American Roulette: The Effect of Reminders of Death on Support for George W. Bush in the 2004 Presidential Election

An experiment was conducted to assess the effect of a subtle reminder of death on voting intentions for the 2004 U.S. presidential election. On the basis of terror management theory and previous research, we hypothesized that a mortality salience induction would increase support for President George W. Bush and decrease support for Senator John Kerry. In late September 2004, following a mortality salience or control induction, registered voters were asked which candidate they intended to vote for. In accord with predictions, Senator John Kerry received substantially more votes than George Bush in the control condition, but Bush was favored over Kerry following a reminder of death, suggesting that President Bush's re-election may have been facilitated by nonconscious concerns about mortality in the aftermath of September 11, 2001.     

Do Young Children's Representations of Discipline and Empathy Moderate the Effects of Punishment on Emotion Regulation?

This study examined whether children's representations of parenting (perceptions of authoritative discipline and empathy) moderated the association between harsh punishment—including corporal punishment (CP) and verbal punishment (VP)—and children's emotion regulation at the age of five years. Participants were 559 low‐income mother‐child dyads. Maternal self‐reports and home observations were used to measure punishment. Children's representations were assessed using the MacArthur Story Stem Battery. Children's emotion regulation was assessed by observer rating via the Leiter International Performance Scale–Revised. Hierarchical multiple regressions revealed that children's authoritative disciplinary representations moderated the effects of both VP and CP on children's emotion regulation. Empathic representations moderated the effects of VP only on children's emotion regulation. The current findings highlight the role of children's internal representations as potential protective factors in the context of harsher forms of punishment.     

The Right to Remain Silent

The paper points out that in dynamic games a player may be better-off if other players do not know his choice of strategy. That is, a player may benefit by not revealing (or not pre-determining) the choice of his action in an information set he (thereby) hopes will not be reached. He would be better-off by exercising his ``right to remain silent' if he believes –- as the empirical evidence shows –- that players display aversion to ``Knightian uncertainty'. In this case, a player who behaves strategically, may wish to avoid revealing his strategy. This is true under various interpretations of the notion of ``strategy profiles'.     

Disproportionality and Resource‐Based Environmental Inequality: An Analysis of Neighborhood Proximity to Coal Impoundments in Appalachia

Environmental hazards created by resource extraction impose numerous risks on rural populations, but have been understudied in quantitative analyses of environmental inequality. This study fills that gap by examining whether neighborhoods with socioeconomic disadvantages are disproportionately proximate to coal impoundments in Appalachia. Coal impoundments are large, hazardous dams that hold billions of gallons of wastewater and slurry, a sludge‐like by‐product of processing coal. I ground this study in William Freudenburg's double diversion framework, which highlights “disproportionality”—the unequal trade‐off between economic benefits and environmental costs of certain industries. Disproportionality is evident in Appalachia, where coal mining makes up a small percentage of the region's jobs, but threatens local communities through the creation of environmental hazards. Spatial regression results indicate that neighborhoods closest to impoundments are slightly more likely to have higher rates of poverty and unemployment, even after controlling for rurality, mining‐related variables, and spatial dependence. The findings also suggest that a neighborhood's proximity to past mining activity is a stronger predictor of impoundment proximity than current levels of mining employment. This article lays the groundwork for future research on resource‐based environmental inequality that considers the uneven spatial distribution of hazards created by resource extraction.