When the Name Says it All: Preschoolers' Recognition and Use of the Gendered Nature of Common Proper Names

By the time they enter preschool children have acquired extensive knowledge of gender stereotypes. There has been little work on their use of this knowledge to make inferences about behavior; there is virtually no information as to how the explicitness of gender-category information influences the reliability of inferences. In two experiments we tested 3-112-year-old children's recognition and use of less-than-explicit, yet highly reliable, cues to gender-category membership: common proper names. In Experiment 1 children reliably associated feminine-stereotyped names with pictures of girls and masculine-stereotyped names with pictures of boys; they did not reliably associate gender-neutral names with pictures of girls and boys. In Experiment 2 children used their knowledge of same-gender-category names to make predictions about the preferences of otherwise sex-unspecified targets; they did not make reliable predictions when the targets were labeled with opposite-gender-category names. In contrast, when the targets were labeled with gendered common nouns (“girl” and “boy”) performance was reliable and was not affected by match or mismatch between the sex of the child and the gender category of the target. The findings indicate differential patterns of development and application of gender-category consistent versus gender-category inconsistent knowledge.     

Enforcing a Tobacco-Free Campus Through an Ambassador-Based Program: A Phenomenology

Abstract

Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine whether student awareness and attitudes about organic foods would predict their behaviors with regard to organic food consumption and other healthy lifestyle practices. A secondary purpose was to determine whether attitudes about similar eco-friendly practices would result in socially conscious behaviors. Participants: The sample was students (N = 443) enrolled in 1 of 2 core courses in a mid-sized Southern university. Method Summary: Students completed an anonymous 28-item survey about their awareness, attitudes, and behaviors. Linear regression and path analysis were used to test whether attitudes were related to purchase of organic foods and eco-friendly behaviors. Results: Many students (49%) possessed factual knowledge about organic foods. More (64%) felt positively about having organic food options available to them both on campus and elsewhere. Taste and price most influenced the purchase of such foods. Attitudes were significant predictors of consumption behaviors and healthy practices. Conclusions: Positive attitudes toward organic foods and other environmentally friendly practices significantly predicted similar behaviors. Student consumers seem to act upon their beliefs.     

The Differing Values of Multigeneration and First‐Generation Farmers: Their Influence on the Structure of Agriculture at the Rural‐Urban Interface

Recognizing the inherent pressures on farm families and farmland, USDA has been developing policies and programs that simultaneously attempt to retain existing farm families on the landscape, recruit new farmers, and create lasting economic opportunities rooted in agriculture. In this article we argue that to date there has been an overemphasis on economic and structural approaches and a systematic discounting of the way individual farmer and farm household motivations can differ as they relate to the farm household life cycle, enterprise growth, adaptation, and reproduction. We use a sociological lens to qualitatively and quantitatively examine the social differences between multigeneration and first‐generation farmers at the rural‐urban interface by exploring how economic and noneconomic values influence succession plans and enterprise structure. We find that the answers to these questions are complex, layered, and not static, as farm households cycle through the life course. We describe how the differences between young and old multigeneration and first‐generation farmers can influence the structure of agriculture at the rural‐urban interface, and conclude with some practical policy recommendations.     

‘A New Language that Speaks of Change Just As It Steps Toward It’: Transnationalism,Erotic Justice and Queer Human Rights Praxis

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) movements have too often been dominated by US liberal individualist framings of lesbian and gay rights, resulting in the hegemony of US‐focused issues and institutional actions, despite the irony that the US government has been relatively unsupportive of LGBT rights on the international stage. We argue that transnational, grassroots queer movements embody more profound aspirations that do not limit the meaning of queer liberation to singular identity politics or rights‐restraining institutions. Specifically, we point to transnational and Third World‐based queer movements that offer more complex structural analyses of sexual oppression as well as more visionary praxes of sexual rights. Drawing on lessons from two cases of queer human rights praxis from the Philippines and México, we assert that a queer grassroots enactment of human rights allows for multiple subaltern constituencies to find – and to make – a place in human rights discourses; queer identity and actions create social formations that expand human rights agendas to further embody the intersectionality, interdependence and transnationality of daily life. Key to these enactments of queer human rights praxis are prefigurative politics and rooted cosmopolitanism, which catalyze new expansions of human rights to include intersectional framings and practices of erotic justice.     

