Small business still speaks with the same voice: a replication of ‘the voice of small business and the politics of survival’*

We replicated Bechhofer and Elliott's (1978) study of Edinburgh shopkeepers to answer two important questions. First, have political attitudes and behaviour changed since 1969-1970 when Bechhofer and Elliott collected their data? Second, are the Bechhofer and Elliott findings applicable only to the one city where their study was conducted? We collected our data in 1978 from the cities of Bradford and Leicester and the borough of Ealing, in grater London. Our replication supports Bechhofer and Elliott's findings in three of the four areas investigated. First, small shopkeepers are consistent Conservatives, although they are not terribly enthusiastic in their support. Second, shopkeepers are recruited from a wide range of social origins, especially from the lower non-manual strata and skilled manual workers. Third, small shopkeepers are highly individualistic politically, being strongly against big government and anti-union. Fourth, although Bechhofer and Elliott found that shopkeepers' optimistic beliefs in the possibilities of social promotion were apparently fulfilled in Edinburgh, such was not the case in Bradford. Ealing, or Leicester. The difference between our results and theirs may stem from differences in city economic structures.     

Social security and physical quality of life in developing nations: A cross-national analysis

Social Indicators Research - Much research has been done assessing cross-national variation in level of social security program development, but very little analysis has been done of the link...     

Intimacy-mediators of the proximity-gaze compensation effect: Movement,conversational role,acquaintance, and gender

Reduction of interpersonal gaze in response to close proximity was hypothesized to be affected by four intimacy-related variables: movement (active relocation vs. static location), conversational role (listener vs. speaker), acquaintance (strangers vs. friends), and gender (males vs. females). Hypotheses were tested in a factorial experiment with 72 university students as subjects. In general, the effects of the four variables on compensatory gaze were interactive. Gaze reduction in response to a same-sex confederate's presence in a subject's personal-intimate (vs. social) distance zone was more likely for subjects with less intimate histories—males (vs. females) and strangers to the confederate (vs. friends). Furthermore, these effects were more likely when the close distance was the result of movement by the confederate from an established farther distance than when a consistently close distance condition was compared to a consistently far distance condition, and also when gaze was assessed during the subject's conversational listening periods in contrast to speaking periods. The identification of limiting conditions under which the compensatory response occurs supports a more refined conception of the intimacy-equilibrium and proxemics models of interpersonal behavior.The research reported herein and preparation of this article were supported in part by NIMH postdoctoral grant #PHS T32 MH 14588-04, held by author Breck, and by Biomedical Sciences Support Grant 40827118, to author Rosenfeld. Preliminary results were reported at the 1981 annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association in Chicago. The authors wish to thank Katherine Wu and Sonya Clark for their assistance in data analysis.     

Low Probability Accidents

Experts frequently differ on their estimates of risk associated with accidents that have a low probability of occurrence. Those who stand to benefit from siting a new facility often perceive it as acceptably safe, using expert opinion to defend their argument. Potential losers find data to suggest that the new technology is too hazardous. This paper contrasts the role of risk assessments of low probability events in siting Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) terminals in the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany. In both cases the decision process was a rather lengthy one due to conflicts between interested stakeholders. The paper discusses the potential of compensation and insurance as policy tools for facilitating negotiation. Four criteria for improving the siting process in any country are also outlined.     

Two envelopes

“You have been given either envelopeA orB. B contains either one-half or twice the money inA. Do you want to switch? Now you open your envelope? Are you still happy to stand pat?” Answers depend on whether you think there is an upper bound to the money inA. You should no longer be indifferent if you think there is not an upper bound, but, if you think there is a certain upper boundU, you should want to switch or not depending on whether your envelope holds less thanU. Expected monetary values are extended to acts with infinitely many equally possible monetary values. It is maintained that though strong dominance under infinite partitions does not in the absence of an upper bound for values imply greater expected value, ‘univocal strong dominance’ is even then properly decisive for choice.     

THE NEAR OPTIMALITY OF MARK-UP PRICING

Mark-up pricing policies result in a loss of profits compared to marginal pricing behavior. These losses, however, are often very small, even for large changes in the money supply. But by adopting a simple pricing rule the firm does not have to forecast the future, and avoids the informational and computational costs required to determine the profit maximizing price each period. Thus, even if these costs are small, mark-up pricing policies may be optimal, or approximately so, at least for some firms. In a macro model this is likely to imply large monetary non-neutralities.     

Viewpoint: A culture of despair: reflections on ‘post-modern’ architecture

The Modern Movement in architecture is dead: on this there is consensus from Right to Left. Anti-modernism, a cultural offshoot of anti-socialism, has become decidedly modish. There are, for us, two main strands to this ‘Post-Modern’ thinking – the populist and the patrician. Each, we argue, is a formalism, an elitist practice; above all, each is an avowed refusal of the emancipatory potential of modernism. Our critique of this resignation, this cultural despair, turns on an affirmation of early modernist practice; it turns on the proposition that the social content of design practice is the issue underpinning matters of aesthetic form.     

Actual and perceived emotional sending and personality correlates

To ascertain whether actual and perceived emotional sending are distinct constructs, the present study investigated the relationship between subjects' ability to facially express six basic emotions and their perceived success at expressing these emotions. Sixty-eight subjects completed a number of standardized personality scales and were videotaped while attempting to portray six basic emotions. Immediately following the videotaping subjects were asked to rate their perceived success in the emotional-sending task. Observers then judged the emotional-sending videotapes to determine subjects' actual sending abilities. A confirmatory factor analytic model indicated that actual and perceived emotional-sending were distinct factors. Zero-order correlations between the traditional personality measures and the actual and perceived sending factors also supported this distinction. These findings have important implications for the construction of standardized measures of individual differences in nonverbal communication skills.This research was supported by a UCR intramural research grant and a UCR NIH Biomedical Support Equipment grant. The authors would like to thank Richard Lippa and Louise Prince.