Social skills of adopted Chinese girls at home and in school: Parent and teacher ratings

This study examines adopted Chinese girls' social skills at home and in school as well as the effect of pre-adoption adversity on these skills. Parent ratings of 869 girls and teacher ratings of 611 of the 869 girls were obtained using the Social Skills Rating System for parent (SSRS-P) and teacher (SSRS-T) respectively. The girls were adopted on average at 15.6 months (SD = 13.9) and were in three age groups, including preschool, elementary school, and secondary school. Data on five indicators of pre-adoption adversity (i.e., signs/symptoms, delays at adoption, initial refusal/avoidance of adoptive mothers, crying/clinging behaviors, and age at adoption) were obtained from the same adoptive parents 2 years prior. Findings suggest that both parents and teachers rated the girls as either similar to or better than US norms on the SSRS. Parent–teacher agreement on SSRS subscales was significant but modest (rs = 0.12–0.25). Two indicators of pre-adoption adversity (i.e., delays at adoption and initial refusal/avoidance of adoptive mothers) predicted poorer social skills at home; two other indicators of pre-adoption adversity (i.e., signs/symptoms and age at adoption) predicted poorer social skills in school.     

The Media as spectacle: September 11 as soap opera

The concept of “spectacle” is most often associated with the writings of Guy Debord, but has also been developed and extended by later theorists, most particularly Jonathon Crary. We make use of their ideas on the “spectacle” which is the mass media to address two important sets of questions: how and why does the media find itself in a position to carry out the “immobilising” function ascribed to it by both Debord and Crary; and what are the techniques and mechanisms that facilitate this operation? We then exemplify the process of the media as spectacle with regard to coverage of recent political events such as the September 11 attacks and the so‐called “war on terror” and its relation to what we call the hysterical order of the soap opera.

The whole of life of those societies in which modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacle. All that once was directly lived has become mere representation. (Debord )     

Criticizing the Critic: Comments on Jahoda's (2012) Critique of Discursive Social Psychology

Jahoda (2012) criticizes discursive social psychology (DSP) on several different grounds; specifically, he argues that DSP has opaque methodological procedures, is of questionable scientific merit, involves over‐interpretation of its data, and implicitly claims its findings to be universal rather than contextually specific. We challenge these criticisms by arguing that observational studies of the kind typical within DSP research have a perfectly valid place within a scientific social psychology, that the interpretations made by DSP researchers should be seen in the context of a temporally extended research process in which they are subject to criticism and potential replication, and that Jahoda is himself guilty of over‐interpretation by inferring claims of universality when such an inference is not warranted by the data (i.e. the qualitative content of the sample of research papers considered by Jahoda).     

Tolerance of Homosexuality in 88 Countries: Education,Political Freedom,and Liberalism

Researchers have repeatedly found a positive correlation between education and tolerance. However, they may be victims of an unrepresentative sample containing only rich Western liberal democracies, where political agendas have a liberalizing effect on curricula. In this paper, we specify the relationship between education and liberal attitudes by analyzing data on educational attainment and tolerance of homosexuality (one dimension of liberalism) drawn from a heterogeneous sample of 88 countries over the period 1981–2014. We argue that nonliberal political agendas in some countries undermine the supposed universality of the positive relationship between educational attainment and tolerance of homosexuality. In relatively free countries, education is indeed associated with greater tolerance. However, in relatively unfree countries, education has no effect on tolerance and in some cases encourages intolerance. Specifically, our analysis demonstrates that education is associated with tolerance of homosexuality only when regimes energetically promote liberal‐democratic values. The larger theoretical point is that the agendas of political regimes shape civic values partly via education systems. Especially in an era when democracy is at risk in many countries, it is important to recognize that education is not always a benign force.