Exploring the Emergence of Side Biases and Familiarity–Novelty Preferences from the Real‐Time Dynamics of Infant Looking

This study examined how look dynamics contribute to infants’ emerging novelty preferences. Time‐series analyses were used to study the temporal nature of looking displayed by 3‐ to 5‐month‐old infants during a serial paired‐comparison task. Evidence was found only for short‐term stability: Novelty preferences and side biases were not stable from one visit to the next, but looking was consistent from one moment to the next producing stability within trials and temporarily across trials leading to the formation of behavioral runs. Persistence in looking left or right across multiple trials did not change from one visit to the next, but persistence in looking at familiar stimuli declined with age. By Visit 3, familiarity runs occurred less often than did novelty runs. Frequent but highly variable runs, including surprisingly late familiarity preferences, suggest that overall side biases and novelty preferences found during visual preference tasks are emergent phenomena affected by moment‐to‐moment changes in looking.     

Revisiting the effectiveness of the employment‐oriented welfare state: Considering the quality of employment achievement

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of an employment‐oriented welfare state. While previous studies have focused on employment growth, this study considers the quality of employment, especially its mediating impact between public social expenditure and fiscal soundness. Three‐step mediated regression analysis was conducted on a data sample from 19 developed countries from 1991 to 2013. The results show that while public social expenditure negatively affects fiscal soundness, if it promotes total and part‐time employment, it can positively affect fiscal soundness. However, when the incidence of involuntary part‐time employment is high, public social expenditure and its impact on employment performance no longer guarantee fiscal soundness. This study addresses the importance of promoting not only employment growth but also employment quality to secure fiscal soundness.     

Ideologies & Narratives in Relation to ‘Fat’ Children as Bullies, ‘Easy Targets’ and Victims

In this study, we explore narratives in relation to ‘fatness’, drawing on focus group interviews with parents, early years practitioners, teachers and young people. The study is located in a larger study on bullying and resilience, with no specific focus on obesity or ‘fatness’. Analysis of the interview data highlighted a recurrent focus on ‘fatness’ within the participants’ narratives, by labelling and stigmatising the ‘fat kid’ and ‘bigger children’. We conclude that obesity and fatness, as abnormalities, are now included in commonsense talk in relation to ‘easy targets’, victims and bullies.     

Appraising the Quality of Democracy as a Developmental Phenomenon: How South Koreans Appraise the Quality of Their Democracy

In recent years, an increasing number of scholars have made serious efforts to assess the quality of democracy from the perspective of ordinary citizens. Their research endeavors to date have all sought to distinguish democracies exclusively in terms of low to high levels of quality. Unlike these studies, which are solely concerned with the varying levels of democratic quality, this study offers a new conceptual framework that allows for discerning and monitoring its shifting patterns from electoral through liberal to civic quality. An analysis of the 2010 Korea Democracy Barometer survey confirms that the quality of democracy is, indeed, a developmental and multidimensional phenomenon. Furthermore, it reveals that ordinary citizens are capable of identifying its particular dimensions, and Korean democracy shows a significant deficit in two: the liberal and civic domains.     

Improving Africa's Roads: Modelling Infrastructure Investment and Its Effect on Sectoral Production Behaviour

Given the scarce resources for public investment in developing countries, policy analysis should include a detailed perspective on the effects of infrastructure. This article develops a modelling framework for analysing the effects of improved road infrastructure on the economy of African countries. The theoretical framework is tested empirically and used for simulations in a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model, and the effects on production and welfare are analysed. The model also serves to investigate the effect of roads on the economic participation of rural households.     

The Double Challenge of Market and Social Incorporation: Progress and Bottlenecks in Latin America

Has the past decade of sustained economic growth and political transformations reversed Latin America's historical failure to secure market and social incorporation? To address this question this article draws on the experiences of Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Peru and Uruguay by distinguishing between short‐term outcomes – which may depend on benign international conditions – and policy changes, which are more important for long‐term performance. It highlights the overall success of both Brazil and Uruguay and shows that the other countries have made more progress in terms of social than market incorporation.     

Ethical living: relinking ethics and consumption through care in Chile and Brazil

Mainstream conceptualizations of ‘ethical consumption’ equate the notion with conscious, individual, market‐mediated choices motivated by ethical or political aims that transcend ordinary concerns. Drawing on recent sociology and anthropology of consumption literature on the links between ordinary ethics and ethical consumption, this article discusses some of the limitations of this conceptualization. Using data from 32 focus groups conducted in Chile and Brazil, we propose a conceptualization of ethical consumption that does not centre on individual, market‐mediated choices but understands it at the level of practical outcomes, which we refer to as different forms of ‘ethical living’. To do that, we argue, we need to depart from the deontological understanding of ethics that underpins mainstream approaches to ethical consumption and adopt a more consequentialist view focusing on ethical outcomes. We develop these points through describing one particular ordinary moral regime that seemed to be predominant in participants’ accounts of ethics and consumption in both Chile and Brazil: one that links consumption and ethics through care. We show that the moral regime of care leads to ‘ethical outcomes’, such as energy saving or limiting overconsumption, yet contrary to the mainstream view of ethical consumption emphasizing politicized choice expressed through markets, these result from following ordinary ethics, often through routines of practices.     

Young adults in the United States and Benin reason about gendered cultural traditions

This study explored emerging and young adults’ reasoning about cultural practices in West Africa. American (Study 1, n = 78, M = 20.76 years) and Beninese (Study 2, n = 93, M = 23.61 years) undergraduates were surveyed about their evaluations of corporal punishment, scarification, and schooling restrictions in conditions where the practices had gender‐neutral or gender‐specified targets. In Study 1, the majority (69%) of American participants negatively evaluated the practices, especially when targets were female. However, the majority (73%) assumed the cultural practices were consensual. In Study 2, the majority (76%) of Beninese participants negatively evaluated the practices, and their evaluations did not vary by gender of the target. Few (10%) Beninese participants assumed the cultural practices were consensual. In both studies, emerging and young adults who initially judged practices positively changed their evaluations with a change in consent.     

Exploring the role of the Senate Majority Leader's political public relations efforts

Grounded in first- and second-level agenda building, this study explored the role of the U.S. Senate Majority Leader in shaping the salience of issues and issue attributes in news media coverage and policymaking in 2011. A total of 358 public relations messages, 164 newspaper articles, and 83 policymaking documents were analyzed. Significant correlations were found supporting agenda-building linkages at both levels. Different types of information subsidies were explored, including press releases, blog posts, Facebook posts, and Twitter messages.