Division of Responsibility in Care of the Aged

Not all elderly people need special care. This review refers to the dependent minority and to the services they need. Brief mention is made of the history of services which began with charitable relief by voluntary action, and the current relationship between government bodies and voluntary agencies is outlined. It is maintained that division of responsibility for the various types of care should be based on assessment of individual needs, decentralization of control, together with evaluation of the resources of the agencies concerned.     

Urban Dispersal in Australia

In a recent issue of the Journal, Professor R. E. Lonsdale argued that the relatively successful American experience of decentralization suggests serious difficulties in attempting a comparable programme in Australia. His comparisons, while illuminating many of the problems which must be faced by a realistic regional development policy, are unduly pessimistic in their assessment of the Australian situation. The barriers to urban dispersal in Australia lie less in economic and social conditions than in political attitudes and governmental structures.     

The impact of anti-Vietnam demonstrations upon national public opinion and military indicators

In an attempt to assess the national impact of anti-war protest, 15 major anti-Vietnam demonstrations occurring in the United States from 1965 through 1971 were analyzed for their effects upon Gallup public opinion survey data, American troop strength, and American munitions expenditures. While weak and short-term counterproductive effects appeared for two opinion indicators, an equally likely conclusion is that the demonstrations had little or no lasting impact whatsoever. The possible reasons for this finding, and its social implications, are discussed.     

Charisma as signal: An evolutionary perspective on charismatic leadership

We present an evolutionary perspective on charismatic leadership, arguing that charisma has evolved as a credible signal of a person's ability to solve a coordination challenge requiring urgent collective action from group members. We suggest that a better understanding of charisma's evolutionary and biological origins and functions can provide a broader perspective in which to situate current debates surrounding the utility and validity of charismatic leadership as a construct in the social sciences. We outline several key challenges which have shaped our followership psychology, and argue that the benefits of successful coordination in ancestral environments has led to the evolution of context-dependent psychological mechanisms which are especially attuned to cues and signals of outstanding personal leadership qualities. We elaborate on several implications of this signaling hypothesis of charismatic leadership, including opportunities for deception (dishonest signaling) and for large-scale coordination.