intermarriage among Black men reduce the likelihood that Black women currently will be married and that they will make the transition to marriage. These effects are especially acute for highly educated Black women whose marriage markets are defined by those Black men who are most likely to intermarry. Finally, our analyses indicate that intermarriage affects the marital prospects of Black women by negatively affecting the pool of economically attractive marriage partners in the metropolitan area.     

Residential mobility between cities and suburbs: race, suburbanization, and back-to-the-city moves

Information from the 1979 to 1985 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics is merged with data on respondents’ tract and metropolitan area of residence to examine patterns and determinants of residential mobility between central cities and suburbs. Consistent with the life-cycle model of residential mobility, mobility in both directions declines with age, but on balance the presence of young children deters moving to the suburbs. Among blacks, education increases the probability of moving from cities to suburbs, while high income retains blacks and whites in suburbs. Consistent with the place stratification model. blacks are substantially less likely than whites to move from cities to suburbs, and substantially more likely to move from suburbs to cities, even after standardizing for racial differences in sociodemographic characteristics. High levels of violent crime and unemployment in cities relative to suburbs also tend to spur city-to-suburb mobility or inhibit suburb-to-city moves.     

Indigenous mobility traditions,colonialism, and the anthropocene

ABSTRACT

The anthropocene is often discussed as an era of ‘new’ environmental changes that require unprecedented forms of societal adaptation, one example being climate-induced resettlement. Yet discussions of the anthropocene can also be better contextualized in terms of their featuring certain phenomena as ‘new’ that are really much more longstanding phenomena. For example, many Indigenous peoples have ancient traditions of environmental ‘mobility.’ This essay reviews some of the history of Indigenous philosophies, especially Anishinaabe, of mobility, migration, and resettlement. Often these philosophies focus on fluid and transformative relationships as constituting the fabric of resilient societies. Indigenous traditions of mobility are critically relevant for climate justice. They put into relief how colonial power can operate as a containment strategy that works to curtail mobility. In this way, looking at Indigenous mobility in the anthropocene involves unraveling layers of colonialism where containment has been widely imposed. This claim can be used to signal some of the dangers of centering the causal role of climate change in certain cases societal movement. To further support our claims, the essay concludes with a brief analysis of some of the literature and testimonies on resettlement in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska.     

Is There a Right Way to Nudge? The Practice and Ethics of Choice Architecture

Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler’s Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness presents an influential account of why ‘choice architecture’ should be used to ‘nudge’ people into making better decisions than they would otherwise make. In this essay we: (1) explain the main concepts that Thaler and Sunstein rely upon to defend their project; (2) clarify the main conceptual problems that have arisen in discussions about nudges; (3) clarify practical difficulties that can arise during nudge practice; (4) review the main ethical and political objections that have been raised against nudging; and (5) clarify why issues related to meaning can pose methodological problems for creating effective choice architecture.     

Shelf Loathing: Cross Docking at an Online Retailer

Online customers expect to wait, sometimes for a delay of many days. At the fulfillment center, there might be an opportunity to fill customer orders earlier than the due date through a cross‐docking transaction: rather than picking the item from inventory, the item moves directly from the receiving to the shipping dock, saving shelving and picking transactions. While cross docking reduces shelving and picking costs, it risks changing customer expectations for how soon a product will be delivered. Given customer order arrivals random in quantity and due dates, random replenishment arrivals, and costs (or benefits) for shipping a product early, we characterize the optimal decision as to whether to cross dock a replenishment item to fulfill demand that is not immediately due or to wait to (hopefully) cross dock in later periods. With multiple demands and due dates, the cross‐docking decision depends on the number of unfulfilled demands in each period across the horizon, the number of units that have just arrived (available for cross docking), picking and shelving costs, and the delay cost (or benefit). We formulate the problem as a Markov decision process, determine the structure of the optimal policy, and propose a well‐performing heuristic.     

Housing Discrimination and Residential Mobility: Impacts for Blacks and Whites

We merge metropolitan-level measures of racial discrimination in housing markets derived from two national housing audit studies, along with tract-level 1980 census data, with the 1979-1985 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to examine the impact of housing discrimination on patterns of residential mobility between neighborhoods of varying racial composition. We find no evidence that housing discrimination in the metropolitan area impedes African Americans' mobility into whiter neighborhoods. Contrary to expectations, in multivariate analyses based on black movers, the level of housing discrimination is positively associated with the percentage of the population that is white in the tract of destination. Housing discrimination against African Americans is positively associated with the rate at which mobile white households move into whiter census tracts. These findings imply that eliminating racial discrimination by real estate and rental agents will fail to increase black residential mobility into racially-mixed and predominantly white neighborhoods. For both black and white households, life-cycle factors, such as age, children, and home ownership, impede mobility out of the current neighborhood. Conditional upon moving, socioeconomic resources, such as education and income, facilitate mobility into whiter neighborhoods.     

Reactions to Transgender Women and Men in Public Restrooms: Correlates and Gender Differences

This study examined reactions to transgender people in public restrooms. Participants (n = 158) completed measures of essentialism and trait aggression and read scenarios where they imagined sharing a restroom with a transwoman or a transman. Participants indicated which restroom targets should use and rated potential negative reactions. Results indicate that targets were assigned to restrooms corresponding to birth sex rather than chosen identity. Women’s reactions to transgender women were more negative than men’s; men were more negative in reactions toward transmen. Essentialism predicted some (but not all) reactions for all participants. Among women, trait aggression predicted negative reactions, but only to transmen. Among men, aggression predicted negative reactions, but only toward transwomen. This suggests that despite views that transgender people belong in birth-sex restrooms, men and women’s trait aggression predicts negative reactions toward them in such instances.