Spatial Analysis of the Relationship Between a Life Quality Index,HDI and Poverty in the Province of Buenos Aires and the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires,Argentina

The study of Quality of Life, Poverty and Human Development shares several elements. Nonetheless, while poverty is a measure of “lack” based on a set of basic need variables (unsatisfied basic needs—UBN), human development index (HDI) is derived from the notion of human capabilities. Quality of Life, however, is a measure of achievement. Our goal is to analyze the degree of spatial correspondence between a life quality index (LQI) and the other indices by using bivariate spatial autocorrelation with its global and local values. The comparison of these three indicators at a municipal level in the province of Buenos Aires and in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (the Federal Capital of Argentina) reveals a medium spatial correspondence which leaves room for discussion about the scope and limitations of the indicators. HDI and UBN have a similar spatial configuration while the LQI yields a more fragmented distribution associated to the complexity of its variables, dimension and weights.     

Motivations for Extradyadic Infidelity Revisited

Relationship infidelities are motivated by many distinct factors, with previous research indicating motivations of dissatisfaction, neglect, anger, and sexual desire (Barta & Kiene, 2005). We expand on this by demonstrating additional, empirically distinct motivations for infidelity. Using an Internet-based questionnaire, participants (N = 495), most of whom were young adults, self-reported their infidelities. In addition to evidence for previously studied motivations, our data demonstrate additional factors, including lack of love (“I had ‘fallen out of love with’ my primary partner”), low commitment (“I was not very committed to my primary partner”), esteem (“I wanted to enhance my popularity”), gaining sexual variety (“I wanted a greater variety of sexual partners”), and situational factors (“I was drunk and not thinking clearly”). Our results also show personality correlates with infidelity motivations. Consistent with predictions, attachment insecurity was associated with motivations of anger, lack of love, neglect, low commitment, and esteem, while unrestricted sociosexual orientation was associated with sexual variety. Implicit beliefs (e.g., growth, destiny, romanticism) were differentially associated with sexual desire, low commitment, lack of love, and neglect. These findings highlight multifaceted motivations underlying infidelity, moving beyond relationship deficit models of infidelity, with implications for research and psychotherapy involving people’s romantic and sexual relationships.     

Quality of College Life (QCL) of Students: Further Validation of a Measure of Well-being

This paper reports a study designed to further validate a measure of quality of college life (QCL) of university students (Sirgy, Grzeskowiak, Rahtz, Soc Indic Res 80(2), 343–360, 2007). Two studies were conducted: a replication study and an extension study. The replication study involved surveys of 10 different college campuses in different countries. The results of the replication study provided additional nomological (predictive) validation support of the measure based on a theoretical model mapping out the antecedents and consequences of satisfaction with college life. With respect to the extension study, the focus was to further test the nomological validity of the QCL measure by arguing and empirically demonstrating that the consequence of QCL is life satisfaction. The extension study involved a survey of three college campuses in different countries. The results were also supportive of the nomological validity of the QCL measure.     

On “lab rats”

Experimental subjects usually self-select to the laboratory and this may introduce a bias to the conclusions derived from observing their behavior. We analyze data stored by a subject-pool management program at an experimental laboratory and speculate about the effect of individual decisions on returning. Specifically, we test whether experience and earnings in previous sessions together with demographic variables explain the decision to return to the laboratory. We find that males and (in monetary terms) well-performing subjects are more likely to participate in experiments again.     

All I Need is Shoe: An Investigation into the Obligatory Aspect of Sexual Object Fetishism

Using a mixed-methods approach, the authors explored whether individuals reporting sexual object fetishism require the presence of their fetish for sexual activity. In Study 1 (n = 63), a qualitative study, the majority of participants reported enjoying sexual activity without the fetishized object. However, sexual activities involving their fetish were preferred. In Study 2 (n = 195), the majority of participants reported having engaged in both fetish and nonfetish sexual activities, and that the fetish was not required for sexual arousal. On average, both fetish and nonfetish sexual activity were rated as sexually satisfying, although fetish sex was rated as more satisfying.     

Inducing efficient conditional cooperation patterns in public goods games, an experimental investigation

This study analyses the behavior in a repeated public goods game when subjects know about the possibility of existence of strict conditional cooperators. We employed a baseline treatment and a threat treatment in which subjects are informed about the possibility of being in a group together with automata playing a grim trigger strategy. We conjecture the resulting game allows for almost fully efficient outcomes. Contributions in the threat treatment increase by 40% before a surprise restart, and by 50% after the surprise restart. In line with the grim trigger strategy subjects contribute either all or nothing in the threat treatment.     

Mapping Social Capital: A Critical Contextual Approach For Working With Low-Status Families

Promoting justice in therapeutic work with families demands an analysis of contextual factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, and social class in relationship to societal systems of power, privilege, and oppression. A broad understanding of these dynamics, however, is inadequate to inform our work with families whose social capital severely limits available life choices, social influence, and material resources. In this article, we describe working from a critical contextual perspective to consider how families gain and/or lose social capital through participation in multiple contexts. We introduce a technique for mapping social capitol within and across multiple systems as well as suggestions for interventions aimed at increasing the social well-being of low-status families. These include considering the dynamics of boundary crossing, recognizing and optimizing resistance to oppressive dynamics, finding ways to limit constraints and optimize opportunities, and developing webs of allies to support family functioning and access to resources. We offer the example of 13-year-old Pepe as a case in point.     

Cities and the state in Spain

Conclusions Leaving aside details and qualifications, the major turning point in relations between cities and the monarchy occurred during the second half of the sixteenth century. The cities paid a very high price for their initial support of the crown. The more the logic of imperial power took over, the less cities had any chance of developing on their own. Nonetheless, they never became simple toys in royal hands. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, as the power of Genoan financiers declined, the monarchy tried again to obtain the support of cities, which finally gave in - at a price. The most crucial price of all was the imposition on the crown of a fiscal system (the servicios de millones) that was even more favorable than the alcabala to the cities having votes in the Cortes. Furthermore, the millones placed severe restrictions on the monarch's use of the funds; from that point on, the monarch had to avert his eyes from the procedures the privileged cities used to collect the taxes that constituted his principal ordinary revenues.Unlike the French case, the Spanish experience, as seen from Castile, did not end with the complete submission of cities to the monarchy's expansive centralization. Yet we must recognize that the cities never tried to create a form of political organization that could have been a Castilian version of the urban republics. Formally the situation unfolded as a series of ritual confrontations in the Cortes, where each of the parties was well aware of its limits. With that balance of forces, any attempt to enhance state power the monarchy tried to initiate could only succeed with the approval of the cities.This series of intermediate barriers meant that the process by which communities became subject to statist royal power was halting and indirect. In addition, great administrative decisions became diluted when they entered the interlocked network formed by local urban authorities. Not until the first half of the eighteenth century, after the liquidation of Spain's imperial territories elsewhere in Europe, can we speak of the consolidation of an administrative monarchy, a true predecessor of what one day would become a Spanish state.