Future life expectancy in Australia,Europe, Japan and North America

Human life expectancy has risen in most developed countries over the last century, causing the observed demographic shifts. Babel, Bomsdorf and Schmidt (forthcoming) introduce a stochastic mortality model using panel data procedures which distinguishes between a common time effect and a common age effect of mortality evolvement. Using this mortality model, the present paper provides forecasts of future life expectancy for 17 countries divided into 12 regions: Australia, Alps, Bene, Canada, England and Wales, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Scandinavia and the United States of America. We consider (traditional) period life expectancies as well as cohort life expectancies, the latter being a more realistic approach but less common. It turns out that a continuing increase of life expectancy is expected in all considered countries. Further, we show that the probabilistic uncertainty of forecast life expectancies is different if either period life expectancies or cohort life expectancies are considered and, moreover, the uncertainty increases substantially if the error of parameter estimation is included.     

Adolescent emotion regulation trajectories: The influence of parent and friend emotion socialization

With mounting evidence demonstrating the link between child emotion regulation (ER) and emotion socialization, we conducted a longitudinal study to understand (a) emotion-specific trajectories of adolescent ER and (b) how specific parent and friend emotion socialization strategies impact ER over 4 years. Participants were 209 adolescents (52.5% girls; M_age = 12.66 years; 75.7% White) and their parents. Latent growth curve models identified unique trajectories for anger and sadness/worry regulation. Anger regulation increased across time, whereas sadness/worry regulation remained highly stable longitudinally, lacking variance for growth modeling. Friend emotion socialization emerged as a more salient predictor of anger regulation than parent emotion socialization. Friend reward, override, and punish responses predicted initial levels. Friend punish and parent magnify responses predicted the slope.     

Integrating Knowledge through Information Trading: Examining the Relationship between Boundary Spanning Communication and Individual Performance*

With the global penetration of Internet technologies, individuals may now cross organizational boundaries to communicate efficiently with others regardless of time and space. Thus, when looking for help in solving work tasks, knowledge workers may just as easily contact individuals in rival firms across the globe as a coworker sitting at the next desk. As a result, management faces questions such as (1) How should firms manage employees' knowledge‐sourcing activities when they span both intra‐organizational and extra‐organizational boundaries, and (2) What is the relationship between different knowledge‐sourcing activities and individual performance? Grounded in the knowledge‐based view of the firm, we investigate these questions using data from Europe's largest information technology (IT) services and management consulting company. Our results provide evidence that organizations should support boundary spanning and knowledge sourcing from both internal and external sources. Results suggest (1) a positive relationship between boundary spanning communication and creativity and general performance, and (2) a negative relationship between a reliance on colocated coworkers as knowledge sources and creativity.     

Student,classroom, and teacher factors associated with teachers’ attunement to bullies and victims

Teachers are instrumental in antibullying efforts given their position of authority in the classroom context, yet teachers can only be effective at reducing victimization and bullying in their classrooms if they are aware of who is involved. Consequently, teachers’ attunement to bullies and victims is a critical component of social dynamics management and antibullying practices. Given the importance of teacher attunement, there is a pressing need to identify relevant factors related to the degree to which teachers are attuned to bullies and victims. The major objective of the current investigation was to examine student- (gender, popularity status), classroom- (average bullying, norm salience of bullying, popularity hierarchy, class size), and teacher-level (gender, teaching experience) factors associated with teachers’ attunement to bullies and victims. Using a sample of students in 5th-grade classrooms, we analyzed the likelihood of teachers being attuned to 267 bullies (76.8% boys) nested in 112 classrooms and 343 victims (55.1% boys) nested in 120 classrooms using multilevel mixed-effects generalized linear models. Results indicated that teachers were more likely to be attuned to boy bullies and victims but less likely to be attuned to bullies and victims with higher popularity status. No classroom or teacher level factors related significantly to the likelihood of teachers’ attunement. Implications for social dynamics management and bullying intervention efforts are discussed.