Eye-contact as a chance product of individual looking: Implications for the intimacy model of argyle and dean

From time to time during social encounters, people look at one another in the region of the eyes, and sometimes their eyes meet to make eye-contact. According to Argyle and Dean (1965), eye-contact in dyadic encounters signals the intimacy of the interaction and is controlled largely by the competing approach and avoidance forces that motivate the pair. In the present paper, new analyses are reported of three published experiments that were designed originally to test aspects of the intimacy model and it is shown that the duration of eye-contact is no more than a chance product of how long the two subjects look individually. Looking and not eye-contact, it is argued, should be the basis for models of visual interaction, and the intimacy model is ill-founded conceptually; the role of emotion in gaze has been overstressed at the expense of the concept of information; and the most important aspect of vision is in any case not looking and eye-contact but visual access to the whole person. The more cueless the encounter—that is, the fewer the social cues from vision and all the other senses combined—the greater the psychological distance; and the greater the psychological distance, the more task-oriented and depersonalized the content of what people say and, in turn, the less spontaneous their style of speech and the less likely a debate to end in compromise.Research for this article was sponsored by the Social Science Research Council of Great Britain.     

The influence of child spacing on child survival

Summary This study evaluates the strength of the influence of spacing on child survival. Data related to a traditional culture (Punjab) in which almost all children are breast-fed up to the age of 17 months. An initial pregnancy history survey, subsequent four years updating through continuous monitoring of vital events and a second cross-sectional pregnancy history survey at the mid-point provided a file containing information on pregnancies and survival of children of 5,018 women. The analysis first looks at the correlation between the lengths of the preceding and subsequent intervals of index children, then examines whether this correlation was related to the repeated pattern of child death or survival. Next, the influence of the duration of the preceding interval on the survival of the index child in general and after accounting for the fate of the preceding child were considered. Then the influence of the length of the subsequent interval on the survival of the index child after conception and after the birth of the next child were studied. Lastly, regression analyses with preceding and subsequent intervals as independent variables and age-specific survival or death as the dependent variable were performed.     

Family composition preferences in a developing culture: The case of Taiwan, 1973

Abstract As fertility comes increasingly under voluntary control in a developing society, it can be argued that individual desires or preferences about children will become more salient and more significant for eventual fertility. Hence, the study of preferences is increasingly important as contraceptive use is extended and results in decreasing the number of unwanted births.(1) Further changes in fertility then depend on changes in preferences. The assumption is that people will at least try to achieve the families they want, if the means to do so are available. The fact that contraception is used at all is some evidence of the soundness of this assumption, although it should be recognized that family size desires operate in a complex of preferences, under varying degrees of conflict and control. To expect a one-to-one relationship between attitudes or preferences and overt behaviour would be simplistic.     

Differences in white-nonwhite community mental health center service utilization patterns

Routinely collected computerized data were used to study the process of service delivery in terms of admission patterns, type and quantity of services rendered, and status at termination for whites and nonwhites in two community mental health centers. Social area analysis techniques were employed to control for socio-economic status, ethnicity and life style variables, and an epidemiologic model was used to analyze admission and service delivery rate differences. It was found that nonwhite admission rates were at least twice as great as white rates. Service delivery rates to the population at large were considerably greater for nonwhites than for whites. Delivery of direct services within the centers differed for whites and nonwhites, but no consistent trends emerged when types and amounts of services rendered were analyzed, controlling for sex, ethnicity, age, diagnosis and social area. Disruption of care indices were greater for nonwhites than for whites. Highlighted were some of the complexities involved in interpreting results of utilization studies.     

Setting health priorities: a review of concepts and approaches

The setting of health priorities is primarily concerned with the equitable distribution of resources and is now more than ever an important part of strategic planning within the National Health Service (NHS). The basic information which can be used to assist in such decision-making and the process by which different agencies become involved are important aspects of priority-setting; this article is based on a major review of the research literature on these aspects and provides a discussion and an analysis of experience within health and other fields. From this material a number of possible approaches to priority-setting are identified and discussed. The article concludes that, before it can be decided how priorities should be set in the future, outstanding questions about how far rational approaches are feasible, about who is to be involved and what role they should play, and about how far such decisions are to be taken nationally or locally will need further consideration.     

