Latent Class Analysis of Gambling Activities in a Sample of Young Swiss Men: Association with Gambling Problems,Substance Use Outcomes,Personality Traits and Coping Strategies

The study aimed to identify different patterns of gambling activities (PGAs) and to investigate how PGAs differed in gambling problems, substance use outcomes, personality traits and coping strategies. A representative sample of 4989 young Swiss males completed a questionnaire assessing seven distinct gambling activities, gambling problems, substance use outcomes, personality traits and coping strategies. PGAs were identified using latent class analysis (LCA). Differences between PGAs in gambling and substance use outcomes, personality traits and coping strategies were tested. LCA identified six different PGAs. With regard to gambling and substance use outcomes, the three most problematic PGAs were extensive gamblers, followed by private gamblers, and electronic lottery and casino gamblers, respectively. By contrast, the three least detrimental PGAs were rare or non-gamblers, lottery only gamblers and casino gamblers. With regard to personality traits, compared with rare or non-gamblers, private and casino gamblers reported higher levels of sensation seeking. Electronic lottery and casino gamblers, private gamblers and extensive gamblers had higher levels of aggression-hostility. Extensive and casino gamblers reported higher levels of sociability, whereas casino gamblers reported lower levels of anxiety–neuroticism. Extensive gamblers used more maladaptive and less adaptive coping strategies than other groups. Results suggest that gambling is not a homogeneous activity since different types of gamblers exist according to the PGA they are engaged in. Extensive gamblers, electronic and casino gamblers and private gamblers may have the most problematic PGAs. Personality traits and coping skills may predispose individuals to PGAs associated with more or less negative outcomes.     

Does Self-control Predict Wealth Creation Among Young Baby Boomers?

Why similar people have different patterns of wealth accumulation is puzzling. The behavioral life-cycle hypothesis indicates self-control is an important aspect of household saving behavior. This study investigated if household wealth creation from 1994 to 2008 could be predicted by self-control among a sample of young baby boomers using National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) data. Variables that significantly predicted 2008 net worth included homeownership, 1994 net worth, income, bankruptcy filing, inheritance, education level, race, marital status, children, retirement planning activities, locus of control, and self-mastery. The addition of self-control predictors to a regression model improved the model’s ability to predict net worth by 1.3 % above and beyond the human capital, financial status, and demographic predictor variables. In total, the model explained 60 % of the variance in net worth. Findings indicated that individuals who invested in their human capital, were homeowners, and had higher self-control, accumulated more wealth.     

Wiki-worthy: collective judgment of candidate notability

The use of socio-technical data to predict elections is a growing research area. We argue that election prediction research suffers from under-specified theoretical models that do not properly distinguish between ‘poll-like’ and ‘prediction market-like’ mechanisms understand findings. More specifically, we argue that, in systems with strong norms and reputational feedback mechanisms, individuals have market-like incentives to bias content creation toward candidates they expect will win. We provide evidence for the merits of this approach using the creation of Wikipedia pages for candidates in the 2010 US and UK national legislative elections. We find that Wikipedia editors are more likely to create Wikipedia pages for challengers who have a better chance of defeating their incumbent opponent and that the timing of these page creations coincides with periods when collective expectations for the candidate's success are relatively high.     

Social Skills in Children Adopted From Socially-Emotionally Depriving Institutions

This study assessed social skills in post-institutionalized (PI) children with respect to age at adoption, age at assessment, and gender. Parent ratings of social skills (Social Skills Rating System) and behavior problems (Child Behavior Checklist) were obtained for 214 children and 127 adolescents who were adopted from socially-emotionally depriving Russian institutions. Results showed that children adopted before 18 months of age have better social skills than those adopted after this age; those assessed in childhood demonstrate better social skills than those assessed in adolescence. PI females, especially later-adopted adolescents, have particularly poor social skills. Children with poor social skills tend to have higher rates of behavior problems.     

Fighting words? Joning as conflict talk and identity performance among African American preadolescents

This study examines how preadolescent African American students in Washington, D.C., used a linguistic practice called ‘joning,’ a style of verbal play similar to ritual insults, in peer interactions. Sociolinguists have focused on how children socialize each other into vernacular styles appropriate for peer group use but often assume that they disalign with social and linguistic norms for classroom behavior. Drawing from a nine‐month ethnographic study that the author conducted in an after‐school program, this article analyzes the structure and function of joning as a vernacular style of African American Vernacular English and its uses in constructing classroom identities. Joning often facilitated student learning, but it was perceived as a socially and physically risky linguistic practice because of its uses as conflict talk in the local community. Focusing on preadolescence as a key stage of language socialization, this article shows how minority students modify peer‐learned linguistic practices to pursue academic success on their own terms.     

Neo-Gramscian Theory and Third World Violence: A Time for Broadening

Abstract

This article argues that the neo-Gramscian theory of hegemony is not as useful in explaining the rise and consolidation of the modern world system. In particular, while the force-consensus approach may indeed be relevant in examining relations among the Western countries, it is fundamentally wanting when applied to the third world. The two main reasons concern the persistent violence against the third world, and the dominance of race and racism as social forces in the production and maintenance of successive world orders. Neo-Gramscian theory needs to be broadened perhaps by paying attention to the relevant thinking in postcolonialism.     

Fundamental accrued capital gains and the measurement of top incomes: an application to Chile

Most previous studies of income inequality have either ignored capital gains or have used taxable realized capital gains to estimate top incomes. Neither of these approaches is fully satisfactory. We apply for the first time a new methodology that allows us to account for fundamental accrued capital gains as part of the top incomes in a theoretically consistent manner. We estimate the shares of the super-rich in Chile showing that accrued capital gains have a large impact on these estimates. Also, the top income shares estimated using fundamental capital gains appear to exhibit a more stable and presumably more plausible time profile than estimates based on capital gains derived from asset market variations.     

Der regulatorische Fokus als Führungsinstrument für eine bedürfnisorientierte und effektive Mitarbeiterkommunikation

Interaction with employees is essential for organizational leaders. If executives do not communicate well, important processes like giving feedback, setting goals or guiding change processes can nevertheless lead to resistance from subordinates when communication is received as more threatening than challenging. Conveying messages in ways that provoke challenge instead of threat appraisals can be achieved via employee-oriented communication, but this may require taking peoples’ differing motivational orientations into account. This is because motivational orientations partially determine what kind of information is motivating to us, which goals and strategies we prefer, and how we deal with changes. In this regard, Regulatory Focus Theory (Higgins 1997) compares the gain- and success-sensitive promoter with the loss- and failure-sensitive preventer. This article applies this theory to the organizational psychological context and outlines practical implications for managers. The goal of the piece is to provide managers a leadership tool that acknowledges the diversity of peoples’ motivational styles and by that revealing a need-oriented and more efficient way in communication with subordinates.     

Religion and the Representative Anecdote: Replacement and Revenge in AMC’s The Walking Dead

The current study examines how the horror-based AMC television series The Walking Dead portrays religion in terms of a reframing of the role, if any, of faith in a higher power, and the portrayal of the faithful. The religious-themed discourse of this highly successful story about survivors of a zombie apocalypse as presented through dialogic and visual imagery serves as the text analyzed here; specifically, related episodes set in churches at two separate points in the series that combine to offer a metaphor of “structure” used to disassemble and reconstruct the role of religion. These episodes interlace religious themes to develop an overarching message that forms a representative anecdote of replacement in which the notion of “faith” becomes redefined.