Beliefs About Poverty and Opportunity Among Mexican Immigrant Farm Workers1

This study examined attributions for poverty and beliefs about upward mobility among 124 Mexican immigrant farm workers. The effects of gender and length of United States residency were also analyzed. Despite living in poverty and perceiving racism as a significant problem, respondents expected upward mobility for themselves and their children. Consistent with previous research on low‐income and ethnic minority attributions (Bullock, 1999; Hunt, 1996; Kluegel & Smith, 1986), structural explanations for poverty were favored over individualistic causes, however, considerable support for individualistic causes was also expressed. Gender and length of residency were not predictive of immigrants’ beliefs about poverty. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Advances in Patient Adherence to Medical Treatment Regimens: The Emerging Role of Technology in Adherence Monitoring and Management

Adherence is a term used to describe the extent to which an individual's behavior coincides with health‐related instructions or recommendations given by a healthcare provider in the context of a specific disease or disorder. Despite significant advances in biomedical science related to the treatment of disease, the problem of nonadherence remains pervasive and may be aptly described as a global public health concern. The recent proliferation of telemedicine coupled with the ubiquity of personal computers, mobile phones, and other wireless communication devices have, in part, led to the development and implementation of a variety of technology‐based methods used to assess, monitor, and manage adherence. As the chronic illness burden continues to grow, these methods may offer solutions to some of the limitations of traditional means particularly for conditions requiring complex self‐management and lifestyle adjustment. In this article, we briefly review recent advances in adherence monitoring and management including m‐health, home telemonitoring systems, web‐based support (i.e., self‐management websites and virtual support groups), and patient portals and personal health records before concluding with a brief account of some exciting new technologies under development in the context of patient adherence.     

Baring Their Souls in Online Profiles or Not? Religious Self‐Disclosure in Social Media

This study measured the prevalence of religious self‐disclosure in public MySpace profiles that belonged to a subsample of National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) wave 3 respondents (N = 560). Personal attributes associated with religious identification as well as the overall quantity of religious self‐disclosures are examined. A majority (62 percent) of profile owners identified their religious affiliations online, although relatively few profile owners (30 percent) said anything about religion outside the religion‐designated field. Most affiliation reports (80 percent) were consistent with the profile owner's reported affiliation on the survey. Religious profile owners disclosed more about religion when they also believed that religion is a public matter or if they evaluated organized religion positively. Evangelical Protestants said more about religion than other respondents. Religiosity, believing that religion is a public matter, and the religiosity of profile owners’ friendship group were all positively associated with religious identification and self‐disclosure.     

Lay Explanations for Poverty in Turkey and Their Determinants

Abstract

The external and internal causal attributions for poverty in Turkey were examined in an exploratory survey. Factor analysis results confirmed Feagin's 3 conceptual categories (1975) of explanations for poverty, structural, fatalistic, and individualistic. Income, gender, age, and education were important determinants of explanations for poverty. All income groups favored structural (external) explanations. Poor persons preferred more tangible structural explanations, and nonpoor persons gave more abstract structural explanations. Poor persons also favored fatalistic (external) explanations more than higher income groups did. Women and older people offered individualistic and fatalistic explanations more than others. Men and people with higher levels of education preferred abstract structural explanations more than others.     

Self‐Objectification and Lower Income Pregnant Women's Breastfeeding Attitudes1

The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine self‐objectification as a correlate of pregnant women's concerns about public breastfeeding and the impact of breastfeeding on body shape and sexuality. Fifty‐two pregnant women enrolled in the Women, Infants, and Children Program responded to telephone questions regarding concerns about breastfeeding, attitudes toward breastfeeding, and self‐objectification. Women who scored higher on measures of self‐objectification reported more concern about the impact of breastfeeding on their bodies and sexuality and were less comfortable with the idea of breastfeeding in public than were women with lower self‐objectification scores. Self‐objectification was not associated with more negative attitudes toward breastfeeding or weaker intentions to breastfeed. Implications for the promotion of breastfeeding for low‐income women are discussed.     

Comparing equity and self‐expansion theory approaches to relational maintenance

Focusing on relational maintenance in heterosexual romantic dyads, this investigation compares the equity theory approach with self‐expansion theory, an alternative approach predicting maintenance behavior when a partner includes the other in the sense of the self. Results supported both theoretical explanations, albeit support for self‐expansion theory was more consistent, predicting all maintenance behavior types. Although relational maintenance constructs were statistically comparable between men and women, a sex difference emerged regarding maintenance behavior's predictors, with self‐expansion theory a stronger explanation for men but not women. The discussion considers how these results inform the distinction between exchange‐ and communally oriented conceptualizations of relationships, as well as development of a communicative theory of relational maintenance.     

