The Emotional Climate of Nations and Their Culture of Peace

Societies seem to have emotional climates that affect how people feel and act in public situations. Unlike the emotions experienced in an individual's personal life, these modal feelings reflect a collective response to the socio-economic-political situation of the society and influence how most people behave toward one another and their government. A government may foster a climate of fear to ensure social control, or it may encourage the formation of heterogeneous social groups to facilitate a climate of trust between people from different groups. On one hand, emotional climates may be viewed as reflecting the relative peacefulness or violence of a society. Thus, an assessment of emotional climate may provide a subjective index of human security to complement objective measures of democracy, human rights, equality, and other factors that we presume are beneficial to human welfare. On the other hand, we may view emotional climates as influences that act to further or to impede the development of the culture of peace advocated by the General Assembly of the United Nations. Thus, their assessment may have predictive power, and measuring a society's emotional climate may help us to create desirable policy. In this article we show that it is possible to measure some important aspects of the emotional climates of three nations that have different degrees of a culture of peace: Norway, the United States, and India. We show that estimates of the collective emotions that constitute climate can be distinguished from reports of personal emotions in that the former are more influenced by nation and the latter by social class. It is the subjective experience of national emotional climate, rather than personal emotional experience, that appears most related to objective indices for the culture of peace in the different nations.     

L'indicateur «Embauche des travailleurs» de la Banque mondiale: bilan des travaux et critiques

Cette note fait le point sur le débat suscité par le projet Doing Business de la Banque mondiale, et notamment par son indicateur «Embauche des travailleurs», censé mesurer la difficulté d'embaucher, la rigidité de la durée du travail et la difficulté de licencier. Les auteurs présentent les résultats des études qui l'ont utilisé, l'ont inspiré ou ont été influencées par cet indicateur. Ils se penchent ensuite sur les critiques de cet instrument qui pose des problèmes conceptuels et empiriques. Ils concluent par la formulation de suggestions pour les recherches à venir.     

Adolescents' and Their Mothers' Perceptions of Parental Management of Peer Relationships

The purpose of the present investigation was to examine the relation of level and discrepancy in mothers' and adolescents' reports of parental management of peer relationships and parent–child conflict about peer relationships to mothers' and adolescent's reports of adolescents' drug use, delinquent behavior, and grade‐point‐average (GPA). An ethnically diverse sample of 121 seventh and eighth graders and their mothers completed questionnaires assessing the degree to which mothers managed peer relationships, parent–child conflict about peer relationships, and adolescents' drug use, delinquent behavior, and GPA. Differences in mothers' versus adolescents' reports were found for parental management of peers and conflict about peer relationships. Results suggest that both level and discrepancies between mothers' and adolescents' reports of parenting are important in predicting the outcome variables. Furthermore, the direction of the discrepancy was important in determining its relation to the outcome variables.     

Evaluation of a major financial incentive for in-home energy conservation

A mail questionnaire methodology was utilized to provide baseline data on consumers' reactions to the Canadian Oil Substitution Program (COSP). COSP is a major financial incentive, operated by the Canadian government, designed to stimulate conversions of oil-fired home hearing systems to alternative energy sources.The results provide a snapshot of consumer reactions one year after the COSP incentive was first introduced. Specific results include the motives for and barriers to off-oil conversion; the importance of COSP, relative to other conversion motives; and the size and characteristics of the oil-user group who are resistant to converting off-oil heating. Implications for program management and directions for future research are discussed.     

‘All those in favour’: computerised trade union membership lists as sampling frames for postal surveys

The computerisation of membership lists offers considerable scope for postal surveys of trade unionists. However, faith in the new technology can give rise to the illusion of increased accuracy. Yet, the computerised data bases, while undoubtedly quicker and easier to use, may be no more accurate than their manual predecessors and samples drawn from them can result in misleading response rates. Therefore, with reference to a specific case study of a major trade union, we argue that researchers should seek to establish empirically the probable error in their lists with a view to constructing realistic ‘benchmarks’. Then, these substantial new resources can provide a solid basis for worthwhile research.