Social context and the experience of emotion

This study examines the relationship between the social context of events and emotional experience. For each of six emotions four different vignettes were devised. Two of these four events took place in private circumstances and two in public. Furthermore, the sociality of each situation was systematically varied, and subjects were presented with situations framed in one of three social contexts: alone, in the presence of a stranger, or in the presence of a friend. Subjects were asked for self-reports of emotional state, evaluations of pleasantness and loneliness, perceived ability to cope with negative situations, and the likelihood that they would share the emotional experience with another person. Anger was the only emotion that varied as a function of the social context manipulation, and this effect disappeared when evaluations of social context were controlled for. However, for all emotions, the intensity of experience differed between private and public situations, suggesting that sociality and emotionality are related at a more global level.     

Review Essay: Animal Magnetism

Qualitative Sociology -     

Stratified structural and epistemic aspects of the care manager's discretion—a theoretical approach to social work related to older people's potential relocation to a residential home

By applying a theoretical point of departure, the overarching aim of this article is to describe, analyze, and try to understand why care managers in their everyday occupational practice normalize the restrictive approach when older people consider relocation to a residential home. While earlier research to a large extent has drawn attention to how the care managers carry out the restrictive approach, this article pays attention to the circumstances paving its way. The focus is on influences from different sociological levels, thereby ‘stratified’, and from two aspects of discretion, where ‘structural aspects’ refer to choices between permitted alternatives and ‘epistemic aspects’ to practical reasoning under conditions of indeterminacy. With this combination, a multitude of circumstances contributing to the restrictive approach is revealed. Thus, the theoretical model includes levels as well as discretionary powers where formulas constitute the foundation at each level, subsequently related to multidisciplinary references in order to get the practice into perspective. The findings show that the priority given to home-based care in contrast to residential care is repeated and confirmed at each level and besides in an interchange between structural and epistemic aspects.     

Risk Factors for Problematic Gambling: A Critical Literature Review

This article is a critical review of risk factors for pathological gambling categorized by demographics, physiological and biological factors, cognitive distortions, comorbidity and concurrent symptoms, and personality symptoms and characteristics. There is also a varia section (availability, parents playing, sensory characteristics, schedules of reinforcement, age of onset, and playing duration). The review found very few well established risk factors for pathological gambling (i.e. more than two studies to support the conclusions). Well established risk factors included demographic variables (age, gender), cognitive distortions (erroneous perceptions, illusion of control), sensory characteristics, schedules of reinforcement, comorbid disorders (OCD, drug abuse), and delinquency/illegal acts. An understanding of risk factors for pathological gambling should enhance prevention and treatment approaches.     

Pension design and gender: Analyses of developed and developing countries

In this article the authors examine different ways of organizing and financing pension systems in China, France, Ghana, Jordan, Mexico, Poland, and Sweden. They explore the advantages and disadvantages of the combinations of different features with special reference to gender differences. Men and women have different patterns of work history, with women usually having a lower participation rate in the formal labor market, including interrupted career in response to child rearing, as well as lower wages in general. Women have a longer life expectancy than men and are more likely to become widows than men are to become widowers. These differences influence the financial resources available to women in old age, depending on how a pension system is designed.     

Benchmark Calculations in Risk Assessment Using Continuous Dose-Response Information: The Influence of Variance and the Determination of a Cut-Off Value

A benchmark dose (BMD) is the dose of a chemical that corresponds to a predetermined increase in the response (the benchmark response, BMR) of a health effect. In this article, a method (the hybrid approach) for benchmark calculations from continuous dose-response information is investigated. In the formulation of the methodology, a cut-off value for an adverse health effect has to be determined. It is shown that the influence of variance on the hybrid model depends on the choice of determination of the cut-off point. If the cut-off value is determined as corresponding to a specified tail proportion of the control distribution, P(0), the BMD becomes biased upward when the variance is biased upward. On the contrary, if the cut-off value is directly determined to some level of the continuous response variable, the BMD becomes biased upward when the variance is biased downward. A simulation study was also performed in which the accuracy and precision of the BMD was compared for the two ways of determining the cut-off value. In general, considering BMRs of 1, 5, and 10% (additional risk) the precision of the BMD became higher when the cut-off value was estimated by specifying P(0), relative to the case with a direct determination. Use of the square-root of the maximum-likelihood estimator of the variance in BMD estimation may provide a bias that is reflected by the cut-off formulation (downward bias if specifying P(0), and upward bias if specifying the cut-off, c, directly). This feature may be reduced if an unbiased estimator of the standard deviation is used in the calculations.