Perceived Community Cohesion and the Stress Process in Youth

Using survey data from two youth samples, one rural and one urban, we examine the role and significance of perceived community cohesion in the stress process. In particular, we assess the extent to which community attachment and detachment are related to depressed mood, problem substance use, and delinquency net of social statuses, stress exposure, and personal attributes. In addition, we explore the degree to which those dimensions of community cohesion explain or condition the links between the above stress‐process components (e.g., social statuses, stress exposure, and personal attributes) and well‐being. We find remarkably similar results across samples: community attachment is related to lower odds of problem substance use and delinquency; community detachment is related to higher levels of depressed mood, problem substance use, and delinquency; and community attachment buffers the link between stress and problem substance use. With respect to depressed mood, however, the rural youth show greater vulnerability to stress than the urban youth and unique benefits from community attachment compared to the latter. Our findings highlight the roles of community attachment and detachment in the stress process and underscore the importance of each for youth well‐being in rural and urban settings.     

Adult Perceptions of Positive and Negative Infant Emotional Expressions

Adults' perceptions provide information about the emotional meaning of infant facial expressions. This study asks whether similar facial movements influence adult perceptions of emotional intensity in both infant positive (smile) and negative (cry face) facial expressions. Ninety‐five college students rated a series of naturally occurring and digitally edited images of infant facial expressions. Naturally occurring smiles and cry faces involving the co‐occurrence of greater lip movement, mouth opening, and eye constriction, were rated as expressing stronger positive and negative emotion, respectively, than expressions without these 3 features. Ratings of digitally edited expressions indicated that eye constriction contributed to higher ratings of positive emotion in smiles (i.e., in Duchenne smiles) and greater eye constriction contributed to higher ratings of negative emotion in cry faces. Stronger mouth opening contributed to higher ratings of arousal in both smiles and cry faces. These findings indicate a set of similar facial movements are linked to perceptions of greater emotional intensity, whether the movements occur in positive or negative infant emotional expressions. This proposal is discussed with reference to discrete, componential, and dynamic systems theories of emotion.     

Movement Differences between Deliberate and Spontaneous Facial Expressions: Zygomaticus Major Action in Smiling

Previous research suggests differences in lip movement between deliberate and spontaneous facial expressions. We investigated within participant differences between deliberately posed and spontaneously occurring smiles during a directed facial action task. Using automated facial image analysis, we quantified lip corner movement during periods of visible Zygomaticus major activity. Onset and offset speed, amplitude of movement, and offset duration were greater in deliberate smiles. In contrast to previous results, however, lip corner movement asymmetry was not greater in deliberate smiles. Observed characteristics of deliberate and spontaneous smiling may be related to differences in the typical context and purpose of the facial signal. Karen L. Schmidt, Zara Ambadar, Jeffrey F. Cohn, and L. Ian Reed are affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA. Jeffrey F. Cohn is also affiliated with the Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA. This research was supported by NIMH Grants MH15279 and 167376 to Karen L. Schmidt, and NIMH Grant MH 51435 to Jeffrey F. Cohn. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Adena Zlochower in digitizing videotape used in this analysis and Rachel Levenstein in the analysis of data described in this paper. Address correspondence to Karen L. Schmidt, University of Pittsburgh, 121 University Pl, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA; E-mail: kschmidt@pitt.edu     

Helping Young Children Cope with Community Violence: A Proposal for the Reduction of Social Distress in the Inner Cities

The authors discuss the crisis of violence in our society and its impact on young children. Research on early violence prevention is reviewed, and a rationale for building parent-teacher coalitions to attempt solutions to the problem of violence is presented. A curriculum for co-training ofparents and early childhood professionals in violence prevention is outlined. The need for longitudinal research on the implementation and impact of early violence prevention programs is noted.     

Personality,Pentecostal ism,and Glossolalia: A Research Note on Some Unsuccessful Research*

L'auteur a d'abord tenté de mettre en rapport l'attrait des offices religieux d'une église de la Pentecôte et les résultats d'un test psychologique basé sur I'achévement de phrases incomplètes. II ne réussit àétablir aucune association entre les deux mesures. II tenta ensuite de mettre en relation les résultats obtenus dans un inventaire multidimen-sionnel de la personnalité, le M.M.P.I., et l‘évaluation de deux films: l'un décrivant un “revival” d'une église de la Pentecôte et l'autre, une réunion où Ton avait provoqué expérimentalement une manifestation du don des langues. A nouveau, aucune association statistique ne put être établie. L'auteur est néanmoins d'avis que la manifestation du don des langues produite expérimentalement offre suffisamment d'intérét pour en faire état dans le présent rapport de recherche.     

SOCIAL COMPARISON AND EFFORT PROVISION: EVIDENCE FROM A FIELD EXPERIMENT

Social comparison has potentially far reaching consequences in many economic domains. We conducted a field experiment to examine how social comparison affects workers' effort provision if their own wage or that of a co‐worker is cut. Workers were assigned to groups of two, performed identical individual tasks, and received the same performance‐independent hourly wage. Cutting both group members' wages caused a decrease in performance. But when only one group member's wage was cut, the affected workers decreased their performance more than twice as much as when both workers' wages were cut. This finding indicates that social comparison among workers affects effort provision because the only difference between the two wage‐cut treatments is the other group member's wage level. In contrast, workers whose wage was not cut but who witnessed their group member's pay being cut displayed no change in performance relative to the baseline treatment in which both workers' wages remained unchanged. This indicates that social comparison exerts asymmetric effects on effort.     

Somewhere Between: Social Embeddedness and the Spectrum of Wild Edible Huckleberry Harvest and Use

Abstract This case study is centered in northeast Washington State and northern Idaho and focuses on the social ecology of the wild edible huckleberry. The theoretical notion of social embeddedness is the lens through which the harvest and use of this much‐prized resource is viewed and analyzed. Using grounded theory as an over‐arching method, qualitative data were collected over two harvesting seasons regarding who harvests huckleberries in the study area and why. Four categories of use/users were identified. The results suggest a rich tapestry of social relations surrounding this resource that belies the simplistic notion of “commercial” vs. “recreational” use. These relations include temporal, geographic, economic, and cultural dimensions. Policy implications include the need to move beyond the commercial/recreational dichotomy in regulating the harvest of berries as well as the need to link the notions of community forestry and subsistence to the harvest of non‐timber forest products more generally.     

Activists against hunger: Membership characteristics of a national social movement organization

This article presents results of the first study of the contemporary antihunger movement. We compare the membership characteristics of one its largest organizations, Bread for the World (BFW), with data on the general population of the United States drawn from the 1985 General Social Survey. When compared with the general population, BFW members are, among other things, unusually well educated, religious, politically liberal and efficacious, and active in church-related and political organizations. The differences in religious and political belief and organizational involvement persist even when BFW members are compared with their equally well educated counterparts in the general population. Our findings thus elucidate certain ideological and organizational bases for membership in BFW. We discuss the implications of the findings for issues in the contemporary study of social movements and for BFW's prospects in the political arena.