Optimal Times to Contact Sample Households

Finding a suitable respondent at home is an essential and expensivecomponent of a household survey. This article reports on theresults of a study of the probabilities of finding someone aged14 or older at home and discusses the application of such datato survey design and budgeting.     

The relevance of the Chinese experience for third world economic development

Conclusion If the ten elements of Chinese development strategy discussed earlier are to provide object lessons relevant for other third world nations, they must be potentially transferable to other societies. The extent to which each element of the strategy is transferable depends on the conditions under which it can be successfully implemented, and on the degree to which these conditions are satisfied in other third world nations. I had also sought to determine what political-economic, geographical, and historical conditions are required for the successful implementation of each of the ten elements of strategy. The results of this analysis are summarized in the form of a matrix in Table 1. Each of the ten elements of strategy under discussion requires at least one - and often many more - of the major features of China's political-economic system. In all cases an effective and extensive system of public administration and/or a massoriented class structure are required, and in most cases a considerable degree of public ownership of the means of production and administrative control of resource allocation is either necessary or helpful. Less often required, but crucial in a few cases, are a central government with the power to mobilize resources on a large scale, a political leadership capable of influencing and involving people on a wide scale, and a ruraloriented class structure.Among the key geographic characteristics considered, large size is necessary or helpful for the successful implementation of two of the ten elements of strategy, but is disadvantageous in many cases because it is then more difficult for the political leadership to establish an effective system of public administration and to influence and involve people on a wide scale. An abundance of labor and scarcity of land is quite generally disadvantageous because it makes the achievement of rapid economic growth more difficult under any development strategy. But ethnological unity can be very helpful for the establishment of a strong state in all three respects I have distinguished.A cultural tradition oriented to cooperative work is quite helpful - if not strictly necessary - for three of the elements of strategy. A heritage of educational and administrative experience is helpful - but not absolutely essential - for all ten elements, since it improves the operation of those basic economic institutions and those characteristics of the state which have played an important role in the success of the Chinese development strategy. The less a society has been subject to foreign domination, the more its environment is likely to be conducive to the success of many elements of the Chinese strategy. And, finally, a profound social revolution would appear to be necessary in most instances for the development of three features of the Chinese political-economic system which as a group are indispensable for the success of all ten elements of the Chinese development strategy.These conclusions suggest that most of the elements of strategy described are currently applicable in only a few third world nations at best. Only a handful of nations have experienced a social revolution of any kind, and not all of these revolutions have been strongly rooted in the rural masses. Moreover, many of the revolutionary societies (e.g., Cuba, Mozambique, Vietnam) have a bitter history of Western imperialist domination to overcome, and most have only a limited heritage of educational and administrative experience to draw upon (e.g., the African nations). Some do not have a cultural tradition conducive to collective modes of operation (most notably Cuba), and many are ethnologically heterogeneous (e.g., Angola, Mozambique). Of all contemporary third world nations, North Korea would appear to come closest to meeting the historical, geographical, and political-economic conditions that have played a significant (and in many cases an essential) role in the success of the Chinese development strategy. But even in the case of North Korea the match is far from perfect in many respects.Do these observations imply that the Chinese experience is essentially unique and therefore largely irrelevant for the rest of the third world? I think not. First of all, the Chinese experience has set new and higher standards for the evaluation of development performance and policy throughout the world: it is no longer enough to promote rapid economic growth, but development planners can and will be held accountable for achieving a balanced pattern of development in which non-growth objectives such as greater equity and self-reliance are promoted along with faster growth.Second, certain elements of the Chinese development strategy do lend themselves to successful application - at least to a certain extent - in other societies which differ considerably from China in their political-economic, geographical, and historical conditions. For example, the promotion of mass-oriented human resource development could be carried out with some success in a nation with a reasonably strong state (in terms of its capacity for resource mobilization and public administration) and a political leadership somewhat oriented to the masses. A strategy of restriction of luxury consumption is potentially more widely transferable, for it requires mainly a mass-oriented political leadership and, up to a point, does not depend on an unusually effective state apparatus. Some degree of economic diversification of regions and localities, as well as some degree of amelioration of rural-urban imbalance, can be successfully accomplished provided that the political leadership is sufficiently rural-oriented and can rely upon an effective