An intermediary enhances out‐group trust and in‐group profit expectation of Chinese but not Australians

In this research, we made a theoretical distinction between direct and intermediary‐mediated trust situations, and conducted a cross‐cultural (Chinese vs. Australians) investment trust game to test the overlooked effects of an intermediary on investors' trust decisions, with respect to how much to invest in and expect from trustees. Compared to situations of direct trust, a nominal intermediary increased the number of Chinese investors expecting in‐group trustees to repay a profit on their investments (Hypothesis 1) and raised their level of investment in out‐group trustees (Hypothesis 2). These results applied to Chinese, but not Australians in support of the proposal that a nominal intermediary would serve as a cue to activate different cultural stereotypes of the functions and meanings of an intermediary with respect to trust and expectation of reciprocity. Coexisting with these culture‐specific effects of an intermediary, the minimal categorisation of people into in‐group and out‐group on trivial grounds leads to a highly significant in‐group favouritism in investment levels of both Chinese and Australians (Hypothesis 3).     

The relationship between perceived religious discrimination and self‐esteem for Muslim Australians

Muslim Australians represent one of the fastest growing migrant groups in Australia. They are also the group who, after Indigenous Australians, experience the most discrimination. Previous research on the minority stress model confirms a link between such discrimination and mental health. However, in relation to self‐esteem and discrimination, the results are mixed, potentially reflecting whether people reject or identify with prejudiced views of them and also the type of discrimination being measured. To explore this issue further in an Australian context, we asked 49 Australian Muslims to complete Rosenberg's Self‐esteem Scale and the Perceived Religious Discrimination Scale. In support of both the minority stress model and the rejection‐identification model, we found that perceived interpersonal and systemic discrimination accounts for a small but significant variation in self‐esteem. Interpersonal discrimination was negatively related to self‐esteem, and systemic discrimination positively related. The effects of interpersonal discrimination on self‐esteem can guide therapists to interventions that help clients resist internalising discrimination experiences. The effects of institutional discrimination support therapists becoming part of the resistance to and challenging of discrimination and inequality.     

Predicting individual differences in low‐income children's executive control from early to middle childhood

The present longitudinal study tested the roles of early childhood executive control (EC) as well as exposure to poverty‐related adversity at family and school levels as key predictors of low‐income children's EC in elementary school (n = 391). Findings suggest that children's EC difficulties in preschool and lower family income from early to middle childhood are robust predictors of later EC difficulties as rated by teachers in 2nd and 3rd grades. Findings also suggest enrollment in unsafe elementary schools is significantly predictive of higher levels of teacher‐rated EC difficulty, but only for those children who showed initially elevated levels of EC difficulty in early childhood. Implications for scientific models of cognitive development and poverty‐related adversity are discussed.     

Support for the Death Penalty and Rehabilitation: Question Order or Communication Effect?1

Response‐effects research has shown that survey questions shape and channel public opinion. Our study examines the degree to which the variance in people's cognitions about and attitudes toward crime policy proposals is a methodological artifact and the degree to which it represents media effects. Four different forms of a survey were used to manipulate the order of the proposal (death penalty vs. rehabilitation) and criterion (cognition vs. attitude). Results show that experimental manipulations affected cognitions or attitudes only for the death penalty. Respondents who were asked the cognition measure first showed a high level of consistency between the net valence of their arguments and their attitudes. Respondents who were asked their attitudes first reported relatively more affective arguments, a phenomenon that we label affective priming. Exposure and attention to specific media content influenced cognitions and attitudes differentially.     

Associations of Mother–Child Reminiscing about Negative Past Events,Coping, and Self‐Concept in Early Childhood

Parent–child reminiscing conversations in early childhood have received theoretical attention as a forum for children's self‐concept development, but this has been little addressed in empirical work. This study examines associations between emotion reminiscing and children's self‐concepts and, building from the reminiscing and personality development literatures, also explores the role of children's coping. Sixty 4‐ and 5‐year‐old children and their mothers completed reminiscing conversations about events in which the child had experienced negative emotion, children completed an age‐appropriate assessment of their self‐concept, and mothers and teachers reported on children's coping strategies. Children's self‐perceived timidity was associated with their explanations for negative emotions during reminiscing. Children's self‐perceived negative affect was associated with fewer emotion resolutions during reminiscing, and with distinctive patterns of coping. Both reminiscing and coping made unique contributions to children's self‐concepts, and findings also suggest that coping may in some contexts indirectly connect reminiscing with self‐concept. These findings suggest that reminiscing conversations both reflect children's characteristics and provide a context for learning about their characteristics, along with strategies for emotion management. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fichte's striving subject

In this paper I argue that Fichte's attempt to reconcile the dualism of concept and intuition requires the overcoming of any idea of a thing‐in‐itself. At the same time he preserves the idea of an external constraint on the I's self‐positing. This central role for the realist constraint of the check conflicts with recent interpretations of Fichte that see his project as advocating the exclusivity of the space of reasons. The striving subject confronts and unifies the opposition between the realistic and idealistic elements in the Wissenschaftslehre. It is argued that as striving, reason's drive for self‐determination is a process of self‐transformation, as consciousness confronts the limitations of its inadequate explanations of the objects of experience.     

