Would You Say You “Had Masturbated” If … ?: The Influence of Situational and Individual Factors on Labeling a Behavior as Masturbation

The term masturbation is often not clearly defined despite its prevalent use in sex education, sex research, and clinical settings. The purpose of this study was to understand what behaviors are typically considered to be masturbation as well as the situational and individual variables that may affect the labeling of a behavior as such. An online study of 564 individuals demonstrated that a wide variety of behaviors were considered to be masturbation by a majority of participants. No difference was found between men and women in the total number of behaviors labeled as masturbation. Both men and women were more likely to label a behavior as masturbation (1) if there was no sexual partner present than if there was and (2) if an orgasm occurred than if it did not. In addition, women were more likely than men to label a behavior as masturbation if they were alone and if no orgasm occurred. Younger age was associated with labeling more behaviors as masturbation, but sexual identity, self-pleasuring experience, partnered sexual experience, and attitudes toward masturbation were not related to the number of behaviors labeled as masturbation. Results speak to the importance of behavioral specificity when discussing masturbation with students, clients, and in sex research.     

Cognitive Characteristics of Strategic and Non-strategic Gamblers

Participation in strategic and non-strategic games is mostly explained in the literature by gender: men gamble on strategic games, while women gamble on non-strategic games. However, little is known about the underlying cognitive factors that could also distinguish strategic and non-strategic gamblers. We suggest that cognitive style and need for cognition also explain participation in gambling subtypes. From a dual-process perspective, cognitive style is the tendency to reject or accept the fast, automatic answer that comes immediately in response to a problem. Individuals that preferentially reject the automatic response use an analytic style, which suggest processing information in a slow way, with deep treatment. The intuitive style supposes a reliance on fast, automatic answers. The need for cognition provides a motivation to engage in effortful activities. One hundred and forty-nine gamblers (53 strategic and 96 non-strategic) answered the Cognitive Reflection Test, Need For Cognition Scale, and socio-demographic questions. A logistic regression was conducted to evaluate the influence of gender, cognitive style and need for cognition on participation in strategic and non-strategic games. Our results show that a model with both gender and cognitive variables is more accurate than a model with gender alone. Analytic (vs. intuitive) style, high (vs. low) need for cognition and being male (vs. female) are characteristics of strategic gamblers (vs. non-strategic gamblers). This study highlights the importance of considering the cognitive characteristics of strategic and non-strategic gamblers in order to develop preventive campaigns and treatments that fit the best profiles for gamblers.     

Predatory Inclusion in Consumer Credit: Explaining Black and White Disparities in Payday Loan Use

Payday loans are a high-cost form of credit, yet they remain a popular financial tool used by a significant proportion of Americans. Use of these loans varies significantly across social groups. Black households in particular are more than twice as likely to use payday lending as white households. Explanations for households’ decision to use payday loans remain disputed. Some scholars argue that poor financial literacy is a major driver of payday borrowing. Others propose instead that payday loans are a form of credit of last resort used after depleting higher quality sources of credit. In this article, I argue these explanations are incomplete and miss the racialized nature of payday lending. Payday lending is a form of predatory inclusion: it provides households experiencing exclusion from consumer credit markets with a needed source of credit but under conditions that jeopardize long-term benefits of access. Given historical and contemporary patterns of financial exclusion, this process entails disproportionate reliance on payday lending by black households. Models using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances provide support for both the predatory inclusion and the credit exhaustion explanations. Predatory inclusion, however, explains the largest portion of racial disparities in payday loan use.     

RESEARCH NOTEStylistic variations in the social network of a 10‐year‐old child: Pragmatic adjustments or automatic alignment?1

