A Meta-Analytic Review of the Association Between Disgust and Prejudice Toward Gay Men

ABSTRACT

A sizeable number of studies have documented a relationship between heterosexual persons’ experience of disgust (measured as an individual difference variable or induced experimentally) and prejudice toward gay men (i.e., homonegativity). Yet, to date, no one has attempted to meta-analytically review this corpus of research. We address this gap by conducting a meta-analysis of published and unpublished work examining heterosexual men and women’s disgust and their homonegativity toward gay men. Fourteen articles (12 published, two unpublished) containing 17 studies were analyzed (N = 7,322). The average effect size for disgust sensitivity studies was moderate to large (d = 0.64), whereas for disgust induction studies, the effect was large (d = 0.77). No evidence of effect size heterogeneity emerged. Future directions and recommendations for methodological improvements are outlined.     

Social Constructions of Young Children in ‘Special’, ‘Inclusive’ and Home Environments

The paper tells of the social constructs surrounding young children with learning difficulties in their home, ‘special’ early education setting and ‘inclusive’ or mainstream early education setting in England. The exploratory study focused on how three‐ to four‐year‐old children made sense of their environments and how their identities were constructed by different parties in the different contexts. Ethnographic case studies were conducted using semi‐structured and informal interviews with parents and practitioners, documentary analysis, fieldnotes, and live and video observations. Shared constructions across the contexts for each child were common, with constructions of them being happy and making progress pervasive across the children and settings. Differences in constructions across settings indicated that qualities could shine or negative constructions be tempered, thus showing the role of the environment and the culture of inclusion in socially constructing children with special needs.     

Guerrilla communication,visual consumption,and consumer public relations

Guerrilla communication has grown into an increasingly prominent strategy adopted by large corporations such as American Express, BP Amoco, Chrysler, Hershey Foods, and Pepsi. In its attention-grabbing instantiations, guerrilla communication points to the convergence of advertising, marketing, and public relations in consumer communication practices. This essay also considers guerrilla communication's place in the circuit of culture.     

Sub-National State Institutions and the Organization of Agricultural Resource Use: The Case of the Dairy Industry1

Abstract Most studies of state/economy relationships focus on national and global institutions and minimize the importance of local, sub-national institutions. This lack of attention to sub-national states also characterizes most of the studies that examine the role of the state in the structure of agriculture. On the other hand, calls for a new type of sustainable agriculture argue that this type of economic system will be embedded in local political institutions. The nature of these local institutions, however, has gone largely unanalyzed. Through a comparative historical analysis of sub-national state intervention in the regional economic structure of the U.S. dairy industry in the New Deal era, this analysis shows how state dairy policy has reflected sub-national interest group politics surrounding food, agriculture, and rural land use. Sub-national states responded to the agricultural crisis of the 1930s by spatially reorganizing agricultural resource use within their territories. The three states examined—New York, Wisconsin, and California—influenced the resource intensiveness of dairy agriculture by managing the spatially segmented boundaries that separated resource-intensive and low-resource dairy production systems.     

Maximizing both external and internal validity in longitudinal true experiments with voluntary treatments: The “combined modified” design

Human services interventions are most rigorously evaluated with true experimental designs in longitudinal experimental field trials (LEFTs). However, differential self-selection or attrition often pose a serious threat to the LEFTs internal validity. This threat can be largely overcome by describing all conditions in advance to prospective subjects and securing their agreement to participate in and complete whichever condition is selected at random by a Lottery. This solution, however, in turn then poses the external validity problem that the program's effects on those who would participate in a Lottery may well be different than its effects on those who would participate in any single condition. In the present paper, we describe a new design, termed the Combined Modified Design, which assesses and overcomes this problem. This new design, in which a modified version of the Randomized Invitation Design (in which only one condition, assigned at random, is described to a potential subject, but outcome measures are obtained on everyone) is combined with the Lottery LEFT, is illustrated with a hypothetical example.     

Fairness and reputation effects in a provision point contributions process

This article reports on an investigation of how issues of fairness and reputation affect individual contributions in a group decision-making setting. In the context of a threshold public goods provision experiment, treatments were performed to determine how individuals react to limited and unlimited information about the contributions of other group members. Experimental results show that revealing anonymous information about individual contribution behavior caused a concern about equity, which led to decreased average contributions and a higher variance in contributions. These effects were partially offset when individual-specific contribution information was displayed. In their conclusion, the authors discuss how the results apply to different fundraising environments.     

Media and Professional Interest in Homelessness over 30 Years (1974–2003)

Media and professional interest in homelessness represent important sources of data that may be useful in understanding broader societal factors influencing this pressing social issue. The present study examined the volume and content of coverage of homelessness in four major newspapers and the professional literature indexed in PsycINFO over the past 30 years. Media coverage showed a steep increase during the mid-1980s, a steady decline throughout the late 1980s and into the 1990s, and a plateau since the mid-1990s. Professional coverage demonstrated a less pronounced and delayed pattern of growth, with no sign of decline during the past decade. Content analysis of 574 newspaper articles revealed a sympathetic focus on deinstitutionalization and other structural causes of homelessness during the period of increasing coverage in the mid-1980s, as well as positive media coverage in terms of an emphasis on critical programs and services during more recent years. Content analysis of 324 professional journal articles showed that deficits and deviant characteristics of homeless people were discussed to a significantly greater extent than the structural causes of homelessness over the entire 30-year time period. Possible interactions among media coverage, professional interest, public opinion, the prevalence of homelessness, and policy initiatives are discussed.     

Guidelines for Conducting a Victim-Sensitive Interview

Victim sensitive interviews allow the adult investigator to gather vital facts from a child. Within these interviews, the investigator is provided with an opportunity to elicit responses from the child regarding allegations that have taken place. These allegations often have many origins and may involve sexual impropriety, abuse, taunting, and torture of a physical nature, verbal nature, or both. The purpose of this article is to provide standardized guidelines that can assist individuals from various occupational fields in conducting victim sensitive interviews. The standardized guidelines provided offer an assemblage of general principles that have consistently appeared within literature as well as in manuals provided by various jurisdictions. These guidelines refer to a practice of conduct that is recommended; however, variance with implementation is allowed. It is assumed that the reader brings a level of clinical experience to the material provided in this article.     

A Provisional Conceptual Framework for Intentional Positioning in Public Relations

Positioning within public relations is a concept not often addressed in public relations literature. This article reports on the progress of a project that aims to develop a way in which positioning could be usefully conceptualized within public relations. It suggests a conceptual framework that takes positioning beyond the marketing definitions that have limited use in the broader public relations field. The article reports on the development of a provisional conceptual framework for intentional positioning within a public relations context. Drawing from recent developments in positioning theory in the field of psychology, a framework was developed and applied to 57 award winning public relations campaign entries. Findings reveal that the positioning framework has the potential to be applied both as an heuristic to aid analysis of practice and also as a framework to aid practitioners in designing positioning strategies. Possibilities for further research are discussed.