TOWARD A SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF ENTERTAINMENT MAGIC (CONJURING)*

The dynamics of everyday social interactions can often be clarified by studying the social organization of unusual realms of activity. One such activity is conjuring–magic performed as entertainment. This article discusses various sociological and social psychological dimensions in the performance of magic. It focuses on the similarities between a magic act and the social interactions of everyday life. It also discusses the dialectic between magic reasoning and mundane reasoning–between the audience's expectations built from the organization of everyday life and the violations of expectations produced by the magician's construction of an alternate reality. A magic trick is described from the perspectives of both magician and spectator using such topics as the directional, concealment, and disattend channels of activity; breaking frames; bracketing; sex roles; expectations; perception and attention; and rationality. The article concludes with some brief suggestions for additional research topics and some implications for both a theoretical and an applied sociological social psychology.     

Depression in school-aged children: assessment & early intervention

A careful assessment of all of these factors will help nurse therapists who are also primary care providers develop a more holistic approach to treatment and, thus, increase treatment effectiveness. The three-pronged assessment approach discussed above is cost effective, safe, and indicated as a frontline measure to assess the risk for depression in children and their parents (particularly mothers), which can begin the process of "true" early intervention. I say "true" early intervention because in my role as an early intervention specialist, my first meeting with families usually occurs after a crucial incident requiring hospitalization of the child or the parent, or school failure, or both. My programs of intervention are hardly "early," although treatment is started relatively early in the life of the child. In the past few years, I have noticed that psychiatric-mental health advanced practice nurses, including myself, are increasingly working in some capacity in primary health centers, such as school-based clinics, churches, collaborative practices, and community health centers. It would be wonderful if we used these settings to identify risk for depression in children and begin preventive treatment (starting with teaching good sleep hygiene, a treatment in itself) to truly make early intervention a reality.     

Subjective Well-Being and Social Production Functions

Recent reviews of scientific work on subjective well-being (SWB) reveal disagreements in conceptualization, measurement, and explanation of the concept. We propose Social Production Function theory as a framework to resolve them. Social Production Function (SPF) theory integrates strengths of relevant psychological theories and economic consumer/household production theories, without their limitations (namely, tradeoffs between satisfaction of different needs are not in the first, and goals or needs are not in the second). SPF theory identifies two ultimate goals that all humans seek to optimize (physical well-being and social well-being) and five instrumental goals by which they are achieved (stimulation, comfort, status, behavioural confirmation, affection). The core notion of SPF theory is that people choose and substitute instrumental goals so as to optimize the production of their well-being, subject to constraints in available means of production. SPF theory guides research measurement and explanatory models, and it integrates features of contemporary subjective well-being theories.