and extensive administrative system. In all these cases the necessary configuration of political-economic conditions is possible (if not very likely) in a society that has not undergone a profound social revolution and that operates within a predominantly capitalist institutional framework. More revolutionary change would be more conducive to success, but not absolutely essential for some progress to be made.Third, and more important, some of the key conditions required for the successful implementation of much of the Chinese development strategy can be realized in the future even if they do not obtain at present in most third world societies. Here it is important to distinguish between those aspects of the setting of any given society which are virtually immutable and those aspects which are amenable to change under appropriate historical circumstances. The key geographical characteristics that I have discussed clearly involve stable features of a society's environment; nothing short of massive territorial annexation, massive migration, or genocide could alter the size, the resource endowment, or the ethnological structure of contemporary third world nations. The historical characteristics I have cited vary considerably in their susceptibility to change. Cultural traditions built up over centuries (and in some cases millenia) cannot be transformed within a generation. The amount of time it takes to overcome the effects of Western imperialism depends of course on the force and the longevity of its imposition, but in many areas at least a generation might be needed. And a substantial degree of educational and administrative experience can only be built up with several decades of concerted effort. The possibility of significant change in any of these three historical characteristics hinges on some kind of decisive break with the past which ushers in new political leadership determined to bring about large-scale change. Such a decisive break need not involve a revolutionary redistribution of power from dominating to oppressed classes, but it does require at least the accession to power of strongly nationalist forces determined to modernize their country (i.e., to increase its resemblance to the powerful industrialized nations of the modern world). Social revolution is the most fundamental historical characteristic of all, for it underlies the establishment of many of the key features of China's political-economic system and (not incidentally) also creates a context in which the needed changes in the other three historical characteristics become more readily achievable. Profound social revolutions, in which formerly oppressed classes do succeed in wresting power from formerly privileged classes, are not made overnight, but they can be brought about after a period of revolutionary organization and struggle. If the revolutionary movement is to be truly rooted in the masses (and the rural masses in particular), and if it is to succeed in a contemporary international context in which privileged classes in third world nations can often count on support from major foreign powers, it is bound to take a great deal of time and effort. But the point I am making here is that it has been done in some countries in the past, and there is every likelihood that it will eventually be done in some other countries in the future.At present it would be foolhardy to attempt to predict where Chinese-style revolutions might succeed in generating historical and political-economic conditions approximating those which have contributed to the success of the Chinese strategy of development. But there are many third world nations with one or more relevant geographic and historical characteristics already similar to China's. For example, India, Indonesia, and Brazil share China's large size, some of the Latin American nations are ethnologically quite homogeneous, many East and Southeast Asian nations have cultural traditions resembling those of the Chinese, the people of India and some of the other semi-industrialized nations of the third world have already acquired a substantial degree of educational and administrative skills, and nations such as Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan were not thoroughly restructured by foreign powers. Profound social revolutions in any of these nations - however distant the prospect may now appear- would go a long way toward establishing the conditions under which many of the lessons from the Chinese strategy of development could indeed be successfully applied. As for the immediate future, there is little likelihood that the Chinese experience will be of much relevance to development planning in the rest of the third world. For the great majority of third world nations are still dominated by propertied or otherwise privileged elites, and, as one observer has put it, revolution is precisely the fate which [they] are striving to avert through their development.

---

     

Social forecasting: An integral part of corporate planning?

The increasing need for business to monitor the social dimensions of its environment and, hopefully make some forecasts of future trends has met with some constructive response from academics and consultants although not as yet on a very liberal scale. The published literature does not indicate to what extent companies in general attemp social forecasting and, where they do, the degree of integration which exists within their corporate planning systems. The authors, therefore, decided to survey a sample of British organizations to see if they could shed some light on these issues and thereby add some information to the excellent accounts of individual cases of social forecasting in, they suspect, the more advanced and atypical companies. The survey suggests a general picture of: awareness of the value of social forecasting; fairly widespread ignorance of the techniques which do exist, primitive though these may largely be; successful integration of social forecasting into the corporate planning systems of a substantial number of organizations but not in the majority.