Although stylistic variation within social networks has been described in adults, this topic remains under‐researched in children. One question that remains unanswered is the extent to which stylistic variation is the result of automatic alignment or of intentional, pragmatically motivated adjustment. We present an in‐depth sociolinguistic case study of a 10‐year‐old boy, his family and four friends selected according to their place of birth and the duration of their relationship with the boy. Statistical analyses of sociolinguistic variables of French suggest that the child's use of these variants is influenced by pragmatic motivations but not by automatic alignment. La variation stylistique est bien décrite chez l’adulte. Toutefois, sa forme, ses mécanismes et ses fonctions ontogénétiques doivent être davantage étudiés chez l’enfant. Une question concerne notamment le degré auquel cette variation résulte d’un alignement automatique sur les usages de l’interlocuteur ou d’un ajustement intentionnel, fondé sur des motivations pragmatiques. Nous présentons une étude de cas approfondie d’un garçon de dix ans enregistré avec sa famille et quatre amis sélectionnés selon leur lieu de naissance et la durée de la relation amicale qui les lie à l’enfant cible. L’analyse statistique de variables sociolinguistiques du français suggère que cet enfant est capable d’ajustements subtils en fonction de l’identité des interlocuteurs. Plutôt que d’être sous‐tendus par un alignement mimétique sur les usages d’autrui, ces ajustements semblent fondés sur des motivations pragmatiques et identitaires.     

On the equilibrium of voting games with abstention and several levels of approval

We study the core of “(j, k) simple games”, where voters choose one level of approval from among j possible levels, partitioning the society into j coalitions, and each possible partition facing k levels of approval in the output (Freixas and Zwicker in Soc Choice Welf 21:399–431, 2003). We consider the case of (j, 2) simple games, including voting games in which each voter may cast a “yes” or “no” vote, or abstain (j = 3). A necessary and sufficient condition for the non-emptiness of the core of such games is provided, with an important application to weighted symmetric (j, 2) simple games. These results generalize the literature, and provide a characterization of constitutions under which a society would allow a given number of candidates to compete for leadership without running the risk of political instability. We apply these results to well-known voting systems and social choice institutions including the relative majority rule, the two-thirds relative majority rule, the United States Senate, and the United Nations Security Council.     

Export Performance,Labor Standards and Institutions: Evidence from a Dynamic Panel Data Model

I investigate the role of labor standards in international trade. While the literature has used many different measures of labor standards, I use two: the rate of work injuries and the rate of strikes and lockouts — allowing me to construct both measures for 112 countries from 1980 until 2004. This allows dynamic panel data methods to be used in estimation. Three measures of the quality of institutions are also used for the same period: the number of years the chief executive is in office, the concentration of a country’s legislature measured by the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, and whether the legislature is controlled by a party representing a special interest. The results show that countries with better labor standards and institutions do trade more — their exports to GDP ratio is higher.     

Minority status and culture: local constructions of diversity in a classroom in the Netherlands

In this paper, we explain diversity in knowledge‐sharing strategies in a multi‐ethnic classroom both from a minority status perspective and from a cultural production perspective. The analysis shows how these perspectives are dynamically related in local productions of diversity. The paper argues how, at the level of classroom practice, culturally learned experiences are shaped by status relationships and, at the same time, how status relationships are expressed in cultural formats. Moreover, it is also argued that at a larger social level, collective attitudes towards schooling develop as a co‐construction between cultural processes and status issues.     

Matching Communities and Hierarchies within the Firm

This article, which draws on recent literature on organizational communities, raises the question of the coherence of the firm through the analysis of the dialectic interaction between hierarchies and Knowledge-Intensive Communities (KnICs) within the firm. Focusing on the cognitive dimension of the firm, we analyze the matching between hierarchies and KnICs and draw conclusions as to the coherence of the firm. Using two key elements (the frequency of interactions and the intensity of communication between communities), we draw a typology allowing a better understanding of the processes of coordination and knowledge creation within the firm. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Responsiveness to feedback as a personal trait

We investigate individual heterogeneity in the tendency to under-respond to feedback (“conservatism”) and to respond more strongly to positive compared to negative feedback (“asymmetry”). We elicit beliefs about relative performance after repeated rounds of feedback across a series of cognitive tests. Relative to a Bayesian benchmark, we find that subjects update on average conservatively but not asymmetrically. We define individual measures of conservatism and asymmetry relative to the average subject, and show that these measures explain an important part of the variation in beliefs and competition entry decisions. Relative conservatism is correlated across tasks and predicts competition entry both independently of beliefs and by influencing beliefs, suggesting it can be considered a personal trait. Relative asymmetry is less stable across tasks, but predicts competition entry by increasing self-confidence. Ego-relevance of the task correlates with relative conservatism but not relative asymmetry.