Long Cheap Talk

With cheap talk, more can be achieved by long conversations than by a single message—even when one side is strictly better informed than the other. (“Cheap talk” means plain conversation—unmediated, nonbinding, and payoff‐irrelevant.) This work characterizes the equilibrium payoffs for all two‐person games in which one side is better informed than the other and cheap talk is permitted.     

构建与软件行业标准相衔接的教学体系

针对如何培养出具有较强竞争力的软件行业专业人才这一目标,通过对软件行业发展和人才需求现状的分析,指出了软件行业发展与人才需求之间的矛盾,并总结了多年来产学合作的宝贵的成功经验,提出了满足软件行业标准和人才自身特点的人才需求分析,构建与软件行业标准相衔接的教学体系的重要性与构建方法,并建立了宏观模型。探讨了构建基于产学合作平台的教学资源库的方法,实现行业标准与教学体系的常态、长效衔接机制。     

The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on infant development and maternal mental health in the first 2 years of life

We investigated how exogenous variation in exposure to the COVID-19 pandemic during the first year of life is related to infant development, maternal mental health, and perceived stress. Ninety-three socioeconomically diverse pregnant women were recruited before the pandemic to participate in a longitudinal study. Infants ranged in age at the beginning of lockdown (0–9.5 months old), thus experiencing different durations of pandemic exposure across the first year of life. The duration of pandemic exposure was not associated with family demographic characteristics, suggesting it captured exogenous variability. We tested associations between this exogenous variation in pandemic exposure and child and family outcomes. We also examined whether mother-reported disruptive life events were correlated with child and family outcomes. We found no association between duration of pandemic exposure in the first year of life and infant socioemotional problems, infant language development, or maternal mental health and perceived stress symptoms, at 12 or 24 months. However, we found that self-reported exposure to pandemic-related disruptive life events predicted greater maternal depression, anxiety, and perceived stress at 12 months, and greater depression and anxiety at 24 months. Socioeconomic status did not moderate these associations. These findings suggest cautious optimism for infants raised during this period.     

Open Relationship Prevalence,Characteristics, and Correlates in a Nationally Representative Sample of Canadian Adults

Open relationships are those in which individuals agree to participate in sexual and/or emotional and romantic interactions with more than one partner. Accurate estimates of the prevalence of open relationships, based on representative, unbiased samples, are few, and there are none from outside of the United States. We present findings from a nationally representative sample of 2,003 Canadian adults, administered in 2017 via an online questionnaire. Overall, 2.4% of all participants, and 4.0% of those currently in a relationship, reported currently being in an open relationship. One-fifth of participants reported prior engagement in an open relationship, and 12% reported open as their ideal relationship type. Men, compared with women, were more likely to report prior open relationship engagement and to identify open as their ideal relationship type. Younger participants were more likely both to engage in and to prefer open relationships. Relationship satisfaction did not differ significantly between monogamous and open relationships. Having a match between one’s actual relationship type and one’s preferred relationship type was associated with greater relationship satisfaction. Findings suggest that, while currently only a small proportion of the population is in an open relationship, interest in open relationships is higher, particularly among younger adults, and open appears to be a viable and important relationship type.     

Urban America as a Context for the Development of Moral Identity in Adolescence

Moral identity, defined as a self-consistent commitment to lines of action benefiting others, is described in the contexts of adolescence and poor, urban neighborhoods. A model of moral identity development is proposed. According to the model, stable characteristics of the individual and the individual's family, in conjunction with social attitudes, self-conceptions, and opportunities for the exploration of prosocial action, influence the development of moral identity. Analyses from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth provide support for the model, and demonstrate that urban poverty is associated with few opportunities for development of moral identity. We argue that the provision of these opportunities should be given a high priority both to foster good individual development and as a means for increasing social capital in neighborhoods.     

There Comes a Time: Biography and the Founding of a Movement Organization

The social movement literature lacks a historically sensitive analysis of pathways to founding and leading a movement organization. I connect biography and history to explain the timing and form of organizational emergence. I show how Robert Welch’s founding of the conspiratorial John Birch Society was pre-dated by moral shocks, a supportive culture and social network, experience organizing people in committees, as well as some dumb luck (in the form of fortuitous timing), all of which grew his reputation in the latent conservative movement. A national reputation allowed him to gather resources and unite regionally dispersed radical rightists into a coherent national organization.     

Dialogues of Diversity in Therapy: A Virtual Symposium

Therapists from Australia, New Zealand, the US, Germany and the UK discuss the relationship between systemic and narrative therapy.     

Adaptive Heuristics

We exhibit a large class of simple rules of behavior, which we call adaptive heuristics, and show that they generate rational behavior in the long run. These adaptive heuristics are based on natural regret measures, and may be viewed as a bridge between rational and behavioral viewpoints. Taken together, the results presented here establish a solid connection between the dynamic approach of adaptive heuristics and the static approach of correlated equilibria.     

Manchester on my mind: a memoir

Abstract The author describes his intellectual journey in ten episodes, starting from his upbringing in Manchester and training in Cambridge. After pioneering research in Africa and work as a development advisor, he returned to Manchester as a teacher of social anthropology. Subsequently he spent periods in North America and the Caribbean, before returning to Cambridge for 15 years. He is currently trying to establish himself as a writer in Paris. What follows is neither social science nor autobiography, but a personal account of being in the world in which he tries to move, without discordance, along the whole length of the continuum linking the self to the rest of humanity. The star of the show, however, is Manchester, where his story begins.