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.     

‘Business under new management’ — lessons from Canada on regulation of the social work profession

Abstract

In December 1998 the Social Work and Social Service Work Act (hereafter the Ontario Act) was passed in Ontario, Canada marking the effective completion of social work regulatory legislation across provincial Canada. This article outlines the principal features of the Ontario regulations, and summarises the strengths and limitations of the various arrangements which have been implemented across Canada. As moves toward control of the Australian social work profession are contemplated, the implications for such a move are discussed in the light of the Canadian experience.     

Migration Decisions of Dual-earner Families: An Application of Multilevel Modeling

A comprehensive framework for guiding analyses of internal migration is lacking. This study contributes to the family migration literature in three important ways. We develop a multilevel theoretical framework emphasizing an integration of individual-, family-, and neighborhood-level effects; introduce multilevel statistical modeling; and explicitly assess how effects of economic-based explanatory variables vary by gender. Our data are from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). We find that the likelihood of a family migrating is affected by economic and non-economic factors, some of which vary by gender. We add to the dual-earner migration literature by finding that wives are not likely to be tied-movers, but husbands are likely to be tied-stayers. Neighborhood factors also are important to the decision to migrate.

Structural and Contextual Factors Regarding the Accessibility of Elective Office for Women of Color at the Local Level

Different from the majority of past research on gender gaps in political officeholding, we adopt an intersectionality framework and move beyond traditional individual factors to explore what implications certain elements in the political opportunity structure may have for women and men of color elected officials serving in county, municipal, and local school board offices. We argue that structural and contextual factors, such as type of institutions, election systems, and jurisdictional racial makeup, may influence the calculations women of color make concerning the accessibility of elective office. Using data from the Gender and Multiracial Leadership (GMCL) project, we find county offices to be the least, and seats on school boards the most, accessible to women of color. Of the types of electoral arrangements, we find multimember districts (MMD) to be the most significant variable predicting the likelihood of women of color in office. Although both Black and Latina women benefit from having a significant share of coethnics or nonwhites in jurisdictions, the two groups of women have an opposite relationship to their racial constituent makeup than that held by their male counterparts.     

Public Research, Private Concerns: ethical issues in the use of open-ended interviews with people who have learning difficulties

This paper is an exploration of the ethical dilemmas in open-ended interview research with people with learning difficulties. We address the possibility that research which gives voice to the experience of abuse, from the viewpoint of the victim, can itself be abusive. Such research is justified in terms of empowering, illuminating and disseminating the meaning that participants give to their lives. Yet every stage of the process raises complex ethical issues when research participants are drawn from vulnerable and powerless groups in society, and the focus for investigation can be deemed private. As a vehicle for our exploration, we reflect on our ethical dilemmas in researching the story of a young woman who has learning difficulties and has been the victim of various forms of abuse. We argue that ethical dilemmas cannot be overcome solely by Ethical Codes or even predetermined 'good practice'. They are integral to the whole research process and necessitate continuous explicit examination of decision making processes within research.     

A vocational special college: preparing students for a participatory democracy?

This paper is based on an ethnographic type study of the say that young people have in the decisions which shape their education and their lives. Such student participation in decision-making is not only a challenge to an essentially authoritarian system in which education is controlled by teachers, politicians and others, it is the foundation of citizenship. The research was undertaken in a newly established, supposedly unique, vocational college for 14-18 year-olds. The analysis of data was structured in a framework of participative democracy: freedom, equality and fraternity. Using this framework, the paper examines the development of power structures, power relations and ideologies which maintain status quo, and define and determine the say young people have in decision-making. It addresses the denial of any foundation for active participatory citizenship in a segregated educational setting.