Treatment of Marital Disharmony Where One Spouse Has A Primary Affective Disorder (Manic Depressive Illness): I. General Overview—100 Couples*

This paper gives a general overview of the treatment of marital disharmony where one spouse has a primary affective disorder. This is the first of a series of clinical-statistical studies on the subject. Neither purely clinical conclusions without the insights of statistics nor vice versa are sufficient methodologically. By treatment we mean a variety of interventions ranging from psychotherapies to somatotherapies (pharmaceuticals and/or electroconvulsive therapy [ECT]). By marital disharmony we mean where the nature of the marital relationship is such that it leads to sufficient pain in either or both spouses to warrent treatment.     

Social policy planning in a federal structure: A social learning strategy

Current social welfare policy planning reflects an inadequate sense of the problems to be solved and an incentive structure which discourages responsible decision making. Proceeding from overly simple cause and effect models, social welfare policies are designed with detailed administrative regulations to insure uniformity and regularity of behavior across the states. When problems are not solved, policy makers focus on the failures of personnel to follow all the detailed regulations. This leads to additional efforts to enforce compliance. There is evidence that implementation personnel consistently and purposively do stretch or ignore regulations in order to service clients. An alternative to further detailed regulations then is to use the autonomy of state units in the federal structure by eliminating negative incentives to innovation and creating incentives to experiment with alternative programs. As a social learning strategy this would encourage innovation and make it possible to learn from the experience of personnel who daily confront the realities of welfare problems and the large array of administrative details.     

The Politics of Canadian Social Scientists: A Reply to Guimond and Palmer

TWO VERY DIFFERENT PICTURES regarding the relationship between the education system and socialization into dominant ideology emerge from the work of Guimond et al. (1989a; 1989b) and ourselves (Baer and Lambert, 1990). Using data from a single Quebec university, Guimond et al. argued that the conservatizing effect of education in the case of some programmes of study (e.g., commerce) was offset by a radicalizing effect in social science education. In their own words, "it can hardly be argued that education increases support for the status quo when one looks at the data relating to social science students.… [Our research program] clearly suggest[s] that studying the social sciences is a radicalizing experience" (Guimond et al., 1989b: 207; our emphasis). In our case, we used national, cross-sectional data to make a case for the substantive insignificance of any such social science effect in the long run, and to support our contention that overall, the education system in Canada has probably had a conservatizing influence.     

Emotional Expressiveness, Extraversion, and Neuroticism: A Meta-Analysis

This meta-analytic investigation explored the relationship between measures of emotional expressiveness and the core personality constructs of Extraversion and Neuroticism. Measures of emotional expressiveness included both behavioral assessments of emotional encoding/expressiveness and self-report instruments. There were 34 effect sizes for the Extraversion-expressiveness relationship and 26 effect sizes for Neuroticism-expressiveness. The results revealed that self-report measures of emotional expressiveness yield Extraversion and Neuroticism effects that are not the same as effects provided by behavioral assessments of emotional expressiveness/encoding. However, there was a significant overall positive relationship between Extraversion and emotional expressiveness, regardless of type of expressiveness measure. Overall, Neuroticism was significantly negatively related to behavioral measures of emotional expressiveness, but unrelated to self-report measures. These results suggest that emotional expressiveness and extraversion are linked, but that self-report and behavioral measures of emotional expressiveness are not interchangeable. Nonverbal communication researchers should pay attention to both the type and scope of the instrument when selecting and using measures of emotional expressiveness.     

Countering essentialism in behavioural social science: the example of 'the vulnerable child' ethnographically examined

After discussing ways in which the concept of vulnerability is applied to children in psychology and sociology. It is argued that many of these may arise from the mistaken concretisation of essentialising concepts which have sometimes thereby become barriers to, rather than facilitators of, sociological understanding. Fieldwork is presented and analysed concerning the interactions of some London children, and their characterisations of themselves and others, in a variety of home, school and other settings. It is suggested that situations in which children are present often do generate 'vulnerability' in all participants not only in the children. In classrooms and elsewhere the attribution and reality of vulnerability moves rapidly between persons as situations develop and change.     

Dark Guests and Great Firewalls: The Internet and Chinese Security Policy

Some believe that the Internet is immune to regulation and is contributing to the demise of the state. Others see the same technology as facilitating surveillance on behalf of states and corporations. To help explore this debate further, this article examines the case of the Internet in China. China—a nondemocratic, authoritarian state—is a "hard case" for those who argue that the Internet cannot be controlled. Even while pushing for the expansion of new information technologies, mostly for economic reasons, China has attempted to maintain strict controls over the Internet. After summarizing the debate outlined above, a review of China's Internet security policies is conducted, and the ways in which prodemocracy activists have attempted to circumvent these policies is examined.     

Induced population growth and induced technological progress: Their interaction in the accelerating stage

A simple model of Malthusian population growth combined with population‐induced technological progress generates accelerating growth. The model may be relevant for a first stage of growth in which natural resource limitations can be overcome through technological progress; it is not applicable to a later stage in which resource constraints are more resistant. Parameter values are roughly inferred from historical experience. Exogenously more rapid population growth initially depresses income, perhaps for up to several centuries, then raises it without limit. More rapid population growth is desirable only when the social discount rate is less than the ratio of the parameters for induced technical progress and static diminishing returns. Imposed population fluctuations cause inverse movements in incomes, so that induced progress is very difficult to detect empirically even for population fluctuations up to 500 years.     

Organizational-level interventions to reduce occupational stressors

Abstract

Occupational stress research continues to grow, and is increasingly being used to inform national policy on worker health and well-being. Most models of occupational stress emphasize notions of person-environment fit. Two approaches for intervention to minimize adverse consequences of occupational stress follow from such models. One emphasizes the strengthening and enhancement of indwiduals and their resources, the other emphasizes the reduction ofcommon workplace-based sources ofoccupational stress. This paper reviews 10 organizational-level interventions to reduce stress at work which have been examined in various field studies. These interventions were generally found to have positive effects, and, given the limited success of individual-level interventions in addressing occupational sources of stress, should be encouraged.