Testing Error Management Theory: Exploring the Commitment Skepticism Bias and the Sexual Overperception Bias

Research on error management theory indicates that men tend to overestimate women's sexual interest and women underestimate men's interest in committed relationships ( Haselton & Buss, 2000 ). We test the assumptions of the theory in face‐to‐face, stranger interactions with 111 man‐woman dyads. Support for the theory emerges, but potential boundary conditions are observed. In addition, we find that women's perceptions of men's desire for commitment is related to the women's own self‐reported sexual interest but that the reverse does not hold for men. Finally, we find evidence consistent with the proposition that people project their own level of interest in sex or in a committed relationship onto their interaction partners.     

Imitation of Self‐Aggressive Behavior: An Experimental Test of the Contagion Hypothesis1

The purpose of the present study was to experimentally examine the influence of a self‐aggressive model on self‐aggressive behavior under controlled laboratory conditions. Participants (N= 94) were given the opportunity to self‐administer electric shock while competing with a fictitious opponent in a reaction‐time task. Participants observed the opponent self‐administer either increasingly intense shock (a self‐aggressive model) or constant low shocks (a non‐self‐aggressive model). Self‐aggression was defined as the intensity of shock that was self‐administered by participants. Results provide support for the notion that social information can influence the expression of self‐aggressive behavior. Specifically, participants attended to the opponent's shock choices in both model conditions, and chose shocks consistent with those of the observed model.     

COLLECTIVE SELF‐ORGANIZATION IN GENERAL BIOLOGY: GILLES DELEUZE,CHARLES S. PEIRCE,AND STUART KAUFFMAN

Stuart Kauffman's proposal in Investigations to ground a “general biology” in the laws of self‐organization governing systems of autonomous agents runs up against the methodological problem of how to integrate formal mathematical with semantic and semiotic approaches to the study of evolutionary development. Gilles Deleuze's concept of the virtual and C. S. Peirce's system of existential graphs provide a theoretical framework and practical art for answering this problem of method by modeling the creative event of collective self‐organization as both represented and practiced in the scientific community.     

Epistemic bootstrapping as a failure to use an independent source

The problem of epistemic bootstrapping requires explaining, in a principled manner, why a subject who engages in bootstrapping fails to know the conclusion of her reasoning. Existing proposed solutions to the problem provide unsatisfactory explanations regarding the bootstrapper's ignorance. This paper puts forward a novel solution and argues that it satisfactorily explains the ignorance of the bootstrapper, while avoiding the difficulties that other proposals face. Section 1 explains what epistemic bootstrapping is, defines the problem it poses for a theory of knowledge, and outlines the basic desiderata demanded of any acceptable solution to the problem. Section 2 explicates the proposal I defend throughout the rest of the paper. Here, I contend that the wrong−making feature of bootstrapping which ultimately explains the bootstrapper's ignorance is a failure to use an independent source in checking the accuracy of the reports of a given source. I call this explanation the “Independence proposal.” Section 2 also argues that the phenomenon of bootstrapping is broader than is usually assumed; there are cases of bootstrapping that do not fit the superficial structure of the prototypical cases discussed in the literature, and any good proposal should apply to these as well. Section 3 argues that the independence proposal does better than other current proposals in fulfilling the desiderata identified in Section 1. Section 4 sums up the central contributions of the paper.     

Predictors of representational aggression in preschool children of low‐income urban African American adolescent mothers

Responses to five doll‐story stems thematically related to attachment experiences with the mother were videotaped in the home and used to evaluate child, maternal, and environmental predictors of representational aggression in 93 preschool children of African American women receiving public assistance who had become pregnant as teenagers. Significant correlations were found between representational aggression and child's gender (male), birth weight, maternal depressive affect, maternal educational attainment, recent employment, mother's historical residence with her own mother, and felt social support, accounting for 40% of the variance in representational aggression. A significant Felt Social Support × Gender interaction effect suggested that girls of mothers who perceive higher levels of felt social support are more likely to represent less aggression in their stories; felt social support was not associated with boys' representational aggression. A significant Felt Social Support × Employment interaction effect suggested that representational aggression is associated with lower levels of felt social support only among employed mothers. Findings suggest that different pathways exist for representational aggression in children of low‐income adolescent mothers, which nevertheless share predictors associated with poverty.     

Accuracy and bias in perceptions of emotionally supportive communication in marriage

Abstract This study examined accuracy and bias within people's perceptions of a spouse's emotionally supportive behavior in the United States. Hypotheses stated that people's self‐reported supportiveness, their marital satisfaction, and outside observers' ratings of their partner's support predict people's perceptions of their partner's supportiveness. Married dyads (N = 100) completed measures of marital satisfaction, engaged in a discussion about personal stressors, and rated their own and their spouse's emotional support during the interaction. Third‐party observers also provided a rating of each partner's emotionally supportive behavior. For husbands and wives, perceptions of partner support were positively associated with their own supportiveness and the partner's observable supportive communication. Marital satisfaction predicted greater perception of partner support for wives, but not for husbands.